Nine Kinds of Naked (41 page)

“What's going on?” she asked, as a man in the crowd lifted the mug high above his head in some kind of victorious exaltation.

“I have no idea,” he answered, grateful for the distraction from the obvious conversation, and at that very moment a concussive air wave seemed to descend from everywhere at once. Cars dented, roofs caved in, windshields cracked, trash cans tumbled, car alarms panicked, pedestrians and bicycles somersaulted every which way down the sidewalk, and the intrepid coffee mug finally shattered into midair smithereens some forty feet away. As for our estranged couple, she suddenly found herself lying on top of him ten feet from where they'd been standing, and if there had been any wind there was no trace of it now.

“Oh my God,” he gasped, jarred by the discontinuity of the collision and reduced to his truth. “I'm so sorry I ever hurt you.”

“I'm so sorry I ever hurt you,” she cried, breaking into tears at the sight of his mortal brow, trickling a trail of blood like tears from a broken heart.

And they kissed.

 

113
T
HE TRUTH OF
Elizabeth's rebuke slapped Diablo into quietude. But he held her gaze, impressed by her confidence in her own vulnerability. “Talking away,” he repeated at last, nodding. “Indeed, I chatter to fill the void and assuage
my own discomfort. I talk it but don't walk it, at least until I encountered you today. You have no idea how much anxiety you have liberated me from. I'd tell you about it but I'm certain that would defeat the purpose.”

“Quit trying to be so incredible,” Elizabeth said. “Let's walk it.”

“What do you want to walk about?”

“You said once that life is a lucid dream.”

Diablo nodded. “That sounds like something I might probably say.”

“You did. So if life is a lucid dream . . . ”

It is.

“Right. So since life is a lucid dream, and since dreams are symbolic, then what is this lucid life-dream symbolizing right now?”

“What,” Diablo replied. “With nakedness? Haven't we already covered that?”

“That's just it,” she replied. “You've covered it. Covered it with a lot of masturbatory yap.”

Diablo nodded. “Ah, but it's so easy to succumb to the temptations of masturbation when this universe is engaged in such a sensual striptease of revelation, wouldn't you agree?”

“Quit quipping.” Elizabeth smiled in spite, of herself. “Walk your talk.”

Diablo looked away and shifted uncomfortably. “You're suggesting that there is some inevitable symbol here that cannot be avoided?”

“It seems apparent.”

“So what is this inevitable symbol?”

Elizabeth gazed at him. “Why haven't you looked at my body?”

Diablo met her gaze momentarily and immediately looked away. “Maybe I'm gallant,” he said. “Have you looked at my body?”

“I'm looking at your body right now. And no, you're not being gallant, you're being cowardly.”

Diablo looked back to find that, indeed, she was surveying his form. “Maybe I'm gay,” he said.

“A gay man wouldn't be afraid to look at me.”

“Touché,” Diablo conceded her point. “I am neither gallant nor gay,” Diablo prattled. “But I'm not so straight that I won't sit next to a male friend in a movie theater. Have you seen those schmos in their ball caps sitting in every other seat, terrified that sharing an armrest is the first tender touch on the road to swish and faggotry? So pathetic.”

“Look at me,” Elizabeth invited.

“Why?” Diablo returned.

“Because that is what the moment demands. Anything less would be a denial of the impulse that you seem so intent upon awakening.” Diablo waffled in reply, and Elizabeth continued. “I think you're afraid to look at me because you fear the defenselessness of intimacy. You know you'll lose control of the encounter, you sense you'll become vulnerable, and you are afraid to be completely naked. Perhaps you are not nine kinds of naked, after all, Mister Mastermind.”

Diablo grinned and became suddenly comfortable. “You know,” he said. “There are nine circles in Dante's Inferno, and the lowest circle is the frozen lake of lovelessness.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth replied patiently. “I know you know a lot of interesting things, but if you want to know the love you presume to promote, you have to step out of that last circle of the inferno, that last part of yourself that thinks you must protect yourself, that fears you cannot trust in complete vulnerability.” She paused and shifted her tone. “I mean, I'm only holding you to your own words here. You said that love is indestructible and requires absolutely no protection. As it turns out, you have been saying exactly what you yourself needed to hear.” Diablo nodded, and Elizabeth continued. “There is nothing to fear here. If you are truly open to love, it is impossible for anyone to do or say anything that will hurt you, for in that case you would immediately forgive them their failings. So answer me, are you merely a cowardly Moses, pointing the way toward the Promised Land but poisoned by doubt and so unable to cross the River Jordan?”

Diablo was silent a long while as shades of sadness and sorrow drew his face. Elizabeth straightened her back and involuntarily shuddered, immediately opening into a profound loving-kindness and marveling at the absence of her own albatross armor of deceit. Watching him struggle to release into trust, she admired everything about him, his ambition, his vision, his erudition, his enthusiasm, yet she knew as well as she knew her own failings that none of it would amount to a hill of horseshit if he couldn't take his own best advice and walk away from those parts of himself that prevented the fullest expression of his spirit. She may not have known this yesterday, but for whatever reason she knew it now, and now is the only moment that ever matters, and she was not going to let her
godfather get involved without getting evolved. After all, what does it profit a man if he saves the world but fails to save his own soul?

“Screw the world,” she said, startling him aware. “Save your self.”

 

114
S
PECIAL
A
GENT
J. J. Speed ran.

Deprived of his Luger and relishing neither the notion of being slain by broadsword nor even the idea of scuffling with a naked and unreasonably cheerful version of himself, Special Agent J. J. Speed sprinted off in the direction of the cavorting gnomes. Due to the unnatural stillness of his urban surroundings, the act of his running seemed to be a tremendous event. Actually, as he discovered when he reached the end of the alley, it was in fact the
only
event.

Jogging to a halt, Special Agent J. J. Speed looked in horrified amazement at the frozen landscape of humanity in which he found himself. Cars, bicycles, pedestrians, even the gaggle of onlookers were freeze-framed into place, one of them victoriously lifting the empty mug salvaged from the pile of laundry as if it were the Olympic torch. “What?” Special Agent J. J. Speed sounded his voice, but his only answer was the mule's gallump toward him, his grinning twin once again astride.

As in a dream that preposterizes existence while nonetheless demanding one's full attention, Special Agent J. J. Speed realized his imminent danger and instinctively flung the only object he had resembling a weapon—the Day-Glo orange Frisbee—and took off running again. This strike was profoundly ineffective, sailing high over his grinning twin before skidding
onto the landing outside of m2 headquarters, but Special Agent J. J. Speed did not linger to observe. Desperately seeking another weapon, he ran toward the gaggle of onlookers and seized the empty coffee mug from the grasp of the frozen mannequin's hand, knocking several others over in his haste. Turning, he hurled it at his grinning twin, who succeeded in shattering it in midair with a slash of his broadsword. Impressed and terrified, Special Agent J. J. Speed sprinted down the sidewalk, grabbing every de-animated pedestrian and bicyclist and throwing them down behind him as obstacles. It worked, initially, as his grinning twin took great care not to trample any of the human statues, though he soon enough left the sidewalk for the street, hoofing over the roofs of cars, cracking windshields and generally trashing their finish in the process.

Just as Special Agent J. J. Speed was gathering his wits enough to begin to wonder just what the hell was happening, he stumbled over an unseen something and sprawled headlong onto the sidewalk. Bruised and scraped all over, he looked up to find a gnome grinning psychotically at him, dutifully dusting Special Agent J. J. Speed's pants. “Be thee ware, weary wanderer,” the gnome chuckled, swiping the side of his nose and pointing at him, “and touch not the bough of mistletoe.” Then, with a tut-tutting wag of his finger, the gnome was gone.

 

115
“S
OMETHING IN YOUR
eyes reminds me of myself,” Elizabeth observed of Diablo, who had finally ceased avoiding her eye contact, though still he would not venture below her neckline. “You have a ferocious wariness against
impostors.” She went on, gazing deeper into his green irises, noting the corona of orange flaring from behind the eclipse of his pupils. “You hide your eyes behind a wall of flame, searching the eyes outside for authenticity but ready to trigger daggers at the first sign of bluff.” She reached out and touched his naked knee, electrifying his body. “Know this now, Mister Mastermind: No matter what happens ever, you are absolutely and always safe.”

Diablo drew a tremendous breath as his grief deliquesced into grace. Blinking into the clarity that she was offering, he exhaled and his eyes opened wide at the tornado goddess he had belittled as his climatological godchild. For the first time, he allowed himself to look fully upon the bathycolpian body of Elizabeth, her presence flowing into his naked eyes like the land of milk and honey, soothing all sadness with the memory of the mother from whom we all sprang.

Feeling this unspoken honorific, Elizabeth's heart effortlessly dropped countless thousands of ogre's ogles and the guardedness they had produced within her. For the first time in her recollection, she was not mortified of her own body, and the spirit that animated her body desired this man who had seen her for the embodied goddess she had always known herself to be rather than the busty slut fucktoy so many others projected her to be. Placing both of her hands upon his knees, Elizabeth hoisted herself forward, stopping within kissing distance of his lips, closing her eyes and sharing in his breath.

“I prefer to taste a person's spirit before I taste their flesh,” Diablo murmured against her aura.

“As if you haven't already tasted my spirit,” Elizabeth dismissed.

“Yes, well,” Diablo continued. “If there is any attraction here, it is a spiritual beckoning, not a sexual imperative.”

“
If
there is any attraction?” Elizabeth smiled, enjoying the heat of their shared breath.

“Indeed I see your point,” Diablo granted. “But there need be no inevitability in this encounter. Nakedness does not demand sexuality.”

“You needn't be such a goddamn gentleman,” Elizabeth whispered, balancing herself with her right hand as her left stroked the hair on his lean chest. “It is only you and I alive in this moment. There is no one to judge but those whose voices you permit within your mind.” She drew an inch closer, stroking his nose with her own. “What say you, Mister Mastermind? Is there any impulse deeper than this? The world could ascend into transcendental chaos tonight, and you still haven't let go. Can you love without fear? Can you walk the talk you talk so well?”

Diablo capitulated, nuzzling her nose in turn and running his fingers up one side of her spine and down the other. “Did you know,” he offered, “that two-thirds of people instinctively turn their head to the right when they kiss?”

Elizabeth experimented turning her head both ways, caressing only the air across his lips. “Hmm,” she purred. “I don't think I've ever experienced a left-handed kiss.”

“Oh, you don't know what you're missing.” Diablo's hands ventured softly onto the curves of her rump. “A left-handed
kiss illuminates the right hemisphere of your brain, which is the intuitive, artistic, and spiritual side of the mind.”

“Mmm.” Elizabeth tilted her head to the left. “Do you believe in magic?”

“I only believe in magic.”

“Good answer,” Elizabeth praised, regarding him but a moment before crawling entirely on top of him, making herself comfortable upon his crossed ankles, wrapping her thighs around his hips and pressing her breasts against his chest. Spines arced, breath deepened, and fingertips curled into fingernails as they gently clawed their hands across one another's back. Eyes lightly closed as she ran her breath across the skin of his face, Elizabeth gradually found her way back to his lips and they fell into a deep, lasting, left-handed kiss.

 

116
B
LINK BLINK
. It was all Special Agent J. J. Speed could do. Blink blink, sitting stupidly on the sidewalk, guddled, muddled, huddled, befuddled. Not only had the scolding gnome vanished, but everything else had banged back into life at the same instant. Blink blink. Wailing car alarms competed with roars of incredulity from a crowd of bystanders, and scattered everywhere down the sidewalk behind were groaning and moaning pedestrians sitting up dazed, bruised, and whimpering, “Wha' happened?”

Nursing his own injuries from his tumble onto the pavement, at least Special Agent J. J. Speed didn't look out of place. He had ample company among those whom he had only moments ago thrown down behind him on the sidewalk, though
this fact did nothing to comfort him. Blink blink. What the hell is happening? Blink blink. Am I dreaming? Blink blink. Is this real? Blink blink. Did I cause this? Blink blink. Blink blink. Blink blink.

Blink blink. No answer dared sass any of these questions, but after a few more blinks it all became irrelevant and utterly forgotten anyway. In the place of his perplexity, indeed in place of that which was once himself, there remained nothing but a lust so covetous that it eliminated any distraction from its own satisfaction.