down in me

I developed late for a child but probably too soon for adolescence. It’s like I was 12 and showering when for the first time I realized there was a secret nook at the far end of my torso, like when an infant I discovered my own toes. I gave myself a stinging infection with the bar soap twice that year. I could not be pried. I prodded with toothbrush handles, inspected with compact mirrors, opened wide and closed tight my legs. Life rocked with the unease of discovery, I was fascinated, started foregoing panties, flirting with the slimmer shampoo bottles. The bathroom breathed new, not since the days of the primary-hued stool we stood on to reach the sink to wash, to make fists into liquid hand-soap bubbles.

When you hear it crinkle, walk down the road with a face like a summer moon. Stop and look right before crossing the street. Let the waft of strangers’ scent intrude you. Inhale last night’s rabid sex and curry to remind you that the second person isn’t so bad, you. They are crinkle-cracked and slain, but so you are. A handful of hurts like a monsoon of petals: say hello to them, say no to them: wrap you up in clear plastic and you say a prayer for lust. When you hear the double-headed helix, over-dramatize. Make noises with your mouth, suck-pumping out the air.

Smack lips like stranger’s thighs, incipient in attitude like a hush of streets. Emboldened by catwalks, she listens, shoots up a naughty finger and bends at the knees. One, two. A simple shot, a plan to leave the noose hanging ready for the plunge. Next to the noose, a bible. Because we all want to believe that it was right. Beside that, a naughty schoolboy, dressed in leather chaps and vagabond slims, his long sharp arms like a giant’s razorblades; he does a half-circle, in roller skates, rolls over toward the painful side, cuts through the mediocre and there he stops, with time he thinks. I don’t know about the next night, but once, when the plane was propped up beside the building, we all knew it was new magic. I heard the boy had a hairstyle like a mother’s braid.

On the train home the guy sitting across the aisle from me started twisting in his seat and the rest of us all looked around at each other. Or rather, the seven men nearest, all laying protective hands to crotches getting ready for the penalty shot, turned to look at me as though I had something to do with it. I stoically wished he’d still and stop. But he didn’t. The large bulge in his pants just kept growing, sending him epileptic near my shoe. I swallowed hard.

He was writhing on the floor between the seats now, frothing a little at the mouth and etc. I was looking straight ahead but knew his eyes were going to start to roll back. This other guy goes, you know you have to help him, right? Wearily I knew it was at least five minutes to the next stop. I mean, you know you HAVE to help him, right? Fucking why, I said. Because you’re the nearest fucking female, that’s fucking why.

One of you is gay, I said. Come on. One of you is so gay. Come on!

They looked at each other accusingly, but quickly they turned back to me. No, they said. None of us is gay and this guy, he’s not gay, look at what he’s wearing. He needs your help, you heartless cunt.

Come on! Fuck! Fuck, I said over again, outnumbered. You fucking bastards, I said. Fuck you, I said.

The train seemed to be going faster but the stop came no nearer. Fuck it, I thought and started toward him, but then couldn’t.

Look it might just pass. Sometimes it just passes. No, no, no, they said. You have to help him, bitch, you have to. Fuck, I grumbled down on my knees and took off my handbag and jacket and scarf and fuck you assholes, I growled as I ripped off his pants and he squealed and grunted like some horror movie, hellbent alien in heat.

Massive engorgement threatened to tear apart his ball sack and the skin across his hip bones. He was crying loudly now and I did feel sorry for him. Fuck I thought. Fuck. I took a deep breath and lunged into it and sucked the fuck out of it, and massaged it and stroked it and gagged and pumped with both hands and my entire body until the others, they had to look away.

Tasted earthy rot, metallic and piss-like you know he didn’t care. He knew he had the sickness and if it came to, he knew some wrong-place, shit-time girl’d have to put her mouth on it, but fuck it if he couldn’t at least try and be presentable for it.

Fuck, I thought on the upswing. Fuck, I thought on the downswing. You motherfuckers! I yelled as I breathed in and lunged right down to the hilt until I drew back with a big kissing sound and he erupted bloody pink jizz on my cheeks and my neck and shirt.

Thank you, he sobbed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you, he sobbed. Fuck you, I wiped my mouth and grabbed my shit and sat back down in that train seat and waited.

I kept telling myself: you would be very correct. I kept telling myself, TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT THAT SHIT HAPPENS. Tonight is the night. I started singing Bella Notte badly. I kept telling myself: when I was alone, I looked away! when I was together … I was never together! Ha ha, I kept telling myself.

I kept telling myself: FOR ONCE THE WORLD WILL BE GOT!

My shoe smelt like dung. I had stepped on a pie. I kept telling myself: this is okay, it must start out shitty if it’s to get better. I kept telling myself: STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF, MYSELF! TURN YOUR POEMS INTO PROSE! TURN YOUR APPLES INTO ALBUMS! COLLECT ALL THE SWEETS OF THIS WORLD! HIRE INFANTS TO NURSE YOUR BOOBIES! FIRE YOUR BREAST MILK INTO THE SKY! SAY HELLO TO SAM AND DAN FOR ME! Stop carrying on like a birthday cake. Stop hoping.

The house that Tony Blair would buy has sixty-seven rooms and a copy of Hustler in each of seventy-two bathrooms. That’s all I know about that. Oh well, that and that the knockers are fat, wrought-iron twisted motherfuckers with a grin that says HALLELUJAH! You knock one of them fucks you’d best be ready to run: down the hill, through the trees and into the small cemetery in the old churchyard behind the church. You talk about Tony Blair’s bathrooms but that ain’t his house, he never did buy the house. The town is a small town and the house is an aberration and Tony - well I used to have a crush on Tony and on Bill. I like my men older, powerful, deceitful (obviously), with Napoleonic wives and big fat wrought-iron knockers on the doors of their would-be homes.

1.
I wade the water up to my waist. I’m shark bait. A plume of wispy pink wafts from behind me like a dissipating eel.

2.
I am standing in line at the altar. A trickle straddles the inside of my leg like a shy retiring child.

3.
There is a small coagulated mass spreading outwards in the middle of my white ceramic dinner plate: shiny, the color of chocolate syrup, the outline of a misshapen silver dollar pancake. I fork around in it dispassionately.

4.
My fingers come up slippery and smell oxygenated. The white cotton string peeks out like a thin, wine-stained tongue.

5.
Through the dirt I leave a dark, dank trail in my wake. The dry ground slurps.

6.
I turn to look behind me like the Coppertone girl. I’m being chased across the courtyard by red puddles like so many stepping stones.

You’re someone I could fall in love with and those are words I use because I’ve heard them said by many people and they seem good to say. You’re someone I could easily cajole into hurting me. I could call you on the phone and you could say, I need quarters for the laundromat and I could cry, I would cry down the line. Because your need to use a laundromat is mildly worrisome but your lack of planning is tear-inducing.

You were lying on the couch and you said, come here baby girl, come here, so I did and then you said, no not you, I meant the cat. But I fucked you anyway. I pushed you back with force like I never have in dreams because I’m the type of dreamer that leaps wide when she means to fly. Then we both became naked.

I straddled you and I tried not to orgasm because I wanted it to last forever and I morphed into a fourteen-year-old boy and I thought about baseball except I don’t know what it is about baseball that you’re supposed to think about. I only remember hitting the softball, flinging the bat and running like my ass was on fire. Thinking of fire and my ass smacking against your pubic bone and upper thighs and hip bones and I came. And that’s not the only bad piece of 80s movie advice I ever followed.

When I quivered and my insides clenched your cock you smiled up at me and I smiled down at you and made a fuck-that-feels-good face and you said, I need quarters for the laundromat.

And then you didn’t reply to my email or link to me on your blog; you didn’t invite me to Thanksgiving at your parents’ or to their summer home; or to an expensive or an affordable meal; you didn’t speak to me after fingering my ass behind the shed near the sandbox after the sixth-grade dance; or at any point during the dance; though you did dry hump me several times during particularly soulful songs; also gave me an in with the other boys which I appreciated; but you never called to tell me whether your clothes were clean.

Still. I’m the one that fucks you and you let me and I keep your secret I am your secret. Not because I’m selfless or worthless but because humiliation agitates me several ways.

This boy is one of those people who have no chin, who take everything as a personal affront to their crooked nose. This boy’s face makes him look unintelligent so he hides it. This boy, he is lonely. His face produces facts his body cannot fathom. This boy’s only companionship is the joke. This boy, he chases the everyone dream, he lives in spirit, his face begets sadness. His face a face so big, he can’t see beyond his sallow cheekbones. Yet this boy you can see coming. This boy goes to the game to climb the cheerleaders. He doesn’t play, but this boy’s not on the bench. This is the kind of boy who ages bitterly, accumulating only products. This boy’s mouthwash is meaningless. For a heart, this boy has a feather pillow. For a thought, this boy thinks about your sleepovers. This boy feels rejected by rocks.

Rounding the bend in his fast blue car she didn’t feel fearless. She never felt fearless in the passenger’s seat. The passenger is out of control. He asked whether she was nervous and quietly she smiled, tightly gripping leather. She had wanted to appear fearless, seating arrangement notwithstanding.

Had she had a premonition? It is quite possible. In hindsight, anything can be translated in terms of foreboding. In hindsight, their love was plastic, flat. But who’s to say what the properties of love should be?

He took the curve too tightly, too steeply, too suddenly. An oncoming car. A tree. Your usual. Blue like crushed paper hugging thick, ragged tree trunk. Girl pinned to the seat by large stabbing branch through her flimsy chest. Glass. Cuts. Contusions. Etc.

He shook. He cried. He did all the expected things: sat blankly, screamed a little, asked for God, begged for forgiveness, cursed. She only stared. Every so often she’d lower her eyelashes like intricate Spanish fans casting long dark shadows on her cheekbones. Gingerly she’d finger the blood spurts, looking more confused than in pain. Dribbling streams from the corners of her pale mouth. Her brows bushy caterpillars, crawling toward each other in shock.

His love-plastic melted, running rivers in tandem with her insides. I’m sorry, oh, God. I’m so sorry. Her eyes said, it can’t be helped, Jack. It can’t be helped.

Once Trudl shopped for a happy vibration, a pretty sky blue. Make it prose, make me prose, no more poetry. Once Trudl shopped for a vibrating joyful, a lovely plaything, curvy smart waves. Light up. Serene. Blue. Did I mention blue? Old Trudl she needed a quick and hefty release like a block of ice forming torched. Once Trudl found the right one quickly she went astray. Held the thing in a fist pump like she might hold her own cock. It shook her senseless mechanically. STEP ONE Trudl places the shaft parallel to her slit and presses down on the mound. STEP TWO Trudl locks her fist around and grinds. STEP THREE the orgasm is ripped from Trudl’s clit. Trudl misses the light touch but there’s simply no time. Once Trudl never owned a clock.

It smelled musty in a bad way. Like he’d taken a shit and individually plastic-wrapped the turds, carefully placed them in a box and placed the box in a drawer in a knotty pine wardrobe in a small overstuffed room.

We lost a lot that day. Three tiny, gold coloured safety pins. A sizeable ball of fallen strands of chestnut brown hair. Two tickets to Jimmy Johns and Jane Jannsen. Front row. A row of maize. Green, unpopped and un-movie buttered.

Some of our stomachs hurt and some of us had bad cases of the measles or pox or something else we’d had before. Maybe mumps or melanoma. Diseased mytochondria. Still, we were determined to go before the judge to have our case heard on the matter of the things we’d lost.

There were three other things, two of which we hadn’t the heart to discuss. One of which was the heart. We’d discuss that aplenty when the time came but presently the stink became unbearable and we had to turn out, our eyeballs reeking, our ears plugged, our cheeks pinched, our fancy noses stuffed.