__________
T h e
P e r v
For this is the body of God that is my body. For this is the spirit of man. For the desire to touch is God's great gift and we deny it as if God fucked-up, as if God screwed the deal. Not my God. My God is the God of spirit manifested in the sweet odor of sweat pooling on the belly, God of wet cunt and slippery cock: cunt that opens to God, cock that leans to heaven.
But still, I was high.
I went to college where I played ball Division I double A, good enough to start three years without missing a game and there was talk the last year of making the draft, but it didn't happen and that was that. I got this job in town selling cars and I been here now almost seven years. You think we didn't get high after a big game? You think there weren't girls? Now I'm a bright smile and Hello, May I help you, Ma'am? I'm not bitter, it's just a long way down that slope from when you're young and everyone looks at you like Man, what a piece of luck to be young and life's spread out before you like merchandise in a department store. Now I'm twenty-eight and trying to get by. Things haven't gone well between me and my wife. She's away for a while. She took the boys. So it was late and I was tired of television and I dug out some grass and got high.
I'm a decent man. I'm a member of the community. I've got two boys, one in elementary school, the other at home. I don't do things like that. Are you serious? You think it was me? Why? You're telling me in that dark you got a good enough look to be sure? This is my life you're fooling with here, Little Girl. Don't tell me you're sure! Why? Because I'm you're neighbor? Because we've said hello a few times?
My kitchen is painted white. There are white walls made of white plaster.
In my living room there's a fireplace. Sometimes I sit by the fire and look out the window to the street.
I want to say, Why are there walls between us?
I want to argue your skin should touch my skin, my tongue should lap the water of your belly and your hands should knead the bread of my back.
I went out into sweet summer night. I sat a while under my Chestnut tree where the branches spread wide like arms embracing heat and sky. I folded my legs under me on the stone bench, the solid slab of boulder it took four guys to lift into the back of my truck and we hauled it here under this Chestnut and set it on two boulders and used concrete to hold it in ground and level. After the job was done Vivian and I drank a beer and sat in the shade and talked for an hour. Back when things were better.
For this is the body God gave us, the beautiful muscles hard as hard earth the soft breasts and tongue that darts into mouth as if to eat of spirit.
Vivian got pregnant, we got married, five months later Timmy came into the world. I had considered leaving before he was born. I had flights of imagination wherein I'd buy a motorcycle and a leather jacket and point the bike west and go. On the road, I'd pick up a beautiful hitchhiker. She had to leave her home because. We'd ride west and fall in love and then there was the ocean and nights in each other's arms. She was always dark-haired, my hitchhiker, with dark eyes that penetrated.
Viv and I had a small wedding and then I found a decent job. For a while it was good. Maybe the first two years.
Let's live in the real world, let's see things as they are. Love is about illusion: it doesn't last. It can't. Eventually, you're two people making a life. Making it work, making your life work. Let's say you did get on that motorcycle and go: eventually you'd be back in the same place: two people trying to hack out a way. Let's get real. This is the world as it is.
A man walks with the dead and knows he dies a piece at a time that his own death is required if the white light that is the light of peace and the harmonious touch of water the brook that runs through the house of God . . .
The first time she called me Mister I was surprised. She looked like a woman to me, though of course young. In high school. She called me Mister and I smiled. I was her neighbor, the guy next door, Mr. Milkman, safe as a President his family in hand the cameras follow him up the steps of the cathedral: wife and children and a shiny life. That was what she saw. That's who I am. Mr. Rodgers. Governor Allen. The President lunching with Billy Graham.
I saw that glow like wonder her body leaning toward touch ripe as red apple or plum when the purple skin vibrates full flesh sucked and licked juicy and sweet to the touch an immersion of senses so packed to become spirit that place where spirit and body weld: long to touch long to touch long to enter wet and suck sweet the tongue crazy with need.
Child. Little girl. Young Lady.
To be nurtured and fostered in the community of adults who raise children lifting them gently toward their own adult lives.
To be stripped to skin and entered, to be opened to the life of the senses, the mask of childhood lifted away: this is the world you live in, this is a way it may be touched.
For this is the body God gave us and through this body the tips of the fingers and the length of the cock, the needy flesh of chin and shoulder, the pink inside the cunt, through this body way to the place where spirit and flesh are one place of heat and light and current to God to melt into.
I was high and it was late and I saw the light in her window. I was alone sitting on the stone bench under my Chestnut tree on a hot summer night. I wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt. My feet were bare. The soles of my feet were wet from wet grass. The sky a field of stars the moon low on the horizon, a Cheshire cat grin of bright moon, a boat on dark water. The light came on in her window. She entered the room. She has dark hair and an athlete's body with broad shoulders that narrow to a small waist. She was wearing white shorts and a yellow blouse. She stood in front of a dresser, her back to the window. I was alone in my yard in the dark on the stone bench under the Chestnut tree. She took off her clothes with a few quick motions and I could see the pink flesh and the curves of her body for a brief moment before she turned and noticed the blinds were open and reached for the cord and pulled them closed, and my heart sent blood through my body like an urgent message flashing along tunnels and channels and there was no thought at all when I sprinted through the shadows and leapt the wire fence into her yard toward the narrow rectangle of light at the bottom of the window.
For this is the spirit of man of the body and the body call to touch: Let me push inside let me inside and feel the heft of breast in the center of my hand the nipple's ridges and knot-hard bumps along the center line of tongue between the pressure of lips suck and push wet heat urging urging for this is the body of man which is the body of God which is the longing in life for the other.
All denials of the body are lies.
Renounce the flesh, you deny God.
I leapt to the rectangle of light and I was more stoned than I realized because I misjudged the height of the fence and the effort needed and I cut my calves and ankles on the wire prongs at the top of the cyclone fence and fell forward into a puddle of slimy water and came up wiping mud from my face and my clothes. For a moment I wanted to laugh. Then I saw her shadow on the blinds and I looked around in the dark to be sure I was alone and then crept like a lurking monster making his way out of shadow I crept quietly to her window and was able by standing on the concrete cellar entrance and leaning to the window ledge see in, where she knelt at the foot of her bed like a child, her eyes closed, her elbows on the mattress and her hands pressed together in prayer. She's a young woman, high-school age, and she knelt at the foot of her bed like a child saying her good-night prayers. She wore a heavy green robe. I saw her at her bed through the reflection of my own face in the window glass, mud in my hair and streaked along my cheeks sideways where I had tried to wipe it away with the back of my hand. I only watched her a few moments, my fingers gripping the ledge. When she opened her eyes she turned toward the window as if she sensed I was there and from the level of her kneeling her eyes were even with the small opening at the bottom of the window and she saw me or saw something and she fell over trying to jump backwards before she rose onto all-fours like a small frightened animal and then screamed and then jumped to her feet.
It's amazing how fast you can move when you're frightened. I had my clothes off before I was back inside my house. In less than a minute my muddy clothes were in the wash and I was in the shower. I took a long, long shower. I didn't hear anything. No knocks at the door. No sirens. She may not have recognized me. She may not have been believed. They'd tell her it was her imagination. She might believe it. Unless she recognized me. Unless she saw me clearly. I was taking a shower. I was on my way to bed. Are you serious? Me? Peeking in windows? I have two children, a family. I went from the shower to bed and lay for hours in the dark. Nothing was going to happen, not this night. Probably not at all. Unless there are footprints or something. Muddy finger marks on the ledge. I doubt it. But still I worry for hours before I finally fall asleep.
I awoke a few hours before morning, which is where I am now: sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee warm between my hands.
It was like a compulsion there was no thought involved: I leapt the fence and made my way to her window. It's done. I'm tired of arguing. It's over. What are we all but compendia of strange behavior in our empty houses? I'm in an empty house a small knot of strangeness. If God were sitting across the table from me here, I'd tell Him I was about to go under. I'd ask Him to hold me on the water's surface. I'm not one of His saints. I'd plead with him to keep me from sinking deep where body is reunited with spirit at the center at the heat at the beginning the word.
The word that calls you to the window.
The word that is longing.
The word out of which we emerge and unfold, thrashing toward this life.
Edward Falco's work has appeared in the Atlantic, the Georgia Review, and many other places including Best American Short Stories, 1995.
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