the shell

That night, after Ashley and I have dinner to take my mind off being involuntarily celibate, I vomit saltine crackers, daiquiris, and oysters on the floorboard of her passenger seat. 

“You said you weren’t going to drink….” Ashley says. 

Weeping into my hot palms, I say, “I’m so sorry,” and then I puke some more. 

 “Let’s rain check on the gay bar, Frankie.” 

“Please, let’s go somewhere,” I say. I am red-faced and out of breath. 

Ashley drives fast and staggers in and out of the lane across the coast. Her antique headlights barely illuminate the sinking highway. I can’t tell if we’re driving straight into the ocean or into someone's sand dune of a front yard. Her cigarette ashes out through her half-open window, flying down the sandy highway, her car phone wedged between her cheek and her bony shoulder, her red hair flying everywhere in a mess of auburn pine needles––Ashley seemed so free yet so unhappy in this moment with me.

The exact moment the slow metallic click of rocking ice appears louder than the roaring waves behind the wind, Ashley punches the stereo off. It is just the rattling of her loosened dashboard and, of course, the extra-large McDonald’s cup of whiskey making noise now. Her jagged-nailed swat comes next, and the flat whiskey Coke slides down my sunburnt legs and wallows around the car floor in my vomit. The drink is thankfully still salvageable, only missing a few sips, but its fallen side is slimy and yellow from regurgitated dinner. 

“Don’t you dare.” 

She’s eyeing my flushed face as it leans into the chewed plastic straw.

Ashley’s always been like this. Never an enabler. I begin to slip away; I begin to sip anyway. At this point, I couldn’t tell the difference between seawater and a bad drink. My thirst is unquenchable, like that of a sailor stuck out to sea. And I was gulping that fucking seawater––slurp, slurp, slurp. I didn’t care if it killed me or left me choking and seizing on my own pizza vomit in a bar bathroom all alone. The momentary gratification of solving my thirst was all I needed to survive the consequences of drinking sea water underneath the blazing sun on a life raft, all alone. Fuck it. Fuck her. 

A solitary light, a forgotten flashing “open” sign in the window of a white building wearing a pink roof as a very ugly swim cap. It was a freshly shaven snow cone, blue and red lights bleeding into its lacking. 

“Turn in here,” I demand. My pointing finger melts into a blur of sandy shoulders of the road. I’m not sure if I’m pointing or melting or alive or conscious.

I yanked the stirring wheel toward the wind-dusted parking lot. The right side of my body met the passenger door, and the window’s crank jabbed into my ribs. I’m alive. The pain makes me aware. 

“Stop!” Ashley yells. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I need to go to work!” I shout back. 

“Your work?” she asks. “Why the fuck do you need to go to work? It’s the middle of the night. You ass.”  

“I just need to grab something real quick… Just real quick… real quick,” I say. I am slurring. I feel the spit coagulating into the corners of my mouth, usually filled with dry air, sordid, like a thirsty, thirsty stray dog. 

Clouds move fast across the horizon in little herds of cotton balls, transparent at their seams and fluffy as they pass through the moon. Its light sparked the water with electricity that I could feel across the highway, separating us. I feel it most in my clit, and the soft throb of my blood. Just the way the light tickles the Gulf, massaging it with a cool, feverish chill on this hot, hot night. Relief. It’s a relief––the moon’s light tossing kisses into the abandoned dark well of salt water beneath it. I watch them dance over there in contrast to each other, making love over there. I’m standing in the parking lot, looking up so the vomit can’t exit my mouth––definitely not fucking. I came for more liquor, insecure of the availability of such, despite being on the way to a bar and holding a cup of it. It’s the thirst. Despite being surrounded by an ocean, I would drink until there was not a drop left. Just me, the whales and sharks flopping around on the sea floor. 

I make my way into work––a large worship center with a gift shop. I worked in the gift shop and pretended to pray to religious tourists on weekdays. No one can see my tramp stamp in a frock. It’s as close to a nun as I could get, unfortunately, in this climate. 

The horniest people are cursed with the deepest convictions about pleasure. I am people. My unnatural thoughts are met with God’s answer: serve him. But I’ve been waiting around, waiting for these thoughts of women to drift away the more I turn toward Him. I’m beginning to lose faith, and I haven’t been concerned with what He thought of me for some time. Still, I’m just, I feel like this little blimp of a human being on this Earth, in this never-ending universe, so so so small. I can’t think about it for too long. Before I start whimpering like a little puppy, begging God for someone to rub my pussy. To make this life bearable, fun, and interesting. An existence that is not marked by the sound of the register blissed out over a purchase of seashells. 

The vending machine in the lobby lassoed me like a little nasty bug to a porch light. I humped the clear glass interface. Its hard corners felt good––so solid. I got two Hershey bars. I ate my provisions with my eyes closed, lying on the plush of the pews, trying to think of just the chocolate melting on my tongue. 

But so many young women enter my mind. Women from childhood, mothers, sleepover mates, the woman who packs groceries, the woman who fills my prescriptions, the woman walking her dog. Flashes of their pink bikini tops, their sports bras, their tight collared shirts, the cute little lip glosses tucked into their bottoms, or mini purses. 

I try to remember a scripture. 

Their thighs, denting and curving––slapping together as they run, sticking to their leather car seats, slick with sweat and tanning oil, becoming pin-prickly the day after a shave. Thighs that are doughy and soft. 

I try to think of anything else. Anything else. 

But its just––carnal lust. Sin. I’m a rabid animal. Feral. I want something. Between my legs, in my mouth, in my hair, wrapped around my hips, between my toes. A her. 

Humping the statue of the Virgin Mary felt right. Relief could be hidden inside her stone-cold body, maybe. But as I begin to mount her, pants still on, Ashley blows the horn. 

I make my exit, but not before I kiss Mary with my thick chocolate tongue. She tastes like glue. Her hand-chiseled face bears a snail trail of spit chocolate. My mark, for when the choir finds her in the morning, they’ll know lust had made a lashing upon her––our––pristineness. 

Ashley lays on the horn again. 

I try to rush through the stale building, but straight ahead, at eye level, is a seashell statue. A girl. I think she’s looking at me. Making eyes at me, maybe. 

The statue is a monstrous heap of shucked oysters, fractured conch shells, and googly eyes—black painted-on eyelashes and sharp tits. All stuck together in a trap of industrial glue. The shell statue at once seems humanoid and uncanny with all the creep of a Victorian China Doll and all the lackluster of an off-brand Barbie. The pink bikini I lust after and, hell, even thighs that wobble like a thick sweet potato soup are missing. But I think she’s cute over there on the shadowed shelf. I could take a nail file to any of her sharp edges. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve humped a statue. 

The statue says, “You’re here late.” 

She’s flirting with me. If her mummified exterior could blush, I think she would be blushing or maybe licking her lips. 

“Who are you talking to?” I say. 

I shush myself as soon as I speak and continue to speak to the seashell statue that’s totally obviously flirting with me. She’s totally into me. 

“Of course it’s you.” I laugh. I wonder if she can tell I’m nervous. 

 “I’m here late, yeah, but I’m here now. This is weird… can I take you out? I mean do you want to come with us to the bar?”

 I pull my shoulder back from the shelf. 

“Am I drunk? How did I get this drunk?”

I want to touch her ridges with her permission, of course. 

“You sure are,” it says. It’s mocking me, and it’s so sexy. 

I carry the statue out the front door with me. Her continued flintiness was enough.

At the gay bar, Ashley hands me a hard plastic cup with a long stem. She evangelizes that Appletinis and cures nights that always take a bad turn. She says Appletinis can cure vomiting, crying, bad sex, a lack of sex, and, of course, hallucinations.

She smiles at me and yells over the music, “It’s going to be ok. I promise. Just pretend you aren’t going fucking crazy for a minute! Just drink. You’re good at that.”

I give her a thumbs-up after a sip. She nods and motions for me to stay there while she, of course, finds someone to spend her night with. 

I locked eyes with a woman in a baby tee with a big blue star embroidered on it. No bra—two lilies of the valley enveloped by processed cotton. I hopped off my bar stool and began to approach her until what I assumed to be her girlfriend walked over and gave her a sloppy kiss. Pink lipstick smears all over their faces. How embarrassing. I am trembling and rush to get back on my stool to save the last bit of pride I have left. I tried. I try every time. But, it gets me nowhere. 

I press my sunburnt forehead onto the wood bar top made warm by my leaning body. Intrusive images race across my mind—women from the bar, women from my dreams, women in paper-view porn in her expensive lace bra in the color strawberry, lilac-heavy perfume, and her trousers half unbuttoned lying on her bed. Another woman on top of her, someone I recognized as another graduate faculty member. Then, the crashing and banging of an improv jazz quartet of an ending. Friction and speed make body parts look so toyish, wet origami. And like everyone else, my first instinct is to feel the need to send something to heaven, a balloon, maybe, with a letter tied to it, a tiny memorial of one, for the virginity I will never lose and for the love I will never receive. 

I take out the shell statue and place her in front of me at the bar. The gay men next to me slam their shooters down. I pour some of my drink into the empty shot glass to scoot it toward the shell. 

“I got you a drink,” I say. There’s an awkward pause when I realize the shell doesn’t have thumbs, so I hold the drink up to its painted-on mouth.

“I guess this is where I ask you what your sign is…” I joke. 

“I’m a Pisces,” it says, “and you?” Words are audible, but her mouth doesn’t move. She’s as stiff as ever. She’s nervous, too. 

“I don’t really do all that…” 

“Yes, you do. You’re a lesbian.” 

“No, I’m not. I’m a Scorpio… Anyway, how old are you? Prehistoric?” 

“What you haven’t come out yet?”

“No, no like really. How old are you?” 

“If you count the ridges on my face, it tells you when my Mollusk left me,” 

“Was that your wife?” 

“You can call her that. We lived together for a long time. For sure. Almost twenty years… Two decades—WOW—such a long time ago… now I’m at the convent…” 

I push the shot glass back up to her lips. I feel like she needs a drink after spilling the details about her divorce. I smile at the shell, and we accidentally start talking at the same time. We laugh. 

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” the shell jokes. My hand reaches over to the shell statue, and I stroke her unmovable hand. I follow the outline of her hardened body with my fingertips. 

“Oh no, no, don’t you go and say it. I know it’s rude to talk about exes on the first date. I’m sorry. I think it’s the drink.” 

“Oh I don’t mind.” 

“I don’t usually drink, Hun. Let’s start over. Are you a virgin?” 

There is a cruel pause. “Ah! I’m just fucking with you.” 

“Oh, that’s so funny, haha.” I sip my drink in a way that wouldn’t suggest that I was actually desperately wanting to chug it. To feel rid of humiliation. My hand feels disconnected from the rest of my body. It feels animatronic and clumsy. I have to concentrate on sitting my drink down softly so as not to bring attention to its lack of ownership. 

I say, “Would it be so terrible if I was a virgin?”

“Why? How old are you?”

“Does it matter? Jesus Christ! I’m 25. I’m almost 30.”

“Are we talking like virgin-virgin or lesbian virgin?”

“Does it matter? Is there a virgin for shell statues? Cus, I think everyone would be one, too, not just me.” I find myself saying this again and fighting back rage, which is hard to do when half my brain is numb. I don’t want to come off as damaged, baggage, or defensive. I want to seem like a perfectly normal 25-year-old woman with everything completely under control. 

It comes on suddenly, but both of us are contagiously laughing. I don't know about what. Then I feel a hand on my shoulder—the shell. 

Yelling into my ear, tone deaf from Brittney Spears, Ashley says, “I think it’s time to call it quits, crazy. The bartender is asking why you’re talking to a fucking shell lady. I told him to fuck off.” 

There’s a tall young man standing behind her, muscular in the shoulders and putting his massive hands on Ashley, exposing his chipped black nail polish. The man's long fingers massage deep into Ashley's tissue. With a look of ecstasy, Ashley says, “Oh, this is Joshua. He’s a dancer. One of those Goth dancers.” 

At Ashley’s apartment on the water, she gives me the couch where I lay down, room spinning, thinking about witch doctors and the power of God.

I forcibly turn to the coffee table, where I place the shell statue, and ask, “Did God do this to you?”

“I have a creator if that’s what you’re asking.” 

“But you’re so disconnected from your purpose,” I question further. 

“You’re saying my purpose was to be someone's home for the rest of my life. To live with an unhappy mollusk?” 

“The ocean––aren’t you supposed to be like in the ocean––I don’t like imagining you unhappy. Was the ocean not cool?” 

The shell doesn’t say anything. I am starting to worry that I have said the wrong thing. Saying the wrong things naturally comes to me, especially when drunk. 

“Touch me…” it says, after some insecure amount of time. 

I fling my hand out over the trench between the couch and the coffee table. My brazen fingertips feel the point of her shell hands. Soft, smooth, then bumpy, rough, and sharp, touching with curiosity, I feel newer and deeper parts of her bone-dry body. I lose count of her ridges.

I bring the statue to my chest, pressing it right where my heart beats and spins. Dancing, a spinning room, and there she was, and there I was. 

Looking through my sternum, I ask, “What would feel good?”

With each breath I take, my chest lifts up, moving her googly eyes along the upturn of her shell face. Guessing makes me feel foolish, and asking makes me feel more like a virgin than being an actual virgin. 

“Kiss me instead, I think,” it says. 

We laugh together, and then I bring her close in the cup of my sweaty hands. She smells like Appletini and the sweet umami of the Gulf: seaweed, bait bucket, and sweet scallops. Her googly eyes tip, following my gaze. I think about how she doesn’t have eyelids; how frightening this must be, a squishy giant coming to kiss her with a great big wet opening. Then, to my recollection, she's used to the ocean and a slimy mollusk suckling on her––probably. 

My lips land on hers, my lip gloss glistening on her face. A spark of light flutters through her new glittering wetness. Before my brain registers my actions, I lean in for another kiss. Quickly rushing away, I whisper-slur, “Shell, I think I love you.” 

“Then let’s go to the sea and be together,” it says.

A barefoot stroll down the dunes from Ashley's house gets us to the water, where we stand there in just darkness and the floating smell of rotten Appletini and fermenting vomit on my clothes. Statue in hand, we stand there, blindly blinking as the warm sea rises through my legs. It’s our own little baptism.

The shell says, “Thank you for walking me home. Would you like to come up to my place and have a drink?” 

The resounding alarm of my broken heart screams––Yes! Fuck me! Fuck me!

Images of women sunbathing on the fine sand transverse my mind, sneaking in almost unknowingly. I snatch off my sticky hat and face the salt-whipping air, letting it sting––burn. Even in the midst of lapping waves, all women enter my mind. No use. Even if I were to open my tearful eyes and stare directly into the pit of the ocean, it wouldn’t take my mind off them. My clit is engorged. I am itchy with so much heat. An echo crept haphazardly into my mind, shoving everything else out of the way: touch me, touch me, touch me. Hot oiled bodies scattered through clover and bull thistle at the creek. Rubber red-hot and oozing from the pressure of impact into an ancient MILF, her sap dribbling down like molasses, swallowing rogue shards of blue boxer briefs and body glitter. 

My thoughts gargle into the brine, the worst saline rinse. A strong stinging saltiness on my tongue and then in the back of my throat. I try to swallow but struggle. 

Ashley calls out, “Frankie!” 

Thumbing the shell’s ridges, it’s a lullaby marked distinctly by the gentle rocking of waves above my face, a distinction of smooth rhythm. We rock into each other. It is easy. It is satisfying. 

“Frankie!” Ashley calls again. 

My lady statue, her salt so sweet on me because in the end, even at the bottom of the ocean, she was inescapable. I imagine her trousers at her pale knees, in another life, always begging for more and always needing less of me in return the older I became. Her, and her one thousand eyes across time, brackish, an infinite memory. 

At dawn, I am in a lawn chair on Ashley’s back deck, soaking wet and naked from the waist down. No statue in sight. But, the cuts and scrapes in between my thighs, obscured by my pubic hair are undeniable.