Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#3
Time and sex: sex chronology is not linear. Sex and time are both
conversant with strange leaps. It is the first day of the first class I will ever
teach. Julie looks at me with big round black eyes, soulfully. She has long
wavy black hair and her looks are dark, foreboding. We often want what
wants us; Julie makes a habit of following me, from the classroom to the
subway, from the subway to the Last Drop. As a student, she’s haphazard.
What she teaches me is that when someone follows you, they can make
you follow them; on the walk home from the Drop, I realize my mind is
following her, into her apartment, onto her bed, underneath the sheets,
underneath her folds, into her little stomach. But I can’t. So I let her
follow me, knowing that this will lead (eventually) to a culminating
moment. My hunger is for continuance. Julie wants the thrill of picking up
a hot potato and dropping it back into the pot. But these early weeks are
all titillation, so that every soulful look to me is the countenance of
continuance, has endurance written into it. Is this my wife? Marriages
have been initiated in stranger fashions. Julie is as pale as Marie, but much
flintier, so I know strife will be a feature of my daily existence, after we are
married. I think this as I stand before the class, discoursing on Chaucer,
gazing at this little wife of Bath.
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