Swimming Past the Remainder

He walked into the room and sat in the chair beside mine, greeting all of us politely. I gazed at his jaw: strong, outlined by his growing beard. His black hair was slightly messy that day; overgrown and begging to be touched.

What? What did I just think?

But it was his nose that fully drew me in. It was huge, prominent, with a large pronounced bump. Above it, his eyebrows were thick. His lips were full and kissable. His black shirt hung off of him, but I could see chest hair poking out of the neck hole and this intrigued me.

No.

“But your memory is here and I’d like it to stay warm light on a winter’s day…”

Yes, memory.

I hadn’t seen Vincent in over two years. June 8th, 2003.

My mind began working out the connexions. June 8th, 6/8, 6’8. Shit. And we met? One week earlier. October 28th. The sixth of Scorpio. 8/6. Shit.

Not as if October 28th didn’t have a totally different meaning as well as this new one. Megan had said she thought Vincent liked me, that day.

Too much. My mind was off in a rush of Shins lyrics.

“I can’t just stay the course, keep my hands on the wheel, our detractors were right, my head’s like a kite, ‘cause all my thoughts run astray and I’m a walking cliché when such a creature I sight”

Bart was preoccupied.

It was Steve who entered next. Entered Shins-land. Commented on my skirt. I could feel Devin’s eyes on it, and my legs under it, as well.

“Oh just a glimpse of an ankle and I react like it’s 1805”

‘Glimpse.’ The title of the story I was working on. My crush on my Government teacher felt nowhere near as naughty as this. That had been unattainable. Devin was…not that old. A college student. A peer.

The night continued on and I couldn’t remove my eyes from him.

“I know something that could embarrass you,” Steve said. He watched us the rest of the night. My small hands and Devin’s huge ones touched at one point, amazing me. Bart didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t follow my eyes to Devin, always to Devin.

Now, two and a half years later I am once again in that room. About ten feet away from where I was that day, on the couch by the fire. The book I have with me is an old favorite, from that Scorpio. The Red Tent.

I am waiting.

He enters quietly, and I don’t notice he’s there until he speaks. Amazing how someone so big can be so quiet. “Can I sit here?”

“It’s all gone but something lingers on, a place I used to call home”

Sleater Kinney-land.

“Of course you can.”

He begins crying immediately.

“Never will they understand how washed up you feel on land.”

Land. Earth. Taurus—that was where we were now, we two Pisceans who had met in Scorpio and began our relationship in Aquarius—the water-bearer. Who had had sex for the first time in Pisces itself.

Were Earth signs ever good for me? Didn’t look to be that way.

I allow him to bury his head into my chest. I stroke his hair, his back, his neck. Some semblance of normalcy is restored as our hour and a half winds down, even if our usual roles are reversed. I am usually the one crying and needing comfort. He is usually strong. I guess it’s different when he’s the one who makes a mistake for once. I never cry that evening.

“What’s that?” he asks, looking at my arm.

Scars, those red marks I dug into myself. I say nothing.

“On the land her body distorts”

“I was afraid you would do something like this.” I nod, softly. “I was afraid that if you didn’t take me back…I wouldn’t have hurt myself, because I’m not like that, but I would have been very sad for a long time.”

“I know.”

“Gabby told me I never stopped talking about you.”

“Kitty said you never did, either.”

“I love you…”

“I love you too.”

“This time it’ll be all right, this time it’ll be okay”

“You’re so beautiful. I kept looking at pictures of you this week…”

This is when we kiss, when we fully come together. I sit on top of him now, my legs wrapped around his stomach, feeling the softness of his belly as we sit on that couch and kiss, finally, again. Two weeks of pain for me, confusion for both of us, worries for him. And it is over, and life makes sense again.

“Oh little light that shines for me in the dark of night”

We walk outside into the last moments of May 9th, the day before Hearse Day, linked again. The Remainder is gone. My giant creature is back.

And I can feel Vincent and Charles—the Gods of Chaos and Peace, the Grasshopper and the Moose—smiling on me.

“Live in the present and spin off the rays of sun”

“The spotlight of the sun, it shines on”