Marble Pillows
by Simon Henderson
Zane held Matthew in a one-armed lovers' necklock, chest on chest, and gestured me to move closer to the them in the bed. He patted his palm on the buffalo robe beside him like he was signing to a small lap-dog. A sheet and comforter rumpled between them and me, a micro-geological relief map of continental plate tectonics. The Himalayas at birth. Continents in collusion.
"We didn't know where to sort you in our mind, Simon. When we first saw you lecturing at Evergreen you baffled us and we guessed that you must be either a mathematician or a professor of geology".
Choking on my own laughter; "Not even!", I guffawed.
"We couldn't buy your neo-primitive facade when we heard your lecture on The Sacred Geometry of the Universe. There was way too, too much of you, there".
"Like a brilliantly colored jungle butterfly. Ephemeral, then gone. And impossible to pin down." The three of us spoke in unison, verbal siamese triplets, a line from an old Barbet Schroeder Movie on the Mud Men of New Guinea.
"Just what is a 'Living Systems Designer' anyway"? Matthew inquired.
"My unruly euphemism" I explained. "As vague, really, as saying I were an 'Interior Dramatist'. Which I am".
"Or an 'Environmental Tribalist', Which I am not".