In a Handful of Dust

Sexy.

That was the brand name stretched in pink curly letters across the top of the packet. A girl standing on a beach–blonde, if I remember right. The object of desire facing away, long legs beneath a hot pink bikini bottom.

The whole packet maybe an inch and a half by two inches. Containing a gram of a material that's nominally meant to be incense even though we all know what it's really used for. There's a warning on the back: "Not meant for human consumption," because it's meant for human consumption but the manufacturers don't want to be held responsible.

Sleazy packaging, but what do you expect from a head shop?

The general term for this type of product is spice. Spice is what you buy when you want to smoke weed but you're either new in town or too socially awkward to find a real dealer. It comes in many forms, and legally speaking is a variety of incense. The fact that I've yet to encounter any variety of spice that could successfully be burned as incense doesn't seem to matter much.

Most of the time spice produces a high that is significantly less pleasant than what you'd experience from the real stuff. It's also less safe (not meant for human consumption, after all) and has been known to cause the occasional fatal heart attack in some unfortunate teenager.

But none of that mattered, did it, vixen? You were coming over for the weekend and I wanted to make sure we had something to smoke. So I wandered over to the smoke shop on Wednesday after classes and picked up a packet of Sexy.

I knew this particular brand of spice. Roll it in a nice joint and it gives a pretty significant, if short-lived high. Heavy on the bodily sensations, especially making you extremely conscious of your heartbeat. And whether because your heart actually starts pounding or simply because you're fixated on it, you get worried you're going to have a heart attack. Which generally means you're going to spend the duration of the high distracting yourself from the fact that you're afraid you're going to die at any second.

It only lasts about an hour though, so it's great. Plus you can't really remember what it's like when you're not using it, so you're ready to jump back in whenever you come down.

Plus I didn't have a dealer at the time, so what was I going to do? Not get high?

No, thank you!

(This was back when I was drinking.)

Anyway, you showed up with Frank on Friday evening, just as planned. So the whole crew was there: Frank and Stephanie, Tyler and Angela, and you and me.

Tyler had spent his free time that week getting drinks ready. He loved having his first apartment and therefore being able to play the amateur bartender on weekends. He wasn't 21 yet, none of us were, but he always had a marching band friend willing to buy booze for him. He picked up some bitters, for whatever you use bitters for. Lemons and limes. He whipped up a simple syrup with granulated sugar and water, explaining to me that you had to get the temperature just right or else the sugar wouldn't dissolve and you'd end up with a useless crystalline mess. He got some bourbon, some vodka–not Heaven Hill, though, because he was a man with standards.

Tyler was flatly uninterested in smoking the Sexy that weekend.

"Come on man," I said. "Sexy is… sexy."

"Sexy is not sexy. Tried it once and I spent the whole time thinking my body was about to explode."

"It's not that bad…"

"Oh yes it is. You'd have to have some kind of masochistic death wish to try the Sexy more than once. Get the real stuff and I'll smoke that."

"Scaredy little bitch…" I murmured. Then shrugged and sighed, "Well, more for me then…"

Anyway, vixen, you and I texted and chatted through the week. About personality tests–you were on an MBTI kick and insisted that I take the test so you could know my type. I pushed back, rolled my eyes ("It's no more real than a horoscope!"), but eventually played along. I even gave honest answers the second time around!

We talked about poetry. You introduced me to Sylvia Plath's poems–which I'll always be grateful for. Until then I'd thought she was only the author of embarrassingly juvenile novels about rich New England girls and their rich New England girl problems. But she was a considerable poet, I'll give you that.

Then you came at the end of the week after hitching a ride with Frank. I hadn't seen you face to face since we'd kissed out on the balcony last weekend. Messaged with you, yes. Chatted with you, yes. But seen you? No.

You were glowing. And I know that's the obvious thing to say, but until then I don't think I understood what people meant when they said a woman glowed. Something in your movements–freer, more open, more demonstrative than I'd ever seen them. Your skin faintly pink, warm, ready with something between us that had been there all along, hidden, but was now out in the open.

And you liked that Tyler, Angela, Frank, and Stephanie were there to play the audience. Slow, slinking movements of the tigress on the hunt. Theatrical woman. I sat in the armchair at the end of the coffee table, and when you curled into my lap you staked your claim on the hunting ground for all to see. And when we kissed, just lightly, I reddened a little because people were watching.

But you? You purred. Quite literally purred.

Delicious, vixen. Delicious.

It embarrassed me to feel so happy.

But the evening had hardly begun. You stepped over to the bar to watch Tyler mix drinks in the kitchen. I pulled out the packet of Sexy, my papers, and my roller. (I'm ashamed to admit I've never got the knack of rolling joints by hand.) Frank and Stephanie, wrapped in one another's arms on the sofa, periodically shouted out movie recommendations.

I lit up the Sexy joint and we shared it. Sweet-scented and dry, a popping burn that never failed to make me break out coughing. We didn't do that thing where you blow the smoke into one another's mouths, although I kind of wish we had.

Hits fast, too. You barely have the chance to exhale the first hit before you're already feeling your heartbeat and the world seems to stretch out in that indescribably familiar way.

"Let's put on the new X-Men movie," Stephanie said. Nobody had any objections, so we did.

You wandered back over to the bar when we finished smoking, vixen. I didn't have any particular interest in X-Men: First Class, so I watched you instead.

And there you sit at the bar, waiting for Tyler to fix you a whiskey sour. Smiling, your skin still glowing faintly pink. The pink grows brighter all the colors grow brighter my God my heart's revved up to 300 beats per minute. No it always beats that way you're just more aware of it now no my heart is pounding and I'm definitely about to die here and the last thing I'll see will be Wolverine on the TV screen. No you're crazy you're not about to die oh my God I'm gonna die someday even if I don't die now what is life what is death what does it mean to breathe what is a woman what do women want oh my God I'm gonna die someday…

I have a body what is a body. I am extended through space I'm up in my head but my foot is also me although I'd still be me if I lost my foot but I wouldn't be me if I lost my head I will show you fear in a handful of dust and I eat men like air.

"Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well…"

My God she's going to kill me my God she's the embodiment of Satan come to drag me to hell for my sins. Don't be an idiot she's charming and pleasant and a joy to be around. Well wouldn't Satan be charming and pleasant and a joy to be around before he drags you to hell. She's gonna suck my soul out through my cock and I'll be eternally damned. No she's just a woman what is a woman you're not eternally damned anyway there's no God and I have to become a Benedictine monk and spend the rest of my life praying and fasting or I'll go to hell forever.

Calm down. There's no devil, no God, and no hell. Just watch X-Men. But my heart's pounding and no matter what I do in life it's always only a distraction from the terror because I'm here now but I'll be dead someday remember that embrace the terror don't hide away from it but what if hell is real but what if hell is real but what if hell is real.

She's the devil and she has horns no don't be an idiot she doesn't have horns. She's gonna steal my soul how do I get out of this…

… I kept my mouth shut, though. No need to worry everybody else with my anxieties about my soul. Especially not when they were trying to watch X-Men.

By the time the movie ended I'd gotten somewhere close to back to normal. I think you and Stephanie finished off the last of the Sexy joint.

"I think I've had enough for the night," was all I said.

The evening went on. The movie ended. The usual murmurs about whether or not to put something else on. Nobody really wanted to put anything on, though. Time for bed.

You still moved like the tigress on the hunt, vixen, right up until the moment when I closed my bedroom door behind us. Still receptive. Still open. Still ready. But with an endearing girlish note of shyness now that the audience was gone.

You were waiting for me to turn off the light. I did. Then lips, hands, and it's cold but I'm warm here with you…

~~~

Where one cannot speak, one must be silent.

~~~

Shy again in the morning light. You covered your body with your hands as you gathered your clothes from the foot of the bed. Smiling, a little giggly. You complained you were sore from being stretched so much.

That was very flattering.

Later we went to get lunch with Frank and Stephanie. You stayed glued to my right side, gazing up at me now and then.

A change had come over you. I enjoyed it.

Heraclitus says a man cannot step in the same river twice. For he is not the same man and it is not the same river.

That's the last I ever saw of you, vixen, face to face. We talked about getting together now and then, while you were at school in Louisiana. But the years flowed by, and they still flow by. I carry the memory of you and think of you fondly sometimes.

As far as I can tell, you were not the incarnation of Satan and you did not steal my soul.

I do wonder, though. Once in a while.