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The Strangest Thing
The weirdest thing happened to me just now, which is weird in itself in that nothing weird ever happens to me.
I, being on the surface at least, not weird.
Why should I lie? I've done nothing. It wasn't my fault. It could have happened to anyone.
I am a 4'11"female weightlifter. I have pockets of fat on my thighs. Particularly on the backs of my thighs.
I am taking steroids because my left knee gave way 3 1/2 weeks ago. And I have to heal rapidly because
my entire existence is fixated on winning the 90 to 100 pound weight-lifting annual contest at my Y.M.C.A.
Seven days from now.
Lies. Lies.
True, in a way. A certain element of surface truth there.
A lie. A shallow fabrication. With no reason, no justification.
My teenage son has five minutes ago gone across the street, up the stairs, to the children's dentist
to get his teeth cleaned. He wants to know why he is still going to a children's dentist. I made
up a lie. It satisfied him. I forget the lie. Who remembers lies? It is only necessary to remember the truth.
I am multi--orgasmic. I can have 50, 100, an infinity of orgasms anytime I wish. No one, certainly not myself,
has tested my full capacity. In theory, I could orgasm continuously until the moment I died.
The steroids have acted upon me remarkably fast. The knee is perfect. My face is puffy from water retention,
nothing is the same. I can see Mars now as though looking at it through a telescope. And I don't mean one
of those junky toy telescopes. I don't mean now, I mean at night. At 11:00 p.m. last night, Mars was near
the nearly full moon and I could see it as large as a small, red pea, could see the canals on it as easily
as the lines on my palm.
True. In a way. Does God know the exact line where truth and falsity meet? Half a life ago I took
LSD seven times and read the "Tibetan Book of the Dead." I ate grass out on my lawn because animals
do, why not me? I saw that it is a lie that people have a demarcation line between themselves and
the environment, I saw that there is no separation, no line, no barrier, no me/you versus everything else,
so my lie is your truth, your truth my lie.
What is happening now is not an interruption. Just a nuisance. A policeman in an unmarked
car has circled the block four times in the last 10 minutes, pretending not to look at me as
he goes by, unaware -- the stupidity of people -- that I easily saw him, without letting him
know this at all, saw him in my rearview mirror, without moving my head an inch, saw him take
down my license plate number. The utter stupidity of these people! As obvious as though he
left off a bomb, and he thinks I'm unaware of his very existence!
Whatever. My periods stopped 14 months ago. This is looking down on life like it is a river.
I take, I start taking, steroids, three weeks ago, and the doctor says, "Your periods may stop
for a while," and I wanted to shout at him, "You idiot! My periods stopped 14 months ago!"
But, wisely, I said nothing, just pretended meekness. Bowing humanlike before the all-powerful
God doctor. Besides he wouldn't have got the point and I find less and less energy for fools.
Beginning this -- there is no beginning. Sneaking up is the trick. I will start when it isn't looking.
I will even sneak up on myself, beginning it when I don't know I've begun it, slipping easily,
unobtrusively into it like a small man entering a very large woman in the night.
That's something I'd love to see on the "Playboy Channel," a small man entering a large woman.
Or even a large man entering a small woman. Instead all there is is boring-sized women humping
boring-sized men to the sounds of modern rock. But no commercials.
Oh, well.
Whatever. My fiction, your non-fiction. It doesn't matter. Nothing is going to change the fact that the Devil --
I wouldn't, you might die of shock, if you could live under your eyelids for five
minutes and see the monster microbes living there, eating each other, squirming,
thinking they are the Devil's own gift to the universe, center of the whole putrid
mess. Sometimes I remember every putrid soul on the planet thinks they are as special
as me. Terrifying. What would the point then be, beginning now I will wait no longer
will begin now this beginning is beginning to beginning I mooned the universe 20 minutes
ago when he went across the street to the dentist. I rolled down my jeans and panties
and knelt here on this front seat, driver's seat, put my rear way up in the air so the
whole world could see my cellulite pockets of rear thigh fat, could hopefully see my
flesh-colored genitalia just like those little women do constantly on "Playboy," and
I felt the cool, sweet breeze on my dear butt swaying high there in the air, two
cars honked in joy as they lingered by, and then when I knew I had done it completely,
at that exact moment of completion, I stopped and grabbed his history notebook from
school before I forgot any part of it and have done this.
Lies. But he is coming out now. Across the street inside the building my perfect hearing
hears him leaving the dentist's chair, going past the receptionist, no time now for the beginning.
The lie, if I could get past...
Grant Flint has appeared in Story Quarterly, The Nation, The King’s English, Poetry, Weber,
Amelia, Slow Trains, Common Ties, and 37 other print and online journals. He was memoir winner in
the 2007 "Soul Making Literary Contest," and appeared in the 2007 "Writer’s Digest Short Story
Competition Collection". He was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize.
Email: Grant Flint
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