hailey o’gorman | fiction | tabula rasa blues

tabula rasa blues
                                                                                                                                         [cw: death, smoking]



While waiting for the girl, time around me ceases. I know this feeling, the reliable stillness of time, as though the cold, country air has reminded me that it will not move for me. The sky has been Irish grey since I woke up. It’s cold, bringing with it an old and dogged air. I breathe it in. My lungs feel full of stone. I peer from the workshop door, over our garden. My sculptures stand as immortal obelisks unbothered by the gnawing weeds and uncut hedges. Marble and bronze remains — cold, unshattering and patiently alive. 

I think of these statues as embodiments of this liminal time, inhabiting a solid state, forcing me to pause and wait and remember how to breathe again. I think I should have maybe tended to the garden before the girl comes. I’m alone, and she should know better than to judge me on the state of my tired affairs. 

I straighten up my tools. I think they’ll need replacing soon, but I don’t know where to look. To replace my tools feels like a concession — I’ve had these since we moved here, and they’ve done me too well. I trust their damage is temporary. My head feels full of a ceaseless fog. 

I find your hand on the same shelf. It’s my idea of your hand, cut poorly from cheap metal, without consideration of how you considered your hands. They are my idea of your hands, what I thought of them, what I wanted them to be, what I remember them as. It's the easiest way to hold you. 

The hands of men are interesting beasts. They are truncated, thick, ambiverts. Devout instruments through which man may shape the space around him. You saw all elements of your body as malleable. You did not need hands to shape the world around you, but you had shaped yourself. You were the tool with which you shaped yourself, and the reality around you. 

That hand falls heavy onto mine. I scratch at the back of your palm, my dogged indication of complexity. I don’t feel great about art that tries to replicate life, life drawings and such. My fingers shift and move through yours, and I see all the small nicks and scars I've given you. I feel bronze feel me, responding to mutual materiality. 

The index finger falls off. It strikes the floor with weathered illness. It’s got me. I stand up, stepping away, catching eyes with myself in the mirror. She sees me, and knows I am thick with guilt. Hand in my hand, bronze remains bronze. There is a set fear in my heart and I am standing still. My gut wants to vomit, but no part of me is liquid. The girl knocks at the door. Of course, the girl is knocking at the door. She calls. I pick up the hand, and wrap it in cloth, scattering my tools. I turn and run through the garden, stashing the broken parts of you underneath your bed. 

‘I’m sorry I’m so late, Jean, seriously, the bus was-’

‘Sorry, Naomi, time got away from me.’

She tells me it’s a project to do with you, and of course, your slow and painful death. She calls you ‘late’. I remind her,

‘That was three or so years ago, I dare say, he’s as much stone as he is flesh.’

‘What do you mean by that, sorry?’

She’s scribbling. Naomi is some young femme, with blue eyebrows and a mullet. She looks like an artefact of city days. She makes me feel old. I hope I was never anything like her, curious and eager to please. 

‘Well, to dust we shall all return, and whatnot.’

‘Yeah, okay, I think,’ She pauses, ‘Is there any other way to put that?’ 

‘I don’t know, particularly. I don’t feel all that ready to wax poetic over him, at least not yet.’ I exhale. ‘I also suppose, Naomi, that Vic was always trying to, I don’t know, maybe embody himself?’

‘Yes, he was butch while he lived, right?’

I exhale again, sharper this time. Implying what? Because he’s no longer alive, he’s lost what he was? He was my husband. Butch sounds uncomfortable in her mouth, like a wine she’s too young to drink. On the back wall of the studio, panels of stone slabs wait to be moved. In the height of summer, sunlight would fall on their formless bodies and we tried to see oceans set in stone.




You bit into my neck when we first danced. It was some downtown workers bar where the boys playing darts would have killed us if we stayed. You kept your stonemason hands on my back, inviting me to fall into them. I saw my body as a statue, crumbling to pieces in the natural atrophy of time. I saw my arms fall off, my nose chipped away — a bust needing to be restored. You were savouring me.

We’d go to your room wherever you were staying. You were following work around in the city. You never kept much with you. I had this fear that you’d find somewhere to work far away, and I’d be stuck in this endless city without you. You’d always come home, and we’d drink. Your hands held mine with the gentleness of warm water. You didn’t want me for power. You didn’t want me for connections. You knew I was tired of art world sex, of men twice my age asking me to stay just a little while longer. I had no interest in academia. I had no interest in my predecessors. You were interested in me, and I couldn’t help but adore you. We drank until downstairs called the cops. 

Scared something would happen to you, you told me about women you knew who made swords and axes, out in the country. You knew I wanted to be anywhere else. You saw my sculptures and touched them and I wanted to know what you felt. You said you liked the concrete and I felt like I knew everything about you. 

The cops never came, so we danced together in that downtown bar, where you bit me. You were carrying me. Drunk, outside a bar that no longer exists, with friends we forgot, I traced my fingers over yours. I traced and traced and traced and traced and said,

‘I am going to remember this.’

‘What, darling?’

I had to study you, even drunk, I needed my eyes to figure out what you were. All butches I had met had grey hair, but you had none. I thought your head was a weird shape. 

‘What’re you lookin’ at?’

‘I’m just looking, I’m just looking, I just think you’re beautiful.’

‘I’m handsome and you know that, darling, handsome as the day gets,’ You laughed, ‘I’ll show you beautiful.’

‘Could you explain that to me?’

Fuck off, Naomi. Get a grip. 

‘He was caring, he was loving, I’m not sure what you’re looking for. What do you want me to say?’

‘Like, I get it means a lot for you to be talking about him, and I think it would be I’m not sure, good to learn about?’	

I stare at her with tired, irritated eyes. I’m too used to my routines these days. Tracing the skirting of the shed for signs of water damage. Clearing the gutters. Trying to paint. Giving in. There are glasses littering the sink, with little remnants of paint and science and ritual. The water is fine, the building is fine, and the gutters are clear. I can’t help myself, finding space to inhabit the space you took, the space you left.  I spend afternoons smoking. You’d hate me for it. I’m exhausted earlier in the day, my arms and legs and spine and ribs all heavy. 

I watch as smoke drifts, curling and disappearing. I wonder if it will stain the marble, those invisible oceans spoiling and polluted. I want to smoke. 

‘Naomi, I would really, honestly rather not.’

‘Then, how about this, how about you show me something.’




We eloped. I was enthralled. You took me here. The house was your brothers, but he was getting city-rich and didn’t care, probably didn’t know you still existed. You called it our honeymoon. I packed books, you packed belts and told me, 

‘I don’t see there’d be many dykes down thataway, but I’ll keep God busy if I dress right.’

You spoke with a smile. I hadn’t felt excitement like that, like something alive. I could feel without thinking. We took the train and watched the countryside pass us by. 

‘I think horse riding would suit you.’

‘Ah, I don’t know.’

‘Why don’t you? We’re far away enough from the city.’

‘Every young girl wants a pony these days. I’m a grown man. No chance they see me, belted and saddled and all, thinkin’ I’m playin’ some other game.’

‘Saying what, exactly? That you’re less a husband because you enjoy what, horses?’

Your eyes were still. Your hand scratched at stubble. You were feeling something. I felt my excitement overstep that something. My gaze met the coastline, the blue existing forever, or maybe I couldn’t see any further. 

There was a small kitchen, a workshop, a living space that became my studio and the shed-turned-bedroom. The windows let in endless reams of light. We adored that summer. You said we should stay here, your voice coated in platinum optimism. You promised me you’d find all the materials I ever wanted. I used scholarship money to pay for our boat trips out. I liked tracing my hands against the water, feeling its motion, feeling how the sun touched it. Every part of the world was moving around us. I knew it wanted it to set. 
	



‘I did these about ten years ago.’

I produce the life drawings from the drawer. You were high, and older then. You said I should study you, teasing the idea when you were afraid of asking. You kept your harness on, your body snared in place. I drew you as best I could — naked, but not vulnerable.

You had the beauty of rain, the beauty of droplets on stone, the beauty of elements separate, distinct. You lay, your right leg outstretched, the fat of your belly resting against your thigh, your arm slung over your breasts. The sun came through from the back window, and shone across you. You held every colour. You were so still. I had not drawn since college. I worked to inhabit your body. You were knowing peace. You were enjoying it.

The paper has faded, brown with age, though the pencil outlining you remains. You were being seen, by the light, by me. The outline of your soul caught, motionless in this withering picture. You look at peace, still. 

She’s flicking through the drawings.

‘That’s really something like, he looks really human, like you knew what he was, if that makes sense.’

‘In some way, yes. He knew what he was. He said he dedicated his body to me, but I don’t know what he meant.’

‘That’s kind of iconic, kind of not.’

I don’t know what she means. I go find the hand. A grief is sinking me, bearing its teeth, begging to be fed. Being around another person feels overwhelming, her presence muddying the idea of you kept so pristine in this space. She feels like she’s moving the dust that you breathed, that we shared, disrupting the place on a molecular level. I felt at peace with just you, the idea of you. I need to hold you, and I know where you hide, across the garden, in our shed. The girl follows me. She’s too curious. 

‘This is where we would spend our afternoons when the sun was hottest and highest in there, the door open, a ice and or wine, or something,’

‘And you’ve kept it as it is? That’s a lot of work, right?’

She was looking at the black smudges where my hands have checked the roof, remnants of obsessive rituals. 

‘Yes, I suppose it is. Do you mind?’

I would not let this space be lost. I would not let time forget it. I needed to preserve what air was left that you breathed, the sheets you slept in. The clothed bronze lay in its parts underneath the bed. Removed from sight, removed from touch. I carry it, an injured pup, unable to cry.

‘Do you miss him?’

‘What do you want to ask?’

‘Sorry, Jean.’

I make us peppermint tea and we sit at the top of the garden. The sky has remained that faithless grey. 

‘From here you can see most of the town, the sea, and the fields. The most pleasant place to take visitors is away from work, he said.’

‘And the whole garden, too.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

A minute passes. She cups her tea. 

‘Naomi, might I ask a question?’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

‘What do you plan to get, or learn, by coming here?’

She takes a minute. She sips, but we both know it’s far too hot to drink, and her lips are too young to manage the heat.

‘I find your sculpting really like, affecting. I don’t know. It’s queer, and I guess I want to know about the person you let into your life, like why him.’

I want to know what you would have said. I can feel you sitting with us. I remember to breathe and sit myself up. We drink our tea, and Naomi takes her cue. I know she will return here, but I want to be whole when she does. I wish her well, and smoke in the kitchen in the comfort of solitude. Your hand rests at the table, unclothed.

Of course, I broke your hand. You had been ill for ages, but now, here and alone and full of love left untouched, the index finger in my hand, I don’t know what to do. Would I have loved you if I knew stone could get so sick?

I’m sorry, I’m apologising to bronze, this abstracted idea of what was supposed to be ‘a man’, what was supposed to be you. I don’t know how, but it became you, it became a shattering fragment of grief. The cut of the break shows unhealthy metal. I wouldn’t have made you out of something so flawed. I stare at the remains of your hand, and wait to cry. I wait for the stone to break again. But, in immovable flesh, I think of that hand. Your hand. Darling and heavy and, in your voice, mask-you-line. 

This space wasn’t supposed to be inhabited alone. The studio and the kitchen all ask for the noises of others, of movement, of distraction elsewhere. Without them, the air sits still, forgetting to breathe. I walk to the garden, careful to smoke as far away from the shed as I can. I am not in solitude, I am alone.

Some feeling sinks through my skin. I take the hand to the workshop. My tools are where I’ve left them, scattered and dissolved in stone projects. I hold them carefully. I know I cannot repair you.

When we decided to live here, to stay here, to become here, you said you were going to make it beautiful for me. You were dedicated, even if that meant being bound to your self-set duties. You know what you wanted to be, and held yourself to that. You were unapologetic in your understanding of yourself. You were perfect in that sense, a person formed and made. You knew what material you were made of. I was surprised when you said, 

‘Darling, I find great comfort in you,’ when we fell asleep. 

Those marble slabs remain, still waiting to be moved. You helped me order in plenty before you went, helping carry it from the man’s truck through our house and into the garden, by the workshop. I would sweep the chalk up from behind you. 

‘Do you?’

‘Of course I do, darlin’. Of course I do.’

‘I want you to find comfort in yourself too, you know.’

‘Well, sooner or later.’

You held me while you slept. You’d press your heavy arms into my chest and I would have to fight to keep breathing but I know that you were resting. I know how much you needed it. I know you felt most at peace when you were still, when your shape was set. 

‘Don’t think it’ll be long now, it’s just how these things are.’

‘What’s that coming from?’

There was marble, cold and touched by the rain. Evening lives and dies through the skylight. I shape the hand out again, and try, and work, and give myself to the memory of you. 

‘Men like me don’t stay all that long, and you know it.’

‘Don’t say that, love.’ 

I’m upset.

I don’t plan on sleeping. I’ve smoked all I can. I’ve been alone too long, and something has gone bad. I haven’t worked like this for years. The stone became an extension of my form, an extension of you. I found quiet communion. I keep the candles lit with your matches. They bear witness to my acts of transmutation. I will make this stone bleed if it means you may rest, if the dust will settle. I burn through them, one by one by one, until by some change of nature I have not let myself privy to, morning has returned. 

My body reminds me, and my focus fails. From marble, the marble you left me, lies your hand, half formed and holding. I hold it. My hand fits, almost. I let my arm fall weak. You hold me. I cannot break you again, but I cannot carry you with me. Your hand is rough, unpolished, real. I can’t take you with me. 

I make my way to the top of the garden. My body is heavy, too heavy for invisible rituals. The sea has changed, and the sky, slowly, changes with it. Time feels as though it’s changed. I breathe. The sunlight lies on my face, quiet, golden, darling.