The Rules of Sight
Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified…
-Jose Saramago, Blindness
On the doorknob of the Slumberland Motel's Room 8 is a lime green “Maintenance Personnel Working” sign. Scribbled in a fine pen, a message on it reads: “Desperately need to get fuck, chix alone, room 21.”
He's tired, cold. He rips the advertisement from the knob and sighs. The motel's room-key is a cumbersome thing, a bright orange bouy with a black “#8” hastily drawn on it dangles from the large, awkward ring.
“No water here for mile,” she says, frowning.
He nods, asks her if she thinks that the motel's management is worried about the key being flushed down the toilet. She combs her long, dark hair behind her little ears as the door opens, “No, I…no.”
They make their way in. The man, a sunken-jawwed forty-something, removes his shoes. The girl–a girl–throws her delicate body on the rough, patchy comforter.
From Room 9, a radio clicks on. Neil Young's “Almost Cut My Hair.”
The man puts his hand to his ear, a boyish tendency. “Goddamnit.”
“What?”
“We've got to do this with that hippy shit going on?”
She, for the first time, smiles. “Just don't think it.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, rolls the sleeves of his white shirt and loosens the blue silk tie from his neck.
“You from a country full of old, brick streets.”
“What makes you say that?” he asks.
Before she answers, he removes a gold flask from the slacks' back pocket and pours a line of brown liquor into the motel's complementary water cup.
“Has you a diseased, English mind.”
He turns, stares at her. “If you're trying to start a fight, you can forget it. I already paid you half. Half. Do you know what that means? I get a night of fucking,” he says, rubbing his fingers together near the tip of her nose, “not conversation. If you want the rest of the money, we fuck.”
“I not trying.” She coils up on the bed and frowns again.
“Alright then,” he says, “take off your clothes.”
—
The motel room's dust shimmers when the sun's rays turn diagonal. Her last, full meal: a host of blood and total reign of this ancient bedroom. Her bra and panties, matching as crown and scepter. Her vagina powerful in its powerlessness.
Now, he feels the night; it has the bitter taste of sugarless tea. Her breath saves him here, in this purple fog; their two bodies see as touch. She is the only thing within her control, her own lover. But does this hold her from the risk of holy sacrilege?
No.
She runs the ragged race to his attention spot–a place he reserves for his mother and first lay. His convincing movements queue her inhibitions; her mouth features his tongue; his skin and hers touch. Performance; a melee of trees and a wind that never comes; their leaves are white, small and uninhibited; they hear the soft timbre of breath as it crescendos; the orgasm; Neil Young's “Hey, Hey, My, My.” The man pays the girl the other half he promised; he smokes a cigar he bought in Taipei City. The girl puts back on her crown. She leaves for Room 21.
Fin.