Fingers on the Pulse
It was Valentine’s Day again, another long and grueling one. I was busy fixing my eyebrows in the rearview mirror while she was telling me about her own dream, frustratingly, as if it were happening inside of mine. We had just spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to agree on a lunch spot.
Later, we headed to a gallery show featuring an immersive performance by Osama Bin Laden’s youngest son, who had become a popular durational artist in the downtown scene. His signature style was to dress in various plaids, and short shorts paired with cowboy boots. He also had a notable collection of vintage belt buckles, very ornate and studded with crystals and jewels. It was said that he wore bright pink condoms to bed.
As part of the show, we were instructed to hold hands with the strangers on either side of us, forming a wide yet intimate circle around the gallery’s periphery. The performance consisted of him carrying around something large and bulky, occasionally bumping into someone and disrupting our fragile human chain as he fumbled visibly with the strange package. He went on like this for quite a while, much longer than seemed necessary, but I guess that was the point of durational art and all of its inherent insufferability. In addition to his standard costume, he donned a comical tinfoil mustache. I felt rather impressed and touched by his celebrity. No one seemed to know what the actual art was about.
We tried to edge our way closer to him after the performance, imposing on a private conversation he was having with another woman. One of us managed to catch his immediate attention, and he made no uncertain gesture as to honor his apparent pleasure at our existence. The poor woman nearly crumpled in our presence, imperceptibly to most, then pulled herself quickly back together.
But I knew the woman flinched; accustomed as she was to comparing herself to other beautiful women. Was his ribald remark meant to tease, to test the limits of her vanity? She attempted to appear reassured by his behavior, almost as if it displayed a kind of trust in her confidence and therefore proof of her own superiority, otherwise he never would have thought to make such a bare admission in her presence…right? With our new proximity, we could see that his short shorts were constructed from a shiny taffeta, to which the price tag was still glaringly attached. He also wore a small diamond in one ear. How arrogant this type of man can be, with a chip in his ear.
Just then my ex breezed past us in the gallery, materializing as if from out of nowhere. I noticed that she had dyed her short hair brown, which was a relief to me, since it made her less attractive. In fact, I almost hadn’t recognized her at first, if not for the aquiline nose. It’s like she means to be unattractive, I remember thinking, as if she has nothing left to lose. She had with her some beefy guy, off whose thick arm she dangled herself, dramatically. They were both dressed head to toe in matching denim, and she seemed very happy and relaxed, shockingly—not at all ashamed.
She, my ex, had been a reluctant sweater designer. The last design she ever invented—shortly before our breakup—featured a teardrop sleeve, made from actual tears, hers.
I arched my back a little, feeling smug. My current girlfriend, despite her many problems, was clearly a prize in comparison. “Devilish” is how Osama Bin Laden’s son had referred to her, just by looking at her. She had slim but strong hips, and teeth with several noticeable indentations, which people rarely failed to find exceedingly charming. In her long black hair, she often wore a blue ribbon, and on that special ribbon was etched an intricate scene. Her body had a loose and careless quality to it, almost like a cartoon. She frequently smelled strongly of garlic, but no one ever seemed bothered.
My ex, though—her head had fit into my hand like a mathematical equation.
I overheard someone in the gallery say the best part of long-term relationships is getting to have sex with other people. To which her friend responded, but it’s a sin you can’t be with that Swiss boy all the time…it’s obvious your bodies just want to be together!
Osama Bin Laden’s son wanted to know our opinions on the growing trend of “eco-sex tourism.” He detailed for us a vivid picture in which he had observed an odd threesome floating together on a small raft, in the Arabian Sea. They were two men, and one woman. He described how he watched as all three appeared to climax together, spiritually. How they had moaned in unison, sounding like whale song. Real cornucopia energy was how he put it.
And had we heard of a certain notorious murderer who also happened to make beautiful photographs out of ecological messes?
A rather wan and timid girl, with strawish hair the exact shade of pallor as her face, so that you couldn’t tell where the hair ended and the head began, offered up a tray of fruit and cheeses, inserting it between us, as she had been hired to do. Osama Bin Laden’s son huffed loudly, threatening to knock it out of her hands, then promptly ran off to insult the caterers.
Fruit is for losers—and women! he shouted across the room. His words echoed off the walls. And animals who are too weak or scared to eat other animals, and are later eaten themselves, ha!
Was this really what it took to succeed these days, I thought, grimly. A globally infamous dad and one corny overpriced costume, or else the perverse drive to invent the most gimmicky “experience” imaginable, turning regular beachside orgies into a spectator sport from which hidden entities must profit? Meanwhile, here I was working at all sorts of ungodly hours, tormented and hungry, unable to be…
My ex marched up, thrusting her whole self at us, boldly interrupting my thoughts. A simple A-frame was how I had always considered her body, humble but homey feeling, like a one-story triangular house. Now it appeared substantially renovated; lifted on stilts, with a whole new floor attached at the top.
She mouthed the word bruise as if it were a bonus—a garnish on top of the lovely purple spot it represented, a rather circuitous rose. She pressed on it with a thorny finger, for added emphasis. Had we seen her bruise. We had not. Not until she made the concerted effort to point it out. The resultant mark of Osama Bin Laden’s son’s bulky package, so it seemed, as it made rude contact with her slim arm during the inscrutable performance.
A liability. She had always been a liability. I wondered if this time she might muster up enough follow-through to actually sue. I stared hard at the heart-shaped pendant she wore on a choker laced around her strong yet supple neck. It had been my gift to her, the previous year. If she were issued a fatwa in return for the lawsuit, I wouldn’t be too sorry.
Outside, snowflakes grew so big and violent they fell like bricks, threatening to cobble the smoking crowd over their colorless, mostly Nordic-looking heads. Models, especially, were forced to stay and huddle together in the gallery inside the knitted caves of their oversized designer coats, which somehow only looked good on models, or else they had a way of reinforcing that impression despite what they wore, simply by wearing it. One carried a little panettone cake with her, worn around her wrist like a tiny purse. She pouted her lips with great focus, but without a clear source or recipient for such intensity of expression. It gave credence to her cheekbones, though, you had to hand her that. She was someone who knew how to starve.
Osama Bin Laden’s son wanted to take us to the top of his recently purchased skyscraper which currently stood as the tallest building in NYC at 105 floors, a full story higher than One World Trade Center. He declared that it was the best spot in the city to see the tips…the “tips” being, evidently, his pet name for the tops of the tallest, sharpest buildings, which he could easily look down upon from his special vantage.
Soon the entire gallery of phony artists and sycophants had relocated to his gigantic penthouse, which quickly turned into a kind of rave. He had a white mustang suspended from the ceiling, stuffed and preserved, frozen mid-rear, forever threatening to pounce. Everyone was microdosing a new drug made for achieving “the perfect balance between the masculine and feminine.” They took turns hanging over a wraparound balcony made entirely of glass, with absolute faith in god and in the architecture.
I had been living in the same rent-controlled studio apartment for nearly fifteen years, at the ground level, teeming with bugs. I swore that I would not run from my moth infestation; instead, I would manage it to the best of my ability, making peace with what I could not change. Besides, this kind of moth was incredibly slow and lazy, despite procreating fiercely. They weren’t too difficult to catch, captured easily in air by clapping two hands together. In fact, they hardly seemed to have bodies at all—you could pinch one with your fingers and it would dissolve into ash.
Because I, myself, have very little faith in god or architects, I could not entertain the perversely see-through balcony. Stretched out with my girlfriend on a massive leather couch, Osama Bin Laden’s son considered our laid-back positions as an explicit invitation. He offered us a glass of wine. It tasted historical. Then without permission or warning, he lifted my girlfriend’s delicate foot onto his lap and slowly and carefully undid the straps of her shoe. As he cupped and caressed her foot in his hands, I could see that she had one really long and gnarly toenail and felt immediately ashamed and embarrassed by it. How long had I managed to ignore this veiled yet glaring flaw?
I like to grasp my girlfriend from behind by her broad hips, feel the bones of her pelvis jutting out like guns from a pair of smooth holsters. When looking her in the face, I often find my gaze fixed on the wide chasm between her otherwise small and lusterless eyes. Sometimes I forget to consider the rest of her.
My own eyes are very deep; they seem to go on forever, I’m told. My constitution, delicate. Perhaps overly so. I used to be of the mind-set that whatever happens to go on inside my body, its complicated systems and networks and their various processes, is really none of my business.
I only recently came to understand that spicy foods do not agree with me. That certain pairs of thighs are what get me up most mornings.
He gave the toenail a second moldy glance, then thrust the foot away. I thought of my ex again, whose every nail was kept perfectly trimmed and polished at all times, not one hair out of place, skin completely poreless, like a witch. Even in death she would be meticulous. I kept that fact jealously to myself.
My current girlfriend giggled, unbothered by her imperfections. Osama Bin Laden’s son seemed torn between sheer disgust and something bordering on respect. Who there had not gone to such lengths to manipulate or disguise anything about their bodies that could be considered even the slightest bit unsavory? To parade around your own abnormalities like that, to let the toenail have a life of its own without interference, to grow thick and discolored and torque as it may, could almost be something to admire.
Speaking of the witch, she and her jeans-clad boytoy were back, circling the room together like a pair of trashy denim hawks. It was only then that I made the connection—this beefcake was Osama Bin Laden’s son’s dealer! Not of the drug variety, of which he already had plenty. No, he was the apparent hell source, the ground zero of the snazzy belt buckles, the bedazzled boots, and probably the tacky shorts. He was a pusher of luxury, or pseudo-luxury, goods.
Like a true merchant, he actually flashed open his vintage Japanese-grade woven utility bomber jacket to reveal a row of belt buckles dangling like glittery illicit ornaments, wrapped in plastic baggies and pinned to a sturdy inside pocket. While the men talked shop, my ex told us about the fancy cabin she had rented for the two of them in Connecticut, for the holiday, and that they would go there next, to celebrate.
But it had been me who liked rustic yet modern cabins, who loved swimming in lakes, and other such rural activities—not she, and by the looks of it, not him either. I knew she had done it just to spite me; the cabin rental serving as a purposeful betrayal of all my previously unmet needs in the relationship. Besides, what would they need a cabin for in the middle of winter, the lake frozen all the way over, and not a swimmer in sight?
The thought sickened me, but in truth, I had always suspected she was a straight girl, deep down, ever since she asked me to fist her on our very first date. It was simply too on-the-nose. True lesbians liked to ease into things, or so it had been in my humble experience.
One detail I did notice gladly, a cheap balm for my sagging ego, was the obvious disinterest or possibly even revulsion that Osama Bin Laden’s son had for her, my ex, most notably in contrast to the googly-eyed attention he paid nearly every other woman in his orbit. Then again, watching him fondle the goods behind the boyfriend’s jacket, as if tenderly caressing his pecs behind a scrim of fine denim, one had to wonder if he favored the female sex at all.
Of course, there had been the bruise; collateral damage from the artist’s full right to expression without borders, suspiciously inflicted only upon her, despite the vast and equally irritating crowd. It wasn’t tyrannical to think she might have been targeted, and with good reason. She really did have one of those faces you either wanted to punch or fuck. It was a face that lacked any sort of neutral ground.
She removed her jacket to remind us of her recently marred forearm, now covered in a large, ostentatious bandage. When Osama Bin Laden’s son finally turned to notice it, he became incensed. He literally put one hand up to her face, as if to say stop, girl, STOP, or to pantomime slapping her. Simultaneously, he made a hacking sound, a low gurgling deep inside in his throat, to express his disdain for her and her silly, unimportant wound. Oh…but did she want to see the tips??? he asked her innocently, abruptly pivoting.
There was something so garish about his grin as he led her out alone onto the transparent balcony, their figures eerily suspended in air. It wasn’t long before we could see that they were arguing, gesturing at each other in theatrical, elongated poses, neither of them seeming particularly concerned with the possibility of flinging themselves over the side and onto the pavement 105 floors below. We could hardly detect any actual words, only the onslaught of angry yet muffled tones bouncing off the thick panes of glass. That is, until the tail end of one exclamation reverberated through the entire loft. “BECAUSE I’M AN INTROVERT!!!” my ex screamed in exasperation.
An alarming realization washed over me…had I been completely off base this entire time? Was there actually something going on, erotically, between the two of them? That’s also when I noticed my current girlfriend speaking animatedly with the gemstone king, right in front of me, while Osama Bin Laden’s son threatened to throw his own girlfriend off the balcony. He leaned deliberately into her hair, inspecting the little scene on her antique ribbon between whiffs of garlic, seemingly oblivious to the unfolding drama. She giggled like a bimbo, and yet here I was the real dummy, perpetually unable to see what was right there in front of me.
Even in her flustered state, I could detect through the glass a woman most cool and still as a mountain, her expression having the solemnity of caves. It suddenly made sense to me, how time and space could bend around an object, creating endless karmic loops. I followed my ex’s face as it bounced off the mirrored wall reflected in the window and into a series of refracted images projected onto the ceiling, like an obscene prism of features from a face you would rather forget.
But I knew something the others didn’t, that they hadn’t yet anticipated—that the era of the image was over, was coming to its inevitable end. Soon, there would no longer be the need for faces, or even bodies for that matter. It was with this certainty that I was able to turn away, to walk down that narrow hall of mirrors in reverse, to descend slowly from the tallest building in the city…and as I floated down the long street toward my destiny and away from my past, I did not pause once or even think to look back, not for all the commotion or shouting in the world, or the rocks as they rained down on my head and the crumbling plaster…as I had already read all the stories there were to read and yet was no pillar, no virtuous woman, and I would not be caught dead as a man would, not in this lifetime anyway, clinging fast to heaven or to salt.
Stella Corso is the author of the poetry collections Green Knife and Tantrum (Rescue Press), along with several chapbooks, including, most recently, DEEPFAKES (mercury firs). She lives in New Orleans.