This is Not Enlightenment - Jackie Davis-Martin

You sit on the edge of the motel bed, hands gripping the mattress on either side, fearing that if you let go you will pitch forward, not to the floor, which is moving in uneasy waves, but to a place that’s more disorienting than where you are, the flat carpeting which you cannot recover from.
A man breathes there on the other side of the bed. You know him. Or, you thought you knew him, a little bit, enough to come here, enough to try something beyond your Newports. His name is Neil. He has dark hair and a strong chin; the bed sheet covers his long body, his feet, strange creatures of themselves, sticking out at the end. He needs his clothes on. You need your clothes on.
You see your dress hanging across the TV. The room is not dark; one lamp is still on, the ashtray full on the nightstand. The dress. You need to get to it. Something before the dress. The room reels again and you breathe in and out, surveying the area steadily. What are you looking for? You forget.
What you remember is you must get out of here. You have to be home; your kids are at home. You remember that. Home, what you picture and remember, the blue living room rug getting worn near the stairs, the two big chenille sofas, also worn, the kids with their music and chattering—all these seem to exist on a planet remote from earthly being, remote entirely from where you sit on the bed.
You must move. You push a little and fall, actually fall to one side like a floppy doll and slide to the floor. From there you lean toward the bed, kneeling, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep you recite and wait. The man doesn’t hear; he breathes deeply and peacefully. You need to wake him. You push his leg—it is a foreign affair, isn’t it, like a log, a piece of anatomy attached to this person who said You’ll really like it, you’ll relax.
You poke him again, three times. “Neil!” you call. “Neil!” When you say the name the word sounds dumb and you wonder whether you got it right. He makes a sound, like a grunt or a sigh but doesn’t stir. You do, though. You must, you must. You stand, grope your way—the edge of the bed, the dresser, the doorframe—to the bathroom. Will water help?
The mirror reflects someone you recognize, or thought you did. The eyes are too black, take up too much black. You push at the woman’s hair, pushing it into place. You have a purse somewhere, you had the new lipstick in it and the house keys. You need to get home, you need to get out of here. Here? Where are you? Outside, through the drapes, you see a parking lot, cars. Which is his, Neil’s? The big navy blue one, you think. You stare at the man on the bed, the one who has to drive the car. Did you have sex with him?
“Neil!”
Can you throw a glass of water? Maybe he’d wake up like a raging bull, and then what? You dress, get ready, steady and slow. You begin pulling, tugging, begging in earnest.
Eventually the man sits up, shifts his feet to the floor, grips the mattress as you did. He is trying to remember you, too.
Earlier that evening you thought the two of you were about as pretty as Barbie dolls in that restaurant with the ferns, you in the black dress with blue flowers, which you now have on again, the man in his suit, a lustrous blue tie. Time stands still for hours, it seems, as you try to drag the man into clothes, into an awakeness that will get you out of here.
Finally, you manage. He is in the car, the two of you are back in his car, the night surrounding you. The clock in the car says 10:17. It makes no sense; it seems to be a reasonable hour but days and weeks since you began this date.
You are not going to date Neil again, handsome as he is. You want to live long enough to see your kids and to tell Neil you will not date him again.
He starts the car and creeps it onto the road, the highway, heading in the direction of what he must know your house lives; some signs come into a blurry focus---exit 34--you remember that, but it’s so long, so drawn out and thick.
The kids, the kids. They went to a basketball game at their junior high; they’ve been home for a while. I’ll be home you had said. Other cars zoom past you on the highway. You and the man Neil creep along, near the side.
He pulls into your driveway and you gather your purse with its new lipstick and house keys and don’t say anything except Thank you thank you, meaning getting me here where I thought I’d never be again.
He is a little more awake. He thinks you’re thanking him for what he said would be a kind of enlightenment. He said you’d see everything clearly, that sex would be intense. You don’t remember sex, if you had it. You don’t care. That wasn’t enlightenment! You were not enlightened.
You wave him and his dark blue car away and open your door with more gratitude than you ever remember having and fall prostrate, like a Muslim, to the old blue carpeting, kissing it in gratitude, offering thanks for your return. Never again will you be enlightened.
That’s your enlightenment.