down in me

The Americans brushed their teeth and went to bed. The Americans had bad dreams for 75% of the night. The Americans had wet dreams for the remaining 25% of the night. The Americans took a really stinky shit in the morning before breakfast. The Americans learned from the news that the Americans had attacked Syria. The Americans weren’t sure why the Americans had done that. The Americans poured themselves a bowl of Cheerios with skimmed milk. The Americans pulled up their drawstring pajama pants. The Americans thought about past mistakes the Americans have made. The Americans felt like cheap imitations. The Americans showered and masturbated to release some tension. The Americans left the house under the pretense of being fully functional. The Americans lived up to the Americans’ reputation abroad by speaking of the Americans’ bodily functions. The Americans felt hopeless and bored. The Americans wondered how long they can keep this up. The Americans were tired of hearing about themselves. The Americans were filled with dread.

“Hey, baby. What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“What? What are you talking about, this is my fucking bathroom.”

“Damn, baby, kiss your mother with that mouth?” he hissed and scuttled closer, all eight legs padding weightlessly across the tiles.

“The question is what you are doing here in my bathroom.”

“Alright, alright, straight up: I got into some trouble outside your window there with some nasty wasps that got caught in my web - not caught enough, course - and I’m just lying low for a bit ‘til I can go back out again. Ain’t that some shit? What? You don’t mind, do you? Come on girl, have a heart.”

“Whatever.”

“Damn you pretty! Tough, too.”

“Alright can I just pee now, please? Is that alright with you, Mr. Gangsta Spider?”

“Yeah, baby, of course. Shit. I ain’t never stand in the way of no girl peein’ and shit. That’s some nasty shit.”

“Okay, be quiet then.”

“Right, sorry … hey, you wouldn’t have some dead flies or something lying around? I’m fuckin’ starving, yo …”

“What do I look like?! Please, can I just fucking pee? That’s all I want to do! Just fucking pee. Then I’ll get out of the bathroom and you can do whatever you want. Just don’t come to my room.”

“Alright, alright baby, it’s all good. I’ll just hang back here, by your dirty clothes. Oof, what do we have here …”

“Get away from my panties!”

“Aw, come on girl, can’t I just chill here? They are so soft and warm and moist and—”

“Ew!” she squealed, snatching her panties away and sending the spider flying into the bathtub.

“Goddamn bitch!”

“WHAT did you call me?!”

“God … damn … ditch … I almost fell into the hole … whatchoo call them things? The drain, that’s what I meant.”

“Right.”

“So about them flies …”

“What?” said the baby panda bear, “what are you all laughing at?”

“Aw, he’s so cute!” cried one of the women, while the rest cackled and held their stomachs and sniffled with mirth.

“What is it, I don’t understand?”

“Oh, baby panda bear, your little wee wee is showing!”

The crowd of women that was now closely huddled around the baby panda bear erupted in uproarious laughter. The baby panda bear felt claustrophobic and unable to grasp what it means for one’s ‘wee wee’ to show.

“I-I don’t understand …” he began.

“It’s like a little lipstick!” a jovial woman remarked.

“Awwwwwwww …” cried the rest of them in unison, drowning out the baby panda bear’s grave attempts to further clarify the matter. One of the women reached out and pinched the baby panda bear’s left ear.

“Hey! You can’t do that!”

But the women ignored the baby panda bear and continued giggling and squealing - “how cute! he’s adorable! look at his wee wee! aw, bless him!” - as they closed in on him.

“So, first I think you should paddle me ‘til my ass is rosy warm.”

“Okay.”

“Then, tell me what a good girl I am.”

“Okay.”

“Um. Then finger me while I’m still over your knee.”

“Sure.”

“Is there anything you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Seriously?”

“I’ll … kiss you.”

“Anything else?”

“And fondle your tits.”

“Great. That’s original. Okay, let’s go through this again. Warm cheeks, lots of praise, fingering, boring kissing slash fondling, and then we can fuck.”

“Yeah. Wait, how?”

“Oh god, I don’t know. Doggie.”

“Okay.”

“You can hang on to my hair for leverage.”

“Okay.”

“Is there anything you won’t agree to?”

“Can I come on your face?”

“NO!”

“Oh.”

“No blowjob, either. Not today.”

“On your tits, then.”

“What is this? Insipidmalefantasies.com? Do you see me holding a cheap digital recorder?”

“That’s an idea.”

“Let me write this all down for you.”

You’re such a lovely boy,
      so serene, so soft, well-spoken.
The darkness in your eyes,
      so well kept
      below the
      surface.

You’re such a lovely boy,
      so calm, soft focus, so cheery.
The pain behind your stare,
      so well swept
      under the
      rug.

What’s such a lovely boy
      doing here, amongst the ruins?
The place such lovely boys
      do not tread:
      amidst my
      skirts.

She balanced the bird by its beak on the tip of her finger and I smiled apprehensively. That’s what I do when I’m nervous, scared, happy, sad, or anything. I smile. The smile may grow into a laugh the way anxiety grows into fear. I worried that if she left she would never return.

“Wait,” I wanted to voice a desire or a command, but what came out was more of a supplication. Wait, don’t go, please stay with me, I’m scared, I’ll let you play these tricks on me and pretend to be none the wiser if you stay.

She smiled indulgently, bounced the bird down then up and again, and on the second upswing he took flight. He was beautiful and she was beautiful for having held him and I was lonelier than ever. She put her arms around me consolingly. I remembered that I didn’t know anything about her and brusquely pulled away. She continued to smile.

“Can you speak? Are you mute?” Why was I filled with such horror at the idea of this girl leaving? This girl I’ve never known, whose voice I’ve never heard, whose glittering eyes I remember the way one remembers a dream? Her flowing white dress looked ready to take flight. I trembled now with indignation.

“Why are you doing this? Why won’t you speak?”

She keeps smiling, smiling quietly and serenely and looking at me with pity and I can’t stand that gorgeous smile another second. I pull the knife out of my pocket and slash her from head to chest diagonally through the face. She splits like paper, still smiling as the two pieces of her float to the floor. Somewhere far away, the bird croaks in pain.

I shudder with relief and excitement and fall to my knees beside the two pieces of her, now flat and frozen smiling, slashed in half.

I’m cursed, I think. I’m cursed.

“I’ve just written four stories.”

“Where?”

“In my head.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s just … that doesn’t help anyone else much, does it?”

“Who said stories should be helpful?”

“Whom indeed.”

“Oh, just fuck off will you.”

After watching your sex tape 23 times, I still want more. I want the camera to continue rolling as you slip your panties back on only to slip them down again when you go to the toilet to pee. I want to watch you splash water on your face and dry your underarms with the hand towel. From the safety of my side of the lens, I could watch as you rummage through the piles of clothes on the floor looking for an okay smelling t-shirt and settling on the baby blue one with the cigarette burn near your rib. The ultra realism of the digital hand-held will enable me to feel that I’m not missing out on anything as you scamper to the kitchen to pour yourself a drink.

I want to watch you uncork a bottle of red wine and bring the cork to your nose to deeply inhale its scent and think about how you’re not sure why you do that or when you started, but it makes you happy to do it all the same, and happier still when the smell is pleasurable (although you think you have noticed that it has little to do with the actual taste of the wine). I want to watch you curl up on the couch with the wine glass cradled in both hands and your feet tucked under your thighs and your lips ready to be pressed to the rim. I hope the cheap camera microphone picks up the gentle sound of your body positioning itself for comfort and your delicate sipping and the clicking of your nails on the remote when you turn on the television.

I want to watch you flip channels and grimace until you find the one you like and become engrossed, the way I was engrossed in your facial expressions earlier. I want to watch you light a cigarette and inhale then attempt to blow smoke rings and smile at yourself when the rings turn out to be ordinary puffs. Later I’ll think about pulling a coverlet over you when you doze off in the middle of your silly medical drama. Then I’ll kiss your nose tenderly and wait ‘til you are rested, so I can watch your sex tape again.

Confident, professional female seeks ambiguously gay pretty boy for confusing physical relationship with potential for longer term pathology. Non-smoking, disease-free. Drugs optional.

I wrote a little something for Six Sentences.

However, it’s crap. You should skip right over it and read some better ones: here, here, and - my personal favourite - here.

I am a big, stalkerish fan of sentences and I think the number six is quite pretty with its pot belly, so all of this makes sense really, when you think about it.

I’m always on time.

I’m not only always on time, I’m early. I plan carefully to avoid the anxious rushing around. I can’t deal with the stress and furthermore, I shouldn’t have to; I am responsible for myself, so I take precautions based on what I know of me.

Speaking of me, thinking of me is what makes me late most often. If I’d thought of it, I might have taken a cab. If my plans were more flexible, I could have taken a cab, but that’s just the point, isn’t it? Well thought out, carefully planned plans that don’t require many deviations. Plans that are well rehearsed, well in advance. Well, it’s too late for regrets and changes of plan.

Lugging my large wheelie bag onto the platform at Hammersmith it occurs to me that I’ll make it, I always do. I’m just prone to illogical pessimism. So either I’ve been driven logical by the seemingly mathematical precision of train timetables, or the herbal stress remedy I popped is kicking in. Of course it’s the latter, because there’s just no precision when it comes to public transport. However, if the next airport-bound bullet really was due at 558, it’d shoot me in there with just enough time to make it through security and I’d win this particular battle in the war of life.

These and many more self-involved thoughts usually cloud my mind and blind me to others. We all have our coping mechanisms, daydreams and scheming obsession are mine. I depend on others to keep their wits about them, so all I have to do is glide past and away. I don’t get in your way, you stay the fuck out of mine. A ghostly presence, gone before it’s registered.

But some doors are narrow and, much as I’d like to deny it, my body still occupies its space in this reality. The last set of doors on each tube carriage, for example, usually narrower than the ones in the middle. But those are the doors I like to go through, because I need to get in and settle where I can comfortably place my bag near me. I just don’t understand how people can leave their bags unattended and sit in the middle of the aisle, reading, listening to iPods, oblivious to their personal belongings. It’s enough to give thirty-year olds premature heart conditions.

I don’t know where they came from. One minute I am hurriedly pulling my bag onto an empty carriage - well, empty is relative during weekday rush hour - the next I’m being jostled in several directions by two men diving off like the ship is sinking.

I didn’t see the child, but I can guarantee I didn’t knock the coins out of his hand. I do like to zone out, but my body is also unbelievably sensitive to touch. I would know if I grazed that boy with the tip of a nail.

Having somehow made it on, and safe in the knowledge that I’ll make it to the airport on time, I help the kid pick up the few coins that didn’t fall through the gap.

“Are you alone?”

“No, my brother…”

“Where’s your brother?”

“He just got off.”

“What, you mean back there?”

“I don’t know…”

Oh great, I think he might cry. His brother’s the one that nearly knocked me over in his haste to get off while the other fuckwit blocked the kid and probably knocked the coins out of his hand, too. And come to think of it, I remember this kid now, I’ve seen him on the tube before. His ‘brother’ plays the accordion and makes him collect money in a Starbucks coffee cup.

“Um. Does your brother have a phone or do you have someone you could call?”

“I don’t know…”

Shit, kid, I don’t have time for compassion.

“Well, guess you’ll have to get off at the next one and ask a station attendant for help. Okay?”

Come on, kid: you’re like ten, you’re a Londoner, buck up. They can help more than I can and they get paid for it.

I have a plane to catch. I mean, I don’t know this kid or his brother, maybe it’s some kind of scam they run to get unsuspecting women alone in dark station corridors and take whatever’s there for the taking. Well I’m not falling for it. I have a life to live. To leave. On a plane. What I mean is, I’m on my way somewhere and I’m running late as it is.