All Fours

by Miranda July

“It’s true!” Brett insisted. “We’ve seen it a million times: someone starts working out, gets hot, and then they’re like, Dude, I could do better! Time for an upgrade!”

This reminded me of when I discovered that most people were in some form of recovery; it was the secret undernetting to the world I lived in. If you didn’t know about recovery and exercise you were out of touch with the human plight. There were only so many ways to lift yourself back up—and falling down, well, it’s what we do.

Why would anyone describe a trip they had just gone on unless it was to Hell or the center of the earth?

“Have you been anywhere fun lately?” a long-haired man asked me after describing Cancún. “No,” I said, “but I’m just realizing this dynamic I have with my husband where I express my problem so dramatically that I become the problem, which makes me desperate to win back his favor. It’s a cycle that keeps us from ever moving forward with our issues. I think my mom did this, too.”

This standstill between us was just life, that was suddenly obvious. There was no way to fix it, nothing to open-source; life was just a struggle. It was supposed to be.

We were quiet, looking down this never-ending hall of mirrors.

And so we were condemned to a very rigorous, if joyless, life that was profoundly meaningful until suddenly one day it wasn’t. Because I had felt joy. Stupid, pointless joy.

“Favored nations?”

???

“Of course,” I said, the same way I said I do at our wedding—no way of knowing for sure, but here’s hoping.

Or maybe this leap had been dangerously delayed by my work; maybe it would have happened years ago if I hadn’t been so satisfied by risks taken in art.

each morning, no matter where I was, I opened my eyes and thought: I can do anything I want. It was like so many dreams I’d had, but I woke up into it instead of from it.

But there was enough hypocrisy built into life, one shouldn’t choose it.

I felt nothing, for her or anyone. Nothing mattered. This was probably how I would feel right before dying; all that worry and anticipation and then right before the end: nothing.

She left at dawn. I had gotten a soft molasses cookie for after. I ate it in the bath, sore and happy. This is the part I’ll remember when I’m old, I thought, eating this cookie in the bath.

One should always be asking themselves What if I lost this? How much would it matter? And then secure it, at least screenshot it.

Picture how the vaginal canal squeezes the water out of a baby’s lungs—it’s the shock of this squeezing and the sudden cold air that makes the baby cry out and take their first breath!” She inhaled so I inhaled, too. “The trauma itself prepares them for the next phase, life on Earth.”

a woman’s mental health postmenopause is usually better than it’s been at any other time in the life of that particular woman, other than maybe childhood.”

“Mm, it’s more that we aren’t cycling anymore between estrogen and progesterone and FSH. And, of course, in a patriarchy your body is technically not your own until you pass the reproductive age.”

“But I really only want to want,” Cassie said. “That’s the whole point of desire.”

Nabolom,

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Cozy and upsetting, nothing could be more intimate.

I was pretty good at getting people to meet me in my mind, but ultimately no one wanted to stay there.

Having seen myself I could no longer be myself.

“Everyone thinks doggy style is so vulnerable,” Jordi said, “but it’s actually the most stable position. Like a table. It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.”

Funny to think I had waited years for this meeting. No matter. It was still a fine way to pass the time.

“You get hyperfocused, like me,” she said, neatly spitting out an orange seed. “We gotta keep moving! Don’t get stuck. Don’t keep staring down the well when the well’s run dry, that’s what Carter always says.”

“I guess it’s late, isn’t it?” I said, looking at my phone. Almost midnight. “Nah, not for me. I’m headed to the studio!” She clapped her hands together. “I don’t use clocks or calendars. Every time is now; every day is Tuesday.”

Motherfucker, I whispered. I was referring to life itself. Always surprising you, always with the curveballs. Room 321 was the cave and I was its guard. I had made a goddamn womb and I had oneness in it every week. With myself, with God, with my friends and sometimes lovers. And I didn’t own it. Because you don’t. Own anything, not even your own womb, your own body. It all goes. But every Wednesday I could get back in there, with or without lust, and be—what was the word? Free.

If 321 was everywhere then every day was Wednesday, and I could always be how I was in the room. Imperfect, ungendered, game, unashamed. I had everything I needed in my pockets, a full soul.