Any Man

by Amber Tamblyn

Darkness is a body. I am in a darkness. Or I am in a body. A body is darkness.

Can she see me? Can I be seen? Am I in a body?

I try not to breathe, which makes my heart scream.

Yes, I am still breathing. No, I am not living.

We sink to the bottom of each other’s oceans, drowning in shared silence.

I want to pull my hand away from hers and never be touched again.

I want to take off all my fingers like pen caps and write blood all over this room.

deserve. Her touch is a broken mirror in every room of my mind. Her touch is a tender, mistaken fool.

“Do you have any clocks in your house, and how many clocks do you own? “Have they ever all simultaneously stopped?

“Do you think you’ll sleep okay in the coming decades? “Do you think this is your fault, Mr. Ellis? “You do, don’t you, Mr. Ellis? “What will Camilla think of you? “How are you going to tell your children? “Are you interested in assisted suicide as an option?

Light talk is as good as any other way to begin my death sentence.

“I’m sorry . . . are you . . . Donald Ellis?” No, ma’am, but I get that all the time. You must’ve mistaken me for a butcher’s block. You must’ve mistaken me for a skinned deer. You must’ve mistaken me for some coward. Donald is no longer with us.

Donald met his friend for a beer after work and died instantly. Donald has to explain to his children what happened and will die instantly. Donald will touch his wife’s thigh and die instantly. “I just want to say it’s so awful what happened to you—you’re all over the news!—but just, like, know that everyone is on your side and sending you prayers . . .” Donald dies instantly

Donald has no recollection of the man named Donald who he sees in a mirror.

I talk about the walking shoes I just purchased, the best brands of mosquito repellent, the time I was mutilated and left for dead in an alley, the time I went rafting with friends for my forty-sixth birthday. I do not talk.

I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. I do not talk. Or I talk about the effects of wind on different sizes of birds. I talk about taxidermy. I talk about golf.

Every condolence cake, every overstayed sympathy hug or half-assed buck-up-buttercup smile is another reminder of how much I’ve disappeared.

I’ve arrived almost two hours before class so I can prepare. It is my new routine. Sometimes I’ll arrive at an appointment three hours early just so I have time to stare out my car window. I watch and try not to think.

Everything is a film: a fly on the windshield trying to get in, a delivery truck parked in front of whatever to deliver something I will never savor, a plane carrying flesh messages across the sky. The movie is wonderful to watch when I’m not in it.

My eyes are no longer a part of my body. We do not know each other. I see them, but they do not see me.

I start with one side of my mouth, lifting the invisible strings of my lips, then dropping them back into resting. I lift the other side, half smiling, and drop it back. Half smile, rest. Half smile again, rest. Then I lift both at the same time, slowly, spreading the meat halfway across my face like a loving bow. The human smile no longer makes sense to me.

Smile is the shape of my mouth Amanda wants to see when she comes running out of the science fair, pushing her lime-colored glasses up her nose and shrieking with good news. Smile is the shape of my mouth my therapist looks for when she asks how I’m doing. It is the shape of my mouth Camilla wants to kiss when I return from a day’s work. The shape of my mouth my neighbors and colleagues desire to set them at ease. It makes others feel safe with my story. I practice this smiling, this mouth’s shaping, in the mirror. I do it for them.

I take a deep breath and do my staring. I watch the movie play around me.

Yes, I am still breathing. No, I am not living.

“I’ve been putting on a good face, Irene. Each day grows toward its death. I try to forget. Forgive. Every day I die again. My family lives a life of burial. Everything makes me want to cry. Everything makes me angry. Everything makes me numb. Repeat. I’m tired. Paranoid. I’m cold most of the time, wearing full sweaters in the hot spring.”

I’d grow extra mouths to swallow all his confusion and sorrow.

MAUDE: Looking for a strong mind to haunt. MAUDE: I like your walls. MAUDE: Can I walk through them?

a beautifully executed joke,

I can’t believe I was given a lifetime’s worth of material at the end of my lifetime.

It’s not your fault. But healing your own pain does belong to you now.

I share her ghost with another man.

Some weeks I am reborn without legs.

“Anger has that peculiar quality of isolation; like sorrow, it cuts one off, and for the time being, at least, all relationship comes to an end. Anger has the temporary strength and vitality of the isolated. There is a strange despair in anger; for isolation is despair.”

I know despair. Known it for years. I’ve introduced it to my family and spent holidays with it. I argue with it about how to load the dishwasher. I watch TV with it at night. I take a shit in the morning by its side. I go for long walks at dusk and let it spew its foul thoughts in my ears. I take it to the doctor when it’s not feeling well. I ride home with it after every show I do, especially the good ones. That’s when despair really likes to be there for me. To remind me it was just a fluke.

I cry harder than I’ve ever cried in my entire life. I cry until I evaporate.

It’s a pain . . . it’s a cellular pain now, okay? It’s not a memory, it lives in me like a heart. And I will never forget this, all right? I will never forget the sound of her laughing as I screamed for her to stop.

My eyes focused in on the only thing they could see: the pattern of tiny cartoon-drawn trees with smiley faces on them and birds flying around.

“‘You know what I would’ve done to that bitch, if I could’ve?’ I’d say to Maggie. ‘I would’ve broken every inch of her. I would’ve cut off all her hair and made her choke on it. I would’ve ripped her apart from her ribs with my bare fucking hands. I would’ve . . . I would’ve raped her worse.’

“How can you go on living when you’re now being lived in? When you’ve been invaded?

How can you tell a joke and enjoy laughter without hearing the one laugh that owns every root in you now?

How can you forgive the person . . . the woman who raped you, who has no face to forgive, who has no intention to understand, who is nowhere forever and everywhere inside you for eternity? How can you forgive yourself? How can you e...

How can you end your own suffering, without ending completely? How can you accept touch? Or walk through your life, a lived wound, forever av...

I lie in her body and just listen to her breathe.

it’s that snow can’t be trusted. One day, your daughter’s angels. The next, a predator’s footprints.

It was a cruelty I’ll never forget.

NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THE BEGINNING. THEY want to hear about the middle or the end.

The parallel me had never been raped. Had never been touched. Had never been so obscenely violated. The parallel me had no restrictions. Still enjoyed sunlight. The parallel me had a future that couldn’t be darkened by his past.

had peeled myself open. Like an orange. Not deep, but deep enough to get the poison out. To get her voice out.

She was just a normal woman. She had brown hair and brown eyes. She wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t ugly. She wasn’t really old but she wasn’t young either. She was just a normal woman.

I said nothing. I think I held my breath the entire time. I just stared up at the ceiling. There was nowhere else to look. I remember feeling like . . . like if I didn’t move, if I just stared at the same spot on the ceiling, that I wasn’t even there, in the room. That I had disappeared. I could see where Arthur’s parents had water-damage stains above us. Big brown circles mapped across the ceiling. I traced the lines. Imagined they were different things each time. A race-car track. A dying snail.