High Tide
Jenny Nieves
I just wanted to have fun, but he was so serious. Pauly held me like he did two weekends before. He thought it was romantic. I hadn’t been with anyone else before him. Then a week later he said he didn’t want to be together anymore because I wouldn’t satisfy him. He needed someone who understood him sexually. So he held me for an hour as I cried. He hugged my back and would remind me that if it hadn’t been for my inexperience he wouldn’t have to feel this way.
Two days ago he asked to see me. There were things he needed to say. I found comfort in him too quickly. For our last night together, he grazed his fingers on the top of my underwear. I took two tranquilizers that night because I was having trouble sleeping. He said it would be okay to relax. My vision and the darkness of the room blended together. The tips of my ears became cold and my body sank into the sheets. I felt like water.
So when Pauly’s fingers reached for more skin, I felt the goosebumps spread across my chest. He gripped my hips and pulled me back. He told me he wanted to enjoy our last night together. I thought I mumbled no more back, but he never responded. I was too quiet.
It felt nice. He was not.
Deep in the pillows, my breath began to warm my cheeks and nose. I thought of boiling bubbles blowing from ocean bottoms. The bubbles that burned so hot they formed misty clouds. It was there I rested warmly in the coldest depths of the sea. He had taken the sheet off of me.
As his hands attempted to tear at my flesh, I drifted to the worn ruins of forgotten peoples and land. I gazed upon the field of broken stone statues bruised by the current. Each an idealized version of an adored man. Their maker carefully carved the glimmer in each eye. Some men were in love too, and some smiled brightly at me. Their greetings were warm and welcomed.
I realized I hadn’t talked to my mom in sometime.
His teeth dragged over my shoulder and he gnawed at my body. Let’s enjoy together, I whispered to him. I wanted to play in whale carcasses and swing from their towering bones, but I only stared back into the hollowed pupils of a basalt Pauly. I looked deep into the wrinkles creating valleys on the edges of the statue’s eyes. I could not find forgiveness, only the sprouts of algae rooting itself within the pores. The lips were pulled back until his teeth fully showed themselves, and the gums were molded hills. A smile made only from joy. I smiled back.
Pauly hummed at me when my teeth reflected the dim hall light. He squeezed the skin covering my ribs. He wanted more of me. Pauly kissed my temple harshly. That was unlike him. Pauly didn’t like kissing when we were intimate those few times. He preferred to hold my face and look into my eyes. He once said it was because he loved to watch himself please me. I loved knowing his attention was held. After the kiss, he held my neck and forced my head to rest on his collar bone. His hand squeezed my throat in quick beats until he held the pressure. He drowned himself in me.
That was when I felt the first slip of my breathing. The sea snow fell onto my chest. Piled up until my lungs could no longer expand. My mouth gaped open like a fish on land and my throat pulsed with every needed breath. I felt burned. It was as if he pulled me from the deepest trenches and brought me to the surface. The pressure encased me like a longing lover. For a moment, I felt safe and leaned into him. It only encouraged him. My ears rang. Tears filled my eyes until they poured over the ledge. My face was colored like the brightest stars. He overwhelmed me.
I’m close, he said to me.
I was nearing the molten lava so that I could tuck myself underneath the world. I wanted to hide. I wasn’t having fun. Yet Pauly made me feel adored, and I couldn’t ignore the tingling of my skin.
Then Pauly asked me if he could see me again. He missed me. Relief opened my throat and I inhaled deeply. He wanted me after all.
Did you enjoy yourself? He asked me.
Of course, I told him.
Amy Marin is a psychologist, writer, and photographer whose work is fueled by a keen interest in human behavior. Her latest photography project “Specimen” is a look into the classification system used by mental health professionals to define and diagnose psychological disorders. There are hundreds of labels for the dysfunctional workings of our minds designed to capture the essence of our dysregulated relationships, our failures to cope, our lost touch with reality, and our profound and troubling emotional states. Although this clinical system benefits diagnosis and research, the cost is that the human is diminished to a set of qualifying features and traits. The photographic images in this series explore the duality of the private, often painful individual human experience of mental illness with the accompanying burden of becoming a specimen of fascination to outside observers.
Jenny Nieves is a full time preschool teacher and a part time student. Storytelling is something she thoroughly enjoys. Born and raised in Arizona, she hopes to leave at some point.
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