I couldn’t stop myself from kissing him. Elijah had my whole head. His hand snaked and forced up between my body and the door. ‘Please, please, god, please.’ I heard myself, desperate. I couldn’t stop myself from doing what we were doing.
There was a truck outside, the garbage being dumped.
‘Our slave’s not so willing anymore,’ Gayl said. She was naked behind Elijah. She saw right through me.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Elijah’s fingers slipped inside me. The door vibrated. I pushed down in my legs for more. Noise expanded. I got slammed in the face. Elijah yelled. I didn’t feel him anymore. The door pushed us all down. A woman led me to the wall. Gayl got hit by two men in black gloves. Four cops had Elijah, who fought them off, spitting. His hair was shaking. He tried to find me. They locked his hands behind his back. They put a sheet over his head. Gayl was caped with one of the sheets. She was not shocked, arms behind her like him. She still had her eyes. We stared at each other.
Six cops led them out of the room: tied up, foreign, liberation done.
I’d met Elijah alone on the beach. Gayl had changed the look of me forever. Our meeting was the first in a chain of events that the expansion of my consciousness was built on.
‘Your father is waiting in a car outside for you,’ the policewoman said. She wore glasses that magnified the whites of her eyes.
A few guys in suits were undoing the room. They dumped out three burlap sacks that were stashed in the closet. Small black tapes scattered on the used mattress – the animal shit of the camera’s corpse.
§
My father sat beside me in carpeted rooms. Police held lukewarm cups of tea. My dad held my hand. They’d all seen the way me and Elijah had sex. Young Canadian Caught up in African Porn Ring. That’s how it was told in the paper, minor unnamed. My fantasies were elucidated for the masses.
Elijah and Gayl had been deported. Gayl to Lexington and Elijah to Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam means Haven of Peace. The cops said that the Americans and the Africans would have to deal with their garbage. The cops gave some psychiatrist’s number to my dad. Everyone wanted my rehabilitation. They’d all seen how I’d taken those blows, the way I hid myself after in the heart of the director.
GAYL: She hid herself in me but I was no place to hide.
LEE: Why did you want to destroy her like this?
GAYL: Destroy? What are you talking about? Who do you think was destroyed? I’m the one who’s locked up now. I’m the one who can’t have a life. I’m the one who has to sit on my ass and write letters of confession.
LEE: Well, maybe some of that will be healing, or whatever.
GAYL: Healing? I don’t think so. I’d prefer my pussy get healed. It misses being fucked. Who’s got something for me there?
§
I was naked lying on top of my covers. Lee stood at the doorway of my bedroom trying to convince me to come with her and Wils and Aaron to Aaron’s parents’ place in Florida. She said that we could rent a car and go off on adventures by ourselves.
‘Bataille says that the power of the abject is the hunger for strong sensations,’ I said. ‘To feel yourself alive in the face of abomination.’
Lee entered my room and sat on the floor. ‘Bataille’s for boys.’
I could not do anything to free Elijah, to free Gayl. I wasn’t going to talk to any psychiatrist. Ms. Bain and Mr. Rotowsky did not give my essay an A or A plus. They gave me a joint and mutual C. With reservations, they wrote. This is all over the place. Please be careful of being too personal in your writing.
‘Did you know that Chris had a major crush on you?’ Lee said.
‘Why’re
you changing the subject?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are. And he did not have a crush on me. He hated me.’
‘He told me he could barely look at you the first time he met you. He told me he thought you were the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He was totally turned on by your thinking. He still wants to publish your piece. He says to thank you for sending it, he loves the new version. You should give him a call. Tell him yes or no. About the piece, I mean.’ Lee smiled at me.
I felt myself smile back at her even though I didn’t want to be smiling.
§