The Antimuscarinic

“At the advent of the Renaissance in Italy, it had been discovered that a tincture of Atropa Belladonna, when diluted and then dropped into a lady’s eyes, blocked the nerve receptors in the eye muscle that contracts the pupil. Her pupil would then reach the outer boundary of the iris giving her a doe-eyed look. The men of Florence and Rome found this sexually stimulating. Belladonna was incorporated in the regimen of ladies at court, who knew full well that the import of attracting a well-suited courtier out weighted the importance of being able to see. At any given dinner party, the male guests would be interspersed with lady companions with eyes utterly brimming with the table’s candlelight, impossibly shiny. Eyes like onyx.

“Belladonna contains scopolamine and hyoscyamine. When ingested, Belladonna is a hallucinogenic. It often induces delirium. When dropped in the eyes, user will experience profound visual distortions and an increased heart rate. Habitual Belladonna dropping is fatal.”

 

George did not need to be told that women will kill themselves slowly for fashion. Emily had been working on the same take-out for three days now. The article did not state how long an abuser of Belladonna could be expected to live. One year? Five? Dear Emily. How long was she planning on?

George read “eyes like onyx” inadvertently several times over again, interrupting his assimilation of the last paragraph as his eyes would flicker back to that moment.

His first year at Colombia he had attended a rave with a girl from New Mexico on scholarship for her work as an archeologist. The rave was in Jersey in a warehouse hidden by a south bank of trees. Accustomed to parties with cocaine neatly lined on the sill, George started to feel waves of depression then anxiety as the archeologist deftly slipped into his convoluted posture, guiding his dance with her hipbone. A velvety sort of panic began to warp his chest wall.

It wasn’t difficult to find a drug once he had convinced himself that he needed it.

George remembered how amused he’d been looking at the unassuming pill. It could have been children’s aspirin. Then the layers of heaven peeled off. Above the swinging colored lights he could clearly see the stars with child-like awe. Sweat was forming on the back of the archeologist’s neck. Her sweat smelled of clementines. He followed, with unprecedented joy, the lines her skeleton made, across her shoulders, the spine in the neck, the straight jaw, the delicate bones in her ear.

Her eyes! Completely open! Did she break her lock? Or was he seeing in her eyes a reflection of his – his eyes surely – an owl perched above a lake in the moonlight. “You’re a lake,” he whispered to the most delicate of bones. For the first time, uninterrupted, his breath returned to him and left him as he continued, “Made out of what made me.”

George never told Emily about the rave. They weren’t in habit of telling each other most things, it is true, but George felt the experience something grander than most of their secrets and had wanted to, really, tell her that we are all elements.

Wording…

No doubt she’d express a snobbish sentiment, hinting such parties so be beneath them. Bella Donna. George entertained the image of her swinging about in a bustle and tiny corset, bending delicately over her hand of cards to brush what looked like confectioner’s sugar from her nose.

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