My Lust Will Melt All the Snow in Antarctica

My Lust Will Melt All the Snow in Antarctica

Steam

He—for of his gorgeous sex there could be no doubt—was sitting opposite me in the steam room. White towel tied around his waist, legs spread apart. He was speaking, of all things, of Antarctica. Of Robert Scott and his doomed expedition, and of the fate of the animals onboard. He had been devouring Scott’s last expedition journal, and his girlfriend was sick of hearing him talk about it. She really is a knockout, a complete fucking babe—except for her reality TV obsession. To her friends she likely said the same—a total hunk except for his annoying obsession with old, dead white men. I didn’t mind whatever he talked about as long as he was sitting with his legs spread in front of me. Scott felt sorry for the animals—the dogs and the horses—once the ship embarked, but he had no idea how sorry he would become in the weeks that followed. During rough seas dogs were saved from being washed overboard only by the chains keeping them lashed to the ship, pretty much hanging them by their necks. Two dead ponies lifted out through the skylight—can you imagine? Here his towel came undone—I could. He continued to talk but his words failed to register, and by the time I returned from my flight of fantasy—the ice of Antarctica failing to chill my blood—he had moved to a new subject. His body glistened as he spoke, and I imagined his every exhaled breath clinging to my skin. I had a brother once who froze to death on the hottest day of the year. The temperature had climbed to like one hundred fifteen, and Rob—my brother, not Robert Scott—was the first to take a swim in the lake to which we’d hiked. He took a swim, fucking never returned, and was later found dead of hypothermia. The water’s source had been a snow-capped peak indifferent to the heatwave below. He wiped sweat from his brow, scratched an immaculate thigh. There’s something in that, don’t you think? It’s how I feel about God sometimes. Whatever, if anything, happens way up there, it has nothing to do with our lives down below. You really are a great listener, you know. I fiddled with my wedding ring, which had loosened with the sweat on my finger.