“I don’t disagree. That’s why I won’t let you kiss me.”
“But it’s strange. You will let me do other things that seem to me to be more intimate than kissing is.”
“I feel like if you and me were kissing, I would be giving myself over to you in a way that I’m not ready to do.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I think that spiritually we are in very different places. I think you’re open to spiritual things, but I don’t think that you are really very far along. And I can’t tell if you are open to them because you really desire them or if you are just open to them because you want to be closer to me.”
“That’s a fair question to raise. I don’t know, either, sometimes. There’s a lot of things going on very quickly, and it can be confusing to me.”
“Also, I don’t know if I love you.”
“Do you think love is some kind of lightning flash? Like it strikes you and then the reverberations just ring out forever?”
“That’s how love is with God, I think. And I think that’s one thing you haven’t really entered into the fullness of.”
“I think that maybe love is a choice that people make.”
“That’s not very romantic.”
“I don’t know what good romance is, sometimes. I mean, it’s good to be romantic, and it’s good to have feelings. But I’ve had feelings for people before, and they’ve had feelings for me, but what was lacking, I think, was a choice to make a life together. A commitment.”
“It’s very scary to me to hear you speak that way. Because it seems very mechanical to me. It seems in keeping with many of the things that seem cold about you, to me. Everything seems so reasoned, so calculated. It makes me think that everything about the way you approach me must be some kind of calculation.”
“If that were true, though, wouldn’t I just tell you everything you wanted to hear all the time? It seems to me evidence of good faith that we have these kinds of conversations all the time, and that we have these, for lack of a better word, arguments, or disagreements.”
“I don’t enjoy arguing or disagreeing.”
“Me either.”
“I’m just going to keep my hand on your leg here, except when I have to shift gears, until we get up to the top of the mountain, okay? I just want to enjoy the ride and enjoy you and enjoy this kind of closeness while we look at the mountains and enjoy the creation and all its wonder. It’s not a slight to you. It’s just something I need right now, if it’s all right with you. But I want to keep my hand on your leg, okay?”
“Of course. I love that you have your hand on my leg. It is really nice.”
•
“That right there is called Witch’s Titty.”
“Why?”
“Because look at it. It looks like a Witch’s Titty.”
“Yeah. I guess it does.”
“You know what I think whenever I pass this place?”
“Tell me.”
“There was this dance in high school, and there was this boy, let’s call him Bob, he asked me to this dance. He was a senior and I was a freshman. I got all dressed up and he got me a corsage. When you go with a senior and you’re a freshman, it’s exciting, you know, because he picked you. You’re the one he picked, and he passed over older girls to pick you. And before I left, my dad told him he could keep me out until midnight but no later. And he kissed me on the cheek, my dad, and he said I love you and we trust you, me and your mother. So we went to this dance, and it was all right. There was music, there was food, there was dancing. And afterward, I wanted this guy, Bob, to kiss me. It was something I really wanted. I had built it up big time in my mind. He drove me out to this park I’m going to take you to later, out by the ski lifts. It was the place where all the kids went to sit in their cars and make out. We had to drive past Witch’s Titty to get there. And I knew that was why we were going to this park, and it was okay with me. But when we got there, this guy, Bob, he started acting really nervous. He was staring straight ahead and he started sweating at his forehead. I felt sorry for him because I could tell he was very nervous. Then he said, like he was apologizing, ‘This is just something I really have to do.’ And he leaned toward me and I thought he was going to kiss me. But then he put his hands up my dress. I wanted to say no to him but I was so surprised I guess my voice caught in my throat. And then I put my hand down there to push his hand away and he grabbed my wrist and held it so hard it bruised a ring around my wrist where he was holding it. Then he put his hand in my panties and he stuck his finger up inside me and poked around. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel good, either, but it didn’t hurt. Then he just held his finger in there like that for a while and moved it around. Then he drove me home.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I went inside and went to bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. It wasn’t until a lot later that I cried.”
“So nothing happened to him?”
“He’s still around. We became friends again later. I forgave him.”
“I don’t forgive him.”
“You don’t have to. But that’s something you’ll have to work on. Unforgiveness. Like the things you sometimes say about your mother.”
“I just feel protective of you. I don’t like it that for him there were no consequences.”
“You carry the consequences around inside yourself, don’t you?”
“Me or him?”
“Something about you reminds me of him sometimes.”
“That makes me feel terrible that you would say that.”
“I just think there’s things you should know about me if we are really going to think about being together.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“It’s just something I thought of because we were driving by Witch’s Titty. That’s all.”
•
“When a long time passes like this and you’re so quiet, I wonder what you’re thinking.”
“Do you think you have the right to know what I’m thinking?”
“I had a girlfriend in college one time who used to say things like that. She used to say, ‘You know what I like about my thoughts? They’re mine. I don’t have to share them with you.’”
“Did she say that after you were prying at her to give up her thoughts?”
“Usually, yes.”
“All right. What do you want to know?”
“So many things.”
“You choose one thing. Any one thing. I’ll tell you.”
“One thing. Okay, the visions. You told me one time you would tell me more about the visions.”
“You see this here?”
“What? The road? The mountains? The sky?”
“The motion, through space. Through time, too. Once I was driving this road, and I had a vision of motion through space and through time.”
“While you were driving?”
“I saw all of creation as though it were a liquid, and we were swimming through it. Me, and all the creatures, land creatures and water creatures, too. The water was a deep blue, sparkling, but also translucent. You could see through it. And the rock faces were shimmering like precious jewels.”
“Was this a distraction while you were driving?”
“It was almost as if I were no longer driving anymore. I had given up control and although in the physical world my hands were on the wheel, and even though in the vision I was moving through a space not unlike the one we are moving through right now, and even though I had given up control, and even though there was that drop-off there just out your window, a couple thousand feet, maybe, I wasn’t afraid. What I was mostly was in awe.”
“Was it like you imagined seeing these things, or was it like you actually were moving through these things.”