Down In Me

I wait and wait and wait.

And there’s all this beauty and love and excitement and desire and rushes and flourishes and oven heat and cold sweat and fluffy soufflés and silky chocolate and creamy whips and succulent citrus. But it all perishes like so much sour grapes and curdled milk the moment you realise she can live without you and you can live without her. Because there’s plenty of hotspots in town and at each one, a faceless beauty clad in black waits to serve you.

I wait and wait and wait.

The warmest interaction I’ll have today will be with the sweet Malaysian behind the counter that asks where I hail from. I stumble and hesitate and confuse because I have no clear sense of where I’ve been. I just know I’m ravenous and I’ll settle for anything to quench this thirst right now.

I wait and wait and wait.

The longest wait today will be for him, undoubtedly. I watch the door, closely scanning (as if I need to) the arriving faces making their entitled way through the glass doors, I bide my time. The vegetables steam, the meat sizzles, the drinks chill, the silver’s gleaming in the candlelight. Everything is picture-perfect cliché, including the waiting fucking female swiveling on the barstool.

I wait and wait and wait.

God, that line is getting irritating, isn’t it? But it’s true: I wait. It’s all I can do is wait. I wait because I don’t know what else to do, I don’t know how else to be. I’ll be your courteous, energetic, enticingly inappropriate waitress for the night. You know, the one that remembers what everyone ordered.

I wait and wait and wait. 

Hello and welcome, my name is Ani (yes, one ‘N’ no ‘E’ because it’s minimal) and I’m here to serve you all smiles tonight. Can I get you a drink to start with? I’ll get you anything you want. I’ll wait on you and serve everything up for you because I’m nubile, I mean servile, I’m servile like that.

I wait and wait and wait. 

I can’t say how long I’ll be able to wait on you though, my shift ends at 1 a.m. Would you care for dessert? I do hope you’ll tip me well because I’m crumbling quicker than our most decadent apple tart.

And sometimes this cool calm and acquiescent exterior gets to be too much. And I just want to scream to holy hell in a not so good way, in a way not befitting a lady like the one I pretend with varying degrees of success. How can I write about it so coolly, even now? Even as my fingers are frozen cold and aching to strangle something in their grasp?

I am irritated and that is usually a bad sign. It means there’s anger I’m trying desperately to mask. There’s always anger just below the surface that barely ripples. Keep it contained, keep it contained dear, lest you do that which we’ll all regret. They’re waiting and waiting and what have you got for them? Nothing but coming up empty-handed and full of regurgitated, overused, unoriginal banalities time and over and once again.

I’m falling apart inside and I want to let it show. Crumble into nothingness dust in the open air because the disdainful desperation of empty forgiveness is wearing on me and wearing thin. I don’t want to give up or forgive, I simply want to give in; to break it all irreparable until we breathe nothing but toxicity because even sniffing glue can’t hold us together now. But I can’t, no. I musn’t. I wouldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t. None for me, thanks. I’m fine. I had dinner, earlier. You’re much too kind.

Dive down in me, drown in me, drive me to drown
Dive, dive to the bottom of me, in this sea of me drink of me
Essence of girl, of woman, dripping drowning in salty tears

Dive head first, arms first, feet first and all at once
Come, come in me, come with me, inside of me
Swim, just a while or forever or two days in time

See how long you can hold a breath
See how long you can keep me from mine
Don’t fall, never fall for me, just dive into me, drown

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

I was wondering if perhaps you’d pop over and have a look at one of my speakers? It emits a horrible sound every time I try to play music, which precludes me from entertaining my numerous guests properly. As you may recall, I do not get on with the electronic equipment ever since that incident with the George Foreman grill.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you the standard payment because… well, that would essentially constitute prostitution now that we are  no longer ‘together’. However, if you can fit me in (maybe after your karate lesson?) I am certain we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Expectantly (but not in that way),

Your Ex-Girlfriend

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

I regret to bring to your attention a highly important matter in which you were unfortunately and detrimentally misinformed.

I have recently discovered—with the assistance of various and sundry battery-operated devices—that I am actually multi-orgasmic (42 in one go at last count). Multiple orgasms are not a myth propagated by hardcore staunch feminists, as you were apparently led to believe. And neither is the G-spot. The jury is still out on female ejaculation, however. I shall keep you duly informed, as a matter of public service.

Sincerely,

Ex-Girlfriend (no longer in a coma)

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

It has come to my attention that there are three cans of shaving cream still in the shower that belong to you. I have no use for them, as they make my legs smell of aftershave. Besides, after our break up I have taken up waxing. Please retrieve said cans at your earliest convenience. As you are well aware, I am not comfortable with waste. Why you ever needed three cans at once in the first place, I will never understand.

Sincerely,

Your (yes, down there too) Ex-Girlfriend

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

Was that your jeep parked across the street, in full view of my bedroom window last night? If so, please allow me to clarify that the intermittent opening and closing of the curtains was in no way a secretly encoded message on my part. I was merely attempting to repair the track.

Psychotically yours,

Your Ex-Girlfriend (compulsive, no longer obsessive)

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

I have recently begun to mull over the issue of your reluctance to engage in meaningful sexual activities of an admittedly, though very mildly, twisted nature during the course of our relationship. It is not like I ever asked for anything completely out of the ordinary, like something involving hamsters or a small weather vane. Really. Would the occasional smack on the bottom have been so out of place?

Masochistically yours,

Your Ex-Girlfriend (now in a variety of fruity flavours)

It wasn’t enlivening, it was deadening.

I can’t stand the view of my reflection in the mirror, in a picture, behind my eyes. I am nauseous with the sight of this rotting carcass, this hollow point shell, this royal husk. It is a covering - a cover, a layer, a barrier. An annoying, withering wallowing shroud overall.

Take this outer, it is not mine. This hooded coat, this blanket, coating, film, overlay, sheet, cover-lay, sheath, crust, this faux finish. I want a new one, a fresh one, one that doesn’t smell with the stench of a thousand men, a thousand suns, a thousand deaths. One that doesn’t show the signs of use, of misuse, of abuse, of disuse. One that doesn’t give one away without protection, one that doesn’t shout to the world anything I don’t want the world to know.

It wasn’t deadening, it was horrifying.

I’m ready to fuck it all up again. I’m ready to be hated, loathed, despised. I want to breathe in putrid sickness to the depths of my core. No more of this fucking dissipating maintaining sense decorum. I’m fucking overflowing with bilious rancour and spite. I’m filled to the brim with mounting rage. More. Harder. Faster. I want to feel the stinging thud on crawling flesh. I need to be reigned in, taught restraint as I’m restrained, otherwise I’m liable to fuck it all up again because I’m ready, I’m so fucking ready. Pretty white fucking blue. Fuck you! Fuck you. There’s no beauty to be found down in me, in me you’ll find everything you’ve ever hated, everything that’s ever made you sick with questioning wonder. I see it in you, I see me in you, I want to see the dirty cheap whore reflected in your eyes. Not as disjointed this time are we? We’re not pulling the wool over anything now because this is pure, unabashed hateful hate spewing forth and hate doesn’t dwell on poetic bullshit, does it? I want to hold the pile of malodorous nonsense in my hands again, cradle it, hold it to my fucking breast like a newborn child and let it drink dry my essence. Take it in, allow it to become part of me. Its rightful place, with its rightful owner. The one chosen to birth, to bear bare the heady aroma of such stinking fucking bullshit.

“So you’re off then?”

“Yes.”

“On holiday?”

“Yes.”

“Again?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Um. It’s just that I…”

“What?”

“Err… I’ll…”

“…”

“I mean… have a good time.”

“Uh, thanks…?”

“Yeah.”

One two, one two, one two three four five, one two, one two, one two three, one two three, one two, one two three four, one two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one two, one two, one two, one two, want to, want to, want to want to.

Hm.

I’ve been counting. Sheep. You. Numbers. Letters. Words. Professionally and otherwise, my mind has been occupied with counting and counting. One. Then two. Then one. Then two. You would think I’d find this boring and enough times you’d be right. But not today. Today I relish counting for it stops and starts and stops and starts and stops the other numbers from creeping in. One. Two. One. Then two again. Again. Again. Two. Then one. Then wanting.

I’ve been counting. With you. On you. I’ve been counting on you to deliver that which is missing from my counts. My numbers swell, then falter. Increase. Decrease. Increase again. By halves and thirds and double seven fourths and fifths. I’m losing it. I’m losing count. I’m losing you.

Um.

Two three four. High as I get. Two three four. Lowest commonality. Two three four five. Limits set. Two three four five. Lives divide.