He gets on the bus with great effort, the thrombosis in his legs causing numbness where pain should be. He asks for a cigarette, should I have one to spare, as he is on his way to the courthouse, he says, to pick strays and half-smoked ones from the sandbox by the doors. His face is a litany of red lines and scratches, left behind, no doubt, after a night spent struggling to keep his legs warm, poached in a wicker of nettles and thorns. They bite my legs, he says, the ants and other bugs and sometimes a rat trying to get at dead skin. I worry they’ll eat their way into my leg, then I’ll need to go to the hospital for a new one or one made from screws and wood. They gave me this thing, he says, pointing at the walker, so as I could get round to the Mission for meals and a card game and such. One of the wheels is choused to the rim, the other worn through, spays of rubber gray as marrowbone. I smile and offer him an unsmoked cigarette; a sad happiness in his eyes that is unbearable beyond words. His life is subcutaneous, nothing living above bone and tendon. No burning sensation or itching, no lice scrabbling, infesting, the yellow skein of his legs, legs gone numb and palsied with grief and bad luck. Better to have lost all feeling than to be at odds with the constant maintenance of toes, shins and knee cups. Better to have no feeling at all, from head to toe, than to smoke half-strays with filter ends stained brown with someone else’s salver and good luck. I had a dog, he says, till it got run over by a car, not a brain in its damn head, poor thing. Always running in and out of traffic like a dervish looking for God knows what. Least when he was around I didn’t need worry ‘bout having my belongings taken away from me, he saw to that, smart, he was, having no brain as he did. He looks out into the road, at the traffic stopped up at the lights, and smiles, stupid, sure, but smarter than you’d think. He knew how to tell when the lights had changed, and when to nudge me into the crosswalk. He could tell what time it was, or when it was gonna rain, the way he shifted his weight from one leg to the other like it was time to go. He could even sniff out smokes for me, some with more than half left. Smart in that way, but dumb as hell when it came to cars and traffic. I sat two seats away from him on the bus, not wanting to see the sad happiness in his eyes, or think of the dog running in traffic, or legs without feeling, rats eating down to bone.
You understand, don’t you, I’m not like you, she said. Yes, we share things, but only those that are common, nothing more. We both shit and eat, sleep and wake, fuck and eat and shit and sleep and stay awake long into the night trembling with cold and bitter memories. That’s all; that’s all we share; all we have in common, nothing else. Beyond those basic shared human functions, animal functions, actions, we share nothing, nothing more. We are different, distinct, but indifferent in only those things, those vatic human needs, those things and actions and functions that we all share and have, together, as one human system, a functionality, nothing more. Beyond that we are not the same, but different, distinct and without measure, two separate things, entities that exist as nothing more than the difference between the two: you and I, it and that, him and her. I clacked my tongue against her cheek, below the bone, and ran it into the seam of her mouth, warm, pulpy, wet, glossed with her own tongue, washed into the spaces between her teeth, diamonds, ivory, hard Etruscan bone. When we fuck, I said, there is no difference, no distinction, we are of the same measure, a cloth cut from the same bolt; and that, yes, that is the difference between you and I, I need the difference, you see the difference, but never need it. We fucked, hard, until the skin leavened from out backs, her stomach pressed into the couch of my ribs, Adam and Eve, fruitless and at ease, fucking like two animals, the difference immeasurable, but there just the same, constant and holding, inseparable. The beast with two backs, blushed, reddened with sameness, indifference and functionality. Our bodies’ pulp cut close to the stone, deep through to the centre where there is no difference, only soft, succulent wet fruit.
You understand, don’t you, I’m not like you, she said. Yes, we share things, but only those that are common, nothing more. We both shit and eat, sleep and wake, fuck and eat and shit and sleep and stay awake long into the night trembling with cold and bitter memories. That’s all; that’s all we share; all we have in common, nothing else. Beyond those basic shared human functions, animal functions, actions, we share nothing, nothing more. We are different, distinct, but indifferent in only those things, those vatic human needs, those things and actions and functions that we all share and have, together, as one human system, a functionality, nothing more. Beyond that we are not the same, but different, distinct and without measure, two separate things, entities that exist as nothing more than the difference between the two: you and I, it and that, him and her. I clacked my tongue against her cheek, below the bone, and ran it into the seam of her mouth, warm, pulpy, wet, glossed with her own tongue, washed into the spaces between her teeth, diamonds, ivory, hard Etruscan bone. When we fuck, I said, there is no difference, no distinction, we are of the same measure, a cloth cut from the same bolt; and that, yes, that is the difference between you and I, I need the difference, you see the difference, but never need it. We fucked, hard, until the skin leavened from out backs, her stomach pressed into the couch of my ribs, Adam and Eve, fruitless and at ease, fucking like two animals, the difference immeasurable, but there just the same, constant and holding, inseparable. The beast with two backs, blushed, reddened with sameness, indifference and functionality. Our bodies’ pulp cut close to the stone, deep through to the centre where there is no difference, only soft, succulent wet fruit.
