Habit
By Cameron Dezen Hammon
My daughter and I are both creatures of habit, so that means I am climbing into bed with her and lying very still until she falls asleep, even though she is eleven. I gave up the singing and back-scratching and story-reading many years ago. But she won’t sleep unless I am beside her. And I never fall asleep first. This has been going on since she could talk, so of course I’ve missed out on some things. There are novels I have not and likely will not read. I’ve missed whole prime time television phenomena (Thirtysomething, hello!) But she’ll only be small once and she’s the only one I’ve got.
My husband doesn’t object, and our arrangement is a financial one at this point.
Sometimes at night I do tell my daughter stories, but usually it is when she is having a hard time falling asleep. When she was seven or eight she always wanted me to tell her stories about funny things she did as a baby. I could hardly remember any so I told her things I remembered about my sister and I, and pretended they were about her. For example, when she was four she became preoccupied with her own urine. She filled a dozen plastic cups with it and stashed it under the sink in the downstairs powder room. She called it an “experiment,” and every time I told my daughter that story she would howl. It relaxed us both. Sometimes I told her things about her father and me that I probably shouldn’t have. But she’s always been like my friend, too. I told her why her father and I never slept in the same bed anymore, why he never sat beside me on the couch. Lately, he’s been coming home later and later and we hold our breath when we hear him on the stairs.
Zak Long, Santa Cruz #12, 2023, color photo on medium format film.
Zak Long, Santa Cruz #8, 2023, color photo on medium format film.
When my daughter is old enough the one piece of advice I’ll give her about men is this: Never rely on a man to take care of you. And maybe also, never have sex without a condom.
My husband always used condoms even though I was on the pill. He did not want any children. Did not. So when I quit taking the pill I didn’t tell him, and after my daughter came along I figured I got what I came for. It’s just taken me eleven years to get around to doing anything about it.
One night, my daughter and I were whispering in the dark and my husband was still out, and out of the clear blue we heard a terrible screech of tires on the street outside our house and then a crash! Something hit the oak tree at the top of the driveway. After all the breaking and shattering and smashing, which I imagined was some car hitting that tree, it was totally silent. Outside on the street, and inside my daughter’s room, also. Her room is at the front of the house and overlooks the lawn and the driveway, and if one of us had gotten up out of bed we could have looked through the blinds, at least, to see if someone was hurt, or bleeding, or even dead in our driveway!
We waited for the sound of an ambulance, a fire truck, anything. We waited and waited and listened and listened. We kept listening and not moving, and eventually I heard my daughter snore. I kept listening, for what, by then, I did not know.
Robert Singer, incompetents, cheats and madmen, 2021, acrylic on panel, 36 × 36".
WET SUIT
She’s being a cunt, you said, of the old lady bartender. She was only six years and a day older than me, though her face looked like a tanned hide. May the Fourth be with you, I said, and held out my knuckles for her to bump. She popped the tab on a Rainier and handed it to you.
Is it enough for you to know that I want you? That may be enough, you said later.
Just keep me company for five more minutes, I answered, and I'll leave you alone forever. Can we agree?
We were both married to other people but it's true what they say: only married people know how lonely marriage can be.
Not once did you tell me your wife's name or show me her picture so I stopped asking. I showed you a picture of my husband and me on our eleventh wedding anniversary. We were both wearing dark sunglasses and he was driving, my head canted toward the rearview. "Happy Anniversary, Babe" the caption read.
I stood beside you at the bar while the rest of our group, ten or so other divers, flirted and gossiped over baskets of fat mussels and pints of beer. The TV played the news coverage of the mudslide on loop, and the bartender stopped pulling pints every so often to sniffle and blow her nose. Whole towns, gone. Just like that. She was emotional, understandably, but I didn’t know anyone from around there except you so I didn’t know what to feel.
Some blonde lady cozied up on your other side and was making small talk when I finally pulled up a bar stool and sat down. That shut her up.
That guy in the camo hat wants to fight me, you said. I scanned the back of the bar and saw only sad fisherman, no camo hat. No one wants to fight you, I said, but thrilled at the thought of watching you fight. There was a fresh scratch across your knuckles that hadn’t been there when we took the boat out. But you said, dully, I'm a lover not a fighter.
I liked watching you pull in the slack line, your hair swinging in damp clumps. I liked watching you hold the knife, too, at an angle, away from the rope so it didn't fray. You could do all kinds of things like that, practical things, like anchor us shallow enough to dive with half full tanks, but deep enough to see all the slow movers without spooking them.
Feeling trapped? you asked. I thought it was a cheap shot because I had earlier and you knew it, my tank leaking into the Sound while I ogled a North Pacific giant octopus.
Not really, I answered.
I liked the way it felt to sit beside you in the bar and pretend we were other people. You look like you belong here, you said.
Then later, it's not like I'm looking for a sport fuck, which I guessed was a kind of apology? I wondered out loud what it was that you were looking for and figured whatever it was you probably already had it.
Just five more minutes, I said.
Zak Long, Cleveland #6, 2024, color photo on medium format film.
Cameron Dezen Hammon is the author of This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession. She is a lecturer in creative writing and medical humanities at Rice University.
Zak Long is a photographer and filmmaker based in San Francisco. His work explores how man-made structures blend with and impact natural spaces. Growing up in Cleveland, he was surrounded by post-industrial landscapes, which inspired his focus on the ongoing relationship between people and the land.
Robert J. Singer is an intracranial neurosurgeon, multimedia artist, and guitar builder (Waterstone Guitar/Elysian Pedal Co.). His workroom, Whalebone Studios, is located in Southampton, NY, where he lives with his wife and three dogs.