The Riving
As far back as he can remember, he’s done it like this: zipper, button, belt. Zip the zipper, button the pants, fasten the belt. Spenser doesn’t think anyone taught him to proceed in this manner, doesn’t think it was observation that imprinted this particular routine along synapses and fibers. It’s just the way he has always done it.
Until about six months ago. For whatever reason, six months ago, without any forethought or deliberation, he has starting going button, belt, zipper. Button the pants, fasten the belt, zip the zipper. He can’t explain this change. The problem is that he now forgets to zip up on a regular basis. Something about the zipping going from first in the order to last, perhaps, or the new ritual in conflict with ingrained behaviour patterns, creating too much static in the system. Whatever the case, the zipping up is consistently falling out of the process.
He tries to catch himself when he starts with the button. What are you doing? Why are you doing it like this? Don’t forget about the zipper. Maybe this is precisely the problem: mind in perpetual war with body, little skirmishes of distraction, cold zones flaring hot, his dignity the only casualty. Maybe paying less attention would be helpful. Fade back into the rhythms of muscle memory.
It feels like a split or rift, unseen but tectonic, shearing across the secret history of his being, the history known only to him. He thinks of himself differently moving into the future. There was the Spenser who zipped first, and the Spenser who now, if he remembers, zips last. And Spenser the historiographer somewhere else entirely, naming these epochs, recording them silently in archives that vanish even as they come into being.
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