Diamond is a Type of Rhombus
Fiction by Jessica Poon
Because Artemis is an adorably arachnophobic vegan with a pronounced distaste for pulpless orange juice; because her mother, for reasons mostly unbeknownst to me, actually likes me, there is no way, at least for the interim, I can terminate our friendship; no, not now. The involvement is pleasantly suffocating. The timing is bad. The timing is like if the apocalypse forgot its alarm clock and arrived at a job interview, insufficiently caffeinated and breathless. Artemis flosses after every meal. She can be a good influence. Artemis drinks a lot. Mostly lager but also vodka. She can be a bad influence. She leaves the door open when she uses the bathroom. “I have other shit to be embarrassed about,” she says. And she does. More than once, I have seen Artemis’s father litter with a completely serene expression. For this reason, and countless others, I used to avoid him. Littering is a contagious act of taboo pleasure.
It’s spring, if you care about that sort of thing. Artemis, her mother, and I are in their backyard. I might be paranoid, but the rhododendrons are judging us. Artemis, of course, is on the hammock with a Sneaky Weasel and her mother is on a lawn chair, her eyes closed, as though she is preparing to die; that, or she’s relaxing.
“My father,” Artemis says, “has hit an all-time new low. I think, anyway. He was walking Vlad and Vlad took a shit. So my father dutifully put Vlad’s little shit in a pink bag that smells like lavender. There was a garbage can a few feet away from him, but my father noticed no one was around. He got that furtive, excited look he gets when he realizes no one but God is watching him. And so, with remarkable athleticism, he threw the neatly knotted up pink bag and sent it arcing onto someone’s front lawn. Which would’ve been fine.
Except a man from nowhere, except really, he came from his own house into the front lawn, so like, he wasn’t actually coming from nowhere, but anyway, he came out and he’s got a cigarette and a temper. He’s screaming at my father, like really screaming, and he picked up that plastic bag of Vlad’s shit and hurled it right back at my father and it landed right on my father’s chest. Why do they say it landed squarely? How do you land in the shape of a square? But yeah, it landed on my father’s chest. Perfect aim. Squarely.
You know how a diamond is just a square, but at a more interesting angle? It’s the whole concept behind Shreddies. And a diamond is a type of rhombus. Which means a square is a type of rhombus. So, allow me: the bag of Vlad’s shit landed on my father’s chest, rhomboid.
The man, the whole time, was screaming, ‘You think you’re such a big guy? Well, fuck you, lady!’ And my father gave him this really intense look and said, ‘Smoking isn’t good for your lungs.’ And he took Vlad’s shit and he threw it back at the man. Vlad was whining the whole time. I think Vlad is a serious empath. He gets it from me. And so, my father’s aim, it turns out, is not as good as that man’s. But the man got the point. And they went back and forth like that for actual minutes. The bag of shit nearly exploded from all the manly throwing.”
Artemis has been known to assume other people’s stories until they seem more like hers than theirs. Until they seem so ludicrously fiction that you know that, they are, in essence, probably true.
“I steal biographies instead of hearts,” she likes to say.
We met in a writer’s workshop. I was not inclined to like her, because she was a brunette white girl that had clearly experimented with blondeness, been rewarded, and reverted to being brunette, offended by the increased amount of male attention, which was also the very reason she had become blonde. And in any case, she was an ostentatious gum chewer. For the xylitol, apparently. When she pointed out a comma splice of mine, I wanted to be offended, but I was so delighted to receive information that wasn’t unrealistically positive. The instructor, someone who’d had published one novel of little acclaim and even fewer sales, interrupted. Valiantly rising to a defense I did not want, he said grammar was not the point and that comma splice was stylish and maybe even intentional on my part. It wasn’t. Over a comma splice, Artemis and I became friends.
I have a feeling the way Artemis has told me this story is not how her father would have told it. I don’t think Artemis’s father would tell this story at all but of course he must’ve, though probably in three concise sentences. I’ve never known him to be a storyteller. He asks questions that make you feel like a surprisingly worthwhile museum exhibition. Questions like, when you say you don’t believe in horoscopes or dislike puns, are you being completely and truly honest with your authentic self? He likes to ask questions where, inevitably, you find yourself saying I don’t know, man. I don’t know.
I would rather be friends with him than with Artemis. Artemis is aware. More than once, she has accused me of wanting to purloin her parents away from her.
“Your father’s way too zen to get into a dog shit fight,” I say.
“There is no such thing as zen,” Artemis’s mother says. “You have to watch out for quiet folks. They try to hide the crazy. I speak from experience.”
Artemis’s mother pauses, giving us time to realize this purported experience is a tacit way of saying, my husband, aka Artemis’s father, is crazy. “Me: I don’t do that. You know I’m crazy.” After this pronouncement, Artemis’s mother winks at me and though I want to acknowledge the wink in the politest way possible, I’m not sure what the etiquette is. An eyebrow raise? A wink back? But Artemis would see and she can’t let a wink, let alone a wink returning a wink, go by without some commentary about the inherent sleaziness of winks.
“You’re not crazy,” Artemis says to her mother. It is clear to me that Artemis did not see her mother wink and I am relieved.
“You just vacuum five times a day.”
“I don’t believe anybody that describes themselves as crazy,” I say. “At some point, forthrightness starts to seem like a disguise.” We all think about this and feel a bit deep.
Artemis’s father is not the kind of friend’s father you would typically fantasize having penetrative intercourse with, or, for that matter, any kind of sex. Artemis once said that imagination was for pussies and fantasies were for penises. I never did understand what, exactly, that was supposed to mean. The thing about Artemis, is, for her to make sense, you need to use your imagination. When I first became friends with Artemis, both her mother and father immediately gave me their respective cell phone numbers and their landline. “You call us if you need anything at all,” her mother said. There was a rehearsed element in the way she said this and I wondered how many former friends of Artemis had gotten the same line, how many of them deserted her after one too many eccentricities.
But anyway, Artemis’s father. He was the first person I ever saw wear a bolo tie. He can’t enter a grocery store without some old lady requesting that he please, if he could, help her get the digestive crackers. He often says, “Being tall is my gift to the world. I can reach things on high shelves and I nod politely when people ask me about basketball.”
I wasn’t sure either of those things were gifts in the same way that say, Mozart was gifted, but I let him have his self-deprecating humour, his humble way of elevating himself. I pointed out being tall also meant he was incrementally closer to the sun, which would increase, however marginally, his chances of skin cancer.
And he laughed and told me some specific anecdote about a specific ex-girlfriend that was Japanese, someone decidedly not Artemis’s mother and I thought how weird it was for parents to have sexual histories. After this ex-girlfriend story, he made an uncomfortably true generalization — East Asian women are very afraid of skin cancer. I was living proof. Hastily, he added: “I don’t want you to feel like I don’t see you, or that I only see you in this one-dimensional way according to what you check on a census.”
I said, “I have this friend who knows two people who’ve had excruciatingly horrible experiences with IUDs and now she’s eliminated them entirely as a possibility, but she’s always complaining about how bloated and tired she feels on birth control and how men hate condoms. But every time I suggest the IUD, she always mentions those two people like they’re real scientific evidence, as if two people can mete a worthwhile generalization. I totally get it, but it also drives me insane.”
I started to wonder if, perhaps, the connection was not as clear to him as it was to me.
“This friend of yours. Not Artemis, is she?” His voice was casual.
“Oh God no. Artemis is too uppity for the trappings of casual sex.”
I thought this comment would simultaneously reassure him and provoke his curiosity, but he seemed to have exhausted his curiosity about his daughter’s sex life or lack thereof, which made me slightly put out, for I had much wittier quips I wanted to give air time, but mostly, I was grateful. The less we talked about Artemis, the better. I wanted to go back to when he said he saw me in a more than one-dimensional way.
The name Artemis comes from a word that means safe. Alternatively, Artemis comes from a word that means butcher. I do feel safe around butchers. I like being around people who know how to use different kinds of knives.
Is bewitchment possible, from a man? Only women can be witches.
“I heard a literally shitty story,” I say to Artemis’s father, “about you.”
We are in his study. He sits behind his desk, a pretense at industry with unruly stacks of papers, essays that need to be marked. I’m the interruption. The sentence fragment. I wonder how long it takes for him to roll his shirt sleeves so neatly. A studied affectation of dishevelment. He’s been a sessional instructor for more than a decade. You aren’t allowed to say adjunct anymore. He is a little bitter, maybe. He does, though, have masses of hair. Softer than you would guess.
“Oh, that,” he says. “I think I was just trying to feel twenty again.”
“I’m twenty and I’ve never done anything like that,” I say and then regret it. I hate reminding people of my age. Especially Artemis’s father, who is pushing half a century, though he doesn’t look it.
“You’ve never littered? You innocent, innocent minx.” He is admiring but also incredulous. I am relieved he can muster the normalcy of exaggerated incredulity. We are two people being normal. A wholesome tableau. You wouldn’t think we have extramarital sex. Although I will stipulate. It is only extramarital sex for him, not me.
“If I started littering, I’d never stop,” I tell him.
“Is that a threat?” he teases. “It’s a warning,” I said.
“Do you ever feel trapped by convention?” Artemis’s father asks me. The tone of his voice tells me he is not really asking me, so much as he is telling me about himself. He is no longer behind his desk but sitting beside me on a dilapidated fainting couch, which he purchased as a joke for his wife, only she didn’t find it funny, nor did she faint.
“Sometimes I think the world just wants me to become addicted to marijuana and gripe about society, all while feeling really calm so I can’t do any actual rebellion,” I offer.
“Marijuana affects everyone differently,” Artemis’s father says. I can hear the sessional lecturer in him.
“I become organized, but also very paranoid. Which makes me more organized,” I say.
“Isn’t that how you are already?” It is a rhetorical question.
We have exhausted the need to pretend we are going to stop at conversation. Artemis’s father is unbuttoning his shirt. I am disappointed that men don’t usually have cleavage. Artemis has stupendous cleavage. It’s the kind of thing that could cause traffic accidents. What if the person I actually want to be with is Artemis? Is Artemis’s father a good substitute? I am a one point seven on the Kinsey scale and anyway, I know Artemis too well to want her in a romantic capacity.
Artemis’s father is undressing me, though every four seconds, he scans my face to see if there is any discernible, nonverbal objection. I forbid my face from betraying any latent thoughts of fucking his daughter; I wonder if my face looks like a pale yellow moon and what role, if any, internalized racism has had in this relationship. Sometimes two libidos align and that’s all there is to it. Yes, that’s all it is. Have I convinced you? Have I convinced myself? Have his crow’s feet become more embedded since last week?
Artemis’s father is like a teenage boy, in the sense that, he always removes the bare minimum amount of clothing necessitated to facilitate sex, whereas, I am always utterly naked. At first, I thought this was eagerness, but now I’m starting to think he doesn’t want me to see his body, doesn’t want me to see the level of decay. He is always wearing compression socks, which he wears underneath dress socks. Which means, when we have sex, he is always wearing two pairs of socks. The absurdity. I almost laugh but then his face has planted itself squarely — no, rhomboid — between my legs and his tongue is impossibly patient and teasing. Artemis’s father likens the act of cunnilingus to breathing underwater. When I come, I get a leg cramp and apologetically ask if he can wait a bit before he tries to fuck me. He is the only person I’ve ever known to be so studious about orgasm equity. I wonder if he is like this with his wife. I’m afraid to ask.
“Does Artemis know about us?” I’m still naked when I ask this question. I want him to share my fear and for us to talk through solutions and then conclude there are no solutions and have sex again, which is, maybe, the real solution.
He gives me a funny look and says, “It was her idea.”
This whole time, I thought I was a slightly more age-appropriate Lolita. He was supposed to be the reluctant but ultimately couldn’t say no, aw shucks kind of man that would feel bad every time he came inside me. And then do it all over again. Is my narrative completely wrong? Has this whole thing been machinated by Artemis to feel like something I started? I can’t help but feel like this entire family has fucked me.
Nose down. Nothing too interesting so far. Nose down. Oh, what’s this? Plastic bag.
Every time there’s a plastic bag floating in the wind, he says What is this, American Beauty? and chuckles to himself.
Nose down. Oh, what’s this? The urine of a two-year-old female dachshund, intact, that recently switched to a raw diet. Nice smelling urine.
Nose down. Oh, what’s this? The stench of a single, enormous turd crushed by several shoes. Smells like pumpkin and shit. Irish wolfhound, four-and-a-half-years-old, neutered, a mix of kibble and canned food, very happy-go-lucky dog.
Nose down. Oh, this is a good spot. A really good spot. Unmarked, theretofore. I circle. I circle again. With pleasant slowness, a shit comes out of my asshole and I can hear the sound of rummaging plastic, a sigh of relief that I have found a spot to shit; finally. I want to tell him: a square inch, a half inch, a millimetre, makes such a difference. I don’t want approximations. I want the right spot.
“Good boy, Vlad!” His voice is so exaggerated. An imitation of happiness. He hasn’t had sex for a week and for him, it must be an eternity. My balls were removed. If they hadn’t been, I would have more opinions and less sentiment. I want to weep but instead I put my head against his knee, which is as high as I can reach. I know this will be interpreted as a sign of affection. I am a good boy, so.
I smell his adrenaline. Again, I hear the plastic. I hear the plastic before I see it being thrown across a front lawn several metres away. This is not usually what he does, but I don’t think much of it. I hear a door open. I hear footsteps. They are loud. I hear a voice. It’s angry. I don’t know what the voice is saying but it’s angry. He starts yelling back at the angry voice. Two angry voices. I whine. I keep hearing the plastic get thrown back and forth. The acoustics of the plastic are aggravating me. I whine again to try to remind him that this is our time. My time.
I realize at some point that whatever they’re yelling about has little to do with me. I am only a third party. Just a dog. A good boy, though. »