If You're Not Yet Like Me
cylinder, and black pepper already ground to gray sand. We ate sitting on the couch, the overhead light the opposite of dim, and Zachary said, “Yum.” For him, this was a feast.
    I don’t mean to be a snob (“Yeah right, Joellyn.”). I only want to illustrate that this man had not cooked dinner for a woman, or a woman like me, in quite some time. If ever. And if I am a snob for making a connection between the passion of food and the passion of lovemaking, so be it. A man who cannot grate his own fresh, raw-milk cheeses is a man who will have trouble undressing a woman, tonguing her parts. This is logic. This is something to remember, once you are born.
    As we dug into our dinner, holding our chins over our bowls so as not to spill on the carpet, I wondered what was inside those piñatas. Wishbones, sea glass, the fuzz of a zillion dandelions— hell, maybe the light of the moon. I wanted Zachary to tell me. More than that, I wanted him to want to tell me. I glanced over at him; the fork was sliding out of his mouth, glistening with pasta sauce. He hadn’t given our conversation another thought.
    “Have you ever heard of Imagine Land?” I asked.
    Zachary raised an eyebrow, and I explained it to him. I did not mention Dickens, but rather, pretended it was a well-known concept.
    “For instance, in my Imagine Land,” I said, “I’ve got a little house with a backyard. And I’ve stopped designing dental pamphlets, because I’ve moved onto fun stuff. Like album covers.”
    I thought of Dickens’ words, how I might use them. I could tell Zachary about the man in my Imagine Land. I could say, “He’s not you.”
    I took a deep breath, and Zachary put down his bowl.
    “Sounds better as Imagine Land,” he said, emphasis on the second word.
    “Imagine Land?” I repeated.
    “You know,” he said, “like a plot of land.” He kept a straight face, and his eyes took on a dreamy quality. He was looking beyond the apartment, beyond me.
    “What do you see?” I asked.
    He smiled then, brought his gaze back to me. “What do you see?” “
    I don’t know.”
    “Come on,” he said. He took the glass of wine out of my hand, and set it on the table. “Try it. Imagine land.”
    “Where do I start?”
    “That’s the question,” he said, and smiled.
    “Dirt?” I said.
    “Dirt,” he repeated. “That’s good. What else?”
    “Rocks.”
    “Definitely,” he said. “Sharp ones.”
    I was smiling now, too. “We’re on the coast,” I said.
    He shook his head. “We’re too close to tell.”
    “We are?”
    “Yeah, we’re too close to the ground. We’re in it.”
    “Oh.” I wanted to see what he saw. “What about little pebbles?”
    “Yes.”
    “So little, they’re like grains of sand.”
    “I like that,” he said.
    “Like in an hourglass,” I added.
    “That’s beautiful.”
    For a moment we didn’t speak.
    “And let’s not forget the blind worms,” he said.
    I laughed.
    He took my hand. “Close your eyes.”
    “Imagine land,” I said again, and followed his instructions. We could have been explorers on a ship, so long on water we barely remembered solid ground. I could picture the rocks, and the worms, pale and jelly-soft, squirming among the soil. Deeper down, that soil turned to mud.
    This was Blow #2.
    I wasn’t looking at him when his lips touched mine.
    T his time, things went differently. This time, I undressed him. All the lights were on, and we didn’t speak. I began with his shirt, pulling it over his head.
    It wasn’t that he’d become beautiful. No. He was still Zachary and I was still Joellyn, but the energy of the room had shifted. It was like that army of 400, leaning forward.
    His skin was so pale, I could have been a doctor, cracking him out of a body cast he’d worn for a decade. That chest, that belly, had missed the sunlight, and now I was giving it back. I was returning opportunity to the body. As Zachary took off my clothes and kissed me, and moved me deftly to
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