Down In Me

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

I am utterly exhausted from your constant demands. Honestly. I thought the point of breaking up was that we could both move on with healthier and happier lives. Yet you continue to impose your overbearing existence on every aspect of my life and I am tired. So so tired.

Therefore, I have seen it fit to max out our last remaining joint credit card to finance a much deserved holiday for me and my new friend. Upon my return, I sincerely hope to find you have gained a better perspective on things.

Au revoir,

Your (completely entitled) Ex-Girlfriend

I am quite comical.

No, really, it’s true. I am not great at relating anecdotes, though. I am more of a witty-one-liner-once-in-a-while kind of gal. But when it comes, it blinds you with comic fury and before you can grab your sides, you’re convulsing in an embarrassing fit of giggles and guffaws. My sense of humour isn’t run-of-the-mill. On the contrary, it has on occasion been considered offensive and distasteful. I often deliver my best lines to stunned silences and chirping crickets. There’s just no accounting for subjectivity.

I’m a good writer.

No, really, I am. I can spell and use a spell-checker and construct a hefty sentence. I use words like ‘hefty’ in place of meaningful adjectives and you never notice. This is mostly because I am very lazy. I just can’t think long enough to produce a story with characters and situations that would fill all the pages of a novel. I definitely can’t see myself writing non-fiction. I mean, that would require hours of boring research. No, I have a talent for spraying words onto the screen and making them stick. I should stick to that, right?

I have a lovely bosom.

No, really, I do. Sometimes when I’m sitting alone thinking, I like to scrunch up really tightly, pull my knees to my chest and nuzzle my nose, mouth and chin between my breasts. I mean, presumably masturbation is entirely normal, right? So why shouldn’t one profess self-love in other ways? Is self-love like the love between lovers or is it meant to be more like familial love? Whatever. Who can resist soft, sweet-smelling, cozy, breathless moments? And why does someone else have to be there to witness them? I know. I’m telling you about it now, but that’s hardly the same.

I have a nice ass.

No, really, I do. I don’t go to the gym. I think it results from being so uptight all the time. Your body remembers the position after a while and years later you can’t remember what came first. Did stress cause the firm glutes and tight sphincter, or the other way around? Either way, if the result is an ass as nice as mine, I’m not worried. Worrying leads to forehead wrinkles and nobody wants that. They come into view before your ass does, after all.

Dear Ex-Boyfriend,

Ever since we broke up you’ve been hounding me with that question. You know, that question. I think there’s enough time and distance between us now that I can finally give you an answer. Whether it meets with your approval, I’m not completely sure. In any case, here goes. The honest answer is… because I felt like it.

What? You didn’t think I’d become reasonable overnight, did you?

Smugly yours,

Your (slightly capricious) Ex-Girlfriend

You sat next to me and the carriage filled up quickly. Our thighs touched. You opened your legs wider. Your arm pressed into mine so hard I felt the blood pump through your veins.

I held my posture: my back straight, my hands in my lap and my stoic, upturned face, faraway yet hyper-aware. My gaze never met yours. Instead I watched you out of the corner of my eye. As I noted the rise and fall of your chest, the rhythm of our breaths synchronized naturally. I licked my upper lip softly. In response, you bit your lower lip lightly.

We fucked. Or we could have fucked. So warm and pressed so close you made me perspire. I ran my fingers over my throat and down my chest and took a deep breath. You took a deeper breath and inhaled my scent, prompting you to press closer, tighter. Stronger.

Too soon we pulled into a busy station and you rose to your feet effortlessly. You disappeared through the crowd. I felt used. Empty. Like the girl that gave it up on the first date and never got a callback.

I caught my breath and smiled inwardly, in a pretend post-coital haze.

I had a thought.

It moved through quickly but I held it for an instant in a cavernous corner. It breathed. I shook life into it and then let it find its way back. I wasn’t sure where it was headed and I wanted to know. I tried to follow its wispy yellow tail as it vanished through the air. I wasn’t quick enough.

It was a bastard fleeting thought.

It might have been an original thought, too. It had all the makings of a thought that’s never been thought before, ever. Transient. Aloof. Ephemeral. In colour. It was a good thought, I think. At least it might have been, if I could have held onto it long enough to validate its sorry life.

I am sad now. Fucking thoughts.

I’m a blank. If you came round right now and told me to jump off the proverbial cliff after you, I would. Not because I’m that stupid (though I might be) but because I’m that bored.

It’s not that I don’t have current problems, residual issues, deep-seated fears, false hopes, a million things that require attention. On the contrary, it’s all so much that I default to the basic stance of boredom. I can’t muster enough thought to think, emotion to feel, power to con, drama to overreact. Things flow over me almost without notice. You could:

Rape my body tomorrow
Take all of my belongings tonight
Beat the shit out of my face in the morning
Sing my sorrows clear to me in the afternoon
Knife me half to death in the dead of night

None of it would matter. Much. I’d barely flinch but I’d appreciate the gesture wholeheartedly because I’m that bored. Blank. Almost blank enough to stop writing. But blankness itself can be fodder for an empty piece on the hopelessness of existence and the dangers of self-destructive habits.

The moment you become aware that you are blank is itself a split second of non-blank sensation. So maybe I’ll fight you, if I can find the fight somewhere behind the boredom. Right now, it doesn’t look likely. But I reserve the right to pull it out later. In spades.

Flash flash flash a bit of skin but not too much. I’m good at this art form of the feminine form of wiles all the while I’m flirty pink female dangerous flesh but far more dangerous words.

Look but don’t touch not much not until I’ve had my fill reeled in the kill and sated. But I’m not going about it in the usual way, that scurrilous scandalous supercilious way. I play up the damaged goods angle, the sexy goods angle, the saucy and lost, tarty and dirty but shy angle. Demurely provoking beck and call behind a long dark eyelash curl.

There’s nothing demure to that play I play so well in the historic bygone style of luscious betties and seductive janes. I’m out for treasure, but not the gold kind, the buried kind the real kind the kind you just don’t find. This is a show, burlesque by force but it’s not a pat down or a put-down, a put-on or a shakedown, it’s a showdown: my wit and your brawn in a fight to the death or at least to the break-up. But you can never take me and rarely will you take me down because I’m sharp fluid motor curves and quick.

Believe hushed tones from a full red pout please believe that I actually do bleed when you can’t match me word for word. Even as I catch sight of your delicate swaggering sunlit outline ambling towards me in the distance and everything screams no go, no go, I allow myself split-second thoughts as I allow myself every other indulgence.

I wish you’d kick the candy-coated doors wide open, tangle velvet tresses in your grasp and drag me out reminding me how small and fragile I am, but only after you’ve overpowered me with a mere thought because nothing quite so impresses my place upon me as a well-written missive in the dark. Hurdles jumped, you’re free to take from me as though it never belonged to me in the first, simply claim righteous debts and in the final hours of the tie-me-down, stake-your-claim victory rape fuck, I’d have been reborn remade redeemed.

Sadly the crushing pressure of my crashing expectations is all it takes to topple the worthiest and most steadfast of suitors. Chances lost I’ll cut you to the quick, lash out knife sharp razor like tongue blade and leave you reeling not knowing what or where but stinging all the same. And with that I’m good as gone down the road, hightailin’ it back cross country on my murderous rampage route due west because I’m living fast and free, no cares no cares.

“Faster, pussycat! Kill! Kill!” 

Thought I’d make it easy give it easy hand it over, surrender it willingly? Learn to read as I blow you kisses in a flurry of poisonous goodbyes.

(This post brought to you in part by The Cramps’ Smell of Female album and the Russ Meyer film.)

Who are we? 

1. Mutilates her body in a show of feigned control
2. Wearily pushes a baby carriage through the throngs of her mistakes
3. Cowers in the black shadow of her father and the powerlessness of her mother
4. Is afraid to say
5. Hides her soft core behind a stern, pallid mask
6. Carries her heart around in her throat
7. Hauls home large plastic bags filled with designer goods to plug the holes
8. Is very, very tired
9. Buries her nose in a paperback and prays for invisibility
10. Walks purposefully with the wisdom of experience she could have used
11. Scurries a few steps behind him in a show of mock deference
12. Pretends that she can see
13. Creates a tiny version of herself, hoping for a second chance
14. Flaunts perceived assets to approximate fertility
15. Holds her nose up high to elude the stench of her own refuse
16. Is convinced that she can sing
17. Hides a multitude of painful wounds beneath thick, black sleeves
18. Gives her body to anyone who asks in exchange for not much
19. Slowly lost herself along the way
20. Despairs that she’s become a cliché
21. All of the above
22. Other _______________

 

How would you feel if I died tomorrow? Compare that feeling to the feeling you might feel if your fuckwit boss died instead. Not glee, perhaps, but not pain either, is it?

But how would you feel if I died? Be honest with yourself. You don’t have to say it aloud. How do you feel wondering where I’ve been and listlessly browsing the Guardian for something to do - because let’s face it, I take up quite a bit of your time - only to find the story headline may be a girl you know: raped and murdered in cold blood / overdosed on hard drugs / mowed down by a double-decker / leapt in front of a speeding train.

Being alone in this city, I depend on you to make my funeral arrangements. They ask you to identify the body. You should be able to, you know this body fairly well. But do you remember? Perhaps if I’m mangled enough only the smallest detail will count. Do you remember my face enough to see it through the swelling and bruises? What about the location of any of my scars? Do you know that I had two wisdom teeth pulled on one side but not the other just to keep me out of balance?

They ask how you met me and what the nature of our relationship might have been. What do you say, I wonder? How do you explain yourself and us and our secret double-agent lives? Perhaps they ask you to contact my relatives. Can you do it? Call up work to tell them I’m never coming back? Can you tell a mother that her eldest daughter is dead before age thirty? And how do you explain to her just who the hell you are?

Think on that. And then tell me you know nothing of love.