I Am Vertical / But I'd rather be horizontal. - Slyvia Plath
Who was it - Sylvia Plath? - who once wrote that she was vertical, but she'd rather be horizontal?
You're not quite sure anymore; it was ages ago when you first read it, scribbled into the margins of one of your girlfriend's journals in illegible handwriting. What you do remember is that, whoever it was, she they ended up tragically and messily, with her head in an oven or underwater and her veins full of alcohol and sleeping pills and regret. You've learned over the years that poets are strange like that.
Viggo is strange like that.
It didn't make sense back then -- that half intelligible quote -- but it makes perfect sense now, especially right now, with Viggo's elbow digging into your side and your spine flush to the wall. You've learned he likes it better this way, with the small of your back breathing into the wallpaper, and the full force of your weight wrapped around him. Your arms at his neck and your legs at his waist and the two of you held together by sheer force of will and the grinding of his hips against yours. When you're held this close together, you have to breathe in polar opposites -- match an inhale to an exhale, or your bodies struggle too much against one another and one of you or both of you end up lightheaded. Not that you aren't lightheaded now and slightly dizzy, but you think it has less to do with a lack of oxygen and more to do with Viggo's tongue lost somewhere at the nape of you neck, tracing insistent circles and muttering.
You wonder if Sylvia ever fooled around like this, if this is what she had been thinking about when she first strung together those words in that order and formed that particularly strange and poignant thought.
You think verticality is overrated, and so are walls and bathroom stalls and the sides of abandoned trailers. Forget back alleys and hallways and the curved trunks of wide trees. You want the hood of a car or a patch of grass or the hastily cleared off kitchen table, with remnants of a forgotten brunch scattered on the linoleum below. You want the hardwood floor or constant rug burn. The futon, the backseat. A bed for Christ's sake.
This way, up and down, it's never close enough, no matter how hard Viggo tries to push into and through you; it's only grazing, brushing past, and it's not enough friction, no not nearly enough to match the depth of your want and desire. It's better Sylvia's way -- you want to be a horizontal too, with the weight of Viggo bearing down on top you. You want the wind stolen from you by the heaviness and pure weight and ecstasy. Gravity is a friend and the result is so much sweeter if you work with it as opposed to against it. Sylvia knew this, and now you do too; you are teaching it to Viggo slowly but surely. You tell Viggo you want him buried in you. Entrenched.
You make a request. Quiet and un-urgent and into Viggo's hair. Saying it this way makes Viggo know how much you mean it. Pull me down, Viggo, you say, and when you speak the words, you hear Sylvia whispering with you, in her long-gone carbon-monoxide voice.
You wonder if this makes you strange like that as well.
