The Divine Farce (LeapLit)

by Michael S.A. Graziano

Under the circumstances, sex came naturally. It was an inevitable consequence of imprisonment. It was a rule-based dance. We did it to pass the time. We’re tinker toys, Henry said, displaying his talent for sardonic wit. We fit together every which way. We never developed jealousies—we didn’t have enough psychological space between us for jealousy. At the root of jealousy is a fear of abandonment, and we had no possibility of abandonment in that place. If Henry and Rose were at it together and I was busy turned the other way licking juice from the wall, I didn’t mind. It didn’t even occur to me to mind. We often did it all three together. Sex helped us to achieve a single warm blend. It was emotional nectar and we maintained ourselves on a regular diet of it.

Human will bang under any circumstances.

For a long time, I wondered if we were in heaven. An institutional heaven, with limited resources, that had slotted us into the only available accommodation. I imagined that the universal block of concrete was honeycombed with compartments, billions for the ten billion people who had ever lived and died, each stall crammed to capacity with one or two or three souls. A brilliant organizational trick, it was applied game theory. A person alone—hell. No matter how deeply reflective, no matter how self sufficient—eternal solitude—hell. Two people—as good as hell. Three people, a triangulated complexity, strife and forgiveness, alliance and conflict, a polyphonic piece of music sometimes dreadful in its dissonance, sometimes uplifting in its harmony—heaven. My optimistic theory was that any three people, crammed together for a long enough time, would eventually find a mutual harmony. The rules of heaven were minimalist. They were elegant.

Why did I want to leave a world of minimalist perfection, to explore something unknown?

I saw the tall neck of the Loch Ness monster sticking out of the crowd, leaning anxiously toward the far wall, but even the monster couldn’t make any good headway.

I was good at hell.

Curling up on the floor, I’d feel paradoxically full in the stomach, empty in my heart, tired, alone, content, whole, hollow, broken and repaired, cheated and lucky, useless and essential to the cosmic pattern. On that ambivalent mood, as fascinating as a pillow, my mind would ease into sleep.

Is it enough to struggle in an endless cycle for the simple biological truths of food, water, sex, and sleep? I tried. I tried to be content. I tried not to feel nauseous about the failures of other people, to draw my satisfaction from the strength of my own muscles and bones. Success is selfish. I tried to relegate my friends to an idle dream. I pretended to a certain nonchalance, as if I didn’t need anyone and was quite well off on my own,

Was that dreadful place down there so bad? Is it possible to be alone when other people are pressed against you skin to skin?

To the extent that heaven above is isolation, it seems to be hell. To the extent that hell below is a crowd, it apparently is heaven. Maybe we are condemned to an endless nagging sense of discomfort balanced against comfort, satisfaction against the itch to escape.