It Took Two Weeks

A good question is self-contained. Requires no pre-text, no explanation. Comes from insight, not ignorance. The question is holistic, begins in the non-linguistic soul and eventually, after ricocheting around the brain, traveling down rapidly firing neurons through grey matter, becomes a sign and symbol—the process of objectification. What it means to communicate.  

More processing occurs as the question travels inversely through the recipient’s grey matter into, eventually into, the non-syllabic, signless, signiferless soul. Journeys, after sojourning its short half-life in symbol and icon, to the soul. A place of transcendence reconnected with the primordial absolute.

A good question overcomes man’s alienation from the world otherness he finds himself placed in (read: trapped). Overcomes dualism to when everything—he, she, them, that moss over there—was united within the primordial absolute.

It took two weeks. For the question to be asked, it took two weeks in this particular instant. Thirteen years would be an accurate exaggeration. But, really, it was two weeks. Two weeks too long.

Exactly fourteen days of unnecessary awkward and forced dinner conversation, hesitant smiles during post-meal family miniature golf outings, insincere my-father-does-this chatting over local hand scooped ice cream, disingenuous inside-joke creations that are inevitable when persons are confined to the same location—bonding. Playing catch with their miserable little Cocker Spaniel, imagining it’s curly head forced down the garbage disposal. Nights spent with necks craning from the water’s edge dock towards the illuminated house veranda where adults sipped dark roast and lazily chaperoned, hoping parents didn’t notice a young hand intrepidly brushing, purposively resting near shaved tanned thigh, evenly muscled from exclusive summer tennis camps, nicely fatty and round from God’s gracious hand.

The parents didn’t notice. Missed the shaking appendage resting anxiously, first allowing blond knuckle hairs to reach out and tickle the thigh. A prologue. Skin touched skin, she shifts into, pressing against the waifish hand. Fearing her backpeddle he doesn’t risk the progress with overzealous momentum. She knows her parents are waiting to interrupt with a convenient “oh the chocolate fondue is ready, dear.” Fondue is in their self-interest, but disappoints the boy and the hand. Don’t worry, they’ll keep each other company tonight like the last ten nights.

A clear sticky ichor sneaks out, creates a delta valley on his briefs and epoxies the cotton to the sluggish river’s source. Ten wasted nights ripping his solitary urethra from cheap cotton, eleven nights when hundreds, thousands of potential seeds mix with soap, warm water and herbal shampoo found in the guest bathroom cupboard swirling regrettably down the shower drain, wasted life. Real abortion. Literally, infanticide. A thousand some odd babies denied the chance for life. Gnashing their teeth at the slippery, adipose, cozy gates. Twelve socks stiff, yellow, smelling like stale coconut, slump in the bedroom corner, befriend dust bunnies when they’d rather shoot out like boiled snake venom in the Arizona dessert, myopically staining that sheer cotton polo draped coyly across twelve-carat buds, the 400-count guest sheets splattered, so much for the new duvet, sopped up with monogrammed towels. Instead, it was thirteen resentfully crumpled tissues, thirteen dry kisses with a hardly amorous, “guess I should get to bed. Mom will worry. She stays up, you know.”

Two weeks, many gluey urological-underwear surgeries and one chaffed obelisk later the perfect question is uttered. One might ask: was the question there all along? Or did it take two weeks frustrated germination to emerge, concupiscence watered with refusal.

They sat on the bed’s edge. She just brushed her teeth. He generated his father’s Board Room cogency. She was already mentally scrap-booking the two wonderful weeks. Girls live off memories, boys the creation of such.

Then it hit with Baroque elegance and Dow Jones grit.

“Where is this going sexually?” the thirteen year-old boy asked his host.
She couldn’t respond. Good questions have no immediate answer. Instead, it swirled down neurons, shed it’s pithy linguistic form and then paused at a tearful purgatory causing her Estée Lauder to run while the Cocker Spaniel’s nails clinked on the hall hardwood.

“What’s the matter, honey? Nothing a little cold cream can’t undo . . . Why’s he a jerk, sweetheart?”

A mistake—some good questions exasperate the dualism.