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Without Claire my time had no organization. I woke up when I woke up. I ate when I was hungry. I sat on the patio and wrote the first sentences to novels. Sometimes I wrote the second sentence, and for a few, a whole introductory paragraph. In my head, I composed masterworks, entire books full of darkness and angst, death and misunderstandings and The Human Condition.
Time went funny. Every night, Claire didn't come home. She didn't come home at 7 and at 8 and again at 9. She didn't go to sleep at 11 so she could wake up for pilates at 6, and I didn't follow. The dog didn't pant up to me, bowl in mouth, at five thirty, didn't need to go out first thing in the morning, 3 in the afternoon, 9 at night.
I wrote the beginnings to stories and I went to bed at midnight, at 6 in the morning, 7 at night. I ate cereal for dinner, hot dogs for breakfast, sunflower seeds at 10 in the morning. I masturbated and I thought and I watched SUVs creep in and out of the mall parking lot while I sat on the couch and the dog smell slowly melted into mildew.
I wondered what Claire was doing, when she would call, whether I really missed the motivational posters or had just gotten used to the clear images of streams and sunsets, yachts and skydivers and wide blue vistas.
The next time was more deliberate. Why have balls that are sleek and new when there's still a tangle down there? I got out the razor and worked my way around the bottom of the shaft, disgusted by how far the hair was creeping up the penis itself.
Why didn't Claire ever say anything about this? She must have felt something sneaking in there, had to wonder what was this wiry brush between our
naked bodies, this fly in our ointment.
I looked at it, a thin line of black sneaking halfway up the front of the shaft. I ran the razor toward the tip, watched the trail reduced to skin, pink and new and elegant.
I decided to drive until I ran out of gas. Then, I would make a home in the new place. I would invent myself all over again. I would call myself John Folsom, perhaps would speak with an accent. When my new friends asked about my past, I would become dark and quiet. "That's in the past," I'd say,
The final shaving was easy — exciting, even.
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squinting and emitting a faint but recognizable hint of violence.
I started by drinking a bottle and a half of wine, smoking a pack of cigarettes. Then I drove to the 7-Eleven and bought more cigarettes. I went back to the house and finished the second bottle of wine.
I started packing but I only had my small duffel bag and there were so many t-shirts — old Dead shirts, shirts with the names of bars that had long gone out of business, shirts from summer camp and high school and college. I piled them up, one on top of the other, and they reached to my crotch.
All of these T-shirts could not make the trip. They had the names of places I'd been, things I'd done. A careful observer — say, the beautiful but misunderstood French librarian in the small town where I would resettle, who would slowly yet inexorably find herself drawn to John Folsom — might start digging around, could actually reassemble my past based solely on these cotton articles of evidence.
I took the shirts out to the couch, arranged them in stacks. I got my matches, sat down, decided to smoke one more cigarette before torching it all — couch, shirts, dog smell, Claire smell, everything. I sat down. I was tired, drunk, maybe hungover. I closed my eyes.
I woke up the next day with the sun. I was still me. I was not John Folsom. I did not talk with an accent. I was no more dark and mysterious than the Spin Doctors tie-dye I'd used as a pillow.
The final shaving was easy — exciting, even. I bought a new razor and some lotion that promised to be extra soothing for sensitive faces.
I took my time. I brought some extra lamps into the bathroom, put on some Thelonius Monk. I bought a hand-mirror. I went slow, delicately clearing a path. Then I lathered up and shaved the whole thing again.
Everything felt different. My fingers and my sensitive parts were like old pals that were seeing each other in a completely different light. Even the most incidental, everyday contact was a revelation. Something as simple as a post-piss jiggle took on a whole new feeling.
I went through two bottles of Astroglide in that first week alone.
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