This Is My Disclaimer, Bitchez: The following work constitutes intellectual property of Mariliza Derveni, who is the sole owner of all the rights to it. Unauthorized use of this material is strictly prohibited. © Mariliza Derveni, 2009.



- Why did you bring me here, what are we doing?
- Look around you.
- I am, I am looking around, it’s empty space, there’s nothing here.
- Wrong; it is not empty space, it’s void.
- Holy hell, you’re seriously freaking me out. Void? Did you say void just now?
- Sit down.
- Where?
- Sit down on whatever your feet are touching right now.
- But I look down and all I see is this solid grey matter. I can’t even see my body.
- Do you feel yourself suffocating? Is anything in contact with your skin anywhere?
- No, I don’t think so. I just have this sense of some light fabric on my chest, but there’s nothing there, just fabric instead of air.
- But you can breathe, you’re breathing normally.
- Yes.
- Sit down.
- Alright, here. What’s the difference anyway?
- I’m tired, is all.
- Now what?
- I need to talk.
- Why here? Why not somewhere warm and comfortable?
- My room is choking me like a sock in the mouth.
- I like the room.
- This is why you’re never paying attention, isn’t it? You’re always doing something around the room. Like a bee. You need to stop doing that.
- What is your problem.
- I needed to leave the room.
- No you didn’t. What’s the room got to do with anything?
- I hate the room.
- Then get out more.
- I can’t get out more, what kind of shit idea is that?
- Why not?
- Because. I’m always busy with stuff.
- Correction; I’m always busy with stuff. You’re just sitting on the carpet, sulking in silence.
- I’m always talking to people.
- Correction; people are always talking to you. You barely reply. You never reply. You reply with random sentences about random facts. That’s not talking.
- I am waiting.
- What does this mean?
- “One person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word”. Verbatim. So spare me the sniggering.
- A task.
- A condition.
- Only this one is
- Different.
- Different.
- Different.
- In what way?
- I don’t want to get out of it. I’m not impatient.
- Resigned?
- Not resigned. I am calm in the knowledge of him. Calm is the word.
- But possessive.
- He can have any girl he wants.
- But eager.
- He need not write to me for weeks and weeks. And when he does, he need not say one kind word.
- But aggravated.
- I kind of want the sex to be crap so that we can spend all our time perfecting it.
- But hopeful.
- Hopeful.
- And eager.
- Slightly eager.
- And possessive.
- No.
- You lie.
- Don’t you see? So far he has been before me, without me. He still is. Time hasn’t started yet. I hold him innocent.
- And what does the kiss hold?
- Innocence still. And waiting, a long wait. And it’s just that, it’s emotionless like a number.
- But surely! Surely he is doing bad horrible things, hidden by all this ocean!
- Calm is the word.
- Bring him back. Or bring yourself back to him.
- Sit still for a second. Now listen. Somehow, all around, time is being crushed against us. This is why I brought you here, where you can feel it happening. There’s nothing in the way; nothing between ourselves and time being squashed like layers and layers of muslin against our chests. Time until time starts counting.
- Let me go back, I’m so busy this afternoon.
- And it’s only here where we stand any chance of surviving the wait.
- You can’t keep me here.
- The room will be fine without me.
- The room is empty! There’s no one there to read his letters when they arrive!
- But we haven’t really been there for weeks now. And what do these letters tell us? They pile over our heads like boulders. And the disgusting thing about each letter is that it is finite.
- Ah, how refreshing. The powers of reason as an argument. All letters are finite.
- The room makes the wait unbearable. It’s these letters and all the background noise and that window exploding with sky, sky exploding with planes except his plane, until that one day when it will be his plane.
- He must not fly directly to London. They’ll nuke all the direct flights.
- I know, see? Now you’re being reasonable.
- I’m optimistic about this. But you need to let us out of here. This time business is scaring me. Time has a demonic way of going on forever. Let’s keep busy, let’s chase him down and speed things up. Let’s read, or take long walks every day. We can learn how to cook? We can study, for christ’s sake.
- I can’t do all that.
- Yes, but you still lie! All this does not start or conclude with this man. Or does it. Or did you really hand the leash over to a stranger.
- I was so tired of holding it. What’s wrong with strangers? Why can’t this be the Douglas stranger that you drop your whole life to be with?
- Because books lie. Well, not lie exactly, they exaggerate life.
- Everyone is someone’s stranger before they fall in love?
- Correct, I suppose. But you spoke of the Douglas stranger. The Douglas stranger would not live there. Canada, perhaps. But not there, that’s the absolute edge of the charted territories of the world.
- The very definition of the Douglas stranger cancels out any favourable conditions in the situation. It’s just a stranger. And you follow them.
- Hahahaha, people no longer let you follow them anywhere. They get creeped out, they call the police. I mean, people won’t even let you talk to them straight. It’s too much, too heavy, too soon, too serious, it’s too threatening and too depressing, too superficial or too deep and it’s all too something undesirable.
- He won’t call the police.
- Will you give him a reason to call the police?
- No, I won’t. I’m not even moving my face muscles here. I am doing the exact opposite of metabolising, for all the waiting I’m into right now.
- Why is inertia nobler than action?
- It shows character. It is a reminder of women as food.
- You’ll lose.
- I’ll probably lose.
- But if you don’t
- Lose, then
- It will be the most amazing thing to ever happen
- To us.
- I sort of see your point about the room now. I don’t like the room either.
- He’s too big for it.
- Too much?
- Too heavy.
- And too soon.
- But he can come here.
- Definitely. He’s perfect for here. Can he come over here tonight?
- No, probably not. Besides, I already told him not to.
- You what.
- I meant the room. But he took it the wrong way. And now he’ll never want to come over.
- And you’ll do nothing but wait.
- Correct.
- Oh Jesus.
- You just don’t see the point, do you. You can’t see how waiting is worse than running or even stopping to run. Where you not there in the room with me? Where you not there on that bed with me? Did running or stopping feel reasonable back then? Or was it perhaps the act of standing right in the middle and holding perfectly still that ensured we’re here today to talk this over?
- That’s not fair. We don’t talk about back then.
- But if we did talk, if we were talking about it now, what was more painful? Moving or waiting?
- Waiting.
- And what did you do?
- I waited.
- Describe it to me.
- I lied there with my eyes closed and listened to myself getting better and out of bed.
- Then what happened?
- I lied there some more because it wouldn’t happen.
- And then?
- I had to wait for it to get distilled out of my body.
- And wait.
- And wait.
- Until the day when the waiting was over.
- It was.
- And how raw and beautiful did the world look like once the waiting was over. How new and untouched by footprints and claw marks. This is what I want here. I want to choose the wicked way and come out the other end triumphant, where I show him my arms and they’re clean, and my legs and they’re clean. And I say “look, I touched nothing on my way to you. I touched and fought no one. I come to you tame and willing, do as you please with me.”
- And he does?
- He does. But by then time has started, the waiting is over, I am released. More than released, I am forgiven. Day one. And my hands will never be clean again.
- God, I love this.
- I know.
- How can we make it happ...man alive.
- Exactly. So you get why I can’t go back to the room?
- I get it.
- No one will know I’m here except you.
- I’m enough.
- And if I give up and lose my reason? If the legs command dirt?
- I’ll hold you down.
- If they find me and feed me rotten food?
- I’ll punch them with my ringed fists.
- If I fall asleep?
- I’ll wait for you.
-You’ll wait for me?
- For you to wake up and in your place for him.
- Possessive.
- No.