In Which We Require Our Own Space

Efficiency

by ELIZABETH BARBEE

I needed an apartment to match my bohemian lifestyle, so I found a small efficiency on the outskirts of Austin. The place was rundown and seedy, facts obvious upon sight, but my mantra was there is beauty in decay. I had just broken up with my boyfriend of four years and it felt hypocritical to discriminate against anything that needed mending. I trusted my ability to romanticize the yellowed walls, the stale cigarette stink, the fact that my neighbors had Wi-Fi names like “Bitches Cum” and “The Dave Matthews Band.” For at least the first week I made the best of it.

Immediately after graduating college I took a job editing erotica. It seemed like the perfect gig for a young English major desperate to demonstrate the depth of her open-mindedness, so I pounced at the opportunity. My first assignment was a gay vampire e-Book called Pack that the publisher described as SEXTREME. Because all of the characters were male there was a lot of pronoun confusion. I could never tell if the protagonist were masturbating or getting lucky. Most of my notes in Track Changes consisted of a single question mark. Regardless, I felt like Anaïs Nin. If only I had been brave enough to shave my eyebrows.

My only friend in town was a free-spirited University of Texas graduate named Saul. He had just sold a story to This American Life, so we were both in the literary biz. He was my first visitor. The moment he stepped through the door he began speaking in the third person. “It isn't bad, but Saul wouldn't live here,” he said. I think now this was his way of distancing himself from the filth of my living space. It was also the first sign of the horror to come.

Later that night, when I was in the early stages of sleep, I heard screams coming from next door. They were not the kind of sexual screams I read about in Pack. They were frightening. The logical thing to do would have been to call 911, but in my dreamlike state I saw only two options: go back to sleep and let my neighbor die, or put on a pair of pants and rescue him. Because of guilt rather than altruism, I chose the latter.

It took him five minutes to open the door, just enough time for me to realize I might get shot. When he finally appeared he was wearing a knee length Madonna concert t-shirt and casually smoking a joint. “Hey, girl, what's up?” he said. “You want to hit this?” I shook my head and explained frantically the reason for my visit. He looked amused. “I get night terrors sometimes. No biggie. I'm surprised you haven't heard me before.” I asked no follow up questions and bought a pair of earplugs.  

Shortly thereafter Saul took an assignment in South America. With my only friend gone, I started a tepid love affair with a first year law student I met at a coffee shop. He had all the markers of a serial killer (frightening intelligence, vacant eyes, distaste for pets), but he kept me company. Plus, he had lots of interesting views on intellectual property in the Internet age, so I decided to overlook his Ted Bundy quality. 

Because I had grown to hate my own place I spent a lot of time at his. It smelled always of fried potatoes, but as far as I could tell he never ate. Instead of going out to dinner we stayed in and rented movies, most of which were directed by Ingmar Bergman. Persona is an uncomfortable thing to watch, especially with someone you vaguely suspect of being an ax murderer.

Two weeks into our lackluster romance he mentioned a roommate whose existence seemed highly unlikely. “It's a one bedroom apartment,” I challenged. “Where's his toothbrush?” “Hugo is a busy man,” he said. “Always jetting off somewhere and taking his toiletries with him.” Perhaps if he had chosen a more believable name I would have stuck it out, but Hugo was too far fetched. I ended things that night. He rarely contacted me after that, but in a fit of paranoia I decided he was stalking me. Too cheap to buy mace, I kept a can of hairspray next to my bed. “If he breaks in I'll douse him with Aqua Net,” I thought.

I am embarrassed now by my egotism. I wonder where I got the idea that I was interesting enough to be stalked. The dude was weird, sure, but only slightly more so than average. Looking back I think it was the unfamiliarity of him that scared me the most. I had spent all of college curled up next to the same man and now I had to get used to this new body. It had hair in places my ex's did not, scars and tattoos I had never seen before. Everything about him, just like everything about that year, was foreign.

All of my discomfort during that time was self-inflicted. I made decisions based on the person I wanted to be (Anaïs Nin) instead of the person I actually was (Elizabeth Barbee, a suburban-bred geek with an affinity for stability). When I came to this realization, I found an administrative job that was boring as hell but allowed me to move to a nicer place. I submitted my final thoughts on Pack to the publisher. “Can we change the main character's name to Hugo?” I asked. “It sounds more vampiric.”  

Elizabeth Barbee is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She last wrote in these pages about her vital signs.

In Which We Follow Him To The Ocean Floor

The Well

by LEAH BUCKLEY

A storyteller relies on deception, depends on the secrets of his characters and coddles their depth, their small lies and their great fears. It is easy to forget that they share your own blood. 

The immigration line in the Mexico City airport was already a tangle of confused Japanese tourists, and adding the passengers from our JFK flight turned chaos to panic. Rodrigo pulled me into a much shorter line tucked off to the side. “But this is for citizens...” I turned and looked longingly at the angry New Yorkers commanding order from the Japanese tour guide. “I don’t even speak Spanish.” An official looking man with white rubber gloves raised his eyebrows at me. He had a look, like, "caught you, you mother fucker. You don’t belong here.”

“Hola,” I smile. I wanted desperately to go back in the other line.

+

The whole family picked us up from the airport, a welcome wagon waiting with cab drivers and lovers holding flowers. We piled into his uncle’s little four door like it was a clown car, knocking knees on the speed bumps out of the garage. Traveling gives the visitor a beguiling sense of wonder—even airport parking lots have an exotic smell, like the water you can brush your teeth with but can’t drink. They passed around hand sanitizer disguised as a Despicable Me minion toy. “Take some of the minion,” Rodrigo urged. I shook my head — my hands were cautiously tucked under my legs. “No seriously. It’s dirty here.”

+

That night I took a walk alone in the just dusk and looked for shadow shapes to remember.

There was a woman in front of me in a tight dress, her gait labored as she navigated cracked pavement in high heel sandals.

The night was empty of sound and her sensuality felt unnatural as we passed looming construction vehicles abandoned for the night.

I sped up to pass her. 

Just as I leveled with her she gasped, falling off her strappy platform

We were so close that I had to say something. "I won't tell," I smiled. 

Relived she laughed back, out of breath. "Me novio…supposed to pick me up, cabron," she whined.

I wondered if she felt very alone. There was heartache behind her effort, and I feared my resemblance to her.

+

I wandered back from the supermarket, backlit now. 

Dark corners lurched out at me and played at the uneasiness in my stomach.

Fingers found comfort in concentric circles around the crispy pastry in my bag, and the crunch in my head drowned out any possibility of danger.

+

The next morning Rodrigo’s abuelo arrived.

His slow steps down the skinny spiral staircase quieted the room.

He wasn’t particularly tall, but he bore the authority of a much larger man. He had the belly characteristic of an epicurean, someone who swam in the ocean despite — or because of — the height of the waves, and ate all the ceviche he wanted. Dignified black hair slicked across his head and shone with lacquered glittering profusion. I noticed thick muscular hands of a younger life, tan from summers in the hot dessert.

+

In private, Abuelo commanded the same awe as he did in Mexico City's presidential palace.

But now, the living room was peppered with uncertainty.

Since the stroke his speech had gotten better, but the great labor in his voice was a quiet secret the family shared.

With each opening line he took an enormous risk.

+

There is a room in the house where Rodrigo's uncle works. Scattered across the big desk are books and magazines, Spanish, English.

Only standing behind the desk did I notice his uncle had taped photos of thinkers and artists. I had trouble recognizing them — one was Locke, maybe.

Was it lonely to look up and only see strangers?

That morning his uncle was working in the garden on the roof. His two little boys played noiselessly about the deck, occasionally hopping off their tricycles to examine the roots of some exotic plant their father was working on, one tucking a head under his father’s shoulder, the other throwing two arms around his neck in an impetuous embrace. He took the opportunity to smooth out hair and brush dirt off faces with the tender quieting hands of a gardener. 

+

The boys told me they had a joke for me, a Spanish language learner.

Había un zorro caminando por el desierto. Estaba solo hasta que se encontró con un burro. El zorro chocó con el burro y dijo

"I'm sorry"

y el burro contestó

"I'm burry"

I didn’t get it. That night, alone, I googled “Spanish English Burro joke translation.”  

+

Not too far from where we were staying in Mexico City, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's house sits on an unassuming plot.

There are two buildings surrounded by a cactus fence, one blue for Diego, and Frida's red. They are connected by the slimmest of bridges. 

I wondered if Frida ever lay awake alone in her house thinking about what her art would look like if she had had children. But only because I imagined her as me.

I stopped thinking about it, and just felt like a cliché.

Abuelo stood wringing his hands in the living room until doorbell sounded sharply. He took stock of the dimly lit room, his suitcase in the corner. “What was the name of the town where the beach house was?” he asked, smiling. A facetious question — he has owned that beach house for 30 odd years.

+

Was it his fortitude of character that made him so majestic? I felt that he was very different from all the strong men I have known, as the land is different from the sea.  

+

The next day Rodrigo and I escaped to that beach house and for a few days it's just the two of us.

Rodrigo shakes his head at me. "If we are here, I think we are here for a reason."

I wondered how forgiveness works as I kneaded my toes into the sand. 

Time began to feel like a trap.

But how could we be afraid when the sky met the water and all around us waves pulled and pushed?

+

Rodrigo plucked an eyelash from my cheek. My face felt changed under his hands, slightly sad at the edges. I thought of what I looked like in that moment, to him. 

Years distanced me from the image in the black mirror pupils. 

“Up or down?”

“Down.”

He opened his fingers and there was nothing there, only sandy skin. I had forgotten to make a wish anyway.

+

Mornings on the beach were mine until about 10:30.

The sand was hot enough that if you wanted to swim you had to sprint to the ocean break. 

A man with a factitious tan, maybe 60, tip-toe ran down the beach, boogie board under his arm. 

Hair slicked back with salt water, I watched him get tousled by the waves, guffaw like a child. 

I imagined him tumbling under a big crest, the water piling and piling on top of him as he fought for a breath.

But he doesn’t drown, as big as the waves are.

Beaten and exhausted, he trudges up the beach around 11.

He has a hitch in his step like a broken toy. 

The woman, equally tan (so the bronze skin was for her liking then?) was splayed out on a lawn chair. 

Silently they gathered their towels and shifted to the pool deck. 

+

I know those people. Unnatural tans, discomfort in the waves. Ignoble people like us are swept along by ocean streams kicking and gasping, or nervously hover about the edge of its great force.

+

We were sitting outside for lunch.

The tan couple already put in an order of quesadillas at their usual spot next to us.

“Where you folks from?” I placed the accent in an instant.

"We are coming from New York," I replied, not sure if I should get into it. 

"...But I'm originally from Minnesota."

"Ah, we are from across the lake! Wisconsin, Hayward actually." Her eyes lit up, while the rest of her face remained impossibly tan and fixed in place. 

"Wow New York. Real busy there," the boogie-boarder chimed in. I knew it was coming. "I could never live there, I’m afraid of that many people."

"Yep, it gets pretty busy..." I waited for one of them to ask me when I was moving home, or how my mother feels, me being so far away and all. 

"We've been to Times Square. I don't know how you do it. All those people." 

I felt strangely comforted by their predictability, and immediately guilty for not fearing it.

+

But the image of that tan man staggering up the beach haunts me. He bears no resemblance to the strength in Abuelo’s calm hands.

I want that control. 

"I’m ready. I don't care if you believe me," I say to Rodrigo, but I care more than anything right now.

I ache for him.

I’m throwing my fears into the sea and jumping with them.

When I do fall, I want to fall slowly.

He moves with the water, rising and falling, his tall form dwarfed by the sweeping swells. When I try to follow him I meet the ocean floor and gritty sand between my teeth. He was born in the waves, and will die there — fearless in the infinite blue. I dream of that ocean.

+

The next day there is a lightness in my feet. I can feel the strength of my arms, and warm blood pumping in my brain. A mercurial feeling of weightlessness rises in my chest. Wave after wave it frees me.

Leah Buckley is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in New York. Photographs by the author.

In Which We Are Not New To This Part Of The World

by jeff blackPros and Cons of Cairo

by HEATHER MCROBIE

PRO: The elevators, I’ve always thought, are like how H.G. Wells imagined time machines. So rickety, so brassy, buttons like old saxophones and levers like The Future. The way the past imagined the future. I know logically it’s because I don’t live in Cairo. When I lived in Amman the elevator just signified nuisance, especially after that time it broke down, 3:30 p.m. in late summer, in an air-conditionless purgatory and my useless fists hitting at the door. It felt like a sign of my uselessness in those years, that I’d be using my energy punching things while obsolete engineering suspended me between two actual places. 

Cairo elevators, as a novelty, are the opposite of purgatory — you are in the past and future together, up and down all at once and with such handsome structure for the journey. When the doors close the stutter noise is so elegant, like the machinery is speaking a second language it learned at a school where uniforms were compulsory. You get in and your companion is a neighbour still smoking indoors or someone coming to fix something else inside the building or just your daydreaming. If the elevator is going up, your daydreaming is that you are Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, except instead of chocolate you are being given the gift of an evening. If the elevator is going down, your daydreaming is that you are plunging, like Jacques Cousteau, in a complicated apparatus whose confines are a small price to pay for the endless expanse it buys you, to explore — a sea, a city. In this Jacques Cousteau daydream Cairo is a coral reef wide as the side of Australia, street corners covered in star-fish. Elevators are the second-best thing made out of iron in this city. The first best thing is bed-frames.

CON: In a taxi, this is not in any of the many views I respect The Way To The Airport.

PRO: The stray cats have never forgotten that they were once worshipped. Like many people on the periphery of my life, I get the tingling sense that they are biding their time — that they know their turn will come again. They have never gotten into the elevator with me, the way they did with my friend. Instead they get me just outside the door, tail-up and too-clever and insistent. When I lived in another Middle Eastern city, the rule I had with my housemate was that a cat had to follow me all the way home — cross the threshold like a bride — and then I’d be allowed to keep it.

Here both I and the cats are too proud to make the necessary moves, and instead share lunch and afternoons as I take cigarette breaks too often between my solitary report-writing. But since I do not have a companion or rule-making housemate here, I indulge them in my afternoon-daydream literary allusions. I talk about Colette’s cats, and T.S Eliot’s. And the other Eliot. My favourite George Eliot novel is the unshowy, graceful Daniel Deronda, a wrought iron elevator of a novel if ever there was one. But even in her maturity Eliot gives in to the literary clemency that cats inspire. The house cat in Daniel Deronda, the opulently-named Hafiz, offsets the handsomeness of the human characters, a single pure indulgence. In breaks from my work I talk to the creatures on the doorstep about which works of contemporary literature would have been improved by the presence of cats. The unanimous verdict we reach is ‘all of them’.

CON: In a taxi, I think of all the people who may have opinions on the act — perhaps doctors or bureaucrats.

PRO: Some of my friends here laugh and others roll their eyes when I tell them that I have come up with the name the ‘Ikhwan Ice-cream Van’. It is the truck that goes round in the run-up to the December constitutional referendum, telling the neighbourhood during the lull of the afternoon that “the people demand the implementation of shari’a”. This is a reworking of the Tahrir Square cry that “the people demand the overthrow of the regime”. Like a bad 2012 remix. The ‘Ikhwan Ice-cream Van’ truck drives up and down the streets with its loudspeakers and its lack of tact. The neighbourhood replies with children running around in groups of five or six, the voices of soap operas tentacling out of windows, and the dissenting mewling of the cats. I love this neighbourhood; it is the first time I have stayed here. It is also the first time I have been here since the revolution. I love it even when, living-alone and lost in my thoughts, I hear things in the night that make me hold the edges of anything I can touch. I should probably state here that the Muslim Brotherhood did not — as far as I am aware and according to my sources — hand out any ice-cream to Egyptian citizens in the run-up to the December constitutional referendum. 

CON: In a taxi, I curse — of all things — my fingernails.

PRO:  My landlady lives in the same apartment building, some floors directly above. With the complications since Morsi’s decree in November and the referendum in December, prices of things have warped, the economy buckled like scrap metal. As it gets colder, the price of staying warm goes up. I know this from the newspapers and from friends but still my landlady tells me I need to stay warm, she has a spare electric heater. From high up in her apartment, she lowers it down to me in a basket, making a pulley system which we also later use for me to send paperwork up to her. The basket dangles past my window. The basket makes me think idly about Moses. This makes me think idly about scrolls. I unwrap the packaging of the sweets I’ve bought like they’re sacred. I lie back into the blank-page of the iron-framed bed. In text and in reality, it is one of the best afternoons the world has given me. I dream that everything I have to write will be sent to me from baskets, from stone tablets, or via elevators. Delivered to my door as certain as a cat.

CON: In a taxi, I make prayers I don’t believe and no-one else believes and even if they did believe they would say it was too late anyway. 

PRO: I met you at the church at just the time you said — the traffic mushed all over the bridge couldn’t keep me. Evening was falling in great chunks like stubborn shop-front shutters: a section of sky, and then another, and then another, dimmed itself in turn. Cafés are opening now like oysters or like flowers or like scrolls. Café after café unfolds. The streets are thick with people and also some roadblocks and also some cats. I tell you about my research and all the things I didn’t write properly. I tell you about all the places I haven’t seen or should have seen more properly. In general my way of looking is — all there is still to do, to be done. This is early-evening thinking. You look like early evening too, lashes falling. You look like Moses baskets falling from the sky, the way your eyebrows shoot up when you are explaining something. You wave your hands around like palm trees. You laugh like copper or brass. We go into one café where I take photos and you laugh at me. We go to another one where I’m really feeling all these things so then you don’t laugh at me. When we walk back out and into the thick of the street the church makes a noise like pearls or the sea or something and I don’t want to leave. I explain to you about coral reefs and cats and Costeau diving-suits and the Moses baskets and all the everything-all-at-once that I love. At least, I try to explain things.

CON: In a taxi, weighed against all of that, is the inconvenience of bodies.

Heather McRobie is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.