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Different Fires
     after Antichrist by Lars Von Trier

Trish and I started dating during one of those long summers when nearly everyone I knew lost their job, got divorced, and became convinced, through the ramblings of AM radio talk-jocks, that the slash piles burning on the logging ridges were actually the ceremonial human sacrifices of Satanic cults.

Trish would only let me undress her if we role-played. It started simply enough—a livestock veterinarian called out to deliver a foal late at night only to find the farmhand’s crippled daughter alone in the barn. But then we started doing things like chasing a fistful of diet pills with gin, emptying the knife drawer onto the bed, and going at it until someone cried for mercy.

One time we did it on the ground beyond the guardrail of the ocean overlook, the sun dropping into the horizon like a battle flare disclosing an enemy’s location. The orange glow over the Pacific could have been a village on fire—there we were, too far away to send for help, but too close not to admire it.