A Penguin

Jeanie was in her small kitchen, making breakfast: a tuna sandwich with tomatoes on top and a big, round mug of black coffee. There was a postcard above the sink, one of those postcards with sheep saying something sweet. Her mom had given it to her when Jeanie moved out because she knew her daughter loved sheep. Her exact words had been, “The sheep will keep you company, I’m sure.” This postcard said, “There is nothing in the world I like as much as you.” There was a picture of the Earth, and the sheep listed things from around the world saying he didn’t like them because the only thing he liked was “you.” On the bottom of the Earth, there was a penguin standing upside down and shivering. There was an arrow pointing at his feet and a little note: “cold penguin feet—I don’t like.”
Jeanie laughed quietly. She read the “cold penguin feet” joke every morning, and it was still funny. She thought about her mom for a little bit and then turned to her sandwich. It was sitting on a plate, and the round mug was steaming. She carried the plate and the mug to the coffee table next to the window. Oh, breakfast could begin now.
While she was eating, Jeanie decided to focus on the air outside. She tried to see it for a while, and then a sparrow flew by. As he was flapping his little wings leisurely, he stopped in midair. He looked around, found what he was looking for in Jeanie’s window and landed on the windowsill. He lifted one skinny leg and knocked on the window twice, impatiently.
“Hello,” Jeanie said.
“Hello to you too,” the sparrow said, hopping and landing in the chair opposite Jeanie’s. “Before you have said whatever it is you are going to say, keep in mind that I am a penguin.”
“Okay, I will try to do so.” Jeanie responded. She attempted to set her buttocks in the chair again but noticed she was the only one who had a drink. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Breakfast?”
“Thank you, I had my breakfast already, but I would appreciate a cup of hot coffee. I take it white.”
“White?”
“Oh, excuse me, with milk, no sugar. This is how the English call it—white.”
“Oh.”
Jeanie set off to the kitchen to make some hot, white coffee.

Jeanie needed to set up a conversation.
“So what does being a penguin involve?” Jeanie asked more casually than she had ever asked a question before.
“Traveling long distances,” the sparrow-penguin answered thoughtfully. “It’s hard for one’s family, but it leads to success. One needs to learn how to fly for ten, sometimes fifteen hours at a time. At first it made me so exhausted that I began hallucinating. But now it’s been so long that it has become a part of my body’s adaptations; I listen to music during the whole flight, and I forget I am going to work.”
“Sounds like it’s useful,” Jeanie agreed.
“Diseases also travel long distances, a very good example being STREP throat. If left untreated, it can reach the heart and lead to a fatal end. Note, if you would be so kind, that I am not claiming it will lead to a fatal end; but it might.”
“Noted,” Jeanie nodded.
They drank their coffee, Jeanie with her mouth, the sparrow-penguin with his tiny beak.
Jeanie sighed. “Distances are annoying.”
“I could not agree more. Most of the time crossing a distance is a waste of time,” the sparrow-penguin was quite definitive in his answer.
“Especially when it comes to crossing distances between people,” Jeanie was trying to get personal.
“I obviously cannot speak about people, as I do not identify as one.”

The sparrow-penguin took a nap. When his head rested against the back of the chair, the fine feathers on his head gently changed shape to comfort the skull inside.
Jeanie played the piano a little bit. The song she could play best was called “A Perfect Indian.” It was about some quiet Indian guy who kept coming into this girl’s dreams, but she wasn’t happy about it because this was the only time he smiled at her. And not in reality, Jeanie filled in. She couldn’t really figure out what the song was about.
The sparrow-penguin’s beak moved up and down almost imperceptibly with the rhythm. When Jeanie stopped playing, he opened one eye.
“You are a mediocre pianist. This is remarkable for a person with fingers as short as yours.”
“Thanks,” Jeanie said. Something told her this was a compliment.

“Okay, but you are still a sparrow,” Jeanie observed.
“In a way, yes” the sparrow-penguin did not seem disturbed. “In your case, your forehead is big, and you are still Jeanie. But I did not say anything about that, did I?”
“You just did, of course,” Jeanie was a little offended.
“Of course,” the sparrow-penguin didn’t seem to care. After a minute or so, he added, “My wife told me I was a penguin. She is sometimes delusional. She thinks our children are penguins too. I tell them not to make fun of her because she might be delusional but she is still their mother, and an incredible mother at that.”
“So that’s why you’re a penguin. You love your wife,” Jeanie said wisely.
He shivered and let out a little cough instead of responding.
Jeanie looked at the floor for a while. When she looked up, there was no sparrow sitting in the chair. Clearly, there was a penguin sitting there, wings folded on his lap. Clearly, very clearly, a penguin.
“I wish I was a penguin too,” Jeanie said.
“I will get going,” the penguin said, standing up. “Thank you very much for the coffee, it was decent.”
“I am glad,” Jeanie responded and reluctantly opened the window. “You are welcome any time,” she shouted after the flapping penguin wings.
After the penguin left, she sobbed a little bit and then made another tuna sandwich.

Red Trees

Lately I’ve wanted sex pretty badly. It’s not a new thing for me to want sex, but I thought I had it under control this time. At first it was really hard, but then I forgot sex existed. I thought about food, classes, people, interesting questions, my parents. I walked and smiled at the sky. But then on a nice Saturday morning, I woke up. My head aching, the world spinning, I pushed away from the bed and landed on my feet. Oh, was it hard to balance! I peed in a hurry because my stomach was screaming for food. I practically ran to breakfast and chewed on some cheese while I made my real breakfast: bread, peanut butter, cheese, and many, many oranges. Why oranges? Cold, juicy, fresh oranges taste incredible against the roof of my mouth on a tough Saturday morning.
I’ve been in this new place for about a month. New country, new people, new everything. Many things are nice but still foreign. Even the thought about an ice cream back home on a sunny day brings pain in my chest. The ice cream here is also good, but the air just doesn’t smell the same.
At 2pm I was more or less better. I found myself going to basketball practice. I met the others, we started warming up. Naturally, I was watching the guy leading practice. Turned out I’d seen him before while studying. Weird, I didn’t know he would be here (Okay, I knew, but that had nothing to do with why I came to practice). He is quite a wide guy, I usually like skinnier ones. There is a warmth in his eyes saying he will not cause you harm unless you annoy him. He knows his worth.
Still, there is something so sexual about him. Maybe because he looks straight ahead or because his posture keeps an air about his body. About a minute after he starts moving across the court, I know I am attracted to him. I begin following his presence, absorbing his movements, his facial expressions, his voice. All this stirs me and tells me to act. Based on experience I say, no, sit still, don’t act different from normal, when you do, it always fucks things up. So now I am trying to be me while absorbing every scent of what he is. Shit, this is bad, and I laugh nervously under my breath. He is running, and the animal inside him starts to breathe. His arms become tense, his body moves skillfully, like a flowing river. His ass is also excellent, slightly wide. It suits him, you know it’s tight, and I can only think of how it moves forward and backward when he fucks. Oh God, I’m sorry, I missed the last set of instructions he gave.
He shows us what to do and goes to each person to tell us whether we suck. I have a question, I really do, so I ask and keep my voice steady. He attempts to touch me and correct my position; he pauses, as though waiting for approval, and I nod my head with an unconcerned expression, yeah, I don’t care. He stands behind me, holds my arms and aligns them, correcting my body posture slowly and firmly. He controls his strength, and his movements are so clean that I cannot help but admire his skill. The animal strength is evident in the veins of his muscular arms, but that doesn’t make him less warm or caring. His skin touches my skin, his thighs touch my butt, his chest touches my back.

I’m sitting in an armchair facing a huge window. I watch people walk up stairs beneath the green-red-yellow crowns of enormous trees. Red trees is all I see. I don’t know why they are so beautiful, except that they are red, but that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason. Gray squirrels seem like ants hopping about their business. I watch and sit, sit and watch, and then just sit, unable to do my work because warmth and sex are on my mind. Damn, I feel like a kid blessing each second of attention the awesome guy gives me. I don’t like that. It’s not like when I’m in love. When I’m in love, the feeling has become inherent, it is no longer a surprise that I melt away when that person is near. While in this case, with this sudden rush of anticipation, I have to remember my crush every morning: oh, that guy, yeah, and feel my insides turn in agreement. I like it, but it also annoys me. Sex is on my mind. Him having sex is on my mind. The two of us having sex is on my mind.
As I sit in my armchair, I stretch to grab my bag. I feel the muscles in my arm contract, and I smile conceitedly: I like the strength, although I know it’s actually of no use. It feels like my body is working for me and I am working for my body. I learn to accept it and work with it or make it look pretty, and I’d better because I’m not getting a new body at least until the afterlife comes about. I decide to go work out, so I go across campus. I love the narrow gray paths connecting everything to everything. Now they have yellow and red leaves all over, the gray path a canvas, and the leaves painters exposing their own bodies. I want to learn to expose myself in the same way.

This place is not home yet. Back home, I used to know tall, gray, ugly buildings staring into each others’ windows. I used to play in the parking lots between two tall buildings because a garden was too rare of an occurrence. As a small, chubby girl, I used to go up and down an enormous elephant-shaped slide, and every time I was at its top, I wondered if I would land on Earth unharmed. Some ten years later, it turned out the slide was pretty small. At that time, we drank beer from big, plastic bottles, and when we finished half the bottle, the stuff left inside tasted like pee, but we’d never have admitted it. Maybe sometime in the night we’d go up and down the slide again to make sure we weren’t too full of ourselves. Weird: going up a slide, going down a slide, going up a slide, going down a slide. It’s quite pointless.
I used to know illuminated night streets after a disgustingly hot day, after a light rain, or in a snowy fog. These night streets flash softly with their shop signs, their street lamps, their reflections of car lights, while a car rolls along them, pushing the concrete back into the ground with its weight. Along these streets I’ve ran to catch the bus, I’ve walked with someone or with an endless pack of people, I’ve walked alone with my music or the city noise. In these streets, I found out what spring sun means, and I learned how slippery mud takes you to the ground. The mixture of old and new buildings never managed to be beautiful, but it did get under your skin. I could look at it and wonder why anyone would ever create it, but then it turned out I liked it. It’s like when my little brother helps me reach new levels of annoyance, but when I shout at him to leave and I see the door close behind his tiny back, I instantly call out to him to get back here.

At the new place, I could still find some rusty buildings and illuminated streets if I need them that badly. I’m sure I could also find someone to annoy me, but I doubt he’ll be as skilled as my brother. So I go on to more mundane items. Oh, yeah, that guy. I don’t like being pushed around by my own romantic whims, so I try to make the desire for him disappear. It doesn’t really, I still want to see him naked and hard, and he sends my blood spinning whenever he is near me, but I want to be happy just because he is somewhere there, doing his own things. It’s tough, I’m not going to pretend it isn’t, because I still admire his flowing movements, his skillful strength… damn it, I should just take a shower and make myself happy.

But, a friend exclaims, “What is wrong with the world? Seriously, red trees! What the fuck is wrong with this world?!”
I shift one step to the side and the sun appears, blinding me, in between the thousands of leaves. The tree is not brown and gray anymore, it is bright red, almost orange. I stand directly below the branches with my eyes fixed on the leaves. They sail upon the wind, and I look. My hands in my pockets, I teach my eyes to drink, in and in.
Well, what can I do. He’s a nice guy, I’ll wait for the whole love thing to go away and then I’ll tell him, hey, do you know I had a crush on you? He will say, whatttt???? and we’ll laugh about it.
It’s not painful anymore to be in a new place and not in the old one, it’s just a matter of habit. When I arrived, my bed was stiff, but a few nights later it began to show mercy. My balance began to fall into place. Tonight I am walking out of a building, and I stop. At first, I don’t know why I stopped, but the moment whispers to me, see, that’s why. In front of me this new land is revealing itself. Its grass is black in its sleep, and the concrete paths flow like silver rivers. Each silver river bounces off of another silver river like a ball on a pool table. I attempt to take a picture, but I can’t find any resemblance between what my eyes register and what the camera registers. That’s right, this same tale will never unravel itself in the same way, but that’s how everything works. I walk away to my dorm with the beige walls that carry the marks left by many others before me. I smile as wide as my mouth allows me. I say bye to the red trees. Their crowns are hunched over in their sleep like babies snuggling under their pillows. I’ll go now, but tomorrow I’ll come here again to smile some more.