Asphyxiophilia
- Jun 17, 2022
- 4 min read
by Eliot Li
When Perry was 8, Pastor George pushed him beneath the roiling waves of Ocean Beach three times, once each for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The pastor held him under long enough for the sin in him to die. The first time, the chill of the rushing water jabbed his tender chest, throttled his contorted face, and he wondered if he might actually die. When the pastor’s stiff hand lifted him above the swell, Perry sucked in air like a newborn. He wanted to laugh, to scream, to call out to Mother who watched from the dry shoreline behind him. But before he could, he was underwater again. This time, he allowed his body to sway with the currents, opened his eyes to the liquid light, felt the gentle sting of the brine. When he rose up, he relished that he was about to be thrown under again.
His mother collected him on the beach, his swim trunks dripping. He licked the salt off his lips. His gooseflesh skin tingled.
“I got so excited under the water,” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“That’s God’s love you felt,” she said, wrapping him up in a warm soft blanket.
*
When Perry was 16, he lay naked inside the clawfoot tub, strained pleasure on his face, the waterline at his neck.
He and Luna had been studying trigonometry together in his room. But now she leaned over the side of the tub and watched him, her elbows on the porcelain rim, the ends of her long black hair dipping into the bathwater.
He took stunted breaths, his brow crinkled in the middle.
Luna reached out, spidered her fingers over his face. She pressed him lower, until his nose and lips were covered by water, and his head touched the bottom of the tub. Through the bubbles he was blowing, he could see Luna’s pale face turn flush, her roguish smile.
Because of the gentleness of her hold on him — the way her supple fingertips kept adjusting slightly to keep him comfortable — he knew she didn’t want to hurt him.
His shoulders wriggled against the tub. His air hunger grew.
When Luna released him, and he rose from the water, gasping, then laughing, he felt euphoric. He felt loved.
*
When Perry was 32, he paddled a canoe into the middle of Lake Merced, the water so glassy he could see the craters in the reflection of the yellow moon. He was wrapped in clear plastic from his neck to his boots, insulated black ski suit underneath, a heavy stone tied with a slipknot to his ankle. He rolled over the side of the boat, breaking through the surface, and the stone took him down, down into the murky green water that faded to black, so that the only way he knew he was still alive was the pulsation of blood rushing in his ears. The cold seeped beneath the plastic, through three layers of nylon and polyester. Tingling spread from his toes to the inside of his thighs. When the tingling reached his pelvis, he imagined Luna’s fingertips on his face. Pastor George’s rigid palm on his back.
The urge to breathe intensified. A dull pain penetrated his chest. And the terror spread through every oxygen deprived cell in his body. He reached below to undo the slipknot around his ankle, the darkness spinning around him, craving air, fumbling and tugging.
As the stone fell to the lake floor below him, and he rose to the surface again, it was as if God put his merciful lips on his and breathed life into him again.
*
When Perry was 33, he started dialectical behavioral therapy.
He told Dr. Wallace that he thought his twenties would be his loneliest decade, but his thirties proved him wrong.
He told Dr. Wallace that there was a girl once. She had a name like the moon.
He told Dr. Wallace about the stones. So many stones tied to a string at the bottom of the lake. The lake for him was love.
Dr. Wallace gave his lake love a name, from the DSM-IV Manual of Mental Disorders.
Dr. Wallace said two opposing things could be true at the same time. Perry could be lonely, yet still ultimately find peace being by himself. He could be trying as hard as he can, and yet still find the strength to try harder.
His will to live could be strong, yet he could repeatedly expose himself to extreme mortal risk.
Perry told Dr. Wallace that he lay awake at night thinking about the body recovery divers finding him on the lake floor, his elderly mother waiting for him on the shoreline where they would lay out his decomposed body. His mother wouldn’t recognize him anymore. But she’d get on her knees and hold him in a deep embrace, his chest still feeling like a chest, his shoulders still like shoulders.
You go to the lake to replace your feelings of loneliness and emptiness, which are difficult to accept. Acknowledge those feelings. You feel the draw of the lake, and it is strong. The emotional mind wants you to go to the lake, even though it might kill you. Acknowledge those feelings.
Then put the emotional mind behind you and ask yourself, what would the wise mind choose to do?
*
When Perry is 64, he goes over the side of his boat, and descends to the lowest point of the lake.
Although he can’t see them, he knows the stones are here. He feels their comforting presence. A thousand of them.
Eliot Li lives in California. His work appears or is forthcoming in CRAFT, Smokelong Quarterly, Atticus Review, The Pinch, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. He’s on twitter @EliotLi2.
