Desire, 2012.
THE GOOD GIRL
We sat on the edge of the big white bed. My feet couldn’t touch the hardwood floor which made me feel so little, every time. My thoughts were scrambled, no thanks to the tequila. I was drunk. This was against my rules. Liquor is poison in my veins, on my tongue. I say things and do things I would never do. But I was bored, it was raining, and I was lonely.
His apartment creeped me out by the lack of things he didn’t have. His detachment from sentiment noted while I fingered the ugly necklace around my neck. White glistening platinum. Generic. A gift a man thinks a woman would want or need but never does. It was becoming increasingly difficult to fake smiles and coo at him. My adoration for him was strictly enforced, designed for wallets. But now, I knew I never needed it. Didn’t want it anymore. What I wanted he could never give to me. I was falling in love with someone else, somebody I didn’t want to love. It was beginning to consume me, change me.
He started to tug at my clothing and I collapsed onto him, burying my face into his neck. My skin was crawling as he pawed at me with eager hands. He was demanding. I had to be freshly shaved, freshly showered, a specific perfume, even more specific lingerie. He had many fetishes and I played into everyone of them. He called me “good girl” and sucked my toes while he was inside of me. The kind of guy that performs cunnilingus not for a woman, but for the validation that comes from a woman’s orgasm. Which is so easy to fake when you are wet, it’s just a series of kegel exercises and manipulated shudders. He never really made me come, I just gave him what he wanted. How could I come with his grunts and intrusive fingers, lapping me like my pussy was a melting ice cream cone. There was no passion, it was all a show to keep his dick hard.
I stared at the ceiling with a fistful of hair. He liked to pull my underwear up so it was wedged between my lips, wrapped around my clit. That was painful. It never felt good. It was like bucking against sand paper. He had callouses and long fingers with rounded tips; in other words, a lung condition. He would finger me until I was dry and ask me why I wasn’t wet. His body was covered in thick keloided scars and terrible 90’s tattoos. He was denying his age, which still showed like weeds in the crack of cement.
He flipped me over and I was face first in the down comforter, smothering a growing annoyance in beautiful ivory feathers. He was the jackhammer type and I could only concentrate on the base of the condom slamming into me. A raw feeling that started in the pit of my stomach and ended with little pink dots on the sheets. That is all he got from me, drops of something that could be washed away. A wound that would heal.
He begged me for anal, forcefully prying my ass apart so he could stare at the pink of my flesh. I always said no, but this time I shrugged apathetically. It would be the last time I saw him. Go out with a bang so he would remember me sweetly kind of thing. He deserved a nice parting gift after a year of sleeping together. I felt bad. He had no idea how many men where in between the same legs he was, how many men I had played the same way. It was all a game to me, kill or be killed, you know?
He was drunk too and beginning to soften. How cruel. I finally caved to this one demand and his body wouldn’t allow him the gift. A pathetic reminder of his age. He fell on the bed in disappointment and tugged on the chain of the necklace, pulling my neck into him. Soon he was snoring and I quietly collected my clothes he had thrown around the room. I stared at him for a while in the doorway before I left, feeling slightly guilty for everything he had given me; the trips to Hawaii, the clothes, the purses, jewelry. His version of kindness, his darkness. His ultimate loneliness. But it wasn’t real. He didn’t want to know me, he wanted to own me.
After a while, I dropped the peach coloured thong on the floor and kicked it towards the bed. He could have that. I wouldn’t miss it. I stood in his kitchen with a throbbing headache or was it heartache? I thought of Bobby, swallowing more cool silver tequila and stared out the window for an hour or so. My throat and pussy burned. It was morning. The rain pounded on the windows so loudly I could no longer hear him snoring. The rain pounded on the windows so loudly I could no longer hear my heartbeat.
I left, knowing there was nothing good about me.
Secret letters:
I always think about you as if you are dying; but I know you are already dead. You lay dying as I was being born. You love me but I am far away, both in miles and age. A shell of a man as deep as a puddle, grief tattooed along trunks you call arms. Painfully applied scar tissue. Blue and black outlines wistfully compared to the Pacific Ocean’s crashing waves, violence that wipe footprints from the beach. Who am I in this tsunami? A casualty of lust, thrown against the jagged landscape of longing. The deep and bitter cliff of despair. A far reach from the other side of the coast. All you have is pictures and words while I lay with another, baking in the golden sunshine of everything you can’t have. What do you have left to sacrifice upon an obsessive altar? Not me, the patron saint of whores and junkies. Our Lady of Roses, our lady of danger. A womb full of bullets, black lungs. Skinny ribs lacking meat and compassion. The prayers of dead old men carved into my skin. Maybe there is room for you here, on my flesh. Maybe you should keep praying.
UNDERSTAND HEAVINESS
The moment when my tongue locks against my teeth and molars grind into sand. Clicking minutes pass in silence. Ears pop with the rush of blood to the head. Thousands of words I don’t say. My never ending sadness. A handicap capable of ruining me.
I don’t know where to start. How to explain what it’s like to wake up with this shit on my plate. The struggle and strength it takes to get out of bed. To try to care about simple things; cleaning, eating, bathing. How do I explain I think about suicide all the time without alarming everyone? I learned the hard way in high school. Forced into therapy and medication was suggested, but that wasn’t the problem. Nobody ever listened to my argument. That chemicals won’t fix the part of my brain that was damaged when I was young and developing. Damage that was exaggerated by the trauma of losing both my parents, the incest and rape survived, the physical abuse my stepmother subjected me to.
My mind isn’t hurting. It’s my heart, my soul, my body. This overwhelming sense of dread. This crawling fear in the pit of my stomach. The nightmares. Panic attacks. Mood swings. Anger. Grief. It’s constant.
Nobody can fix that part of me. My sadness developed. It continues to develop. I am willing and open to the idea of growing further and further away from my unfortunate childhood. But I can’t ignore being wronged at the hands of strangers, being wronged by the circumstance of life. How my parents failed me, how lovers have hurt me.
This hungry monster. It follows me. On nights when I can’t sleep, it’s because of what I remember, what I have to live with, what I don’t have anymore. The future scares me, so I try to take it day by day, by the hour, the minute. It’s hard for me to articulate what is exactly wrong when everything is wrong. When everything has been wrong.
People applaud me for strength. Comparisons are made. These are hurtful. These are a reminder of how fucked up I feel. I know and you know what I’ve been through, so please stop saying you don’t know how I do it. Please stop making excuses for feeling like you have problems. Everyone has problems. Mine are not greater. They’re different.
An example from the other night: “I can’t make you happy, so yr on yr own.” We sleep together, we fuck, we share. Yet the obvious was thrown in my face. My toxicity. It hurt. My inability to tell the whole truth. The wake up call after six hundred days of learning how to be vulnerable again, learning to feel safe. Another love almost lost. Caught dancing with my demons. Because I hurt, I am hurting those around me.
No one will fully know what it’s like to be me. A lesson in sharing. Reinforcing the weakest parts of me. Accept my sadness, understand heaviness. Some shit you can’t escape. Some shit you just have to live with.
The first hotel I lived in, 2007.
TYIN’ ON THE DINOSAUR
You were beautiful once, do you remember? You were like Billie Holiday on stage, takin’ shit to another level in front of strangers. You were adored. The boys loved yr pale skin, green eyes, long red hair. Little and curvy. Drove everyone crazy. You were gonna make it, you were gonna be famous.
Funny how much changes in ten years.
Who are you now? We’re not in Kansas anymore. Through the forest of empty spoons, down the yellow bag road to the city of H. Sold those busted ruby slippers and can’t find yr way home. Sold yr pussy and heart to the Devil to get high, to forget all the times the men beat you. Yr father, yr lover, yr pimp. Now the baby’s playing with knives in the kitchen, blind in one eye, brokenhearted. As long as the welfare check’s in the mail, you don’t give a shit.
Nobody feels sorry for you.
Somebody has to be toxic, right? Might as well be you. The victim crown suits you well, princess. It’s easy. Tap the vein hard enough to quiet the pain, to blur the faces of disappointment. The plastic beds in rehab aren’t as soft and comforting as six feet of dirt above you. Maybe you’ll get high enough and shoot yr way into heaven. Nobody wants to attend yr funeral, but everyone’s gonna be there. It’s gonna be the biggest show you ever sold out. You’ll finally make the papers.
You were gonna be somebody. You were somebody, once.
Why should I brush my hair when you don’t see me anyway?
We’ll never be lovers.
I could teach you a thing or two about desire.