Aphrodisiac
Aphrodisiac
This is only the first part of something that hasn't been titled yet. It's sort of an experiment in introducing characters with a bang.
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At eight in the evening, the Calle de Sonrisas resounded with the clatter of heels and young people’s laughter steeped in herbal humor. The sun had barely set and the air was heavy with the scent of sea salt and charcoal from the neighbors’ patios.
A clear breeze wafted through the open skylight of Mona Lee’s penthouse bathroom where she, sweating in the heat of Miami in July, sank naked into the bath with a glass of her late grandfather’s prized No.2 1889 cognac.
The tub was short for Mona, as were most men in her life, she thought regrettably as she crossed a pair of emaciated legs over the edge of the bath. She was sore all over after a long day, and gently kneaded her stringent muscles, taut tendons with the tips of her fingers.
It had been a long day in court, spent sitting under scrutiny on the wrong side of the courtroom. It had been an exceptionally long, disappointing afternoon of bogus verdicts, millions lost and pink slips. Her ass hurt from the hard wooden benches and from shame, from her boss’ pointed displeasure.
But that was no good to dwell on when the night was new and the bath hot.
Closing her eyes, Mona thought instead of exotic restaurants, dark evening dresses heavy with the fame of the names they carried, avant garde dishes of third world portions hand-carved by some of the most self-indulgent chefs in Miami.
She thought of the curious eyes of waiters peeking out at her from kitchen windows and how they dazzled at the tiny James Beard medal clipped into her lapel.
She held her breath in recollection of crisp aftershave, from that night she leaned forward and whispered into the ear of her vegetarian editor-in-chief, “Not the sea cucumbers,” just as one wriggled on the plate.
And as the blood fumed beneath her skin, Mona slid beneath the scorching surface of the bathwater. A trail of oxygen sacs rolled toward the surface as she exhaled.
Mona recalled late-night coffee in the newsroom with Tom Geier, writing the cover piece of “Wine and Dine” magazine in a haze of drunken eloquence. He held his liquor better than she did, which wasn’t saying much if the flare in his cheek and the tousle of his hair and the one more open button in his shirt than was appropriate meant anything.
“I think you mean the old-world balsamic oil was sensuous, not sensual,” he had said, leaning close over Mona’s shoulder.
There was the screech of wheels on the street, the crack of skulls against brick, a gunshot in the distance barely distinguishable from the sound of shattering glass beside the edge of the tub. The salsa bars across the street were opening up shop for the night.
Mona shut it all out, her toes trembling above the surface of the water.
Sweat, sex, psychological distress. There was the rumble of the earth in heat, the planet turning on its side and South America drowning from the tilt of the oceans. Mona recalled nearly drowning in the sink as an infant. The need to breathe so absolute back then, she had opened her lungs to the faucet thundering over her face before the giantess hands of her mother rescued her.
She broke the surface gasping for air, a murky fluid spreading like octopus nerve poison between her legs. Standing from the bath, Mona turned her face toward the cool shaft of starlight falling through the window, dripping with fatigue.
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spurgeoncc-blog liked this · 13 years ago
More Posts from Suduu
Grandpa died an hour ago.
I’m not sure how I feel. Hearing my father cry over the phone before he abruptly hung up puts the whole situation in a more acutely verifiable light than did my mother breaking the news, which simply put me in shock. And shock, though immediately jolting, is actually quite a numbing sensation once it settles.
In a patriarchal society such as China, the death of a father’s father is a deeply transformative ordeal. The family unit is central to Chinese culture, philosophy and political science. Everyone is now looking to my father, the youngest of his siblings but the only brother to his three sisters, to lead the family into mourning.
My father is grieving in a way that I can’t understand because since I left China at three years old, I had only a cross-continental relationship with my grandparents. To me, my grandfather was an obstinate man. That’s what I know him for primarily. He survived nearly 10 years on dialysis when younger victims of acute kidney failure maxed out at eight on average. After he was hospitalized a week ago after partying too hard at my cousin’s wedding banquet, he repeatedly tried to escape.
But then what made my grandfather human to me was a story my mother once told me about him when all I personally knew of the man was his short temper and his illness.
When my grandfather was young and his mother passed away, he had been presented with the challenge of finding a place to bury her. Back then, Chinese families were buried in clan plots. My great-grandmother was either a divorced, illegitimate or second wife to my great-grandfather, but in any case she was not an actual member of the Du clan. She could not be buried in the Du plots nor her maiden family’s plots because she had technically married. Thus, my grandfather personally begged each household of his father’s family to allow him to bury his mother on their land, carrying her ashes from door to door.
No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard my father cry, but what unsettles me more than that are my dry eyes. I don’t want to over-analyze my feelings toward my grandfather. There are lots of things I don’t understand about him, such as his feelings toward his American granddaughter for one.
Respect is all my family asks. This is where the etiquette of mourning comes into play. Ritual covers for awkward, ambiguous feelings.
Actually, Maimonides was caught on the horns of a painful dilemma. He was fully aware of the dangers, and indeed of the limitations, of philosophy, of the need for prudence and discretion in the dissemination of rationalistic views, of the fact that the philosopher would always be part of an intellectual elite far removed from--and often suspect by--the mass of simple believers. But despite these difficulties, he remained unswervingly committed to the supremacy of speculative theology, convinced that all people should pursue it "to the extent of their ability" and "according to the measure of their apprehension". Any esotericist, convinced of the validity and usefulness of his doctrine, eventually has to evangelize his cause and face the dangers of popularization.
Understanding Rabbinic Judaism, from Talmudic to Modern Times by Jacob Neusner, who described Maimonides' work as the "peak of medieval Jewish rationalism"