Down In Me

As I’m apparently unable to stop relating everything to sex, I’m aroused to report that sexy literary genius and all around Smart Girl, Z, has popped my tag cherry, so to speak. Yes, I know I couldn’t hold on to that one very long either. Ahem. Anyway thanks, Z, for your kind and far FAR too generous words and for supporting the new chick on the scene with some link lovin’. I won’t be passing the STD err, I mean tag on, however, because I’m a greedy whore (well, that and also because the bloggers I love are so prolific as to be virtually untagable. Wait. Is that a word?)

A necessary wax and wane
giving in and up
much too soon
pulled forward
thrust upon
flung back
in the midst of a need
and the grip of knowledge

Under the pretense of play
soul correspondence entwines apprehensively
cognizant, something pushes
pulling
deeper
closer
stronger
then desisting
 why?

Waxing and waning
powerless to resist
a mournful yearning
a smarting inhale of intense words

I’m awake but no one can tell. There’s no one to whisper good morning. I open a small slit in the blinds just big enough to see a sliver of the outside. No one knows. The harsh bright reality is jarring and I let go immediately. If I tripped and fell down the stairs and hit my head and died right now no one would know for weeks. Maybe months. No one knows that I’m having coffee and not tea. I know it’s been raining because I hear the cars splashing outside. No one knows I’m here alone. No one knows that I haven’t done my laundry for weeks or that I haven’t paid a bill for months. I hear my neighbors talk and laugh outside. They don’t know I’m here. They don’t know I can hear them. A child screams and giggles, completely unaware that I envy him. The postman jams junk through the letter hole startling me. He doesn’t know I’m here. I try to read a book that no one knows I’m reading. Is it night yet? Can I go to sleep and disown myself for a few hours? Hopefully I won’t dream. Just dark, quiet, stillness. Try to make it last. It doesn’t. I’m awake again but no one can tell.

I want to apologize for that last post. I’m not sure to who, but bear with me, I’m going somewhere, I think.

I meant to write a staggering piece on the beauty of a simple look and it’s ability to communicate, to take hold, to inspire. Instead in an immature fit of sexual frustration mingling with guilt and self-hate I spewed forth the disgraceful soliloquy in question. I have since relieved myself in many ways including a shower and some much needed sleep and sobering up and my thoughts now are, if not clearer, at least more open.

I’m ashamed of what I wrote because it belongs in that category of things one may think but one should never voice. And yet I can’t bring myself to delete it. It is self-destructive, obnoxious and not very good writing. But it is cruelly honest. And it is me.

So as much as it’s been pestering me and festering at the back of my mind since I hit that fateful publish button, I’m going to resist the aching urge to delete it. I guess what this means is that in the end, I’m doing this for me.

I’m apologizing for being so unkind and careless with myself, for allowing a couple of online strangers to see it and for generally being a shit writer with stupidly good intentions, an overactive imagination and a shamefully high sex drive.

Of course, I can’t promise there isn’t more where that came from as I’m sure we’ve only just skimmed the surface. But there might be some good stuff coming from somewhere deep down below, too.

Yes. It’s there. I promise not to relent until I find it.

He’s giving her that fucking look.

The waitress. She’s pretty in an offbeat way which irritates me all the more. If he wasn’t giving her the look I may have well given her my own look. But I’m here with him and he’s giving HER the look. And it grinds my flesh that the look makes me tingle in that special fucking place when it’s not directed at me.

Of course it’s not directed at you, stupid bitch. You’re not worthy of the look.

Fuck I love the way he orders her to fetch and shows his satisfaction with the results. I’m burning! Searing red hot heat of frustration. I would fetch and heel and roll over in a second. But really I just want to suck his cock. I would do it right here and now and he hasn’t got a clue! He wouldn’t even have to fuck me. I just want to kneel at his feet, take his whole cock in my mouth and look up to see him giving ME that look. Right before his eyes roll back because it’s so fucking good.

What a shameless, depraved, stupid, oversexed, wanton, desperate loser. Besides which you give awful head.

Why can’t I just give it to him straight? Listen, I know this is going to sound a bit mad but I don’t want the chicken stinking tikka. I want your cock. In my mouth. NOW.Yeah right. You? Speak your mind? Register a need and some sort of semblance of spirit behind that placid mask? Heh.

Oh. My. God. Why is it so hot in here? Is he seriously going to keep chatting away? The pub and the girl and the what with who? I have no idea what he’s talking about and now he’s going to ask me an intelligent question and I’m going to fumble through an awkward response and he’s going to know that I’ve been doing nothing but picturing myself giving him head the whole night!Oh ferfucksakes! Shut the fuck up and eat your chicken. Cunt.

Pissed away the time in a dirty ashtray full of cigarette butts and a few empty bottles of the finest. Stumbled onto the toilet and let it flow through me hurriedly, wanting no waste while time kept wasting away. The acid sweet feeling of ‘please don’t let it end’ heavy in the moist salty air.

Heroically hanging on to good intentions with intimations of just one more and then off to bed. But there’s a point at which a.m. light on the horizon becomes the only last call you’re able to respect. At an ever more fluid point far beyond that one, we sailed aimlessly for two days. And on arrival?

Skin awash in unexplained bruises
Head swimming in a cold sweat
Desperate dehydration

Long, slender fingers tap tap tapping on an old, dusty typewriter
Abstract ideas coalesce into a moist and shameful longing
Each sentence is an invitation typeset in desire
Expertly punctuated with a heavy sigh

Held at the cusp of your narrative arc
Caressing every letter while each syllable caresses me in turn
Seductive metaphors that taunt and delight
And commas set for a brief pause, in all the right places

Paragraph by paragraph washes over me
In lasciviously lapping waves of page after page
A gushing stream of invisible thoughts connects us
Until finally, the whole of your composition erupts in orgasmic prose within me

Night. An empty street. A woman lies on the cold, wet pavement cradling a dead body.

“Noooooooo! No, come on you gotta breathe. BREATHE! Please fuck please. No. No. No. No. Nooo! This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening. Please please please don’t leave me. Please. SOMEBODY HELP ME! (There’s no one around.) PLEASE! FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

You can’t fucking do this to me. (Slamming the dead body against the floor.) WHY!!!! Why are you fucking doing this to me you fucking AAAASSSSSHOLEEEEE!!!! (Punching him on the chest.) COME ON!

Come on. (Trying to pick up the dead body.) COME ON! You’re not dying. You’re not FUCKING dying. GET UP!!! (Dragging the dead body across the floor.) Get the fuck up now. PLEEEEEEEEASEEE! (Collapsing in sobs.) You motherfucker whyyyyyyyy! This isn’t fucking happening… please! Why? Why? Why? (Crying hysterically. Then calming down and gasping for breath.) No, you’re not dying. This can be fixed. We can fix this. Hear that? I think the ambulance is on it’s way. You’re going to be fiii…. (Sobs.) Why? (Wails.) WHYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Whispering in the dead man’s ear.) Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. (Laying down on the floor. Nuzzling her face in his neck.) Please don’t leave me.

Please don’t leave. (Kissing dead skin.) Please please please please please please….(Pressing her ear to his chest.) Where’s your heartbeat gone? (Speaking softly and sweetly.) Huh? Where’s your heart? (Taking hold of his wrist.) Come on. Beat for me. Beat. Beat…. please. (Clutching his shirt.) PPPPPLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEAAAASSSSSSSEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!”

Olfactory memories wafting in uninvited and perhaps imagined. I’m doing something or nothing and it hits me. Someone walks by or doesn’t, wearing her perfume or not. A soft breeze brings it creeping through the window, tickling my nose.

There’s two distinct fragrances. The first she wore when she was frozen in time for me, at age 29. The scent carries soft, billowing folds of muted gold satin as a backdrop against the skin of her thin, tan arm glittering with tiny gold flecks. Tenderness and safety overwhelm me in an instant. An instant that’s impossible to hold.

The second is the fragrance she wears presently. Something more grown up but equally sweet that permeates everything but provokes no images.

We stopped being mother and daughter and became pretend-friends many years ago, when she was frozen, aged 29. Curiously, I’m 29 now. And every so often, I long for her essence.

Up until then he had been the nice teacher, the cool one. Now he was surreptitiously giving me the old Baker Act.

“Let me see your wrist. Were you trying to kill yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to get you some help, OK? It’s going to be OK.” He lied.

It wasn’t OK. Who’s idea of help is this? Stripping you of everything. Dehumanizing you by taking the shoe laces from your Converse All-Stars. Forcing you into someone else’s orange jump suit. Orange being code for “danger to self and others”. No under garments of any kind. Have they not noticed that these jump suits are made of a highly abrasive material that rubs you into an orange frenzy of shamefulness?

Locking you up in the small white room with the other fucked up little orphans. Fucking system. Is this what you think I am? You think I’m seriously fucked up like these spazzes? Not me. I’m clever. You’ll see.

“Why are u here?” The note read. Its orange-clad writer was skinny and pale with light brown hair cascading over his blue eyes. He seemed half way to normal.

“I hate myself and want to die. You?”

“yeah me too I was gang raped”

“By who???”

“Some older guys. bunch of assholes. I want to kill them but im stuck here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It OK they have jello”

Shit. My plight is nothing in comparison. I really am sorry for what happened to you and I think you’re really cute otherwise. Maybe, in another time, at another school…

We ate our jello and watched TV. They took him away for “tests”. He came back zombified. The spaz across the hall in solitary had a spastic fit and was promptly subdued, too. Its how they keep things manageable. Valuable lesson that.

At night we slept on opposite sides of the brightly-lit hallway on thin plastic mats. Staring at the sickly happy Disney scene of frolicking forest animals painted on the wall. And the watchful eyes, watching. TV mostly, but watching us, too. I say slept but it was more like suspended animation for the night. Doze on and off to the repetition: maybe this isn’t really happening… isn’t really happening… isn’t really happening…

“You have five minutes.”

I tried the door. She locked me in the large empty bathroom by myself. Privacy at last. Five minutes to figure out how to commit the unthinkable with a bar of soap. A shower stall with no door. A small, rough towel. Fuck this.

“I don’t want to kill myself anymore. I miss my mom and I just want to be with her and tell her how sorry I am for scaring her like this. Really. I was just sad because my boyfriend, the captain of the football team, broke up with me and I didn’t get into the cheerleading squad this year. But I’m OK now. I just want to go to school and see my friends again.”

There was no mommy, no boyfriend, definitely no fucking cheerleading. It was absurdly easy. The key to freedom was in my head the whole time. All you have to do is lie and pretend. Another valuable lesson ingested.