And then I felt like crying, because this giant, insane child was not letting me go. I wanted him to shoot me. I wanted to see the thin stream of water wet my clothing like a wimpy ejaculation.
But I couldn’t risk it. Maybe real bullets came out. Maybe the gimmick was that it was a real gun that just looked like a water gun.
“Is that a real gun?” I shouted from the bathroom, knowing he would probably answer yes, just to be strange.
“No.”
“Is it a water gun?”
“Yes. But I can hurt you with it.”
“How? By throwing it at me?”
I opened the door and looked at him. The gun was no longer in sight. He was sitting on the floor against the wall, flipping through the pages of a book while blowing bubbles with his chewing gum.
From the night table, I quickly grabbed the lamp and alarm clock, which I had unplugged during the night for this purpose, and ran toward him. I threw the lamp at him. He blocked it with his arm and whipped out his water gun and shot me. There was a stabbing pain in my stomach. I screamed and dropped the alarm clock. I looked down at myself and saw a small shard of ice planted in the middle of my abdomen. I pulled it out and lifted my sweater and saw a bleeding half-inch cut near my belly button.
“Ow!” I said. “I’m bleeding!”
From his bag he took out a box of Band-Aids, pulled one out of the box, and threw it at me. It fluttered to the floor. He then took out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a package of cotton balls and handed them to me.
Blood was running down my stomach, spreading to the top of my pants. I said, “You think I can just put a Band-Aid on this? We have to go to the hospital, to the emergency room. I need stitches.”
“No you don’t. Disinfect yourself and put on the Band-Aid.” His gun was pointed at me.
I started disinfecting my wound. “You said it was a water gun, you liar.”
“Ice is water,” he said coldly. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use it, or even take it out at all. That’s why I brought it in a bag.”
“You deceitful asshole.”
He looked hurt. “Come over here.” He took me by the arm and positioned me in front of the bed. “Listen,” he said. “First off, it can kill. With the ice knife.” He shot a large blade of ice into the mattress. “Then there are the shards, which I shot you with. We also have the ice needles, which hurt about as much as getting a shot at the doctor’s.” He shot one into my pillow. “Then there are the ice threads. Those don’t really hurt at all.”
“So what are they for?”
“For the hell of it. There’s also the boiling water category. The doses come in three sizes: tablespoon, teaspoon, and half-teaspoon. And in two forms: stream or ball of water.” He shot all the varieties onto my bed.
“Can’t your gun just do a normal, gentle stream of room-temperature water?”
He opened his mouth, aimed the gun inside, and shot a few spurts. He suddenly looked in pain, and I thought perhaps he had used the boiling or ice features by accident. But no. All he said was, “Gross pH.”
He then talked about flexibility. He wanted to see how far I could stretch in every direction.
“Show me your bridge,” he said.
“My bridge? I don’t have a bridge.”
“You know, a back bend.”
“I know what a bridge is, and I don’t have one.”
“It doesn’t matter how small it is. I want to see it.”
“But I don’t have one. Not even a small one.”
“Sure you do. Do it.”
“I can’t. I don’t even have a speck of a bridge. You could shoot me with the shards or even the dagger and I still wouldn’t have a bridge.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll show you your bridge.”
“No, you will break my back. It’ll be a broken bridge.”
“Nonsense.” He made me lie down on my back with my legs bent, elbows up and palms flat on the floor on either side of my head, in the proper pre-bridge position. He slid his hands under my waist and tried to force me into a bridge by lifting my middle off the floor. But I wouldn’t let him bend me; I kept my back as straight and rigid as a board, too afraid of pain or injury. Damon pulled harder, and finally my entire body (hands and feet included) rose off the floor, my back still perfectly straight. I was balanced on his hands like a seesaw.
He gave up and put me back down, panting from the exertion. “As far as I’m concerned, a person cannot truly be sane if their body is not flexible. I know I wouldn’t be.”
“But you’re not sane.”
“Flexibility is not only important for sanity, it’s important for life. You know, deep down people die of stiffness. The root of all death is stiffness. As is proven by rigor mortis.”
“That happens after you’re dead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Rigor mortis creeps up on you imperceptibly before you die, and it’s what kills you. You die of subtle stiffness. The intense stiffness you get a short while after death is just the symbolic manifestation, the proof that stiffness is what killed you.”
“That’s your insane theory.”
“Yes, I admit that it’s my amusing theory. But it could be true. And to a certain extent we know it is. We all know that being flexible is healthy. It even protects you against accidents. But flexibility is not only important for mental and physical health, it’s also important for emotional health. It’s an essential ingredient to successful relationships. What is far more fascinating, though, is that it is important in art.” He paused and then spoke slowly and intensely, as if imparting me with a very exciting secret: “In my opinion, the most basic, essential quality to genius is flexibility.” And he added very quickly: “There were no great artists without it.”
He took something red out of his bag and handed it to me. It was a bathing suit.
“Would you mind going in there and changing into this?” he said, waving toward the bathroom.
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to see your body. I need to get a clearer picture of how much work it needs.”
“I’m not a piece of meat.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wants to be the actor. Bodies matter.”
He took his plastic gun out of his bag and pointed it at me. “Now go.”
I went, sighing.
I took off my clothes, first hoping that the one-piece suit wouldn’t be too small, and then hoping it would be, just so he’d have a small failure. But it fit, and it was even somewhat flattering. But not flattering enough to make me feel totally at ease stepping out of the bathroom.
And then I became indignant at myself, and ashamed of feeling uneasy about my body. It was ridiculous; I was a captive. Here was the last place I should let images of tall, thin models that had oppressed women for centuries, or at least decades, add to my oppression.
I tried to comfort myself by remembering the best, and I think only, compliment I ever received about my face: I had been told that I resembled young Elizabeth Taylor, but with slightly lighter hair, and disfigured. “The way Elizabeth Taylor would look if her face had been gently squashed.”
I bluntly stepped out of the bathroom.
“Let’s see what we have here,” said Damon. “We have to work on the legs.”
He walked behind me and mumbled, “Forgive me for touching,” and squeezed my upper arm, feeling for the firmness or lack of it, I suppose. “We could tone the arms a little more. The stomach is in good shape … comparatively speaking. The buttocks need firming, but they will be taken care of along with the legs.”
“I’d like a cigarette.”
“No, sorry. That’s wish number five on the list: to stop smoking.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“You must have. You uttered it eight and a half times during the few weeks I knew you.”