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  • But the Psychometric Assumptions of the Tool Were Grossly Violated
  • Lee Ann Roripaugh (bio)

Entomologist or exterminator? he asks. The man from the coffee shop rolls her onto her back, takes her left foot into his hand, massaging the instep for a moment with a thumb, before hooking her leg over his shoulder and pressing himself deeper inside her.

His penis is vertically pierced with a large silver barbell that glints in the dark of her bedroom. It comes unscrewed like an industrial nut and bolt. He makes a production of revealing the quarter-sized aperture to her when he unscrews the jewelry.

(Apadravya, is what she comes up with when she Googles the next day to see what’s what. She’s the kind of woman who likes to know what’s what.) Entomologist, she tells him. Duh.

It’s a Weird Meet, not a Cute Meet. He sits much too close at the adjacent table, pulling his chair up so they’re practically sitting across from one another.

He puts on a pair of glasses, begins scribbling margin notes in Deleuze. Pretentious, she thinks. She glances at his handwriting. Serial killer script, she thinks. He has multiple ear piercings: scaffold, pinna, orbital, and rook. He stares at her over the top of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. When she looks up, he laughs out loud.

So what else? he asks, as if they’ve already known each other for a long time

When she mocks this exchange over the phone later on with the BFF, the BFF says that maybe she’s being a little bit harsh.

It’s true, the artichoke’s her totem produce. It’s true, she only likes men when they’re a little bit damaged. She needs them to come with a dent, a ding, an open wound of some sort. Physical, or psychological, it doesn’t really matter—although physical’s easier to spot and saves time.

The man from the coffee shop keeps turning up. He’s at the friend of a [End Page 33] friend’s art opening. He shows up at the cafe on the night when there’s jazz. One Saturday night, as she’s dancing with a crowd of women in a happy glitter of vodka and blues, she notices him standing outside. He’s cleared off a view-hole in the misted windows with the elbow of his coat and he’s peering into the long tunnel of the old bar’s tin-roofed back room.

He keeps turning up. He lives in a faraway city but he’s in town housesitting for his parents. He claims to be an epileptic, which she thinks might be a narrative garnish, but why lie about something like that? When his strangeness starts to become strangely appealing she lets him into her bed. The last time she sees him he makes breakfast for her. He stirs pine needles from his parents’ Christmas tree into the scrambled eggs.

Every interaction, she thinks, is like one of those Russian nesting dolls. There’s a moment she can always peel down to and pinpoint—the seed within the shell, the kernel within the seed, the tiny sliver of epiphany piercing the kernel like a splinter in the heart.

It’s like dreading the eye puff test at the optometrist. She feels ridiculous later, knowing she’s built it up too much in her head, but she can’t help it. Because there’s a tiny dagger of air. Being shot straight into her eye. When she places her face in the metal stirrup she tears up and flinches in self-defense. Then POOF! It’s over.

It’s okay to like someone, says the BFF.

That seed within the shell? That kernel within the seed? That tiny sliver of epiphany piercing the kernel? This is that moment: Thirteen below. They are standing outside downtown after last call and he offers her a ride. They drive to the cemetery, headlights combing through tangled curls of fog.

I’m here for two weeks, he says. Let’s make plans.

I don’t like plans, she says. What she really means: Last year I was in love...

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