Take My Kist

Had I not wanted anyone to see the content of my chest of secrets, Francine made sure to tell me long ago, I should have locked it. Not necessarily an elaborate lock, just a sign that the content was private would have been enough of a hint not to look within. Francine called the chest a kist and kissed me every time she used the term. Buy a small lock, she suggested. Wrap twine around your kist; tie a ribbon in its eyelets. She’d know not to snoop. Lock my privates, I joked. Both of us jittery, neither wishing to prod too much, not willing to commit either a silly blunder or an egregious error, to risk the first slight swerving of the heart. Francine had just moved in. During the weekend we brought all her stuff, all her baggage, her kit and caboodle joining my kist. We sat on one side of our bed, mine alone not a few days earlier, now impeccably made with her favorite dusky-brown duvet, the smallish chest between us, facing the closet where she found it, where she’d excavated it from under a myriad of cardboard boxes of books and papers and trinkets. I wished to point out but chose not to that a chest whose top had my original name, Ayman, amateurishly carved into the softened wood with a Bic pen should have given her pause. I saw traces of blue ink in the grooves of the script. It was possible that someone else might not be able to; it was possible that I was seeing the ink I supposed was there that had faded long ago, that I used to see. I knew I was making too much of this situation. The chest was a depository of my past, my book of reminiscences, just the thing I should be sharing with my lover. I should relax, unfurl those tense muscles in my shoulders. But who was I kidding, the strain in my body was palpable. My stomach called out for antacids. It was silly, I could easily talk myself out of this nervousness, could soothe this budding anxiety. I could make a joke. I always made jokes. I was good at that. I could repeat an aren’t-we-all-afraid-of-intimacy cliché, any relief. Had I been the seer Tiresias, I’d have come up with a funny line to soften the pronouncement’s blow: Listen, Oedipus, remember how your dad said you were getting too old for your mom’s goodnight kiss, well, let me tell you . . . Was this a Tiresian moment? My life before and after the opening? I feel ridiculous, I explained. I don’t think there’s anything more than papers and pictures in here. I want you to see them, and I don’t know why I’m terrified of that. Francine kissed me without having to mention kist. I’ll show you mine, she said, if you show me yours. That was how it began.

With its old hinges yielding with a woeful moan, I opened the box, pandoraed it, and unleashed my demons unto Francine’s world. Don’t blame me, I warned her.