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 FICTION


Wheels by Deb Margolin  


We're leaning up against a car. A stranger's car. It's eighth street, or fourth street, or some street divisible by two. It's an old car, got no alarm, no blinking red lights, no protection. That's what being old means: fewer defenses. If you lose it, so what. He's got me up against this car, and he's tall, he's so tall, he's so much taller than I am, than the car is; his head is the size and level of the streetlamp, only the light coming out of his head is infrared: you can hear it. Halfway between a mugging and a seduction, this struggle: the metal against my thighs, something under my short skirt, either a hand or a mirror. I think of the expression: shocks and struts. These are car parts, but I'm not sure what they do. I think shocks are what keep you from bouncing too hard in motion, but struts make me think of peacocks, and of men. And there's the expression: parking. They went parking. So old, that expression; so stupid, so innocent. I've got these things in my mind, sitting on the floor of my mind like rotten metal under a riverbed.
     The car is warm. Day ended so long ago, but the metal is warm, not with use but with sun; it's high summer midnight, someone has parked this car, and we're up against it, struggling; a Biblical struggle, like Jacob wrestling the angel God sent to him on a mountain. Only our mountain is a car, old and hot like I am, unlit and still, like he is. Against this car I moan out something delicious, pointless; I love this car; I leave my smell on this car, like a cat; this car held me up bearing down, this old car: I'd never recognize it if I saw it again.


"Wheels" is a portion of Margolin's book, Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo.


For more Deb Margolin, read:
Dateline: Fire Island
Two on One: Survivor
Till Death Do Us
Heaven Is a Cliche, So Is Cyberspace
Alfie and Joe
Wheels
Handling the Curves: The Erotics of Type
I Am Monica Lewinsky
Views and Reviews


©1999 Deb Margolin and Nerve.com

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