Unkiss Me: 26 Poses

Part 2

7.

Balancing Stick Pose

One of the carpenter’s favorite activities is walking through works-in-progress, noting the building decisions of other carpenters. He does this after hours, and the trespassing makes you nervous. Still, there is a thrill in negotiating catwalks and scaffolding behind him as he points out future toilets and closets.

“Those couplings are twenty bucks a piece,” he announces, and you realize he is fantasizing stealing the hardware carelessly piled in a corner.

He kisses you as you balance on a riser, the zigzag beneath your feet inviting misstep. Not long after this evening, you’ll crawl behind the carpenter as he scales an ocean cliff. Climbing this precipice, the Pacific roaring and threatening behind you, you’ll feel powerful, manly, even. Inching back down, however, will terrify you. Think of a cat stuck on the upper branches of an oak. Notions of hook and ladder trucks will flood your brain, but there will only be this carpenter, his gentle voice and your trust.

You are discovering that dating this carpenter is like standing on one leg at a time: life with boyfriend, life with kids. This gets sticky when the carpenter spends the night, which he does with increasing frequency. One morning, you’re making pancakes, and discover the dining room table heaped with freshly harvested marijuana. You don’t mind this, theoretically; you know that side of his life. But this is your house. Your kids roll Playdoh on this table, and now, these hairy clumps of bud lie there. You feed the kids in the family room instead. Turn on “Beauty and the Beast.” Disney, you think, and lots of it. Sometimes, you wish you didn’t give that magenta jogging suit to Goodwill.

8.

Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose

The carpenter likes to make money. You could be making money, too, he says. He’ll teach you. So you sell your nice, finished house and enter the world of the fixer-upper. Two for the price of one: the carpenter’s fixer and, a few blocks away, your fixer. This is an investment, you tell yourself. Houses are leaping up in price, you tell yourself, five thousand a month, in fact. You’re making money while drinking your morning coffee. But whose blue eyes are you looking into while drinking that coffee? Why is there half-and-half in your refrigerator, when you drink your coffee black?

Your hundred-year old house needs lots of work. TLC, is how it was advertised. Never in your life have you repaired anything. You come from a tradition of throwing stuff out and buying a new one. Well, once, as a child, you found an old wagon in an alley and covered it with contact paper and white paint. This wagon, when you looked at it, made the space between your heart and stomach glow as if warmed by briquettes. You want that glow again, so, after watching the carpenter and taking notes in a spiral notebook, you buy a heat gun and start stripping the Victorian molding around your windows. You buy pry bars and hammers and a Makita cordless drill. You even swap out a three-prong pigtail on your dryer because you have a four-prong outlet. And when you’re done, the dryer works!

Meanwhile, in his fixer, the carpenter has discovered the work-enhancing effects of methamphetamine.

9.

Triangle Pose

The ten-year old diaphragm fails you. Duh, say the eyes of the Planned Parenthood doctor as he sucks the collection of cells from your all-too-inviting womb. But, it wasn’t as easy as all that, this decision. For nearly a month, you contemplated two distinct trinities, tried to come up with a workable intersection.

First, the existing trinity: You, and your fatherless son and daughter. This trio was born of survival, and as such, the edges have blurred. You have done your part, your heart has stretched as far as it needs to stretch; you are through. Until you contemplate a second triangle. The carpenter, you, and a potential baby. A potential trinity. A virtual trinity. A trinity emerging given this variable and that variable.