Nicole Brogdon: THE POD • Cleaver Magazine

Nicole Brogdon
THE POD

I never felt enough eyes on me, never enough love. Never enough arms, wrapping round my body. Nor hands, chopping vegetables for soup. Not enough healthy backs, moving my furniture. More hands, putting on clean sheets—floral sheets, washed by someone else. Clean hands, bringing me the trash can, when I’m down five days with stomach flu. More hands, bringing me a plate of tea and crackers, whisking the waste-bin away, sliding a clean bin beside the bed. Multiple hands, for multiple orgasms, hands gently plugging all my body’s holes.

A village—at least, a pod—might fix our wounds, might patch our leaks and dents. This I believed, for a while. One person could never satisfy it all, my experiences said. My first boyfriend, always studying. The later one, work work working. Other men, lying—about where they’d been, who’d they’d been with, who they were. Deceptive, about musky odors and perfume smells on their chests and shirts. So why pretend monogamy works? Why wait for that one unicorn, constant and true—why insist that the beast have a horn, at all?

I remember fourth grade winter break. Skinny Mother, dressed in navy.

“I’ve been waiting all week for holiday presents,” I said, Christmas Eve morn.

She winked at me over cereal. “Santa likes the sales, day before Christmas.” Then she drove to the mall alone in the Volkswagen, to load up her sleigh.

“Where’s your mother?” Dad asked, spiking his coffee with a long whiskey pour.

“She’s Christmas shopping this morning. Like she always does, Christmas Eve.” I kept washing dishes.

He took a long slurp. “So she’s gonna sit on Santa’s lap. A big Ho ho ho, to her.” Dad rummaged the cabinet, grabbing another bottle of Jack. “I’ll be out in the garage. Building a time machine.”

Mom came home after dark, struggling with shopping bags. Arranging gifts beneath the holiday tree. Dad weaving in from the garage, “Where the hell were you?” He punched her hard, knocking her into the Christmas tree. That same artificial tree we had for years, no lights on it. Mom fell backward, the tree falling, Mom breaking through the window glass behind, cutting her back and arms. No one to stop him. Not enough people in the house.

So last summer my husband Dan suggested we form a pod. Get two more people involved. So he could finally have sex with men. So we could stay together. Expand our minds. Live like libertines, instead of suburban salt and pepper shakers in the dying bourgeois birdcage of marriage. We could get help with cooking—which neither of us liked. Have companions for me, when Dan traveled for sales conventions.

“Why pretend monogamy works?” he asked. Let in the group, one by one. Interview, hug, inhale the pheromones. Try them out, one by one. Vote them in, or out, of the house. Open up the home, the bedroom, your heart your mind your legs. Never be bored. Never lonely again.

“OK.”

He was happy then, affectionate. Especially when the French girl, Murial, answered our ad, arriving in cutoffs and a tank top. When he asked, she tossed her clothes right off. Long tangled mermaid hair grew from her head, and from her body crevices.

Then the Mexican guy, Carlos.

“You like swarthy people, I know it!” Dan exclaimed to me, slapping Carlos on the butt, almost knocking him down. Like he was buying exotic horses at a stable.

The first month was like a house party, playing games at night—Twister, water guns, strip poker. Dan was like a kid at Disneyland, “Wheee!”, going up and down on all the rides. We took turns cooking, spicier meals now. The French woman was a sous-chef—she prepared a fine béchamel sauce, and beef bourguignon. Being French, she ate small portions. We gained all the weight. Carlos was a whiz at repairs—Dan was never handy. Carlos fixed misaligned doors, leaky faucets. Mounted ceiling fans to cool us off.

We paired off, took turns in the nice bedroom. Sometimes Dan stood in the doorway, watching, cheering, though I told him, “Stop it.” The sheets were often dirty, so I changed them twice weekly. And the toilets kept stopping up—all that French food, and charro beans and migas. Carlos unclogged our commodes, complaining our old pipes needed replacing.

Murial borrowed my jewelry, dipping into my earrings. I began to find my earrings—often, a single fishhook bauble—everywhere, especially in bed. Poking me in the ass. She’d walk into the den, wearing my underwear. Pulling at the seat of it, indicating too big for her. “This hangs like a diaper.”

“Quit wearing my underwear,” I said.

She yawned. “Someone needs to skip the potatoes.”

Dan held weekly house meetings, talking—he wanted us to share, practice collectivism. Rise above petty jealousy.

Somebody was always fault-finding—who was covetous, or resentful. Who was not pulling their weight, who was “being an Asexual”—God forbid. Constant chatter, constant touching, my nerve endings, flayed. I felt tickled to death. Pod members stayed up late in the den, watching TV. Loud porn sometimes, which sounded like people undergoing dental surgery, over Carlos’ new speakers.

In the end, I missed quiet. Complete quiet. I lay in the back bedroom, trying to meditate. Or sleep. Working from home, editing, I hardly clocked enough hours.

Dan stopped going to the office. Instead, he pontificated—best techniques for oral sex, trendiest nudist vacations, communication rules with outsiders, “the clueless repressed masses. While inside our Eden, every day’s a holiday.” Attachments, he said, were our enemies. Murial, behind on her rent, often curled topless on his lap like a cat during meetings. Carlos nodded gravely—although I’d heard him talking on the phone to a secret lover, a woman outside the pod. Breaking the rules.

One afternoon I sat in bed reading. Dan stood over me, wrapped in a loincloth. Behind him, Murial held a tequila bottle in one hand, rubbing mentholated oil on his bare back with the other. Licking her fingers like it was frosting, winking at me.

“Murial,” I said, “keep the eucalyptus oil away from your mucus membranes.”

She grinned. My earrings. She was wearing my earrings. “My mother’s earrings!” Faceted blue beads winking in the light, in front of her snaky curls. I reached and pulled Murial’s ear. She shrieked. I slid the baubles off her earlobes, one then another.

“I’m disappointed in you,” Dan told me. He stepped back, swigging tequila. “Not a team player. Self-absorbed. A drag on the pod. Next meeting, we start punishments.”

I sat, tying my running shoes. “I’ve been punished enough.”

“Where are you going?” Dan asked.

“Outside.”

“You narcissist! Run, into the void!” Dan yelled.

Carlos smiled from the hallway, murmured, “Can I come with you? I’ll make you feel better.”

“I’m sure you could,” I answered. “But no, I need to be alone.”

Dan hollered, “You think you can shove the genie back into the bottle?”

The night Mother left Dad, she looked like a panda, two black eyes.

“I’ve tried to be a team player,” she said to the car mirror.

In the backseat, feeling older than a fifth grader, I leaned on my Pegasus backpack. “Mom. It’s not good for us. Being on his team.”

“You’re right,” she said. “We’ll find good people. Helpful folks. However long it takes.”

We drove a long time down Highway 45, past the city limits. Past the acrid gas refineries, through south Texas. The sky was full of stars—I’d forgotten.

Eventually, we reached the ocean. Parked, clambered down the steps of the sea wall. We waded into the salt water, holding hands tightly. Rinsing our wounds. “Don’t let go,” Mother said. So for a long time, I gripped her hand in mine, splashing, laughing. “Look!” she said, pointing. “Someone placed stars, high above us!” Stars, watching over the glossy sea, winking at us, like bright, dazzling eyes.

Nicole Brogdon is an Austin, TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, with fiction in Vestal Review, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Bright Flash, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, 101Words, Centifictionist etc. She’s a 2024 Best Microfiction nominee and Smokelong Microfiction finalist. Twitter NBrogdonWrites!