Clean

JENNY. My dreams are better than my reality. And they're vivid. So, so vivid. By the time I wake up, I've lived more than Liz Taylor. I've been rich and I've been famous and I've been prettier than Marilyn fucking Monroe. But then there's morning, where there's the overwhelming feeling (day after day after day) that I have been splattered in blue paint by Jackson Pollock on a rainy Monday.

I take my first hot shower of the day and avoid the mirror completely. Which is easy, considering I covered them all up months ago, like I'm sitting fucking Shiva. Shiva for some part of me that got left there in the wreckage. I wait til there is steam and the water has reached a too-hot point and I step inside. Ssssss. My skin sizzles like an egg on a sidewalk in August. The blue paint has rinsed off and finds its way down the drain, swirling round and round until it disappears completely. Until tomorrow morning when it's back. On my hands. On my neck. On my back. On my legs. I wash furiously with an apricot scrub. It's grainy. Coarse. A little tough on the skin, but that's necessary to truly get clean. Sterile, is how my shrink likes to put it. It's always followed by a condescending this too shall pass.

To tell you the truth, I'm not entirely sure why I still see her. We've tried a number of tactics, but none of them seem to work. There were the tell-me-how-you-feel puppets. I swear to God, I'd put a fucking sock puppet on my hand and tell her in the most ridiculous voice possible that my vagina had closed up for good. There was the take-home journal I'd only ever write dates in. Marking time. Stating I was alive. That I'd woken up that morning. We'd turn my chair around so I wasn't looking directly at her. She'd ask questions. I'd answer. I'd tell her that I got to the bagel store and back without panicking. That I watched a sitcom and okay, maybe I laughed twice. That I'd tried masturbating like she suggested but that I couldn't even get wet.

These people -- these doctors -- these shrinks --there is a saying for them. Those who can't DO, teach. Or some variation on that theme, obviously. Those who don't feel, live vicariously through others. And Carol -- sorry -- Doctor Gruber -- what the fuck does she know about what I went through? What it felt like to kneel there watching him sniffing my panties, jacking off on my -- no, LETTING -- yes, letting him jack off onto my face. And all the while he calls me his bitch. And his princess.

(Beat.)

He didn't even know my name.

(Beat.)

Doctor Gruber tried to distract me with board games. She wanted my competitive side to let my guard down. Monopoly to get me to talk. Backgammon to get me to say the word. Chess so I would slip up and admit to being raped.

(Beat.)

Or something like it.

(Beat.)

The first man I tried dating after it happened told me that it was only rape if the guy fucked me. And that since the guy didn't fuck me, I'd be just fine. I'd need some time. But by the salad course, my date already wanted a blowjob and I wanted to stab with him with a steak knife. Doctor Gruber suggested I try again. That dating -- and eventually making love -- would get easier. Over a game of Chinese Checkers, she asked if I had been masturbating. She suggested that I touch myself. Maybe just my thighs at first. Some light exploration. Had I seen my vagina recently? I went home, with a hand-mirror I'd stashed at the bottom of a drawer, looked at myself. And looked. And looked. And cried. And took my sixth shower of the day.

(Beat.)

Sweat has a very distinctive taste. It's salty. A liquid pretzel. But its scent changes. A hot summer day smells different than looking over your shoulder at midnight. Excitement smells sweeter than fear. And as that scent permeates -- you wonder, will he remember it? Can he track me down? Hunting me like a canine, sniff-sniff?! So, I shower. And I scrub. Apricot, peach, pear, eucalyptus, kiwi, watermelon, coconut, citrus grove, lemongrass, lemondrop, pomegranate, lavender, strawberry, cucumber-melon, every scent you can imagine. I've masked my image with sheets over mirrors. And I've masked my scent with a fucking farmer's market.

Fourteen times in one day is the record. We -- Doctor Gruber and I -- we've gotten that down to six. I've had the occasional bad day. I've thought, suspected someone was following me. You know how, when it rains, footsteps sound louder right after a storm? Then. Then I shower.

I shower fourteen times. Only ten showers less than the hours in a day. 24 hours. Twenty. Four. That's how many months it's been. That's two years. And in 730 days, I've taken nine thousand, one hundred and forty eight showers.

That's how I measure time. In blue paint and water and soap.

The Game

PAUL. The Rook had been at F4 for a month. I'd checked the spam folder daily. You know, in case his e-mail had gotten lost in there. Malcolm never went more than two days without making a move. We'd been playing the game for six years and this... this never happened.

I spent two hours on the phone with a computer from Google, trying to track down Malcolm's phone number. When I finally reached someone -- under the pretense that my own e-mail was malfunctioning -- and a tech savvy geek from Mumbai starts rattling on about cookies, I begin a frantic explanation of the month's events. Or lack thereof.

He makes some imbecilic joke about Malcolm being the second coming of Bobby Fisher and I wonder how this jackass in Bangalore even knows who the fuck Bobby Fisher is, but I don't just wonder it, I say it. Out loud. And before I even realize that I've stopped thinking and started speaking, he hangs up and I've gotten absolutely nowhere.

I don't have the patience to sit on hold for another two hours, so I go directly to the library in search of all Sydney news papers. That's where Mal-kee's from. Syndey, (with a horrendous accent,) Austrayyyyylia, matey. (He laughs at his cleverness.) Anyway. I'm sitting at this tiny little cubicle, going through piles and piles of Australian obituaries.

Hey. You might think that's pessimistic, but you don't know Malcolm. A whiz like Mal-kee isn't just going to up and leave in the middle of a serious match like this one. And that bastard was only one move away from mating me. (Beat.) I've had a lot of time to analyze the board this past month.

And just when I'm about to give up, I find it. Right there. That picture is the one on his Google profile. I see it every time he sends me a move. (bad Aussie accent again,) "Hey, jackass. Knight to 3H. Bishop to 5B. Rook to F4." Carbon-monoxide poisoning. Suicide. Garage. Car. Pawn in right hand.

(Beat.)

Fuck.

(Beat.)

I put away the board last night. They'd been sitting out for a few weeks. I couldn't bare to do it. Hoping it was wrong. A mistake. Waiting for that "ping" the computer makes. Ping. Every time a message comes through. Ping. "Pawn to 4E." And I stood on the stool that rocks too much to stand on and just managed to get the box high up on the shelf. Tucked away. Hidden from view. Under an afghan my mother made one Christmas when I was still married to Susan. Malcolm let me win the week she left me. It was the only time I actually ever beat the prick.

(Beat.)

Carbon Monoxide.

(Beat.)

Shit.

(Beat.)

Checkmate.

January

for Laurie Strickland

JANUARY. Andy played the piano. He didn't play it well. In fact, he couldn't even read music. And he most certainly didn't know where Middle C was. But he could play a few songs here and there. And I suppose that reminded me of my grandfather, who only played the black keys. And when we'd moved in to the house together, there was that very All in the Family moment. I was the Edith to his Archie and we sat there singing and barely playing and mostly laughing. And piled around us were the many, many boxes neither one of us wanted to open.

There were the books. Hundreds, at least. So many doubles - his worn-out copy of Swann's Way and mine still with a price tag. His barely-opened David Foster Wallace and mine, dog-eared and beat up from my thirty times through. We'd argued about Infinite Jest one evening. The drinks had kept coming and we'd started raising our voices. He thought Wallace had attention-deficit disorder. I tried to explain his stream of consciousness, but Andy's cheeks were red and he only heard every other word. I didn't want to hear about Proust's red velvet cake. That's what Andy called it. Sumptuous and rich. I called it high-falutin' bullcrap. But eventually we'd stumbled out of the restaurant, me laughing at his taste in literature and him at my stubbornness.

There was a lot of that in those days. We were from the school of Opposites Attract, Andy and I. He told me that his mother always said "Love is about sacrifice."And we'd convinced ourselves that was gospel.

The day after our honeymoon, I came home from returning an overdue documentary we'd rented. I was jet-lagged but happy. Andy was sitting on the living room couch naked with a bowl of ice cream. Most people would be upset by his nudity but I was more concerned with the very red raspberry sorbet he was eating on my very white couch. "Marriage is about giving and taking", my mother said. After the the first spill, we flipped the cushion. The second time? A new red couch because raspberry was his favorite flavor. Give and take.

But eventually I got tired of seeing him there, night after night, wiping a new stain up before I'd catch him. And when I found his red raspberry fingertips all over my copy of Infinite Jest, I'd lost it. Instead of getting lost in this moment - his triumph - being happy that he'd finally gotten past Wallace's insecurities and intricacies, I was furious that he'd ruined my already tired copy.

So, I threw a pair of jeans at him. Then a shirt. And socks. And shoes. And bags. And boxes. (Beat.) And my ring.

(Beat.)

I'd been warned by mother that my having a name like January would be a hard sell. But that despite the cold, despite the bite, despite the colored air you breathe, despite the death... that it was her favorite month of the year. January. Everything white. Like you have an eraser. A constant start-over.

(Beat.)

While Andy packed, I sat at the piano played the only thing I knew -- the first three measures of Fur Elise. Over and over and over again. (Singing it,) Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dum..... Until I heard the door close and let my blinders down and looked around.

(Beat.)

Give and take.