Fourth Section of ''Hypocorism'' (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: EO No. 3 Rugosa (Parfum), by Ensar Oud
Fourth wear. Now I might rank this higher than Rose of Sandzack. It even contends with Sultan White Rose. Wpow this punches way about its price bracket. Not as complex or busy, and definitely not as animalic-musky as my J-Musk—which is stunning in its demonstration of blending power and (it seems) synthetic usage. Here we get a similar peppery clove-tinged Rosa rugosa, but handled very differently.
The rose opens more spa-like, with a coastal-air pink pepper impression and even a subtle metallic edge (almost like the metallic facet I sometimes get from castoreum). What makes this especially interesting is the smokiness of the oud. The seaside serenity, boosted by the saline air of ambergris, mixes with a burnt-log oud impression (moldy-tobacco myitkyina and sunned-underbrush Malaysian), while these two extremes are bridged by a cedar-cool Timor sandalwood presence. The result is a fragrance that feels like waking up on a beach beside the remnants of a fire from the night before.
Maybe because of the synergy with the Tibetan musk—which I have noticed is intensely deep, with a truffled skin-cream impression, and even a faint urinous lift that adds to the illusion of people having pissed around the beach fire—this rose feels especially deep. That depth could almost be mistaken for jamminess—not Bulgarian rose jamminess, though. That would be heavier, richer, more syruped. This rugosa is fresher and more coastal. Cooler, closer to May rose in that way. But instead of makup powder it has a cashmere-like texture. It is a texture that would have become too coarse if Ensar had gone with dry linen-like Australian sandalwood or, at the other extreme, ghee-butter Mysore. Instead, it is perfectly balanced by Timor sandalwood, which here feels more like silk.
Rugosa, in this composition, is fresher and cleaner than the honeyed fruitier Damask profile. While it carries some Damask-like spice—especially in the white-pepper and pink-pepper direction—it remains brighter, simpler, and more lifted: a pink pepper and clove structure with a cool dewy character. As a dune rose, it has a tea-leaf-in-a-garden feel. The stemmy quality is pronounced—almost terpenic, metallic, and a tad dewy.
There are hints of tea leaf freshness. But this is less than in a May rose. Alongside this I get underripe pear and even artichoke-like vegetal fleshiness. These nuances—tea leaf freshness, lemony pear, underripe fruit, and grassy artichoke-green facets—create a delicate but not crystalline purity. It sits shy of the Platonic abstraction I get from my Sultan White Rose Afghanissimo. And this si especiallyu because of the oud smoke.
Rugosa rose is often underrated in high perfumery, seen as lacking the richness or body of more traditional rose materials. High perfumery tends to favor Damask or Bulgarian (for their fleshy honeyed depth), Taif (for smoky fruit) or May rose (for powdery cosmetic femininity in the French style). But here, rugosa is pushed into a Taif-adjacent direction: fruits (pear, pineapple) and woods (silky sandalwood and smoked oud) elevate it toward something more complex and with hints of charred-lychee.
It may not be my favorite rose composition. But it is hard to argue it is not the best rose-centric perfume I own—yes, even though I own The Rose of Sandzak and Sultan White Rose Afganissimo, and also have Ensar’s Rose Kynam Rouge. The naturalism is staggering—genuinely knock-you-socks-off impressive. I suspect this could be even more extraordinary with Tibetan musk dialed up further. But as it stands, I cannot deny, the pairing feels intentional and exact.
The ingredient synergy is really the point: Tibetan musk, rugosa, and Timor sandalwood form a near-unbeatable combination. The meditative calm, elegance, and elite-level naturals create something almost absurdly well-resolved. A spa-like rose is present but it is balanced with pear-like fruitiness and citrus brightness and that smoke. The overall effect is deeply tranquil—spiritual.
Ensar Telegrafi’s appreciation for high culture, art, and wisdom feels embedded in the composition itself. It radiates through the perfume. He is like the Quentin Bische of artisanal. That almost seems like a contradiction in terms. But the point is that—unlike Elkhaldi, who does naturals in a messy-garage band way with an inimitable charm (like a five year old scribbling all over the walls with crayons or her mothers lipstick), and unlike Wasif Reza, who does naturals in old world way (like one of those singers today who dress and perform and sound like Dean Martin even though they are like 13)—Ensar is nearly as precise as a Swiss clock. In that way he is like Bische. What is cool is that Bische works with all the synthetics to push that precision into some cyberspace futurism. Ensar does not go that far. And yet he does not stay in the human-all-too-human elegance of Bortnikoff. Instead, he is in-between those extremes, evoking a cyborg modality: part tech, part organic—the transhumanist process of evolution toward the posthuman goal already reached by Bische.
tea leaf freshness with lemony pear cherry, underripe pear, and stemmy grassy artichoke geranium aspect nuances in eo 3. delicate and clean but not crystalline pure like White Rose but still at it comes with an awesome tension against the smoke.
*Let's workshop the fourth section of my story, novel-length now, that examines the intricate power dynamics and linguistic structures at play in a man's passionate relationship with a girl he deems too young.
*This section is dedicated to the memory of Jada West.
Fourth Section of “Hypocorism”
As for what really happened that first day they met, both had functioned—depending where one sliced the temporal stream—as enabling and precipitating causes (oxygen and matchstick strike) for the flame that bloomed between them. It would be no Crayola caricature, even so, to say that she alone had broken the barrier between subtext and reality—a barrier he would have otherwise continued to hide behind. He had just started serving as a b-balling “big brother” to her sibling. Working one on one with the developmentally disabled, that was his job now. He had won his due-process case with the legal support from a free-speech organization called The FIRE. But he no longer felt at home in academia.
She had opened the door in a shower cap to the two of them. His starchy ball sweat billowed up at him with undertones of her soap. A bleached-out Nemo towel covered too little even for his debilitating shyness. “Damn you smell good” came out of him, which it would never have if had calculated beforehand.
“Like who even are you?” Her eyes locked in as if she had once known him but could not place it. And yet her brow furrowed like a bad kid, like a little ruffian with a balled-up fist from some chimney-sweep era where everything was black and white.
“Sorry, I—.”
“Ajante, get inside.” She kicked at the autistic boy even though he was out of range, a Rockette reveal too high up her thigh.
He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
She switched hands to keep her towel up and took his. “Okay.”
He persisted, though. “I gotta smell it.” He knew what he meant by “it.” He pictured what he meant by “it.” But he spoke in a tone of someone with an academic obsession, a pinner of butterflies. He loved this demographic best (hoodrats) and yet he could not stop approaching them in this doofy-white way that tended not to work—spoiling his chances in part as a way to prove right his sense of unworthiness (a ghetto self-defeatism he had enough school to have articulable awareness of, unlike most who never left his hometown of bombed-out factories) but also, in a much less bleak part (albeit still a downstream rationalization of his disposition to self-sabatoge), as a way to ferret out the “real ones” who, while still at home in bedroom roughousing (stiff smacks, strangleholds), might rather read a book than spend hours getting their nails done to Trump degrees of gaudiness only to have them all break in weave-yanking fights alongside their blunt-toking bestie mothers.
“No nigga. Like, what?” She saw through his plausible deniability. Even her beauty, her pocket size, could not drive him crazier.
Intimacy deprivation had him stir crazy. The bandaid of his perfume collection, edging toward a thousand, had been flapping for months. The sweat of the courts was all it took to expose the abscess pulsing underneath. Young men in an open car played boom-bap from thumping subwoofers, music from before they were born—deaf to the time-derailing effects as he tried to keep focused, off on a side hoop, on keeping Ajante focused: “♩Is Big L slow? Hell no. / Bitches get fucked on the roof when I ain’t got no hotel dough.♩”
His hands were dry. He made the most of the rarity, bringing in his other hand to cover the back of hers. Hers was notably heavy for its size, dead weight—as if in a desperation to pass off some invisible reins.
“Just the neck,” he said—full nerd, as if conducting no more than a quick survey and then would be out of everyone’s hair. If it counted as gaslighting, it was white like those lies. He leaned in, right to the carotid thump.
“Boy, stop.” She said it with a suppressed giggle, angling away to find his eyes awaiting hers.
She took in a breath. He could hear it filling her. Her sternal notch pulled into a deep recess framed by the flared v of neck musculature. The hollow was still wet and her vellus hairs appeared lickable in the angle of the sunlight.
He looked back at her eyes. Her pupils vacillated left and right. He felt his remain still, locked in to monitor for any warble in her subtextual consent. He dipped back to the neck, sacrificing the whiff he wanted for the nostril-air tickle he wanted more—two good pulses of tease. “No,” he said. “That’s not it.”
“Okay, then.”
“. . . .”
“Like bye.”
The causal contributions for how her hand got there were too tangled to pin on either party. But she was holding his heft through his shorts, weighing it all like one might weigh the breast of a sleeping lover. Her thumb traced his length. The petting would have been touching, like a mother still soothing a tantrum even though the hitched breaths had already lullabyed into purrs. But she was clearly sizing him up. Her eyes, slightly quizzical as they peered into his dirty soul, made clear—if only to a divinity—that she was sizing him up less as object than as project.
“Sure?” He asked his question in the upbeat tone of a clipboard canvasser who just had been told “No thank you”—no hint of the seduction that would have matched her fondling and both of their faces.
She sighed and spoke a “Yes” in a ragged groan. The heaving floor undergirding that “Yes” read even to him, someone with too much insecurity to contain, as if he had asked something entirely different. Her mouth closed into a lip bite of succubus disproportion, as if otherwise she might have let out a whispered sigh of “Oh God.”
He backed away in the playful gesture of “Don’t shoot,” as if he had heard only the exasperation of the upper register and none of the bassy undercurrent on the breathy bottom end. Twitching at a phantom—that is how he left her hand. Palm up with fingers curved in a gesture of offering too counterbalanced by taking, by swooned demand, to be the same as Harriet Tubman’s in the mural painted on the museum he took her too, the mural he photographed her in front of (his only picture of her)—he could always see it. How could he ever forget that hand?
She stood there in the golden light. He did not look back as he drove off in the vehicle where, he knew not then, talk would become as intimate as touch. Here had shone bravery he feared he could never muster. He would have felt thunderstruck just by the obscene buzz inside him, no matter who the girl had been. But she was the violet arc that grounded itself in his marrow. Her—he felt thunderstruck by her.
He clenched his jaw until he got home. He could have jumped up and clicked his heels to the side as he unlocked his front door and went inside. From the side of his shorts he freed himself, slicked with saliva superfluous to his native ooze. The distention of veins, alien in its xylophonic ripple, suggested murderous intent as he moaned on the toilet. But in his climax he muttered “I love you baby girl. I love you. I love you.”
He was not one to whore that phrase. Nor was he one to fall for woo. But his scent of the day had been Bortnikoff’s Coup de Foudre, the woodcap original—French for thunderstruck, lightning bolt, love at first sight. The dawning of that fact upon him, the reanimated vanilla-leather base enveloping him as he toweled the linoleum in a thousand-yard stare, could only focus the emptiness-eradicating amperage inside him—an amperage no more diminished, not for one second, by the insanity of his load than the birth of a second child diminishes a parent’s love for the first.
Tighter and tighter the focus became, a laser of self-mythologizing intensity for which jail posed no threat to actionable planning. He watched himself in the mirror and decided the first step would be what it is for most Americans ready to make a change: Amazon. Hyaluronic acid for his eye wrinkles would come the next day.
He came to the door again for the drop off, this time plumper around the eyes but much more rattled. The old self that less than forty-eight hours prior felt had been killed for good was right there, sweaty in every mirror. He was so much like himself that, while he knew contact had happened, he did not know how much of that hand had been true. Playing horse on one of the side hoops with the boy, it did not matter the talismanic empowerment of more 90s lyrics (“♩Bathroom passes, cutting classes, squeezing asses♩”): the truth seemed to dissolve the more he tried to revisit the scene. The hand was definitely open and out, palm up—not a natural position—as he backed up. But clarity decayed with rewind.
She opened with sunny smiles. “Hello.” Her gums were dark and he found that beautiful. “Oh. You must be Ajante’s new worker.”
Her statement threw him for such a loop that he did not have time to let his nerves bumble him with “ums.” “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Excuse me?”
“Girl—.”
“Tch. Girl?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You actin like you know me.”
“You don’t know who I am?”
“Ajante’s worker.”
“Girl, pinky promise my ass right now.”
“Ahaha. You too easy.”
“Jesus.”
“Nice to see you!” She gave him a hug, quick but deep. And when she looked at him he did not know who it was falling into the other’s eyes.
“You have fun?” she said to the boy, breaking the link. The boy said nothing. He was already looping the Mickey Mouse Club House jingle on his foamed tablet.
“Come in.”
“No doubt.”
The place smelled like Raid, lavender powder over paint-thinner base notes. Her fleshy ass jiggled with a sassy switch through the kitchen, enough junk that he had an urge to sniff the cushions of the chairs. He followed her into the living room. He tried to keep it cool. It was easier after that ice-breaker, nerve-shattering in retrospect as if on purpose.
A black boy was on the couch. He had a taper fade with lines shaved into the side of his head like in the 80s style from his own days.
“This my friend LaShawn,” she said in the tone of a practiced host.
“Sup brother,” he said to LaShawn and gave the boy a full ceremony hug-pound despite the residual sweat on his hands even after that ice plunge.
“He works with Ajante,” she explained. She turned and looked him in the eyes. A flicker of intuition, before being stomped by the usual cackle of doubts, felt that her gaze was in the way of someone who knows this is whom they will marry. “You want anything to drink?”
“Nah, I don’t want to impose.” He shook away the intrusion of an over-sugared pitcher of Kool-Aid in the fridge. “Where’s your mom?”
She nodded up to the ceiling. “You need me to sign something or whatever? Cuz that bitch ain’t doing shit.”
“Nah, the—. Nah, it’s all good.”
He felt his armpit drip in the silence—the bad one, the right one. “So what you guys about to do?”
“I’m bout to make dinner and LeShawn waiting for his dad.”
“I don’t think he comin,” LaShawn said. “Nigga still ain’t pick up.”
“What, you need a ride bro?”
“Tryin to get home.”
“I can give you a ride.” He pictured grilling the kid in the car. “I mean, is it close?”
“Like fifteen minutes so—.”
“Nah, that’s fine.”
He could not just plunge right into an aggressive third degree. He would have to ask benign questions—“How’d you guys meet?” and “What are your goals or hobbies?”—to learn the nature of their relationship. He would have to remain casual.
“You sure?” she said.
“Yeah, you sure?” LaShawn added.
“It’s all good.”
It truly was all good. He would give anyone a ride. He was a door-holder. He could chat up old ladies in the grocery store for hours and help them load the car. The reasons here, of course, were not all impartial. It was not about sizing up a potential threat to him, to whatever absurd romantic designs he he had. Just walking in to see that handsome boy on the couch, in all likelihood her boyfriend, was enough to pop his bubble of energizing joy. No, it was about sizing up a potential threat to her. That would be his consolation prize, diverting his love toward the health and protection of her. He was not going to be draconian. But he would insist that the boy wear protection. Even if he had to be frank about it, he would.
“Aight, let’s be out,” he said—sensing, and self-conscious about, his code switch.
And he would definitely let the boy know, impress upon him, that it would not be smart to mistreat this girl, that negative consequences would come. He pictured taking out the ghat, under some yet-to-be-decided pretense, as the two of them sat alone at wherever the destination would be.
“Me and Ajante comin with ya’ll. Hold up.” His envisioned scenario would have to be scrapped. Reality always proved too messy for even his skill at control. “Ajante get your cup.” The edge he had first seen, that mouth, sprang out again. “Now nigga! The fuck!”
They got in the back and Ajante got in the front. He made small talk that would involve everyone. “Ajante’s really good at basketball. Right Ajante?” Ajante was in his tablet. She gave him a tap from behind. “Ajante, he’s talking to you.”
“It’s all good. Let him be. LaShawn, you play basketball or any sports?”
“I play baseball for my school. But I like basketball yeah.”
Both of them giggled in the back. That pissed him off, thinking they must have found him funny.
“You guys go to the same school?”
“No, he go to Tilden. I go over here.”
“So how you guys know each other?”
“We met on social media,” she said.
It went like that. They were mainly silent, no spoken words to one another as far as he could tell. He checked himself, even when called by a sense of road awareness, from lifting his head up enough that they would appear in the rear view. He figured he would give them privacy, however much he hated the idea of LaShawn’s hand on her leg or worse.
“How you guys like living in Philly?”
Both gave stock answers and then he talked about how he had lived down south for nearly two decades and only recently came back. He tried to restrain his desire to impress her. But he still had the emotions and excitability of a younger man. And he was not one to put on a completely different persona, however much he knew that restraint and silence could be an older man’s super power for seduction.
“Yeah, I was a professor for—jeez—nearly two decades. And then I came back up here. But what’s crazy is that you really never come back. That’s especially true in my case. Where I grew up mahfuckers was slinging crack on every corner, robbing kids on the way to school. And here my ass, slidin everywhere so people wouldn’t see the holes in the bottom of my sneakers—had the newspaper stuffed in them mofos. Now it’s like million dollar lofts. I mean, it’s for the better I guess. You’re not going to get your chain snatched every time you step outside. But—I don’t know. I miss it. It’s like those early experiences, even if totally dysfunctional, warp you. You grow to like it. I mean, I really to have a fondness for how my city used to be. I’m sad it’s changed.”
He worried he was saying too much and that his struggle to hold back made him awkward. He worried he sounded old, rambling like a chaperon of young love who just wanted to be in a world of their own. What made it worse was that he knew his intuition was solid. He wanted to look back but resisted. It did not help when she giggled at her phone. He figured the boy had sent her a message mocking him. Who knows? Instead of thinking to himself that this would be odd since he was doing a good deed, he felt a flush of anger precisely because he was doing a good deed. But he swallowed it back.
He reached back and gave the boy daps again before he got out, no ghat sightings or condom discussions. She got out too. That pissed him off. It was quick, though, and she got back in behind Ajante.
“You want to wait to make sure he gets inside okay?”
She giggled. “Nah, he good.”
“So that you’re boyfriend?” He could not help himself. “And by the way I want to apologize ahead of time if you think I’m prying. Just tell me to shut up if I’m prying too much. It’s fine if its none of my business.”
She giggled. “You good. We used to talk.”
“Used to?”
“Yes, used to.”
“. . . .”
“Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Hmm.”
“What this ‘hmm’?”
“You just seem real interested.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“So what’s up with your mom? I’ve only met the caseworker. And again, please don’t feel pressure to tell me. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“I said you good.”
“. . . .”
“She just depressed. She honestly—she a narcissist, though.”
“Like self-centered?”
“She put herself first, over us too.”
“Wow. That’s pretty real to admit, man.” He tried to restrain himself from gassing her up. He did not want to love bomb. “Jeez.”
“Just facts. And she like out of it now. Cuz when some shit go wrong she just collapse. Like her man—he went with some other bitch.”
“Sucks.”
“I aint want him around anyway. That nigga literally unsafe. Like he tell her where she can and can’t go.”
“Controlling.”
“This next level control, though—the bad kind, not like claiming a bitch and leading a bitch.”
“Interesting distinction.”
“Like pushing a bitch to do better, teaching her discipline or communication (whatever), verse pushing a bitch into a wall.”
“Is the first option really controlling, though? I don’t know. Usually people say there’s no good kind of controlling—I mean, in a relationship.”
“Maybe but—. I feel like—. It’s like shoving versus hugging. Tch. I don’t know. Like when a bitch gotta check in cuz that nigga flip out or versus she gotta check in cuz he need to know she safe.”
“I get it. Interesting. Like dominance versus domination.”
“Oh my God. You’re smart. That! Cuz what wrong if a nigga givin direction? I want a nigga with experience, emotional control—shit to teach. Feel me? I feel like if you free to leave if you don’t want the shit, it’s all good.”
“No doubt.”
“And like what if it feel safe doin what a nigga says?”
“It’s about freedom in the end, yes. But women aren’t objects.”
“Yes and no. Cuz—. Tch. I feel like everyone talk about ‘Don’t objectify a bitch.’ But like I’m an object too. Cuz at the end of the day—. Like excuse my bad mouth, but a nigga’s fuckin somethin. Feel me?”
“That’s right.”
“Like literal skin.”
“I think what people mean to say is ‘mere objects.’ Woman aren’t just objects.”
“I like that. Mere.”
“But it’s important to be clear, and that’s where I messed up. Because when it’s convenient someone can use the ambiguity to their advantage and call out someone for not doing anything but recognizing the object side. I’m not being clear, sorry.”
“You clear. Cuz like what? A nigga supposed to feel bad cuz he looking at titties. Them shits aint even need to be all out. That’s the nature of men.”
“You’re a smart cookie.”
“I like how we vibe.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“But he—this guy—was definitely the bad kind—the bad kind of controlling?”
“Like her sister died, right. And since he don’t be going to funerals or whatever, he like ‘Nah, you can’t go.’ Nigga expect her to do like he do. The fuck?”
“Yep, that’s the bad kind. He ever fuck with you?”
“That nigga ain’t say shit to me cuz I have a mouth and I ain’t scared to go after any nigga.”
“Firecracker.”
“Don’t get it twisted, though. I am feminine. I do like being soft. It’s just it comes a point—. I just won’t be played.”
“Good for you.”
“But yeah, still my mom miss that nigga.”
“Tough situation.”
“Now she just in bed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She want people feeling sorry for her. Maybe I need to introduce yall. Dead.”
“Do you too—feel sorry for her?”
“Yes, of course. I ain’t trying to feed that, though.”
“I get that.”
“She like hear voices too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, like literal voices.”
“I’m good on that introduction, then.”
“Dead.”
“What do they say?”
“That bitches tryna steal her man. That niggas plottin. Everyone always plottin.”
“Well—.”
“Bitch think everyone a demon. Like literally. I know she’d think you a demon.”
“Why you say that?”
“She don’t like white people. And cuz how you smart. How you speak.”
“She would take it as, what—like a—.”
“Like you was tryna put her down. Tch. Bitch crazy.”
“. . . .”
“Like you use a word she don’t know and bitch get’s angry.”
“Fuck. Excuse my language by the way.”
“It’s okay.”
“. . . .”
“She mean well, though. She a good person. I mean, that’s my mom. It was just tough for her. She was in foster homes.”
“Me too.” He regretted making this about him, but he offered a quick explanation. “Not long, just a few months when I was like five.”
“Still, that’s tough for a kid. I’m sorry you went through that.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Bitch about to put me up for adoption like three times. I mean, it’s crazy.”
“Damn girl.”
“But no, I get it. I do.”
“Get what?”
“Like where she comin from.”
“. . . .”
“Like my mom was always pretty. That’s what people saw. It wasn’t about who she was but how she look. And so its always about being pretty with her.”
“So she puts on a false self?”
“Oh my God. Exactly! Like she all nasty in her room right now—I mean, use your imagination, nigga (excuse me). But first thing a bitch gonna do when she ready to be back up is whiten her teeth. She send my ass right to the store.”
“For the strips?”
“Yes. I’m like bitch, priorities.”
“Damn.”
“And I’m not tryin to be mean.”
“I don’t feel you are one bit.”
“. . . .”
“Hey,” he looked back. “Got me?”
“I do.”
“You recognize that everyone has a story. That matters. It seems like that skill is dying. Good for you. You’re wise. I mean, you clearly got a big heart.”
“Thank you.”
“You should feel good about yourself.” By instinct he slid his hand back, the underway for a little low five. He regretted the move because his hand was sweaty and was set too draw it back after she gave it a little clap. But she clapped it and then held it in two hands.
“I don’t want you thinkin I’m like this mean bitch. I feel like I can get shit off my chest with you. That’s all that is. Cuz yeah, it’s tough on me. Cuz when she down I have to be this nigga’s mom. Tch. Even when the bitch up to be honest. But she had it tough. No one told her she was loved. It was always this house then that. Like constant change and just all she had was her looks.”
“She leaned into her beauty for survival. I get that. But survival came at a cost.”
“You sound like a movie, nigga. Dead. But yeah because if she aint have no nigga, or God forbid a nigga leave, and she’s down.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Do you read literature?”
“Like books?”
“Yeah.”
“I used to like in sixth grade but no, not really.”
“I figured you read a lot. Your empathy’s off the charts. Look at the world where we’re in. We demonize everyone who thinks differently. We don’t make any effort to see what might motivate people to think what they think or behave how they behave. They’re just evil if they don’t think like us.”
“I hate bullies. That’s the one thing I hate most. It’s cruel. Like you hear bout that girl Jada West?”
“No.”
“Oh my God. She was beautiful. She hit her head fightin a bully and died cuz the shit.”
“Damn man.”
“She looked like a good girl and these ghetto bitches bully her cuz she different, she herself. She got dreams and intellect. You could tell she did.”
“Fuck. Where was this?”
“Down south. Here she go right here. Look how pretty she is.”
“Yeah. Damn. But I see what you mean. She got that Nirvana shirt.”
“She like me. She aint bout to be boxed.”
“Have you experienced it? Have people bullied you?”
“Like some of it was people around me doing it. And like I felt that was rubbing off on me. So I’m glad I’m away from them now. Cuz I felt like I started picking on Ajante. That made me feel like a bad sister.”
“Good that you recognized that.”
“And some of it, yeah, was cuz I was bullied.”
“Why were you bullied—if you don’t mind me asking?”
She was playing with his fingers, pulling them in different directions like a kid. “I feel like—. Tch. Just how I look and how I think, who my friends be.”
“You’re saying like that girl?”
“Jada.”
“Yes, Jada.”
“How I dress. Like I’ll wear sketchers. All that. I be friends with white girls. I be friend with weirdos. That’s how feel like she was—loving.”
“Inclusive—that’s good.”
“Niggas is fake as fuck for real. Cuz as soon as a weird bitch get famous, then everyone like her.”
“Sheep.”
“Yes.”
“van Gogh’s a good example.”
“I don’t know that.”
“van Gogh is a guy. You’ve seen the paintings. ‘V’ ‘A’ ‘N’—look it up. ‘V’ ‘A’ ‘N’ and then ‘G’ ‘O’ ‘G’ ‘H.’
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Oh yeah. Oh my God I know this.”
“And that one is him right there.”
“Yeah that nigga weird. Dead.”
“People would avoid him because he was so intense. He would stare at you, get in your space. I don’t know. He just didn’t have a chill setting—very serious, impassioned, quick to fall in love.”
“Sound like you.”
“What you mean? I’m chill.”
“Dead.”
“What?”
“Hiding not being chill ain’t chill.”
“Damn girl.”
“A bitch got no filter. Sorry.”
“No it’s okay. But that was his issue too, so—join the club.”
“Tch. I’ll be weird. Aint give a fuck!”
“But yeah, the man they threw rocks at—now he’s on t-shirts and mugs. I mean, the crucial point is that the same people would would have hated on him, they are the ones with all his art on the walls.”
“Fake as fuck. That’s what I mean.”
“. . . .”
“Like you really listen. It’s nice to have someone follow me, contribute.”
“You make it easy. You’re interesting.”
“Bitch’s be like ‘What’re you even sayin?’ Makes me feel like I’m crazy.”
“That was how it was for me. Really it’s the same.”
“Findin your tribe important.”
“Yes. But now where were you at. You were talkin about bullying and then—.”
“I was just saying bitches hate cuz I’m weird. Like I’m that bitch that want a hedgehog. Feel me?”
“They’re cute.”
“Right? Oh my God. Bugs too. They just be—. I don’t know. We don’t know why we’re here. But they ain’t even know they don’t know.”
“Now I’m starting to understand the bullies.”
“Tch. Stop.”
“Sorry. I’m teasing you.”
“I know.”
“Actually what you said is really important to me—about animals. It aligns—. I mean, that’s the explicit role animals, and kids too, play in my stories.”
“Oh, you write?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. Just like little observations. But not like you.”
“You never read my shit. What you mean?”
“You’re too smart. I can tell. My shit basic.”
“You gotta share stuff with me.”
“I will. But what do you do with animals in your stories?”
“It’s nothing profound. They’re just a symbol I guess. Like I might place an animal in, or a child too, to represent the divine perspective.”
“Like God?”
“Yeah or like something that transcends the adult human world of concerns. You can say ‘nature’ too. Think of it this way. Adults are building a ladder heaven. And I don’t mean necessary anything more religious than making sense of reality and their place in it.”
“Like their purpose?”
“Yep. Exactly. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is already in heaven.”
“I like that.”
“It simply lives its purpose, I mean—at least in the sense that it’s stuck in the present, in a state of unconscious grace.”
“Hedgehogs do remember, though—like routines and who nice to them.”
“You’re right. It’s more of a relative thing—difference in degree. They’re tied closer to the peg of the present. It’s not like this pure curiosity or whatever.”
“Interesting.”
“You seem skeptical.”
“I’m just takin all these big words in. I like listening to you.”
“I don’t know. I never really had a goal in writing. It’s kind of like—.”
“Getting shit off your chest, right?”
“Yes. There’s that—purging emotions. But honestly it’s like just what I do. I can’t help doing it. I don’t feel right, whole, if I don’t do it.”
“Nigga made it work. Is that good? Does that shit kill the magic?”
“In some ways, probably. But that’s what it takes, at least in most cases, to bring it to the next level.”
“Out of my level. Dead.”
“Nah.”
“But like—. Tch. Maybe you need to like look over all you wrote and maybe you’ll see there was a purpose.”
“That’s a good point.”
“Do you ever do that?”
“I just keep writing. But I guess there’s some reflecting. Like when I edit, the reflection works in the background.”
“True.”
“I write some dark shit—FYI, by the way. So don’t think I’m crazy if you ever read it. I’m a good guy.”
“Dead.”
“I’m shedding light on the shadow parts of us—that’s what I like to say at least, if only to justify it so I can keep talking about rape.”
“You wild.”
“But it does make sense. It is important, I mean. Because if we deny the shadows elements, if we don’t cast light on the parts we repress, they can better control us.”
“Deep.”
“I don’t know.”
“How that connect to children and animals, though?”
“I wasn’t saying it did.”
“Oh.”
“But—. I don’t know. I want people—my audience, adults—to start believing children and animals again. That is another goal if you forced me to say one.”
“Like getting in touch with intuition?”
“Yeah. It would be good to open people back up to immediate perceptions, underneath the rationalizations and conformity to social norms—to the innocence. Adults tends to mistake the map for the territory. Children see the particulars.”
“Now that shit deep.”
“And so maybe the two connect in that to believe them, to trust in animals and children, is to reconnect with a lot of things we prefer to ignore, and the shadow—.”
“That’s the shit we ignore.”
“Exactly. Children and animals—their actions are raw and visible. The kid digs in his ass and smells it. The dog humps your leg. I guess I don’t want people to forget the raw aspects of who we are. If we know ourselves, instead of denying who we are—. We’re less dangerous. I don’t know.”
“Knowledge is power.”
“It all sounds neat and tidy—like some job interview shit. That makes me skeptical. It’s probably just empty. I never said this before.”
“Believe in your shit. Who else will? There’s a reason you said the shit.”
“Maybe I’m just trying to sound good for you. I just write man.”
“I like that too.”
“You’re so bold.”
“So they say.”
“I like that you think for yourself.”
“A bitch’s teachers don’t. Dead.”
“That’s too bad.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“But yeah—. Tch. But like the big thing—.”
“Yes, sorry—the bullies. You hate them.”
“I do.”
“And you experienced it too.”
“I did. Not to bring it there but niggas say I be having sex cuz I got an ass. That was like in sixth when I was real shy. It used to bother me. Like I’d be crying in the bathroom. But it aint nothing now. Been done put it in perspective.”
She let go of his hand. “I’m sorry. I know you need to drive. Nigga got a bitch goin.”
He brought his hand to his thigh to wipe the evidence of his anxiety, figuring she had been repulsed in spite of the length of time she had it in her keep. He pressed his head back against the headrest, eyes closing for a breath. But she came to the edge of the back seat, in the middle, so she could continue holding the hand. It was from over the top. That was a relief.
The relief could not last. He would have squirmed under such intimacy regardless. But she went right to the worst of it: the thumb—tracing, like a braille reader both blind and dyslexic, the snaggy shards of hyperkeratosis around his nail, the tactile erratics redolent with iceberg meaning beyond their mere non-belonging. Most of his fingers lived in that chronic state of apology, even his pinkies: maimed and scabbed, in daylight hours often actively bleeding—blood pooling in the cuticle trough only to spread around the whole nail if left alone to physics. He picked and bit them back open the way you worry a loose thread you cannot leave alone.
The reasons never to let them heal—abuse upon abuse like one of those deals where, unable to stand the mirror-like look she has with her busted lip and a black eye, you beat the shit out of her yet again—compounded over unbroken decades, control trumping both pain and shame. It helped him concentrate, a normal writer’s nicotine. It soothed him in times of fear—not the best strategy, of course. For the soothing was the kind that bills you later, beyond just the concomitant disfiguration. Seeing the blood, seeing the sock cuffs and inner jean pockets and shirt hems full of rust crescents where he had covertly tried to stanch the embarrassing seep (blotting himself before, say, flashing his ShopRite loyalty card at the register at an angle that would make a toupeed perserverator proud), only seemed to legitimize the fear as worthy of such twisted self-soothing.
He hated the unevenness that resulted, the micro razors of lift on a canvass that ought to be smooth. Those tactic triggers that, even though he himself was from the hood, could not be ignored any more than a smoke detector’s low-battery chirp—he could not stand them. For a control freak such as himself that could mean, especially factoring in the self-sabotage of his drunk and illiterate kith and kin, little else but a deface-fix feedback loop—so simple it was stupid, so stupid it was hard not to punish by ramping up the intensity—of more picking and nibbling even during those breather moments of relative placidity that would otherwise have meant truce.
His Spanish teacher in middle school said to the class once, her words casual but aimed enough to make him gulp, “Don’t make biting your fingers a habit. It puts you at risk of cancer. Cancer is about inflammation.” Such a warning—lodging into his soul like a metaphysical splinter—was big for him, a child who by this point had many years under his belt—walking in his own private hell even during the laughter and birdsong of recesses—convinced that a certain bump on this arm or head meant he would be bald and done for soon.
But still he could not help it, chasing an armistice he always broke with his own teeth. Not long into double digits—top front incisors noticeably slanted from the compulsive nibbling, mammelons worn well away on the left even while still fresh as first rupture on the right—he had reached the cerebral milestone of veteran addicts where they promise themselves, yet again (as if just asking to be demoralized), this will be the last: this will be, and here he could not help but think of Mrs. Murphy’s warning every time, the picking and biting that will even things out well enough to end all picking and biting.
“So—. I mean, there were rumors going around?”
She had her chin on the seat behind his right shoulder, talking toward his ear. “Like all last year. Bitches saying I’m a thot. And then all these niggas after me—so that don’t help.”
“I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that. You get unwanted attention and the same people that judge you for having an ass judge you for that too.”
“They act like I want it, like its my fault. Like no, I don’t want the security guard looking me up and down like that.”
“I get that.”
“Don’t take this wrong. But niggas say they get that and still treat a bitch like she nasty. I don’t do shit with nobody.”
“You’re old school.”
“Yes. I mean—. Tch. My generation’s cooked. Girls fuckin since like fourth grade.”
“Damn.”
“So I have to fight this image.”
“The profiling.”
“Yes, I’m different than the norm or whatever.”
He looked down at the hand. It was clear that her nails were painted. He could not see any more design aside from some stripes and maybe some blue, but still he said—spirit squirming, clenching and unclenching in guardness like a muscle—“I like your nails.”
“The little cherries popped off.”
“Hmm.”
She relieved him of her hold and spread her fingers next to his shoulder. “You can’t really see. It’s too dark.” And then she took the hand again.
“And what about how you think? You know, you were saying—.”
“I don’t just go with what everyone go with.”
“Yes. Okay. That’s what I figured.”
“I like what I like even if its weird.”
“It’s a tough road—having that independent attitude.”
“I feel like—. I don’t know. I just love people who show up in all they colors, who stand on who they are and don’t feel like they have to hide in a corner. Like, be weird. Stand on your shit. You got one life. The fuck?”
“You got my vote girl.”
“I want my man like that too: independent. That way we can’t breakup.”
“Huh?”
“Cuz we already separate.”
“Ba-dum, tish! You’re silly.”
“But now really I just stick to myself.”
“And LaShawn.”
“Tch.”
“I’m just messing with you.”
“I know.”
“Do you mind that?”
“I don’t mind you teasing me. But I ain’t with no nigga.”
“Good.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“. . . .”
“I mean, you seem like you have high standards and a good head. So I wouldn’t want you settling.”
“. . . .”
“It sounds corny but—you deserve a good partner.”
“Nigga, that is not corny.”
“I’m sorry. I just—. I don’t know.”
“Nigga . . . ”
“What?”
“You know how old I am?”
“What? Like nineteen?”
“. . . .”
“Seventeen?”
“I’m young.”
“Like how young?”
“Like for real?”
“No, for fake.”
“Fourteen.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Bout to be fourteen, technically.”
“Don’t even tell me in how long. Just don’t.”
“You’re stupid.”
“Well, I guess I just gotta be your bodyguard?”
“What?”
“Like watch out for you—mentor role.”
“Tch. You acting like you in a bitch’s life.”
“Yikes. I’m sorry.”
“I’m teasing you. But go ahead. What you gonna do?”
“Fuckin, I don’t know—a resource.”
“Dead.”
“Like make sure you do well in school, make right decisions about guys—all that.”
“Like that I go to bed early?”
“Yep.”
“You’d do that?”
“Definitely. We can do yoga. I mean, I can teach you to drive.”
“Oh my God. You’re like really sweet.”
“. . . .”
“You ever meet someone and can’t decide if they ass good for you or dangerous?”
“Yeah. You!”
“Nigga, I’m dead.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“You’re special. You’re worth it. I mean, everyone’s worth it. But—.”
“But what?”
“I don’t meet people like you often.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“And if I wanted you? Would that be the right decision?”
“No.”
“Nigga aint even think about it!”
“. . . .”
“Even with our chemistry?”
“Fire and gas have chemistry too.”
“Dead.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“A lot goes into it.”
“So how long a bitch gotta wait?”
“I’m not telling you to wait for anything. Friend until your legal.”
“Period.”
“And that’s if you even want—.”
“So you’re fine if I date other people?”
“I’d have to be!”
“Nigga, I see the way you look at me.”
“So? I can control myself. I’m not trying to close anyone’s horizons.”
“And what if another old nigga wanna get with me.”
“Nah.”
“You wouldn’t let me?”
“Nah.” His dick surprised him with stiffness. He nibbled his lip skin.
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“You know I’m playing with you right?”
“I think.”
“But I like what you said.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“You’re trouble.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Just chillin’s fine with me. I feel safe with you.”
“That means a lot to me.”
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
