mwotw

I read this now, and realize I must have been at some sort of inflection point when I wrote this — a point of change. Having been “Sam” many times, I began to lift my desire for brilliant, beautiful women to a higher plane. Enter, “Mr. Carrier” (must thank Dearest Lauren for the name). I wanted to take and give, rather than take and leave empty-handed. The power of a genius, when so restrainted so long, so unfairly, can be released by the merest touch…

Zero Positive

Used to be I had to work at my fantasies, shut my eyes and find some quiet place, like inside momma’s closet. I’d spend at least five minutes just setting the stage. I’d have my timid little thighs all shut tight, bracing in my need. I’d lean way back into the depths of momma’s fake fur coats. It was black as pitch in that closet, but I knew those colors of artificial mink and fox and the other one. I knew them good, and they were a sumptuous glory into which I pressed my little girl’s body. In the dark, thinking about the colors was the best part. One of momma’s silk slips pressed to my cheek made it all sexy. I’d breathe into it and make it hot and humid from my breath, almost felt like skin after a while. I made my kissing movements into it, which only made it wetter still. My fingers, inspired by some magic, formed those lips I wanted so bad. My fist, with just a little effort, became a cherished skull, and the silk slip was a skin and the complexity of the knotted part was like his hair mounding powerfully downward to where I was imagining the rest of him. I could feel his press, the insistence of his need, and the fur coats prickled my most delicate skin. The hardened knot of him, the bunched silk slip into which I had breathed its nightly life, passed over my entire body, and took its leisure where I knew he would. That was back in the day, before what I call the “Renaissance of Darcy Davis”, before he kissed me. Every day after that one was different, and for good. I’d be at Von’s with momma, right there in the chilly aisle, feeling cold in all the best of ways. He’d come to kiss on me, without me asking for it. Didn’t even have to close my eyes. He’d just come, and it’d be less cold. If I wasn’t careful, he’d have me, right there in Von’s with momma looking on me and wondering what was wrong. It worked out well to get kissed when I thought I wouldn’t, and then to have Mr. Carrier tell me he thought I was so good in math, all on the same day. I guess it made it clear how loving Sam was just like math, and how my future was bound up inside his, like some geometry. It was nice to have those things so close. Seems like all that life from before is already part of a closed chapter. I mean, where do you know that you’ve been changed? It must come at some moment before the actual event. When I knew, I suppose, that Sam would have me, that must have been when everything really changed. ‘Cause here I am, riding like a bullet, like some derailed train in Sam’s Impala. And it may as well be a convertible, the sky’s so big under my wide eyes. He’s got this tape he made special playing, and all the songs are right. We’re going on the highway too, we looked at each other in complicity when Sam took the on-ramp. There’s so much possibility in the Eastward direction. We could be going anywhere, but somewhere along the journey, we’re gonna stop, and Sam’s gonna make me a woman. I am so surrendered to our speed. Mr. Carrier has this way of wrinkling up his nose, when he thinks you’re not gonna get it. It’s like he’s apologizing ahead of time for making you feel less smart than you should believe you are. I’ll bet he hates that part of his job, handing out F’s and D’s, when he’d really love it most of all if his students just fell into natural love with Calculus. It makes me sad. I wonder if Sam is good in math. We’ll have kids, and they’ll sit around on the floor just staring at the ceiling, while neon numbers dance above their little heads. Sam’s got the car fixed up special for the occasion. The smell inside is just like in Mr. Carrier’s car. He’s got that amber jar sitting on the dashboard too, looks like a little genie’s bottle, kinda magic. Never saw one at night before, the way the liquid is thick and moves around in little waves. I hope we’ll kiss a lot before we do it. I think I like the kissing best. I knew Sam was gonna be the one when I saw the beautiful mathematics in his mind. It was about a week before Sam kissed me for the first time, and Mr. Carrier had been talking about complex numbers, and making me feel a little woozy but every bit as smart as I knew I was. There just seems to be all this space opening up all the time, and it’s just like driving really fast at night. Mr. Carrier, he just goes on and on, and I get the scary feeling there’s some crazy sort of infinity that’s gotten into his mind. I want to go there, and he makes me feel I could follow. Mr. Carrier just gave my nose a little squeeze, right where any other man would’ve done something else. And I was ready for any assignment. Then Sam told me how much he loves me. And there was all this clockwork in his head, as if he were reckoning the ratios of his passion, and wanting to steady us, because the numbers were too powerful. I almost fainted, there was so much restraint in him. But Mr. Carrier is the champion of restraint. I’m sure he’s holding himself in line all the time, wanting to laugh out loud for all the symmetries inside him. It’s so dark down here up close to the upholstery in the back seat, and warm. Sam is busy with his calculations, preparing his descent on top of me. The windows have begun to fog, and the lights in the sky are all a milky glow. As a vice to be conquered, most of all I want to concern myself with exactitude. I want to be clear and certain, like Sam, making no assertion before the moment is right. For all his capacity for precision, Mr. Carrier rusticates in theory most of the time. He’s all invitation and no consummation. To succeed, I’ll need a lesson he can’t give me. Sam gave me a new pet name, when he picked me up at home tonight, said it was gonna be the name I’d hear myself called in my dreams. He said there was math in it too. Wrote it on my hand with a Sharpie pen: “0+”. “What’s that mean?”, I said. Sam was light as the air inside the Impala, on top of me. He made himself into a point, and the darkness swallowed him up, and I looked out through the fogged rear window up at the foggy stars. So much space out there, Sam! “It means ‘Zero Positive’, Darcy. It means you’re still nothing, but you got ambition.” Sam was displacing great volumes of nothingness inside me, without filling me, only defining a space. Outside the car, inside the cradle of the road-side dark, my neon numbers were tumbling end over end. I clung to Sam as he drew his lines and slashes over me, and loved him even more terribly than before, for the cruelty of his math.

10 June, 2001
virgin | discreet mathematics | pontiac impala

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2005 at 11:28 pm and is filed under 2001, Stories, Metaphysics, Death, Sex, Unfinished, Art, Advanced Mathematics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.