One Thousand and One Nights
Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781, oil on canvas, 40″ x 50″. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
“I hate running.” My oldest daughter might quit soccer.
I start to defend running, though running, to me, is always as in a dream, legs stuck in quicksand, lungs stiff with panic, the bad guy closing in. Why defend things I do not like? I tell my girl the truth. “I hate running, too.”
*
When do the men come to you? They come to me at night. In the quiet, they find a way in, as if they’d been waiting in the foyer all day. Samantha will see you now. Which is to say, I let the on the Roman bus; the masturbator on the C local; the man in Grand Central; the man at the photo assistant interview; the guy in the Chevrolet; my older cousin’s older boyfriend who slipped into my bed when I was fourteen; and the stranger jerking off beside me on a dark Santa Monica beach as I sang a slow, sad version of “Shattered,” wearing my nutty song as a protective shroud of mental instability or at least a muffle to drown out the grunts and fleshy kneadings of him getting off on my fear.
