brightwalldarkroom:

Sex and the City 2: The Sun Also Sets

by Ernest Hemingway

There is sand stretching in between the dunes like a spine as far as the eye can see and a camel in the middle of it. Two camels, or three. The camels walk slowly. I do not think they have ever had to run away from anything.

I like them. The camels. I like them because they walk with something you could call a stateliness. An elegance in the face of extreme heat, of the stench of something rotting closer than is comfortable but not in the line of sight.

In the room that holds the screen where the camels walk, I pour myself another scotch. The glass has not been washed in days. The street outside is still covered with snow.

“Lawrence of my labia!” a woman on the screen says. Her eyes look like the eyes of someone who is very tired but knows they should not look tired or they might let someone down. Lawrence might be let down.

Lawrence was the name of a guy I met in Madrid, back when I was with Maria. He went by Larry. He was always telling me not to spend so much time with Maria. She was no good. But I did not want to listen. I loved Maria and her black hair and her taste for wine. She could drink a whole bottle of wine before noon and still go fishing if she felt like it. And she would catch bigger fish than anyone else, on top of it all.

Larry was right anyway. Maria spent so much energy putting on a show for me and for Larry and for anyone else around that by the time we got to the sweet spot of the night all she wanted to do with me was go to bed. Most nights I did not want to go to bed with her. I had been injured by mortar fragments in Vienna and anyway all I wanted was to have a chat sometimes with a woman who was alive, who made me feel alive inside.

I like the camels because of their grace. Their willingness to bear a weight which they should not have to bear: the weight of these women made less of flesh than of the cold, sad steel out of which one builds monuments to the cowardice of store windows and book burnings and expensive brassieres. That was one thing I liked about Maria. She did not go in for brassieres. She said she was proud of her bits just the way they were, under clothes, without any fancy dressing on top. She was right about that.

I like the fortitude of the camels. I admire their refusal to give in to the narrative being forced upon them. Their eyes look more determined than tired or anything else.

Looking out the window at the snow, which now bears a single set of hoofprints, I switch the screen to “off.” I pour myself another scotch. I toast with it to the camels.

Ernest Hemingway cannot be reached by email, cell phone, or camel ride. He does not have a Tumblr. He contributed this review via Elizabeth Cantwell, who tumbls here. Her relationship with Hemingway is, at this moment, unknown.

This is very clever. Try it in Chrome as your browser. Don’t panic when it starts, it cleans itself up nicely. Very worth it.