Watching Beauty
by
Matt Werner

 I am now off to my Emergency Medical Technician class. I’m taking the 51A bus instead of a BART train because I want to throw myself on the third rail whenever the train enters the Downtown Berkeley station.

The bus’s windows will not stop rattling. I sit in the isolation of thought. I work as a sorority Houseboy, doing dishes mornings and nights, but I am unable to meaningfully communicate with the fifty UC Berkeley sorority girls I live with. I don’t know if it’s because I’m male and I buy my clothes at the Salvation Army, or that I’m an English major or what. Last night at the dinner table, I overheard Catherine and the other Orange County girls talking about blow job techniques and scented tampons. Although I live in the same house as her, I have never had an actual conversation with Catherine.

During the EMT lecture, my hands are stiff from my houseboy duties. Yesterday, I had nine hours of English class at the junior college. Lately, I tend to stare at walls and windows as if they hold the meaning of my existence. My mind often pulses with vacancy. The only thing that keeps me on edge is that tonight I will see Catherine at her sharpest.

In EMT class, I imagine Jesus Christ lying, fallen off His cross. I approach to determine Jesus’ level of consciousness by pinching His ear. Jesus is unresponsive. I administer two rescue breaths and initiate CPR. The first three of my fifteen thrusts into Christ’s dirty chest crack like sheets of ice falling from rooftops.

Purple blood comes from Jesus’ palms and feet. Intestines slightly eviscerate from His lateral abdominal wound. I lick Jesus’ stale lip area to better seal the connection to administer breaths. I repeat the fifteen-and-two CPR process without emotion or full consciousness.

I long to stop and cry and hug Jesus. His serene face is now radiant like Catherine’s. I bend for another blow-kiss. The instructor calls on me.

~

Late that night at the sorority, I imagine that my bathroom mirror is infused with the image of Stephen Daedalus. My temples ache. My limbs hang like black bodies from trees in the South.

Looking out my window, I see Catherine’s light turn off across the sorority quad. I am instantly invigorated with my blood-lust for the Prada-wearing blonde.

It is time.

I walk down the hall to the storage closets and hide behind the sliding mirrors in the large first floor powder room. I keep the sliding doors open two inches and see the back of her body as she walks in. My eyes adjust to the light, and I see the reflection of her front in the sink mirror opposite to me.

I still myself.

She turns on the water, and I soon see steam cloud the mirror. She holds her arms below the steaming water. She removes a thin object from her pocket and runs it under the water.

Her body tenses as her right hand moves slowly over her left arm.

I am gripped by the pockets of air released from this girl who fastidiously cuts her inner arm with a wet razor blade.

My feet are now pulsating with an overabundance of blood. I cannot slide my feet—she will hear me.

She now quickens her breaths. I see blood drip onto the tile floor. She tilts her head back orgasmically, mouth open. She continues deftly sliding the blade back and forth over her left arm.

Her uncontrolled, shallow respirations are screaming at me.

My foot slides.

The water is still running.

Silence.

I’m screaming without sound.

She knows I’m here. She has to.

My hand is down my pants.

She paradoxically remains still while shivering in held cries.

I wish to be her Pablo Neruda whispering, "I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."

I wish to be her Oscar Wilde declaring, “the well-bred contradict other people; the wise contradict themselves,” and then I go on to contradict other people.

I wish to be the man who violently makes love to this woman whose beauty is as effortless as an F. Scott Fitzgerald tense-change—

But I am not violently making love to her.

Instead, I just watch and listen to such beauty cut herself away—unable to control her control. I just watch such beauty cut and destroy herself, unable to approach her, and I live another day each day to watch.