Night Vision

Catherine Gammon photo by Dennis Mathis Catherine Gammon is a Fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She has publishedfiction in The North American Review, The Arkos Review, and Shankpainter. In 1979 she received a creative writing fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. Ms. Gammon has been a guest of Yaddo, and was previously a Fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in 1977-78. Night Vision IT IS EARLY when we go into my room, seven maybe, or eight. In February it's already dark. I have turned the lights off in the kitchen, the front room. China Blue is standing by my bed, dropping his shoes. IN THE BEGINNING we stood with our clothes on, lay down wearing clothes, felt the other's body through clothes. Now we undress immediately. Get me to bed quick, he says. Before I change my mind. I DON'T WANT to spin a lot of fancy images, I'm not a razzier dazzler. I don't want to deviate from the real, don'twant to stray into whatis not, what might be, or what I fear or wish were true. I want to be accurate. I want to direct a narrow focused beam onto his face, into his eyes, and undress his mind. But it can't be caught that way. He talks reluctantly, easily only in bed, between one fuck and another, our arms and legs entwined. Every night we spend together is the first again, and the last. I have to strip him down obliquely. He vanishes with the day. ONE SATURDAY in December, very cold, I was walking early in the center of town when a woman crossed Commercial Street in front of me. She was wearing a bright gold robe that hung unevenly from under her sealskin coat. It looked like a bedspread. Her legs were bare and she was wearing rubber thongs. She was beautiful. I wanted to know everything about her: why she would be walking so early on such a cold morning with bare feet. She turned around and asked me if I knew the time. Before nine, I said, I don't know exactly. She nodded. She was very beautiful. She must have been drinking. I wanted to be that free. That beautiful and destroyed. She was an image my mother once had of herself. For years Mama believed she would die in the gutter at twenty-five. When she didn't, she became a survivor. But this barefooted woman just keeps on dying. Her smile was glorious. I don't think she's any younger than my mother is. I see her now, on the streets, in bar windows, I see her everywhere. Three days later, I spent my first night with China Blue. Catherine Gammon The Missouri Review · 45 MAMA NEEDS a fix. She's addicted to his body, to his long fingered hands, to hiaskin. She's addicted to his precise, quietvoice saying, Turn around, I was hoping you would do that, Do you want me to get on top? She's addicted tohis semen, which she swallows, to the pulse thatripples up his cock against her tongue before he comes. Am I hurting you? he wants to know. Are you in the habit of hurting people? No, he says. Because I was moving your fingers away? Yes. I didn't want you to do that now. What do you want? I want you. You want me how? Inside me. Just my cock inside you. Yes, she tells him. Yes. IN THE MIRROR ofher window at night she studies her face. Sheholds her hair back from her forehead with her hands. She wishes she could still see the image clearly when she takes her glasses off. Without her glasses what she sees is a wash of pale skin, a purple robe, black night, an impressionist sketch, the asparagus fern in the window blurring green and bright out of the darkness. She pulls her glasses down again. In the lenses the lamplight is reflected. The frames are dark, amber plastic, and they break up her face. Her hair hangs around her temples, too long tobe...