The Unknown Knowns (9 page)

My own mating ritual was less about animal magnetism and more about compounding ironies that eventually led to doing it. Jean met me when I still worked at the Center for Gender and Power. Her Catholic studies group, the Sisters of Ruth, paid a visit one day to check out our latest exhibition. Actually it was more like a fact-finding mission. Jean's parish priest had asked the group to evaluate the show, called
Faith Rape: The Myth of the Godhead and Sexual Violation,
to see if it contained any serious blasphemies.

They walked in, four women in their twenties, eight rolling eyes and a frenzy of smirks. I don't remember having a first impression of Jean, except that she was at least a head taller than her companions. The natural impulse was to identify her as their leader, but that was just the tallness. In fact their leader was a squat woman named Bess Howard, who had a loud voice and the ever-frowning face of a Carmelite nun.

The show had just opened the weekend before to withering reviews in the local alternative weekly. Mostly they focused on the Virgin Mary diorama, an exploration of the phrase
full of grace
through the critical lens of gender politics. You know: Is “immaculate conception” a euphemism for date rape on a cosmic scale? Is consensual sex possible when the guy in the equation is the creator of everything? Tough questions like that were posed and perhaps even answered.

Jilly wanted the “phallic manifestation of Yahweh” and the ambivalent terror and arousal of the victim Madonna to be conveyed with poignancy and resonance. But, she said: “Go easy on the comic book shit, Jim. No melodrama.”

What I came up with was, I thought, pretty subtle.

Mary is viewed from behind, kneeling in her blue robe and head scarf, so you can't actually see her face. One hand is raised to block the celestial light that emanates from behind a scrim. It took me a long time to find the colored gel that said
miraculous
and, at the same time,
menacing
. In the end I picked yellow.

To represent the Creator, I built a shadow puppet that threw the silhouette of a lightning bolt on the scrim. Inside the bolt I added just the faintest outline of a penis, so vaguely dicklike that you might not notice it at first, but once you'd seen it you'd never look at lightning the same way again. Or that was my intention,
anyway. The critic at the weekly likened it to the logo for a heavy metal band called Cock Storm. I looked it up, and I'm pretty sure the band doesn't even exist.

When Jean and her church group arrived, I was inside another diorama, “The Sex Life of Zeus.” This was supposed to be my most ambitious display in the show. In one scene Zeus was going to pay a sexy visit to the imprisoned Danaë in the form of a shower of gold. In the other he would drop in on Leda in the form of a lusty swan, and the Greek god would have his way with her, swan-style. In dioramic parlance it was going to be a classic diptych.

I wanted to pull out all the stops. For the shower of gold I requisitioned one of those rain machines like they use in rainforest displays at the zoo. I planned to light the drops with a crazy golden light. For the Leda part I envisioned an animatronic swan that stood some seven feet tall. I wanted that long neck—whatever the swan equivalent of a gooseneck is—to writhe and strike at Leda's bosom.

I thought long and hard about how to portray a swan, or any kind of waterfowl, in a state of sexual arousal without it just looking stupid. Which must be a problem for the swans themselves too. I couldn't, for instance, risk giving the bird a penis, because people might laugh.

In the end the question of swan arousal was moot. Budgetary constraints meant that we couldn't get the rain machine or the huge animatronic swan. The Colorado Springs Center for Gender and Power was having funding troubles, so I had to make do with a stuffed bird rented from a taxidermy shop. And for the shower we put an intern up in the rafters to drop handfuls of gold glitter every couple of minutes. For cost purposes we combined
the two myths, so that Zeus shows up in a shower of gold that turns into a swan and then does it with a woman who might be either Leda or Danaë. These were compromises that I didn't want to make. Still, when I stood back and saw the thing in action, it was pretty riveting. And unexpectedly sexual.

The problem that day, the day Jean came to the Center, was that our intern called in sick and I had to sub in the glitter position. About noon I saw the four women come around the corner of the gallery. They were talking about my Virgin Mary and one of them was saying, “Was that supposed to be a dick in the lightning?”

They all laughed, all except the tall one. Her eyes landed softly on the swan below me, and mine on her. From where I sat, she looked more beautiful than Danaë herself. The Olympian light shone on her upturned face like a golden apple. My hands were aching to do something, to expend the pent-up amorousness I was feeling. But they were full of glitter, and I didn't want to release it until all the women were gathered in front of the diorama.

Soon they stood directly beneath me, my future and sudden love along with her three unremarkable companions. I released a handful of gold and cued the sound effects: thunder; a mad fluttering of wings; and then the call of the mute swan, which isn't actually mute. It sounds like a crow with problems, or like an oboe clearing its throat. I released the second handful of glitter.

Bess Howard, the leader of the group, clawed at her eyes.

“Christ!” she screamed. “My eyes!”

“What
was
that stuff?”

“You okay, Bess?”

“Did that guy just
throw
something at us?”

“What guy?” I was dressed in burglar black to conceal myself from the visitors. I wore greasepaint.

“There's somebody up there.”

One of the women pointed, and the Sisters of Ruth all looked up at me, Bess Howard blinking frantically. I tried to apologize but realized that the dynamic was all wrong. I was in a position of superiority, elevated above them. Any apology from this lofty perch would appear kind of condescending. So I slid off the rafter and started to lower myself to the floor, but I must have lost my grip. I was using an aluminum-based glitter that gets slippery when combined with palm sweat. Jilly wouldn't spring for polyester.

I didn't land directly on the swan. That would have been worse. I twisted my ankle and kind of fell forward with a yelp. When I did so, I tried to stabilize myself by grabbing the bird's neck. We both tumbled forward, me and the horny feathered manifestation of Zeus. His beak came off in my hand, and when I finally regained my footing, Zeus lay there in a pile of used glitter staring at me with those miserable swan eyes, beakless and emasculated.

Jean was the first one to speak. She said: “Is that what you call a swan dive?”

Everyone laughed. Even I had to admit it was pretty funny.

The next day Jean called the Center and asked for the “guy who fell on the swan.” Jilly handed over the phone without looking at me. Jean asked me on our first date that very night. Before she hung up, she said, “And bring the glitter. I've got some ideas.”

My eyes are filled with gold as I think about what happened later that evening, Leda and her ugly duckling. The “shower” of gold glitter, her naked body on mine. Zeus and Danaë. Then I
hear the boy beside the Lazy River yell to his mother and I'm back in the present moment.

“Mommy! Mom-
my
!”

The Single Mom excuses herself by raking her nails across the Nautikon's shoulder. Hold that thought, her eyes say as she carries the child through the lobby to the bank of elevators. The Nautikon cradles his head in his interlocked fingers. The beer bottle glistens brown in the blue light of the pool. He sighs and shakes his head. “I don't know how you do it,” he seems to be saying, except he's saying it to himself.

Then, in a single, preternaturally sexy movement, he strips off his shirt and stands up. He's walking in my direction, clutching his aqua calculator in one hand and flipping a menacing Maglite in the other. In six determined strides he reaches the bank opposite my table. With only the Lazy River demarcating our spheres of operation, I start casting around for a means of escape. A shame-activated cloaking device would be ideal under the circumstances. My heart pounds. Then, just when I think he might leap across the raging waters and accost me, he doesn't.

Turning right, the Nautikon follows the river upstream to its source. There a jumble of rocks, scree you might call it, conceals the pumps at the back of the cocktail bar. And although the rocks are probably just fiberglass sprayed with a concrete compound, the whole mise-en-scène is pretty convincing, even to a scrupulous diorama builder like myself. I make a mental note to take some measurements for the museum. He kneels to probe a frisée of plastic ferns with his Maglite, stopping now and then to diddle his aqua calculator. The whole act, now that I reflect on it, is deeply sexual in nature.

By now I'm thinking to myself, What could this guy be look
ing for? What could an aquatic being possibly expect to learn from our cheesy fake waterworks? Could our humble little museum mirages serve his mission of converting the bellicose land dweller to the peaceful feminine virtues of Nautika? Might our vain attempts to exceed nature through taxidermy and three-point perspective actually hold the key to repairing our damaged world? If that's true, I'm thinking, it would be very awesome.

Now the Nautikon's in the water. He swims the length of the river (several hundred meters, I'd guess) without surfacing for air even once. Holy Jesus, it's cool. I know that I should stay put in the deck chair, but I can't restrain myself, so I trail him along the bank. The guy's stroke is otherworldly. It's like a dolphin crossed with a sine wave, all fluid and loping and constant, and through the rippling water his blue sheen is amplified. In the water he comes alive, drawing forth the pure, feminine creature he's been concealing under that brutish disguise.

My pulse races and races, the room smears. Then I lose my footing.

In an instant I'm up to my neck in the surging river, trying to stay afloat in dress slacks and my trademark shirt—a look I like to call Harry Truman casual. The current is way stronger than I'd anticipated. I go under once, twice. I claw my way to the surface. A scene from swim class at the university pool flashes through my mind, followed by a still more terrible vision.

It's the Nautikon, and he's surfacing before me, just like that statue of Neptune's chariot coming out of the fountain at Versailles. At last I regain my footing. (The Lazy River, it turns out, is only three feet deep.) His eyes are flashing with intent, but not for me. He looks past me, through me, beyond me. But for a split second I see reflected in his brown eyes all of my faults. They
must be enormous, I think, to contain all of Jim Rath's suckiness. I see my stunted monkey body in duplicate, two flailing specks drowning in his irises. He throws back his head, and droplets of water spray out behind him in slow motion. I see his teeth and I smell his breath. Anchovies and brine and beer and old secrets. Then he ducks under again and I'm left alone with my shivering body.

I drag myself onto the tiled shore and lie there for a while like a castaway. If you're familiar with
Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth
(No. 11; November 1973; VG $45), you have a sense of the gravitas of this situation. My feeling is utter loneliness. Desolation the day after the day after the apocalypse. Please bear in mind that my wife has left me. Please consider this. And also consider that the reason she left me is embodied by the guy in the Lazy River, and consider also that I just made a total jerk of myself in front of him. Consider all that stuff going forward, and maybe you'll begin to understand what I've done. Or what they say I've done.

On the elevator I try to ignore the puddle forming at my feet. I slink down the hall, listening to my sneakers go
squish, squish, squish, squish
. Only when I get to my room do I realize there aren't any dry clothes to change into. Fortunately the Radisson gift shop is stocked with souvenir apparel. I sink forty-nine dollars into a Colorado Rockies jersey, a pair of running shorts with the slogan
MILE-HIGH
branded across the backside, and a couple pairs of athletic tube socks. They come in a two-pack. After a quick change of clothes in the men's room, I hurry back to the pool, where (no!) the Single Mom is back for more action.

She's draped in a sarong, her plump legs crossed, flapping a sandal against her heel. Either it's an ear infection or the sound of
the flapping is actually hurting my head. She arches her back to improve the bosom presentation, and right on cue, along comes the Nautikon, balancing two frosty glasses on the palm of one hand. The little boy? He's conveniently out of the picture.

The Single Mom shows those nicotine teeth. The Nautikon wags his head, delivers a boyish grin, and joins her at the table.

“June,” he says. “It's awesome you're doing this. Give the rug rat a little time-out. Let him watch
Dora the Explorer
. Cut loose, girrrrl!” He musses her hair.

“Oh, Officer,” she says. “Are you flirting with me? You know a single mother has a lot of responsibility.” (Officer?) Suddenly her eyelashes start batting and you think they'll never stop.

“Comfortable Screw?” he says, sliding one of the drinks under her suspiciously perky nose.

“Believe me—it's been a while.”

“What say we make up for lost time?” he says.

Have you ever felt utterly bummed? It's like regular disappointment except worse: you have a bucket full of admiration; you're drawing it too swiftly up the well; you're almost at the top when suddenly the bottom falls out, and all that welling-up water of love just drops. I guess I took it personally. But why not? When a man of virtue—maybe the first and last man of virtue—stumbles, even if he's just ordering a cocktail with a sexually degrading name for a plainly desperate surface woman—when he stumbles we all fall to our knees.