Nothing is alive on the highway. There are just the
tiny coral builders in their cars scurrying to their homes. But even they
arenÕt really alive; they are in the stasis that comes from driving, being
hunched over a wheel, waiting for your stop, waiting to turn the corner,
waiting to get off. I have missed my off-ramp; I will drive to the next one.
This car is wonderful; it practically drives itself. It is one of my presents
to myself. I have achieved quite a few of my ambitions; I am rich, I am
influential, and in my own way I am admired. And the person next to me is
shadowy, just like in my long ago dreams.
Once this
area was a huge primeval forest, the home of the first warm-blooded animals. We
began to use all of our bodies, discovering the delicate tissue of our mouths,
the ticklish flesh of necks, the delicious thrill of teeth dragging across each
otherÕs skin. Meanwhile, the reptiles grew larger and more sophisticated, the
birds with teeth becoming dinosaurs the mightiest creatures ever to walk the
land. They are gone now, it doesnÕt matter how big you are, how important, how
much you love and how much you deserve to be loved back, everything crumbles
into dust.
What else in this time? Plants, plants too, were
evolving. After millions of years of monotonous green, the countryside exploded
with colour as the first flowers appeared. Hard to imagine on this highway,
which is black and white and yellow lights. But they were here, the first
yellow, lilac, pink, soft pastel colours. I can see those first colours that
donÕt exist anymore when I am with him. In his arms, under his embrace, I have
seen eclipses, star-bursts, felt the asteroid that hit the earth whipping out the
dinosaurs, the terrible lizards and all other forms of creation that were over
fifty kilograms.
There was finally space for the little creatures to
come out, to assume their dominion over the Earth. The tiny mammals, little
warm-blooded shrew-like creatures crept out of the warrens they lived in,
criss-crossing honeycomb societies, and communities under the ground. They were
slight, barely formed creatures, barely seeing, barely tasting, kept alive by
willpower, and by nestling against the warm heat of the earth. Drawing life
from the burning magma at the earthÕs core.
Why didnÕt we end then? It was so fragile, so
silk-like the connection between us. I wanted it, so I held on. I was so young;
I canÕt remember being that young, and I canÕt remember what I was before him.
So young then, but even now I can feel his nearness in my blood, echoing
through my brain to come closer love, come closer to me, come love. I canÕt
remember not waiting for him. And for fifteen years I canÕt remember not loving
him. I am inching closer to him. I would crawl to him; drag myself across the
ground on my stomach. I think maybe that form of devotion would probably
embarrass him.
All the time the tiny creatures were slowly
developing, growing eyes, (to see him better) developing digits (to touch him
with) forming packs and dens and mating rituals (keep this a secret) Canada had
been slowly moving farther north. The Canadian Shield was afloat on a raft of
basalt and granite drifting upon the magma sea at the earthÕs core. Even as
Alex and I drifted towards Canada and America.
There is always a sea dragging you along, always a
force greater than you pushing you forward. What drives me now? The straight
flat highway in the night, the road rules that say you drive this speed and this
direction on this road, I see that I am being forced toward him by powers
utterly beyond my control. I rebel; I slow down some more.
This continental drift put Canada, put Alex and I, in
the path of a devastating natural force that would completely change the
landscape. The Ice Age.
If Hell ever does freeze over it will look like the
Red Army barracks. It is so cold at night that I end up sneaking to his bed,
cuddling against Alex in the darkness. There are posters of the walls, blessing
the Party, praising the Army, all in red, and black, and white. All colours are
hard faceted gemstones: red blood, black night, white ice, and the green
diamonds of AlexÕs eyes.
I made the first move again. Kissed him one dark night
when it was so cold that I thought my blood had frozen to red ice and the skin
of my hands would crack and split if I bent my fingers into a fist. I thought
it was so cold that we would be dead in the morning and I wanted to know what
this was like.
So I kissed him, and he kissed me back and told me he
was defecting. And he kissed down my chest, warming my skin, and I didnÕt
believe him. As he kissed my belly, he seemed like a boy making a vow before
God that would never be kept, as he took me into the hot red cave of his mouth.
I thought that I had found the perfect way to pass nights.
He defected. He ran away from me, to cold Great Lakes,
and the Canadian Shield.
During the last Ice Age, the finial glaciation, the
north polar cap expanded, covering most of Canada in a sheet of ice a kilometer
and a half thick. A kilometer on this road takes seconds in this car. I pull
into a rest area. I tell myself it so to rest my eyes, but really, I canÕt
drive through this part of the worldÕs history. Because the ice chocked all
life, the ice chilled the world into stasis. Life was fragile, hesitant, and
furious that it was so cold, clinging to the memory of the warm Great Sea under
the new sea of ice. I began to practice a gentle rebellion, I became passive in
the face of the Soviet juggernaught; I knew it was only a matter of time,
before we could be together again.
Centimeter by centimeter, year by year, the ice sheet
grew pushing ahead of it those things that would move, mercilessly crushing
those that would not. Eventually the face of the glacier, taller than the
tallest skyscraper, extended east and west from where tourists view Niagara
Falls today. I was utterly alone, left to shiver in the dark. Shunned because
of my friendship with him and the guards that now followed me everywhere. They
were right to think I would go. I would have left everything; abandoned Valya
to the wolves to join Alex in America. I was never warm; I wasnÕt alive, onyx
night, diamond ice, and sapphire veins. I could see the rubies under the fair
surface of my skin. And then I could feel him in my arms when I slept; the
pulsing of our veins was in synchronicity, his blood calling to mine from a
continent away. I could hear him in the gentle darkness; hear him calling out,
for me to go to him.
Finally, the ice sheet stopped growing, bested by a
slight increase in the average yearly temperature. The Soviets were being
ground into sediment. Even they could not block out the sun. The edge of the
glacier began to melt, forming a giant muddy rage of water shot through with
boulders it had picked up during its journey. In a spectacular rush, the waters
of Lake Iroquois began to surge through this newly opened channel, flowing to
the Atlantic.
I came to America. The glacier waned; the water began
to pour off. I thought I would begin again, but I was walking on the sediment
of the coral reefs we had built around ourselves in Russia. The USSR
that-does-not-exist-anymore had left in its tumultuous crushing wake the rain
of limestone powder that would create the caprock for the relationship that we
would have in North America. That can only be felt when we are together, can
only exist in the gentle dark when we come together. Because we were in a free
country and no more free. We were still secret, still hidden.
The glacier waned, and all that water had to go
somewhere. Some flowed into the oceans, some evaporated, the rest became the
great lakes. I have kissed Alex by all of them. We have gone away together,
without his family, without my flavour of the month, we have followed the path
of the ice retreating.
There was so much water that North America, huddled
damply in the embrace of the Canadian Shield, began to tip to the south. The
rivers began to flow, Niagara was created, and it grew warmer. Great animals
followed the retreating glacier northward. Can you see where I went? I went to
the south to, calculated in my head the time it was here when it was dark
there, where he was.
I am back on the road; the snake slithering through
North America, Some of these retreating animals would survive to the present.
The dire wolf and the mastodon wouldn't be able to keep up with the changing
climate. A new era had begun. Nothing had changed. We hid from everyone, we
lied and we evaded, and yes, we grew old. And others still, such as the cervalces,
a deer with antlers three meters wide, would succumb to the spears of the first
humans to walk the land, almost 12,000 years ago. DonÕt you see, dear Alex?
People wreck everything. We were better off alone.
There is a room in Buffalo that is more beautiful than
anything else in that state. We closed the curtains, so although it was day
outside inside was dimness. And we sat opposite each other in the middle of the
bed, and our gestures mirrored each other. My fingers unbuttoning my shirt, his
mirror-fingers unbuttoning his shirt. Shucking the cloth off my shoulders, my
hands-his hands pushing his shirt aside, revealing the flesh underneath. And
there were colours in my life again; whirling, spinning, flowers bloomed in the
snow in Middle America.
He married. It all changed. Nothing changed. We still
made love, and it was still love. It was sweeter in some ways. Now he seemed to
worship me, enjoy these moments with a body different than the one he spent his
bright sunlit days with. I donÕt know when he began to crumble, when the
pressure of maintaining two people began to wear at him. I only felt the
barriers where there had been none. The excuses that I echoed, for his wifeÕs
needs I raised the stakes with a demanding girlfriend, when his children were
sick I had an appointment I could not escape.
Useless walls that tumbled down whenever we were
together, as we tumbled over each otherÕs bodies. I could never resist him;
every last time became the second-to-last. Always I return to him.
The road unfolds before me, how can something look so
secret, so mysterious, even when you know where you are going? Do you see that
couple in the room? They have crushed their lips together, gasp into each
otherÕs mouths. In the rooms beside them, maybe sleeping, maybe screwing, each
other, strange women, who knows, around them are their teammates. One of those
men wants to scream out, wants everyone to know what is happening in this room,
he is silent, the pressure to be quiet shaking his body with an even greater force
than his orgasm.
I canÕt hide what I feel any more. I wonÕt. I have
bitten through my lips to be silent; I have squeezed my hands into fists to
remain quiet. Even now, in my car, with no one around I whisper his name, but I
have to say it, just because I know how lovely it feels coming from my lips.
That was the first last time. And I go to him now, for the very last time
repeating to myself, these rituals exhaust us, exhaust us, exhaust us.
