1. Invitation

Say it is Halloween and you are invited to a party. Say the host and hostess of the party ask you to dress as you really are. You don’t know who you really are. You are trying to make a decision about what to wear based on the instruction: Come as you really are.  But it seems impossible. Who are you?

Perhaps you’ll go as a bug or a snake. How would you dress as a snake? How would you behave? You take a walk in the park and see a grasshopper walking across a rock. You see this from a standing position. How much would you notice at ground level? You sink to your knees in the loamy earth and within seconds an ant is crawling up your leg, onto your battered knee, and into your groin. You tell yourself, this tickles, but it doesn’t tickle. The sensation is grotesque, like you.

You are a grotesque, you are a deviant. Many have said this to you these past months, and now you are invited to a party to face them.

2.  Preparation

You are preparing for the party at ground level, searching for more grasshoppers. If there is one, there must be more than one. You think, they are very delicate, and wonder how they survive. The leaves have turned—vividly, despite the too-hot summer—and you are in repose, looking upward at their undersides. Everything is available from the locus of point of view: the inside out, the outside in, top and bottom, forth and back. Where are you standing? Where are you lying down?

From the undersides of leaves you note the sky, a strange word, like the phenomenon itself. A sky. How far does it reach, how far can you travel into its material reality, imaginatively speaking, if that is not too oxymoronic. Very far, you say.

You go to the thrift store near the university and search for a costume to express who you really are. Man or woman? Child or adult? You cover the tattoo over your left breast, a series of etched numbers. Desecration, you think. You have no reply to this remark, and you remain silent to yourself,  and to others.

In preparation for the party, you take a warm bath. You day-to-night dream of sky, grasshoppers, and leaves. All other sensations evaporate; the water cools; the one candle remaining from your trysts has melted to the wick. Only a vanilla aroma remains.

3. Mirrors

As you anticipated, it is not your image in the mirror. Stranger, you say, grotesque. You are in the schoolyard, aged nine, deflecting taunts. Nothing has moved for you since then, it seems.

You are wearing a white tuxedo with wide 1940’s lapels. Mix and match. In your hair, a gardenia, like Billie. You can be either the bandleader or the chanteuse, depending on the moment, or the mood of the moment. You visualize your entry to the party: in medias res,  standing at the door, waiting in the reception area, relinquishing your coat.

The mirror returning your image to you is beveled, sculpted at its edges, folded back into its iron frame. You straighten your tie, pull the cuffs beyond the sleeve of the jacket, tint your lips the brightest red your olive complexion will tolerate, pomade your mustache. You are a clown sliding through the fun house at the amusement park. If you step forward, or back, your body will mutate. You gather your purse, find your keys. You think, Life is not predictable, as advertised.

4. Surfacing

A famous man is debarking a limousine as you surface onto the street. You recognize his face but cannot name him. This is not unusual—as life for you, these past two years, has been a series of two-dimensional images, icons, and reflections. Where are you in this world?

In a museum last week, you read the titles of the collection without seeing the objects, moving from one to the other methodically. When you returned home, you referred to your notes. All the entries began with the word apocalypse.

The weather is balmy, but cool. Balmy and cool. You should have dressed as a weatherperson, prepared for all eventualities, and once on the street, amidst other revelers, you could hand out weather reports on small chits of paper stashed in your pockets. Less fattening than candy, you think. But you are not a weatherperson; no, you are a chanteuse, the leader of the band—both  or either—depending, once again, on point of view.

The word gossamer is in your mind. You wish you had your dictionary now to look it up. Then you remember where it is, not the dictionary, but the word. It sits directly above the word gossip. You expect a challenge to this interesting fact, but there is none forthcoming on the streets of the city, stranger among strangers. To say it quite frankly: even here, or especially here, surfaced from the shelter of your apartment, you are alone.

You walk boldly to the corner to hail a taxi, but there are no taxis. On the subway—the  antidote to isolation—the  jostling, warm-blooded crowd is half-dead or half-alive, depending on your point of view. You begin a conversation with a woman holding on to the metal post. Her hand has slipped onto yours, and she has apologized. You decide she is kind, but you are not certain of this. In a moment of self-doubt and delusion, you tell her not to worry and then you look away because you are afraid. The woman has now shape shifted into a bioterrorist, no costume required. It is all in your mind.

5. Fissures

If you could only rewind, begin again, where in your life would you begin? Not as a child, no, not then. You would begin on top of the mountain overlooking the bay, close to the active volcano in the coastal range. You are standing on a glacier in full climbing regalia, snowshoes strapped to your back. Your guide, tethered to you with leather straps, is shouting instructions. You think, It is only a fissure, I will cross it easily.  You are at high altitude—have you forgotten this—intoxicated by the thin air, the frothing cone of the volcano, and the endless horizon. Your eyes are a telephoto lens: what is near is far, what is far is near. You step forward and fall into the crevice. You are rescued—or you would not be telling this story—but only after several hours. Deep, deep into the night you rest inside the fissure against the cold wall until eventually you are able to block out the voices, the blades of the helicopter, the fumes of the oil lamps, and your memories.

6. Arrival

You emerge from the subway with an appetite you cannot suppress. The party is thrumming with goblins from your recent past, their loping gait. They greet you with slight nods and turn away. Why have you left your mask at home? Billie’s chocolate-au-lait skin, her rheumy eyes. You step into the center of the room, ash spewing into the ceiling fans, ersatz heat and light. You are offered champagne, irrelevant to your devouring heart. Perhaps he is here, and she and him, and that one there, and all the others. You stand in a corner, you stand in a corner.

7.  Fissures Again

On the mountain, swallowed by danger, you felt safe. The descent took more than a day. You were on a stretcher, the guide held your hand, spoke to you softly, did not scold. If only you had listened. None of that. No broken bones, either.

But the fissure, here, at the party with the goblins, is impassable. When you fall into the crevice, you will not be rescued.

8.  The Morning After

 Because you are afraid of the bioterrorist on the train and the goblins at the party, you invite a warm-blooded person home and into your bed. You make love, in a manner of speaking—which  is to say, you make love at ground level, like grasshoppers or ants. Slowly, you say, or I will break.

It is an accommodation you will not forget. A man with a beard, a heart, strong legs, makes love to you with unprecedented grace.

Later, after coffee and brioche, he says he must leave and touches your cheek tenderly. Perhaps he will return, you think. At the door, you release him to the wind, like a dandelion.

You bathe and dress, bathe and dress again. The days pass, the fissures close, open and close again. You take a walk into the park to visit the grasshoppers. You say their names.