Justine Read Free Page A

over-risen dough. She’s smiling. A terrible smile. That smile gives me a bad feeling inside.
    I let go; the pictures smack against the wall. That smile’s a state on the brink.
    And horribly, it reminds me of something else, Eske from the academy of arts, the guy with the depressed dad. His dad isn’t all there, he calls Eske at home and leaves messages on his answering machine. Every single day. When the answering machine picks up, he describes how he’ll take his own life. He’s come up with any number of ways to do it. He’ll hang himself from a tree. He’ll eat caustic soda. He’ll go straight out into the water and drown himself. Farewell.
    Eske had an exhibit for a time with a white box you could crawl into. When you were all the way inside, you could press play on the answering machine and listen to his father’s messages. “I’m going to do it. I’m really going to do it . . .”
    I’ve been in that white space.
    â€œI’ll do it soon. I’ll take my belt. The narrow leather one. I’ll fix it right up for you all.”

A ne and her paintings fill the space. My person is broken down to small fragments, flitting around, colliding with everything that isn’t me, but rather her, and coalescing into a body. Finger. Print. That’s always the gist of us, right?
    One of Ane’s paintings is a paisley landscape without up and down, near and far, or horizon. She’s made a rip in which the colors blend in spirals inside the brain’s winding coils, and amid a flock reminiscent of thought, an underwater life of seaweed. Fish with bird heads, birds sporting arms, little girls with bare breasts and rough hands, boys without legs, some laughing, some bleeding. Three girls in French braids display their buttocks, spreading their cheeks to show their deep assholes. A boy combs a longhaired cat, and in the midst of it all a dog-ape hybrid is shaving its legs.
    I say it now: I think I’m some other. Or how should I put it? I’ve become some other. That other hasn’t become me, though. She didn’t exist before the fire. Or did she? She’s a new condition. At once definitive and boundless. I have no clue where we’re off to now.
    To the bathroom, where all is gray, and I inspect her in the mirror. She looks like me. She holds the large scissors in her hand lifts a hunk of hair. It’s my fingers that are chopping, my hair’s a hunk that falls. I’ve kept my hair this long always it’s lived a slow life together with me headed down toward the ground, ready to take root below. I cut again, graying the water, I keep cutting until I’ve come full-circle. The exact same woman in the mirror has an uneven pageboy. We’re different. And now what we want is to fuck, not cut. The place is deserted.

H e approaches from the front, a young man, well, a big boy really, with a smile on his open face. He approaches me and angles his head back so he won’t get cigarette smoke in his eyes. Then he places the hot water kettle and cups on the table and extends his hand through the barrier of air. With a squeeze he says:
    â€œBo.”
    Now he removes the cigarette from his mouth. His hair springs in large curls away from his head. He’s sunburnt with eyes that are white in the white.
    â€œYou’re the one who made that video of the woman doing the drum dance, right?” he asks.
    He rummages about, not just with his hand, but with his whole arm, no, with his whole body in my space.
    â€œI don’t think so. I’m some other.”
    â€œSome other? How can you be some other? Other than who?”
    â€œThan myself.”
    â€œI’m pretty sure it was you, and . . .”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    At this point, I’ve turned around and left, because he can’t help it, after all, he’s just that open, pure and simple. But he’s unconcerned and on my heels, I can hear