Photo by Alexandre Boucey on Unsplash.

This passage originally appeared in I AM MERCURY Book Three: Subterraneans (2017).

So sweet the pain.

That’s the first instinct I felt when I found out I was pregnant. “This is going to hurt like a bitch.” The next thoughts were practical in a way. “How much weight am I going to gain? I’m going to need maternity clothes. What space for the baby? We’re going to need a bigger apartment. What am I going to tell my parents?”

“What will he say?”

It didn’t matter terribly in the beginning that something was growing inside me. Some foreign entity, planted into my stomach by a man I told not to wear a condom because I was on birth control. I didn’t feel all that different, except for the nausea. But it all leads up to the godawful pain of childbirth.

And they told me it wouldn’t really hurt because I’d be drugged up and floating on a cloud while people yell to push.

You’re standing here next to me, gripping my hand, the sweat pouring down your face. You’re the only one not screaming at me as I stare at you through squinted eyes. You let me squeeze your hand and I think of how cute you look in those teal-green scrubs. I love you even though you did this to me. I love you and your face, and those pale hazel eyes. I squeeze your hand as I push, like all the people in the room are yelling at me to do. We’ve already been here for hours, in basically this same position.

I met you at a party in college. It was before you ever did any college radio work, so you were just this guy at a party where my boyfriend had to leave early. At the time, my boyfriend John had been trying to get me out of this pattern of being a peppy suburbanite cheerleader. I went along with it because that wasn’t who I wanted to be moving forward. It was college, it was a vague sense of the real world and responsibility, and John liked things a bit dark.

John listened to punk rock, metal, and had just gotten a pierced ear and a tattoo on his shoulder. He read books by guys like Bret Easton Ellis and Don DeLillo. He was sometimes loud and obnoxious. But you, you were John times a thousand; you were an amped up version of my boyfriend. There’s no real way to describe it, there was a certain charisma that attracted me to you. This party in colllege, people drank from red plastic cups and listened to Pulp on the stereo. Smokers were in and out of the house, through a sliding door in the back of the house that accessed a patio. You were with them, out back, smoking like a chimney and drinking from a bottle, trying to regale the small crowd with your strict opinions about certain movies like Alien and The Thing.

I first noticed you as John and I stood out on that patio, sharing a joint. I know for a fact I caught your eye before you caught mine. But we stood there, separate from you and your little group of movie discussions. I remember hearing your tale of being terrified of Alien. “...when I was a kid, we went on the Great Movie Ride at MGM studios. And when you go on it, you’re thinking, hey, it’s Disney, it’s going to be really tame and fun. The outside looks like that Chinese Theatre in L.A. So you go in, and you’re taken through all these movies, like Wizard of Oz, y’know, and Public Enemy. And all the sudden you’re on the Nostromo. And the Xenomorph BURSTS OUT OF THE FUCKING CEILING IN YOUR FACE...” and the group erupts in laughter.

My friend Chloe stood with us. We passed it around between we three and the others didn’t really notice we were smoking marijuana. 

Oh fuck it hurts.

The blood and random mucous coming out of me. What a mess. I felt horribly embarrassed when my water broke. We were walking around the mall, Chloe and me, and it was like I pissed myself. Chloe got on my phone right away to tell you.

Chloe smoked with us; this was her house. Well, her parents’ house where I met you. They were out of town on some vacation and she decided to throw this rager. You continue with your story, “And there’s Sigourney at the end of the Nostromo sequence with a flamethrower, a y’know, a wax double. And she says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.‘ And I’m cringing and crying and like, yes, Sigourney, please, take care of that.”  

I was in a bluish dress that had this mess of teal blotches all over and it goes down to my knees, but hugs my hips. It makes my boobs look amazing.

Oh and they leak. They fucking leak milk. They’re going to leak milk for the next two fucking years, aren’t they? It’s so gross.

In the dress, my boobs look amazing and I keep catching John peeking at my cleavage, as do all the other men I walk past at this party. I can sense Chloe’s jealousy just a little bit. There was some guy there she wanted to impress, but she wore a yellow tank with jeans, which was way too casual if she wanted to impress the guy. And yeah, if I remember right, that guy peered at my cleavage too. But they all did, so whatever.

Don’t think that I was just some quiet wallflower there. I had a reputation in college for always trying to drink and get fucked up with the big boys. Most of them I could drink under a fucking table, but we’d still have a great time. This was just at the beginning of that phase. Me and Chloe and John, smoking up and listening to you tell a group how the Alien scared you to death. God I haven’t thought about John in ages.

You just perched on their patio table, your feet on a chair, smoking and drinking from a bottle. You told stories and kept the conversation up. Almost everything I heard had something to do with movies, music, or television. You had a theory about conversations at parties, dinners, etc. If you could limit the conversation to those topics, you’d never run out of things to talk about.  Awkwardness would not set in, and people would like you. The illusion of charisma through shared experience.

Your hand grips mine tight, but it’s not you that’s in pain, in a daze, contractions flashing in terrible intervals.

When John had to leave, I sat at the table with Chloe and we drifted into your conversation. I didn’t feel terribly high, but my head was swimming a little from the Captain’n’Cokes I drank. The first thing you said to me was, “Hon, your boob is showing just a little bit.” Embarrassingly called out by obviously the most interesting person at the party, I pulled up on the front of my dress. Smiling. Red-faced.

“No, it’s cool,” you said. “I really didn’t mind looking.”

Why did John have to leave? What was it that drove the wedge that pushed me to you, to my destiny? To this hospital bed, where I push and push and push? I don’t even remember anymore. Maybe his family was going on vacation and he had to go with them. Maybe he had to go to work that night, a desk clerk at a hotel nearby. My fate, you and I intertwined and creating life, that’s a position frozen in time around which they all circled. There were others, trapped in our mesh, whose destinies flowed away from that night. How we ended up in Chloe’s bedroom together, lips pressed together, I don’t know. 

“Let’s live together next year,” I told you. “We could have so much fun.”

“That sounds amazing,” you said to me. Your hand was under my skirt while we stood there against the door in Chloe’s room. I could tell how clumsy you were with it, inexperienced, but you still hit a nice spot. I don’t know if you were trying to push circles around my clit with your wet fingers, or maybe figure eights, but it felt good. And your lips on my neck.

The doctor and several nurses peer between my legs. It’s like a regular party down there, everybody’s watching the show and I don’t think I’ve ever bared myself to more than one person at a time ever in my life. Maybe when I was younger, when I was a girl and we were cheerleaders, or when I played basketball in middle school, or maybe even gym class. They’re there to watch it go from a beautiful, perfectly groomed and inviting pussy to a ripped, haggard, and deformed cunt.

And it all began at that party. High and drunk, my head swimming just like now, but it felt so good. In those moments, I loved you. I could see myself with you, more than John. You were just so much more exciting and the thrill of your inexperienced hand in my panties, we were bad together. I was somebody else’s, but the truth was that we belonged together.

My bloodshot, dazed eyes stare into yours, my eyebrows raised as I try to tell you, “We are bringing this baby into the world. You and I,” but I know you can’t hear me. You can’t understand. My words are feeble and pale. They’re all staring between my legs and waiting, shouting their instructions to push, but the world goes dim because I can feel you.

You took your hand out of my panties, planted a kiss like a signature on my lips, then dropped to your knees. You push your face between my legs, press into my damp underwear, and peel them down my legs where I feel them tickle around my ankles. There’s a tiny flash of pleasure at that simple feeling, my undies down around my feet. As I feel your tongue down there, slipping around my clit, I don’t give a fuck about John. I don’t care that this is Chloe’s room. I don’t care about the world ending or that I have class on Monday or that I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life. My hands run through your hair and pull you tight to me. My right leg goes up on your shoulder.

I hear, “I really didn’t mind looking,” in my mind, as though you whisper it flush against my ear. But it’s you, with those scrubs on, still there, holding my hand. It’s lightning through my body, all the way down to the baby pressing to escape. I can feel the world leaking away from me, spilling out of me.

My eyes flicker open as I feel the sticky, ugly wetness between my fingers. I’m face to face with you, but your eyes are closed. You’ve got a small smile tattooed on your lips, as though your sleep is the sleep of the righteous and just. The sticky wetness on my fingers comes from the damp spots along my belly. At first I think my water’s broken. I’m shouting at you but my lips don’t move.

I’m back in Chloe’s room, and the two of us undress each other for the first time.

I’m back in the delivery room, and you squeeze my hand tight while I push.

I’m lying in bed with you, and I think you might be dead next to me because you won’t answer my cries. “Alexander, you wake up right now,” I think I’m saying. “You wake up and help me, there’s something wet on the bed. Something could be wrong with the baby.”

But my hand is too heavy, it’s weighted down (squeezed tight in the delivery room), I can’t reach out to touch your sweet, sleeping face. My eyes won’t even close, there’s not enough strength in my body. “Alex, Alex, it’s me, I’m slipping...” My panicked (pleasure sighs in Chloe’s bedroom) whimpers echo only in my head. There’s one last enormous push, teeth clenched, possibly squeezing your fingers so tight that I hear the bones crack, your other arm around me, I’m soaking in sweat and saliva escapes down my bared lips, my hair feels matted and disgusting after pressing it so hard back into the pillow. After we undress each other, you’re on top of me, you’re pushing into me (no wait, what’s escaping? what year is this?), and you feel so good, you’re big and you’re hitting that spot over and over and over, and I can’t tell whether this is happening those years ago in Chloe’s bedroom or if it’s the bedroom in our apartment, nine months before the delivery room. “It’s out of me, it’s out of me!” I’m shouting somewhere, at some point in time indistinguishable from any others. I can still feel it connected by the umbilical chord.

The doctor lifts the slimy, pink thing into the air, crying it’s amazing cry, announcing itself to the world. Summer, my Summer, our baby girl, whose soft and green eyes speak all the lines of poetry you used to read me in college, all those sweet words that you’d whisper right into my ear. It’s almost as though I hear her speak, ‘Mommy, I don’t want you to take offense at this or anything, but daddy is my favorite person in the whole world.’

And even as I hold her for the first time and you look over my shoulder, I can see you with your eyes closed and the blood on the sheets between us. It’s not you that it’s spilling out of, it’s me, it’s always spilling out of me. Somewhere my baby girl and I are alive with you, but here I’m bleeding from my stomach and my womb; the life spills out of me. Your lips taste like smoke, like slow death. 

In the delivery room, our baby’s raised high and we hold her close. In Chloe’s room, I know she’s never going to forgive me for making a mess of her sheets. In our own bedroom, there’s a pair of scissors in my belly. 

“In my father’s house there are many mansions...”

I’m moaning loudly, howling into the darkness, and I hear the banging on the door outside. “Who the fuck’s in there?” I can’t help from shouting, “Oh God!” over and over. “Rosie? Rosie is that you? Oh goddammit!” To which I respond, “Oh Jesus! Oh Fuck,” unable to resist the overwhelming tide lapping upon the shore.

Plunge it into me, over and over again.

So sweet the pain; the life comes out. My body, my arms, my eyelids too heavy, pulled down by gravity, the work finally done. We smile and kiss. We admire the creature we’ve assembled, the force we’ve merged through will and mitochondrial chemicals. I can still feel the chord connected, needing to be snipped by the doctor’s scissors. She’s the most beautiful thing we’ve ever imagined, but only because she’s ours. “She’s our Summer,” I tell you, and you press your lips to my left temple. My hair clings to your cheek from the sweat, just as it did the night of the party, just as it does when you wake up and realize I’m dead and gone.

The light through the windows wakes you, the tears stream from your face. You’re in such an utter state of shock that you stumble out of bed. My eyes peer directly into yours, incapable of blinking. You use the sheets to cradle me, as though I’m the child, while they soak through white to pink to red. You place a kiss on my cold lips and close my eyes with your fingers, whispering something I’m no longer capable of hearing.

“I said, can I call you?” were the words from your sweet lips when we were finished in Chloe’s room. 

“You don’t even have my number,” I said. 

You’re busy tying up your boots, a pair of combat boots that you wore everywhere. “You’re not going to give me your number?”

“Nope. I’m going to make you suffer.”

We’d actually spent the night there, in my best friend’s room, door locked. That hideous morning light telling us that our sweet night, our first time together, was over. I found a small notepad on the desk Chloe had next to the door. There was a coffee cup with a bright red heart on it that contained a number of pens, pencils, and a pair of scissors. My fingers brushed against the metal of the scissors as I grabbed for a pen and I got woozy, but you were up quickly to steady me.

“Hangover?” you asked.

“Something like that.”

With that I scribbled my name and number on the top sheet of the notepad.

“It was fun. Let’s...”

“Have dinner sometime,” you interrupted.

I was going to say ‘let’s do it again, sometime’ but I didn’t let you know that. I simply stood there, stupefied that you got what you wanted and you could’ve just walked away, but you wanted to make it romantic. You wanted to turn it from a one-night stand to something else. That kept me coming back to you.

The doctor snips the chord.