Feverland by Alex Lemon

Author:Alex Lemon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781571318428
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2017-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

IV

“To suffer is to find oneself mired in oneself. Pain then is the inner experience of one’s own being as a weight, an affliction. . . . What wounds may be the instrument, but what pains is the sensuous element. In pain what oppresses is the light, the heat, the din, the density, the depth as such. In pain the sensuous is an oppression before it is a sense impression, impression of a sense.”—Alphonso Lingis, Phenomenological Explanations

V

Many people say spitting is: Disgusting. Gross. Crude. Repulsive. Dirty. A disgust response makes a person want to turn away; it saves you from the inedible, the worse than rotten. “We don’t do that,” my wife tells our son when she catches him hawking up phlegm outside. “It’s bad manners.” If this happens, I firm up my face with seriousness and nod—dutifully reinforcing her words—but find myself looking at a spot directly over his head. Growing up, I spit constantly: into the air as I pedaled my bike, all over baseball and football fields, while mowing dirtpatched lawns, out the rolled-down windows of Pontiacs.

Spitting can be seen an aggressive act. The lizard brain needs to protect and help itself, to disguise uncomfortable emotions, to get a reaction. The boy hard-swallows a handful of worms. A girl throws a used tampon on your car’s windshield. A guy asks the sky if it wants some and then whips his T-shirt off. Today I catch myself before spitting about half the time, and stop. The rest of the time I go ahead with it, then feel guilty, even if no one’s watching. Each night, as soon as I step onto my porch, I clear my throat like I am about to give a commencement address, and then I spit into the bushes. Thousands of wads of chewed gum are buried in their shadows. Sometimes I see ribbons of saliva, tiny spit bulbs, gleaming like diamonds in the darkness.

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