Acts of Service

by Lillian Fishman

A life knows that it needs a shape and, taking cues from films and lives it has glimpsed, chooses a core around which to bend itself. A life recognizes the theater in which its keeper appears most real. Against all my better rationales, my life recognized sex.

When I realized this was as far as I could get toward a vision for the future, I sat up straighter in the plastic seat and felt for a moment the ominous tickle of intuition: Whatever it was I had, there was a pretty high chance I was squandering it. My small portion of beauty, my small portion of mind. Then again, I felt sure that I was drinking to the final drop from that last precious bottle, time. And what person, if they had already determined where it was they wanted to end up, could honestly say they were milking their portion of time for everything it had to give?

I had been going around for years trying to figure out what sex meant to other people. Nathan had said, That’s what it is for people—a birthday party. Special and not-special like that—a spark that means your life is happy, a show of desirability, a mark of beauty or prestige or humor. Smaller, more superficial than love.