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The Traveler
I, Orkney, was a freak. I bounced from rural towns, suburbia and cities, running away
from my shame. She only moved in with me out of pity. We sat smoking grass,
feeling good I thought, until Dana told me to look in the window. I did, staring at my
acne. She finished the joint, got off the couch, and said maybe she’d drop by the next
day.
I went to work the following day, opening the antique shop as usual in the suburban
town near Chicago. I had a 19th century armoire dresser I picked up at an estate sale,
priced at $2,100. I met Dana there, she interested in rare books, not unusual for a
librarian. Dana was intrigued with me, staring intently at my eyes and face. That night we
smoked pot, Dana running her hands over my cheeks, getting higher, telling me to get a
good look at my reflection in the glass.
Dana, two marriages shot to hell, lived alone, dating pickups she met in the library.
She’d sit in her favorite restaurant and watering hole, drinking Drambuie, nostalgia-
talking with old-timers. They liked her because she wanted to write a history of the
town before it became dominated by commuters. She photographed them, seated
contentedly with glasses of wine or beer in their hands. When I took off for lunch she’d
photograph me too, my back to the wall, still wearing a tweedy sport jacket I picked out
from my father’s things after he died.
Grotesques I sold in the store, Capricious Classical ornaments, animals, foliage and
sphinxes connected together. Dana suggested I acquire genuine grotesques, ugly,
deformed, hideous creatures, something reminding me of my own freaky face. I couldn’t
tell whether she was serious or not, but it confirmed an identity I longed for, negative was
better than anything. I wanted to be a writer but I couldn’t make money doing that. I sold
some pieces to high-paying antique furniture magazines, then decided to open an antique
store.
Dana moved in with me, leaving most of her furniture in storage. She wanted to learn
how my disfigurement affected my life.
“I stood in line waiting to fill out a summer job application at Arlington Racetrack,
and a young guy said, ‘What ugliness’. I was thirteen and worked with most of the others
scraping weeds in front of the stands. That first clarified my life.” We sipped Drambuie,
noise pop back-grounding my confession.
“I knew girls afflicted with acne, though it’s mostly boys. I dated a guy in college
covered in pus-sores. I can’t tell why I’m attracted to men like that.” She smoothed her
slacks, moving closer to me. “Maybe it’s because my father was abhorrent, wens and
moles and scars leftover from his youth. I loved him, fixating on ugliness ever since.”
“I liked to sit in the last row in class. Raising my hand answering questions was
easier.”
“I’ve dated handsome men, both husbands were good-looking guys but I felt
intimidated.”
“Why? You’re very attractive. Maybe some inner gruesomeness drives you toward
horrible-looking men,” I said, wincing at the word “gruesomeness.”
“I used to kill chipmunks, feed them nuts and berries, then squash them with a rock.”
“I can’t visualize seeing you doing that. For kicks, I still watch that old movie “Freaks”
a lot.
“I had a bad birth, oxygen deprived, my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck for a
few minutes. I had spinal meningitis as a child, maybe that contributed to my morbidity,”
she said, tossing her back revealing smooth skin.
“In college I never made it to the famous make-out spot by a pond. I drank quart beers
with guys, throwing empties at passenger trains zooming past. I used to masturbate in the
geology building in college, getting my rocks off in dark and gloomy stalls,” I said.
“I had more fun teasing squirrely, ugly pusses, until they exploded quickly. I could run
through three of them in one night,” she said. “I’ve found talking to ugly people easier,
probably because they were less demanding, eager to share my confessions. Especially
uptight, sexually-repressed protestants.”
“One fraternity ‘brother’ used to hold his dick, switching it from hand to hand, asking
me to guess which one held his penis. I touched the dick-hand and he opened up. Maybe I
should’ve been gay.”
“Who you are gets entangled with what you look like,” she said. “Dualities are the
curse of our species,” she said, getting up, stretching, fingering magazines on the
low table, then sat in a chair facing me. “What happened in the swinging sixties?”
“In ’68 I dated a girl from college. We fucked many times, and I foolishly wanted to
marry her. When she told me my hands were my best feature, I dumped her.”
“I joined a convent for six months in the early ‘60s, leaving when I read about civil
rights and the Dallas assassination. No TVs were allowed, so I read newspapers,” she
said, looking at as if I thought convents were out of her league. “I went to
demonstrations, usually fucking long-haired strangers afterwards.”
“When my ex-girlfriend came to New York, I wasn’t in. The woman upstairs told me
she buzzed me. I imagined things might’ve turned out differently if I saw her.”
Dana left, coming back with crop and rope.
“Here’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?” She wore black, full-fashioned hose, seams
out of Petty Page stag films, her breasts partially showing above her bra.
“Take that away. No. Get up to bed and I’ll join you there.”
“You’re no fun, that’s for sure,” she said, and slouched upstairs.
Before sleeping, I thought about that woman in my building. She eventually seduced
me at 4 AM. She pulled my dangle into her, and I shot my load. At work the following
day she looked haggard, saying that she felt empty. I felt more ugly than those pinheads
in “Freaks.”
After a month living together, Dana kept staring at me so intensely it made me
more freakish, the reason I traveled so much. I wanted to bolt out of the house, running
down the street like madman, hoping some cop tasered me and I’d die of a heart
attack. I eventually sold the shop through craiglist, getting plenty of money to leave her
behind with her sado-masochistic eyes. Eyes were to me the self, not the soul, but her
biological presence. She could sodomize herself if she wanted.
When she went to the library, movers lugged most of my furniture into the van. I gave
the rest to Dana. She’d find another guy to ball-gag, or whatever she planned for me.
I relocated to Seattle, coasting on my savings account, doing nothing until I felt like
opening another antique shop. And I wouldn’t sell mirrors, either.
George Sparling has been published in many literary magazines including Tears in the Fence, Lynx Eye, Hunger, Rattle,
Red Rock Review, Rattle,
Paumanok Review, Lost and Found Times, and Potomac Review. He has had many jobs, such as a welfare caseworker in East Harlem, a counselor/reading instructor in
the Baltimore City Jail, and a scuba diver for placer gold in the Trinity Alps of Northern California for two years.
He tries through fiction and poetry to give all dark things the light they require to exist unconditionally.
The tension between persons living in pain and the struggle not to fail as human beings also concerns him.
Email: George Sparling
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