Muscle Memory
By Paola De Pasquale
Joshua Hoene, digital photograph, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
MUSCLE MEMORY
PAOLA De Pasquale | MAR 2024 | Issue 31
In school I was taught that the body remembered things the mind couldn’t: it was called muscle memory.
When I met her, it was almost spring. We rode back to my place in a taxi with the windows down. Then she tied me to my headboard, and the first hot breeze of the year was coming from my window.
The year after that night, I shaved myself everyday. I’d do it every other morning in the shower so that hair didn’t have time to grow back. I liked that when I looked down at my body, it looked like the body of a child, hairless and thin.
One time she asked me to tell her the worst thing I had ever done.
I tried to think or make up a story, but I could never think of something worth telling her. The truth was, I had a feeling that the worst thing I had ever done was what I was doing with her.
She had a car that year, it was green.
I’d play dvds in it while she was out buying groceries or having coffee with a friend.
I’ll wait for you in here, I’d say, I have some emails I need to get back to.
The truth was that I liked looking at her walk, I liked the fact that she knew where she was going, and most of all, I liked that, in those moments, she was going back to me.
When she’d get back we’d listen to music, and sometimes I’d take the sunglasses she kept in the glove compartment and put them on, because I wanted to be the kind of person who did things like that just for fun. Do you think I’m beautiful, I’d ask. The sunglasses were too big and covered my whole face. You look silly, she’d say, smiling, looking at me briefly and then at the road again, like I was just another thing that belonged to her.
Then there were times where she could be tender.
When we’d walk down the street, for example, during that winter, I’d feel her arm lingering around my waist, gently, like it wasn’t even there, like she didn’t mean to touch me.
We would walk around town like that, her arm close enough to my waist so that she could touch me if she wanted to.
We woke up together one morning in my bed, while I still lived in my apartment, and she said she wanted me to visit her hometown.
In our bathroom in Madrid there was a big tub made out of grey marble.
She’d pass by our bathroom and take a picture of me in the tub, smile, then keep walking.
I’d put some more soap on my hands and keep scrubbing my skin until I felt like I was clean.
In the mornings we’d meet our guide in different parts of the city — she wanted me to really get to know the place — and walk around in old churches. I’d listen to the guide while I imagined us having sex.
Then, later, when we were actually having sex after two washed-down drinks, I’d pretend I was walking into a catholic church and that her mouth was the entrance.
She’d get incredibly quiet during sex, like we were in church.
The small sounds our bodies made — the heavy breathing, my hands on the headboard — reminded me of the moments after prayer, when everyone was trying to be really quiet and was thinking about their sins and all that was left was the small sounds.
I’d imagine looking at the art we had seen on the walls, all the Madonnas and the saints being murdered in paintings, while I had two fingers inside her.
Thinking about something else while we were together gave me a sense of power, like I had control over my mind.
Before we stopped for lunch one day I bought a pair of uncomfortable shoes. I liked them in the way one likes things they know won't last: beautiful clothes, or pets. I bought them because I figured she’d like them, and that she’d want me to be the kind of person who liked wearing shoes like that. They were blue and had a heel.
How do you say “shoes” in Spanish, I asked her. When we were out, in the city or elsewhere, I’d ask her to speak in Spanish. I like hearing the Rs come out of her mouth, and the fact that she could do something I couldn’t.
The night she brought me to her mother's, I was wearing a backless dress. Purple on the front, only skin on the back. We’re so happy you came, her mother said. Her gold bracelets jiggled on her arm. She looked like a statue.
I wanted her to think that I was beautiful. I wanted to be the beautiful and mysterious woman her daughter had brought home and the best person she had ever been with.
I could never tell what she was actually thinking — she’d smile and tell her other daughters to sit up, then briefly glance at me fast enough to make me understand that she didn’t want me to notice.
When I brought her home to my uncles, she talked a lot.
She kept inhaling and talking, one cigarette to the next, smiling and chatting politely.
She had a way of making everything her own. The dinner table, the food, the conversation.
Sometimes I'd look at her while she was in the middle of a sentence and think that she was the most powerful person I knew.
When she went to see her, I instantly knew. She didn’t have on her usual cologne and was tidying things up in the apartment — she took off her shoes and let them fall to the ground.
They had broken up the past spring, it was messy. I could tell from the faces friends would make when her name came up. Yeah, that ended badly, they would say. I never knew how.
The first time she told me about her we were in my bedroom, after she had untied me, she told me that she felt like Bea, that was her name, hadn’t loved her enough.
What do you mean enough? I asked her.
I loved that we were talking about something bad that Bea might have done. I loved talking about all the wrongdoings of other people with her: her friend who was loud, that editor who was sloppy. I liked feeling like everyone else in the world was bad but me.
One night she told me, people are in general really stupid, Maggie.
The fact that we were naked in her bed implied that I wasn’t.
She never replied to my question that night. She just shrugged and sat up to roll a cigarette.
In the silence that followed, I imagined them together. I had seen some pictures on the internet, and most of my friends knew her before she moved away, so she felt like a silent presence in my life. I became kind of obsessive — I’d imagine them having sex and wondered if she’d whisper to her like she did to me, if she had brought her home sooner.
One morning in May, she said to me, I feel like the faces of all the women I’ve loved make up a mosaic of her. I didn’t know what to say so I just said, why do you think that is.
I don’t know, she told me, but I want you to be careful.
I wasn’t careful.
After we broke up that summer, I went to my parents’ house for a while. They lived in the south, by the sea. When I’d swim and feel my body dissolve into the water, I’d think of her.
I’d think of the last words we said to each other on the phone, and feel her voice linger in my head. How long till the sound fades, I’d think. I was afraid of losing the memory of her my body still held — the consistency of her arms, of her hair, how her voice would sound when she’d whisper. The way she whispered on the phone, when I asked why she was breaking up with me, stop fucking begging.
When I got back to the city after the summer, I walked into the church right in front of my apartment. I would do it several times during that winter. I prayed for her to come back to me and I had hope that she’d actually do it.
Everyone in the city looked happy and kind.
I didn’t want to be kind. I wanted to be beautiful and irresistible and loved. I was none of those things. I was alone and scared sitting on a church bench.
Months later she called me and said, I need to see you.
I said, you can come over. I looked in the mirror and I felt all my muscles harden.
My mind had kind of forgotten but my body hadn’t. Here it is, I thought: muscle memory.
Paola De Pasquale was born in a small town by the sea in the south of Italy. She’s majoring in creative writing at Scuola Holden, the first writing course in Europe. She thoroughly enjoys American fiction, memoirs, and tea.