Something so placidly mundane [I taste ill]
You like the idea of a girl tossing and turning in bed, sweaty tearing off the sheets in frustration. You like imagining the floral scent fuming off her skin pushing damp in the shadow dark; blushes spread and flush. You like the idea of girlish fear invading your nostrils as your fingers invade the honeyed musk in the folds of her pink matter. Because of course, in the end you only want to save her, protect her, fit her lovingly into a little glass vial to store on bunched up white tissue paper in a periodically accessible corner of your mind. She’s beautiful in there, she’s rich with sex and vitality, she’s wild with your nose in her hair. Time passes. She watches daytime television and eats when she’s not hungry for food, she decays, she grows old, she develops a pack a day habit and bad skin, she nurtures bad posture and a healthy dose of guilt; bored, she’s sour. She flags, she sags, she flabs, she’s spent. Douse liberally in petroleum jelly and wait to decompose.
And meanwhile, what about you?
13 August 2008 at 10:48 pm
Moobs, beer gut, rotting teeth and hookers quite probably. That’s if I were a man aging disgracefully, which I thankfully am not.
13 August 2008 at 11:02 pm
Me? I am placidly mundane.
[Unlike this, which is anything but.]
13 August 2008 at 11:11 pm
Okay, I see this piece in three parts: 1) an actual physical encounter, 2) the remembrance of that encounter stored in the mind for future use, and 3) what happens in real life to the woman. I am a little puzzled by the ‘glass vial’. The ‘bunched up white tissue’ paper is an obvious metaphor (although ‘man-sized’ might be better than ‘white’ if I’m right) but why the vial? I suppose it’s something like girl-under-glass. Yes?
I don’t think the ‘you’ in the last sentence is the ‘you’ in the rest of the piece. I guess it depends on how much you emphasise the initial ‘yous’; it would be clearer in a language like French where we could see if the initial ‘yous’ were plural or not. If you replace the first ‘yous’ by ‘men’ you’ll get the idea.
As for the title…? The conversation is mundane, routine, despite the subject matter. Not sure why you chose ‘ill’ since there’s no illness in the piece.
14 August 2008 at 9:08 pm
Ariel: No, of course not. Pretty girl like you. *peeks under your skirt*
AUW: You are nothing of the sort. Do shut up.
Jim: Not exactly what I had in mind, no. I love that though, your interpretations make me see my own writing in a whole other light. It’s partly why I write the way I do here. I don’t have to be understood, although it’s very rewarding when people come close (and they do, fairly often). But I don’t want everything to be instantly decipherable, I want you to interpret willy nilly, the way I do with others whose writing I enjoy. If you’re really interested in my actual thought process, email me, though. I’d be only too happy to clear it all up!
16 August 2008 at 3:17 pm
A good warning against the power of fantasty and imagination - what we think someone is when we fall for them is rarely the true picture.
16 August 2008 at 10:56 pm
There are people who seek to change what most attracted them, and there are those who try to preserve it in aspic. Fucking control freaks. They should all be taken out and shot, and not allowed to choose what order they are shot in.
16 August 2008 at 11:20 pm
*wild applause for Z comment …
omg, Ani! awesome … ominously seductive with a sell-by date … *shudders* … damn we’re so unnatural about ageing … we’re so mundane about stereotypes and women are supposed to look 18 forever … while guys often see themselves as exempt from image-demands … and that’s all really ill … as in none of it’s “right” .. and is it just a man-thought? or a woman fear that that’s what they think?
and .. who’s to say she isn’t still wild in there? did they both stop seeing? who blinded who?
and that’s an open question at the end … what does reader see?
*bleh … there ya go .. did it to me again *grin
thank you *heh
18 August 2008 at 7:40 pm
Jem: And yet we can’t help but fall all the same.
Z: My, my, are we feeling a bit violent?
Shell: I have no answers to any of the very pertinent (spookily) questions you pose, but if my post made you question life, then I am happy. :)
18 August 2008 at 10:13 pm
I think some peace and love are needed, to break out of these nasty relationships.
20 August 2008 at 10:47 pm
Ah, my dear Neil, that thought is as inconsequential as it is beautiful, I’m afraid.