Read Dispatch from the Future Online
Authors: Leigh Stein
Dispatch from the Future (5 page)
invites us to buy diaries where our hearts may speak
freely. She quotes Meggy Wang (not her real name),
who once made perfume out of rose petals
with her brother in their backyard and when
they gave some to their mother, she said,
“Mei you shi ching bu neng jie jue,” which
the author was unable to translate, but if you ask
Meggy she will tell you. My diary says things like
“I doubt he could even keep a goldfish alive,” and,
“if I was alone on a deserted island and could only bring
one book it would not be yours, Katherine. It would not
be yours.” In response to, “Describe a childhood trauma
that you believe is preventing you from finding the one,”
I wrote, “When I was four I wanted to name our kitten
She-Ra and my mom wouldn’t let me.” And then I felt
uncertain, a little ashamed, so I ripped out the page
and burned it and put the ashes in an envelope and
mailed them to the address of the house I grew up in.
There is an entire chapter devoted to what we remember
of our first house. When Meggy Wang thinks of hers
she thinks of her first girlfriend and stalkers. Aaron
thinks, “Oh my God why did they paint it like that.”
Katherine tells us that our feelings about this house
are the same sad feelings we feel about our low
relationship IQ. We leave, new people move in,
and yet we drive by in the middle of the night,
hoping they’ll have the blinds open so we can see
inside and feel worse about ourselves. Dear Katherine,
I wrote in my diary today, I asked him if I should
have surgery so my ears don’t stick out so far and
he said no, and it was the most romantic thing
anyone has ever said to me. Is he “The One”?
What should I do? Write back soon.
In two weeks we leave the country.
The way you say pianist reminds me of a love story.
You can face the wall until you can make a better face
than that one. Anyway, we went to see the abortion movie
everyone was talking about, and we went to the Pink Pony,
which is really yellow and sans any small gentle horses, and I
ordered a peanut butter and banana sandwich because I was too
upset
to look at meat and imagine it inside me. He ordered steak.
The February darkness was forgotten outside as we swallowed
in the lamplight, staring at each other’s hands, wishing they
would do
tricks. As I thought about my uterus, he told me about his
wristwatch.
I love my wristwatch, he said, I love it. You are probably
thinking
it’s inappropriate to roll up your sleeves at the table just to show
you have something to hide and I shouldn’t have cried then,
as I stared at the dark hairs below his shirtcuff. I didn’t cry.
Let me tell you what I used to do with scissors, I said, and I told
him. And then he waited for someone to come refill our glasses,
I waited for someone to bring a scalpel set. I wanted violence,
someone to fight in the dirty slushed gutters of Ludlow Street.
He was too small to fight, though; I had to wear flats. What are you
thinking? I said. Right now? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing.
I was thinking of being plundered by a Viking. The least
he could have done was put his hands on me in the dark.
You know how cold that winter was. You know what I mean
when I say whaling harpoon. You’ve seen pictures of what I want.
I can’t go to the east village anymore
because it is like going on a tour
of my worst dates. I get older, my heart
leaps at the sight of children
who don’t belong to me, I pronounce
everything like an Italian opera title.
I used to listen to songs and have someone
in mind for the you parts, now I just want
to be where the light is intense, I want
the kind of heat that kills you
if you drive into it unprepared. This
isn’t a metaphor for anything else.
When I speak of the light, I mean the light.
I go to church and sing along and feel
just as moved as if my faith were blind.
When I speak of the blind, I mean
the light. Truly the only things Lindsey Lohan and I
have in common are our preoccupations
with fame and weight loss, and yet I recognize
a kinship there, as if those two things mattered
more than anything. When I speak of
the darkness, I mean this living.
In a restaurant called Caracas,
I once spent fifteen minutes arguing
about an Ayn Rand book because
every time he said
Anthem
I thought
he meant
We the Living
and I said
what dystopia, what about the woman,
and he said what about the Home
of the Infants and I said what
Home of the Infants? What about
loving a man so much you’ll sleep
with another man in order to finance
the first man’s tuberculosis treatment?
Welcome to Russia, I said, and we
were looking at each other and then
not. I tried to picture Caracas, tried
to leave him for elsewhere, a fever.
In response to your nice message, yes, no, no, no,
only when I’m drinking, I’d love to, and
Anna Karenina
.
In response to the last question regarding what I like
to do for fun, basically I come home from the factory
and first I make a list on my dry erase board of each
part of my life that makes me want to give up and
then I think, which of these things do I have no
control over, and then I erase the entire list and repeat
positive affirmations in the mirror. Do you have any plans
this Saturday? There is this obscure Ethiopian documentary
I’ve been wanting to see ever since I read about it
in
Documentarian Quarterly
about a young girl
who is forced to spend two years hiding in an annex
with her father, mother, sister, another couple, their
son, and his cat. She keeps a video diary to chronicle
her hopes and dreams and posts it on YouTube.
Today I felt so alone and surrounded I built a fort
underneath my bed and that’s why I’m holding
this flashlight up to my face, you guys. I don’t
know how much longer I can take this. We are
down the last of the rice
. One entire entry
is thirteen minutes of her erasing all the answers
in her crossword puzzle book and then getting up
and going to the window to trace a heart
with an arrow in the dust. Then she prays in a language
we will never understand, and this is the last time
we see her alive because her diaries lead the police
right to the annex. After they’re all captured they’re
sent deep into the desert where no flowers bloom,
but it’s better, somehow, to realize the fragility
of your life in the desert, where the sky is open,
than in a small dark room and so even though they
kill her loved ones and rob her of her humanity she
kisses the earth. When I am overwhelmed and
double-checking the locks and the windows
and re-organizing the knife drawer again
and washing my hands because I’ve forgotten
if I’ve already washed them or not, I think
I hear her voice and she is telling me I’m not
alone. She says it’s not your fault until I sleep.
Let us go then, you and I, to where the yellow
sagebrush lights the sand. Let us go and hide
from ghosts. Make me forget my name.
Make me forget the touch of other hands.
I wrote you a love letter, but it was lost in the fire.
Wolves got it. It put stones in its pockets and
went in too deep. It lit a match on a bridge over
the canyon and swan dived like the kind of bird
that eats the dead. I wrote you a love letter, but
it ran out of ammunition. It couldn’t kill
the insurgency and so it slept all night
under a veranda choked with hollyhock and
rue and watermelon vines in the country
where the trees are hollow highways
for soldiers to drive through when on leave.
I wrote you a love letter, but it was just
the first six pages of The Book of Luke, ripped
from a Gideon’s Bible I stole from the hotel
I stayed in last week when I was trying
to decide whether or not to steal the Bible.
I read it four times. I found the story I heard
at a wedding once, of the woman who asked
her husband why he never brought home flowers,
like the husband of her friend across the street did,
and her husband told her he hardly knew the woman,
why would he bring her flowers; except in the Bible
it’s not a woman, it’s a lamb, and it isn’t flowers,
it’s blood. I wrote you a love letter, but when I went
to that wedding I accidentally left it in the guestbook
instead of my name. Maybe I can get it back, but
if I don’t try then I never have to see them again.
In the Book of Lamentations, after the temple
is destroyed, Banksy sits with Jeremiah inside
a cavern near the Damascus gate and says,
As soon as you meet someone you know
the reason you will leave them, and Jeremiah
writes this down so he can get it tattooed later.
What I wouldn’t give sometimes for a pen
and a piece of papyrus and a view of the sea
in an apartment paid for by someone else’s hard,
manual labor. I wrote you a love letter, but
I will never leave you so you will never need
to find it at the bottom of a drawer only to throw
it away. Have you ever held a fish in your hands
and watched the breath go in and out like horses,
thinking, I’ll let you go when I can think of a metaphor
to describe the broken light of all these stars?
Today I think I said why are you trying to hurt me
at least four times to a large crowd of people and
then I came home and ate vanilla frozen yogurt
and listened to my mom tell me all about
optimal heart rhythms and the application
that is supposed to help us do this, optimize
our hearts, so that we will have a higher tolerance
for emotional pain, like robots do. If a robot is sad
a robot will make cookies shaped like velociraptors
and leave work early just to mail some to his
mom. If a robot is really sad he will draw hearts
and arrows and blood on every smooth surface.
If a robot is totally devastated he will go on an online dating
site and under “Who I’m looking for” write, “Someone
to teach me how to love.” Then the robot will stare
at this, wonder if it makes him seem like he just wants
sex, and write, “Someone to hurt me. I am a robot.”
He will list his interests as parasailing, infinite regressions,
and vegetarianism, and then go change the water
in his guinea pig cage while he waits for the three thousand
eligible women to come break down the door to the house
he lives in with his mom and his guinea pig, Rumi.
Sometimes when a robot feels really sad he will
post fake emails from people who don’t exist on his blog
just to prove to all the people who don’t read his blog
that he has friends. Dear Luke, Thank you so much
for last night. It’s still hard to walk. Dear Luke, I loved
that poem you posted about staring into the hot,
white sun. Dear Luke, I have two tickets to
Faust
tonight. Are you free? Love, Me. After three minutes
of staring into the deep abyss of his inbox, Luke
will update his online profile to say he’s looking
for a relationship with a girl who signs all of the notes
she gives him “me” with a row of xo. He will change
his interests to pandas, emus, and tae kwon do. He will
post a picture of himself standing in front of a great chasm,
wearing sunglasses with blue tinted lenses. Luke will lie
about his height and religion and what he thinks is sexy.
Hi ladies, my name is Luke. I am a robot. I have leukemia.
Congratulations on Alaska, it sounds really great.
I spoke with your wife yesterday—she didn’t know
what to get you since you seem to have everything:
dried figs, firewood, sugar cookie scented candles,
and I said maybe you would like a picture of someone
who loved you, but who wasn’t with you in the cave. Like
a woman?, she said. I don’t know, I said. You know
him better than I do. I told her I bought you a book
of stories about a Thai man and his adventures
in cockfighting and love, which I hope you’ve received
because otherwise I just ruined it. I meant to ask you,
though, do you ever see things, out there in the wild,
and wish there was someone standing next to you
so you could point and say, Look? Such as bats?
Or strange lights? Do your dreams take place
in different weather? So many things happened
this year that I just didn’t have the courage to write