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    Spaces
    Spaces
    Spaces
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Spaces

    By Joel Kopplin

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A young woman, compartmentalized by a married man, assumes the role of the object. She tells her sexual history in judgment-free fragments, stories of casual violence committed in the name of desire. Joel Kopplin's short novel explores the difficulties of personal intimacy, the impossibility of knowing a self in relation to others. SPACES is singularly disturbing - and yet widely resonant. A close-up view of a young woman manipulated and maneuvered through physical space.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOutpost19
    Release dateMay 30, 2012
    ISBN9781937402334
    Spaces

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      Book preview

      Spaces - Joel Kopplin

      Copyright 2012 by Joel Kopplin.

      Published 2012 by Outpost19.

      All rights reserved.

      Outpost19 | San Francisco

      outpost19.com

      Kopplin, Joel

      Space / Joel Kopplin

      ISBN 9781937402334 (ebook)

      But here I am at the bottom, at the base of my closet—the door, the door, the door, the door is open a crack, opening into total and all-encompassing darkness. Dark space. A void. Avoid. Something is inside, smiling and I have no idea what this something is. It just sits in the darkness, this something/nothing, this total and all-encompassing darkness, and it smiles. I sit at the bottom, the base of the closet door and imagine the smiling of the darkness. Giant incongruous disparate teeth smiling, the smile all-encompassing and opening wide like the door, the door, the door, the door of the closet that is a open a crack, open in the blue afternoon light of the room, an opening into the total and all-encompassing darkness. I crouch on my knees, in my socks, my sweatpants, crouched at the bottom, the base of my closet,  my eyes wide and watching, watching the darkness in the crack of the door, the door, the door, the door—the total and all-encompassing darkness, the dark smiling space beyond the door. Not just smiling but laughter too. Soft at first, so soft you have to crouch to listen—ears close to the carpet at the bottom, the base of the closet. Soft laughter like shadows Mom brings at night. Men that giggle and whisper as they walk past, that never come during the day. Ears close to the carpet and listening and watching the darkness beyond the crack. The laughter like giggles, my breathing, my face close to the carpet, looking into the total and all-encompassing darkness, the smiling laughter of darkness waiting behind the door. The giggles grow loud and I crawl into bed, pulling my sheets up over my chest, my feet rubbing together, the blue afternoon-light filtering through the blinds. I lay on the bed, watching the crack in the closet, the total and all-encompassing darkness, listening for laughter, waiting for the inevitable knock, for shadows along the floor.

      I

      It was late when I left. Quiet outside, dark inside the house. The clock on the stove flashed the wrong time of day. 3:17, 3:17, 3:17. My feet creaked the floor in telling ways, slipping into the hall outside the living room.

      Well go then.

      Some chuckles and coughs. The scraping sound of a cigarette lighter. The small light of her cigarette. She sat in the dark, all the curtains drawn but one. One wide open at the far end of the room. Open and spilling orange light over the carpet. She watched the window, covered in dark. An outline—a torso, some baggy t-shirt with a logo high up on the chest, sweat pants. Perched on the couch, legs drawn in. Knees upright. No face. No shoulders or upper body. A cigarette burning small light.

      Well go then, she said, softer this time. She coughed again, clogged and rusty. The streetlight bleeding in monotone through the far window and all over the carpet. Her gaze fastened to the opening.

      I pulled the inner door shut behind me. The screen door hissed and banged against the frame. I crossed the lawn into others, into other lawns cluttered with childish debris and carelessness, things left overturned. Yards dark without anticipation, nobody left to come home. Televisions and half-caught conversations climbing from open windows. Some shouting. Always crying. Children always crying.

      At the corner I turned to watch the house from a block removed. Like a blown bulb in a fixture. Like it had no context now.

      I knocked on her door. Her mother answered, pulling at a robe slung over sharp shoulders and eyeing me and taking in deep breaths through her nostrils. She didn’t say hello, just turned and called.

      Amelia. You got company.

      She told me to wait there on the steps and I waited there on the steps. When Amelia turned up, her mom blocked her with those shoulders and made some hushed commands, using her fingers as punctuation, as cues. Amelia nodded and nodded. Looked over her mom’s shoulder and nodded, kept nodding.

      Yeah, Mom. Yeah, I know. Yes.

      I’m just saying right now. You hear me?

      Yes, Mom, yes.

      Some more nodding, her palms surrendered as she maneuvered and approached the door.

      Sarah, hey.

      She stopped nodding and smiled. I smiled. Her mother breathed in through her nostrils—loud, deep breaths—and turned down the hall.

      Come in.

      I stepped inside the dim light, stopped to unlace my shoes. Amelia held my arm.

      Keep them on. Your feet will get dirty.

      We walked through the kitchen, down the hall, stopped in the living room where her dad was splayed across the couch. Sweatpants. Shirt bunched around his sternum, bald bulbous belly jaundiced in the light of the lamp. We would have passed along without even a pause, but her dad made a sound, high-pitched and scratchy from the back of the throat, and sat up pulling the thin cotton down over that stomach.

      Hey, girls.

      He slipped his feet into his thong sandals but didn’t stand.

      How you girls doing, huh? How’s it going?

      His fingers were stubby and they sat on the crotch of his sweatpants, wriggling like they were shaking out sleep.

      Nothing, Gene, Amelia said because maybe her dad wasn’t really her dad or because maybe she only ever wanted to call him Gene. Either way he was mostly indifferent.

      His eyes found me and stayed.

      Nothing, huh? Oh, okay… He drew out his words, the last words, to last much longer than needed, to sound much more knowing. His voice was nasally, even squeaky. It rose at the end of every statement like he was always asking questions. His eyes found me and stayed and I was the only one in the room.

      Okay…

      Yeah, Gene.

      He scooched on the couch, leaving room for one more. He told us about a show he saw about

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