Binoculars
“But you know the weirdest part about getting screwed like that,” she said.
I didn’t.
“Is the next day, when you’re in line for coffee, at the grocery store or something, and you smile at the cashier or the person in front of you and they smile when an hour ago you were naked and tied up and getting whipped all over by someone who was also naked. But I mean it can’t be that uncommon. Have you ever thought. I mean maybe the cashier, the night before. Maybe half the cafe one time or other. In the New York Times I read once that thirty six percent of American adults have tried it. I mean my mother gets the New York Times. And then after we all go out into the day together smiling with our clothes on and Hello Thank You. Do you understand. I’m no prude. Or else would I be here. All I wonder is people. How one thing leads to the other and back.”
“Thank you,” said the facilitator.
He sat in the middle of our circle. He was supposed to make sure we all got only one minute to talk. I wondered if he got compensated for being here or if it was like AA where you were supposed to thank God there’s a better path than where you were and pay it forward. If he felt like he was paying it forward just right now.
Then a tired coarse man who was wider in the middle than his chair. The metal creaked under him when he cleared his throat, which was often and involuntary. He had a friendly face that wrinkled deep around the edges and thick curly hair that fell over his ears and looked too black for his age.
“I’m Dave and I watch too much. You know. To. That now I can’t.”
Dave was tensed. He looked over each of us, dreading disgust, probably. We all looked back and nodded softly. He settled back a bit and cleared his throat. His chair creaked loud in the bare room.
“Hello, David,” said the facilitator. “Thank you.”
“I’m Mona,” said a woman who didn’t need to. She was the only one who’d taken one of the big white stickers and a marker and written her name. All caps on her chest like an emergency. MONA.
“And I’m here because I keep cheating on my husband.”
“Hello, Mona.”
“When he was flying I wouldn’t ever have come here. I thought of it as covering my bases. Of course that’s wrong. But it wasn’t inaccurate. I’d think what could he possibly be doing on a big warm beach in Malta or Miami where no one knew him, or somewhere in the mountains with rich bored women he’d never have to see again. Calling from wherever he was, he’d tell me about his days off and get to the nights and just trail off. It was just fine. And I’d go out and meet someone. It’s not hard, you can imagine.”
She waved at her face and it was true, she was pretty with shining cheeks pulled taut over the bones and a mouth like a dropped plum. Plain blue eyes flitting from the facilitator’s lap, up to the window with the trees waving in the bright heat as though underwater, down to the table with the coffee no one ever poured, down at her own neat fingers, one thrumming with a bare gold band on.
“Then we got a big house across town to make space for children. And he did private flying on the side to make up the money. Seaplanes and traffic helicopters, like that. Not billionaires. Though once he did a helicopter tour of Seattle for a big football player visiting. Even though it was raining sheets. Just because he wanted it. Because the football player said if that was the real Seattle he wanted to see it. Up in a weather plane three years ago he crashed in the woods up north. Just lost control of everything at the worst moment, he said. There was a summer storm. We got money but not a lot because the lawyers got it looked over and both sides said there was nothing wrong with the rotor, that’s the big wheeling blade, or the wings or anything else. And that first week he could barely twitch his thumb back and forth. I thought I’d be wiping his ass forever, you know, like Christopher Reeve in Rear Window, not that I wouldn’t because I love him.”
“Jimmy Stewart,” Dave said.
“Oh I love that one, with the binoculars,” the S&M addict said. “Where he says ‘Right now I’d welcome trouble.’”
“So he has a motor chair now and he can do everything himself. Nearly.”
Dave creaked.
“So can you imagine. Me being who I. Needing what I need. And he knew that when he married me. How important it was for me. And him. He loved that. He said he’d never met a woman like that who was always ready who wasn’t paid to be or had serious psychological issues. He loved it.”
Her hands tented on her lap.
“And you know what the worst part is.”
I didn’t.
“He still does. Not that. Well. I mean he’s still a man for chrissake. But he understands. No one spends four hours at the bank. Goes to the little park the next town over because it’s so peaceful every single three o’clock on Thursday. I used to try, you know. I had a friend in town. I’d check the movie schedules. But he understands. That’s my problem. A weakness. Who hasn’t once or twice. But coming home. Asking about his day over dinner. How he can stay standing up for a long time now without grabbing onto anything. Yes my day was nothing special. Kissing goodnight and brushing over him to turn the light off. He understands. Can you imagine.
“Thank you, Mona,” said the facilitator.
“Because I was so miserable that first year, and of course he was stoic but for both our sakes he wanted to be dead. And I took perfect care of him, he told me. I still do, even better, even though I don’t have to now. Now we laugh again when we wake up and at night with the TV. Do you see how making trouble could be so much worse than just. If he really is that comfortable for once. And what do you do with that.”
“You know what I think,” said the S&M addict.
I didn’t.
She sobered her face.
“You’re not comfortable. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here,” she said, slowly, with great weight.
That’s all she said.
But I was starting to think how she was wrong, wrong, wrong. How it was late June outside, the longest day of the year. How the sun wouldn’t set until nearly nine. And it wasn’t even seven yet. Or maybe it had passed without our noticing, and it was the day after the longest day. How we’d all get up soon and put the chairs away and enter that day smiling and Hello Thank You, catching the last full light.
Selen Ozturk is a San Francisco-based writer born in Istanbul. Her writing appears or will soon in Evergreen Review, Hobart, Bayou Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, and SFGATE. She has received support from Bread Loaf, Grub Street, and The San Francisco Writers Grotto. She holds a philosophy degree from UC Berkeley and works as a journalist.