I’d shiver after sex with Jules. She would do it too. I don’t think I always used to do that. I think I got it from her.
It’s this bone-chilling, skin-crawling shiver, all up your spine. Like something’s leaving your body—something spiritual though, some energy. Like something’s evaporating..I don’t know.
After sex Jules would just lay there, naked—she’d cover only her feet—and she’d stare at my wall. I guess: at my paintings. Jules was a fan of socks—not very comfortable with her feet. She’d be staring into my paintings, seeing things in them that I’d never seen; she’d talk to me about them, and talk to me about other things.
“It looks like this,” she’d say. “I think I saw it in a dream.”
She’d have her hand on my painting, but I’d be staring at the ceiling, or watching us both naked from my computer’s point of view, through its camera, on the screen.
“You know this part you have down here? Where it’s color like a whiplash?”
"Yeah," I’d say. I know that part.
"How did you make this?"
"I made it with a string."
"Oh," she’d say. "I see! This is—" she’s tapping the painting "—not unlike the other description I’ve heard. You’re not tired of me talking about this, are you?"
"I like hearing you talk about it."
"Good," she says (relieved), "because I scare some people."
I roll over to her. "You don’t ever have to be afraid of your intensity with me."
We’re eye to eye.
"I love your intensity. Ok? I’m intense. I love that you are." I’m gripping her face. "You need your intensity and we need it too. I do. It helps me. It’s like when Jesus said—you don’t mind if I talk about Jesus—"
"Talk about Jesus!—"
"Ok. It’s like when Jesus said ’You are the salt of the earth.’"
Jules is nodding.
"Salt is intense."
Jules is nodding more.
"So be your intense self. Ok? If it scares me, I’ll deal with it."
She almost has a tear in her eye.
"It’s better than the other way around," I say. "Unintense people, boring people, dead people. What good is that? It’s a waste of the genome, it’s bodies..walking around..doing nothing. We have enough of that, so people like you..have to be intense. You have to. It’s your job. Don’t you feel that that’s your job?"
Jules’s eyes are closed. She’s nodding. She whispers: "It’s yours too."
Then she’d tell me about the vortex, and I would get a little scared. Not really of the vortex, which, sober, I didn’t believe in. But of Jules, and Jules’s mind, and how much of her mind was filled with stuff like this.
She would tell me about this other description of it, which she had read. Like on the internet somewhere. I imagine the page with animated under-construction icons and rainbow’d horizontal separator bars. Maybe a purple background. Real scientific stuff.
She’d tell me the description—and she’d see it in my paintings. Her hand would trace the part I’d made with a string and she would see the description of the vortex, in it.
"You’ve seen it," she’d say.
"No," I’d say, "I just made that with a string."
Then she’d get mad.
I personally don’t think you have to believe all the same things as the person you’re with, or as your friends. I don’t see any reason I couldn’t be with someone who had entirely different world-views than me, and still love them. Living together, to me, is about making love and arranging the house and making breakfast and washing clothes and taking walks and taking baths and brushing hair and burning incense and wiping your feet at the motherfucking door.
"Jules. What do you see?"
"I’m telling you. This is exactly it," she’d say.
"Show me."
"I don’t have to." She’d pull me closer. "See? It’s in your painting already." She’d touch the canvas. "You’re, showing, me."