from “This Condition”

LYDIA DAVIS

Time, the bugger. Oh, how the phrase “Too late!” has haunted the length of my waking days: Born too late; too late to change; too late in the day; it’s too late, baby, it’s always, invariably, a bit too late. I never seem to get the drift until the drift is gone, the bandwagon I’d jump is ever on the egress and I don’t appear capable of figuring out a situation before a new one has come to take its place.

This is how I felt the first time I came across Lydia Davis’s short-short story “This Condition.” A dear friend read it to me over the phone, and I was livid.

“Damn! Damn! Damn! That would have been perfect for Nerve! I can’t believe we didn’t get it,” I ranted. “Jack,” she responded soothingly, “it was published in 1997, a few months before Nerve launched.” Alas, too true. The same old condition: born too late.

So even though I’d argue that “This Condition” defines what I was always seeking in Nerve fiction (top shelf writing that’s sexy as much for its emotion and wisdom as its erotic content), I didn’t get to publish it first. But at least I get to reprint it here in its entirety. For Davis, ever the master of the shortest shorts, manages in this one to create one of the most beautiful, rhythmic, elegant, sexy, Freud thumb-nosing bits of writing you’ll ever find. Read it out loud; read it to a friend, a lover, a partner. Davis does more to demarcate desire in 400 choice words than most people do in volumes. She’s got an itch; she’s got it bad, and we have it right along with her.

In this condition: stirred not only by men but by women, fat and thin, naked and clothed, by teenagers and children in latency; by animals such as horses and dogs; by certain vegetables such as carrots, zucchinis and cucumbers; by certain fruits such as melons, grapefruits and kiwis; by certain plant parts such as petals, sepals, stamens and pistils, by the bare arm of a wooden chair, a round vase holding flowers, a little hot sunlight, a plate of pudding, a person entering a tunnel in the distance, a puddle of water, a hand alighting on a smooth stone, a hand alighting on a bare shoulder, a naked tree limb; by anything curved, bare and shining, as the limb or bole of a tree; by any touch, as the touch of a stranger handling money; by anything round and freely hanging, as tassels on a curtain, chestnut burrs on a twig in spring, a wet tea bag on its string; by anything glowing, as a hot coal; anything soft or slow, as a cat rising from a chair, anything smooth and dry, as a stone, or warm and glistening; anything sliding, anything sliding back and forth; anything sliding in and out with an oiled surface, as certain machine parts; anything of a certain shape, like the state of Florida; anything pounding, anything stroking, anything bolt upright, anything horizontal and gaping, as a certain sea anemone; anything warm, anything wet, anything wet and red, anything turned red, as the sun at evening; anything wet and pink; anything long and straight with a blunt end, as a pestle; anything coming out of anything else, as a snail from its shell, as a snail’s horns from its head; anything opening; any stream of water running, any stream running, any stream spurting, any stream spouting, any cry, any soft cry, any grunt; anything going into anything else, as a hand searching in a purse; anything clutching, anything grasping; anything rising, anything tightening or filling, as a sail; anything dripping, anything hardening, anything softening.