Adrienne Rich — Seven Skins

1 Walk along back of the library in 1952 someone’s there to catch your eye Vic Greenberg in his wheelchair paraplegic GI— Bill of Rights Jew graduate student going in by the only elevator route up into the great stacks where all knowledge should and is and shall be stored like sacred grain while the loneliest of lonely American decades goes aground on the postwar rock and some unlikely shipmates found ourselves stuck amid so many smiles Dating Vic Greenberg you date crutches and a chair a cool wit an outrageous form: “—just back from a paraplegic’s conference, guess what the biggest meeting was about— Sex with a Paraplegic!—for the wives!—” In and out of cabs his chair opening and closing round his electrical monologue the air furiously calm around him as he transfers to the crutches But first you go for cocktails in his room at Harvard he mixes the usual martinis, plays Billie Holiday talks about Melville’s vision of evil and the question of the postwar moment: Is there an American civilization? In the bathroom huge grips and suction-cupped rubber mats long-handled sponges the reaching tools a veteran’s benefits in plainest sight And this is only memory, no more so this is how you remember Vic Greenberg takes you to the best restaurant which happens to have no stairs for talk about movies, professors, food Vic orders wine and tastes it you have lobster, he Beef Wellington the famous dessert is baked alaska ice cream singed in a flowerpot from the oven, a live tulip inserted there Chair to crutches, crutches to cab chair in the cab and back to Cambridge memory shooting its handheld frames Shall I drop you, he says, or shall we go back to the room for a drink? It’s the usual question a man has to ask it a woman has to answer you don’t even think 2 What a girl I was then what a body ready for breaking open like a lobster what a little provincial village what a hermit crab seeking nobler shells what a beach of rattling stones what an offshore raincloud what a gone-and-come tide pool what a look into eternity I took and did not return it what a book I made myself what a quicksilver study bright little bloodstain liquid pouches escaping What a girl pelican-skimming over fear what a mica lump splitting into tiny sharp-edged mirrors through which the sun’s eclipse could seem normal what a sac of eggs what a drifting flask eager to sink to be found to disembody what a mass of swimmy legs 3 Vic into what shoulder could I have pushed your face laying hands first on your head onto whose thighs pulled down your head which fear of mine would have wound itself around which of yours could we have taken it nakedness without sperm in what insurrectionary convulsion would we have done it mouth to mouth mouth-tongue to vulva-tongue to anus earlobe to nipple what seven skins each have to molt what seven shifts what tears boil up through sweat to bathe what humiliatoriums what layers of imposture What heroic tremor released into pure moisture might have soaked our shape two-headed avid into your heretic linen-service sheets?