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CHAPTER 1
THERE ARE HORSES AND LIGHTS IN THE CITY
If you were above the city you would see the lights. From above the clouds above the city the lights of the city are blurred. The clouds cover the city. The lights are under water. It could all be Atlantis. What an unnatural beauty the city is. Blue, yellow, red lights are a city from above that looks like crystal jewelry you can hand to a friend. If you want to see a cross you can stare at the lights and you can see that within the lights there are lights in the shape of a cross. It can mean nothing. It can mean someone has sacrificed something for you in this city. A man who does not have a house or a car stumbles around to remind the people of the city why they must wake up early in the morning. On the streets of the city there are horses. They travel with blinders on, in and through the lights of the streets of the city. The people of the city take away the horses' peripheral vision. If the horses saw all the lights they might be frightened. You think this life is so cruel I can want something I will never have. In a car in the city the man sitting next to you feels like a friend, but he won't tell you why he has come. This hurts you enough to have to pretend he has come to the city to meet a mistress. He is too ashamed to tell you. His shame makes your shame better. There must be a reason why the people in the city need the horses. There must be a god who loves the horses. The people of the city must not frighten the horses. Clouds look like something that could be scooped up in your hands, something you can fall on. Everything has been the same since you realized you would fall in and through clouds. You should be able to take off these scabs on your face with your nails. You should find perfect skin beneath the scabs you can scrape off with a nail. First there is blood, then another scab again if you wait. If you wait, a scar. Everything is the same. Even skin does not do what you can see in front of you. Even skin has a punishing system. Looking down from above the clouds look like mountains, valleys, fields made of the gushing milk of an animal whose baby has been plucked away. If you tried to walk on them you would fall right through. What looks the softest can disappoint you. The horses can only see what is in front of them. One car. One man. One house. Life is so cruel you can want things you can't have. You should be able to, if you feel a gushing in your chest while talking to a friend, grab a face and kiss on the mouth. But that is not what friends do. You find something to stuff between your legs without realizing it. Walking in the city you do not realize what you look like. You don't know what you look like when you speak. Until the people of the city remind you, you are speaking loudly. When you begin to think about your voice you can imagine it. The parts of you that are too short, too long, too thick, too small. You cannot be a natural beauty. What you would have said changes. The horses can focus. They will not be disturbed by their vision. I am too loud when I speak. We are also too loud. The horses stay quiet in the city. I can tell you what we feel sometimes. A single thin needle pressed into our foreheads. A needle pressed through the bone of our chest punctures the skin of our lungs. We can sleep with closed eyes pressed tightly. Open eyes only pretending not to feel like pin cushions when they open up early in the morning. As if life cannot be so cruel you can want things that don't exist. A house, a car, a man, god. I am fine. God. I am shamed. In front of the people of the city I spoke too loudly. Can you hear me over the noise of the city? I have said many words too loudly before. Only the horses can see me. That is why when I wake up I can feel the thick black cloud that moves in my stomach. There is nothing you can say to make people in the city love us. Then what good is it. To speak at all. To walk out into a street to be with the horses.
Some people in the city are alone in their beds.
It's hard to start out here. It is not just him. It's just hard to start out. Everybody wants to be something here. It's hard to start out. They are all only putting their fingers inside their mouths and biting down just to feel something.
People in the city are alone in their beds.
She told the class that mothers kill their children more than any other kind of people kill children. What's that supposed to mean? It is too harsh to mention these things. It's too hard hearted. The simple logic is that they have easy access to children. It's not that bad really. It's only because they have access to their children. She wanted to make it sound so bad. So bad. Don't be so sensitive. Don't be so sensitive. When people aren't around children, they don't kill them.
People in the city are alone in their beds.
It doesn't matter if she misses you. It is just a feeling. She may miss you, but she won't do anything about it. You think if she misses you enough she will call you, but that is not true. If she feels guilty enough, misses you enough, she may change, become a better or worse person than she was with you, but she will still forget about you. That's how it works. That's just how it is. That's what you do too. You regret what went wrong with a person, and so try to be different with the next person, but you don't call the person you wronged to apologize and try to make things work. You know everything is already poisoned.
People in the city are alone in their beds.
It's just how they sweet-talk you, tell you what you want to hear, things that make you feel good. Then they take the feeling away from you when they stop paying attention to you, and you want to hear those words again. It's not even that man you want anymore. You feel it was never real, that you never were good enough for it in the first place, stupid to have believed it, but you want to believe it was real, and only he can make you feel it was real by paying attention to you again. Then when he says something to make you feel good again, you have him, you are happy to have him again, then he takes it away by not paying attention to you, and you have to stick around until he gives it back to you, again. He builds you up, then breaks you down. You can't believe you let him stare at you naked in sunlight. You were basically saying see, here are the little hairs I missed on my legs. Here are the bumps from the ingrown hairs on my thigh. These stains on my stomach are marks left over from scabs. These here are the marks left from when my stretched out skin would not come back to where it was. You are not now what you were before. No wonder he said nothing.
People in the city are alone in their beds.
When he feels she wants him he is happy. He feels energetic and excited and everything goes well for him that day. Then when she doesn't want him he feels sick, nauseated, tense. He thinks cleverly to himself the opposite of being desired is the desire to vomit, or because not being desired leads to the desire to vomit. Either way it is just a physical feeling, like having a fever. It will be over and done with soon enough. It will go away just like an illness goes away always, after it takes its course. What doesn't kill you ... How could he die from this? He could change, for the worse, maybe, but ... No, every time one of them stops wanting him he feels like this. But the sick feeling has always gone away. Every feeling eventually goes away.
People in the city are alone in their beds.
She used to heal so much more quickly. She used to give herself these scabs on her face and have perfect skin underneath them in a week or so. It's as if her skin isn't moving anymore, not like it used to. The older she gets the more slowly her skin moves. Her cells stop moving and stand still on top of each other. She can't heal as well if the new skin isn't pushing and fighting to take over the broken skin. There are too many still cells on her face. She hurts her skin now and it stays hurt. It stays the same skin she has hurt. It stays where it is, what it was. She has to start using thin needles to get to the ingrown hairs. She has to stop scratching at the skin of her face. A thin needle could easily get under her skin.
people in the city are alone in their beds
if there are men watching him from those windows
if they are taking pictures of him
if they are trying to make him look better by keeping the camera at certain angles because they know it would hurt him if they took pictures of him naked in bed with his gut looking like this
if they want him to look good in pictures because they think he does
if the pictures end up somewhere where other men can see them and if they all think he looks good too
if somebody is watching
People in the city are alone in their beds.
She used to actually say a little prayer every time she heard sirens at night in this city. She would pray for whoever might be bleeding. Now every time she hears sirens she wonders how much can naturally leave the body at the same time. Shit and piss and blood and milk and mucus and saliva and tears can all leave at the same time. A woman sitting on the toilet naked, crying, spotting, and lactating at the same time? Yes, maybe. Not likely, but maybe. There is a woman who is crying while she's shitting and pissing and she's bleeding and there's mucus and spit all over her face and her breasts are dripping milk onto her fat gut. Men have neither, do they? Men do not have blood or milk. What else can leave the body? Yes, she remembers.
If only she knew what would happen when she died, no matter what it is that could happen. She would know how to live life. She would know what is right and wrong to do while she is alive. She would know what to feel about life. If only she knew what happened when we died.
CHAPTER 2
A MAN IN THE CITY IS WRITING A STORY ON A BUS
He thinks to himself, the sight of the nape of this man's neck is the only comfort I have here.
Is she a man or a woman?
Everybody is against me.
Why should his kisses redeem her? It is the skin on her stomach that was wrong to stretch out over so much fat tissue, when touched by the skin of this man's lips, nothing happens. It is not removed. It is not punished.
What is wrong is the feeling I have. Different thoughts are spinning around my head all the time. Then, suddenly, some of them stop. Some of them are bad and some of them are good. If only the happy ones keep swirling, then I am happy. If the bad ones keep swirling, then I am sad. That's what makes my moods. Thoughts like those bugs who light up at night and twirl around trees. Some of them light up, some of them turn off. Everybody is against me. I see only the streaks of lighting they fire off towards me. The place where my heart is goes murmuring. It is not painful, it is uncomfortable. This is where your heart is, it says to me. What is this fighting and why does it happen? What are expectations and why do they come with contact? She did not have a pure feeling of love for me. I know the signs. One woman is walking past me. If she stops to look at me, and smiles, that is good. If she looks at me a certain way, this feeling will stop. It will stop if she wants to speak to me. The signs are expectations too. Everybody is against me. I can try to fight them, but there are too many. Whatever is blood for them they will take from me. Even things can be blood. My feet I accept, however. The hair can be removed there and they will look strong. Only one foot has scars from bites. My legs are good from the knee down, strong and firm. Except for one ankle where there are scars from bites. My thighs are not scarred, but the skin of my thighs is flimsy from having stretched out over too much fat tissue. Hairs are all over my thighs.
Stretch marks wrap around her thighs. She is a woman.
The skin of my ass is not smooth, but hairy. The small of my back is filled with little hairs and bites. The rest of my back has bites and purple marks. My stomach has hair and three scars from hairs who keep growing under the skin. My arms dangle and are scarred. My face has scars. I pick at the skin. I write on my face the home I have had, then, I want to wash it and be new and young again. A sign. A man says may I sit here. He does not talk to me. Expectations. I always drink too much like this. I always want it, but I can never enjoy it. That is need.
A man says to her I will draw on you in your own home. To give tattoos. She wants to say yes, but it is too easy. He may touch her with his hands not just his needles. Then I will be wrong. Something will happen to the skin he kisses. He may ask her who wrote this, as he is touching her skin.
There are scars on the sides of both my wrists. The veins on my hands burst out of thin skin.
Do you want to know what I would look like if I were a man, she asks him sincerely or sweetly. She asks him. She asks him pleadingly.
If I were a man?
I loved and hated her at the same time. I feel two things always. Every time I do something it is not right. I do another thing. It is not right. I expect things to be this way. I expect to be wrong. I don't know how to be right, instead of wrong.
So, she wants to be right to only a person. One person. Who will not stare too long, or too briefly. A person. To be poetic I will say a place. She will try to be right to a plum.
The only way to live is to know that I am wrong. That is comfort because it is knowledge.
The sun stares at me too long sometimes she says. Angrily. Childishly. In a child-like tone. Like a child. She says.
I will do this because ink is a poison I cannot eat, and paper is made of wood. I stain wood with this poison. Poison moves on wood to make shapes and patterns. The shapes are the bad feeling. They are all against me. Are they all well loved? Every time I have felt loved there was a light. Light is good. Dark is bad. Dark needs light and light needs dark. I cannot write with black ink on black paper. I cannot see the poison. It needs the friction. Ask me, man. Ask me. Who wrote this? I did.
I did.
A homeless man who I give money to hugged me. If he hugs me every time I see him from now on, that is a sign. A homeless man who has just been released from prison asked me for a cigarette. He says he will give me one if I see him again, if I need a cigarette later. If he does, that is a sign. The genius is in writing it all down only. It does not matter what the words are, the genius thinks to write them down. One insect can bite one man many times, but the man will still live. Many small insects can kill a man. I am one insect. I cannot kill anything, but I can bite. All the people can kill God together if they bit him all at the same time.
Who wrote this he asks her. Who wrote this?
A woman in one city misses a man she spent a day with in another city.
Things I miss about him, how he made me feel like I was worth making love to, as he would say. I want to make love to you, he would say. I miss how I felt while waiting for him to come make love to me. Why did I want him to make love to me? Because I wanted to touch him and I wanted him to touch me, and I usually don't want that from people. I miss how he would quote me, nobody except him remembers what I say, even though he has only known me for a little while and we have been apart. I miss the way he said hello when he called. He says hello like children do, as if he is shocked people could hear each other over the phone. Every time, he said it the exact same way. Hello was the only word he said that never changed no matter what mood he was in. But what if some other man calls me and says hello that way? I don't want any other man to call me. I don't want them to touch me and I don't want to touch them. This thing would have to be done with somebody who you want to touch you. It will be all right though, as long as I look the same. I am sure I will meet somebody I want to touch me again in time. I don't want to look older. What will change about me at forty? I will go gray. But, I can dye my hair. I can get it conditioned too. It is not thick hair, but there may still be a lot of it left at forty. Maybe it is good my hair will thin out because there may be too much of it now. I will have to take care of my skin. The skin on my face used to be so much smoother. Now look at you. It will look even worse. What about the cellulite on my thighs? That will only get worse. Not unless you don't buy a car and walk to go where you need to go in this city. What about my stomach? That will get worse, your fat stomach. But I won't have kids, because nobody will make love to me, so maybe my stomach will be the same as the stomachs of other old women by then. But, I have to look better than I do now. Stop picking at the skin on your face. Yes, so it looks good. And don't have children. But if you have a child then maybe somebody has seen your body and made love to it before. My feet will probably look the same. My calves will look the same. Have you seen the calves of those rich old ladies who come in on Sundays? But that's only because they lose muscle tone and expose their calves to the sun. You will be walking everywhere with your legs covered. Your calves will be fine. What is the difference between a twenty-year-old foot and your feet? I am not sure. I have never compared my feet now with a twenty-year-old foot. Calves will be fine, I think. Thighs might be the same with some walking. No, with a lot of walking, with a lot of walking. Stomach will be worse, but might be the same if I don't have children. Arms and hands, I am not sure about. You should cover up your hands and arms too. The skin on the face is what I have to worry about most. The skin of my face.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Big City"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Marream Krollos.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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