Three Loves Seven, Chapter 19, Part 6 - "Head Lice Are Not Sentient Creatures, Are They?"

Dear Gentle Readers,

Chapter 19 finally wraps up with this installment, and Clete ends one of his most eventful days on Dog Island. However, his fun in jail will not stop yet.

Today you will be reintroduced to the sacrosanct Island law that essentially prohibits an unmarried man from sleeping under a roof with a woman who is neither his wife nor kin. Remember it--it will show up again.

In this section you will read an allusion to an apocryphal story about the apostle John, who dealt with a problem that a lot of U.S. urban dwellers are plagued with today--bedbugs. It's for real, check it out sometime. The story is so cute, I had to have a character latch onto it sometime, and dear, vegan, zero-karma-tolerance Qi seemed the best.

As I said, Clete's incarceration continues, but we will shift point of view for Day Two in our installment next week.

Thanks for reading.

Love,
Pops


The story continues ...

Eventually dinner was served to all residents of the Qi-Fei House. After the requisite clean-up, Faye, Qi, and I settled down in the yard together as I showed them how to use their household’s new e-book reader. Since Shakespeare was on Qi’s mind, I pulled up Merchant of Venice from the many thousands of works that I had Sally load into these things, and we did an out-loud reading to ourselves as that evening’s entertainment. They loved that there was a man who could lend voice to the male roles. I almost found myself forgetting that I was a prisoner of that house.

If it seems odd to you that I would socialize so easily with a woman who blithely commits human rights violations, torture, and acts of psychological terror, it’s because we seemed to share the project of shielding Faye from having any negative thoughts about our relationship, or about anything period. To Faye, it was just her family’s turn to host me for their style of dinner and home entertainment. I think I was starting to understand married couples who keep up appearances “for the sake of the kids.” She didn’t tell me, I didn’t tell her, we just did it. And it seemed right. But I knew it was NOT right because it was dishonest and I did it anyway. Is creating illusions of well-being the project of parenthood? And if it is, why am I feeling this way about Faye? Part of Faye’s problems, and her stunted aptitude in academic work is that I think her mother is too indulgent and too controlling. And yet, here I found myself in collusion.

And then there is the paradox of Qi as well. She is the Ferrari of emotion—meaning that her moods, feelings, and affects change direction, start, accelerate, and stop on a dime. Once she goes into friendly, loving, nurturing mode, it’s impossible not to like her. The guy who makes a life with this chick will have to be absolutely flexible or entirely bland and neutral, or at least figure out how to shift her into her good mood.

The daylight eventually faded and the electricity was turned off. I was wondering how this legalistic bimbo of a judge was going to deal with the cardinal rule of the Island prohibiting me from sleeping under the same roof as either she or Fei. Not to worry. She had come up with her workaround when it was time to turn in. She got a bundle of cloth and led me out into the yard and hung a hammock on sturdy hooks that were mounted on two trees.

     “This is your hammock. You will sleep here tonight. Get in.”

I promptly complied. She then hung a second hammock on the same two hooks. She removed her clothing, loosed her hair, and climbed into that second hammock so that we were essentially hanging, pressed against each other.

     “Just WHAT do you think you’re doing?” I said.

     “You may not sleep under the same roof as me, so we are out here where there is no roof.”

     “Why do you have to be out here?”

     “I have to be sure that you do not slip out of the perimeter and go do your work in violation of your incarceration order while I am asleep. I am tying us  together by our legs together as well.”

     “You’re going to have to stay up all night then. What if I just untie the rope while you’re asleep? Aren’t you worried about that?”

     “Nobody can untie my knots but me. You’re welcome to try.”

     “I’m not playing games. I promise I will not leave the premises.”

     “Your word is not trustworthy at this time.”

     “Even so, tying yourself to me overnight is a bad idea.”

     “Oh?”

     “You are a middle-aged woman with aging-body issues. I am a middle-aged man likewise with issues.”

     “What issues?”

     “I gotta get up and piss at least three times in the night. It’ll be very annoying to wake you up.”

     “Why must you urinate so often?”

     “Enlarged prostate gland. Things don’t empty out completely.”

     “Hmm. Well I have highly interrupted sleep patterns with episodes of night sweats. Don’t worry about me. It will be instructive to watch you as well. Take off your fundoshi then. It will be troublesome for you then.”

     “Don’t you think this sleeping arrangement is highly inappropriate?”

     “How so?”

     “I’m not an anthropologist, but don’t you think the law about a man not sleeping under the same roof with a woman who is not his wife or family member is essentially a cultural prohibition against pre-marital sex?”

     “No.”

     “Then what is the point of that law? We may as well be sleeping in the same hammock.”

     “Would you like that? For me to climb in with you there?”

     “O God no!”

     “Why not? Am I not attractive in that way?”

     “I really don’t want to sleep in a hammock alongside you either. Put a longer rope on my leg and I’ll sleep on the ground.”

     “But it’s not as comfortable.”

     “You wanna know fuckin’ why? You have a goddamned bad case of head lice! I don’t want lice. Geez! I can even see them crawling on you in the dark. It’s gross! It makes me itch just to look at you.”

     “I consider them pets.”

     “That’s great for you. Guess you don’t have to buy pet food then. I’m getting on the ground.”

     “Keep your place. I will ask them to move off during your stay.”

     “Are you nuts? Lice are not sentient. They don’t take orders. They just move toward heat and scent.”

     “You are a Christian are you not? Your own holy book teaches that such creatures are sentient.”

     “The Bible is not a science book, but there’s nothing about lice there.”

     “In the Acts of Saint John, the Apostle John asks the bedbugs at an inn in which he is lodging to vacate while he sleeps the night. They obey and he blesses them as they return to their home in the morning.”

     “What looney-tunes Bible did you dig that out of? There is no Acts of Saint John.”

     “We have a copy in Old Portuguese in our classroom library.”

     “The hell? OK, so maybe you do, because some weird-ass heretic-refugee washed up on your shore a long time ago with his banned books, but it’s not part of my Bible.”

     “So you just pick and choose what parts of your religion you wish to believe? How consistent is that? And you seem to value consistency so highly. They are already moving off. My lice will not trouble you.”

     “If you want to believe that, fine. I’ll just endure and delouse myself after this whole ordeal is over. Tell your little friends that if they set up house on my head it’ll be curtains in a few days. Jesus! BUT, I still do not want to be this close to you.”

     “Why?”

     “Frankly? I really didn’t want to say this because I was trying to be nice, but you stink. You smell like a homeless person. You reek of every foul body order that I can think of. Being next to you is punishment for me. I mean, don’t you believe in washing?”

     “I like to think that my own sweat is my body’s way of cleaning itself. I also walk into the ocean.”

     “Weren’t you in the tub the other week, when the Security Council took a bath together and Na got all pissed off?”

     “I do not get into the tub. But how do you know about that?”

     “Long story. I just know. And since we’re talking about Na, you smell even more rank than her and you’re covered in bugs. You probably have crabs, worms, and fleas too. Yet Na is a pariah and you get a free pass with everybody giving you deference and pity. Explain that one to me.”

     “I do not want to talk about Na.”

     “You wanna know what I think is going on here?”

     “You are just going to say something cruel. I would not if I were you.”

     “Don’t you have any self-respect?”

     “Don’t you have any self-control? Especially over that horrible mouth of yours? You have no friends do you?”

     “I don’t need friends. They all fail and bail eventually.”

     “You are so cynical.”

     “Only because I’ve been taught to be that way by bad, flaky people. I like to think that I have very high standards of loyalty. And I have nothing else to say. Rejoice! I’m shutting my horrible mouth.”

     That forced her into a very long pause. She eventually muttered to me. “You stay in that hammock. If you think you are being punished by being next to me, so be it and all the better. This is your prison after all. You suffer. You sleep. And wake me up when you need to urinate.”

It was the most unpleasant of nights to pass together. She tossed constantly and broke into sweats and made loud grunts of impatience. I could swear that she trembled and shook at times, in a way that I would almost think she was crying to herself. And like clockwork I got us up at 1:30 a.m., 2:30 a.m., and 3:45 a.m. to piss (all my usual time points), but after that third emptying it all settled down for both of us and the next time we opened eyes it was daybreak. Sleeping together old-person style is NOT a romantic move by any means.

© Copyright 2012 by Vincent Way, all rights reserved.