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The Communicable Differences Between Light And Gray
"There are
reasons," she says, and attempts to enumerate them on the spot using the
shower head as a microphone."Ladies and Gentlemen," she bellows out, "further
explication of a physical manifestation of paradise right here in your very own
shower!"She sweeps her hand
around the shower to demonstrate the great vastness of this experiment.
"Are you
going to have enough room in here?" I ask her."As soon as we
undress," she says.She takes off
her blouse and her pants and her underwear and tosses them out of the shower
and on to the bathroom floor.She
reaches out and undresses me.She piles
my clothes on top of hers.She turns on
the water.She aims the showerhead at
me and sprays me up and down.She soaks
me good and playfully.The spray is hot
and stings my flesh.Hot and spike all the
way up.All the way down."You are sufficiently lubricated,"
she says.She sprays herself.Then the soap.Lots of lather."The
experiment will not work without an abundance of lather," she says."Phenomenology is the process of
exfoliation, during which an impressive amount of friction is created, and
without proper protection from viscosity, we're liable to burn the flesh right
off our bones." She grabs the
shower head and booms into it."Now," she screams, "for demonstrative purposes only, I
shall prove, beyond all doubt, that there is a distinct difference between
light and gray!"She sprays
herself and her body glistens.The
lather disappears.The soap runs down
her body and washes down the drain.She
sprays the lather off me, too, and we both watch the white soap run down my chest,
my hips, my thighs, my feet.Then down
the drain.“In heaven,” she says, “everyone
is required to sit on their hands and if a shirt has buttons all of the buttons
must be securely fastened up to the neck.Everyone is required to look straight ahead, and if a woman has to
adjust her pantyhose, no one is allowed to peak at her thighs."The shower fills with steam and water and
light and she reaches out and touches me and I reach out and touch her and this
must be how Adam and Eve discovered each other."Gray," she says, "is not being allowed to peek up
a woman’s skirt when she has to readjust her pantyhose. Or, not being allowed to point at a man's
erection when it happens spontaneously in a supermarket line.In heaven, girls are lined up on one and the
boys are lined up on the other.Everyone must keep their eyes on their shoes."She steps towards me and we embrace and
copulate in the shower standing up.We
grunt primordially.I push into her and
she pushes against me and wraps her legs around me and jumps up into my arms. I sink into her deep where it is safe and
moist and warm and I thrust her against the side of the shower stall and the
flowing water sounds like a round of applause cheering us on.She screams and I thrust and she moans and I
thrust and she hyperventilates and I thrust.We wonder together if Adam and Eve, when doing their own game of push
and pull, ever screamed out God's name and, if they did, if it were out of
resentment or gratitude.She whispers
in my ear, "Here is your heaven, right here on earth."
Aaron Hellem "The Communicable Differences Between Light and Gray,"
is part of a collection entitled, The Things a Body Does When It Thinks
It's Going to Die, which, as of yet, is unpublished. This story is a sexy
exploration of the Wallace Stevens theory that "the greatest of poverty must
be to not live in a physical world."
Aaron Hellem is attending the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
His short stories have been published in the Berkeley Fiction Review, WoW, and Arnazella,
and are forthcoming in Ink Pot, Willard and Maple, and Liquid Ohio.
Email: Aaron Hellem
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