My thoughts, they swirl. A speaker. A woman. Ah! There she is! Right there next to me! What a sneak, I didn't notice. What was I thinking on? I can’t remember. Gah! I am dreaming, am I not? I Am! Ha-Hah! I sensed, peculiarity. It’s not about clarity, rather, a seismic imbalance which I can only describe as that. Something is "screwy", even though my mind is telling me it’s “okay.” Leave me in peace. No! I didn’t mean it. I love you. I do! Never mind! See, I got distracted. There is a person beside me—a woman. She is about to speak. How do I know that? Am I dreaming? No, of course not. Mere intuition. She speaks:
“They are starting the tornado sirens now, and I’m due any day, as you can plainly observe. See? Look at my stomach. I’m huge!”
“Granted. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, the father is somebody you know, but let’s not talk about it now, storm’s coming. Everybody is going to the library because the roof is infallible,” says she.
“Does that mean a tornado won't rip it off? I always thought 'infallible' meant something else.”
“Yeah, well. That’s how I use it. You’re adorable. I just wanted to say that and I don’t know why.”
“You’re the second person to say that to me today. You go ahead and go in there; I want to stay out for as long as I can, to watch the storm. Funny thing—when I am out in a really bad thunderstorm, I feel close to God. Well, maybe not God necessarily, but close to what my idea of God is. It’s semantics, is all. I know it’s an artificial feeling. I know that the thunder and lightning only excite an aesthetic depravity in me, and it has nothing much to do with God. Sorry, I feel as though I am ranting.”
She’s gone. She must have left sometime during my sermon. Did she? I’m not sure she was ever there to begin with. If so, she went so quickly. If I only imagined her, then I am upset with myself. Why would I imagine such a person? She was the devil to me. I am bitter about everything. I know that the storm will pass to the east. It’s an intuition, and I know it's true. The library can read its own books for all I care! Those people aren’t safe anyway. A bunch of tuna fish, the lot. If a tornado came, they’d all be sucked up in it. I don’t think I would feel sorry for them. Even if I were standing out here and they were all in there trying to get out, I would just say, “Too bad, so sad. I told you this would happen. I told you a thousand times.” I haven’t got time to feel sorry for people who’ve locked themselves in the library during a tornado.
I look over at the building—the library. It’s far enough away so that it looks beautiful and grand. For a moment I want to go over there. I want to go in, but I know it’s just a trick. Perfection only exists where the senses begin to fail. How many cigarette butts would I find on the steps? Everything is worse up-close. I guess it's my policy.
How long have I been walking? I wonder if I am dreaming, because I don’t remember having walked such a great distance. No. I certainly don’t remember straying into this desert. Thank goodness for the nighttime. The heat in this place would be an outrage at midday. Here comes something, or someone. I hope it is a family of wolves. If it is, one of two things will happen: They will either adopt me as a wolf pup, which would be swell, or they will attack me and have a feast of me. Either end isn’t so bad. Please let it be wolves.
Ah! Drats! Two people, walking this way. Probably tourists, or undergraduates. In either case I know I will hate them. Oh cats! I know these two. Not socially, but I've seen them around Campus. Abe and Beth: their names. I’d hoped to pass without talking, but I see now that it won’t happen. Damn my intuition. Why am I frustrated? Here’s why: Whenever I meet strangers, I act like a prize jerk, a smiling pun-happy buffoon; and I hate myself for it.
It’s a young couple. Just as I suspected, I'm acting foolishly polite. I will incarcerate myself later for this. As we converse, however, I begin to like them. Look how comfortable they are with each other. He puts his hand on her butt in a delicate sort of way, as she tells me about her school papers. When he's talking, she squeezes his hand, and sometimes looks very closely at his shoulder with a spunky little face, which is very adorable. Their affection softens me. Our conversation deepens. Sometimes I interject, dry witticisms, at which neither laugh. I can’t blame them. My witticisms are neither ironic nor funny. Infinite time passes and I become increasingly positive that I am dreaming. Boy, what a cruel trick that would be! If these people are phantasms, well, well what a dirty trick of myself to play on myself! What gain would come from it, save that I would have a model by which to compare the rest of the world! It would lead to disappointment, no doubt! I think about it a little more and decide that I'm not dreaming. These two are just two like-able people I’ve grown to enjoy; two people I’ve seen around campus before; two people I’ve just bumped into, in the desert. I am enjoying this moment. Good conversation is distracting.
“Will you be married someday?” I ask.
“No, no, friend. We are in love, why would we get married?”
That strikes me as peculiar and I tell myself to remember it, so I can think about it later. Remember what he just said, says I to mien self.
Suddenly, I am parched. I declare it, boldly. Beth tells me that they've been drinking from cacti along the way. I notice them for the first time. They are monstrous. Saguaro, I think.
“The milk is so sweet and delicious, you would never believe it,” says she.
“Alright, well, that doesn’t really comply with what I’ve read about cacti, but I am willing to give it the old Harvard try, if you show me how. I think this is my first time in the desert. Well, I mean, I’ve flown over deserts, but, you know, this is my first time in the desert.
Beth takes me to the nearest cactus and summons her knowledgeable man-friend. He glides over and produces a foldable stepladder, from his velvety rucksack.
“Very impressive,” I say. I am feeling strange about this cactus business. I wish for green grass and water from a glass. At this moment, I want to take my shoes off in a library and slide around in my socks on the freshly waxed floors. I want to do baseball slides and jumps and listen to Chopin really loud. I want a beautiful girl to come into the library and say, “I have socks on too, and I don’t want to go out tonight, because I’m just feeling different today, not bad, just different. I feel really great actually! Can I slide around in my socks with you?” And then I will say, “Yep”, and we will slide around in our socks and listen to Chopin, and we will pretend that we are at the train station, and that we are running late for a train, and we will run pell-mell across the floor in our socks yelling, “Hold that train, hold the train! We’ve got tickets!” And we will run and slide in our socks, and just barely make it. I can picture her face and how she smiles and yells for the train, but I can’t think of her name. She has blonde beautiful hair. She is very beautiful. It will never work between us, but we will slide around in our socks.
I step up on the ladder. There, jutting from one huge arm of the cactus, is a smaller arm; sort of a prickly cactus-protrusion-type thing. It smells semi-sweet and bitter and green, if green can be a smell. I think it smells green. Beth speaks as she hands me a knife:
“Here. Take this and cut that branch thing off. Put your arm in there and reach around until you feel, like, a soft-pouch-type thing. That’s where the milk is. It will be prickly and weird. Just squeeze the pouch until it breaks. It will burst and all of the milk will drain to the bottom of the arm. We’ll pour it out into a cup. We have some Dixie cups.”
“Alright.”
I slice at the cactus until I get through enough meat to tear the rest. I do so. I hand down the knife and reach my arm in there. It is cool and moist inside. Suddenly my mind does something weird. It does like a growling thing. As I feel around the sensation doubles. It's as if the cactus is making me feel weird, only not me—making my brains feel weird, all squishy and vibratey and weird-weirdy-wowzers. I think that my brain is making a growling sound, like a low and gurgling growl, but maybe it's the cactus. I compose myself and continue to feel for the wet pouch-thing. Finally I come upon something soft and a little prickly, and a little soft. I recoil at first; the texture of the thing is unnerving.
“Hey Beth, I feel something like what you said, I think. It’s like, soft and prickly.”
“Okay. Squeeze it as hard as you can.”
“Ok.”
I try to reach further into the arm of the cactus, in order to grip the thing. I feel it all along my forearm. The texture terrifies me. I squeeze the thing. It moves, suddenly, and begins to slide up my arm. It is very strange and prickly, almost furry. It pulls itself along my arm and there is an explosion of pain. My thoughts become disjointed. I pull my arm free. It is very red.
“It went wrong. Something bit me,” I declare.
“I bet that was one of those cactus mammal-snakes,” Beth moans. “I am so sorry. You are very lucky though. See, there are these snake things, and they have fur, and sucker mouths, and teeth, and suction cups, and they are mammals. They live inside a cactus their whole lives, feeding on it. They sit in there and get huge and fat and disgusting. They get probably forty feet long sometimes, so that only part of them is in the cactus and the rest goes way underground. Did I mention that they are mammals and have weird spiny fur? I think that’s the most disgusting and awful part. Actually no, it does get worse. Apart from having no eyes, they deliver an anesthetic through their mouths and the suction cups on their stomachs. They lie in there and wait for something to come along to get the milk from the cactus, and since they feel a lot like the milk sacs, they have the perfect system. When something reaches in there, they bite them and put their babies on them, and you’d never know they where there, because of the anesthetic. That’s how they get from place to place. They’re remarkable and repulsive at the same time. We’d better check to see if you have one on you. I mean a baby one. You wouldn’t feel it, like I said, and it might be anywhere on you, like under your clothes.”
I am terrified at this prospect and I immediately start to undress. I reach behind my neck to remove my shirt. I feel a long sloping, bulging lump at the base of my shoulder-blades. It is soft and moves at my touch. I panic and begin to rip at my clothes, violently. I am yelling at them to get the thing off me. Finally I get my shirt off. The snake-thing pulls itself around under my arm, and I get a good look at it. Such a homely and terrible beast I have never seen. The thing has whitish fur and suction cups everywhere. It has a long pointed snout and no eyes, like a mole. I cannot feel it on my body, but when I grip it with my hand, it feels loathsome and warm, and meaty. The whitish hairs are coarse and prickly. I can't explain how terrible it makes me feel. I get a good hold and tear it off. I spike it on the ground like a football. It makes a weird thud. It lies there, moving around, secreting puss, or something. I am appalled. I vomit. I put my clothes back on. I feel awful. My new friends comfort me. After a few hours I feel much better. I leave Beth and Abe to their desert romance. Onward.
