The Advocate

Flying South

Tony Monchinski

Her name is Peru and she comes into my life unexpectedly but that’s more often than not the way the best things in your life happen. She is beautiful, intelligent and sexy, and I don’t understand why someone hadn’t snatched her up a long time ago. But I am not going to complain. I am just going to get to know her better.

Our first date we go to a coffee shop and talk for three hours. I have a regular Guatemala, black, which I let cool for most of the evening. She dunks her biscotti in a double latte decaf skim with Irish Cream. We laugh and talk and outside the spring is coming.

She says she believes in reincarnation and feels she has been here before. She asks me if I believe in reincarnation. I have to think about that one for awhile.
Then I tell her about Plato’s insights, Marx’s totality, how we’re all capable of knowing the same things. And now they’re doing all this DNA research. Maybe knowledge can be passed down genetically, I suggest.

If you can come back, she wants to know, what would it be as? That’s another one I have to think about.

I wake up at her place and I don’t want to leave.

At work I can’t wait to see her and touch her and talk to her and say mindless, useless things like how was your day? And the thing is I really do care how it was and what went on in her life. We can sit looking at a wall and say nothing forever and I’d be happy.

We go through all the options in the “Complete Manual of Sexual Positions.” One of my favorites is number sixty-three, she on her side on a wingback chair with me from behind. We both agree that a wingback chair is a welcome addition to any home.
On campus we walk around watching the leaves change color. I try to take her book bag but she’s into that liberated woman thing and doesn’t let me.

Everything is going from green to brown to red to orange. Then it turns black and falls to the ground. We try not to step on the cracks in the pavement.

I like to wake up with Peru. I can wrap my leg and arm around her and we nestle like two spoons. Fall asleep that way sometimes. Wake up next to her with bad breath and keep my mouth shut so she won’t notice until I brush my teeth. There are some things I wouldn’t wish on others.

Get back in bed again after I run to the bathroom to pee and hunker down in the warm spot. Wake up extra early and lie there beside my Peru, watching her sleep and when she wakes greeting her.

Her chest goes up and down and she has the most exquisite breastbone I have ever seen. Sometimes she catches me admiring her and she asks what I am doing. And sometimes I tell her and other times I just kiss her.

“Do you trust my judgment?” I ask her.

She asks me why.

I tell her not to say anything, to just listen to me.

I tell her I am in love with her, that I love her. I tell her I know she is capable of taking care of herself, but that I want to take care of her as much as I can. That I know she can watch out for her own person, but that if she lets me I will watch out for her. I tell her I know she’s into being her own person but I want to carry her book bag if she’ll let me.

“How do I know you’ll always love me?” Peru asks.

We are lying in bed. Her head is on my chest. I am invincible.

“You’ve just got to believe me,” I tell her.

She is quiet for a moment, then,
“I do.”

I smile. “I know.”

And then one day she tells me she loves me.

When she tells me about the leukemia she is scared that I will want nothing to do with her. Does she really think that I am going to push her away?

I pull her close, hold her tight, and try not to cry. I try to be as strong as I can.
I go with her to the hospital for the treatments. We sip bad coffee in the lounge and make small talk with the geriatric candy stripers.

Sometimes we go for little walks to the maternity ward and look in on the babies in the glass. A lot of them cry and wriggle around. I squeeze her shoulder and smell her hair.
We laugh and kid a lot about silly things and I attack her with two pinching fingers I call teensey flies.

Mirthfully we agree that we’ll open a combination coffee shop-slash-cigar store-sex club one day. After all, what’s better than a good cup of coffee, some great sex and a nice cigar? Neither of us smokes.

Pomp and circumstance night would see all the patrons dressed in tuxedoes and gowns. A mock wedding ceremony would culminate with our consummating the union in front of everyone else. From there the whole scene would degenerate into a Dionysian-free-for-all.

She laughs and says I am crazy.

I take her to treatment and after awhile I sit in her room and watch garish television programs beside her bed. I hold her hand and she asks me to read her poems.

I push her chair around in the children’s ward. They talk to us and the ones who can play. They’re always glad to see people.

One thing I like to do is press my nose to her head and smell her hair. I breathe it all in and it is good. Sometimes when she stays the night I spend the whole next day finding little hairs strewn about. I play with them and run them across my face and wish I had her here.

I went to visit Peru today, at the cemetery. She beat the leukemia. But in the end her body was so tired it couldn’t carry her through.

A bunch of geese go by overhead. They make a lot of noise because they are late flying south.

I squat there next to where she is now, and I run my hand over the stone. It’s been awhile and I don’t cry anymore like I used to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss her.

The geese have gone home.

The ground is pretty solid in the winter so I have to leave the flowers lying there. I can’t drive them into the dirt.

I love her you know.

Tony Monchinski is a PhD student in the Political Science department.