Madeline Simms

For Someone

For Someone, Taste was before anything. Before Song or Dance. Before Someone Else or other things. Before Someone emptied the dishwasher for the first time, or opened a CVS on the corner, across from the Walgreens. Before Excess, Bravery and the Snake. Before Touch or Word, there was Taste. Everything in the mouth, all at once.

*

This is why Someone hates the word mouthfeel. Mouthfeel, mouthfeel choke of a word. Squirming to the back of the throat, a slinking embarrassment of everything it should not be doing but somehow, gets away with. Pretention. Mouthfeel like it can actually do that, actually feel the silk of sweet cream coating the throat, the wet acid of a blackberry burst, or salty-fat bacon on the tongue. Mouthfeel. As if Taste were not enough.

Someone warns Food Critic working for PBS, “The acknowledgement of sensation can kill the buzz like a cigarette caught in a storm.” Food Critic exhales, the smoke exhausting the words, “But acknowledging sensation, or lack thereof, that’s my Job, Someone.” The commercial break ends and Food Critic begins his new segment of the show with the word Mouthfeel. Someone sighs.

*

Someone gives the word a chance. Her tongue feeling around her mouth: unbothered, busy, rubbing her left snaggle tooth like a clit. Each tooth, its own pleasure. When Maggie Nelson said, “I am not interested in a hermeneutics, or an erotic, or a metaphorics, of my anus. I am interested in ass-fucking.” Someone felt that. Pleasure superseding Language. There are some things we are just meant to Taste.

*

Someone thinks of her own Taste. She thinks of Midcentury Modern furniture. Considers herself a Maximalist. Thinks about Color and Shade. This Taste, she knows, is different than the body and so, returning to the body:

There does not need to be a word to describe Parkay Squeeze melting down the left wrist of an arm to a hand to fingers holding an ear of corn. An ear because listen: Someone eats corn with elbows on the table, props herself up like she’s preparing to be exhausted, placing her head in her hands. After all, eating is hard work. Endless jaw and chomp. The secretion of saliva lubricating each movement not once, not twice, but three times a day! Despite the Elegant Elder’s wishes, there is no delicate way to eat corn. No smaller bites dear. No chew like a bird, chew like a hog. Salt uneven on the cob keeps things exciting. Keeps your wrists spinning the food like a miniature spit, keeps the tongue searching, lips licking, wandering and loose. How lips should be.

When Someone was young, she wore Braces. She listened to the Orthodontist because her parents said Braces are expensive and nothing is free. The Orthodontist cautioned against many things: licorice and nuts, fruits that require biting into, like an apple. The Orthodontist said not to eat corn on the cob. So Someone took the corn off the cob. She held the ear upright, perpendicular to the cutting board, and sawed the starch clean off with a serrated knife. The strips of fresh-cut kernels reminded Someone of small block towers in the church nursery. Each row fell in one piece before Someone mixed butter into the equation. Taste takes its time. In time, her teeth are corrected. And Someone chews the corn straight off the cob.

*

Once, Someone ate an entire cheesecake alone in the basement while she told everyone in the House she was doing Laundry. This was not Taste. This was not Laundry either but it was also never spoken of. What poisons in secret became Shame.

*

And then there was Dance. Because of Dance, Someone no longer has Shame. Dance: or the pulsing union of universe and self, the crashing wave, the inevitable body tuned sonic. One does not need Song to Dance. There are those who think they need rhythm, others (like her Father) Liquid Courage. There is a breed of people, Two-Left-Feeters who think they must abandon Dance altogether. But they are mistaken. In order to Dance, you must Dance with Abandon. Someone needs nothing but the backbone of a beat, a faucet drip, a radiator hum or Mambo No. Five in her Mother’s kitchen–whatever’s convenient. The tempo-ed tin of a swaying chain against a ceiling fan keeps time just as well. Tap, tap, tap, the oe surrenders.

Someone doesn’t know Angela, Pamela, Sandra or Rita. She doesn’t know Monica or Erica, Tina or again, Sandra. Someone once met Mary, but not this one. She imagines all of them as Someone Else’s lovers, choreographed in the Kitchen while her Mother makes dinner. An assembly line of shaking hips around the salad bowl, each with their own vegetable in hand. Angela peels a cucumber, Pamela dices a tomato, Sandra and Rita rinse the lettuce in the broken salad spinner. Someone always Dancing the Salad Dance.

Someone invites Abandon over for dinner. Together they Dance the Salad Dance, romaine flying wildly, tomatoes landing in small splats near the cucumbers. Together they mix up a salad dressing – olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. Abandon says to Someone, “When I am overwhelmed, I chop. I begin deliberate and controlled. Especially when it comes to things like onions. One wrong cut and you are in tears. Slowly, I allow the knife’s energy to build to the point of me, Abandon – one with the knife rocking back and forth beneath my palm until the desired size.”

This reminds Someone of the time Abandoned shaved her head. Abandon began by sectioning off pieces of her hair – hacking away with blunt scissors. Someone remembers looking in the mirror with Abandon after the first chop, like the first cut of an onion – chunky and unfinished but unmistakably chopped. Abandon plugged the clippers in next to the sink and ran them over Someone’s head. The shorn hair fell in her lap, heavy and dark. She was blind to the cut but listened to the buzz of the clippers run over and over her head, back and forth like the path of a small lawnmower.

There is always something left behind – the skin of an onion, hair on the floor. Abandon reminds Someone how free it is to be a scrap, to be cut – again and again. She thinks of “cutting a rug” and thinks of Abandon, her bald head, the Salad Dance. In the fervor and freedom of the chopping knife, in the heat of Abandon, they smoke a cigarette and share a kiss.

*

There was a time Someone had a lover who Danced on Stage. The spotlight illuminated every one of their movements as if they were suspended, controlled by the light itself. Each limb was a weightless glow against the heavy velvet curtain. For a moment, before the lights went up on the audience, Someone felt like she was the only one watching her love. She felt as if her own gaze might be the light itself: directing and illuminating, the ventriloquist to a puppet. Like any moment, it ended. The lights returned to the audience seated in their rows with programs in their laps.

*

Dance can be around something like the dishes. One night, Someone filled Someone Else’s bed with dirty dishes after Someone Else neglected to do their share for weeks. When it is about the dishes, it is never about the dishes. But neglect is never symbolic. Neglect is real as dirt underneath your fingernails.

*

The first time Someone Else asked Someone to Move To The Backseat, her Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtle-Graphic-Lace-Panties were soaked. Unfortunately, Matilda by alt-j was on repeat. She felt as though her body had betrayed her, sprung a leak. Each clumsy kiss tumbled down between her legs – building and spilling. Every close breath an overflow, sloshing around like a bucket of water carried from the side-house spigot to the midnight firepit out back. The smoke-smell lingered into the morning like Someone Else’s cologne, the night ongoing with nowhere to go but the Backseat.

Someone had seen people Move to the Backseat before: in the movie Grease, on Cable TV, in Health Class, and once, in a utility closet she mistook for the pool door at a hotel in Wisconsin. Someone always breathing. Someone Else touching. The Backseat always a few kisses away.

Someone Moved to the Backseat years ago in a stranger’s bed, nothing wet. Everything cracked clay and raw. A broken scab, a bloody accident. This is not about sex. Most sex is not, as Someone comes to learn. This is about Moving to the Backseat and Dance being the inevitable body tuned sonic. Listen. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Rain runs down the windowsill. Someone returns to her apartment and finds comfort in Abandon. Abandon shaves her head again.

*

Someone is Lost in her Hometown. She remembers Rebecca Solnit once said, “Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.” Someone thinks this is the first type of Lost. The Road she thought she needed is not The Road she remembered. She stops at a store she never stops at but has driven by countless times. It is a General Store. The General store is the store with fake roses is the store with fake sunflowers is the store with a melon baller is the store with paint brushes on the wall. The store with paint brushes on the wall is also the store with greeting cards that read: “Get Well Soon,” “Goodbye From All of Us.” The store with Lysol wipes is also the store with baking/serving dishes is also the store with cotton slips is also the store with Finding Nemo stencils is also the store with colored pencils and vacuum bags. The store with oil cloth by the yard is the store with signs that read: “Private Property,” “For Rent.” The store with knives on the wall is the store with ribbons and thread is the store with mouse traps is the store with plastic ashtrays is the store with cardboard boxes stacked in the back. Someone is Lost in the General Store but knows everything she needs is somewhere collecting dust.

As time moves on among the things, Someone gets Lost in the General Store and imagines a life where she might need plastic ashtrays, greeting cards, and fake roses all at once. She imagines herself a smoking pallbearer, which isn’t exactly an impossibility. She weeps in the General Store, grieving for this imagined death of Someone Else, Someone Else she might smoke for. Someone Else she might carry and bring fake roses to the grave. Someone’s imagination gets the best of her.

*

Someone is often In Her Head. She apologizes to Someone Else saying, “Sorry I am so In My Head”. One night, Someone fell so far In Her Head, she could not get out. Deep in the folds and synapses of her brain, she tried to pull herself out but to no avail. She began to grasp onto words like mouthfeel, problematic, and juxtaposition. Those words with dried up roots, no substance, no real dirt and consequence. Every time she pulled up on them, she fell further down In Her Head. She waited at the bottom, craning her neck to look up, to call for help or scream. But there was no one In Her Head, everything a mirage, an echo. She grew hungry and tired, fading in and out of sleep. She dreamed of weak coffee and morning sun that makes even the rust on the lip of the dumpster seem necessary. More than anything, she dreamt of Someone Else. When Someone woke, she found herself lying next to Abandon.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Abandon lit a cigarette and together, Someone and Abandon found Reckless. The three emptied Arizona Ice Tea cans, filled them with Four Lokos and Danced. They Danced without sound or music. Someone Danced with Reckless, Abandon, and color. In Her Head, there was only color. Abandon, eyes closed, leaned back on the color Blue – the clear hum of the hue carried them away like a lazy river. Reckless finds red like a shot of whiskey, abrupt and wrong. Together, Someone saw purple. She was reminded of a time where everything she had was purple: a purple coat, a purple backpack, purple hair and purple sheets with purple jeans. She remembered a time where her life was just beginning, she was so young all she had to her name was purple. In Her Head she found Memory in purple. Someone longed for time when all she had was color. She thought of a set of Jumbo Crayola Crayons – the thickest sense a color could be and wept. With her eyes closed, Someone reached for Abandon’s hand, and found Nothing. Everything appeared White.

*

Out of the White came the sound of a train whistle and shortly after, the Train of Thought. The conductor leaned out of the passenger train car, surprised to see Someone crying. “Lost?” Someone nodded. “Watch your step,” the conductor said as Someone climbed aboard.

Someone quickly found a seat, leaning her head against the window. As the Train of Thought pulled away from the station, picking up speed, Someone pulled out her journal and began to write down everything that happened In Her Head. She wrote about finding Reckless and Abandon, about the whiskey and the colors, Memory. The more she recalled, the more she remembered. She remembered to Breathe, writing it down. The feeling of the cloth seat and the way she continually rubbed her index finger and thumb to remind herself of touch, how it is always happening. She remembered the small tender bend of the grass and the thin metal lip of the Arizona Ice Tea can. Everything written became Special to Someone. Her breath, the click-clack of the train over tracks, the sky – not asking anything from anyone.

Someone looked up from her journal. Outside, the Train of Thought slowed and the world around did too. The conductor walking down the aisle looked to Someone and said, “Next stop, Lost.”

The Lost Station was marked by a metal sign, rusting with teal letters. There was one vending machine with nothing but sunflower seeds left. The water fountain had a paper sign taped to the side. At one point, the sign must have read, “Out of Service” but the “Out” is out, the ink erased by possible water drops.

There was an outdoor pavilion jutting off to the side of the station. Someone found a seat in the shade, closed her eyes for a moment. She felt the sun behind her eyelids. Felt the shadows of birds. When Someone opened her eyes, she realized those shadows did not belong to birds but to small fraying threads floating around in the wind. Each colorful thread seemed to have a mind of its own, some taking flight, others inching across the ground. Some threads perched on the gutter of the pavilion. She stood on the bench, reached up and grabbed at one.

Upon further inspection Someone realized the thread connected to a scrap of paper with a date, time and the phrase, “Properties of St. John’s Wort.” She grabbed another: “Painting the Yellow House on the Corner”. One had the recipe for rosemary bread. Another had the lyrics to Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Put Your Records On,” a song she forgot the lyrics to at a talent show in sixth grade. The more scraps Someone pulled, the more she began to trace them back to a memory of forgetting.

Here at the Lost Station, was a floating graveyard of thoughts once snipped from Someone’s own Train of Thought. There they were, collected as if each one were snipped from one long thread, some of the newer ones still curling with the fresh imprint of the spool.

*

Someone waited at the Lost Station In Her Head until her own tears flooded the dry valley. Until Green grew and her feet were muddied with words like Happy and Hungry. They began with feeling and slowly grew into whole meals: Chicken Pot Pie and a Full English Breakfast. Green became Tree and Someone ate until she was full. After she ate, Someone found the tallest tree In Her Head and began to climb. While climbing, she scraped both knees against the hard bark. The blood smeared in the shape of the word Body. Every time a small bead of sweat dropped, it fell like a clear note, a pitched chime. Looking down from the tree, she saw the new words growing, fed by Rain and her sweat chimes. This became Song and Someone began to sing. As she sang, really sang – with the breath from her belly and the notes from behind her ears, she climbed higher and higher, right up out of her head.

*

Someone goes Outside. Inside, there is a party. It has been a while since Someone has been around so many people. Everyone is Dancing and Drinking and chatting–what looks like a Good Time. Someone needs a Breath of Fresh Air which is why she steps Outside. She sits on the grass and notices a plastic ashtray full of half-smoked cigarettes. The collection of half-smoked cigarettes remind Someone of everyone else who needs a Break, a Breath of Fresh Air. She thinks of John Prine and his heaven-bound cigarette, the one nine miles long. Smoking a cigarette nine miles long is not as impossible as it seems. If you are in the car, smoking a cigarette, over the course of driving nine miles, you have smoked a cigarette nine miles long.

*

Someone finds Cut Grass pleasing. Not just the smell or the sound, but the chore of it all. On Saturdays after Rain, Someone mows the lawn. Before wielding the mower, she scours the yard for rocks and sticks, anything that might jam the blade, or worse – kickback and scar her shins. Preparation as hot oil in the pan, nothing burnt, everything slightly golden. Someone prepares to avoid marring. She feels strong pulling the starter cord and starting the small engine, igniting the sound and the smell of exhaust. Someone begins with the perimeter first, the path like a tongue licking around its lips. And then, cut right down the middle, the plunge deep. Someone works the lawnmower back-and-forth like a typewriter, like that ear of corn, like anything which revolves around a row. Seat in the audience, soybeans in a field, ducks in a row. Ducks in a row, rowing the boat, Someone works the lawn. She holds down the Safety Shut-off Lever, pulling up on the Drive Control, moving forward, always forward. The cut grass trails behind like a row of ripped up stitches.

On the move, the blade drowns out everything. The engine’s thick fumes combined with Cut Grass intoxication is equally consuming. Someone loves being consumed, all senses becoming one thing, Cut Grass. If she could, she would live her life consumed. Dissolved into sensation. How easy it would be to get out of her head if her body were consumed by Cut Grass.

Occasionally, Someone has to Bag The Grass. This is always easier with Someone Else. There isn’t much talking, as the lawnmower itself is too loud. Sometimes the two like to guess what one another is saying, fake yelling over the whir of the motor. Olive Juice! someone mouths. To which Someone Else’s muted reply becomes I love you!

When the grass catcher is full, Someone stops the mower and calls Someone Else over to help. She unhooks the catcher and shakes it around until the grass gathers at the bottom, a heap still warm from the motor. Someone Else holds open a paper bag for Yard Waste and Someone flips the grass catcher upside down. Sometimes, a brief cloud of grass and dust forms above the paper bag, causing Someone else to sneeze. Someone packs down the grass and together, they drag the bag to the curb, the paper scratching against the concrete like static. Some things like Carrying in the Groceries or the Doctor’s Office are easier with two. The more hands, the lighter the load. To Carry is to Love.

*

Abandon joins a Jazz Band and tells Someone about John Francis Anthony "Jaco" Pastorius III. They say things like, I want to be just like John Francis Anthony “Jaco” Pastorius III. They say things like John Francis Anthony “Jaco” Pastorius III was the greatest guitar bassist to live. And John Francis Anthony “Jaco” Pastorius III was murdered by a bouncer at age 35. Why are Genius and Tragedy so symbiotic? Together, Someone and Abandon lie down on the floor and watch live recordings of Jaco on YouTube. He is always so colorful and animated. Someone’s eyes settle softly on Abandon. She watches then watches the screen – all lit up in the glow of Abandon. Someone worries after Abandon. She worries before Abandon too, crawling back In Her Head. She comes home late one night after being out with Abandon. Someone tells Someone Else not to worry. Someone worries enough for the two of them.

Someone and Someone Else attend Abandon’s first show together. The lights are dim in the bar, the Regulars shoot pool and drink pitchers. No one seems to be listening, not even Someone Else. Someone Else chats with the Regulars. Abandon plays the Bass while Reckless plays the drums. Another plays the guitar. There is no singing but the room begins to swell with Jazz. Jazz is the sound of music, not quite a Song, not quite a Dance. A Jazz. Abandon’s bass flows from walking to running up and down Someone’s spine like a small trickle of water, a leak. She thinks about running away as Reckless taps on the crash cymbal. Jazz gets ahead of itself – Someone closes her eyes. Behind her eyes, Someone is In Her Head Again – it is colorful and Jazz. She thinks of all the people who don’t like Jazz, and the few. It’s not easy to love Jazz. It’s not easy to love Abandon. Someone Else taps her shoulder. On the way back to the car, Someone Else carries Someone’s coat.

Mariah Rigg