II
Sometimes she thought sex was madness, a form of madness: the loss of control, the strange explorations, the words, the sounds, the attempts to disengage oneself from the usual. Madness, madnesses... Recently, she had several dreams about tall women and short men. One about an eight-foot woman with small breasts making love to a three-foot man with a legendary penis. On a crowded street corner, people walking past them, barely acknowledging their existence or gymnastic difficulties. Sometimes she was eight feet tall, other times barely three feet. Dancing circles around Alice, turning Wonderland on its head. Maybe one day she would have a dream about a nine-foot woman and a two-foot man... She wants to write a poem about these ludicrous dreams. About orifices, explorations. Licking, touching, pinching, biting, sucking...so much doing... (In class, bored with school, she had made a list of all the words she could think of that dealt with sexual pleasure, or at least sexual activity. She had been fourteen and her teacher found the list, sent her to the principal's office, who told her such personal fantasies shouldn't be indulged in during school time, but the principal didn't answer when restless teenager asked if she had ever made love with another woman.) Fluids like ancient mysteries, flowing beyond comprehension. That's what she had written at the bottom of the list.
III
She wrote down all the names she had used in her life, along the margin of the page, sentinels of memory. Twenty different names in her life, counting nicknames and stage names. Stage names, she chuckled. She liked the name she had given herself, Amanda—euphonious and melodious, she described it in a poem—before she had met him. She wanted to think of a new name, to put on a book of poems. An exotic poet's name. The new name had to be separate, an embracer of rebirth, renewal. She was almost ready to submit a book manuscript. Maybe three or four more poems. She had been using a half dozen different names for her poems, sending them to literary magazines, a few publications already, several more acceptances. She would bring the names together in one name for the book. Didn't sound possible a year ago. But she had reinvented herself, yet again, became the poet she had always longed to be.
IV
After she dressed in her erotic costume—the nylons, garter belt, panties, long skirt, silky blouse, and lacy bra no longer wrinkled animals, clinging to her body like desperate lovers—she put on her space-alien high-heel shoes and stood in front of the mirror, assessed her body—she stayed in shape: yoga, weights, running—touched herself, thought about an old boyfriend. She called him, got him off on the phone, her tongue finding his every sensitive spot, pinching his nipples, you like when I put my finger there...deeper? He begged to see her. She said she was engaged. He laughed. Told him she was writing poetry now. Dirty poetry? He ejaculated, as they spoke, then crumbled into inanities and platitudes. She put on bright-red lipstick that matched her nylons perfectly. Impulsively she pressed her lips against the bathroom mirror, an erotic signature. Her fiancé seemed to be afraid of her mouth, her fearless tongue. He wanted her to let her hair grow longer, maybe consider a less dramatic colour. She had dyed her hair before meeting him, considered changing her colour again. It was purplish-red, the colour she had as a teenager, but now her hair was short, shorter than his, then it had been fairly long, until the day she had quit high school.
Her mother used to tell her that marriage could save a woman, provide the security and stability to get through an insecure and unstable world. You sound like a convoluted preacher, she had told her mother. Dark glasses early in the morning, into the night. The daughter swore she would never get married. Now she was going to get married. After forty, though. Her mother was married at nineteen, the first time. Then Mr. Batting Instructor...
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