Map of My Body

Cody.

Cody said Kelly’s legs were fat; that’s why nobody had kissed her. Matthew chimed in from across the campfire to defend dream girl. Kelly dream girl was captain of the soccer team and had been nominated as royalty for every school dance since freshman year. She was muscular – Matthew discredited Cody’s answer, he had read muscular meant sexy these days. It should be noted, that Cody was seventeen years old and just now creeping his way up to my towering 5’8”; he too was muscular despite his elfish stature. But Cody had been fucking girls since he was fourteen – only the small ones. He had played on all the school sports teams starting the day he popped out of the womb and made ski movies in his free time. Cody was never smart nor did he ever see past his immediate assumptions, so I let him have his self-conscious idea of Kelly. Kelly was allowed to have stumpy legs because Matthew knew they were powerful.

Matthew.

Matthew had started every football game and had been captain of the basketball team since he had tried out in eighth grade. Whenever we asked them about girls, they would categorize them into three sets – beautiful, sexy, and hot(hawt). Courtney was hot because she walked around like she only shat small Hershey’s kisses not even Cody’s grandmother –who had a fear of everything since her spat of bacterial meningitis– wouldn’t shy away from a taste of and could fit her tight ass on the smallest chair in each room while still commanding power. Chloe was sexy because she let her mouth hang open in class and would accidentally forget how short her skirt was every day in biology when she let her long thin legs hang over the armrest of her desk. Anika was beautiful because she walked like she was getting As in every class while still managing to be president of the student council and looked like an angel as she commanded more space with her smile than her massive tits in the cafeteria.

Matthew told me one night when he placed his hand on my shoulder to help me across the mountain stream, that he would no longer be feeling up girls – “They look like they feel one way... and then suddenly you have your hands in fatty spaces you didn’t know existed, I just wish girls felt as hot as they look”. Searching for an itch I didn't know I had, my fingers grazed across my skeletal back.

AJ.

I always thought AJ had a horrible name. He always got to be more than one. AJ was one year younger than Matthew and had independently managed to fill the same social niche. AJ also, collected tadpoles with me when we were eighteen and would use his real laugh when we lay next to his truck. His truck played music I thought was stupid but now I listen to it every time I miss the corners of his grin connecting to the sun rays above us.

One day I started calling him Alan in public. He was only kind to me when we were alone in his bedroom now; he would sound like his country music and I would say no because he had a girl who called him AJ in public. When he would return to his parties, he would tell his followers of his escapades in my jungle that still was yet to have seen the Venus razor my mom let me borrow for my armpits. Ian told Amanda that AJ had been sleeping with me all summer.

Sleeping together – sleeping with someone still meant when I ran to sleep next to my

mother on her waterbed. I do this when my night terrors return at the end of each

month and my room seems to be filled with more demons than hers.

My dog would always bark at him so I guess I should have known.

Nate.

Nate always called his cat sweetie. Sweetie is how the sack of bones, the one with three different mustaches, varying in shade within the gray to white spectrum, at the cafe refers to me. It’s one of those male power words that no longer means anything – see bipartisan, democracy, bitch – words that when women use them no longer contain their sociohistorical context and instead, endear man with her playful affirmation or inability to comprehend what he knows. Words that make the table of four, round-bellied, men at the bar gafaugh.

Nate seemed to have a talent with words. Not in what he said, or in the form of his speech but in the thespian nature he was born with. I was there for the twelve-year construction of the stainless steel stage that stretches from a small island in South Carolina to the southernmost tip of California with terraces that trickle north approaching the Canadian border of Montana. Without an audience there can never be a performance; this was something Nate knew all too well. Not only was Nate aware of what constituted a performance but he knew how to stretch his body over miles of steel and let his mass fill each crevice that might have easily been overlooked. He knew that mouths must be muffled if their words disrupt the show and in a civilized society the audience respects the cast with voices no louder than the spirit’s whisper only they can hear in the attic.

He was a collector. This affliction began when he realized he could effortlessly collect with consumption and his riches would show in the thick layers he used to keep the parts of him, reserving space in northern regions, warm. Nate’s parents had hung up capitalist propaganda in his room when he was two and would play tapes of Uncle Sam’s Distribution of Wealth on his walkman when he stopped his habit between the hours of 3 and 8:14 AM. So Nate internalized his father’s desire and demanded a fee of eight decibels from each audience member who had the privilege of being graced with his presence. Sometimes I liked to help Nate with his collection because consuming me meant he wouldn’t take from others.

Alden.

Alden had worked in a secret government agency after graduating college and had three secret lives he was legally restricted from disclosing. He lived amid a slew of contradictions and only knew what it meant to be rich with wealth. Happiness to him meant something I would only ever know through his gifts. Reciprocity was an inescapable fact of human existence to Alden, and he was careful, as he was with all sweeping statements he made, to make this true. In exchange for each extravagant adventure and lavish gift, he took my autonomy so he could hold me captive with shame. He seemed to get off on my fleeting happiness. To keep me happy on the simple days, he bought me tea cookies when he thought I was sad and fed me the finest Indian cuisine when he knew he had wronged me. He was the kind of man who could give you the world, whilst making you cease to exist.

With Alden, you were shameful until you were draped in the jewels and fibers we use to excuse ourselves from acknowledging that sexuality is in our nature. I bought a bathrobe when I sixteen because my body was only mine in private and he wouldn’t look at me during the day in just a towel.

James.

I only knew James for two months. The first three days I knew him I contorted my body so any notion of his body against mine was indisputably unwanted – he reminded me too much of Levi. On day four he no longer seemed pretentious and replaced my previous misconceptions of him with a suave familiarity that begged his feet to grip tightly between my thighs, a position he would hold for the remainder of the season.

In my second week of knowing James, we sat in electricity while he showed me things he knew about me. I’d turn to Levi in these moments and whisper, “he thinks he knows me”, to which he would always reply, “that’s because you let him”.

On the last day I knew James we traversed the entirety of the pacific northwest. In Washington, he told me of my mythical alter ego who was no longer restrained within her castle of anxiety. In Idaho, he reminded me how his grip within my thighs had freed my fear of sharing, and in Oregon, he unpacked the last suit I would ever see him wear. The suit was made of denim that I had woven with my toes while he had told stories of the fairy girl. The white shirt that was to go underneath, had not the smallest imperfection, and I was reminded of a lesson. Alden had taught me of reciprocity, and I could not give James what he wanted in return.