Storytelling

Heeb‘s critically acclaimed Storytelling series presents Jewish stories from an ever-changing crew of performers across the country. We now give you Heeb _Storytelling in its online incarnation. Check back here each Thursday for a new story. This week’s installment is “The Joy of Solitude and Other Illusions” by Matthew Hamity._

True Love

There’s a fly on the window and she is trying to kill it. With a sandal raised above her head, she waits for the fly to emerge from behind her mother’s prisms.
“He’s smart,” I say. I am watching her and the fly instead of the TV.
“And fat too,” she says quietly. “It’s the only fat insect I’ve ever seen.” She is crouched slightly, watching the fly, with her back turned to me. I look at her reflection in the window, pretending the fly is a mole on her cheek.
“What about bumblebees?” I ask. “And horseflies?” She scares me, standing there, staring at the fly like she is. Her face is still. Her eyes look like they’ll never close again. I’ve seen her like that before. We were walking her dog in the forest preserve by her house. We were holding hands and stepping over logs and talking about love.
“This is pointless,” she said. “You can’t talk about love with someone you love.”
“Why?”
“Because it wouldn’t be honest. It’s like talking about sex with someone you’re fucking. Everything gets taken too personal.” I pulled a branch that hung in our path out of the way. The leaves brushed against her hair.
“Then who?” I asked. “Who’s a good person to talk about it with?”
“A stranger,” she said. “An ugly stranger.”
I watched her dog trotting ahead of us. His body was angled almost sideways but somehow he managed to move in a straight line.
“Okay, fine. Pretend I’m a stranger. Pretend we just met in line at a Dairy Queen and now we’re walking together talking about love. Oh, and I’m deformed.” She shook her head.
“Well what are you afraid of?” I asked. That’s when she gave me the same look she’s giving the fly now.

My Tremendous Manhood

I can’t fit.
We get some lube.
I still can’t fit.
I am disappointed but also proud.
“Small vaginas run in my family,” she says.

The Grass is Greener

Three weeks ago, I switched deodorants for the sixth time since beginning puberty back in 1993 (I point to ’93 as the year because it was then that tender little knots grew behind my nipples). The smell was shocking, as it always is with a new deodorant. In the middle of class, I rubbed the back of my head, pondering a question (“Can you think of any potential ethical problems with organ donation?” the professor had asked), and the scent so surprised me that when she said my name, probably mistaking my raised hand for a desire to answer her question, I was speechless. After she’d moved on to ask a few more people, a response came to me, and I raised my hand, only this time, perhaps worried about a repeat performance, she refused to even glance in my direction.

My armpits burned for two days, itched for six. I drew blood on the fourth day from scratching so much, and yet I was undeterred, largely due to financial concerns (there’d been a sale on this particular brand of deodorant, three for $12.99, so basically, I’d over-committed). Twice daily, I applied dollops of the cream that I had leftover from the last time I switched deodorants, and the rash went away, slowly, red splotches becoming pink splotches becoming smaller pink splotches until it was only detectable if I shined a lamp on it, which was good enough for me, so I stopped using the cream, only then it came back a week later, so I had to start up again.

I never should have switched from my first deodorant. It’s all been downhill since then.

Sexual Healing

We make love in four different positions: missionary, girl on top, doggystyle, and finally, the origami marriage, which we came up with while we were high last spring.
We both come.
“I’m still angry,” she says.

The Joy of Solitude

I am washing between my toes, working up a thick lather, and wishing I could tickle my own feet, when I hear the apartment door bang shut.

I guess I should’ve sensed something was wrong. After all, she didn’t even look up from her book when I told her, “I’m gonna take a soak.” Normally, she would have said something like, “What do you mean, take a soak? Are we in Kansas or something? and I would have smiled, because she’d never been to Kansas, but threw it into conversations periodically since she met a girl named Topeka at the grocery store.

But she’d said nothing at all, and so I walked into the bathroom and took off my clothes. I turned on the water and then I looked at myself in the mirror. I stood there for a while, amused by the strangeness of eyelashes and eyelids, intrigued by the profusion of veins bunched under my tongue. I tried to make a face that would surprise me. It took only a few seconds before I found one: a cheek sucked in on the left side and both eyebrows raised. It was startling how easily I could become unfamiliar to myself.

I thought about going back out to show her the expression, but decided against it, understanding there were some things that I alone could appreciate. Instead, I bent down and placed my hand under the running water. It was the perfect temperature, just hot enough that it would take some getting used to, but not so hot that it burned. I enjoy temporary discomforts.

I plugged the drain and stepped into the tub. The water rushed against my feet, turning them slightly red. When the tub had filled to the beginning of my calves, I turned off the water and sat down. The phrase “water displacement method” popped into my head, and, closing my eyes, I pictured myself climbing naked up a giant graduated cylinder, my sixth grade science teacher, Mrs. Welsh, recording the milliliters of water displaced after I dove in.

I stayed in the tub for a long time. With my ears underwater and my mouth open just above the surface, I spent several minutes listening to the sound of my breathing. Then I inhaled as deeply as I could and watched as my stomach peeked above the water, only to dip back under when I exhaled. At one point, I felt myself becoming aroused. I looked on as my penis broke the surface, and then rose, like the synchronized swimmer I’d seen the other day on TV.

Eventually though, I got down to business, shampooing and rinsing my hair, washing my face and working my way down, past my navel, past the backs of my knees, until finally, I reached my toes.

When I hear the door close, I stand. Soap bubbles cling to my shoulders. Reaching down, I unplug the drain and watch the water whirl away. I wrap a towel around my waist, step out of the tub and looked briefly in the mirror, my face a foggy blur and no longer interesting. I walk out of the bathroom, leaving wet prints on the black tile and sit down on the couch. Staring at the shelf where her kung-fu videos used to be, I begin to shiver.