heartnotes

two is the loneliest number

I was born one cold winter morning, premature. my mother went outside for one of her daily pregnancy walks. I’m the eldest of my five siblings, her first pregnancy she was young and unprepared. She was trapsing through the snow when the labour started and she was still trapsing through the snow when the labour finished. I came quickly. I felt the pressure of the birth canal drag me out forcefully, before i felt ready and all of a sudden there i was. laying silent on the cold snow. I didn’t cry or scream, which is usually an indication of a dead baby. Perhaps I was dead this whole time and grew in the body in spite of soul. But when my mother scooped up my little body she determined that I was “alive” and carried me home to father.

My father was a land Baron. When my mother fell pregnant with me he decided that it was time for him to create something worthy for his new lineage. He married my mother and took over our village by force, driving the previous Baron out of town and forcing all townsfolk to submit to his will entirely. My parents, lazily neglected to give me a name of my own. They dubbed me “Two”. in reference to me being the second in this new lineage. Father, Son. One, Two. I had four more siblings that followed me, two brothers and two sisters. well balanced, without me. All conceived within the confines of wedlock, something my dear father never let me forget.

The memory of that birth canal pressure stayed with me for the entirety of my lifetime. The cobra-like squeeze and push has forced me through life against my will. I feel as though i’ve always had drive, I like to tell women that i have tremendous drive, but if i’m being honest it feels more akin to suffocation. The cold fingered grip of oedipus around my thick neck compels me to compete with my father. I compete with him in all things that he has done. He teaches me how to sell oil that we extract from the belly of a snake, i move to a new town and i sell my own snake oil. I try to break free from his shadow, but I am always lowly two. The second in my lineage, given none of the glory of being the first but all of the responsibility of being the eldest.

As i stand here now at the ripe age of 24 on the precipice of becoming mid. I think to myself: father? (yes. son?) I want to kill you. And so i strive to eat the sun and the moon to make him pay and i writhe in the snow with my adult body as i did that cold day my mother birthed me there right into it. I don't know what to do with my life, or even if i want to live my own life. My younger brother moved away from our little kingdom to the forest in the easterlands this past april, and he started his own oil company, he told me there's plenty of work down here in the forest, everyone is sick multiple times per year, a result of being covered in the foliage from the looming trees above and too impoverished to escape and so selling the oil of the snake is a cakewalk. he told me i should come down with him and join his business.

i decide at the end of that following July that I will go, i would like to outsell my father and prove to him that i am more than just his shadow, more than just his heir and so i pack my rucksack and i mount my stallion and set off down the road to the east. I spend many days and nights through snow and meadows, fields and villages and i slowly make my way there. I stop by little inns along the way and converse with many women, most of them think that i come on too strong but i cannot help it. I see a beautiful woman and i feel that same suffocating pressure around my neck like god himself is strangling me.

two is the loneliest number, dear reader. it is just you and one other person, no audience to applaud you, nobody else to perceive your actions towards that second person, to see how perfect you are. you are left in a state of pure vulnerability, pure connection with one other human, a beautiful concept but who could ever understand? i embrace beautiful women along my journey but they bore me, as you may be bored of this story, of my story, of my manifesto about my life with nobody reading along with you over your shoulder to agree with you that my writing is perfect. do you perhaps read this story outloud to your lover? does your lover tell you how well i am writing? or do you read alone in the dark. just you and i. narrator, reader. one, two. there is intimacy in this, i suppose. but only if you are moved by me as deeply as i wish for you to be. The women i embrace and meet with, the women i drink with and dance with bore me because I cannot move them. They file their nails when i speak and they break eye contact with me.

when i finally arrive in the easterland forest, late july. the air is warm and i feel exposed even as i stand under the canopy of trees, i see run down weatherboard houses all around me and my feet plant into the mud on the ground formed by humidity and a lack of grass due to the absent sun. it is dark here even in the day time, the air smells of mushrooms and sawdust, i hear a man coughing in a nearby house. my brother was right, the people here seem unwell. on the street i see a young woman, about my own age, blowing her nose gently into a handkerchief and walking slowly as if her soul is barely dragging her body along. my health feels out of place here, i stand out with my sunkissed skin and my vibrantly curly hair. people stare at me as i walk through the village square and i begin to feel several inches taller. my brother meets me out the front of his house, it is equally as rundown as the other houses in the town with moulded, rotting wood on the outside from the humidity and lichen on his tin roof, but he looks just as vibrant as I do. he takes me to a room on the northern side of his house and shows me his business set up. his walls are lined with cages containing snakes and in the centre of the room, a large table filled with little clear glass bottles ready to be labelled.

he tells me his business plan, he has managed to splice the genes from a cobra and a common brown snake in order to maximise oil output and perfected his snake breeding and extraction methods. He wants to utilise my charisma to sell it in larger quantities. I happen to be a very adept flirt. He says that I could sell milk to a cow and i think he's correct. He says that I will go, door to door selling the oil that he extracts and bottles. I will tell people the reason for their illness is that they need more vitamin D and due to the nature of a snakes blood being cold, they need to be housed under UVB lighting which is rich in vitamin D. The snakes absorb this vitamin D through their reptilian scales and any excess that they do not need for their own health gets stored in large quantities within their oil, this oil is then safely and humanely extracted from a pouch hidden in their belly and can be bottled and distributed to humans.

he sets me up with a cot in his spare bedroom and we get to work first thing the following morning. i set out just after sun rise and begin knocking on doors. my healthy and virile appearance captivates the locals as i knock on their doors and i ask them how they are feeling. most of them tell me they have been sick for some time. these people have spent decades of their lives suffering under the weight of chronic flu-like symptoms and eagerly take bottles of my brothers oil from my firm, tanned hands. I tell them I take this oil every day under my tongue and that's the reason I have thick curly hair and strong arms. They are in awe of my body and tell me they hope they can become as fit and active as me as soon as possible and I tell them they will. They even admire me for being able to walk down their street carrying a heavy milk crate of bottles full of liquid.

i feel taller and more competent than i have ever felt in my life as i knock on the final door of my first street on my first day in the easterlands. A long pale, almost grey-green arm pulls the door open to reveal a girl standing before me with large pale breasts scooped into a skin tight, black shirt and deepset collarbones. the ends of her auburn hair fold neatly inwards around them. her long pale neck is dotted with four beauty marks and her large green eyes stare at me unblinkingly. She doesn't speak at first, she doesn't look unhealthy although she is slightly gaunt looking so I am not sure what to say and i don't launch into my usual flirting routine that i do with my female marks. We stand there in silence together for about five seconds that feel like a lifetime and then all at once she begins to tell me off. at first I am not sure what she's telling me off about, my mouth is slightly open as i try to regain control of my brain. I realise she's telling me off about having the little clear glass bottles in a milk crate instead of a closed box. She says that if i'm carrying around essential oils they shouldn't be exposed to the light as it will make the oil quality degrade and they will lose their scent and that i should really know this if i'm going to be an oil salesman, obviously

i begin to argue with her voraciously. this strange woman doesn't even realise these are not essential oils they are bottles of oil from a snake. I begin to explain this to her and she rolls her eyes at me. she tells me my product is stupid and that snake oil is not a real thing. i launch into a long winded explanation at her, she stands there with her arms crossed and lips pursed as i tell her my brother extracts the oil and my father did it before him and i have seen the process myself, actually. I begin to get heated and i set my milk crate down. We continue like that for a while, counter point on counter point. She brings me inside her house so she can show me her own business. As it turns out i have just wandered into the local soap makers abode. she leads me down her hallway and takes me through a doorway. i am immediately confronted with the smell of burning incense and a medely of aromas all blended together to create a smell i doubt i could ever place as one specific thing. her living room is decorated with lamps, on the floor, on tables, bookshelves lined with strange tomes and trinkets of cats and castanets. to the right of her living room is a large workspace with several loaves of soap lined up on a table with a large slicing instrument. buckets of oil and botanicals on the floor stacked on top of each other. she swoops over to what appears to be some sort of perfumers desk, along the back edge of the desk is a series of little amber bottles all labelled intricately

she picks one up in her small pale hand and shows me how it is in an amber bottle and not a clear glass bottle and how the room she perfumes in is kept dark at all times. I lose all interest in the argument at this point. I am standing inside her house now wondering how, if she lives like this, in a dark home, in this village covered with foliage, is she still able to have the drive to argue with me so passionately when everyone else i have encountered here so far, feels so feeble?. I look around for a moment and then ask her this. she pauses for a moment, appearing confused by my change in subject. she makes a point to tell me it has nothing to do with any such snake oil type products- that she goes to the big city and gets touched weird by the organ healing lady once a month. I have no idea what this means but suddenly I don't care. I have just met the first woman who is not impressed by me based on physicality alone and i have got to change that immediately. All at once the hands of god take me by my thick neck and begin to squeeze, and i with my two hands take her two hands and i take the bottle out of her hands because she's sitll holding the stupid thing and i put it down and then i grab her hands again and i stare into her eyes and tell her she needs to let me impregnate her immediately.

she tells me not to be so silly and that her front door is open so i run to close her front door and alleviate her anxiety and return to her pale clasp. her eyes and her face soften slightly but she doesn't budge on the issue. I can tell she thinks i am being melodramatic and she is not wrong, i am quite prone to being melodramatic. But the fire inside me roars and i feel as if i need this more than i have ever needed anything in my life and i hold her hands tight because i fear she will look at them and realise she has a hang nail she needs to file in this moment and this will take her attention away from me, from this moment here with me in the most intimate two moment, where two is not lonely and empty but is electric and full. in her warm room lit up with lamps where we, she and i, are both encased in a haze of scent and smoke and orange light. she doesn't pull her hands or her eyes away from mine and i begin to tell her about myself. the words boil up inside me and bubble out and she takes me over to her couch and we sit together. she listens intently as i bare my soul. her, an endless pit to be filled and me never ending stream of wet concrete spewing from my mouth. a perfect match.

she listens to me for hours and we never break the bubble, i can't even tell anymore what time it is, it may be after dark, i should be home reporting back to my brother, he probably thinks i am lost but i can't tear myself away from this moment where i am being seen and heard

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