The Ferryman

     I am thankful that I have been broken open and that my shell is being dissolved.  I am thankful for the women that do that magic work.  Their spit is acid.  Their tears penetrate skin and infect the heart.   I had my doors locked and windows shuttered but they broke in anyway.  Somehow.  They are resourceful that way.  Sneaky.  Insidious.  They come in the night or they come in the day.  It really doesn’t matter.  You see them come or you do not.  It really doesn’t matter.  Somehow they manage to get through.  They seduce you and soon you are a willing participant although you do squirm a lot and pretend to yourself that you are not captured.  You hold tight to this illusion of your autonomy, you spout sayings you think are wise or profound and you lift heavy weights to show you are superior and not susceptible to their special brand of poison.  Ah yes, that is the way these women kill.  Drop by drop.  

     Without noticing what has happened, your certainty is lost.  You are painfully insecure whenever they come around. You are filled with doubt when they do not come around.   You become accustomed to the way their spit burns and you do not notice the infection that is spreading through your body.  

The process is painful but soon you are anticipating their spit.  If only she would spit on that crusty shell between your shoulder blades then you would feel so much better.  That shell has grown cumbersome and is restricting your motion.  For years now it has been a source of discomfort.  Soon you are waiting for them to arrive and you cannot think of much else, even though you try, try so desperately, to busy yourself with all your very important business.   

     You begin to think of the spit and the tears as a gift.  The gift is priceless but to accept it has a cost.   We pay a price to receive the priceless!  And what is that price we pay?   I am not sure because we pay it over and over again.  We think we have paid in full.  

     You live quite well on your estate with its manicured lawns and the trees you have planted perfectly spaced and delightfully scattered across the hill and with highlights of colour for every season and the pond at the bottom of the hill with pretty ducks and birds all quacking and trilling.   How brilliant your creation seems to you.  How very proud you are walking about and inspecting every aspect.  And when it is cold, a fire crackles in the fireplace and there are warm rugs to cover your knees and there is a graceful light coming through the windows and wise books from floor to ceiling in the library.  How perfect you are despite the carapace between your shoulders and the tough skin that covers your chest.  The skin is especially thick and scaly over your heart.

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     I looked up from my hearty breakfast of toast and eggs and bacon and those women were standing in my kitchen.  One was black and one was white and they were both very beautiful.  They appeared very comfortable in my kitchen and wandered around looking at all the nice things I had collected.  They admired the cutlery and plates and pots and pans.  They appeared very comfortable in my kitchen and they appeared very comfortable in their bodies and moved gracefully around the room.  I was startled and said, 

     “How did you get in here?”  And they both said in unison, 

     “That’s for us to know and you to find out,” and they giggled. They were acting like naughty little girls.  But they were not little.   I asked, 

     “Are you going to hurt me?”  And that really made them laugh and the black one said, “Probably.” And the white one said, 

     “Certainly.”  

     “But you might like it,” said the black one.  

     “And you might not,” said the white one.  And the white one pursed her lips and pouted and the black one looked out the window and said, 

     “Nice place you got here,” and I said, 

     “Thank you,” because I didn’t know what else to say, “Should I call the police?” I asked and the black one said, 

     “Probably,” and the white one said, 

     “Probably not.”  

     “Maybe we should call the police?” the black one said.  

     “Yes” the white one said, finally agreeing with the black one, “We most certainly should.”  

     “Yes, yes, yes,” they both cried out loud as if they were singing a school yard taunting-tune and they danced around my table and my breakfast had gone cold. “Yes, yes, yes, let’s call them now, let’s call them quick, because this poor man is sick, sick, sick.”  

     Now my morning was completely ruined and they danced around and around and, as they passed my chair, they kissed me on my cheeks and neck.  Wet kisses from their moist lips.  The kisses stung.  

     “Yes, yes, yes,” they sang some more as if they were skipping rope, double Dutch, on the school ground at recess,

     “Let’s call the doctor, let’s call the police, let’s call the priest.  The priest the priest the priest!  We need a holy man to give last rites and make the sign of the cross and place a wafer in his mouth.   We need a doctor to pronounce him dead, dead, dead.  We need police to surround the kitchen and the house and the garden and the pond with miles and miles of yellow tape.”   

     “Crime scene!” they both cried together and they drew a chalk outline of my dead body on the kitchen floor.  

     "We do love a crime scene,” the white one said.  

     “Yes, we do,” the black one agreed.

     “My maid will be here soon” I said, “and she will make short shrift of you two monsters,” and I looked out the window and saw my maid arriving at the door and putting her key in the lock and in she came.  

     “I see you have met my friends,” she said. 

     “Would you like to touch me?” the white one said.  

     “Inappropriately?” the black one asked.   And they both raised their skirts to show me their lovely white thighs and lovely black thighs. And the black one leaned forward and showed me her breasts which seemed to be bursting all constraints.  “Inappropriate touching,” she said and raised her eyebrows.  

     “We have to leave now,” the white one said.  

     “Yes, we have places to be and people to see,” said the black one, “But we will be back when you least expect us.”

     My maid was dusting and cleaning and doing her job with her usual efficiency.  She always whistled and sang while she worked.  Just another morning. 

     After they left, I looked in the mirror because my face and neck were burning.   I was covered in red sores from their wet kisses.  I dared not call the police because of the inappropriate thoughts I had been thinking.   What would I tell them?  Who were these women?  How had they gotten into my house?   How did they know me?  It was all very suspicious and I had my reputation to protect.  I was a respected citizen in the community.  After that morning, those women came and went as they pleased and I was powerless to stop them.

     The next time they came it was evening.  I looked out my window and they were down at the pond, rowing about in my little boat.  They were fishing and they were catching great big fish, colourful fish.  They caught the fish and held them up and admired them and then they threw the fish up in the air and the fish flew away.  But there are no big fish in my pond.  They didn’t come up to the house and they didn’t wave at me or even look in my direction.  I was relieved and disappointed.  

     I asked my maid about the women and she stopped whistling and said to me, 

     “I know them from the city where I go to dance.”  That’s all she said.  That’s all she would say.

Then they came in the middle of the night.  I woke up and they were standing by my bed.  

     “Time to get up and time to go,” the white one sang in her sing-songy way.  

     “Put on these trousers,” the black one said with great authority, “And this shirt and these socks and these boots and this coat,” and she laid the items on the bed and watched me get dressed.  She stared intently at my nakedness and my half nakedness and the way I pulled up my socks and the way I tied my boots.  “You would be quite handsome and quite a good dancer if only you did not have those crusty bits,” she said.  

     “Have you ever made love to a woman?” the white one asked.  

     "Of course I have,” I answered somewhat too emphatically and defensively.  

     “Yes, but we mean, really made love to a woman, really, really, really with all your heart and with the proper deference and respect and admiration and understanding,” said the black one.

     “Yes, we mean, have you appreciated her musk and her soft interior?”  

     “Her delicate places, her secret desires?” 

     “The way she yearns, her terrible longing?” 

     “Have you tried to learn her, from the inside out?” 

     “From the outside in?” 

     “Have you?  Have you?” 

     I had nothing to say because of the crusty bits on my back and the thick reptilian skin that covered my heart and because they knew the answer anyway.   

     They each held my hands and we walked out of the house like three little children going off for a picnic together.  I was delighted and felt light on my feet for the first time in many years.  We swung our arms in unison and sang songs and they kept kissing me and rubbing my body and teasing me. The sun was coming up and the sun was chasing the mists and the mists were laughing and hiding from the sun like children playing hide and seek.  We lay down together, behind some bushes, and pretended we were mists hiding from the sun.   We stayed as still as we could but we wiggled about because the sun would catch our edges and make us giggle and little wisps of us would drift away and disappear.  It was so much fun.

     Soon the sun caught all the mists and lifted them up and the sun shone warmly on our whole bodies and we continued on across a great field with tall grasses swishing against our legs and alarmed grasshoppers jumping out of our way.    

     “Nothing lasts forever,” the white one said.  

     “Especially mists,” the black one said.  

     “Yes, especially mists.”

     I felt the comfort of their warm, sweaty palms.  The joyous comfort of their holding hands. I felt it for one last moment and then I felt their fingers sliding across my palms and up my fingers and tickling my skin and then I felt their fingertips lightly stroking my fingertips.  Each fingertip of both hands, their fingertips and my fingertips, a gentle caress fingertip to fingertip.  A thrumming in five delicate notes. A lingering touch.  And then they were gone.                                                                                                                 I could hear them receding like echoes into the distance, their laughter bouncing off the trees and off the cliffs and weaving across the water.  Their conspiratorial whispers rushing through the grasses.  

I was standing at the edge of the field and the edge of the forest.  I had been so entranced by those women and so enthralled with the games we were playing together that I had not paid attention to where we were going.  

     It was very quiet and the sun was high and the light was flat and the heat was oppressive.  My head hurt behind my eyes, from the intense brightness.  I went into the forest looking for shade and leaned my back against a tree and fell into a heavy sleep.  I woke drenched in sweat and stumbled to my feet and found a little path and plodded along.  I was disoriented and dull and felt betrayed and abandoned.  I followed a creek that flowed into a river.

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     You are by a river and you are more uncertain than ever, especially now that you are far away from the safety of your estate, especially now that you have no idea which direction is home.  You are lost.  You are alone.  You feel heavy.  You are no longer elevated by those joyous and mischievous conspirators.

     There is a ferryman waiting at the river and he beckons you to come aboard.  And you pay the fee and you pay in full without any questions without any discussion without any haggling.  And off you go up the river and now you want to travel farther and deeper because you want to find those lost women again.  Because you are addicted to their spit and their tears and their laughter and their exuberance and their glow.    

     And the ferryman gives you a sly look and says, 

     "Not so fast my young and foolish friend. You say you want to go farther up the river and deeper into those unexplored channels.  Okay, I can take you there, but you must pay me more."  And that sly old bastard is not interested in silver or gold.  He contains his own currency and changes his fees on a whim.  All the way up the river he sings his songs.  Ditties.  Old folk tunes long forgotten.  Dirges. Popular songs from another time.  He stands at the wheel with his feet apart and sways with the flow of the river.

     If you are a woman, you can pay with your body because, he says, 

     "A naked woman is the work of God."  If you are a man, he eats your fear for breakfast and that makes him strong and gives him a tremendous erection!   And then he fucks your woman and forces you to watch her pleasure and listen to her sighs and moans and he takes that preciousness from you, that intimacy.  He takes that last lovely thing you thought belonged to you and only you.  For him, it is just another penny paid and all very amusing. You have no idea what he might demand next, just for you to travel the next few miles.  And you have no idea when you will have to pony up another payment.  If you do not pay, he may simply fall asleep and let his boat drift.  

      "Will there be no joy!" you shout.  And he does not answer.  And when he has taken almost everything from you, only then you realize, sure, there will be joy.  Sure, the joy will be intense and sublime.  But there will be no joy without sorrow.  There will be no person standing close unless they also stand away.        Why did you agree to start this journey?  How were you convinced?  But that doesn’t matter now.  The question now is, how does it end?  You feel inside yourself and you realize you have very little currency left to give.  So, how does it end? 

     And now you notice the flotsam floating in the water behind the boat.  You are shedding your carapace and your newly exposed skin is soft and velvet and feminine and you can hardly remember who you once were.  Old friendships bob away like lonely little corks.  They have outlived their value.  Ancient rivalries appear like buffoons, sword fighting on a stick of driftwood.  You see yourself, dressed in tight trousers and wearing a codpiece and slashing away at... who is that anyway?  You see yourself but you do not recognize yourself. You see those lovers who were never really lovers but only part of an elaborate charade.  Lovers loving the game of playing at loving.  They are drifting away and they are crying, 

     "Help me, help me."  But you do not care.  How ridiculous that you ever cared.  And who was the you who cared?  You can't remember.  All of the many yous; the you you thought was you, the you you pretended was you, the you you wished was you, the you you hated.  All those yous are floating away in various disguises wearing mustaches, beards, expensive shoes, wigs.  Floating away in various exaggerated poses, pretentiously pointing this way and that way, as if they are in charge of important proceedings.  

     You ask the ferryman, 

     "Must I give it all up?  Every last little bit?"  He does not answer.  He does not acknowledge the question.  He is paid to drive the boat.     

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