Editor’s Short Story - Shit, Intimacy, Shit.

Shit, Intimacy, Shit pays tribute to Jean Paul Sartre's 'Intimacy' by directly addressing ideas of purity, impurity, sex, and fertility, while also exploring deeper questions about human nature.

Shmuel is unafraid when it comes to pushing the boundaries in his writing; in fact, he welcomes it with open arms. He explains that it isn’t because of ‘shock value’ but because ‘it keeps literature fresh and furtive’.

Shit, Intimacy, Shit

Tried and tested, the shower is the best place to be struck with the mystifying clarity of a good idea. Accompany the percussive, analeptic pattering of shower water on the top of the skull, with the draught of an aching body and twisted innards, and from this comes the painfully orgasmic delivery of ideas. And it was here, in the shower, where Ari contemplated on the finer things in life.

‘Shit,’ Ari said, as he rubbed a damp towel over his groin, taking particular care to mop up the moisture in the creases between balls and thighs. ‘Shit has been around a long time.’

‘So has oxygen,’ Julia replied. ‘Oxygen has been around much longer than shit.’ She chucked Ari some talcum powder, leaving a vapor trail across the room.

‘Yeah, but think about it. Shit has been around as long as any living organism. I mean, it is a living organism, right?’ Ari squeezed the powder onto his palm, smacked it between the creases of his thighs, then stood, naked, arms akimbo in a powdery haze. ‘As long as there is a vehicle to do the deposit, then there will always be shit—input, output kind of thing. What you put in, you get out. Just like babies.’

Julia laid back on the bed like an awkwardly placed pencil in a tight pencil skirt.

‘I wish you’d put something in me more often.’ Ari wagged his fingers above his naval as if playing air guitar. ‘Last night, I went to sleep with this new riff in my head, playing over and over. Guess what, this morning, I just couldn’t let it go, so I transcribe it from my mind to the guitar, and it was—’

‘Shit!’

‘Yes, exactly, it was utter crud.’

‘A little bit like your attempt at making a baby last night,’ Julia said, sitting up, inspecting a questionable coffee.

‘Sorry, I had a lot of shit on my mind,’ Ari replied.

‘Look, I’ve got to get to work.’ Julia scooped out some creamy, phlegm-looking seagull shit milk slug from the mug.

‘Ah, sorry, the milk’s off. I didn’t want to waste it so... thought you wouldn’t mind,’ Ari said.

‘I’m done,’ Julia said, towing herself off the bed. ‘See you tonight. Time to bring home the kosher bacon,’ Closing the door behind her, she left Ari to powder his armpits and contemplate shit.

***

‘That fucking bastard. That patronising bastard,’ Julia said, slamming the door behind her. Ari leapt up off the sofa and swaddled her in his arms.

‘Just leave… leave me alone for a second, please, Ari, please I… I need a minute.’

‘Lechaun again?’

‘Why do you never leave me alone when I say I need some space?’

‘Well, somewhere in the marriage rule book it says women will say one thing, but mean another.’

‘You obviousy don’t know what a rhetorical question is.’

‘Just trying my best,’ he said, pecking her on the cheek.

‘Oh, just… shut up,’ Julia said, as a hint of a smile crept in.

‘So, what’s wrong? Lechaun being a knob again?’

‘He’s a perpetual knob. I’m too exhausted to tell you all about it, I’d rather talk about shit.’

‘Ah,’ Ari clapped, ‘I’m glad you brought that up again as I’ve been thinking about it all day.’

‘Did you get any writing done?’

‘Not one word. But… here sit down, here’s a glass of your favourite red… but…’ Ari plumped up the cushions and handed Julia a glass of red wine the colour of the worst bruises imaginable. ‘Speaking of shit, I find it so perplexing that we put good stuff into our bodies to survive. We go out of our way to make delicious food, only for it to be shat out in some foul-smelling, vile-looking goop. How can something good, essentially good, be expelled existentially as bad?’

Sensing Jules’ most usual response, ‘Yes, yes, it depends on what you define as bad, it’s all about context, blah, blah’, Ari flapped his hand and continued. ‘It seems edible things are created by design. We harvest the nutrients and vitamins from, say, an apple; it’s juicy, sweet, and packed full of goodness. Full of seeds. Then, the digestive system breaks it down, packs it together, and then we push it back out again, just in a different form. All for the miracle of digestion? I’d like to take this moment to say that your bowels are beautiful for being able to do such a thing, they truly are.

‘Why, thank you,’ Julia said, tipping her glass.

‘But, I’m not qualified to talk about your insides. I love ‘em but I don’t know them, and that’s one thing that separates us. To be frank, it kills me, not knowing every part of you. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I know what you mean, but I’m not interested in knowing every part of you.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re not all that nice.’

‘Oh. But that’s, that’s why I’m not disgusted by your… you know, for exmaple…your arsehole? Actually, it's the contrary.’

‘For fucks sake, Ari, you couldn’t have put it more romantically.’

‘Hear me out. It’s not in bad taste, not vulgar.’

‘Please, god forbid you are not trying to suggest something.’

‘No, no, not at all. Don’t get me wrong. I’m trying to say that, to me, it seems that every single thing carries the essence of shit, even when it’s not shit. Even things like beauty. Whatever starts pure, will always be expelled as shit once you’re done with it. It’s just the laws of purity. And that’s why I love your arsehole.’

‘Imagine, we finally have a baby, Ari. Is our baby a piece of shit?’

Ari clucked his lips together.

‘What we deserve to believe,’ Jules continued, ‘is that human nature is faultless, perfect from the very moment of conception. Why? Because we have a conscience that convinces us that something created is without flaw…innocent. Because it’s new?’

‘I imagine so,’ Ari said. ‘How about shit? It’s ejected, new, so to speak. Is it without flaw? I don’t think so somehow.’

‘For a short time, urine is pure, and can be used as antiseptic, as drink,’ Julia replied. ‘But once in contact with oxygen, it degrades, becomes poison.’

‘So, oxygen is the real shit?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Saying a baby is a piece of shit is different to shit.’

‘How? You just said everything is the essence of shit.’

‘Well, you grow a baby from two cells. It then develops for nine months. It becomes something with a mind.’

‘You grow and nurture shit, for as long as the digestion system needs to. Then it expels it. It might not have a mind, but shit will tell you a lot about your health.’

‘Okay, but you can die from having a baby inside you too long.’

‘Constipation.’

‘Uh.’

Ari had become truly flummoxed by Julia’s artful twists.

‘You can’t eat shit, it would kill you…eventually,’ he rebutted.

‘You can eat a baby. It will sustain you, but still, it will come out as shit.’

‘Exactly! We create for that thing to create, for that creation to create. We’re just shitting all over the place.’

Julia, dejected, leaned her head on the sofa and closed her eyes. ‘You don’t have intercourse to produce something bad,’ she said, opening her eyes, and taking Ari’s hand in hers. ‘You know how long we tried for a baby. Tests, on both you and I, and still as much as we tried, we haven’t produced.’

‘Maybe we were putting it in the wrong place,’ Ari said.

‘Be serious, Ari, come on,’ Julia said, before taking a big gulp of wine. ‘I guess I’ve got to tell you.’

‘What is it?’

‘You won’t like it.’

‘It’s okay, I’ve been waiting for you to tell me you’ve been having an affair. It’s Lechaun, I know it.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘Sorry, go on.’

‘Remember, a few weeks ago, after we came back from the hospital, remember, we were driving down a country road… there were three dead horses with bulging stomachs on the side of the road?’

Ari nodded.

‘Well, one of the horses, a stallion, rigamortis had set in and his… his, you know…’

Ari squeezed her hand.

‘It was huge, leaking and huge. Creamy sperm all over the concrete. I recall, vividly, the smell, the pungent, tangy smell. That was enough for me. While you were playing detective, I was ovulating. I entered into a trance, I guess, because of the fumes. There was something about that leaked fluid, something acidic, yet viciously visionary. I believed this was all a sign.’

Ari’s ears burned. He dare not interrupt.

‘When you returned to the car to call the police, I squatted down and patted the sticky stuff. It was stringy, leggy.’ Julia had now found her way off the sofa and onto the floor, squatting atop the sheepskin. ‘Remember what I was wearing?’

Ari’s niveous vision led him to rely on his other senses to react as he let out an embargoed grunt from deep within his diaphragm.

‘That’s right, a dress, that long pleated lavender-coloured dress I always wear when we go to the hospital. Well, I hiked it up around my knees, scooped up a bit of the fluid, pulled my panties to the side with my other hand, and —’

There’s nothing more unsettling than waiting to find out what happened - Ari, who had gone through different phases of shock, replaced a cushion over his crotch and sat back, aghast.

‘That’s right, I put it inside me. I stuffed it up inside me like I hid my parent’s gold jewellry from the nazis.’

Ari couldn’t read his body: part of it wanted to vomit, another part, to rust up; all the while he had a hard-on and his balls had retreated high up into his body. He burst into laughter, a reaction that took even him by surprise.

‘Wait there,’ Julia instructed.

Ari was going nowhere.

‘How many times can a man be circumcised?’ Ari called as Julia left. A few bangs of cupboard doors later, and she returned with an olive jar. ‘...because it’s possible my circumcision was done incorrectly and has failed to protect me from —’

‘Circumcision does not protect you from anything, Ari. Your foreskin is now shit,’ she said, cutting into his panicked etude. She shook the olive jar and handed it to Ari. ‘Look.’ The swirling, tie-dye brine slowed down into a rhythmic lag, where a small pulse would accelerate the water, and a mix of green and yellow would follow behind. The pulses slowed, and the green and yellow merged into a sickly pond of algae green. Ari kept his eyes on the jar. There was something inside. Jules, leaning on Ari’s thigh, looked up and smiled.

‘Take a look,’ she said. Ari peered into the murk. Hold on, there it was. A globule of flesh, no, a pustule of flesh, no, no, a polyp of flesh. There it was. The brine, completely transparent by now, had given up its secret, and floating inside the jar was a globule… a rabbit-dropping–sized globule of something fleshy, with body parts in places that didn’t deserve a body part.

‘What do we do with it?’ Ari asked. Jules opened up her skirt. ‘It’s our only chance.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘The horse.’ Her eyes bulged and crackled. ‘I ejected it.’

‘But… it looks like shit.’

‘What did you expect? The more good we put inside us, the more we’ll get out. Just like our love. If it gets expelled again, I’ll put it back up there, and we’ll keep doing it until it’s a fully grown. ‘Ari…’ Julia looked longingly into his eyes. ‘The signs surround me like the thick oxygen we breathe.’

Ari’s hands and feet were tingling, sweat, an aquaplane between his and her hands, and I got drunk, fell in a ditch somewhere in the countryside, you’re dreaming, and cows came around you ‘and lapped up the fluid that was discharged from every aperture of your body,’ Julia said. ‘You’re just somebody else’s shit to look after.’

She puts it up inside her. They fuck. Three days later, the globule is expelled. Expelled, but three times the size.

Julia was at work. She wore her lavender dress. Lechaun confessed his love for her. She came home late, her lavender dress soaked right through, in the crotch. ‘I found another dead horse,’ she said to Ari before pouring herself a bloody red.

Ari stood in the shower, scraping off the coagulated talcum powder from between his balls and thighs. The hot, pure water waterboarded every pore on his back. Soap, hair, and belly-button fluff collected between his toes. He turned around so that the water coursed over his chest. The shower head was doing its job; the plug was, too. All he had to do was stand there. The shower head kept on coming, the plug kept on taking. All he had to do was stand there. It was then that he had a good idea.