Rose was sexless for so long, more years gone without touch than not, because of nothing to do with Christ. For the record, she did not hate men. She loved them. A product of the sixties, she even loved women. Rose wrote poems, stories, drew pictures incessantly of the human body’s contours. It was the one fix she allowed herself to have.
There was nothing wrong with Rose’s body, hormones, or reproductive parts. In the first part of her adulthood, she had sex with many men and women between university lectures and lab experiments. And then, she discovered the biology behind making love.
Rose discovered the biology. She did not learn it. What they tell you is wrong. The truth: At penetration and climax, two lover’s skin cells bloom inside the other person’s body. The cells undergo a kind of zygote-less meiosis. They are yours. You are their’s now. The fate is sealed by his DNA rearranging yours. This is not romance, but science.
So many promiscuous souls, with Epicurus breathing into their ears, have made Rose the enemy for speaking this truth. She saw it under a microscope, dedicated decades to research for a deed she no longer did. Living across the street from her all my life, I am well scripted in her lonely hypothesis. I know it to be true.
Listen to your heart more closely. If you just listened a bit closer, you loose souls, you would hear it. You would hear it when laying down with someone new. The sadness you feel after making love is sound. You are hearing the crying of all your past lovers, stuck mutating somewhere inside of you. Emotional cancer.
I myself have not laid down with a man in a decade. In all my life, I have slept with three men. Those men are known by their crying now and by nothing else. I hear them whimper every time I am sexually attracted to a person. I am like a man who feels a zap at each erection.
At thirty-nine, my hair is long with the ends trying to run away from the head they belong to. I am going grey; and that’s fine by me. There is no one else to ask ‘is grey hair okay’ to, but my cats. I don’t think they mind. Many people who have known me make fun of the stereotype I have become. I love my cats, though. They are one of the few things I can touch without hearing the cries.
It is the day after Rose’s body stopped breathing. I am already lonely. She was my only friend. She died at such an old age that when people asked how she died, the answer was usually ‘old age’.
No person ever questioned it, but in fact, her womanly breasts killed her. She never had a child; so, the cancer came to collect her human body. Rose, the scientist, broke the biological breeding rule. The one that says nursing your child prevents breast cancer. It was worth it for her.
It is not worth it for me. One day after Rose has died, my ovaries are pleading for a child. The lovers inside me agree. Rose cried for children on her death bed. She kept howling, “give me my babies, God! I’ve been good!” So, now, I must make a baby.
Sitting on the porch, my eyes move from the male neighbor bringing in groceries from his car to the male landscaper who is clearly too fit and too young for me. The crying inside begins. I am aware of each heart beat, which drowns out the tears. Past lovers don’t matter. This is for thrill, conception, for Rose.
I take another sip of coffee, becoming aware that my teeth aren’t so good. Neither is my hair, skin, weight, I am dissecting and disgusted by my body. So, I decide to go to the bar just down the street. Legend has it that alcohol makes men loose.
When I walk in, a handful of eyes gaze to the noise the opening door makes. They all look away abruptly, uninterested in my entering body. I stuff myself in a chair, which takes more effort than it should have. The bartender is a female. It shouldn’t have let me down, but it did. Perhaps since bartenders are paid to stay there and chat, one would become interested in me…that was my train of thought. But females don’t have sperm. They don’t have what I need.
Four beers and two shots later (names of alcohol and beer left hazy), the universe gave me what I needed. It was a minute or so before it registers that I am sitting next to a tall, average-sized man (whose features are left hazy), while maintaining a conversation.
“Have you ever noticed how they always play love songs in bars? As if to remind us of our reasons to drink,” the man laughs harshly. It is such a harsh laughter that I knew he felt and heard his past lovers’ cries, too, when making love to others. We were the same.
I lifted up my glass, which may have been empty as far as attention serves, and exclaimed, “here’s to that!”
The next thing I know, we are in his apartment. I always thought lesser of people who used that term- ‘the next thing I know’- to justify their own misjudgment. It’s like a plea of insanity for the sane. But next thing I know, the tall, average-sized man with hazy features is rubbing me.
The feeling is one I haven’t felt in years. ’This is wrong, wrong, wrong’ I can imagine Rose say for one second. But then her voice is gone. Rose is gone. But the man is here.
I hear the cries, but I can’t think. He is rubbing me all over, making me want him. The cries are a symphony behind us. They are the love song in the bar as we groan about the last one gone. I can’t think about any of this, yet. Rose being gone- or my heartless sexuality being born. For every finger he lays me, I lay two on him, happily.
The crying of past lovers is real. They are apart of you. But as I am listening to them, grinding my way on top of a man I barely know, they are nearly inaudible. The sound is real, but I can’t comprehend the noise. No emotions. This is for thrill, conception, for Rose
I can’t think. Can't think. Is this the joy of sex?
