Equations: Thesis: Heather Mullen

 

Heather is easily misinterpreted. She goes to bed with me for complex reasons: because she has pity for this underling artist, who tries so hard to be recognized; because this underling artist gives her treats (a public forum for her own underling art); because she finds him hard to resist after a few drinks; and because, lo and behold, she is genuinely aroused by what happens when these things are investigated. I don’t have many interpretations of Heather; she’s average height, average weight, a face more handsome than beguilingly pretty (sort of a WASP Frida Kahlo, heavy eyebrows, thick lips, dark hair that rides her head in waves). But what happens in bed is so climactic that it takes us beyond our self-serving interpretations. This is a woman who gives; every inch of her is covered in desire, which can (and must) be fulfilled. Heather likes sex more than any other woman I’ve slept with. She screams, bites, moans, and there is such a delicious fluidity to her movements that, despite her near-homeliness, I am moved to do the same thing. Heather is teaching me how rare it is to find a partner who loves these processes, who makes sex a manifestation of spiritual generosity. We’re both almost thirty; I’ve never seen someone who contains both the generosity and the sense of comfort Heather has in the physical act.

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In this favorite game, and when youth is involved, women often hold the cards. Heather has decided that we will have two nights, no more. There is something in me that wants and needs her too much. She is too touched, too moved. It’s safer just to flush the thing. I don’t particularly realize this, as we sit at the Cherry Street Tavern. All I know is an anxious feeling that I’m going on a trip and Heather is giving me a warm goodbye. It is a trip involving my art and my sense is that I’m going to get killed. Heather, she knows privately, is about to kill me too. She puts in her diaphragm and when I come, it is an exquisite lunge into some variant of heaven. Her intake of breath tells me that she is getting my stream. She might even be frightened that the diaphragm is punctured. Amidst all the peace and its benignity is the sense that things are getting out of hand. This is unsanctioned intercourse, out of mutual dependence; Heather feels this too much. So that, when I get back from my ten days in New England (where I have, in fact, been killed), Heather is nowhere to be found. That part of her that took my streams is loathe to take any more, too happy, too at peace. I learn that Heather represents that great portion of humanity that wants to be in pain. Ecstasy is a dead end street; it is too unreliable, too jumpy. Heather now goes for guys that give her the manner and form of the pain she wants, and not too much of the nice stuff.

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