Some Kinds of Love: Stories

Pleasures of the Neighborhood

20J Pleasures of the Neighborhood When I come home from my shift at the United Parcel Service Warehouse at 4 a.m., I drop my weight belt to the kitchen floor and stare at the grocery sacks I have waiting for Donna Prince, my next door neighbor’s lustrous wife. Upstairs in my insect room, I flip the light, cross the wide, bare floor. Sitting, I rest my elbows at my work table, my chin in my hands and admire the shimmer of wings and veins across my wall. No entomologist on earth has such an extensive selection of Hymenoptera. In the last year, I have discovered and officially named three distinct species of Gall Wasp: Donna Pin Oak Cynipinae, Donna Woolly Cynipinae, and Weeping Willow Donna Charipinae. There is a click and jingle at the back door, and I raise up and draw my shades. Donna has let herself in. I hear the stairs creak as they do under her. But her timing is highly irregular. This is early Tuesday morning. We normally meet late morning around ten, when her husband, Clifford, is at work. She stops to catch her breath at the top of the stairs, and this concerns me. It is a recent phenomenon, one of several. She complains of feeling trapped in the hallways of her home, of a world narrowing to meet her, of the strong slushing of her heart in her ears. She knocks, then enters. Her red hair is smooth and straight, curving pleasures of the neighborhood K21 brightly at her shoulders. She wears a tank top and sweat bottoms . Her arms are bare, and her bosom, when she breathes, is almost intimidating. She extends her chin and plants her hands on her expansive hips. She assumes this pose often on entering. It is staunch, a moment when she is essentially Donna Prince, the nub of her actual chin evident in the round of her jowl. “Clifford’s asleep, Patrick,” she says. “We’re just fine. But our schedule’s going to be way off,” She breathes deeply. “He’s retiring . He told me last night. He’ll be home from now on.” I can hardly rise from my chair. Clifford is only 55, in impeccable health. He has no reason to retire, save to torment us. “We’ll just have to make love while the moon shines, honey,” she says. She strips, and her skin is porcelain white, billowing, but this does not fully excite me. She lowers herself to the floor, looks about, her brow scrunched and puzzled. I go downstairs and bring the groceries, organize them in a circle around her as category one, breakfast cakes, layered cake (chocolate and angel food); category two, barred chocolate (nuts, without nuts); category three, chips and dips (french onion, bacon/horseradish, guacamole); category supplemental, whipped cream, blue frosting . I return to my table. Her belly grows as she eats, from soft and pliant to distended and taut like the skin of a melon. A five-foot tape applied at intervals indicates a distention rate of .55 inches (measured from left superailial abdominal over navel to right superailial abdominal ) every five minutes. After forty minutes, she finishes, lowers herself flat on her back and rests her arms at her sides. I undress and crawl on hands and knees to her; her face is momentarily hidden behind the rise of her body. Then we make love with a meticulous care. I thrive on the balance and tenderness that must be maintained, on her hard stomach stretched against the hollow of my chest, on the squint of her eyes, the jubilant rush of her breath. “Fill me,” she whispers, “God, fill me.” 22J pleasures of the neighborhood As a structural entomologist , I realize if her abdomen were segmented, the growth possibilities would be limitless . The swell undergone by the chitinous gut of a Mantis when gorging serves well as an example here. More fascinating still, since all structure in the Wild works similarly, I pursue an experiment of sorts. How much can Donna Prince, and her endoskeleton and epidermis therein, endure before rupturing or collapsing ? There are times when I believe I almost force lovemaking on myself to ensure the continuance of this pet project and the journal it entails (See figures 1.9 and 1.10 at right). For four years it has been this way...