Pastoral with Rosé, and: I Am Not Arnold Schwarzenegger, and: Fairy Tale

Pastoral with Rosé

I assume my life remains on a trajectorytoward a 1983 Riunite on Ice commercial:shrimp cocktail and chilled sweet wine on a patiowith a crowd of well-dressed friends.These beautiful people. What having moneymust look like. I imagine the jokesI would make, how they would earn mepraise from the assembled wives and husbands;I imagine myself easy to envy. To be happyought to be enough. It is not. One must beseen being happy, one's happinessthe sort of thing that sparks argumentsbetween couples on their drives home,neither of them honest about the sourceof their irritation as they bickerthen fall quiet, their silence in the darknessa kind of privacy. I am entirely investedin this nonexistent Amorak. I imagine himlingering outside long after everyone has left,as cigar smoke and perfume melt into the duskand ice fades to water in copper buckets.Chorus frogs. Fireflies. I imagine him lonely.I pity him, though surely he has more sex than I do,has hair he doesn't have to think about,a slimmer waist, stronger calves.The moon rises. He vanishes.I am left to wonder how he pronounces our name.Is it the same? Or have I been sayingit wrong all these years, every versionof myself in disarray, even on my own tongue?

I Am Not Arnold Schwarzenegger

I am fourteen years old at the video store deciding on a movie my father and brother might both enjoy, deciding who I will be for the rest of my life; so many ways this can go wrong; so many rules that I'm grateful for any that are written down: Rewind. Return by noon. Three movies per night per household, more than enough for the forty-eight hours we have to fill each week. So many choices, and every story promises the same metaphors for the Cold War, or sex, or the war between the sexes, which is shorthand for adults not understanding each other, or themselves; I haven't learned this yet, I still believe wisdom is real and waiting just around the corner. I want to see Porky's but my father is in the car and I'm not supposed to know about the skin mags in the back of his desk; we keep our erections to ourselves. We watched Risky Business on last weekend's visit, and I would happily spend two more hours with Rebecca De Mornay, only my father doesn't like the ending. Terminator, then. Again. It's no longer a surprise when Arnold turns out to be the villain, but still. There's pleasure in watching him learn to be human so he can destroy us. His body is a marvel. A measure against which I have no chance. His body is relentless. I am somehow both skinny and pudgy. His biceps are a religion. My flesh is only flesh, my bones only bone. No titanium anywhere. I am too young to see the inevitability of a sequel in which he is the hero. Sarah Connor? Arnold asks, his eyes hidden behind those sunglasses, and I see what he's really asking. Yes, I want to say, yes, I am, though I know what the answer will cost.

Fairy Tale

My father cuts off his thumb with a circular saw.A tiny magical man makes me an offer.

I cannot refuse. My father's thumb grows back.The price I have agreed to pay is too great;

I cannot bear to say its name aloud. In the cornerof every room I enter, the tiny magical man

crouches, nameless and cruel. Not today, he says.Not today. One day, I will enter a room and he will

not be there, and I will know the bill has come due.A phone will ring. I will answer. A stranger's voice

will mispronounce my name, apologize,hesitate. In this brief silence, foolish hope will bloom.