Little Weirds(14)
Whatever usually fundamentally restrains me just evaporated like mist in our good heat.
We didn’t need to have shirts on or any clothes that we didn’t want. A rabbit doesn’t have socks. Why would a woman have a bra if she was making a snack in her natural habitat, which is of course a house by the sea? We put our groceries away in states of undress, we drank beer while making cocktails. We got in the bathtub together and sat there like toddlers, like psychic siblings, like little clams. We took a three-hour bath, getting in and out to bring in new treats. Somebody took a nap during the bath. We let the cold go down and kept putting in the warm when we needed it. We kept cups of wine around the tub.
In the night, we slept restlessly but it wasn’t a problem because most of what we were doing in the day was draping ourselves over everything in the world and then drifting off. At night, we put on lipstick and took a pill and rode a taxi for thirty-five minutes into town so that we could chomp lamb chops and caviar in a very old and charming restaurant filled with stiffs and spinsters. We took our picture in front of the fireplace like three lieutenants from an army of dazzling women, here on earth to gallop through your beach house and make you feel crazy, baby!
One night, we roasted a chicken and had our chests bare and we ripped that hot chicken apart with our wicked little hands—we didn’t even wait for plates. We didn’t even think about plates. We were honest-to-god female animals with each other and I felt that, because of how we floored it like that, we could be animals with the other animals, too. I saw it clearly: One woman could go outside and sit on a rock and a fox could come and sit next to her and put its paw on her back the way a buddy does to encourage another buddy or to apologize for losing a temper. They would look at the sunset together, sniff the air, make a plan to meet up later on and howl. I would look out the window while shaking a colander of tomatoes and see her shaking the fox’s paw and saying, “Nice to meet you. I’m Mae,” and I’d watch the fox trotting off and calling out, “See you later for the howl!”
One of us could just drop off the deck, flipping backwards onto the back of an osprey. She would take a flight down the beach and back while the other two of us chopped carrots. “Where’s Jane?” “Oh, she’s on that bird right now—I think I just saw them circle the lighthouse.” “Oh, okay. Do we want white wine with this? If so, we’re going to have to put an ice cube in because I forgot to stick it in the fridge. I’m having beer now anyway. When she’s back from the bird-ride we will ask her to do the potatoes.”
As for me, I would be allowed to kiss a rabbit. Not for a sex need, just for sweetness between two creatures, just to be allowed to be seen as a fellow animal and not a predator, just for touching the untouchable . . . that would be my special delight.
I would see the rabbit on the lawn by the back door and I would put down my vegetable peeler and wipe my hands on my pants. “Hi,” I’d say quite plainly, swinging open the screen door. My feet would go from the steps onto the grass and clover. The rabbit would peek up at me and not be afraid of me at all. I’d have my pants on but absolutely no top and I’d raise the rabbit up and feel its soft stomach and its paws on my chest. Its back feet would press into the top of my breasts as it climbed toward my face but it wouldn’t scratch my skin or put any bugs on me.
The rabbit would smell my chin and it would push a paw into my cheek to try to see what I was. Then I would angle my head down and feel the two hot tufts of air push out from the little nose of the animal. I would blow my own two air tufts and see the fur move on the crown of its head. The rabbit would press its forehead against my mouth for a kiss. I would kiss its little head and press back with my mouth, and then the rabbit would flip its face up and kiss me one small kiss, right on the lips, anointing me into the real animal realm, one paw now pressing into the space between my nose and eye, where tears track sometimes. I would be able to smell the woods on the rabbit and it would smell roses and beer on me.
I would stick my tongue out like when you are trying to catch a snowflake and the rabbit would stick its tongue out too and press the delicate pink petal-tongue into my own tongue, like a stamp. Then eventually when I would speak again, all of the words would pass over my stamped tongue, and whatever I’d say would be marked by the rabbit stamp of acceptance that says, “I am a gentle creature. You can listen to me completely because I am not trying to hurt anything.”
Then the rabbit would make a noise that I have never heard before, and it would kiss my jaw, and it would kiss me right below the ear, and then it would climb onto my shoulder, and pull my necklace with its paw. It would want my necklace so that it could be like me. I would think about it and then take off the necklace with the little J on it, and put it around the rabbit’s torso like a sash. The rabbit would be proud and leap off my shoulder, bounding into the woods to show the other animals what it had.
When I’d come inside, my friends would be sitting on the floor, putting wood in the fireplace. “Who was that?” they’d ask. “It was a rabbit,” I’d say.
We all fell asleep watching a movie in my bed. We cried and ate potato chips. We got more than a glimpse of what we could be if there were no boundaries for us, no world but this. Because of these two women who brought a boatload of love to me on a small island, I eventually stopped wondering thoughts like, “But what if hot ham water could turn into a love potion?”