Terra Materna

“What kind of loaded fucking comment is that?” he said. “What kind of a shitty loaded comment is that?”

I do not like this man. I do not like his chubby gut and I do not like the patch of black hair on his back. I do not like his smelly cigarettes and I do not like his scummy thrift store comforter on his scummy twin bed. It is pink and white striped with gray filth fuzzies. I do not like that he is constantly trying to pry my legs apart. I secretly hate myself for wanting him to pry my legs apart. I hate that he takes forever to cum and I hate that I can not wait for him to finish.

I had spent the prior evening listening to Marco and Paul verbally masturbate. They are both apparently experts on everything. Paul likes to impress guests with the exotic goods he brings back from his travels. He brandishes a bottle of absinthe along with the story of how he smuggled it out of the Czech Republic. Tomorrow he will make us French press coffee with the finest coffee beans from Vietnam. They were roasted by the acid in a weasel’s stomach and then regurgitated back up. When leave I will not have eaten solid food in a long time.

After drinking this weasel coffee on an empty stomach I ask Marco to drive us to the mountains. I will only be in New Mexico for three days and I want to go to the mountains, just to feel like I am somewhere beside the Midwest. It starts to snow as we drive and the snow gets heavier and heavier as we drive further up. We will not make it to the top. At one point we pull over and look over the cliff. The snow is pretty. We watch the snow fall, holding hands. I am trying to feel romantic, but I just don’t. All I feel is hungry. He is the type of guy you want to fuck but don’t really want to kiss or hold hands with. This is too intimate. After we get back from the mountain I take a hot shower. I am very cold and very hungry. He does not have his heat on. Poverty is not fun, but apparently he would rather freeze, starve, and mooch than be a whore like me and get a day job. I get out of the shower and lay down on his bed. I don’t know why. I always lay down on my bed naked or wearing just a towel after I get out of the shower at home. He is touching me and I do not like it. Why don’t I like it? Why can I never act or react the way I am supposed too. I do not want him on me. I was clean and now I am dirty again. He asks me what is wrong and I tell him. Never before has a comment I made been scrutinized so much.

What I had said was “Sometimes I feel like I am very fuckable, but not very likeable or loveable.” I had been oozing with fake sentiment since I walked off that plane Friday night. Fake impressed at weasel vomit coffee. Fake romantic at falling snow on the mountain top. This was the most honest I’d ever been with him and he was not taking well to my honesty.

He wants to know if I was molested as a child. He wants to know what my post feminist agenda is. The truth is that I am just finding his body to be grotesque. It is an assault to all of my senses. He is substance with no style. He does not smell good or taste good or feel good and I am sick of hearing him talk. I am sick of him trying to psychoanalyze me in hopes of finding some grim childhood trauma. I will never be romantic again. A one night stand should just stay a one night stand. Venus is going home.

In retrospect it is hard to honestly state how I felt about Marco when we first met, as every event is colored by what happened before and after that event. I met him while I was traveling. I had quit my job and let my moved out of my apartment. All of my earthly possessions were being stored in various places around Chicago. I had decided to travel for a solid month. My first destination was Tucson, Arizona. I stayed with my Uncle and his wife, two people that are very dear to me. I did not know them very well and was exited when they invited me to come visit them. I had never been to the Southwest before and I found the landscape to be breathtaking. I could see why my uncle had migrated there back in the seventies. All the colors where warm. Saguaro cacti stood erect against the brilliant desert sky, and the scents of tortillas and tamales seemed to hang like a vapor in the air. After spending a few days at their house my uncle let me drive his car to Albuquerque.

I was mesmerized by the orange cliffs and the yellow grasses that lined the highway. In the distance there were shades of purple and deeper shades of rust. I took a short cut my uncle had told me about and drove through a town where every house seemed to have a mobile of dried chili peppers hanging from the porch. By the time I arrived in Albuquerque it was starting to get dark. That was the night I met Marco.

I found a coffee house where there was an open mic that night. I always travel with my guitar. It makes meeting people easy. I asked the host if I could sign up and he said that the list was full, but if I stuck around I may be able to play later. I was terribly hungry, so I got a bagel with cream cheese and some coffee. I felt the presence of the man sitting behind me. Without intentionally looking at him I turned around so I could see him. He smiled and I noticed that he had crooked teeth. I turned around and I could still feel him looking at me. I soon noticed that he had a very pungent smell. It disgusted me and turned me on at the same time.

He was signed up to play and eventually it was his turn. He walked up to the mic and threw some little paper airplanes around the room. They were flyers for his art show and everyone was invited. From the way he looked and smelled I was expecting him to have a deep voice, but he a high, rather feminine voice. Once his hands were free of paper airplanes he played a few songs. I don’t remember what they were about, but I found him to be a compelling performer. Later that night I did get to play. I was the last one. He was impressed with me as well. Looking back we were not as impressed with each other’s work as we were just impressed with each other’s lives. He was an artist. He made all his money selling his artwork and did not have a day job. I was a woman traveling alone with her guitar and singing at open mics in new cities. I gave him a ride to his house and he showed me his artwork. We talked for a long time and he had many profound things to say. “First there is being, then there is doing, then there is having, but most people have it backwards.” "In a sense artists are the most uncreative people. They are transient and reclusive. They do not create families and communities the way other people do. they just analyze and dissect the real creators." I did not find him to be attractive, but I was attracted to him. To his crooked teeth and thick black pony tail, his social theories and his philosophic musings. He sat behind me on the couch and put his arms around me. It was then that I said I needed to leave. I had already paid for my bed at the hostel and I was taking that as a sign that I was meant to stay there. The next morning I fled the city and drove to Santa Fe. The next day I fled Santa Fe and went to a small town that had geothermal springs, but that paper air plane flyer was still in my pocket. I drove back to Albuquerque the next day.

His “art show” was actually him hanging all his work in the back yard and inviting neighbors, friends and anyone passing by to see it. I had been feeling cynical about the whole do-it-yourself ethic in my own art. Not too many people showed up for his show. My cynicism was not really erased that day, but I felt a kinship with him. He was not trying to be part of some scene; He was just trying to do honest work. As it started to get dark we spread out a blanket on the drive way. “I love the desert because you always have to rejuvenate yourself here. It’s like the environment sucks out all your life and you constantly have to replenish it.” He had some fancy cheese left over from an opening some of his work had been in. I went to the grocery store down the street and bought a bottle of wine and some crackers and grapes. I had intended to drive back to Tucson after we ate, but he seduced me. I let him seduce me and I enjoyed it. Right there on a blanket in his driveway. I spent the night and we went to get coffee together the next day. When I finally did head back to Tucson I had no false illusions about what had happened. I was still cynical, but somebody had reminded me that there were other options. I knew I was not going to fall in love with him. In fact, I would probably never see him again, but I did not need love at that time in my life. I needed whatever I got that weekend in New Mexico and that night in that drive way. I went back to Tucson and then traveled around California with a friend from college who had moved to the West Coast. I arrived back in Chicago a month after the day I had left.

When I arrive at my new apartment it is as if I’m still on vacation. It is unseasonably warm for Chicago in late September. It is still hot. I have never lived in this neighborhood before and am not really with the configuration of the streets. My new apartment is a fourth story walk up above a Mariachi bar and the building smells heavily of pine scented cleaning solutions. The building itself is sandwiched between a taqueria and one of those stores where you buy random useless things for cheap– fake flowers, mardi gras beads, plaster figurines of the Virgin. There are three other taquerias on the block and the street is pungent with the scents of Mexican food and chicken fat. I park my car in a place I don’t feel safe parking it and slowly make my way to my building carrying two heavy bags and a guitar. The dumpster stinks and the alley surrounding it is littered with chicken bones, trash, and a rotting fish head. When I arrive at the fourth floor I open the door hoping that my new roommate will not be there. He is not. I need to eat badly, so I buy some yogurt, apples, and cans of guava and papaya juice at the supermarcado down the street. I walk with my plastic bag through the neighborhood. I see stray kittens under a car fighting over a chicken leg and dogs with testicles dangling down to the sidewalk. There are women with babies, greasy men, and kids walking home from school. There are babies everywhere. Baby people and baby animals. I make it home and eat my food. Thankfully my roommate is still not around to add to the sensory overload I am feeling. The next few weeks will be difficult, but eventually I will find a new job and get back into my regular routines here in Chicago. To my surprise, Marco and I do keep in touch. He always ends our phone conversations with “I love you,” but I know that that means something different to him than it does to me. He loves paint, he loves trees, he loves Buddah. This is a man who said that when he dies he will be reincarnated as the color yellow.

I thought about visiting him, but I did not decide to do it until that strange Valentine's Day. I went to Bar Vertigo with some friends to see some bands. The special that night was a syrupy sweet vodka drink with red sugar around the rim of the glass. Love juice. There are condoms strewn on the floor that the singer of the last band threw out into the crowd. I pick a handful off the ground. A guy I used to date is approaching. I hold out my full hands. “In case you need them for later.” Then I notice that he has a date. I feel like an ass. My roommate leaves, but I stick around for the next band. I want to catch a ride to the big loft party later. A male acquaintance sits down next to me. It is very loud and very dark. “You’re beautiful. You look like Cleopatra. You’re beautiful, you know.” He is starring very hard. I go to the bathroom because it is something to do beside watch a male friend reveal his dark side to me. I slip out of the bathroom without him seeing me and catch a ride to the party. I get this sense of awareness that people in their 30s getting wasted at a party is like people in their 20s getting wasted at a party except that the 30s crowd is well aware that their verbal masturbation is just that. The product is stained sheets, not some grand piece of abstract art. It is comforting, but also a little depressing.

I am sitting with a group of people, including Sam. This is his loft. There has been sexual tension between us since we met a few years ago, but nothing will ever happen. Our glances are loaded. Our words have a thousand hidden meanings. “Why are you here?” he asks. I am embarrassed. Our little game has ended in a not so subtle way in front of a lot of people and I feel embarrassed. If cupid is at this party his hard on is certainly getting in the way of any good intentions. Amid all the verbal jism and cupid erectus Marco calls me from Albuquerque and leaves me a silly voice message. He sings “Happy Valentines Day” to the tune of Happy Birthday. It is dorky and sweet. It is the nicest thing anyone has done for me in a long time. I decide I will visit him. That is how I ended up here, having a miserable weekend with a man who despises me. I am an unwanted houseguest and I need to go.

Airports are full of people starting or ending an adventure. Mine is over. I am two hours early, so I walk around and get some ice cream. I look at the jewelry the gift shops. I like it, but I would never wear any of it. I am Midwestern. All the stones are huge and brightly colored like Marco’s art. I come from a place of subtlety and discretion; a place of secret codes and endless shades of gray.

I do not like his artwork. My appreciation of his art was all contingent on my appreciation of the artist. I like a few of his black and white photos, but that is all. I find his paintings to be a bit tacky - all those bright colors and sharps lines. He probably thinks all my writing is shit too. I asked him what he thought of a song I wrote and he said, “Anything that comes from the heart and soul is beyond criticism.” I found what he said to be profoundly beautiful and honest and a load of shit at the same time. The night we had met I gave him a CD and he gave me some photographs and a print of one of his paintings. I kept the photos, but I just left the print on the wall when I moved out of that apartment, and left Chicago for good. My roommate had liked it. It was an abstract painting of a mountainside. If you looked closely you could see woman’s figure in that orange mountain, maternal and glowing with warmth.