Eight
Grieving
the Shmoo
I wasn’t completely sure that Frosty
would set foot in a place as civilized as the Hotel Bel Canto. So much more the surprise when he arrived
fifteen minutes early. I cracked open my
door and smiled at him under my still-wet bangs. After two dreary, stormy days without, I was
entirely too desperate for him. I knew I
had to fight it.
“Frosty!” I said. “Come on in.
Have a seat. I’m still about five
minutes from perfection.”
“But you don’t under... . never mind.”
He sat on the edge of his chair like a
sprinter in the blocks. I abandoned
conversation for the roar of the blow-dryer, but I could see him in the mirror,
jaw muscles tight as guitar strings.
“It’th jutht goh-jeth out theah,” I said,
lisping around my lipstick. “I left the
blinds open last night, and this morning the sun just about exploded me out of
bed!”
After this bit of declarative puffery, I
felt Frosty’s touch at three different places: a hand on either side of my
waist, his mouth on my right earlobe.
“You wouldn’t believe what’s going on out
there!” he whispered. “Frosted Glass
Woman has scattered a full left arm along the rocks. Two kneecaps.
A chin and both ears!”
Frosty was now touching me in four
places. I wiggled my rump just to make
sure it stayed that way.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “I can’t
afford to start anything right now. But
do save these items for later.” His fingers sledded my half-moons, sending
laser-shots all through my posterior regions – that is, until I registered what
he was saying.
“Frosty,” I said, er... frostily.
“If you don’t want to hear the song, perhaps you shouldn’t drop your
quarter in the slot.” I turned to poke
him in the ribs, but found him kneeling at my feet, desperate.
“Please oh please forgive me, Sandy, but
there is enough glass out there to supply a Coca-Cola bottling plant and I
GOT-ta HAV-va FIX, man!”
He began writhing on the floor, slapping
his arm, looking for a vein. How could I
not reward such bad acting? I lifted a
foot onto his chest.
“I forgive the lowly addict. However, having juiced my oranges so early in
the morning, young man, if you expect me to spend the day bending and
harvesting like a migrant worker, this evening I expect you to apply that
little kielbasa of yours to divine purposes.
Got it?”
I didn’t bother waiting for an answer,
but charged into the bedroom in search of my jeans. Frosty’s voice rose from the bathroom floor
in a Calypso reverb.
“Lohr!
What a woo-man!”
Minutes later, Frosty was nudging me to
the point of a great rockpile, somewhere near our previous treasure trove. The diggings were so plentiful, in fact, that
Frosty had assigned this date its own place on the sacred calendar of Frosted
Glass Woman: The Day of Royal Crescents.
In any case, there he was prodding me
forward as I dug in my heels like an underfed mule. So sue me – I had become nervous around
breakers.
“You must go forward!” he commanded. “You have to go right to the edge or you
won’t understand.”
“Understand what? Dampness? Sogginess? Pneumonia?
I understand that very well, thankyouverymuch!”
After a few minutes of this
pushme-pullyou, my spirit weakened and I edged my way forward, until my toes
were fixed upon the crest. Looking down,
I found a peacock’s-tail of rocks, possessed of that semi-gloss sheen denoting
recent contact with the ocean. A wave
bore down on me, curling over the top like a pompadour and landing smack! on
the sand. I braced for the shock of cold
liquid on my feet, perhaps up to my kneecaps, but then... a funny thing
happened. The water struck the rocks and
just... died. The pile soaked it up like
a sponge. I looked back to find Frosty’s
grin.
“Cool, no? Something to do with friction
and inertia. The rocks create all these
little explosions of water, and they basically kill each other off. And I’ll tell ya, it’s just about the most
glorious glass-hunting perch in the world.
Same technique as fly-fishing, only now it’s one step down, pick it up,
one step back and you’re safe. And then
the wave comes in and reshuffles the cards, revealing ever-more gems as you
go.”
We spent the day ranging our sun-sated
beach, prairie-dogging the royal crescents.
Beyond the easy gluttony of it all, I noticed two interesting
patterns. First, that in this environment,
green was the most unnatural color and thus, easiest to spot. Second, that every fiftieth wave did, in
fact, conquer the peak and splash you good.
(These were, however, about as subtle as Godzilla, so they were pretty
easy to evade.)
At the end of our six-hour traverse, we
crowbarred our bodies onto my chocolate-colored rock and observed the
unsettling pitch-change of the Whalespout.
(I wondered if all those hours of opera were having an effect on my
hearing.) We then dumped our respective
Zip-Locks all over the surface of Mocha Rock, and piled through them like two
kids with a new set of Legos.
“Pick out your favorite,” said Frosty,
his eyes flashing.
That was easy. I had been admiring a marshmallow white that
resembled the Shmoo – a storybook character from my childhood. I picked it out and placed it in Frosty’s
hand. To my great horror, he proceeded
to chuck it into the ocean, about halfway to the Whalespout.
“What the... what the fucking fucking
fuck did you fucking do that for?” I was mad.
“A sacrifice to Our Lady,” said Frosty,
quite seriously. “To keep absolutely
everything from a Royal Crescent day would constitute unspeakable greed, and
thereby desecrate the great name of Frosted Glass Woman.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me
you were going to do that before... before you did that?”
“If I did, would you have picked out your
favorite piece?”
“Of course not! But I also wouldn’t be experiencing this
great desire to wring your fucking neck!”
Frosty sorted through his pile and handed
me a glassine chocolate bar. I hurled it
into the drink with great speed and efficiency.
“There,” he said. “You feel better?”
“Yes,” I said. It was a lie; twenty percent of me was still
grieving the Shmoo. “But… how do I know
that was your favorite piece?”
“Would I denigrate the sacred name of
Frosted Glass Woman by offering less than the best?”
I had always figured these
pseudo-religious comments as some kind of subtle, elaborate joke, but their
consistency and fervor were getting to me.
Before I could raise a question, Frosty pulled a pink stick from his
pack and handed it to me.
“Salmon jerky. I’ve got some mango nectar to wash it down.”
After our marathon harvest, I was
famished, so not even the powerful fishy smell could drive me away. Frosty, meanwhile, offered the next item on
our agenda.
“There’s a trail near the lighthouse that
winds down to a little-used cove. The
sunlight hits there only in the afternoon – about now, actually. When was the last time you walked a beach in
the buff?”
I tried to keep the blood from my face,
but the look in Frosty’s eyes told me I was failing.
“Unless you allow for the possibility of
previous lives,” I confessed. “Never.”
“Ah!” Frosty barked, wagging a
finger. “Today we pitch another taboo
into the Pacific!”
“So what was it like?” asked Frosty.
“Well, you know. You were there, too.”
Frosty chuckled. “It wasn’t exactly my first time, darlin’.”
“So, when was your first time?”
“I was nine. My parents were nudie dorkers.”
“Eck-skyuse me?” I said.
“Nudie dorkers. Naturists.
One time when I was twelve I was hanging out buck naked in the back yard
when the crusty old Serbian guy next door yells out, ‘Hey! Hey you! Nudie
dorker! Yes, I see you. Put your clothes back on or I’ll call the
cops!’ And I said, ‘Mind your own business or I’ll call the cops on you, you
Peeping Tom!’”
“You evidently got your cojones at an
early age.” I said.
“And not afraid to show them off,
nee-ther. It’s a powerful thing,
teaching your kid to be comfortable with his body. So… what was it like?”
“Damn!
You are so well-tracked!”
“I’m a choo-choo train, baby!”
I folded my arms and feigned
contemplation. “Okay. I’m vi-zhoo-uh-lizing. We’re at the cove, the sun is shining, and
I’m unzipping my jeans – Oh! There it is.
That classic Puritan American conflict.
Utter shame and paranoia, mixed in with a definite sexual buzz. I’m picturing an old Irish pub in my
head. Seated at a table in the center of
the place are a fat, pinch-faced nun and a hooker with blood-red lipstick and
huge tits. The two of them are carrying
on this fierce shouting match over the immorality of public nudity.”
“What are they drinking?”
“Ummm, the nun has whiskey, the hooker is
working on her third pint of Guinness.”
“Egad!” said Frosty, slapping the table.
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll fill you in later. So… what did you feel like afterward?”
“Well, gradually the whole thing became
less and less shameful, and, at the same time, less sexual. The nun and the hooker had both gotten sloppy
drunk and were staggering around the pub singing ‘Molly Malone.’ A breeze swept across me like a giant
paintbrush, left shoulder to right buttock.
Then I began to observe the way my body really works – not separate
units mapped out by articles of clothing but all one fluid, immaculately
designed machine.
“Ten minutes later, an astounding thing
happened. I actually forgot that I was
nude, just for a moment, forgot all the little flaws I was putting under the
glare of daylight. I swept myself around
and took in the seacliffs, the battering of the waves, the track of light
across the wet sand. This’ll sound just
godawful kozmick, but it made me feel very ‘at one’ with it all.
Frosty raised his hands and said, “The
Moment of Eden.”
And I thought, Exactly. The momentary
erasure of self-knowledge, the return to nature, the raised objection to
Yahweh: Hey, ya big moron, you’re the
one who made us like this – why should we be ashamed of our bodies?
Frosty smiled knowingly. “I’ve heard of it lots of times, but never
really experienced it. I don’t have
those fences to jump, I’ll never know that moment of… unexpected victory. It must be like a really good drug.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what it was,” I said. “And thanks for dragging me into it.”
“Anytime, Clementine.”
We huddled next to the fire, finishing off yet
another culinary miracle: chicken curry salad, sourdough bread dipped in olive
oil, steamed asparagus in a lemon herb sauce.
The only flaw was dinnerware. In
his eagerness to get to the glass, Frosty had skipped his morning dishwashing,
so we ate off Frisbees. After a day like
that, I wasn’t about to complain.
I soon discovered the reason behind that “Egad!”
Frosty extracted two, well… frosty glasses from
the cooler, planted them next to the lantern, then cracked open two pints of
Guinness and poured them. The lines of
foam worked their way heavenward, dropping out flocks of maple syrup seagulls
till both glasses were black with a half-inch cap of custard-colored foam. My first sip was rewarded with a spreading
licorice calm – pot roast in a glass, someone once said. Frosty matched me sigh for sigh. Not a bad time to bring up a long-delayed
question.
“Frosty, I don’t want to sound like I’m teasing
you, but whenever you mention Frosted Glass Woman I get the funny feeling that
you’re serious. Is it some kind of
religion?”
Frosty took on a serious expression, scrunching
his face until a crease spread across his forehead. He raised his index finger and posed a
question.
“In the general progression of ideas and ideals,
what is the level of thought directly preceding a religion?”
I took a sip, wiped the foam from my mouth and
answered, “I would say… mythology.”
“And mythology is begat by…”
“Ummm… storytelling?”
“Yes! And
before that?”
“A search for meaning. A need to explain the universe, and one’s
place in it.”
Frosty drew a finger down the length of his nose,
smiling with my answers. “You’ve thought
about this.”
I let out a muted snicker. “Lately, I’ve had to.”
“Good.
Now, let me ask you this: do you think it would be possible to invent a
religion?”
I considered this carefully. “No.
You can certainly invent stories, and rituals. But I think it takes dozens of generations –
and the mouths of a million people – before it takes on the shape of
mythology. Then you’d have to have a few
centuries and some kind of… organizing force to turn it into a religion.”
“Perhaps a well-equipped army?”
“And a well-equipped church,” I said. “With strong, charismatic leaders.”
Frosty looked a bit past me and rapped his
knuckles against the table in a random pattern.
“Okay. Let
me ask you this. Would it be possible
for someone to invent a body of stories with the conscious intent of having
them someday evolve into myth and religion?”
I had to let the idea swim a couple of laps
through my Guinness. Was there some religifying
property inherent in Irish ales? Would this explain the deep Celtic affection
for both pagan mythologies and powerful religious traditions? And what the hell
was the original question? Oh, yeah…
“Y-y-yes.
At least, with that aim in mind.
I wouldn’t guarantee the results.”
Frosty eyed me discerningly, took a deep drink,
and then, as if talking to himself, announced his decision. “Yes.
I think you are ready.”
And then he took off his clothes. I thought this amusing, but before I could
deliver a wry comment, Frosty pursed his lips in a hushing gesture. He switched off the lantern, leaving us in
leaf-lights of fireglow. He undid one of
our nearly-bursting bags of glass, and then began placing them, as precisely as
chess pieces, around the fire. Once that
was done, he laid out a blanket, sat upon it, and asked me to get naked.
This being early October, I should have been
freezing, but the fire, the memory of the afternoon sun and Frosty’s wolf-gaze
lifted my blood to the surface. I stood
before him as he rose to his knees, cupping my pubis in his hand like a
goblet. With this kind of mysterious,
ritualized foreplay, I didn’t need much of the real thing, and soon I was
crouched over Frosty’s erection, feeling him part my lips and make his way inside.
I began to realize that this coitus was a means
to an end – foreplay to mythology.
Neither of us was bound to last for long. The branches of the trees flashed through my
vision as I trembled into orgasm, the plates of my spine lining up like rivets
on a beam. A minute later I recovered my
muscles and began my work on Frosty, matching the motions of my hips with the
expressions on his face until he, too, was overtaken, his semen painting
streaks of heat across my womb.
We stayed that way for a few minutes, panting in
counterpoint until our breaths linked up on level ground. Then he pulled out of me, placed me beside
him, picked up an old Navajo blanket and wound it around our bodies. He took a glance in the direction of
Cassiopeia (the imprisoned queen) and began his story.
Far away, in the birthplace of music and
strawberries, there lived a race of beings with skins of glass. Not the brittle, breakable glass of Earth,
but a kind of self-contained fluid, a substance that could heal almost immediately
after being scratched or punctured.
Their organs were made of metals – soft, organic versions of silver,
copper and titanium. In order to hide
these organs from view, their skin had developed an opaque, frosted appearance,
much like Earth glass that has been tumbled in the ocean.
Because of these differences in their physical
makeup, these glasslings lived much longer than humans, and were a highly
evolved, creative race. Their greatest
creativity came from their women, whose powers reached their peak during a
psycho-physiological phenomenon known as a “blossomfire.” Considered events of
great awe and mystery, blossomfires would begin appearing in glass women at the
age of maturity – about a thousand Earth years – and would cease at the age of
reverence, around 4,300 years.
Blossomfires usually appeared every 200 years, and lasted only a few
Earth days – in glassling terms, a very brief period. Occasionally, however, there came a glass
woman who carried the capacity for much lengthier blossomfires; one who was
able to cultivate heightened powers and ever-expanding levels of creativity.
Just such a being was Frosted Glass Woman, who
for purposes of this telling we will call “Sandy.” Sandy’s first blossomfire
lasted for three of our weeks. As she
matured into young womanhood under the tutelage of a woman of reverence we
shall call “Lowiltry,” her blossomfires lengthened into months and years, and
her creative ventures grew ever larger and more complex. Her first was a process for distilling the
elements of individual personalities into the form of perfumes. Her second was a kind of jewelry that changed
shape and color according to the direction, intensity and pattern of a person’s
gaze. Another time, she invented a form
of music that she called “jazz,” but she had no idea what to do with it.
Nearing an age of 30,000 Earth years, Sandy
realized that her powers were coming to a peak.
For her next blossomfire, she settled on an unprecedented project: the
creation of her own world. Her mentor,
Lowiltry, warned against this. A project
this expansive would extend Sandy’s blossomfire to dangerous lengths. Those attempting this kind of extension
before had fallen into a state the glasslings referred to as “the hardening,”
in which the fluid glass of the skin becomes hard and fragile like the glass of
Earth. The condition lasted for a
thousand years, during which time the victim had to be hung by wires over a bed
of snowy egret feathers.
Shortly after this warning, however, Lowiltry was
overcome by a sudden illness and began to rapidly deteriorate. At the very start of her student’s Great
Blossomfire, she passed away, her elements rising to the sky in banners of
copper, silver and white vapor. Spying
this sad but lovely vision as she entered her creative trance, Sandy was more
determined than ever to achieve her ends, if only as a tribute to her mentor.
Dipping a hand into the glassling world’s
still-molten third moon, Sandy drew out a sphere of hot elements and blew it
cool with her breath. As the crust began
to harden she drew canyons and mountains with her fingers, and then outlined
long gouges and wide depressions that she filled with her tears. She plucked out strands of her hair and
formed them into trees, plants and seaweed, then molded small bits of the crust
into mammals, fish and birds, animating them with drops of perspiration. She also found places for her previous
inventions. The perfume she swept into
the hearts of a million flowers. The
jewelry she deposited just under the surface, where they awaited the wandering
gaze, the searching hands. As for jazz,
she hid that in the trunk of a tree on the plains of Africa.
Sandy completed her new world just as she felt
her Great Blossomfire ending. But her
creation was missing something, and she knew that this was something not even
she could produce: living spirits, souls, intellects, sparks of
self-knowledge. She felt great sadness,
for what good was this new world of hers without some form of cognizant being
to behold, observe and admire its beauty?
By the time she came to terms with her defeat, it
was too late – the hardening had begun.
Sandy felt great, sudden terror, not at the physical reality of her
petrifying skin, but at the thought of spending year upon year suspended by
wires as her creation sat there with no knowledge of its own existence.
Stumbling along on her stiffening limbs, Sandy
drew herself down a path behind her home to the top of a great sea cliff. By the time she approached the edge, she
could move only her left arm. But this
was enough. With painful effort she
pulled her green arms and face, her white torso and brown legs alongside the
drop. She lifted her blue eyes in a
final prayer to Lowiltry, then pushed off as her arm froze into place. Frosted Glass Woman hurtled avenues of air
and fell to the rocks, smashing her skin into a million pieces.
Aware of their daughter’s wishes, Sandy’s
bereaved parents spent the next three hundred years roaming the shoreline,
gathering the pieces of their daughter’s skin and scattering them over her
newly created world. As the pieces
became more and more difficult to find, and finally disappeared completely, her
father became overwhelmed by grief. One
morning, in a burst of anger, he picked up his daughter’s world and hurled it
into the vast recesses of space. The new
world settled into orbit around a small, stable sun, and the pieces of glass
took physical form, becoming that which we call women.
To this day, Frosted Glass Man wanders the
shorelines of Earth, hoping one day to reassemble Frosted Glass Woman and bring
her back to life.
I sat there in a daze, searching for words. But what do you say to a man who has just
granted you the power to create worlds?
I took the blanket from our bodies, eased Frosty onto the cold earth and
placed our green, brown and white jewels along the contours of his body. Then I lay down beside him and cried rivers,
lakes and oceans into the recesses of his skin.
Photo by MJV
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