down in me

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.

1.
The thing that you have to understand is that she’s a true professional. I mean, when you’re doing a photo shoot with Jenna, there’s no bullshit. What I most admire about her is that she has crazy control over her body. Every single inch of space is accounted for. Every limb, every curve, down to each finger, she controls it all. I think it’s all that yoga she does. But it’s not just that, it’s the way she regulates her breathing, in time with the flash. Her tongue is always at the optimum level of moisture. Seriously, I know it sounds ridiculous but she’s taught me so much. Oh you know what else? Okay, so sometimes you’ll be doing a photoshoot with someone, especially someone who might be a little inexperienced and you can smell the arousal wafting off them like fumes from a fishmonger’s. Like, you barely haven’t even grazed a nipple yet and their shit is salivating. Not with Jenna man, she can even control her arousal. So we get done with the preliminary shoot and it’s time to get nasty for the video and it’s like everything she had inside comes rushing out all at once and she becomes this gloriously sticky mess. That’s a pro yo, ha ha. That’s a true pro.

2.
I’m a kill that motherfucker, Jake. That motherfucker don’t know how much I dream of knifin’ him in the face. I’m a … OK, I’m not gonna kill ‘im. That’d give him too much reason to survive. Like inspire him to carry on. Like I’m adversity and dude’s gonna overcome ME. Hell naw. Jake exists on the motherfuckin’ cusp of the crest of my life and to kill a motherfucker is to kill a wave that washes over adversarily or some shit. Summarily, I ain’t about to. I’m a kiss that motherfucker. I’m a sit in righ’ close and I’m a whisper don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, son. This old stranger right ‘ere’s got nothing but love for his fellow man, you know what I’m sayin’? I’m a spit him some shit straight out of my favourite book the motherfuckin’ bible. That bastard’s been around and up the tree of motherfuckin’ life for too long but I’m not gonna be Judas or whoever killed the priest, oh no. That sure as hell ain’t gonna be me.

So here’s me. At the end of one row. Next to me a guy. Next to him a girl, but we’ll see more about her later. Across from me a guy. Next to him a guy. The guy next to me is wearing a suit in a conservative style. The guy across from me is also wearing a suit in a more fashionably conservative style. The guy next to him is wearing a fashionable suit. The guy next to me’s suit is grey. His shirt is light blue. His tie navy. The guy across from me’s suit is navy blue, his shirt is small navy and white checks. The collar is open. He has a five o’clock shadow. Dark hair. Light blue eyes. He reminds me of Hugh Laurie. Or a model for Brooks Brothers. His thighs are large. The guy next to Hugh his suit is brown. It fits slim. His shirt is bright pink. His tie is navy blue with tiny white polka dots. It has a large knot. It is off-centre. He has a brown mop top. His skin fair. His look is carefully constructed dishevelment. This guy, the guy next to Hugh - the guy diagonal - he’s eating a pot of noodles from Wasabi. He’s not using chopsticks, as I expected when he first pulled it out of the bag. He’s shovelling them in his mouth with a white plastic fork. Hugh is looking at the floor. His brow furrowed. He’s squinting to see something far off in his imagination. Every so often, he softly shakes his head no. The guy next to me’s thighs are slim. His legs are long. His face I daren’t look at. He is talking to the girl next to him. He’s excited by the conversation and faintly elbows me every time he makes a point. The girl is also eating. I can’t see what she’s eating out of a white container. It smells like more noodles. This girl, she’s a receptionist. The guy next to me, he’s a sales guy in the same office. They’ve been dating for a month. I’m bored. The guy diagonal finishes his noodles six stops too early. He wipes his mouth with a brown paper napkin. He stuffs everything back in to the bag. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do next. I can see his socks. I can see the outline of his cock. It is pointing left. His pant’s zipper and seam are aligned with the imaginary line that separates his left ball from his right ball. I imagine his ball sack is stiff, hot. Hugh’s pants have a looser fit. Probably his balls are bigger. He keeps shaking no. No. No. The guy next to me and the girl, his girlfriend now that I have deemed it so, they get off at Westminster. A thoroughfare. They are catching another one, to her place. She uses a diaphragm. I didn’t think those were available any more, but they are. It’s in her sensible black handbag. Next to the tampon. Beneath the lipstick. Behind the boredom she’s sating with the salesman tryst.

So he goes, you were doing your same old boundary-pushing sex thing. And I smiled because it was true. And then I pretended to apologise, but I didn’t mean it. Not really.

&

He bought me a teddy bear. He told my mom I was a very special girl and she beamed elated. She pushed me towards him and he took my hand. His own hand was clammy and he smelled like dewy moss.

One day she beat me for letting a boy give me a hickie. It was the town fair and we made out on the ferris wheel like we’d been told to do by countless tv shows and movies. I perfectly understood the appeal of bruises begetting bruises. Sadly, mom didn’t.

&

He said I had an addictive personality. I wasn’t sure whether he meant that I was prone to addiction or that I myself was an addictive substance. The latter suited me. And when I blew him on the couch of my grandparents living room hiding my face behind a large cushion in full view of the window and the small, talkative town beyond it and he begged for more and again, I knew it suited me perfectly.

&

At seven years old I modeled swimwear in front of hundreds of faces. Later I remember thinking no one apart from mom had ever seen the bendy place where leg meets torso, though plenty had. During performances I was always blank behind the eyes.

Around that same time I had my first kisses from a girl. I can still recall her taste to my lips (moist bland strawberry) and the practised way with which she twined her tongue round mine.

&

This boundary-pushing sex thing has been going on for a while, kid. It’s just money’s never been the chosen reward. So now you know. I’ll take a john when things turn sour again so quite soon. Give him what little I have in exchange for not much and be done with.

*sweet sweet bunny ass by potentially nervous

The bunny hopped into the cold room wearing only a t-shirt black-marker scrawled with the words RAPE ME. She’s not an extraordinarily pretty bunny so she doesn’t think anyone will want to rape her. Nor is she an extraordinarily astute bunny. She doesn’t think anyone will misconstrue her political anti-rape stance.

In the cold room, other bunnies are being raped. On the couch, on the floor by the couch, on the coffee table, two in the hallway. Bloody downy fluff bodies are pinned down by rope, by metal, by other bunnies. Jackalopes - mostly uneducated white male jackalopes from broken homes - push flailing bunny paws apart to discover the furry goodness between. Rape-me t-shirt bunny shuffles around like a somewhat shy punter surveying a shop piled to the rafters with useless antiques.

“Hey. Hey what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” A burly brown jackalope startles the bunny. She didn’t expect anyone to notice her. Much less speak to her.

“Um. Nothin’.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“Why?”

“Oh my god you’re so fuckin’ stupid. Come ‘ere. Dumb bitch.”

Well. We all know what happens next, don’t we? I know you saw it coming. Rape-me bunny did too. Somewhere in the back of her small bunny brain, nestled between the make-up tips she got at the lab, the daddy issues and the extra helping of carrot cheesecake guilt she had at lunch there was a large NO BUNNIES ALLOWED sign she wilfully ignored.

Hemingway got to the office at a quarter to three in the afternoon. He took one of the empty desks by the window and booted up the PC.

“Mister Hemingway? Pardon me, I just wanted to introduce you to your new assistant, Maria Elena. Maria Elena, this is Mister Hemingway.”

Maria Elena forced her rosy full lips into a tentative smile. Hemingway didn’t speak, he just nodded a little. Maria Elena furrowed her ashy brown brow and took a few paces back and away from Hemingway while he continued staring at the flickering screen.

“Are you sure that is him? He looks like one of the Castro brothers, or Fidel himself. Ay dios mio, I am working for Fidel—”

“Don’t be silly, girl. He is very serious and a little scary at first, yes, but really … he is harmless.”

Maria Elena studied Hemingway’s features to convince herself that he was, in fact, not Fidel Castro. He was a weathered old man, but she thought she could see a young sparkle in his eyes which she’d never seen in Fidel’s, so she reckoned that was a good start.

Hemingway was wearing black, military inspired clothes: a beat up flat top cap and a hip length coat with epaulettes. He hadn’t removed these items when he sat down, he’d only unbuttoned his coat. His salt and pepper beard was scruffy and untidy and the skin on his face was flaky. Maria Elena thought she saw him discreetly pick his nose, though he pretended he was just scratching it. She guessed he hadn’t showered today, and maybe not yesterday either, but instead of the disgust she had expected, this filled her with an odd sort of tenderness.

“Now, here is the list of things you must go buy for him. He will probably be here until around 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, maybe later depending how it goes, but you’ll be able to get some sleep in small spurts. Make yourself scarce, but always within earshot in case Mister Hemingway wants for something. Understood?”

“Si,” Maria Elena nodded solemnly.

Maria Elena is a Cuban refugee, who just celebrated her 37th birthday by picking strawberries in an organic strawberry field three hours north of where she lives. She found this choice of birthday celebration humorous and ironic, and she thanked all her angels for her many blessings with lit candles and the ritual offerings she’d been accustomed to providing for the saints since she was small.

Tanned, with wide thighs and hips like a grand, tufted sofa, Maria Elena is actually in excellent shape with a thin waist and pert, small brown breasts. Huge areolae form a couple of dark shadows under her plain white top. She owes her taut biceps and the firm calves beneath her knee-length pencil skirt to years of cleaning other people’s houses, and the years before that which she spent hiding her politically dissenting and morally bankrupt poetry from the pious crazies in her seaside hometown.

“Señor Hemingway?”

Hemingway was now lifelessly staring into an empty Word document, a still hand cradling the computer mouse.

“Señor Hemingway, do you need anything? I am going to buy the supplies for the night.”

“No,” he coughed.

Hemingway hadn’t said a word to anyone in three days and he resented Maria Elena for breaking his peaceful spell and making him cough.

“Bueno.”

Maria Elena was told to purchase Marlboro reds, hard cheese and a few bottles of mid-range white wine and was given ninety dollars. This seemed to Maria Elena like an inordinate amount and she reasoned that if she bought the cheapest items she could find, she’d be able to keep most of the ninety dollars for herself. She was told that being an assistant had its perks, and she figured this must be one of them.

As Maria Elena made her way through the rows of nondescript, office worker desks, she clocked several scenes which mirrored her own. An old man at a desk, feigning solitude. A woman, at an indeterminate point nearby, ‘making herself scarce’, a turn of phrase which Maria Elena found particularly baffling. She passed one desk, turned a corner and pretended not to try to peek over another writer’s shoulder and onto his screen, and was rather surprised when yet another writer’s assistant shot her a vaguely aggressive look. Maria Elena didn’t realize the extent of these men’s fame and the zealousness of their assistants.

When Maria Elena returned to the office and put the supplies away, she casually glanced at Hemingway’s screen. He’d only written one word since she’d been gone: HEGEMONY. Maria Elena thought hegemony probably means ‘long night’.

Maria Elena sat down on the floor and curled her legs under her bottom. The agency madam had left her a cozy blanket which she promptly pulled around her shoulders. She stared at the curve of Hemingway’s broad back and at the wisps of gray hair poking out around the edges of his cap. She stifled a yawn so as not to disturb him and leaned her head back against the wall. Her eyelids drooped almost immediately. Hemingway blurred.

A couple of hours later, Maria Elena awoke with a start. Hemingway towered over her, erect and proud, softly kicking her knee with a steel-toed boot to rouse her.

“Si, Señor Hemingway?”

Hemingway was so above her, she felt he dizzied over her slightly and for a moment she worried he would crumble on top of her. She stood up to face him on a more even keel.

“What can I do for you, Mister Hemingway?”

Hemingway turned and sat back down at his desk. He pushed his chair back and motioned for Maria Elena to come to him. As she approached him, he pointed to a spot between his shoulder and neck.

“Would you like a massage, Mister Hemingway?”

Hemingway wished Maria Elena would be quiet, but he knew that people like her rarely communicate without speaking. Maria Elena took his silence as confirmation and she lay her warm, calloused hands on either side of his head. He, too, was warm, but also bulky and tough, though Maria Elena imagined his skin was wrinkled and flaccid under his large coat.

“It would be better if you removed your coat, Mister Hemingway.”

Hemingway grudgingly did as Maria Elena instructed, revealing a dirty thin, white undershirt. She began working his shoulders and upper back and it felt so good that Hemingway struggled to keep from moaning with pleasure. Maria Elena meanwhile, kept staring at the screen on which Hemingway had now written pages-full, but she could not make out a single sentence because she was too far from the monitor and the letters blurred into one another. She squinted and gave it a good try and once even leaned forward to the point where her chin almost rested on Hemingway’s forehead, but presently he stirred and cleared his throat and Maria Elena quickly regained her focus on the task at hand.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

I read something about agent orange and I just couldn’t care, I couldn’t care less. I walked down the street and saw the birds chirping in the trees by the rows of houses, but I just couldn’t hear them. I just can’t hear a birdsong, sing bird for me and swell my heart. Mommy, what’s a heart?

And inside these houses (three families a piece) there sit glorious baby grand pianos never to be played, and dried pasta in glass cylinders on kitchen counters never to be cooked al dente. And the birds sing and the kids laugh and the men cry and I don’t hear them. I can’t hear a thing mainly for my drowning out voice.

When I arrived at the bus stop on the corner I heard the roar of the bus, but I just couldn’t get on, I just couldn’t. I made to take that step, but the soles of my shoes had become one with the pavement. Well what do I do now? I’m stuck here, I thought. Stuck to the ground, what a predicament. I plopped down on the bus bench behind me without moving my feet. Not a bad place to get stuck, I guess, as getting stuck goes, I thought, at this awkward angle. And then I sat and thought some more.

People came and went and stole glances at my immovable presence every time I failed to board an oncoming bus. Sometimes the cars got stuck at stoplights and looking straight ahead everything was empty and I dozed comfortably with my back against the glass shelter until the next group of bus passengers arrived to stand and look sullen and impatient and wait.

I was getting hungry and it was getting darker. Someone left a half-eaten bag of chips and a thimble-full of beer in a can on the seat next to me just in time for supper. I supped eagerly, marvelling at how life always provides for the sickliest of her sticky-sweet children.