Metal
I am a voyeur. I observe the sordid for my own selfish means. I see the pain in others pulsing beneath their everyday movements. I see it
when they tip their glasses back, full of liquor, and let it course down their throats. I see it in their raucous, hollow laughter. I see it when
they walk down the street and catch their own reflections in a store window. I steal their pain to create a story and then I use it to make
myself cry for money. Truth is, all the stories are real, even if I make them up. And the truth is, nobody wants to feel pain but nobody will
let go of it. So I feel it for them.
But that is what I am, a Heart.
I started to cry at an early age for money because my parents said I had a talent for it. From ten at night until two in the morning, I sat on
a glossy, white, cylindrical, Formica platform stationed at the end of the bar and I cried the gamut of sadness from misty simpering to full
throttle sobbing. Seated on my stool, I was visible to everyone. The Brains lined up below me and asked me to cry about hurtful things
that happened to them. They paid me to cry for them because they could not and did not want to cry. Not only did it embarrass them
because they weren’t able to, theirs was the unbearable pain that began with hand tremors and ended with blinding migraines.
I leaned down and felt their warm, moist whispers pulsing in my ears, hushed reasons for sorrow — the loss of a job, a lover or a parent —
streamed into my ears and out my eyes for four straight hours. During that time, the Brains stared at me as I wailed and groaned away
their sadness. Their faces expressionless while they watched me, and afterward, they thanked me with a generous tip and told me how
good I made them feel.
The first night Metal came into the bar, I cried the best that I could. Metals are rare and I was somewhat star struck. Through my tear-
clouded eyes, I searched for silvery glint of her mask that bared her toothy grin and I listened for the faint scraping of her armor as she
shifted in her chair.
She sat in the corner with a particular group of eight to ten Brains. They chattered and laughed; rarely were they silent. Their
conversational cadence soothed me — sentences that rose up followed by rounds of bassoon-like laughter. There was a certain stool at
the bar that they gave me which was a perfect lookout as I stared unobtrusively at the Brains, ogled at their exposed brains resembling
shiny, bulbous mounds of soft caramels pressed together. On weekends, I attempted to glimpse the red numbers on the upper back
quadrants of their large heads. I obsessed over spotting them, as difficult as it was. Their IQ’s were always 140 or above. I liked to see if
their behavior seemed above or below their IQ. I added up the group’s IQ and found the median and then I’d figure out who was the
leader, who was the runt of the litter.
But like I said, I am a voyeur.
Metal never denied that she was a Brain, but this was not why I loved her. Through the slits in her mask, I saw Metal react with her eyes,
and I believed she was a Heart.
Hearts were not stupid, but we were considered too emotional to use our intelligence to the best of our abilities. But just like the Brains,
our hearts were on display. In the middle of our sternums and on the outside, the color of our emotions throbbed for all to see. When I
was embarrassed, like when a group of Brains caught me staring at them, my heart turned orange-red and beat rapidly, galloping away
from the Brains who laughed at me. It beat so fast, it ached for two days straight. Most often I kept my coat on so they wouldn’t see how I
felt, but Brains knew why Hearts did this. And if they were drunk enough, they humiliated you for it.
As they did me. I sat on that very same stool and my heart’s embarrassment poked out between the top two buttons of my coat like a
piece of burning ember. They, the smoky drunk Brains, pointed at me and giggled as the covered their heads with their hands or placed
their cocktail napkins over their numbers.
Therefore, I mastered the art of the body angle. I took yoga so I could swivel and watch the Brains while my heart nestled comfortably on
my chest, its deep cherry red shadowed by my upper arm. I scrutinized One Forty-Three in the group. I eyed my heart in the brass bar
railing I leaned against. I watched it turn mustard yellow and beat stronger. This told me I was jealous. I knew I was as smart as One
Forty-Three, but One Forty-Three’s confidence made me covet her tawny ovoid head. She acted like a One Sixty-Three — the way she
insolently tapped the ash off her cigarette and laughed at something amusing that One Fifty-Seven had just said. I wondered if I had ever
known a confident Heart, and I realized I had not as I peeked at my yellowness glowing down below.
The Brains that Metal sat with were my regulars. They liked my work and I knew they made up sad events so I would cry for them. When I
worked my crying shift, my heart idled in a coal black that excited them. I knew they were turned on because they were quiet. I couldn’t
see them sitting at their table when I cried, but I heard their clapping when I finished. If Metal was there, I smiled at the sound of her tinny
hands crashing together.
I remember when Metal first spoke to me. I stood at the bar and I felt something cold and rough scrape my thigh. I jumped and turned
around. She said, “Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize I was so close.” Her eyes, shining expressively like smooth beads of aquamarine, answered
with a me to my who. Next she uttered the words I still hear before I go to sleep, “Your heart… that’s passion, right? How beautiful. That’s
why you’re such a good crier.” Then I saw those teeth and looked at the steel that covered her from head to toe and I wanted to pour
myself inside her metal clothes. I said that it was just a scratch and she replied, “Something to remember me by.” As she banged off, I
wondered if I could ever forget the metal-clad answer that I had finally found.
Brains were supposed to go out with Hearts even though Hearts were regarded as inferior. For instance, we Hearts had only been allowed
to vote for thirty-three years. And I have heard some horrifying stories about Hearts getting turned away from the voting panel because
the color of their hearts didn’t fall between that of a ripe navel orange and a deep brick red (only a hint darker than my own red). Lighter
or darker, and you were considered too emotional to make a sound political decision. The two times that I voted, I drank a glass of
absinthe an hour before to calm myself. The absinthe coated my anxiety in a peaceful haze while my heart remained its natural color and
a shade away from rejection.
I had dated a couple of Brains, but I switched to Hearts, which pushed me further away from the Brains, and I think, from Metal. The first
Brain I dated made me laugh, which Brains were very good at, and she liked talking about art. Her hands were smooth as if her
fingerprints had been sanded away and she liked to touch my heart and watch it change colors. Her brain had a sweaty sheen and when I
hugged her, I felt a circle of my hair dampen where her head rested on mine. Her IQ was One Sixty-One and I would run my finger over it
when she slept, leaving a trail just like the ones I made as a kid on my Dad’s rainy car window. She smelled like Ceylon tea. Then, she
started to pinch my heart to see if it would turn black for a couple of seconds and I told her it hurt. She laughed, called me a silly heart
and I cried. I didn’t cry because it hurt; I cried because I knew she would never understand me.
The second Brain I dated was not as smart as One Sixty-One, only a One Fifty-Nine, but she treated my heart like a newborn. She would
come in on Friday nights to watch my set and whisper the same cry request every week — to cry for her because she was a an intellectual
failure. When she touched me, her hands were calloused and dry because she was a painter. One Fifty-Nine did not drink water so her
brain looked matte, dusty on the outside. She held her finger over my heart and lowered it, skimming my heart. She looked at my heart
and I looked at her. She was too gentle with me. She had no intensity, no spontaneity — just the smell of her paints reaching me before
she ever entered the room. I saw her movements and reactions simmer in her brain. I knew she was going to kiss me before she swept
her lips against mine. I knew how she would kiss me twenty years from now, like a glass-figurine angel — treasured, but never desired.
My heart never had reason to turn the cerulean blue of love or the eggplant color of lust. It held fast at your basic rainbow red and this,
too, made me cry.
Since then, I have dated only Hearts. I made them laugh, made them dole out their sensuality, card by card, each one trumping the one
before it. My relationships with Hearts have hit like spinning gusts of emotions, floating and intense. It is a dangerous combination — two
Hearts, changing colors so quickly, both so vulnerable. When we are attracted to one another, we clasp hands as we jump off the cliff of
Eros, drift through infatuation and land in a field of dissonance filled with jealousies, grievances and differences. We look up, blanketed
and trapped by what we thought was love.
Take Lavender, for example. She called me Passion Fruit because my heart color reminded her of the cherry preserves her grandmother
made and because it is the closest to the color of passion. I could not keep my hands from touching her; I could not keep my heart from
turning the sensual blackish purple when I desired her. Then I saw her kiss a fuchsia colored heart when we were at the bar together.
When I asked her why, she said that she didn’t know whether we loved each other or were just lovers. They thrive on reactions. Lavender
did not want to fill everyday with me, the same color of passion. She wanted to control the colors of my heart. Once I realized this, my
heart spiraled through the hues of submission and settled on the nicotine brown of anger. When Lavender couldn’t make that change,
she left.
Sapphire was the last Heart I dated. She was a composer and a moonstone blue. Hearts that are this color are sad, philosophical and
damaged. They hate to brood alone. She was best when the moon hung in the sky like a tiny jagged sliver torn from a piece of yellow
construction paper. When this kind of moon hid in the corner of the night, she was the least sullen. She tickled me with her corded, short
fingers playing musical trills on my neck. When she played the piano, all kinds of moons came out. She pounded on the keys as if she
were angry with them, as if they were not sounding like themselves. And I fell in love with the fact that she played all the shades of every
Heart. Once, when we were at the bar together, she got jealous when I stared at the Brains. She left. When she decided to come back, I
sensed her self-hatred as we lay on the bed and I watched her heart sink into that deep jade — a faraway color that stained whatever
came near it. I escaped to the bathroom to figure out how to help her heart feel another color and then I noticed in the mirror the ominous
jade of my own heart. I said goodbye to Sapphire and to the feeling that the moon held that much power.
So the infatuation with Metal began when everything with everyone else ended. It continued when she winked at me after beating a Brain
at arm wrestling. Everyone at the bar thought that because he was a One Seventy-Four, he surely knew how he was going to beat her.
But Metal had had three glasses of absinthe which made her armor shine with invincibility. I watched her eyes crinkle shut with effort and
then pop open just before One Seventy-Four’s soft, refined hand hit the table. She slapped him on the arm and bared her healthy teeth
saying, “Nice try One Seventy-Four, but you’re no match for the Mistress of Metal.” The Brains guffawed, their big, egg shaped heads
bobbing up and down. That’s when she winked. The wink endeared her to me, but her arm wrestling had made me sad. I felt sorry for
her needing to show off and wondered what her armor was hiding. Later that night during my shift, I thought about that while I cried for
someone else.
Because she was smart and because she was an aggressor, not known to nurture a soul, people assumed she was a Brain. At the bar,
Metal would always come and order her drink next to my stool, scratching me as she squeezed in between me and another. It made her
laugh as she glanced down at my thigh, fresh with her thin red gashes like the tattooed name of a lover. It was like a Brain to laugh at a
thing like that, but then she would nervously drop her eyes behind the metal mask and whisper, “Sorry again.” At night, I counted the cuts
and dreamed she was a Heart.
The bartender who worked the weekends told me that Metal had humiliated herself for a Brain she loved. Years of drinking have stained
the bartender’s heart the intense purple black of a moonless night. I call her Purple Moon. The bartender liked this name because it is
more poetic than being called a drunk or a lost soul.
Purple Moon had seen Metal come in with big dents on her armor. A Brain Metal dated, named One Sixty-Six, bragged to Purple Moon
that Metal asked to be hit with a bat. “She enjoys it. ‘Cause, you know, she feels it,” she said. One time, One Sixty-Six had a Heart beat
her while One Sixty-Six watched. Metal really liked the bat because she faintly felt the sting of it, but she also saw that the crying Heart felt
the very same sting.
Once, I went to see Metal’s artwork. I went to see her sculptures formed out of mottled pieces of scrap metal-brass, silver and tin. She
soldered them together to form the skeletons of animals and human beings. There was a human skeleton walking a dog skeleton, a
human skeleton holding its head in its hands, and a skeletal frame of a tiger stretched as if running in mid-flight. I felt nothing when I saw
them, but sadness overcame me when I envisioned Metal’s hands molding the burning scraps into whatever she was hoping to express,
her fingers bending with the heat. There were many Brains at her exhibit, touching the sharp pointy joints and fingering the rib cages,
reveling at all the possible interpretations of the minimal framework. I spied Metal loping around, particularly interested in the reactions of
One Seventy-Four. She followed her and showed her teeth when the Brain bought two of her sculptures — the human with the head in
her hands and a large metal brain with three question marks instead of numbers.
The sculpture of a heart with a brain in the middle drew me to it because it had no sharp edges, only rounded bends that folded into each
other. I looked for Metal so I could compliment her on her idea, but the Brains surrounded her. After all, they had the money. She led a
few Brains over to where I stood and as she walked behind me, she placed her hands on my upper arms and whispered, “Excuse me,” as
she guided me to step to aside. I felt the metal cut into my skin and she smiled at me as I moved out of her way. She looked at my heart
turn that cerulean blue. Wearing no coat, I left quickly, embarrassed that she saw my naked truth. My heart was hung-over for four days
after that.
The next time I saw her was at the bar, two weekends later. She lingered next to me and ordered an absinthe.
“Hey you, looking forward to watching you work,” she said, grinning. She was always friendlier to me when she was drunk.
“I liked your exhibit. My favorite piece was the heart with the brain in the middle.” I felt my heart heating up and changing. “I found it
insightful.”
“Thanks, Pretty. I’ll put it aside for you until you have enough money to buy it.” Through the opening in her mask she smiled at me,
baring those straight antique white teeth that reminded me of perfectly laid tiles. “If I knew you a little better, I’d let you have it. You are my
favorite crier, you know.” She glanced at my bare thigh, and then she scratched me. She stared into my eyes while she did this and then
she laughed. I winced. This cut ran deeper than any of the others. My blood dotted her metal finger. She spilled her drink as she tried
to pick it up and said, “So long, Pretty Heart.” I was glad she was drunk and didn’t see the tears in my eyes. I didn’t want her to think that
she’d hurt me.
Later that night, Purple Moon and I were talking when the rising cheers of “Metal! Metal!” became too loud for us to hear each other. One
Seventy-Four slouched with her arm around her angular shoulders, pulling Metal to her as Metal’s polished head fell on One Seventy-Four’
s shoulder. Metal laughed and pushed herself up and all the Brains started to clap and yell. She creaked and wobbled as she headed
towards the bar. She slammed her metal hand on my back and said, “Listen Pretty, a couple of the Brains have dared me to take my
clothes off, so to speak, but I need someone to help me and I choose you.” She swayed and blinked her eyes and continued, “And I’ll give
you that sculpture of mine if you help me out. We gotta deal?” I didn’t say no to her although I felt a small no rumble in my stomach.
“Come on, come with me,” she said. As we walked over to the Brains, I buttoned my coat and the lining felt cool against my feverish
Chinese red heart. She held my hand on the way over which I barely noticed because all the Brains moved their chairs and shouted
“Make way for Metal!” When I was close to her, I smelled the absinthe mixed with the metal oil. The Brains circled around us. “Okay. I’m
gonna take it all off and my friend here is gonna help me,” Metal explained. The Brains hollered, “Let’s go, Metal.” The Brains didn’t say
anything to me, just stared at me and smirked. I heard one Brain behind me whisper, “Look! The Heart is trembling. She’s actually
scared of hurting Metal.” “As if anyone could,” another replied.
Metal, stifling her laughter, stood in front of me and said, “Okay, Friend, start with the head first and pull from the top. The top downward,
okay?” I nodded and grabbed the piece that began just above the forehead. I pulled but couldn’t get it to come off. “Friend, you’re going
to have to pull harder than that,” she laughed. “It won’t hurt, trust me.” More laughter. This time I yanked and felt the metal pare away
from her skull. I stripped downward and saw that her skin had peeled off with the metal.
Metal stopped laughing. Her mouth closed, muffling a high-pitched squeal. The Brains yelled at me to continue as a slat of metal came off
to reveal, as expected, an exposed brain. I was angry that I’d fooled myself into believing that she was a Heart and I pulled her metal off
faster and faster, ripping off the tiny pieces around her neck and the slats on the sides of her head. The Brains moved in closer to see
her numbers, but they had come off with the metal. I tore off the sections of her legs, feet and arms, exposing her grapefruit colored
rawness as she screamed out of her open mouth. She wailed like a small dog being attacked by a pack of coyotes, which would leave
nothing behind but the carcass, a model for one of her metal skeletons. I dropped my head, looked into a piece of her armor, and saw my
tears fall onto it like spilled absinthe. The Brains cheered because she was a Brain, and chanted, “Metal! Metal is a Brain!”
I stopped when I saw her raw pinkness without skin, without metal. She cried and shouted, “Continue!” I said that I couldn’t. The Brains
booed and the one Brain, the one who said I was trembling, yelled, “What would you expect from a Heart?” A sudden crash on the ground
silenced everyone as we all stared at Metal’s facemask on the floor. There were gasps at the sight of her skinless face contrasted with
her light turquoise eyes and bright teeth. She smiled and cried.
“It hurts,” she gushed, “Keep going. I can feel it! Take off my front panel, please,” she begged. I took both hands and secured them onto
the top of her breastplate. She grimaced and laughed towards the ceiling, “Please do it.”
My coat was unbuttoned and my heart was black. I pulled with as much power as I could, stunned by the brutal look I saw on my face in
the breastplate as I took it off. Then, it was quiet as we all noticed a heart in the middle of her sternum. It was the same color as her
tender fleshiness. I was smiling and crying, and then Metal collapsed, throwing her fresh exposed arms around my shoulders. I dragged
her to a chair, passing the jumble of broken armor, and placed her gently in it. The Brains watched in astonished silence. I put my hand
on Metal’s brain and pulled her to me as my heart made contact with her stripped, barely beating heart.
I am a voyeur. I observe the sordid for my own selfish means. I see the pain in others pulsing beneath their everyday movements. I see it
when they tip their glasses back, full of liquor, and let it course down their throats. I see it in their raucous, hollow laughter. I see it when
they walk down the street and catch their own reflections in a store window. I steal their pain to create a story and then I use it to make
myself cry for money. Truth is, all the stories are real, even if I make them up. And the truth is, nobody wants to feel pain but nobody will
let go of it. So I feel it for them.
But that is what I am, a Heart.
I started to cry at an early age for money because my parents said I had a talent for it. From ten at night until two in the morning, I sat on
a glossy, white, cylindrical, Formica platform stationed at the end of the bar and I cried the gamut of sadness from misty simpering to full
throttle sobbing. Seated on my stool, I was visible to everyone. The Brains lined up below me and asked me to cry about hurtful things
that happened to them. They paid me to cry for them because they could not and did not want to cry. Not only did it embarrass them
because they weren’t able to, theirs was the unbearable pain that began with hand tremors and ended with blinding migraines.
I leaned down and felt their warm, moist whispers pulsing in my ears, hushed reasons for sorrow — the loss of a job, a lover or a parent —
streamed into my ears and out my eyes for four straight hours. During that time, the Brains stared at me as I wailed and groaned away
their sadness. Their faces expressionless while they watched me, and afterward, they thanked me with a generous tip and told me how
good I made them feel.
The first night Metal came into the bar, I cried the best that I could. Metals are rare and I was somewhat star struck. Through my tear-
clouded eyes, I searched for silvery glint of her mask that bared her toothy grin and I listened for the faint scraping of her armor as she
shifted in her chair.
She sat in the corner with a particular group of eight to ten Brains. They chattered and laughed; rarely were they silent. Their
conversational cadence soothed me — sentences that rose up followed by rounds of bassoon-like laughter. There was a certain stool at
the bar that they gave me which was a perfect lookout as I stared unobtrusively at the Brains, ogled at their exposed brains resembling
shiny, bulbous mounds of soft caramels pressed together. On weekends, I attempted to glimpse the red numbers on the upper back
quadrants of their large heads. I obsessed over spotting them, as difficult as it was. Their IQ’s were always 140 or above. I liked to see if
their behavior seemed above or below their IQ. I added up the group’s IQ and found the median and then I’d figure out who was the
leader, who was the runt of the litter.
But like I said, I am a voyeur.
Metal never denied that she was a Brain, but this was not why I loved her. Through the slits in her mask, I saw Metal react with her eyes,
and I believed she was a Heart.
Hearts were not stupid, but we were considered too emotional to use our intelligence to the best of our abilities. But just like the Brains,
our hearts were on display. In the middle of our sternums and on the outside, the color of our emotions throbbed for all to see. When I
was embarrassed, like when a group of Brains caught me staring at them, my heart turned orange-red and beat rapidly, galloping away
from the Brains who laughed at me. It beat so fast, it ached for two days straight. Most often I kept my coat on so they wouldn’t see how I
felt, but Brains knew why Hearts did this. And if they were drunk enough, they humiliated you for it.
As they did me. I sat on that very same stool and my heart’s embarrassment poked out between the top two buttons of my coat like a
piece of burning ember. They, the smoky drunk Brains, pointed at me and giggled as the covered their heads with their hands or placed
their cocktail napkins over their numbers.
Therefore, I mastered the art of the body angle. I took yoga so I could swivel and watch the Brains while my heart nestled comfortably on
my chest, its deep cherry red shadowed by my upper arm. I scrutinized One Forty-Three in the group. I eyed my heart in the brass bar
railing I leaned against. I watched it turn mustard yellow and beat stronger. This told me I was jealous. I knew I was as smart as One
Forty-Three, but One Forty-Three’s confidence made me covet her tawny ovoid head. She acted like a One Sixty-Three — the way she
insolently tapped the ash off her cigarette and laughed at something amusing that One Fifty-Seven had just said. I wondered if I had ever
known a confident Heart, and I realized I had not as I peeked at my yellowness glowing down below.
The Brains that Metal sat with were my regulars. They liked my work and I knew they made up sad events so I would cry for them. When I
worked my crying shift, my heart idled in a coal black that excited them. I knew they were turned on because they were quiet. I couldn’t
see them sitting at their table when I cried, but I heard their clapping when I finished. If Metal was there, I smiled at the sound of her tinny
hands crashing together.
I remember when Metal first spoke to me. I stood at the bar and I felt something cold and rough scrape my thigh. I jumped and turned
around. She said, “Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize I was so close.” Her eyes, shining expressively like smooth beads of aquamarine, answered
with a me to my who. Next she uttered the words I still hear before I go to sleep, “Your heart… that’s passion, right? How beautiful. That’s
why you’re such a good crier.” Then I saw those teeth and looked at the steel that covered her from head to toe and I wanted to pour
myself inside her metal clothes. I said that it was just a scratch and she replied, “Something to remember me by.” As she banged off, I
wondered if I could ever forget the metal-clad answer that I had finally found.
Brains were supposed to go out with Hearts even though Hearts were regarded as inferior. For instance, we Hearts had only been allowed
to vote for thirty-three years. And I have heard some horrifying stories about Hearts getting turned away from the voting panel because
the color of their hearts didn’t fall between that of a ripe navel orange and a deep brick red (only a hint darker than my own red). Lighter
or darker, and you were considered too emotional to make a sound political decision. The two times that I voted, I drank a glass of
absinthe an hour before to calm myself. The absinthe coated my anxiety in a peaceful haze while my heart remained its natural color and
a shade away from rejection.
I had dated a couple of Brains, but I switched to Hearts, which pushed me further away from the Brains, and I think, from Metal. The first
Brain I dated made me laugh, which Brains were very good at, and she liked talking about art. Her hands were smooth as if her
fingerprints had been sanded away and she liked to touch my heart and watch it change colors. Her brain had a sweaty sheen and when I
hugged her, I felt a circle of my hair dampen where her head rested on mine. Her IQ was One Sixty-One and I would run my finger over it
when she slept, leaving a trail just like the ones I made as a kid on my Dad’s rainy car window. She smelled like Ceylon tea. Then, she
started to pinch my heart to see if it would turn black for a couple of seconds and I told her it hurt. She laughed, called me a silly heart
and I cried. I didn’t cry because it hurt; I cried because I knew she would never understand me.
The second Brain I dated was not as smart as One Sixty-One, only a One Fifty-Nine, but she treated my heart like a newborn. She would
come in on Friday nights to watch my set and whisper the same cry request every week — to cry for her because she was a an intellectual
failure. When she touched me, her hands were calloused and dry because she was a painter. One Fifty-Nine did not drink water so her
brain looked matte, dusty on the outside. She held her finger over my heart and lowered it, skimming my heart. She looked at my heart
and I looked at her. She was too gentle with me. She had no intensity, no spontaneity — just the smell of her paints reaching me before
she ever entered the room. I saw her movements and reactions simmer in her brain. I knew she was going to kiss me before she swept
her lips against mine. I knew how she would kiss me twenty years from now, like a glass-figurine angel — treasured, but never desired.
My heart never had reason to turn the cerulean blue of love or the eggplant color of lust. It held fast at your basic rainbow red and this,
too, made me cry.
Since then, I have dated only Hearts. I made them laugh, made them dole out their sensuality, card by card, each one trumping the one
before it. My relationships with Hearts have hit like spinning gusts of emotions, floating and intense. It is a dangerous combination — two
Hearts, changing colors so quickly, both so vulnerable. When we are attracted to one another, we clasp hands as we jump off the cliff of
Eros, drift through infatuation and land in a field of dissonance filled with jealousies, grievances and differences. We look up, blanketed
and trapped by what we thought was love.
Take Lavender, for example. She called me Passion Fruit because my heart color reminded her of the cherry preserves her grandmother
made and because it is the closest to the color of passion. I could not keep my hands from touching her; I could not keep my heart from
turning the sensual blackish purple when I desired her. Then I saw her kiss a fuchsia colored heart when we were at the bar together.
When I asked her why, she said that she didn’t know whether we loved each other or were just lovers. They thrive on reactions. Lavender
did not want to fill everyday with me, the same color of passion. She wanted to control the colors of my heart. Once I realized this, my
heart spiraled through the hues of submission and settled on the nicotine brown of anger. When Lavender couldn’t make that change,
she left.
Sapphire was the last Heart I dated. She was a composer and a moonstone blue. Hearts that are this color are sad, philosophical and
damaged. They hate to brood alone. She was best when the moon hung in the sky like a tiny jagged sliver torn from a piece of yellow
construction paper. When this kind of moon hid in the corner of the night, she was the least sullen. She tickled me with her corded, short
fingers playing musical trills on my neck. When she played the piano, all kinds of moons came out. She pounded on the keys as if she
were angry with them, as if they were not sounding like themselves. And I fell in love with the fact that she played all the shades of every
Heart. Once, when we were at the bar together, she got jealous when I stared at the Brains. She left. When she decided to come back, I
sensed her self-hatred as we lay on the bed and I watched her heart sink into that deep jade — a faraway color that stained whatever
came near it. I escaped to the bathroom to figure out how to help her heart feel another color and then I noticed in the mirror the ominous
jade of my own heart. I said goodbye to Sapphire and to the feeling that the moon held that much power.
So the infatuation with Metal began when everything with everyone else ended. It continued when she winked at me after beating a Brain
at arm wrestling. Everyone at the bar thought that because he was a One Seventy-Four, he surely knew how he was going to beat her.
But Metal had had three glasses of absinthe which made her armor shine with invincibility. I watched her eyes crinkle shut with effort and
then pop open just before One Seventy-Four’s soft, refined hand hit the table. She slapped him on the arm and bared her healthy teeth
saying, “Nice try One Seventy-Four, but you’re no match for the Mistress of Metal.” The Brains guffawed, their big, egg shaped heads
bobbing up and down. That’s when she winked. The wink endeared her to me, but her arm wrestling had made me sad. I felt sorry for
her needing to show off and wondered what her armor was hiding. Later that night during my shift, I thought about that while I cried for
someone else.
Because she was smart and because she was an aggressor, not known to nurture a soul, people assumed she was a Brain. At the bar,
Metal would always come and order her drink next to my stool, scratching me as she squeezed in between me and another. It made her
laugh as she glanced down at my thigh, fresh with her thin red gashes like the tattooed name of a lover. It was like a Brain to laugh at a
thing like that, but then she would nervously drop her eyes behind the metal mask and whisper, “Sorry again.” At night, I counted the cuts
and dreamed she was a Heart.
The bartender who worked the weekends told me that Metal had humiliated herself for a Brain she loved. Years of drinking have stained
the bartender’s heart the intense purple black of a moonless night. I call her Purple Moon. The bartender liked this name because it is
more poetic than being called a drunk or a lost soul.
Purple Moon had seen Metal come in with big dents on her armor. A Brain Metal dated, named One Sixty-Six, bragged to Purple Moon
that Metal asked to be hit with a bat. “She enjoys it. ‘Cause, you know, she feels it,” she said. One time, One Sixty-Six had a Heart beat
her while One Sixty-Six watched. Metal really liked the bat because she faintly felt the sting of it, but she also saw that the crying Heart felt
the very same sting.
Once, I went to see Metal’s artwork. I went to see her sculptures formed out of mottled pieces of scrap metal-brass, silver and tin. She
soldered them together to form the skeletons of animals and human beings. There was a human skeleton walking a dog skeleton, a
human skeleton holding its head in its hands, and a skeletal frame of a tiger stretched as if running in mid-flight. I felt nothing when I saw
them, but sadness overcame me when I envisioned Metal’s hands molding the burning scraps into whatever she was hoping to express,
her fingers bending with the heat. There were many Brains at her exhibit, touching the sharp pointy joints and fingering the rib cages,
reveling at all the possible interpretations of the minimal framework. I spied Metal loping around, particularly interested in the reactions of
One Seventy-Four. She followed her and showed her teeth when the Brain bought two of her sculptures — the human with the head in
her hands and a large metal brain with three question marks instead of numbers.
The sculpture of a heart with a brain in the middle drew me to it because it had no sharp edges, only rounded bends that folded into each
other. I looked for Metal so I could compliment her on her idea, but the Brains surrounded her. After all, they had the money. She led a
few Brains over to where I stood and as she walked behind me, she placed her hands on my upper arms and whispered, “Excuse me,” as
she guided me to step to aside. I felt the metal cut into my skin and she smiled at me as I moved out of her way. She looked at my heart
turn that cerulean blue. Wearing no coat, I left quickly, embarrassed that she saw my naked truth. My heart was hung-over for four days
after that.
The next time I saw her was at the bar, two weekends later. She lingered next to me and ordered an absinthe.
“Hey you, looking forward to watching you work,” she said, grinning. She was always friendlier to me when she was drunk.
“I liked your exhibit. My favorite piece was the heart with the brain in the middle.” I felt my heart heating up and changing. “I found it
insightful.”
“Thanks, Pretty. I’ll put it aside for you until you have enough money to buy it.” Through the opening in her mask she smiled at me,
baring those straight antique white teeth that reminded me of perfectly laid tiles. “If I knew you a little better, I’d let you have it. You are my
favorite crier, you know.” She glanced at my bare thigh, and then she scratched me. She stared into my eyes while she did this and then
she laughed. I winced. This cut ran deeper than any of the others. My blood dotted her metal finger. She spilled her drink as she tried
to pick it up and said, “So long, Pretty Heart.” I was glad she was drunk and didn’t see the tears in my eyes. I didn’t want her to think that
she’d hurt me.
Later that night, Purple Moon and I were talking when the rising cheers of “Metal! Metal!” became too loud for us to hear each other. One
Seventy-Four slouched with her arm around her angular shoulders, pulling Metal to her as Metal’s polished head fell on One Seventy-Four’
s shoulder. Metal laughed and pushed herself up and all the Brains started to clap and yell. She creaked and wobbled as she headed
towards the bar. She slammed her metal hand on my back and said, “Listen Pretty, a couple of the Brains have dared me to take my
clothes off, so to speak, but I need someone to help me and I choose you.” She swayed and blinked her eyes and continued, “And I’ll give
you that sculpture of mine if you help me out. We gotta deal?” I didn’t say no to her although I felt a small no rumble in my stomach.
“Come on, come with me,” she said. As we walked over to the Brains, I buttoned my coat and the lining felt cool against my feverish
Chinese red heart. She held my hand on the way over which I barely noticed because all the Brains moved their chairs and shouted
“Make way for Metal!” When I was close to her, I smelled the absinthe mixed with the metal oil. The Brains circled around us. “Okay. I’m
gonna take it all off and my friend here is gonna help me,” Metal explained. The Brains hollered, “Let’s go, Metal.” The Brains didn’t say
anything to me, just stared at me and smirked. I heard one Brain behind me whisper, “Look! The Heart is trembling. She’s actually
scared of hurting Metal.” “As if anyone could,” another replied.
Metal, stifling her laughter, stood in front of me and said, “Okay, Friend, start with the head first and pull from the top. The top downward,
okay?” I nodded and grabbed the piece that began just above the forehead. I pulled but couldn’t get it to come off. “Friend, you’re going
to have to pull harder than that,” she laughed. “It won’t hurt, trust me.” More laughter. This time I yanked and felt the metal pare away
from her skull. I stripped downward and saw that her skin had peeled off with the metal.
Metal stopped laughing. Her mouth closed, muffling a high-pitched squeal. The Brains yelled at me to continue as a slat of metal came off
to reveal, as expected, an exposed brain. I was angry that I’d fooled myself into believing that she was a Heart and I pulled her metal off
faster and faster, ripping off the tiny pieces around her neck and the slats on the sides of her head. The Brains moved in closer to see
her numbers, but they had come off with the metal. I tore off the sections of her legs, feet and arms, exposing her grapefruit colored
rawness as she screamed out of her open mouth. She wailed like a small dog being attacked by a pack of coyotes, which would leave
nothing behind but the carcass, a model for one of her metal skeletons. I dropped my head, looked into a piece of her armor, and saw my
tears fall onto it like spilled absinthe. The Brains cheered because she was a Brain, and chanted, “Metal! Metal is a Brain!”
I stopped when I saw her raw pinkness without skin, without metal. She cried and shouted, “Continue!” I said that I couldn’t. The Brains
booed and the one Brain, the one who said I was trembling, yelled, “What would you expect from a Heart?” A sudden crash on the ground
silenced everyone as we all stared at Metal’s facemask on the floor. There were gasps at the sight of her skinless face contrasted with
her light turquoise eyes and bright teeth. She smiled and cried.
“It hurts,” she gushed, “Keep going. I can feel it! Take off my front panel, please,” she begged. I took both hands and secured them onto
the top of her breastplate. She grimaced and laughed towards the ceiling, “Please do it.”
My coat was unbuttoned and my heart was black. I pulled with as much power as I could, stunned by the brutal look I saw on my face in
the breastplate as I took it off. Then, it was quiet as we all noticed a heart in the middle of her sternum. It was the same color as her
tender fleshiness. I was smiling and crying, and then Metal collapsed, throwing her fresh exposed arms around my shoulders. I dragged
her to a chair, passing the jumble of broken armor, and placed her gently in it. The Brains watched in astonished silence. I put my hand
on Metal’s brain and pulled her to me as my heart made contact with her stripped, barely beating heart.
M.E. Carter
M.E. Carter has two selves—a former and a current. The former self was a stand-up comedienne for ten years, an
actress and a morning show host for an alternative radio station. The current self chooses to express herself solely
through her pen and pad. Her body resides in Los Angeles, but her mind lives anywhere it desires. She works at
Skylight Books as a humble, yet noble, bookseller.
actress and a morning show host for an alternative radio station. The current self chooses to express herself solely
through her pen and pad. Her body resides in Los Angeles, but her mind lives anywhere it desires. She works at
Skylight Books as a humble, yet noble, bookseller.
