From
where I sat I could hear only the sibilants and fricatives, the blown leaves of
their conversation. A bit of
voice like a glimpse of leg. Mostly those rustling esses and rattling tees. The
limb gets pretty hard. I worried they'd see my feet dangling there over the
patio, but it was dark.
This is
good, I’m sure he said. He made a stabbing motion with his knife at the
steaming contents of his plate.
So glad
you like it! The way she spoke she could only be smiling: her voice high in the
throat, slightly fluting, bright. Her face was in shadow but I could hear she
was smiling. Recently, the advertising they play over the sound system in the
grocery store features intensely-smiling female voices. The voice actors sound
like they have great teeth, American grins. They sound like they are exquisitely
happy about fat-free yogurt or what have you.
I wished
I had put on a sweater.
He said appreciative
things about the food, which smelled very good. His body performed the sanctioned
poses: heroic positions of the torso, shoulders, and arms; ostensibly languorous
attitudes of the legs, hips, and abdominal trunk that actually require
considerable flexing; constant adjustments of the angle of the head relative to
the position of hers, always mindful of the most flattering angle of the light
streaming across the table from the kitchen behind them. My theory is that we
learn this from the media, and it is an aspect of fashion. The
self-consciousness of his performance of the current manhood subverted his
intended projection of virility, IMHO.
Her
movements were also highly practiced, pretty and delicate, graceful and equivocally
coy, and, though the wind picked up a little and hissed through the tree and I
couldn’t hear much of what she said, I could hear, distinctly, that her voice
was pitched high and that it rose at the end of each sentence almost like a
question, but not exactly. Every sentence rolled onto its back. This is a form
of deference, or perhaps submission, and therefore potentially dominant, and I
have theories about this, that there is a sociobiological basis for this kind
of feminine behavior. It is a way that women make themselves available to men.
It is a method of flattery and, therefore, control. I am tempted to say it is a
way of lying, or, perhaps, a form of honesty. This will require more thought.
The voice
actor who reads the tortilla ads uses the hard r’s and soft d’s of Spanish. Her
vowels are unitary and precise, very unlike the broad diphthongs of American
English. She sounds very nearly overwhelmed by the pleasure of urging us to buy
the tortillas. Euphoric, or giddy. I predict that these women, these voice
actors, will soon figure out a way to suggest, just to the limit of decency,
that they are actually enjoying a barely-contained orgasm brought on by the product
they’re selling. I’ll have what she’s having, they want us to think. Oh, so
that’s her secret! And it’s on sale today! Commerce depends on the cynical
re-purposing of sex, of course.
After
some time, he pushed his plate away. They stayed on the patio, drinking beer
and leaning into each other with the unmistakable movements of what I will call
new love, which is lust. Each movement profoundly gendered: her graceful arms,
elbows in tight, wrists exposed, hands birdlike; his arms possessive, his chest
forward and massive.
He said
something sly and turned his head to watch her eyes. She laughed rather
abruptly and her shoulders rose and she placed her hands on his bicep. She
threw her head back to laugh, and placed one balletic hand on her upper chest,
as though she couldn’t get a deep breath because what he said what so amusing.
He leaned back in his chair and straightened his legs out in front of him and
hooked a thumb in his pocket so that his hand framed his package. All these
movements had the canned flavor of recitation. My theory is that the
highest-status young people practice these gendered movements in the mirror.
They must consume media with a voracious attention to gender display, desperate
to learn how to present themselves for mating.
I have
heard very few male voice actors reading ads in the grocery store. Men do many
of the in-store announcements, but the ads the male voice actors read are
mostly for meat and barbecue products. Also, men read the ads for the
gas-discount rewards program. These are prescribed male roles. The male voices
are enthusiastic, but, whereas the women’s voices verge on rapture, the male
voices verge on command. Pert girls sell salad greens. Kindly but authoritative
fathers sell charcoal and beef.
She
played with her hair. She spoke and the wind rose at that moment so that I was
able, again, to entertain the idea that the breeze emanated from her mouth, that
she made the leaves rustle and the branches rattle. I saw her teeth backlit white
against the kitchen window.
That's
all. They went inside after a while, and watched TV. He put his arm on the back
of the couch behind her. She retracted her hands inside the cuffs of her
sweater, hunched her shoulders, tucked her feet, and made herself small. And I
slipped down out of the tree and walked back here to my warm, bright little
apartment suspecting that I had witnessed what I need to know, that it would
require some thought and parsing, but that the leaves would eventually blow off
the tree and leave the trunk bare and plain, and there’d be nowhere to hide.