PureVolume

"Strait of Gibraltar" (short story)

Strait of Gibraltar
By Russ Courtney

1. Cloudless Sky

When Tammy finally wakes up, Steve is standing at the bow of the boat, unworried about the wheel, the current, the sails.
Were getting closer now, he says, with pride and excitement. I can already feel the winds picking up.
Tammy, of course, knows what this means. It wont be long before they are finally there. The Strait of Gibraltar. And so well be on land by noon? she asks. Steve, slowly, to show how little he cares about the time, checks his watch.
More like two, he says. Im not trying to hurry through this. Tammy doesnt bother to ask why. She knows the reasons are coming. Tammy, just for a second I want you to imagine the power it took Hercules to make the straitto look at the rock that was Atlas, he who once held the world on his shoulders, and split it in half.
Oh, so thats where it came from, is it? That huge body of water? From Hercules? Tammy says.
Youve heard them called the Pillars of Hercules, right? The Rock of Gibraltar and Jabal Musa?
I think youve been reading too many stories, she says. Steve slows down his breathing, aware again that the things that excite him do not do the same for his wife.
Tammy rolls a pair of dice that sit in a wooden box on the deck table. A pair of fives. She rolls again.
Are you really rolling those dice again? Steve asks.
Nothing else to do, she says, with her deepest voice, to emphasize her boredom.
Nothing else to do? Steve says, How can you say that theres nothing else to do? We are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, approaching the crossroads of the world, where
where Europe and Africa converge, Tammy says, I know. She has heard it a million times by now.
Oh, so you already know? Im sorry if Im repeating myself, Steve says melodically, to make the sarcasm obvious enough to slap her in the face. Tell me, Tam, what else do you know?
I know I would rather have stayed in Barbate, she says. They had docked the Caliber on the coast of Spain a week before, waiting for the right day to navigate the Strait. After all, Steve had made it quite clear that the power of the Strait of Gibraltar wasnt just in its historical and cultural significance, it was in its difficulty to pass. In the ancient world, when people never left the Mediterranean, it was believed to be the edge of the world, or the gateway to Hades, and the sailors fear of the straight kept them in the Mediterranean, like toys in a bathtub, for centuries.
Tammy rolls again, and again.
I dont understand how that entertains you at all, Steve says. Just rolling dice over and over again? Is there any way to win?
I try to roll higher than my last one, she says.
So youre too smart to listen to stories of ancient mythology, the faith of millions of our ancestors, but still willing to play dice against yourself? Steve says.
Tammy is calm. And what do you suggest would be better? Staring at the ocean all day? Its no different, Steve. Its just wave after wave, each one just barely different than the last one.
Clearly you dont understand true beauty, Steve says.
Fuck, Steve. Tammy does not raise her voice for a second. I dont see why you have to insult me.
She cracks the hatch to the V-bunk under the deck and goes back to bed, disappearing quickly like a leaping fish, while Steve stumbles over the right, most hurtful thing to say.
Alone on the bow, worried now about many un-nautical things, Steve is empowered by the expansiveness of the Atlantic, and stretches his arms out at his sides, so that his long, white sleeves get smacked like the sails above his head by the wind. Possessing the mental clarity given only by miles and miles of ocean, he knows that the marriage isnt working. And that they argue all the time. But soon enough, he thinks, they will be at the Strait, the nexus of the ancient world, with all the romantic power of a million perfect bouquets, and they will fall in love again. That, after all, is the plan.
Softly, over the amplified whoosh of the ocean, Steve hears the sharp metronome click that is Tammys dice on the wooden box coming from the bunk below, and thinks she doesnt know what shes missing. He gets behind the wheel, checks his compass and corrects his path before he begins to sway like a blade of grass in the morning sunlight, appreciative of the cloudless sky that he has waited in Spain for, for hours to come.

2. Unraveling

Faith thinks that things really started unraveling when she met Brooke. Faith, also, is awareas she sits in front of her dorm-room mirror, in a conflicted admiration of the two-headed being that she makes up half of, Brookes torso beginning just above the top of her head as her hair is being shaped and her makeup being drawnthat things have become unraveled.
We are going to look so good tonight, Faith says.
Brookes face lights up, stretches upwards, before she says, I know.
Brookes hands push the hairbrush through Faiths recently-dyed black hair in waves, some long, some short. And Im telling you, girl, Brooke says, Zachs the hottest guy on this whole campus. And he promised his friend looks just as good.
I cant wait, Faith says, though she knows that they will be waiting for at least a few hours; the dorm room ritual that prepares them for a night out only just beginning. She also knows that, during the coming hours, she will have to answer that question that is on the tip of Brookes tongue, ready to flow.
Alright, though, Faith. If Zachs friend asks you back to his place tonight, what are you going to say?
Faith doesnt know. Still, she says, Im going to say yes. She is in possession of a sad confidence, one where she knows exactly what to say, prepared by Brookes instruction, but where she is still unable to actually picture herself saying the words, doing those things shes never done before. Going to a mans house, going all the places after that. Maybe shes not ready, she thinks, but doesnt dare to say it to Brooke.
Because you know its frustrating, Brooke says, pushing the brush up against Faiths scalp, for emphasis, when I work so hard to make you look good before we go out, and you dont take advantage of the situation.
Well
Tell me this. Did you or did you not have a chance to hook up with Tyler Everett last week?
I think so. He might not have liked me, though, Faith says.
He wanted you to fuck him, she says. And you would have had a great time. Brooke makes gasping noises, while mimicking sexual positions for Faith to see in the mirror, and Faith is tempted to think that, yeah, she probably would have. Still, in every fantasy she has, every cinematic camera-shot-from-above dream she has of herself beneath Tyler Everett, hulking football player, she, all too often, spots the boom-mike peeking in, or a stagehand carrying coffee in the background, and she is reminded of the presence of the director. He, too, is a hulking man, though not in physique. He is her father, the Baptist preacher, who has worried for Faith, and given her countless verbal warnings on the phone, since the first day of college, when he took her to her dorm room and met Brooke, shocked by her exposed mid-drift, and the disrespect to the sacredness of flesh that was her naval ring.
Yeah, I dont know, Faith says, aware that she has been too silent for too long.
Are you going to lose it tonight? Brooke says.
Lose it?
You know what I mean, Brooke says, eyes wide.
My virginity?
Brooke laughs. Yes, your virginity. You talk like youre in junior high.
Faith weighs out those that influence her decision on the matter. Her father is a hundred miles north. Brooke is hovering above her, with hot, sharp objects near her neck. Where is Faith? Lost somewhere in limbo between the two.
Youre gonna give it up, right? Brooke says.
Maybe, says Faith. As Brooke places a handful of hair in the curler, Faith goes on: I think I will. And here the fantasies begin again, and go on for a while. The only difference is that this time, when the dream-man lets go inside of her, daddy is nowhere to be seen.


3. Performance Art

Brett Jann and The Oracle meet at the theater just hours before the show begins. They have not seen each other since their last performance, but they have deemed this unnecessary, since art, they say, is about spontaneity, not rehearsal. Besides, even though they are performing mostly at rock concerts, music is not their art, so its not about rehearsing songs for a predetermined setlist. Their art, rather, is to disturb, to disgust. To offer commentary on, to criticize, modern thought by mocking the things it depends on. Like human decency. Respect of the body.
So, Brett says to the Oracle, tonight.
The word makes both of their bodies get tense, muscles contracted in fear. Yeah, The Oracle says, Tonight.
They are both vaguely aware of the outcome of this conversation, so they are slow to begin. Still, though their muscles dread it, the vacuum of serotonin in their brains pushes them forward. Well I dont think it needs to be said, but Im going to say it anyway, Brett says. We have to do something big.
Yes, we do.
From the very beginning, its been about pushing the limit. Taking things farther than people want them to go, Brett says. It certainly was true. At their first performance, they had posed as a punk rock band, to get a chance to be on a stage with a crowd. Once they had the stage, they didnt play a single chord. The Oracle took his guitar by the headstock, and swung it like a bat into Bretts face. Brett dropped to the floor, and flopped like a fish before coming to his senses. He lost four teeth, right across the front; three of them were in the middle of the stage, in a puddle of the thick blood that comes from ones gums, the fourth on the concrete floor of the mosh pit, easy to spot because of the fault it caused in the crowd around it. They were disgusted. Afraid, even. Still, their eyes were on the stage.
The crowd applauded lightly, confused, when Brett threw up, adding another gallon to the puddle of bodily fluids on the stage. But the clapping turned to excited shouting when the Oracle took from his pocket a skinny, tall crazy straw, and started to suck it up. After all, this is a punk-rock crowda crowd that would let Henry Rollins spit on their faces, or kiss Johnny Rottens dirty mouth. They were satisfied when the blood and vomit mix hit the Oracles lips, but they were utterly impressed when he swallowed all of it down. No mop would be necessary for cleanup.
In the upcoming performances, of which there were only two more, Brett Jenn and The Oracle took it farther. If their art was about shock, they said, there can be no repetition. Once the people had seen something, they were desensitized to it, and could no longer feel the thrill that is shock from disgust. Preparing for the second show, they didnt shit for days. For the third, they bought an ill-fated goat, which they killed onstage, with big plans for the corpse, but were arrested too soon for the animal slaughter. Luckily, the damage had been done, and they had caught the eye of The Kza, popular death metal act, and powerful record producer, who witnessed the goat incident. He paid their bail, promising that his lawyers would get them off the hook, since it was simply artistic expression, and put them in the opening slot for his next show, causing Brett and the Oracle to be in the current dilemma.
Remember how many people are going to be watching tonight, Brett says.
More than any of the other nights.
More than all of them put together. Brett is ready to say it: We have already exhausted the shock of mutilation. They know we arent afraid of pain.
I know what youre getting at, The Oracle says, confident as ever about their artistic linkage. We have to show them that we arent afraid of death.
And arent you afraid of death? Brett says. The Oracle shakes his head. He doesnt bother to ask if Brett is afraid; he knows that hes not. He knows that, from the beginning, they have been obsessed with it. Who knows what could have happened when Brett got his teeth knocked out? He could have just as well died that night. Or any of the times when they had sat together in Bretts apartment, shooting heroin and tying up their arms and legs with razor wire.
Brett and The Oracle agree without expressing it verbally. They will die on stage tonight. It is their best idea yet, and they can hardly wait.
We are going to need knives, The Oracle says. Sharp ones."


4. Balcony Scene

Faith is uncomfortable in large crowds, but still, she is happy to be at The Spot, the most crowded bar on campus, since its loud, and so its less awkward when nobodys talking. She is not very good at talking to guys, she thinks. Zachs friend, whose name is Dave or Dan or something like that, looks as good as Zach had promised. Hes big. Muscular. And hes old enough to buy drinks. As soon as they had arrived at the bar, he handed her a Fishbowl, which is almost bucket-like in size. Faith realized then that this was probably an easy way to get a girl six-drinks-drunk while she still thinks shes on her first drink, and vowed not to fall for it, though now she is afraid she has.
So where do you think Zach went with your friend? he shouts, hands cupped around his mouth and into her ears, to reach a volume above the pop song on the loudspeakers.
Faith doesnt hear. What? she shouts, throwing her hands to her shoulders.
I think your friend left, he says.
Can we go outside? Faith says, I cant hear you.
He nods, and they move through the crowd to the front door, beyond which they will hear only the white noise of the city, which will seem like silence in juxtaposition. Their progress is stopped only by the bouncer at the door, a bald-white man, like a glacier, who tells them no, you gotta finish those drinks inside. The couple chugs, and when he finishes before her, he pushes the bottom of her drink upwards, to encourage her drinking speed. Faith, of course, cant keep up with gravity, and the blue liquid spills down her exposed chest and onto her white tank top.
Did you really have to do that? Faith says.
Its fine, he says, we can just go back to my place, Ill give you one of my t-shirts to wear.
Faith is not excited about going to his place, since hes a creep and he ruined her shirt, and says, But Im freezing.
Didnt they tell you? he says. Me and Zach live right up there. He points to building next to the bar, only an alleys-width away, and three floors up. Impressed with the tasks ease, suddenly aware of her mistrust in her ability to walk correctly, Faith agrees that, yeah, they can go.
Behind the apartments front door are Brooke and Zach. Brooke is completely naked, and Faith, fighting the instinct to look away, sees Brooke press her chest into Zachs face, before her and her boy mutter sorry and rush through the living room into the kitchen. Faith, having difficulty balancing on two feet, sits on the kitchen counter, next to the sink, which is remarkably clean, she thinks, for a guys apartment.
Lets get that shirt off you, he says. Faith goes along with it, although she knows that he hasnt gotten the promised t-shirt yet. Aware of her immobility, and the fact that Brooke will be busy for the rest of the night, she realizes that she has been checkmated. When he puts his mouth on one of her breasts, she thinks about how they have not yet kissed on the lips. He takes her pants off, and the progression is slowed only by Faiths words: Are we really gonna do it right here in the kitchen?
He shakes his head. No, he says, follow me. He takes her through the kitchen door, and they hear the familiar sound of the city again. Looking down from the balcony, Faith can see the crowds of people laughing and singing next door at The Spot, and she wishes that she could have just stayed there. Thinking of her nakedness, she says What if those people see me? He assures her that its way too dark.
Faith is looking down, bent over the balcony rail, trying her best to have an out-of-body moment, where she can go back to the bar, or, in a perfect world, go home, as she feels him enter her from behind. He doesnt start slow, like she wishes he would. Instead, he drives at her fast, and very hard, so hard that every thrust makes her grab more tightly to the railing, afraid of falling three stories to her naked, public death. She feels his cowboy-sized belt buckle smacking up against her, and she realizes that he is still fully clothed, only his fly undone.
Faith is thinking about Tyler Everett, the man she wished she could be with. She thinks, then, about the man behind her, and how hes not Tyler, hes Dave or Don or Jesus, she doesnt even know his name. She thinks, then, about her father, and now he is fucking her, smacking her ass, saying I told you not to do this.
She is losing it. Her virginity. And because of this, she knows that she will remember this instant, this sad balcony scene for the rest of her life. She thinks about Romeo and Juliet. She thinks about the romance she had hoped for, even expected for this, her first time, and she knows that its not there; it has been sucked out with a vacuum.
From the bar below, she can hear the crowd chanting something, but cant make out what it is. When she realizes that the beat of their chanting is perfectly in time with the metronome click of this mans thighs against her ass, she forces herself to believe that it is only coincidence.


5. Suicide on Stage

Brett Jann and The Oracle are naked in front of a thousand people or more, and though, to them, their heads floating from adrenaline, it seems like a dream, everything is very real, the hardwood floor beneath their bare feet almost too tangible.
The performance artists were not introduced. They care not about developing name recognition. They simply walked out onto the stage, and stood silently until the crowd settled down. They are silent now, some percentage of them confused about what or who they are seeing, some other percentage knowing already who they are, waiting to see what they will do this time, how they will top the last one.
On the floor of the stage, next to the mic stand and the monitor they will not use, one of the stagehands has set up their knife rack, which holds maybe ten, although Brett and The Oracle will probably not use all of them. They have everyone fooled, insisting that it would compromise their artistic integrity to reveal to anyone their plans, including the club manager, the stagehands, The Kza. Brett leans into the stagelights, illuminating his pale skin, the exposed, scarred flesh all over his body, and picks up a knife. In a swift motion that begins the moment the handle of the knife is in his hand, he throws the knife backward, like a quarterback in a pitch play, into The Oracles stomach. The knife stands for a moment in his skin, parallel to the plane of the stage, before it slowly droops, and falls to the floor, The Oracles hand never touching it.
The Oracle does not bother to grab a clean one. He picks up the bloodied knife, still with a chunk of torn skin on the tip, and pushes it into Bretts back. The audience is still silent, some amazed, others trying to decide whats real, whats part of the magic act. To fight this awkward silence, the sound tech had told them that he could play music while they were on stage, but they had refused this, assuring him that the sounds of their show were important, too. The crowd hears the sound of each stab, like a squeezed sponge.
The Oracle and Brett do not talk to each other. They only sense when it is time to stop this silly knifefight. Their lust for blood is high, their tolerance for pain already exceeded, and they are finally drunk enough from blood loss that they can turn the knives on themselves.
The crowd begins to mutter when the two of them stand straight like pillars on either side of the microphone stand in the center of the stage. Slowly, they each lift a knife to their neck, and begin to saw, pumping their arms back and forth until they are too dizzy to remain upright, and fall like broken stones.
The paramedics arrive all too quickly. Someone, somewhere, in the crowd or behind the stage or at the bar, called them when Brett and The Oracle collapsed, and they knew for sure that no, it wasnt a magic show. Brett and The Oracle wake up, now separated, in stretchers, their arms and legs tied at their sides. Carried only some minutes before by the incredible momentum of the stakes that they had set, their artistic vision, they now find themselves immobile.
In each of their hospital rooms, they are each told that they will not die tonight, but that they must remain in the hospital for weeks at the least. They wait, in complete silence, save the metronome click of the heart monitor, for someone to visit, The Kza, maybe, but he is busy playing for the audience that they had so artfully scarred.
Separated by white hospital walls, they still remain on the same wavelength, as they liked to say, and they each think, in their own way of doing so, what a fucking disgrace. Suicide on Stage. It was so simple, so real. Their best idea yet, and they couldnt pull it off. They should have cut deeper, pushed harder, but they didnt, and they were paying the price
Separately, they are interviewed by the psychiatrists, who will search in vain for mental stability in the artists. They know that the states got ahold of them now, that soon they will face trial for that poor goat they killed, and in doing that they will have to face their public, and their own humiliation over not being able to deliver what they believed was promisedgenius in performance art.
And though they will never know the extreme to which this is true, they do think alike, act alike. After the lights go out in the hospital rooms, and its time to sleep, they both become naked again, and after admiring their new set of scars, they begin to rip up their hospital gowns, tearing them carefully into connected strips, each about an inch thick. Together in spirit, and in art, they take the ropes that they have made, and begin to tie their nooses.

6. Nothing Lies Beyond

Steve is alone still, Tammy down in the bunk, when the wind caused by the natural tunnel that is the Strait of Gibraltar hits their Caliber sailboat, and he knows for certain that they soon will be there. Soon, he will see the beauty of the Strait, as created by the gods or natural science, both of them masters of their craft. It is nearing noon; the sun is almost directly over his head, now, at the tip of the vector that extends from the mast into the sky.
Soon he will fulfill a lifelong dream, to navigate the most majestic body of water in the world, with its unexplainable easterly current and its natural landmarks that surround it. On the starboard side will be Jabal Musa, enormous Moroccan mountain, and on the port will be the Spanish mainland, with the Rock of Gibraltar straight ahead. He is certain that, when Tammy sees this, she will know that this whole trip, and every night spent island hopping, was worth it. She will see that after five years of marriage, he still knows good romance. They will kiss on the bow of the boat, and in a postcard-like scene, they will be silhouetted against the great rock, like lovers as natural as time.
A voice on the radio interrupts his reverie. It is Tarifa Radio, a station which, he knows, exists specifically as a guide for amateur sailors attempting to pass the Strait. They are hailing him, saying that he must stay out of the shipping lanes. Within minutes he understands why. Upon the horizon he sees it: traffic like a London highway. Freighters, sailors, even, shit, windsurfers. Steve takes the mental picture that he had developed of this beautiful body of water, and crumples it up. Deleted. He had expected tranquility, and finds havoc, ever-increasing entropy. They have designated lanes in the water. And no, they are not painted like the streets in yellow lines, but they are just as binding, just as commanding, as those on a highway. He realizes, then, that the Strait is no longer about beauty, it is about getting from A to B. It is about commerce, that fucking machine, sucking the life out of everything.
Alone still on the bow, Steve hears Tammy below him, banging her dice against her wooden box. Slowly, Jabal Musas tip emerges from the horizon. It gets larger and larger, and minutes later, when he doesnt expect it to get any bigger, he sees the Rock of Gibraltar. He thinks about Hercules, and the sign that he made after creating the strait. Nothing Lies Beyond, it said. He is aware now, though, that Hercules was wrong. Everything lies beyond. In fact, he thinks, nothing lies within this straight anymore. Just petroleum, and piss, and anything else secreted by these god damn ocean liners. He decides that there is a new god, one more powerful than Atlas, or Hercules, one that has no concern for the creation or maintenance of beauty.
Steve pulls into the recreational sailing lane, and passes the straight dodging windsurfers, who are turning this whole thing into a game. When the time comes, and both of Hercules pillars are perfectly in view, the point where hes not sure in hes closer to Europe or Africa or Hades or Limbo, he knows that its time to get Tammy up on deck, to tell her he loves her. He lifts up the hatch to the bunk below. Tammy? he says.
Yeah?
Steve is embarrassed for himself. For his marriage. In possession again of the mental clarity given by the ocean, he is aware that this whole trip was nothing more than a fiasco, a diversion meant to prolong the destruction of this doomed marriage. He realizes, also, that the Strait, even in its beauty, could not have saved them. The Strait of Gibraltar, he thinks, is nothing more than a trickling stream that connects a pair of puddles of water, compared to the importance, the weight of the issue really at handhim and Tammy.
Its not worth it, he thinks.
Nevermind, he says.
Steve keeps sailing, keeps moving, because the wind, the current, and the traffic all demand it of him, no matter how badly he just wants to dock, and get off this damn boat. Below him, he can hear Tammys dice rolling still. Click. Click. It will be the heartbeat, the metronome, the chant of the crowd that will keep him pushing forward, even though he no longer has any place to go.

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