how to write a happy ending

Posted on May 23, 2013 by

[a follow-up to the previous post, with the legs, i hope, to stand on its own]

Utter darkness.

And a foreboding awareness.

I stand and wait for his approach. I can sense his movements as if he were a twin I never had. And when he is in range, I thrust an invisible knee at an invisible groin, and there is a satisfying thud as he hits the ground.

“You bitch!” he gasps.

I find the light switch on the wall, flick it on.

He squints.

I kneel next to him on floor. It is never fun to see someone in pain.

“I just need to tell you something, first,” I say.

A knock on the door.

“Hey, are you okay in there?”

“Everything’s fine,” I call back, fibbing a little.

The person on the other side of the door is the first boy I’ve ever kissed. He has long, lanky legs and silly, feathered hair. But he also has this way of looking at me that makes me feel as though he sees something there.

I hear him set his head on the door in misery, and then his palms.

“Don’t be like that,” I call out to him. “I promise you: everything is going to be okay.”

But I can’t be with him right now. Because there are other things that are going to have to happen.

I turn to the boy on the ground, hands clasped between tight knees.

“I need you to know something,” I tell him.

The right side of his mouth twitches.

“What is about to happen is going to accelerate the direction my life is already taking. With or without you, I’m going to self-destruct for a while. It’s just the way things are going to go.

“So you are not special, what you are going to do is not unique. If it weren’t you, it was just going to be someone else.”

“Fucking slut,” he mutters.

I lift the lid of the toilet tank, and remove a cigarette from the pack conveniently taped to its underside. The lady of this house has some secrets she keeps, and I like her for it.

“Mind if I smoke?” I ask, almost comically.

Lighting up with the matches next to the potpourri dish, turning on the bathroom fan, I inhale.

Follow that with a long exhale, the smoke pulled beautifully skywards in serpentine strands.

“Here’s what I’m trying to say, ” I start again. “This is going to happen, but I won’t always be a fuck-up. I have a whole, long life ahead of me.”

I make a wide sideways arc with the cigarette to encompass the length of my story, and the smoke loyally moves with it.

“And you, here, this moment, are like this in comparison.”

I snap the fingers of my opposite hand.

The boy on the other side of the door drunkenly moans my name, and I hear his body slouch dejectedly to the floor.

“And okay, you’ll fuck things up with me and him,” I concede. “I’ll give you that. But it’s going to be about twenty years before I can even begin to hold his gaze, anyway.

“So we’ve got time.”

I give myself a moment to let that sink in.

“And besides,” I continue, “if not because of you, there would just be some other reason that we leave each other’s lives.

“That’s just the way things work.

“And at least if it’s you, we’ll have that in common.”

I sigh now, turn to look at myself in the mirror. Capture the moment.

“You’re going to find this hard to believe, but one day, a long, long time from now, I’m going to lie in his arms and tell him all of this.

“And he’s going to be quiet for a while and then he’ll say, ‘Do you want me to beat him up for you?’

“I won’t be expecting that, and it will make me giggle.

“And then he’ll start giggling too.

“We won’t be able to stop, and he’ll make it worse by pulling it together enough to say, ‘I’m serious, I’ll do it.’

“Which will make me laugh so hard that I’ll get stomach cramps and I’ll have to leave the room just to be able to breathe.”

I drop the cigarette in the toilet, nudge the boy on the floor with my delicate foot.

“You know why we’ll be laughing?” I ask him.

He doesn’t answer. But I think he does know.

“It’s because , at that point, the idea of your holding enough importance to bother with will be hilarious.”

I smile now, just thinking about it.

Then I walk across the bathroom, and turn the lights back off.

“Now let’s get this over with,” I say.

And I lie down next to him on the floor.

*    *    *

this post is dedicated to Asmira, who is teaching me that it’s never the end
http://healingscarsmovingon.wordpress.com/
http://itsnevertheend.wordpress.com/
 
About these ads
Posted in arbitrary fiction, poker face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

thirteen and the ways to know me

Posted on May 20, 2013 by

50849f1627bedb597315a2fac1c1e5559ea2edc0_m

because. because. because.

because the momentum was there. and so was the alcohol. and so was the sense of complete despair and the conviction that nothing made a wrench of a difference, anyway.

i don’t remember those days much anymore. but when we first started hanging out again, it all came stampeding back to me and i lingered there for a while, in the dust, trying to make sense of the she who was and the me i am.

 the house on the corner. they were out of town.

i broke in through the basement window.

curtains drawn, the house shady, cool. 

i found the alcohol. called him. 

he showed up with two other boys.

one, a couple of years older, eyeballing me all afternoon.

and when i went to the bathroom, following.

i was sitting on the toilet. laughed when he walked in.

drunk. young. didn’t understand.

he locked the door behind him. turned out the lights.

utter darkness.

and a foreboding awareness.

i stood and tried to to make my way to the shower to hide. tripped on the tub, falling, pulling down the shower curtain.

the other found my body. pinned it.

he didn’t even think to kiss me first.

just went straight to trying to stick it to me.

stupefied. my thinking a fuzzy combination of “what the fuck?” and “is this love?”

 a knock on the door. “hey, are you okay in there?” 

the other put his hand over my mouth. didn’t need to. did he think i wanted to be caught like that any more than he did? 

but my heart went to hang out on the other side of the door. with him. calling my name. 

he was so soft back then, and i hate knowing that i spit in the face of our innocence. saying, “watch this. watch me while i fuck up and fuck us both over.”

and it was all forever ago. but he still has the same sweet look. all these years later and it still feels like his eyes know without my ever having to say.

and it breaks my heart.

it still.

breaks.

my heart.

 
Posted in arbitrary fiction, poker face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

garboyle

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

images

It turns out that he is, authentically, a large man.

This is validating, because for a while there I thought it was just my imagination that made him so.

But no, he really is.

I found this out because I gave him a shirt in size L and he said, “It won’t fit.”

And I said, “It’s a large.”

And he said, “It won’t fit.”

And I said, “Try it on.” And he said, “It. Won’t. Fit.”

And I said, “Now you’re just being a jerk.”

Which might sound like a strange position to take, given the exchange, but I am a woman. So it’s not.

His jaw got tight and he closed his eyes. I could almost feel his internal quest for patience, which I loved, because it means that he considers me a lot of work. (How long I went in life without being any work at all, and what a waste of time that was!)

Drawing in an overlarge, nostrilly breath, he stood up from my bed and crossed to the bamboo towel rack that I’ve set up in the corner as a decorative display for sexy underthings. It’s my bedroom’s latest stage prop. I’ve wrapped it all up in ivy vine, and it’s dangerously seductive. He didn’t seem to notice that as he slung the size L shirt across its top and began to pull off the one he was wearing, but trust me. It acts as an awful tease to the unlucky men who don’t hold his ranking.

(He’s the only one allowed in my bed, so if you are any other man in my house who thinks you have a shot in hell with me, SURPRISE! You totally don’t.)

I like watching men undress.

Whether or not a man undresses with ease says a lot about his character.

Whether or not a man undresses me with ease says more.

But anywho.

He pulled off the shirt he was wearing by bowing his neck forward, grasping the back of its collar in both hands, and pulling it over his head in one fluid yet somehow aggressive motion. Completely engaging. I almost applauded.

The shirt I got for him was a shade of black heather with some kind of cryptic skeletal images in a destroyed red. Tough, right? But the twist was that it was made of Egyptian cotton, and was irresistibly soft.

Which doesn’t matter now, because it didn’t fit.

At first it looked like it did, but then he showed me how it was all binding in the shoulders when he lifted his arms.

I was fascinated, and I thought, “So it’s his shoulders that are huge…”

How was I not specifically aware of this anatomical structuring before?

(And for that matter, what else am I missing?)

Apart from the size, it captured him well. So I was surprised when he said, “Did you really get this for me?”

(He wonders if there’s something that he’s missing, too.)

“Of course I bought it for you. Look at it. Who else do I know that would wear something like that?”

A rhetorical question, because he has yet to meet anyone that I know.

He did the violent/graceful shirt-removal/striptease again.

“Why?” he asked next.

Naked from the waist up. The broad shoulders. The even tone of his skin.

I understood the question. But I don’t know what I’m doing with him any better than he does.

I didn’t mean it as a parting gift. At least I don’t think I did.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. To be nice?”

He sneered and expelled a short, audible breath that said more than any words could have in its place.

He threw the shirt at my face.

I caught it before it hit.

Posted in poker face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

dead bird

Posted on May 13, 2013 by

“I just need to be doing my own thing. I’m claustrophobic here,” is what he said, before he left. And I stood there with a beautiful baby on my hip and nodded and when he came back for his last bag he held my face between his hands and kissed me full on the mouth, tongue and all, and whispered, “You have no idea how much I want you right now.”

I was never as desirable to him as when he was leaving.

He gave me one of his blue-grey looks, seductive and cold. It shot straight through me, to the wounded backspace of my own undoing, unbeknownst to me or perhaps completely knownst to me but what difference did it make now, anyway?

For him, the depth of that look lasted no longer than the five seconds it took to walk out the door.

I stood there, then, far longer than I should have. Staring at the closed door. Unable to turn away from it.

And finally at dusk I turned, walked down the hall to the bedroom, climbed into bed with the baby, and wondered what would happen next.

For a time, it was the frozen moments that made a life.

Endless circuits on the bus with the baby in my lap. Deliberately missing my stop because I couldn’t make sense of standing up.

Making my way home on foot, the baby hidden inside my loose jacket. The darkening sky. The skeletal branches of bare trees.

And in the apartment, a phone that didn’t ring.

A forgotten razor blade in the porcelain soap dish.

A dirty window pane.

And so on. Until the portentous evening that we arrived home one shoe short.

“Where’s your other shoe?” I asked the baby, taking his tiny foot in my palm.

He blinked at me.

I quickly rewrapped him and headed back into the night.

I could feel something alive in me for the first time in weeks.

Outside, a drizzling rain fell amidst steamy fog. We made our seekers’ way down one block, then two, and three.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” I told the baby.

The seventh block. The headlights of a passing car illuminating the wet, oil-streaked street, at whose center lay a small, dark mass.

For a second, I was almost afraid of it.

I took a breath, and checked both ways before running into the street to retrieve it.

It was soppy wet, the precious white laces dirty and limp.

I pulled back my jacket to show him and was met with his wide baby eyes.

“We found it,” I went to say, but my voice caught.

I tucked the shoe carefully in my jacket pocket. Lifted my baby out of his carrier and up to my heart. And, breathing in his solid, pure scent, I hugged him for a long, long time.

When my beautiful baby and I arrived back home, an old woman in the lobby held the security door open for us. I looked her in the face with way too much intensity, I know, but it couldn’t be helped. I took her free hand in mine and said, “I don’t know where I’ve been. It was horrible.”

I felt her trying to pull her hand away from mine, and I squeezed a tiny bit tighter, enjoying the feel of her warm, pliable skin, the frail bird bones inside.

“It’s okay,” I told her, “I’m back now.”

And I let go.

Posted in arbitrary fiction, the seducer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

the debutante

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

One of my earliest memories is of being carted back to Kmart in a borrowed Cadillac and being hoisted up on the counter so that I could confess to the manager that I shoplifted a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker, in cotton candy flavor.

il_570xN.369836626_gfd1Mum encourages me to wear a wonderful slip-lined tulle dress for the occasion. Light pink in color, with a matching drawstring purse. She giggles approvingly when I add the white cotton gloves to the ensemble. What fun we girls have!

I am not really sure what type of crime it is that I committed, nor what might happen to me after I forcefully confess to it. So when I wave goodbye to mum and sissy from the backseat of the Cadillac, I am not entirely sure I’ll be seeing them again.

“Goodbye, Mummy! Goodbye, Sissy! I’ll miss you!” I call out.

And they stand together, there in the front garden, looking just as beautiful as ever, loyally waving until we take a turn onto the main road and I’m out of sight.

“I want you to think about what you’ve done,” Mr. Fisher says now, from the front seat.

But I accidentally don’t. And this is not because I have bad manners. It is because of the plush interior of the Cadillac, and the way it captivates my attention in an all-consuming sort of way.

The heady, male scent of the leather.

The natural creases in the soft, frictionless seat.

The elegant silver switches on the armrest.

What are all of those switches, anyway?

I sneak a quick peek at Mr. Fisher in the rearview mirror, my fingertip poised irresistibly on the toggle nearest me.

is mr. fisher called mr. fisher because he looks like a fish?

And I put forward pressure on the switch and jump a bit as my window begins its smooth descent.

How delightful!

The other way for Up again.

And Down, ever so slightly.

And the silver toggle adjacent does the opposite window.

And now both of them, together.

“Enough!” Mr. Fisher pronounces, and I snap to and cross my ladylike hands in my lap.

But now my hair is being all blown around in my face, incoming wind from both sides, so I slip out of my seatbelt and lean way forward to tug lightly on the bottom of  Mr. Fisher’s waistcoat.

“Ach! Jesus!” He swipes at my hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Huffy man, this Mr. Fisher.

“Sir? May I please put the windows up?”

Mr. Fisher doesn’t respond, just makes some flustered noises and then, lo and behold, rolls up my windows from his own set of switches.

I strain my neck forward for a better look.

“Sit down!” he screams. ”And put your seatbelt on!”

I do as I’m told because that is what proper young ladies do. But even I can tell that Mr. Fisher is overreacting. Goodness.

Now he’s muttering something from the front. I catch an, “If your father could see the three of you, I swear…”

The three of us hear this a lot.

“I’m sure he sees us,” I tell Mr. Fisher reassuringly.

Mr Fisher throws a quick look at me over his shoulder and shakes his head.

doesn’t mr. fisher pay attention in church?

“In heaven you can see everything,” I inform him.

I cinch open my purse and take out my Bonne Bell Lip Smacker. Well, not mine, exactly. I remove the pretty pink lid and hold the cylinder right up close to my nose. Inhale deeply.

it really smells like it would taste better

I slide the gloss several times around my lips, then smack.

In the distance, I can see the big, red Kmart sign.

I sit up straight. Poised. Graceful. I’ve never been more ready.

Posted in arbitrary fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

electric blue running shoes

Posted on May 3, 2013 by

Seemingly out of nowhere, Electric Blue Running Shoes texts me,

Hey do you remember kissing
me what it was like?

   It is tempting to text back,

How about you refresh 
my memory?

But that would be a bad idea.

Also a cliché.

So instead I ignore him.

For about two hours.

(Electric Blue is not one to be ignored.)

This is important. Do you
have a specific memory
of kissing me?

Really, Electric Blue? It is important that I respond to a text out of left field regarding a kiss we shared last winter?

Okay, fine…

 

images-1The elevator doors open to reveal a man on the seventh floor jogging in place. I feel like he should be embarrassed. I know for certain that I am embarrassed for him. But he is somehow oblivious, immune. And he unashamedly just high knees it into the elevator, turns, and continues jogging in place as the doors close.

I watch his nervous dancing feet as I consider how well the steel cables might handle this bouncing force. He’s wearing electric blue Asics with white stripes. They look freshly bought. There is something so sweet about them, and it’s ridiculous. The whole thing. It makes me feel suspiciously happy inside.

I glance up at the jogger’s bobbing face, his own eyes turned toward the rotating lit numbers above. I give him the chance to look at me. Blatantly staring now. He doesn’t.

And I think, “Oh no, I’m going to do it again, aren’t I?”

I start to feel sick, and my heart starts to hop in my chest almost as if getting in sync with his stupid feet.

And I reach sideways and take his hand in mine to get his attention, and ludicrously he continues jogging in place as he turns to me. And I say, ”I am going to kiss you now,” in much the tone of a doctor saying, “This is going to sting a little.”

I put my hand up to his still-bouncing cheek and do my best to hold him steady. But it isn’t until my mouth touches his that he slows down at all and it isn’t until he realizes that my hips are a great place for a man’s hands that he comes to a complete stop.

The elevator door dings and I pull away and slide my thumb across his bottom lip, because it is something I have seen done in the movies. And then I walk out of the elevator with my head screaming so loudly, “DON’T FOLLOW ME DON’T FOLLOW ME DON’T FOLLOW ME” that I can’t believe he doesn’t hear it.

Later, in his hotel room, straddling him on the divan thing, I pull back a moment from his soft kisses and look down at him. My loose hair hangs long in my face, the best place for hiding in the world. He takes his fingers and parts it, like curtains. Opening night. Starring an unknown.

I pull a smile that I can feel is tinged with a bit of sadness, and he looks at me so forlornly that for a moment I worry he is going to think he is in love with me.

But instead, “My wife just left me,” he says.

And suddenly I am the ridiculous one jogging in place in the elevator.

“Oh,” I respond. I arch my back and search out his left hand to see if I missed a sign that I shouldn’t have, but it’s bare.

Placing my hands on his shoulders for balance, I start to remove myself from his lap. But he solidly grips my knees and stops me.

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

I search the caverns of my intelligence for anything else that might wish to present itself.

Nothing.

So I nod my head. Yes.

He lifts his face to the ceiling and exhales largely.

“More than half of marriages end in divorce,” he tells me, and I try to figure out what to do with these statistics.

And now, “The odds are not good.”

I want to go home.

He looks at me again. Touches my neck lightly with his fingertips.

“I like your dog collar,” he mentions, absently.

“It’s not a…um…it’s called a choker,” I say, touching the leather band encircling my neck.

Not long after that, I see myself out.

On my way, I catch sight of his bright blue running shoes, nestled carefully by the front door, side by side. And it’s heartbreaking, somehow.

The housebrokenness of it.

 
Posted in arbitrary fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

don’t touch me

Posted on April 30, 2013 by

noFood

There are, I believe, two diametrically opposed elements that narrate our desire to keep coming back to each other.

One is our not even remotely knowing each other.

And the other is knowing each other so completely.

He’s allowed one overnight visit every four to six weeks. Today he showed up after an absence of 21 days.

“That’s cheating,” I wanted to say.

But I didn’t.

When I am quiet and submissive, I am never sure if I am being considerate of his feelings— his life—or my own.

“There’s no food in the house,” I tell him.

“I didn’t come for the food.”

After he rests, we go out for dinner.

The hostess leads us to a table with two chairs opposite a booth. My son and I slide into the booth side.

“Are you all right with a chair?” I ask him, after the fact.

He closes his wide hands over the chair’s crest.

“What?”

“Do you want the booth?”

He’s huge. Not just his physical body, but something about his presence. He towers over the young hostess, who is nervously waiting on us to get settled.

Eyes never leaving mine, he pulls out his chair and sits.

“I like this side,” he says, as our hostess relaxes slightly and starts to hand us our menus.

And then, “It reminds me of my time in prison.”

The sweet hostess turns and stares nakedly at him for a fraction of a second before blushing and hastening away.

I spread my napkin slowly across my lap, smoothing the soft fabric with my fingertips, fighting the tug at mouth’s corners.

When I gain enough composure to look up, I realize he has been staring at me the whole while, awaiting my reaction to his little performance.

This is a perfect example of our intimacy. A joke that makes no sense whatsoever, played on the unsuspecting, simply so that we can be pulled closer in each other’s orbit.

How pleased with himself he looks. And how it tears at my heart to see his looking such.

He’s profoundly beautiful to me. Many lifetimes ago I knew him as a shy, tender boy.

I can’t conceive of what I’d think of him now, had I not known him then.

Sometimes I try.

“Would I like you if I were meeting you for the first time?” I asked once, out loud.

“I doubt it,” he answered honestly and, probably, accurately.

He sleeps with his hands balled up in angry fists. He claims that he spent our years apart in the arms of whores. He’s abrasive and ill-tempered almost all of the time.

But somehow, when I look, I still see adorable innocence spilled all over him.

Posted in poker face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 87 Comments

snapshot

Posted on April 24, 2013 by

“I’ll never spend the night,” she told you from the beginning.

“I’d avoid making commitments to never, if I were you.”

That was two or three months ago.

Now she sits on the edge of your bed, putting on her stockings, talking nonstop about matters of zero consequence. An attempt to smooth over the fact that she is leaving in the dark. Again.

She sounds idiotic, inane. You have honestly never met someone worse at small talk.

(He is leaning against his closed bedroom door, arms crossed, pouting. He’s strikingly beautiful when he’s angry.)

She looks at you. Smiles.

“I guess that’s it, then.” She pats her own knees and stands.

She juts out a hip. Slides her open palm slowly along it.

“Thank you for having me, ” she says, thinking you will find it cute.

Sometimes she gets like this. Kind of nervous and light. You can tell by her gently-caving shoulders that she’s craving your approval.

You scowl.

“Do you want some money?” you ask her coldly.

It is a cruel thing to say, and you are surprised that you said it.

You meant to hold that card for later.

A halting awareness passes across her face as she registers the words.

But as is true of anything thrown with poor aim,  your invective misses its target.

“Would you mind?” she asks coyly.

“What?”

“Would you mind if I took some money? How much do you have?”

She’s bluffing of course. And damn if she doesn’t get a reluctant smirk out of you.

She takes three steps to close the distance between your bodies. Rests her forehead on your chest. The crown of her soft hair catches in the stubble on your chin. 

“Move your big, dumb body away from the door,” she says quietly. “It’s time for me to go.”

So you do. And she does.

Posted in poker face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

holy shit balls

Posted on April 17, 2013 by

Something that you might not know about me is that I am a very spiritual being.

Whoops. That’s completely untrue.

What I meant was, I am very sought-after, spiritually.

I think I must have a certain FUCKING SAVE ME! air about me. Many religions seem to consider my soul an object of intense desire, and I practically have to beat them off.

It is not uncommon for religious groups to cluster mercilessly around me and practically go to fisticuffs over my divine path.

I’m not even kidding here. Name a religion, and I will give you an example of their wanting a piece of me. Seriously.

The Christians? The Catholics?

Come on. Too easy. What else you got?

The Muslims?

Oh, definitely. How about that time, flying home from Australia, when I fell asleep sprawled across the three middle seats and woke up choking on the bisht that Muslim man draped over my head? Remember that? And remember when I tried to sit up and rip the damn thing off and he held me down by my face until I bit him?

I sure as fuck remember that. That’s a hard thing to forget.

I also remember, as we were preparing to land, his telling me that we would play a game of cards and if I lost, I would become one of his wives. (Which actually, had I been remotely attracted to him, that might have been interesting.) So we played, and I didn’t understand the rules. They seemed to keep changing. And in the end, he declared himself the winner. Which left me with no choice but to assault my way out of the plane and tear breathlessly through the airport to get away, convinced that if he caught me he would throw me in a burlap bag and ship me off to the desert. An unwilling convert.

Next?

The  Hindus?

Um, namaste? Are you serious? I can’t even let my guard down for a minute in shavasana without being molested by Shiva and Shakti.

 The Jews?

Well, okay, that was a bit of a snafu on my part. When I signed up for six months on a kibbutz, I was young and very turned on by the whole commune thing, and I somehow thought there would be round-the-clock spliff-smoking.

You know what? Let’s skip the Zionists for the moment…

The Mormons?

How about those two boys from Utah who were on a mission in Brazil? Do you know that they wouldn’t step foot in the ocean, despite being on an island, surrounded by the some of the most beautiful waters in the world?

But that somehow didn’t stop them from repeatedly showing up at the nude beaches in their sweaty dress shirts and black pants. Always right in time to catch me and my cute friends peeling off our clothes. Bibles at the ready.

They would also show up at the same parties we frequented, hosted by a notorious coke-snorting artist-musician. “What the fuck are you doing here?” we’d ask them. And they’d tell us that the artist-musician, Valdir, was in the process of being converted. Meanwhile Valdir, standing behind them, not understanding a word, would nod eagerly and smile beatifically, and then run off to dip his glass in the cachaça tub on the patio and snort another line.

Nice job, boys. We’ll take it from here.

The Pagans?

Good one. Do those invitations to “gatherings” that ended up being naked free-for-alls in the full-moon wilderness mean anything to you, smart-ass?

The Buddhists?

Ah, you saved that one for last, didn’t you? Because you know it is the Buddhists with whom I’ve had to scramble the most. Those tricky, tricky Buddhists. I never wigged out with anyone like I did with them. But I’m not supposed to talk about it. I’m serious. I could get in a lot of trouble here.

To the Buddhists I simply say, catch me if you koan.

Posted in arbitrary fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

the seducer (venus in furs)

Posted on April 13, 2013 by

A memory. Six years old. Bare belly flat on the bathtub’s floor, small hands miraged beneath the two-foot depth of water. Dizzyingly hot. I slide my naked body across the slippery porcelain bottom and  clamber up into the cool night air of the open window. Knees to chest, I fit perfectly in the small sill. A scanty breeze plays upon my wet skin, rousing an irrepressible, full-body shiver.

The heady scent of lilac, and that hypnotic song I know ventures from my lips.

Shiny shiny shiny boots of leather, whiplash girlchild in the dark…

The older neighborhood kids in the street, out late, playing kick the can, stop and stare.

End scene.

I can still see my mayhem of a mother screaming about that one. Always with her screaming. Until the words were nothing more than a sound I chose not to hear.

And it was too late anyway.

The implications of myself framed in the window stuck.

Fast forward twenty years.

His name was Severin, but they called him Piranha. I never asked why they called him that. It wasn’t my place to ask.

Severin was my night-time captor.

(And what a captor he was.)

All of my waking hours belonged to me, and I was free to do as I chose. Free to linger in dirty cafes, scribbling lazily in the margins of left-behind newspapers.  Free to stand under awnings in the rain, hugging myself, watching the heavy drops splatter against my Edwardian button-up boots and glide erratically down through the cobblestones below. Free to smoke hashish with three exotic beauties, a mental asylum outpatient and twin sisters from Brazil.

I don’t remember spending my time around men. If it happened at all, it meant nothing to me.

I vaguely remember having my palm read, listening to Nick Cave, and impulsive performances at open mic platforms.

At day’s end, the growing shadows were an indication to bid my adieus and find my way home. To a third floor pied-á-terre on a quiet street. Lit by the familiar orange glow of an overhanging lamp.

As when a child, I would soak in an overhot tub before bed, by now well-acquainted with the concomitant lightheadedness. Even if Severin didn’t come of an evening, I was still the better for it. I loved pinning my hair in a skull-crown, sudsing every inch of my body, rubbing lavender oil into my dewy skin. I loved standing in the bedroom window to dry, a high blush on my cheeks, the diaphanous curtains catching the wind and wrapping themselves around me.

During that time I slept easily, though lightly, and sacred were the nights I’d wake to his haunting form standing over me. I’d hear my own quick intake of breath before he descended.

“Open your eyes,” he always instructed. And I’d look in time to see his ravenous mouth, his menacing glances.

Aside from that, we didn’t really talk much.

Hours later, I’d wake briefly to the sound of the front door shutting, and be consumed by a terrific loneliness.

But by morning it was all as if a hazy, sensual dream.

Posted in the seducer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments