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an ode to the labyrinth



at nearly ninety miles per hour, he zipped us up to that windy edge, a sinuous road running the ridge of the santa cruz mountains, where he then proceeded to pump his vehicle in and out of turns, sometimes dropping down to fifty miles per hour only to immediately gun it back up to ninety again, fast, slow, fast- fast, slow, sometimes a wide turn, sometimes a quick one. he preferred the tighter ones, the sharp controlled jerks, swinging left to right, before driving back to the right, only so he could do it all over again, until after enough speed and enough wind and more distance than i’d been prepared to expect, taking me to parts of this city i rarely think of and never visit, he dipped down into some slower offshoot, a lane of lightless coves, not stopping there either, but pushing further on until he finally found the secluded spot he’d been heading for all along, overlooking the city, far from anyone, pedestrian or home, and yet directly beneath a street lamp, which as far as i could tell, was the only street lamp around for miles. seems all that twittering light flooding down through the sunroof really turned him on.

* * *

i can’t remember the inane things i started babbling about then. i know it didn’t really matter. he wasn’t listening. he just yanked up on the emergency brake, dropped his seat back and told me to lie on top of him, on top of those leather pants of his, extremely expensive leather pants mind you, his hands immediately guiding mine over those soft slightly oily folds, positioning my fingers on the shiny metal tab, small and round like a tear, then murmuring a murmur so inaudible that even though i could feel his lips tremble against my ear, he seemed far, far away—”feel it” he’d said, which i did, lightly, until he also said “pull it” which i also did, gently, the longest unzipping of my life, all the way from right beneath his perfect navel to the tiny tattoo, a japanese sign, the meaning of which i never guessed, marking his lower back, the rest very guessable though don’t underestimate the danger which i guess really wasn’t so dangerous after all. we never even kissed or looked into each other’s eyes. our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, his in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, his for all i know gone to black forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery i still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, his screeching, mine—i didn’t hear mine—only his, probably counter—pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove . . .—which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in his throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come. too bad dark languages rarely survive.

* * *

in the end, the whole thing had been so frantic and fast and strange and even sad in some ways, i completely forgot to ask him about the German phrase. “But here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear.”