In the Cruel Light

In the cruel light of day I can not bear to look at myself. That is the problem with stopping to think about it all. In the moment of sex there is nothing but forward motion. There is pleasure and the active taking of pleasure and there is giving back and everything is in motion. Now, with the light and the stale sheets still damp, there is a pause and I am left with myself and I am ashamed.

This is what other women feel, I am sure of it. I see the signs of it in their eyes as they fail to meet my fierce gaze.

In my own head there are indigestible clues:

I walk past a group of boys who sit, spotted and ugly in the drunken gutter. I hear one of them howl like a wolf and yell out 'dog'. It is only a moment later that I realise he is referring to me. The moment lodges in my brain like a blood clot.

The fetid drunken homeless man shambles past and looks up at me, blurry eyed, his breath a nightmare as he spits out the word 'fat' and then moves on. Another clot forms, throbbing in my temple.

The group of men at the pub who point at me and call out 'there's your girlfriend' and splutter laughter to each other. A hook in my head that could catch fish.

Then earlier, the girls at school, the boys at school, the magazines that tell me I am built badly, the eyes of my friends as they linger over the pretty girls, the thin girls, the leggy blonds and whistle their approval. The teacher that told me I should loose weight to get the role in the musical. My invisibility when I walk into a cafe especially when I see the boys alert to the joys of every other girl.

I am unlovely. I am overweight. I am too fiercely smart and combative. I do not wear matching underwear. I do not wear scent or makeup or work out in a gym. I have grown older as we all grow older and there are still kids to grow up and into that teenage moment of desirability.

I stand amongst the stained sheets wishing it were darker, wishing there was no mirror in the room, wishing there was still flesh pressed up against mine because when it is all kissing and sucking and touching there is no room for looking or pondering over those brain hemorrhaging kernels of derision lodged in my memory.