I smell of sex. Constantly. It is that post sex smell that is already drifting towards staleness. It is the smell of sheets that should be washed soon. I smell like the end of sex before sex has even begun. I wonder if they have ever noticed. My various lovers from so long ago. I wonder if he now, can smell me when I drift past and if so, why the smell, like I have been with other lovers recently, doesn't pique his jealousy, make him grab for me.
There have been no other lovers. He knows this, and therefore he catches a whiff of me and lets me pass by. It is just the scent of my thoughts straining towards unexplored potential. It is just the low level hum of desire that constantly distracts me from my work and my life. I lie on the couch and there are other smells captured in the soft velour surface of it. Other people, sweat and dead skin cells, a pheremonal fug. I can not concentrate on my work because of the smell of it.
As soon as I am sated I begin the quick climb towards longing once more. And I smell of sex, not the sex in porn which smells of fresh rubber and an overcooked stale McDonald's reek, I smell of sex in a garden at night with the acid of sap and the undertone of fresh turned soil. I smell of wormy slipperiness. I am in an olfactory loop of desire. The smell of me makes me think of sex and I think of sex and that releases more of the scent onto the couch where it will mingle with the perfume of others.
Also I am sticky and damp. This is unusual, but I have found that I have experienced this more frequently of late. I touch myself and there is a texture on my fingers that makes my throat dry. I swallow. Everything is sex. It is a cacophony. I need to work. I must work. Then there are the dishes and the mini skip and all the detritus of our life that I must remove from the back courtyard. There are things to do, but instead I lie and breathe in the smell of sex and slowly melt into this slippery Sunday afternoon.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
forgetting
I have already begun to forget the nice things you have said about me. I remember "old" and "age difference" but all else seems to blur into a vague idea of something overheard in an elevator. Some joke perhaps that involved positive comments about my appearance, spoken with irony. For instance, I know that you said 'you look good today' and my mind began to instantly reframe it. 'you look good today' becomes 'you look better than you do under normal circumstances'. 'I find you sexy' could be read as 'I feel sorry that you are so sad about your looks, here, have this little crumb of flattery and it will make me feel good to see you cheer up a little'. 'I would sleep with you' means, 'I would close my eyes and try not to think too much about what is occuring and then we might go to bed together'.
These are the voices in my head. This is the girl who cannot believe that she could ever be loved. This is the woman who is about to have a book published and is already seeing her book discounted to $7.95 in the bargain bin with a black nikko pen mark across its spine. Why can't I just settle and enjoy this. I have what I want. I have it right now. I have my life and my love and my books, and the knowledge that you, at a stretch and with the correct lighting might find me attractive.
These are the voices in my head. This is the girl who cannot believe that she could ever be loved. This is the woman who is about to have a book published and is already seeing her book discounted to $7.95 in the bargain bin with a black nikko pen mark across its spine. Why can't I just settle and enjoy this. I have what I want. I have it right now. I have my life and my love and my books, and the knowledge that you, at a stretch and with the correct lighting might find me attractive.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Fight
My fleeting desires for others does not take away this love I have for my boy. This weighted thing, this catch in my chest when I see him wandering by in search of a pen.
Sometimes we fight and I am angry and I shout, or rage quietly. Sometimes the acid of my anger burns off the memory of care and support and leaves me with the bones of this long term thing, but they are solid bones. Even stripped of flesh I carry them carefully. We snap and snarl at each other but I curl my fist around this thing we have built together and it is a weapon against separation.
"All right," I tell you "If we continue to yell then one of us will want to walk out and go sleep somewhere else tonight, or it will be the couch and then we will regret it in the morning, particularly at 7 when the tradesmen come and stomp in their blundstones all over our fragile love that has weathered a night apart"
So, like the adult thing that this is, we repair it grudgingly. It is worn out in places, it is a threadbare thing if you hold it to the light, but the bones are thick and firm and heavy and I suspect we will survive all of this together.
Sometimes we fight and I am angry and I shout, or rage quietly. Sometimes the acid of my anger burns off the memory of care and support and leaves me with the bones of this long term thing, but they are solid bones. Even stripped of flesh I carry them carefully. We snap and snarl at each other but I curl my fist around this thing we have built together and it is a weapon against separation.
"All right," I tell you "If we continue to yell then one of us will want to walk out and go sleep somewhere else tonight, or it will be the couch and then we will regret it in the morning, particularly at 7 when the tradesmen come and stomp in their blundstones all over our fragile love that has weathered a night apart"
So, like the adult thing that this is, we repair it grudgingly. It is worn out in places, it is a threadbare thing if you hold it to the light, but the bones are thick and firm and heavy and I suspect we will survive all of this together.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
pillion 3
There is a spa bath in the house.
I see this in my tour of the place, the gorgeous excesses of each room, the bookshelves with their familiar paperbacks, books that make me feel accepted and at home.
The writing workshop is all fine. There are a group of us. I perhaps have more in common with the others, all middle aged women like myself, and yet the fact that we are dripping wet from the ride seems to mark us as similar. They talk about the difficulties of parenting, schools, motherhood, childbirth. I sit beside him and he draws me into a conversation about the structuring of documentary films.
I sip my wine and I keep thinking about that spa bath, big enough for two, perhaps even three. I would not even have to remove my bra and knickers. Our clothes are wet already, we could sit their fully dressed and discuss the difference between a short story writer and a novellist, whilst sipping the good wine.
The rain grows heavier. There is talk of sleeping the night. I would sleep the night. I don't want to ride home in this weather. They ask him what he wants to do and he pauses, looks towards me. I shrug. I could stay the night. I think about the spa bath. I try not to but I think about the spa bath.
We could stay.
Of course we will not jump in the spa bath together. This will not happen. I am not even sure that I like you very much. We sit and we drink and we talk and the rain falls heavier and heavier.
"I think I'll ride home after all."
Which is ridiculous given the weather and I see you reaching around frantically for an escape. There are women with cars. You quickly negotiate an alternative to the motorcycle and I am glad, because it will be suicide to ride in this weather, no visibility, dodgy tyres, no wet weather gear, but I am also disappointed because somewhere on our trip back it would become impossible and we would be stranded at the side of the highway and we would have to huddle together for warmth.
I gather my still sodden bike jacket and helmet. I glance at the room with the spa bath, which is right there near the entranceway to the house. We wave goodbye. I do not hug you. I feel like perhaps we should shake hands. Too late as I move out towards the bike and clip the abandoned pillion helmet onto the side. It will be soaked by the time I have found my way home.
The rattle of tyres skidding on wet gravel. I can't see a thing. My right index finger becomes a windscreen wiper for my visor. Even this just makes the world a blur of light and shade. I flip open the visor and the rain pierces my eyeballs. I will look into them and see the bruising on them and in the skin around them when I am safely home.
I am safely home.
An hour and a half of breathless terror and I am safely home. It was never worth the risk. I should have stayed the night. But then there was that spa bath. I dream it. It becomes a recurring theme for the next few nights. How we come to it, fully clothed, drinking, laughing, acting like children in the early hours of the morning. Still. I barely know you and I barely like you. Perhaps I don't like you. I see your little green light pop up on the internet and I could talk to you. I could ask you how your trip home was, but instead I close my computer and reach for my sodden book and ease the pulp of pages one from the other. Tonight I will not chat with you. Tonight I will read, or I will write. Anything but chat.
I close my eyes and there is that spa bath again.
I see this in my tour of the place, the gorgeous excesses of each room, the bookshelves with their familiar paperbacks, books that make me feel accepted and at home.
The writing workshop is all fine. There are a group of us. I perhaps have more in common with the others, all middle aged women like myself, and yet the fact that we are dripping wet from the ride seems to mark us as similar. They talk about the difficulties of parenting, schools, motherhood, childbirth. I sit beside him and he draws me into a conversation about the structuring of documentary films.
I sip my wine and I keep thinking about that spa bath, big enough for two, perhaps even three. I would not even have to remove my bra and knickers. Our clothes are wet already, we could sit their fully dressed and discuss the difference between a short story writer and a novellist, whilst sipping the good wine.
The rain grows heavier. There is talk of sleeping the night. I would sleep the night. I don't want to ride home in this weather. They ask him what he wants to do and he pauses, looks towards me. I shrug. I could stay the night. I think about the spa bath. I try not to but I think about the spa bath.
We could stay.
Of course we will not jump in the spa bath together. This will not happen. I am not even sure that I like you very much. We sit and we drink and we talk and the rain falls heavier and heavier.
"I think I'll ride home after all."
Which is ridiculous given the weather and I see you reaching around frantically for an escape. There are women with cars. You quickly negotiate an alternative to the motorcycle and I am glad, because it will be suicide to ride in this weather, no visibility, dodgy tyres, no wet weather gear, but I am also disappointed because somewhere on our trip back it would become impossible and we would be stranded at the side of the highway and we would have to huddle together for warmth.
I gather my still sodden bike jacket and helmet. I glance at the room with the spa bath, which is right there near the entranceway to the house. We wave goodbye. I do not hug you. I feel like perhaps we should shake hands. Too late as I move out towards the bike and clip the abandoned pillion helmet onto the side. It will be soaked by the time I have found my way home.
The rattle of tyres skidding on wet gravel. I can't see a thing. My right index finger becomes a windscreen wiper for my visor. Even this just makes the world a blur of light and shade. I flip open the visor and the rain pierces my eyeballs. I will look into them and see the bruising on them and in the skin around them when I am safely home.
I am safely home.
An hour and a half of breathless terror and I am safely home. It was never worth the risk. I should have stayed the night. But then there was that spa bath. I dream it. It becomes a recurring theme for the next few nights. How we come to it, fully clothed, drinking, laughing, acting like children in the early hours of the morning. Still. I barely know you and I barely like you. Perhaps I don't like you. I see your little green light pop up on the internet and I could talk to you. I could ask you how your trip home was, but instead I close my computer and reach for my sodden book and ease the pulp of pages one from the other. Tonight I will not chat with you. Tonight I will read, or I will write. Anything but chat.
I close my eyes and there is that spa bath again.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
pillion 2
Rain. Riding into it there is no way to keep it out. It gets in. In through your gloves, into your boots, trousers damp and sticking to your knees. I can feel twin rivulets of rain trickling over my chest, finding a circuitous rout down and around past the swell of my breasts, puddling in my knickers, a cold finger of water teasing me towards thoughts of sex. He will be getting wet, my pillion. He will be cursing the nature of a motorcycle when he could be warm and dry inside a car.
I have a fantasy that one day my pillion will slip their fingers around my hips and settle them in my groin. I will not be able to remove their hands because I am busy with the serious business of steering, but I can adjust my hips a little to ensure that the fingers are finding their mark as I rub up against them.
His hands are on my hips. The warmth of his fingers burn in contrast to the chill of the rain. Riding my motorcycle is all about sex and despite the fact that I am still irritated with him, I feel his legs rub against mine on every bump. I imagine his hands sliding forward and I am ready for this possibility if it happens.
I am still quite cranky at him but I find that now I want him anyway. It must be pheromones. I remember the nice clean smell of him over drinks, the musky body heat. Some people are just like that, sweating out their sexuality like a wild animal on heat. I know that if we stopped now I could turn around and taste him, lapping sweat and rain from his skin. I know the wetness isn't just from the rain pooling in my lap. I so rarely become damp with desire, but I am damp. I feel the little flutter low in my groin. The rain, the vibrations from the engine, the open road, and the smell of him.
At some point I realise we are lost.
We took the wrong exit off the freeway. We have ended up amongst the shopping centres and the run down fish and chip shops. I smell burning fat and damp and rubber. He slips off the bike and he is wet, but grinning.
"I was so nervous when we started out" he says, "but then it got better."
"It is wet," I tell him, "Wet and cold."
He nods, sniffs as if testing for the smell of rain, "Ah well, we are almost there."
But are we? We ask at a service station but the directions are complex and I leave without being certain as to which direction I should take.
"No, I'll remember them" he says.
"OK, but tap me when we need to turn. Tap me on the right side to turn right and the left to go left."
It seems simple enough, but there are taps to both shoulders simultaneously. There are taps to the centre of my back. He yells directions at my helmet as if I could actually hear what he is saying. When we leave a side road and rattle up a horror of wet grass and loose gravel I am cranky with him yet again. I do not care how good he smells and how my body wants to roll him into the mud and nuzzle into his flesh. My anger is more true and clear than my sexual urges for once. I leave him to struggle out of his helmet and his gloves. I drag my soaking clothing up to the front door and I knock.
I have a fantasy that one day my pillion will slip their fingers around my hips and settle them in my groin. I will not be able to remove their hands because I am busy with the serious business of steering, but I can adjust my hips a little to ensure that the fingers are finding their mark as I rub up against them.
His hands are on my hips. The warmth of his fingers burn in contrast to the chill of the rain. Riding my motorcycle is all about sex and despite the fact that I am still irritated with him, I feel his legs rub against mine on every bump. I imagine his hands sliding forward and I am ready for this possibility if it happens.
I am still quite cranky at him but I find that now I want him anyway. It must be pheromones. I remember the nice clean smell of him over drinks, the musky body heat. Some people are just like that, sweating out their sexuality like a wild animal on heat. I know that if we stopped now I could turn around and taste him, lapping sweat and rain from his skin. I know the wetness isn't just from the rain pooling in my lap. I so rarely become damp with desire, but I am damp. I feel the little flutter low in my groin. The rain, the vibrations from the engine, the open road, and the smell of him.
At some point I realise we are lost.
We took the wrong exit off the freeway. We have ended up amongst the shopping centres and the run down fish and chip shops. I smell burning fat and damp and rubber. He slips off the bike and he is wet, but grinning.
"I was so nervous when we started out" he says, "but then it got better."
"It is wet," I tell him, "Wet and cold."
He nods, sniffs as if testing for the smell of rain, "Ah well, we are almost there."
But are we? We ask at a service station but the directions are complex and I leave without being certain as to which direction I should take.
"No, I'll remember them" he says.
"OK, but tap me when we need to turn. Tap me on the right side to turn right and the left to go left."
It seems simple enough, but there are taps to both shoulders simultaneously. There are taps to the centre of my back. He yells directions at my helmet as if I could actually hear what he is saying. When we leave a side road and rattle up a horror of wet grass and loose gravel I am cranky with him yet again. I do not care how good he smells and how my body wants to roll him into the mud and nuzzle into his flesh. My anger is more true and clear than my sexual urges for once. I leave him to struggle out of his helmet and his gloves. I drag my soaking clothing up to the front door and I knock.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
pillion
We are participating in a workshop together the next morning and it is a ride away. I said that I would meet you and I am there in time. Last night, at drinks I felt myself closing off to you. I experienced an irritable stepping away. You and those girls just a handful of them, but enough for me to think that we could not be friends.
My bike is high and you have to climb it, tugging at my shoulder, but when you are seated there is a pleasant pressure of your thighs around me and you hold me gently. There have been pillions who have hugged so tight that I couldn't breathe or steer or lean into a corner. There have been pillions who are taller and bigger and shift the balance subtly but unpleasantly. You touch me on the waist, but without pressure. Your weight settles the bike more steadily on the road.
I once said that if my bike likes my pillion then I will like them too. Like someone with a beloved dog who helps them make informed decisions about their friends. A good pillion will be a solid friend. But perhaps it has nothing to do with friendship, because you feel good on my bike and last night I felt the pricking of anger and I have decided that after this trip I will not waste my time on someone who is friends with the only three people in the world that I have difficulty liking.
It is your first time on a bike and I feel you tense as we pull away from the curb. The first stretch is always the most difficult. You settle quickly when we have stopped and started at several crossings. When we speed up for the highway I can feel your thighs tightening. I think about how sexual the whole thing is, the reality of sitting behind someone, gripping their arse with your thighs, the trust that is involved in the whole process of riding pillion. I find myself softening to you.
We have barely traveled fifteen minutes before there is a spotting on my helmet. It is going to rain. There is nothing but to sit and let it soak through us. I have not brought wet weather gear. We will be late as it is. There is no turning back.
My bike is high and you have to climb it, tugging at my shoulder, but when you are seated there is a pleasant pressure of your thighs around me and you hold me gently. There have been pillions who have hugged so tight that I couldn't breathe or steer or lean into a corner. There have been pillions who are taller and bigger and shift the balance subtly but unpleasantly. You touch me on the waist, but without pressure. Your weight settles the bike more steadily on the road.
I once said that if my bike likes my pillion then I will like them too. Like someone with a beloved dog who helps them make informed decisions about their friends. A good pillion will be a solid friend. But perhaps it has nothing to do with friendship, because you feel good on my bike and last night I felt the pricking of anger and I have decided that after this trip I will not waste my time on someone who is friends with the only three people in the world that I have difficulty liking.
It is your first time on a bike and I feel you tense as we pull away from the curb. The first stretch is always the most difficult. You settle quickly when we have stopped and started at several crossings. When we speed up for the highway I can feel your thighs tightening. I think about how sexual the whole thing is, the reality of sitting behind someone, gripping their arse with your thighs, the trust that is involved in the whole process of riding pillion. I find myself softening to you.
We have barely traveled fifteen minutes before there is a spotting on my helmet. It is going to rain. There is nothing but to sit and let it soak through us. I have not brought wet weather gear. We will be late as it is. There is no turning back.
Monday, January 26, 2009
cried
Perhaps this is the first time I have cried for you. It is not that you have made me cry, but I am overwhelmed by the list of people you could love and my obvious absence in this list. I have come around again to this confusion. Not wanting to be listed, wishing I were there, knowing that there are good reasons for me not to be among the exhaustive list of the chosen.
I have nothing for you. I am loved and in love. But if this was not the case I would not be among the favoured.
Again I would be overlooked and this is something deep and painful, a splinter from my wild days that has worked itself so close to my heart that I am poisoned by it. I am not the kind you fall in love with. I have never been that kind. There is no chance that I would ever be this for you.
I will go now, I tell you. And you can't see me or hear my voice and I am glad because you would never mean to make me cry.
Sad. I say. Sad again. This never healing wound will reopen periodically. You are close enough to me now to touch it. You are good enough to want to spare me this, but perhaps, with your help, now, we can work through this together.
I have nothing for you. I am loved and in love. But if this was not the case I would not be among the favoured.
Again I would be overlooked and this is something deep and painful, a splinter from my wild days that has worked itself so close to my heart that I am poisoned by it. I am not the kind you fall in love with. I have never been that kind. There is no chance that I would ever be this for you.
I will go now, I tell you. And you can't see me or hear my voice and I am glad because you would never mean to make me cry.
Sad. I say. Sad again. This never healing wound will reopen periodically. You are close enough to me now to touch it. You are good enough to want to spare me this, but perhaps, with your help, now, we can work through this together.
one breast held
Just one breast held. This is the dream. Just one breast eased out of the nest of fabric it is settled into. One breast exposed, the nipple hardening, the tug of it echoing in my groin as if the two are connected through my gut and the tightening of the nipple pulls the muscles there, a quick contraction.
In the dream it is just this easing out and then a cradling, fingers curling around the weight of it, thumb rubbing against the nipple, and after this a pained sigh because why does this have to end?
But you are easing my breast back into my dress and the disappointment is the sound that a story makes when it rings true. The sound of a novel slowly closed after a perfect ending.
In the dream it is just this easing out and then a cradling, fingers curling around the weight of it, thumb rubbing against the nipple, and after this a pained sigh because why does this have to end?
But you are easing my breast back into my dress and the disappointment is the sound that a story makes when it rings true. The sound of a novel slowly closed after a perfect ending.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Is Philip Seymour Hoffman Good in bed?
Google should have the answer to everything. When I Google 'what should I do today?' it comes back with a hundred answers, many of them a possibility. And yet when I Google 'Is Philip Seymour Hoffman good in bed?' it comes back with nothing too interesting. If you Google 'Is Brad Pitt good in bed' it comes back with a whole list of gossip and hearsay. So I want to say to the world: "YOU PEOPLE HAVE NO IMAGINATION AND AS A RESULT YOU WILL MISS OUT!"
The truth is it is quite likely that Brad Pitt is boring in the sack. Why would someone who gets voted 'cutest' and 'hottest' have to work at all?
I watch Philip Seymour Hoffman perform and each time I notice the sensual way that the man moves, his full lips, his generous smile, the eyes that seem confidant and humble all at once. His hands are particularly moving. They move languidly. They touch, and they look like they are truly feeling whatever they are placed on. In my imagination I place them on me. It has been ages since I have had such a crush on an actor. I have settled on Juliette Binoche because of her intelligent eyes and her genuine smile, and of course the accent. I am a sucker for a good French accent. But really, I can't see Hoffman without imagining him curled up beside me on cool white sheets.
So now when you Google 'Is Philip Seymour Hoffman good in bed' there will be one answer and it will be from me and the answer will be; yes, I imagine he is exceptional in bed and if it weren't for my perfect, gorgeous, wonderful husband, I would make some serious attempt to prove to you all that this answer is correct.
The truth is it is quite likely that Brad Pitt is boring in the sack. Why would someone who gets voted 'cutest' and 'hottest' have to work at all?
I watch Philip Seymour Hoffman perform and each time I notice the sensual way that the man moves, his full lips, his generous smile, the eyes that seem confidant and humble all at once. His hands are particularly moving. They move languidly. They touch, and they look like they are truly feeling whatever they are placed on. In my imagination I place them on me. It has been ages since I have had such a crush on an actor. I have settled on Juliette Binoche because of her intelligent eyes and her genuine smile, and of course the accent. I am a sucker for a good French accent. But really, I can't see Hoffman without imagining him curled up beside me on cool white sheets.
So now when you Google 'Is Philip Seymour Hoffman good in bed' there will be one answer and it will be from me and the answer will be; yes, I imagine he is exceptional in bed and if it weren't for my perfect, gorgeous, wonderful husband, I would make some serious attempt to prove to you all that this answer is correct.
Meeting in real life.
I remember you as soon as I see you. I wasn't sure I would. He is looking out for you because he knows you better. We have chatted our way through two beers and then you are here, suddenly and I know it is you. You have a manner which is both confident and shy at the same time, as if you are apologising for your own self-assurance. I recognise your voice. You never waver in your manner. It is the same rhythm and meter that I enjoy so much from our electronic chatting. There is comedic timing, and you are quick. You leap from one topic of conversation to another like a dancer. You can take us both, my friend and I, you can engage with our similarities and our differences.
I buy you a beer.
We turn our attention to people we have in common. This is one of those towns where people wash up against each other. Huddles of people bob on a cyclical Brisbane tide. I have probably slept with friends of your mother's or at least friends of her friends. It is inevitable. We find people in common and we circle around them. You like girls it seems. Girls like you. Girls that I have had altercations with like you. You like girls who dislike me and actively make my life difficult. You like them and you will not back down. My glower is a siren, warning you against shallow water and sharp rocks. You continue blindly on your course. You are perhaps a little drunk and therefore unable to read me neatly. I am becoming irritable as I down another glass of wine.
"We should stop talking about her, maybe"
But you bluster on, extolling her virtues, bringing me up to the boil one sentence at a time.
My friend suggests a meal. He is more sensitive to my moods than you it seems. He wants us up and walking. A change of venue, a change of conversation. We move to a restaurant nearby and it seems the fresh air has lightened things. We talk about food, swap recipes. You like to cook and I have a knack with herbs and spices. It seems our ship has righted itself. I push off into safer waters and you sail alongside me, but in a pause you mention another girl, my Nemesis. You count the things you like about her, her manner, her habit of giggling and touching you on the arm. I tell you that this is an affectation, that I would never use such calculated moves to charm someone, but you will not budge from your admiration and when our food arrives, I eat it with a tight throat and it seems for a moment I might choke on a chicken burrito, but I swallow it and chase it down with more wine.
The problem with the Internet is that it is so easily to misinterpret someones meaning. In the harsh light of the real world, I take stock of you and know that my assessment was misguided. You are an irritant. You are a liar. You are a clever salesman with the gift of the gab and a penchant for flirtation. I will not be flirted with by you.
When we come to the subject of dating I explain that I have never gone on dates, just one, a disaster that ended in bad sex and a series of phone calls to be dutifully avoided. You say you would like to take me on a date, but that is the last thing I would want to do at this moment in time. I want to finish my meal, scull the last of my wine, and find the quickest path away from you.
Later, I will not talk with you on the Internet. I will not be fooled by your faux sensitive banter. You are all lies, but still there is something about the quiet hurt in the droop of you girlish mouth and the odd style of your dress, and the slightly mannered way you speak. Something about all of this makes me think that there must be more to you than that. You are cleverly calculated, it is true, but there is something else, some softer place that you are hiding beneath a brash exterior.
I am always one to trust my first impression and I feel that you are a good person, complicated, but good at heart. It is something I can't quite put my finger on. And also, you smell good. You smell clean but with a hint of flesh and the flesh smells sweet. I am vaguely attracted to you because of it. You are not my type. You are nothing compared to the exquisite beauty of my own boy. You are nothing like the tall thin bookish boys I lust after. You are not the smooth hairless Japanese stereotype I adore. You are not for me and you are far too young for me in any case, and yet when I shake your hand at the end of the meal I have a fleeting urge to lick the sweat off your fingers.
I buy you a beer.
We turn our attention to people we have in common. This is one of those towns where people wash up against each other. Huddles of people bob on a cyclical Brisbane tide. I have probably slept with friends of your mother's or at least friends of her friends. It is inevitable. We find people in common and we circle around them. You like girls it seems. Girls like you. Girls that I have had altercations with like you. You like girls who dislike me and actively make my life difficult. You like them and you will not back down. My glower is a siren, warning you against shallow water and sharp rocks. You continue blindly on your course. You are perhaps a little drunk and therefore unable to read me neatly. I am becoming irritable as I down another glass of wine.
"We should stop talking about her, maybe"
But you bluster on, extolling her virtues, bringing me up to the boil one sentence at a time.
My friend suggests a meal. He is more sensitive to my moods than you it seems. He wants us up and walking. A change of venue, a change of conversation. We move to a restaurant nearby and it seems the fresh air has lightened things. We talk about food, swap recipes. You like to cook and I have a knack with herbs and spices. It seems our ship has righted itself. I push off into safer waters and you sail alongside me, but in a pause you mention another girl, my Nemesis. You count the things you like about her, her manner, her habit of giggling and touching you on the arm. I tell you that this is an affectation, that I would never use such calculated moves to charm someone, but you will not budge from your admiration and when our food arrives, I eat it with a tight throat and it seems for a moment I might choke on a chicken burrito, but I swallow it and chase it down with more wine.
The problem with the Internet is that it is so easily to misinterpret someones meaning. In the harsh light of the real world, I take stock of you and know that my assessment was misguided. You are an irritant. You are a liar. You are a clever salesman with the gift of the gab and a penchant for flirtation. I will not be flirted with by you.
When we come to the subject of dating I explain that I have never gone on dates, just one, a disaster that ended in bad sex and a series of phone calls to be dutifully avoided. You say you would like to take me on a date, but that is the last thing I would want to do at this moment in time. I want to finish my meal, scull the last of my wine, and find the quickest path away from you.
Later, I will not talk with you on the Internet. I will not be fooled by your faux sensitive banter. You are all lies, but still there is something about the quiet hurt in the droop of you girlish mouth and the odd style of your dress, and the slightly mannered way you speak. Something about all of this makes me think that there must be more to you than that. You are cleverly calculated, it is true, but there is something else, some softer place that you are hiding beneath a brash exterior.
I am always one to trust my first impression and I feel that you are a good person, complicated, but good at heart. It is something I can't quite put my finger on. And also, you smell good. You smell clean but with a hint of flesh and the flesh smells sweet. I am vaguely attracted to you because of it. You are not my type. You are nothing compared to the exquisite beauty of my own boy. You are nothing like the tall thin bookish boys I lust after. You are not the smooth hairless Japanese stereotype I adore. You are not for me and you are far too young for me in any case, and yet when I shake your hand at the end of the meal I have a fleeting urge to lick the sweat off your fingers.
Friday, January 23, 2009
kissing
I have never thought too much about kissing. I have never kissed anyone I have not slept with. A kiss is a perfunctory thing, like unclasping your bra or flinging your socks into the corner of the room. A kiss can be a playful little nuzzle. It has never been an end in itself.
I have photographs of me kissing my friends, all of them girls, all of them beautiful as girls so often are. Soft lips, pressed against mine, but this is nothing. Someone has a camera, I say we should kiss, and we are kissing. I feel nothing. it is an ongoing project. I have these photographs which make it seem more than it is.
I have never enjoyed kissing very much. Perhaps it is because of the intimacy. My face so close to someone elses, the intimacy of this, the idea that they could see me through their lips. I kiss through the hard shell, my defensive carapace. I kiss without engaging, and yet, still I tremble when I think about the possibilities inherent in a simple kiss.
One kiss that I remember, with her. All this on camera with a film crew watching. Perhaps the crowd added to the thrill of the moment. It was a kiss for a band film clip. Apparently it is still shown occasionally, late night on Rage.
I could not stop myself from trembling. We had touched before. I had buried my head between her legs and feasted on her breasts till my back teeth ached but I had never kissed her. This most simple of acts that everyone can perform so easily. People I know have kissed just for the sake of it, open mouthed, breathless. They kiss and it is nothing. For me the kiss was more and because of this I came at her too quickly, too urgently. It was to be an open-mouthed thing, full of passion, full of want. I wanted like you might want water when it has been so long between drinks. I wanted with my mouth open to consume her. I might have eaten her, gulped her down and saved nothing for tomorrow. I wanted her with the kind of hunger that can lead to gluttony. All this, and the camera an annoyance and the director, a friend of ours yelling 'cut now, stop' and me never wanting to stop.
It wasn't what he wanted. He wanted teasing. He wanted a playful glance at the camera. He wanted this kiss to be about him and the audience and I didn't operate that way. 'stay still' he told me. 'don't move, and she will kiss you'.
I became stone. I waited and she moved towards me and I was not meant to respond. Her lips soft and fragrant with lipstick. Her breath on me and inside me and me trembling with the pain of not engaging with it.
It was our first kiss. The kiss that I remember more than any.
I am still impatient to be done with it, this chaste lip to lip, this gentle, meaningless pressing of faces one against the other. A kiss is certainly not the thing of the flesh I crave, and yet I have been thinking about kissing lately. The sweet naivety of the act. I have been feeling the idea of it as something that sweeps through my body, a flush colouring my skin. Perhaps I have underestimated the power of such a gentle nudge of flesh on flesh. I am too impatient. I must learn to kiss. I need to learn to wait and all good things will come with gentle ease. As you say, it is inevitable.
I have photographs of me kissing my friends, all of them girls, all of them beautiful as girls so often are. Soft lips, pressed against mine, but this is nothing. Someone has a camera, I say we should kiss, and we are kissing. I feel nothing. it is an ongoing project. I have these photographs which make it seem more than it is.
I have never enjoyed kissing very much. Perhaps it is because of the intimacy. My face so close to someone elses, the intimacy of this, the idea that they could see me through their lips. I kiss through the hard shell, my defensive carapace. I kiss without engaging, and yet, still I tremble when I think about the possibilities inherent in a simple kiss.
One kiss that I remember, with her. All this on camera with a film crew watching. Perhaps the crowd added to the thrill of the moment. It was a kiss for a band film clip. Apparently it is still shown occasionally, late night on Rage.
I could not stop myself from trembling. We had touched before. I had buried my head between her legs and feasted on her breasts till my back teeth ached but I had never kissed her. This most simple of acts that everyone can perform so easily. People I know have kissed just for the sake of it, open mouthed, breathless. They kiss and it is nothing. For me the kiss was more and because of this I came at her too quickly, too urgently. It was to be an open-mouthed thing, full of passion, full of want. I wanted like you might want water when it has been so long between drinks. I wanted with my mouth open to consume her. I might have eaten her, gulped her down and saved nothing for tomorrow. I wanted her with the kind of hunger that can lead to gluttony. All this, and the camera an annoyance and the director, a friend of ours yelling 'cut now, stop' and me never wanting to stop.
It wasn't what he wanted. He wanted teasing. He wanted a playful glance at the camera. He wanted this kiss to be about him and the audience and I didn't operate that way. 'stay still' he told me. 'don't move, and she will kiss you'.
I became stone. I waited and she moved towards me and I was not meant to respond. Her lips soft and fragrant with lipstick. Her breath on me and inside me and me trembling with the pain of not engaging with it.
It was our first kiss. The kiss that I remember more than any.
I am still impatient to be done with it, this chaste lip to lip, this gentle, meaningless pressing of faces one against the other. A kiss is certainly not the thing of the flesh I crave, and yet I have been thinking about kissing lately. The sweet naivety of the act. I have been feeling the idea of it as something that sweeps through my body, a flush colouring my skin. Perhaps I have underestimated the power of such a gentle nudge of flesh on flesh. I am too impatient. I must learn to kiss. I need to learn to wait and all good things will come with gentle ease. As you say, it is inevitable.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
This thing with you.
You are there once more. I come to like the picture that you have adopted. Most people put their own image on their facebook page but you have a piece of art. A house, balanced on a mountainous peak, a wash of a storm brewing. I have come to associate the picture that stands in for you with pleasure. I smile when I see it and when I am anxious I close my eyes and there is your house behind them like a talisman. I know that it is a silly thing, but I associate our chats with a feeling of contentment and your picture is enough to evoke this feeling. You chat to me about books and styles of writing.
I ask you to send me some of your work. I have heard that your writing is good but I am not sure that I have read any of it. We talk about Nicholson Baker as you gather things together to send as a file. You multi-task like a demon. This, more than anything marks you as a member of the next generation. I know that I am far too old for you. I am from a different era.
Vox is about us. I say. You and me.
Ah, but I never talk about sex.
But I do.
Therefore Vox is about you, but not about us, exactly.
You will talk about sex one day. I tell you. I will have an influence on you.
When you talk about sex, you say, you are not actually talking about sex.
And so I answer, When you talk about other things you are always talking about sex but in an oblique way.
And then the file comes down. I click over to my GMail and it is there, your stories. A little paperclip and beneath it three little files. I open them. A new message from you makes a little popping sound, but I ignore it. You know I will be reading. Your stories are good, clever. One of them is funny and it makes me smile. It is not until I open the third one that I feel my heart engaging. This story goes on too long. There is a moment when I feel my chest expanding, my heart opening up to you, my eyes pricking with tears, and then the story moves on a little, like a train that has overshot the station, leaving the passengers stranded with no platform to step down onto. I switch to chat and tell you this and you immediately start to fix the thing. You send me an amendment which seems better.
I can't believe you just went and changed it just like that.
But doesn't it make it better?
Yes.
Then why wouldn't I.
I don't know, because you are a young person. Young people are precious about their work.
I like to edit, you tell me. I like to make things better.
I like you is my reply, I like you very much. I like your stories. If you ever write a novel I might develop a crush on you.
I am not sure I will write a novel. I may be a short story writer. I like short stories.
Ah well, then you will never have my unwanted romantic attentions.
This is a risk I will have to take, you tell me, and I laugh. You make me smile and you make me laugh.
When you have signed off for the night I go back into your facebook page just to look at the little house perched precariously in the storm. It is a beautiful image, painted by a friend of yours. I like the painting on its own merit but I also now associate it with our conversations. Looking at it, I feel a liquid rush. I become unsettled. I know that I must masturbate or I will never find the joyous oblivion of sleep.
Oh, so now I have become sexually attracted to an image that stands in for a person that I can only vaguely remember in real life. The physical representation of you is that image, and I lie on the couch and watch it as I place my hand quietly between my legs and the release is quick and violent. When it is done there is still the picture on the screen and I really can't remember what you look like in real life. When I close my eyes there is a little house perched precariously on a hill and I must not concentrate on it too closely because I can already feel the warmth of desire rising up in me for a second time, and if I give in to this I will never get to bed.
My boy is sleeping on his side and the light on his face is a real and beautiful thing. Strange to be able to masturbate over someone elses profile picture and not feel my love and desire for my husband at all diminished.
I know better than to wake him with my caresses at this point. He will be tired and irritable. I lie beside him and I am wide awake and he smells like hot dough, baking and I want to take him into my mouth. My desire for it is difficult to ignore. I wonder vaguely if I should get up and relieve this pent up energy discreetly in the loungeroom, but I find that I am yawning and I turn over onto my side and leap desperately for a wave of sleep.
I ask you to send me some of your work. I have heard that your writing is good but I am not sure that I have read any of it. We talk about Nicholson Baker as you gather things together to send as a file. You multi-task like a demon. This, more than anything marks you as a member of the next generation. I know that I am far too old for you. I am from a different era.
Vox is about us. I say. You and me.
Ah, but I never talk about sex.
But I do.
Therefore Vox is about you, but not about us, exactly.
You will talk about sex one day. I tell you. I will have an influence on you.
When you talk about sex, you say, you are not actually talking about sex.
And so I answer, When you talk about other things you are always talking about sex but in an oblique way.
And then the file comes down. I click over to my GMail and it is there, your stories. A little paperclip and beneath it three little files. I open them. A new message from you makes a little popping sound, but I ignore it. You know I will be reading. Your stories are good, clever. One of them is funny and it makes me smile. It is not until I open the third one that I feel my heart engaging. This story goes on too long. There is a moment when I feel my chest expanding, my heart opening up to you, my eyes pricking with tears, and then the story moves on a little, like a train that has overshot the station, leaving the passengers stranded with no platform to step down onto. I switch to chat and tell you this and you immediately start to fix the thing. You send me an amendment which seems better.
I can't believe you just went and changed it just like that.
But doesn't it make it better?
Yes.
Then why wouldn't I.
I don't know, because you are a young person. Young people are precious about their work.
I like to edit, you tell me. I like to make things better.
I like you is my reply, I like you very much. I like your stories. If you ever write a novel I might develop a crush on you.
I am not sure I will write a novel. I may be a short story writer. I like short stories.
Ah well, then you will never have my unwanted romantic attentions.
This is a risk I will have to take, you tell me, and I laugh. You make me smile and you make me laugh.
When you have signed off for the night I go back into your facebook page just to look at the little house perched precariously in the storm. It is a beautiful image, painted by a friend of yours. I like the painting on its own merit but I also now associate it with our conversations. Looking at it, I feel a liquid rush. I become unsettled. I know that I must masturbate or I will never find the joyous oblivion of sleep.
Oh, so now I have become sexually attracted to an image that stands in for a person that I can only vaguely remember in real life. The physical representation of you is that image, and I lie on the couch and watch it as I place my hand quietly between my legs and the release is quick and violent. When it is done there is still the picture on the screen and I really can't remember what you look like in real life. When I close my eyes there is a little house perched precariously on a hill and I must not concentrate on it too closely because I can already feel the warmth of desire rising up in me for a second time, and if I give in to this I will never get to bed.
My boy is sleeping on his side and the light on his face is a real and beautiful thing. Strange to be able to masturbate over someone elses profile picture and not feel my love and desire for my husband at all diminished.
I know better than to wake him with my caresses at this point. He will be tired and irritable. I lie beside him and I am wide awake and he smells like hot dough, baking and I want to take him into my mouth. My desire for it is difficult to ignore. I wonder vaguely if I should get up and relieve this pent up energy discreetly in the loungeroom, but I find that I am yawning and I turn over onto my side and leap desperately for a wave of sleep.
First chat
Night. Sleepless night. A slight chill in the air, but I rested my hands under my laptop. The battery was a little fire to warm my fingers on. Seven tabs open on the top of my screen. I flicked from one to another, skimming. Without my beautiful boy there would be little sleep. His breath on my back is like chloroform, the lack of him is like drinking coffee before sleep time. When I heard the little popping sound of a message coming through I was jittery. Loneliness as a stimulant. High as a kite.
Hello? Do you remember me?
I glanced at the little pop out box that had suddenly appeared at the bottom of my facebook page. Your name. A name I remember vaguely, that friend of a friend who I met once at a chance writer's festival dinner.
I didn't know there was a chat function in facebook.
Ah. Well there is.
The little popping sound it makes is disconcerting.
Would you like me to stop talking to you?
No, actually, I am very happy to talk to you. I am having trouble sleeping.
I chatted to you for an hour. We talked about writers and books and art. You seemed to know a lot about things I was interested in. I was intrigued. I tried to remember your face and had a vague impression of someone rather short and perhaps a little brash. I couldn't picture you exactly. I sat up in bed, began to enjoy your witty banter. When the battery was low I moved to the loungeroom where I could plug in. I was so far away from sleep by then. When you said you should go to bed I felt vaguely disappointed.
This was how it began. Suddenly and unexpectedly. How very modern, I thought. Someone I know from the Internet more than real life because I didn't really remember taking much notice of you at that dinner if truth be known. I was distracted by my unusual accommodation and by the presence of a writer with a book I had read and quite enjoyed.
The next night, unsettled in my lonely bed I looked out for you, switching between Internet pornography and facebook where I would be able to see if you had come on line. The disappointment of your absence. I chatted with someone else briefly and without the same kind of excited analysis of art and life. I found that I missed you. That I was looking forward to another conversation. Strange that I hooked into this thing with you so quickly. I went over our conversation of the night before and your voice in my head sounded like my voice. Already, right up front, you felt like family to me.
Hello? Do you remember me?
I glanced at the little pop out box that had suddenly appeared at the bottom of my facebook page. Your name. A name I remember vaguely, that friend of a friend who I met once at a chance writer's festival dinner.
I didn't know there was a chat function in facebook.
Ah. Well there is.
The little popping sound it makes is disconcerting.
Would you like me to stop talking to you?
No, actually, I am very happy to talk to you. I am having trouble sleeping.
I chatted to you for an hour. We talked about writers and books and art. You seemed to know a lot about things I was interested in. I was intrigued. I tried to remember your face and had a vague impression of someone rather short and perhaps a little brash. I couldn't picture you exactly. I sat up in bed, began to enjoy your witty banter. When the battery was low I moved to the loungeroom where I could plug in. I was so far away from sleep by then. When you said you should go to bed I felt vaguely disappointed.
This was how it began. Suddenly and unexpectedly. How very modern, I thought. Someone I know from the Internet more than real life because I didn't really remember taking much notice of you at that dinner if truth be known. I was distracted by my unusual accommodation and by the presence of a writer with a book I had read and quite enjoyed.
The next night, unsettled in my lonely bed I looked out for you, switching between Internet pornography and facebook where I would be able to see if you had come on line. The disappointment of your absence. I chatted with someone else briefly and without the same kind of excited analysis of art and life. I found that I missed you. That I was looking forward to another conversation. Strange that I hooked into this thing with you so quickly. I went over our conversation of the night before and your voice in my head sounded like my voice. Already, right up front, you felt like family to me.
bathroom
when the bathroom is renovated there will be no more collective bathing. Our dark tub is not the best to steep in, but when I lean against the tiles, sleepy still and full of dreams, you lie on my back with the water pounding down around us and it is perhaps my favourite thing. Your lips in the crook of my neck, my hands snaking around behind you and this still pure moment.
Can we do this even when the renovations are finished? In the small square of a new bath and without the sympathy of tiles?
Can we do this even when the renovations are finished? In the small square of a new bath and without the sympathy of tiles?
Small stumble
Whatever it is that makes me move through the world with a degree of confidence, my sassiness, my cheek, my arse, my mojo, well I lost it but only in relation to you. I know this because even at such a distance you have made me cry. I used to cry a lot when you were around.
My natural sexual longings have been with me for so long that I have grown used to them. I immerse myself in that liquid rush and I shrug and move on. With you there was always an edge of shame. I should not, I thought, or, I am wrong to. There was always some self-judgement that cut hard into my psyche. I lusted and I similtaneously hated myself for that lust. There was nothing clean about the feeling and I am still, even now, scrubbing myself free from it. You unleash that bitter anger at me yet again and I am suddenly in tears. I stumble. I become insecure. It is time to remove myself from the harm you can cause me. No amount of friendship can make up for how bad it can feel when I am scoured by self hate.
This new friendship is so much better. It is dogged by frequent moments of lust but it is easy to turn that into fuel for my creative pursuits. We are honest with it. There is a dialogue. He does not share in my little lustful fantasies but he is familiar with them and he returns the favour with his care and friendship. He is flattered. He does not use the situation to point out my failings. Instead he is kind and gentle with my emotional turmoil and in time it will settle. We are friends. He is a good choice of friend.
You however have removed my dignity, and although it was not entirely your fault, I think you enjoyed the power of stripping me back to bare bone. Each time I cried you became more powerful, each fall from grace was a buoying up of your ego. I am putting distance there now. I am guarding myself against that raw place. I am still surprised by my own tears and I would like to protect myself from more of the same.
My natural sexual longings have been with me for so long that I have grown used to them. I immerse myself in that liquid rush and I shrug and move on. With you there was always an edge of shame. I should not, I thought, or, I am wrong to. There was always some self-judgement that cut hard into my psyche. I lusted and I similtaneously hated myself for that lust. There was nothing clean about the feeling and I am still, even now, scrubbing myself free from it. You unleash that bitter anger at me yet again and I am suddenly in tears. I stumble. I become insecure. It is time to remove myself from the harm you can cause me. No amount of friendship can make up for how bad it can feel when I am scoured by self hate.
This new friendship is so much better. It is dogged by frequent moments of lust but it is easy to turn that into fuel for my creative pursuits. We are honest with it. There is a dialogue. He does not share in my little lustful fantasies but he is familiar with them and he returns the favour with his care and friendship. He is flattered. He does not use the situation to point out my failings. Instead he is kind and gentle with my emotional turmoil and in time it will settle. We are friends. He is a good choice of friend.
You however have removed my dignity, and although it was not entirely your fault, I think you enjoyed the power of stripping me back to bare bone. Each time I cried you became more powerful, each fall from grace was a buoying up of your ego. I am putting distance there now. I am guarding myself against that raw place. I am still surprised by my own tears and I would like to protect myself from more of the same.
Monday, January 19, 2009
sex and self doubt
Sex and self-doubt. He says that these are my themes and he is right. The sex is easy. The self doubt seems to complicate my life somewhat. He drifts along in the wake of one pretty girl after another and I wonder why I will never be a boat that sways him. Still we are on parallel courses, twin hulls, bumping against each other with a hollow thud and continuing on in tandem. We will keep each other company until one or the other of us is drawn in a different direction and we part.
Still every time he is distracted by a hint of perfume or softly powdered skin, I find I am weighing myself against the various girls and finding myself lacking. I do not have what is needed to draw his attention. Not for a moment. This makes me sad.
I am happily married. I am happy. He is my friend. I wonder why I need this kind of errant crush. this validation of my affection. I do not need his attention. I do not need his love. I do not need his desire. But I desire it.
Still. We will do something else together.
Still every time he is distracted by a hint of perfume or softly powdered skin, I find I am weighing myself against the various girls and finding myself lacking. I do not have what is needed to draw his attention. Not for a moment. This makes me sad.
I am happily married. I am happy. He is my friend. I wonder why I need this kind of errant crush. this validation of my affection. I do not need his attention. I do not need his love. I do not need his desire. But I desire it.
Still. We will do something else together.
compromises
I have made compromises so that I will remain in my relationship and in love. I have given up something of myself. I am diminished and enriched in equal measures. All those aspects of myself that you do not approve of are shrouded and packed away, the nostalgic smell of naphthalene, all my childish dreams subsumed in you. And in exchange you have illuminated the facets of me that you like and Here I am, suddenly presentable because of you. I also have your body to replace the smell of turpentine and linseed oil. I have the sculptural representation of all that is good about flesh. I touch it and there is nothing to add. It is a work of art completed. I am removed from the process. I am a collector of you.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Diary
So today is the day I meet my editor for the first time. I will have a leisurely breakfast. I will hop a tram into town. I will spend my morning thinking, making notes in my manuscript, appreciating the wonderful friends who have supported me getting this far. I am looking forward to the edit. I am both excited and nervous. I will have lunch with my editor and then I will hop straight on the phone and debrief with the ones I love. Then I will eat and drink with Ronnie Scott. This will be a good day. This is why we work so very hard. This is the sweetener for all those hours slaving at the computer. I am happy to be here now.
Nicholson Baker
If I could stop time I would not undress you or anyone else for that matter. I would not look at people in the shower or making love. I might perhaps pause to lie beside you on the bed and rest my chin in that soft place between your neck and shoulder. I might hold your hand, but probably not. Mostly I would just sit by the river with the sweat still drying on the red faces of the frozen joggers and I would take the time to read and to write and to finish something before moving on. I would walk through the world without feeling looked at and judged. And if it was within my power I might not re-start the clock. I might just let it all stay on hold indefinitely, until I became lonely and let the world back in for the duration of a conversation, or to make love.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
ugly confession
Me and sex.
The pleasure is in the reading.
The disappointment is in the seeing.
She tells me that I must reduce my self-deprecating comments by 25% and yet I have the mirror of the world to remind me. I venture towards the promise of clothing on sale and find that even clothed I am no better than I was.
He drags himself to my bed because of his kindness and I am aware that it is an effort. He is a good man. "I am not as sexual as you", an excuse that does not fool me but I am glad of his lie. I want nothing but lies. I want 'I lust after you' and 'you are beautiful' and 'I can't keep my eyes off you' and I don't care that it is all out of pity. I am happy to suspend my disbelief for the duration of a beautiful lie.
I am beautiful at times too. I am beautiful in the dark where the light cannot touch my skin with form and colour. In the lonely space of an afternoon by myself, under water, protected by blindfolds, hidden behind my writing.
So I am looking around for someone to stand in for me when they take the author photograph. In the meantime I am rushing through the the self-deprecation, gorging myself on it. Next week, when I am on display, meeting and greeting, I will be all confidence and smiles and glamor, but today I am gnomic and hurt and desperate to believe the lies.
The pleasure is in the reading.
The disappointment is in the seeing.
She tells me that I must reduce my self-deprecating comments by 25% and yet I have the mirror of the world to remind me. I venture towards the promise of clothing on sale and find that even clothed I am no better than I was.
He drags himself to my bed because of his kindness and I am aware that it is an effort. He is a good man. "I am not as sexual as you", an excuse that does not fool me but I am glad of his lie. I want nothing but lies. I want 'I lust after you' and 'you are beautiful' and 'I can't keep my eyes off you' and I don't care that it is all out of pity. I am happy to suspend my disbelief for the duration of a beautiful lie.
I am beautiful at times too. I am beautiful in the dark where the light cannot touch my skin with form and colour. In the lonely space of an afternoon by myself, under water, protected by blindfolds, hidden behind my writing.
So I am looking around for someone to stand in for me when they take the author photograph. In the meantime I am rushing through the the self-deprecation, gorging myself on it. Next week, when I am on display, meeting and greeting, I will be all confidence and smiles and glamor, but today I am gnomic and hurt and desperate to believe the lies.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
ditched
You ditched me for breakfast with someone else but I choose to think it was about the post-breakfast time for writing. I will not torture myself with wondering who sits above me in the pecking order. We all pick favourites. You just happen to be mine. Without asking your permission I picked you. You have picked other girls. They are lucky. The stories that you send me are my consolation prize and I prize them more than breakfast and your sparkling conversation.
I need to talk about sex because that is what this blog is about but I can't think about sex. I can only think about love and care and intimacy. I am losing my edge. You have worn me blunt.
There is sex again - and for a while there was none. Today I chose an appropriately large and complicated tool hoping that the complexity of the thing would distract me from my routine of thinking about you. It didn't. But it didn't matter. The thing is done and I feel some small relief from it.
You have your date and I have things to organise anyway. You know that I will always step back. Perhaps too far back, but I will probably return a little at a time until we are in some kind of balance again.
I need to talk about sex because that is what this blog is about but I can't think about sex. I can only think about love and care and intimacy. I am losing my edge. You have worn me blunt.
There is sex again - and for a while there was none. Today I chose an appropriately large and complicated tool hoping that the complexity of the thing would distract me from my routine of thinking about you. It didn't. But it didn't matter. The thing is done and I feel some small relief from it.
You have your date and I have things to organise anyway. You know that I will always step back. Perhaps too far back, but I will probably return a little at a time until we are in some kind of balance again.
Diary
Sometime this year my book will be published. This is something I will only experience once, my transition into a new world. I will live it. It will feel like life and death at the time and then it will be done and I will begin the process of forgetting. I have decided to keep a diary. I know that most of the people who find this site do so because of the key words "horse in my vagina" or "fuck virgin girls in arse" and therefore you won't be particularly interested in the highs and lows of this run towards publication, but there are others out there who are in it for the writing and therefore I would like to keep a diary leading up to the date of publication. Rather than start a new blog, I will do this on Furious Vaginas or Furvag as my beautiful friend calls it. So if you are in it for the sex, just ignore the posts that are called Diary as these are not about the sex. These are about the art and therefore in a way you could say they are about wanking.
I begin it here. I begin as I ready myself to go down to Melbourne to meet my publisher. First I have to say it is the publisher I have always dreamed of. Every birthday cake, I would close my eyes and whisper 'Text Publishing' and make sure I did not touch the bottom with a knife. I would catch dandylion clocks on a gentle breeze and speak the name to them and let them go. A childish habit but one that underlined the importance of this particular publisher in the scheme of things.
As I prepare to have my first meeting with my editor all my insecurities bubble to the surface like acne. I take it out on my person, my intimate companion, not my partner, who I have learned to keep removed from this kind of thing, but my dearest friend. I turn on him and snap and snarl and looking back on it I know that it is all because of my insecurities. My fears are ridiculously amplified. What if I can't fix it in the edit, which is ridiculous because I am a voracious editor. What if I say something ridiculous - which is possible. I am prone to sudden bursts of ridiculousness. Worse, the main thing, the completely insane but terrible heart of it all, what if I am too ugly to market effectively.
Oh we are so superficial and predictable, we humans. Here I am at the brink of acheiving the thing I have desired most for so long, and I am concerned about my weight and my haircut. I fret over the author photograph incessantly.
I walked past a discount bookshop the other day and had a flash of the eventual fate of my own book. I saw it piled up and reduced to 7.95 which is their price for trade paperbacks. It was a soft moment of melancholy but I shrugged and walked on. I know how these things go. I am far more stressed about the author photograph anyway.
I begin it here. I begin as I ready myself to go down to Melbourne to meet my publisher. First I have to say it is the publisher I have always dreamed of. Every birthday cake, I would close my eyes and whisper 'Text Publishing' and make sure I did not touch the bottom with a knife. I would catch dandylion clocks on a gentle breeze and speak the name to them and let them go. A childish habit but one that underlined the importance of this particular publisher in the scheme of things.
As I prepare to have my first meeting with my editor all my insecurities bubble to the surface like acne. I take it out on my person, my intimate companion, not my partner, who I have learned to keep removed from this kind of thing, but my dearest friend. I turn on him and snap and snarl and looking back on it I know that it is all because of my insecurities. My fears are ridiculously amplified. What if I can't fix it in the edit, which is ridiculous because I am a voracious editor. What if I say something ridiculous - which is possible. I am prone to sudden bursts of ridiculousness. Worse, the main thing, the completely insane but terrible heart of it all, what if I am too ugly to market effectively.
Oh we are so superficial and predictable, we humans. Here I am at the brink of acheiving the thing I have desired most for so long, and I am concerned about my weight and my haircut. I fret over the author photograph incessantly.
I walked past a discount bookshop the other day and had a flash of the eventual fate of my own book. I saw it piled up and reduced to 7.95 which is their price for trade paperbacks. It was a soft moment of melancholy but I shrugged and walked on. I know how these things go. I am far more stressed about the author photograph anyway.
not one thing
If I am not one thing then I am another. Seesaw. Tipping between states and at the time when I am feeling it, it doesn't feel like play. You have done nothing wrong, and yet I seem to run hot and cold and rarely any warm mix of the two. I remove a blog post. Delete it outright. I am worried by its angry tone. In real life I spend my morning spruiking your various qualities to someone new and smart and single and beautiful. At night I rage against you and the emotion is unwarranted. You are the same and you are constant and I love you and despite the operatic sweep of my emotions you are still there when I have returned from one state or the other.
I have denied myself the pleasure of an orgasm for days. I have not allowed myself the humiliation that comes with using you in this way, as if my abstinence will somehow atone for the months of pleasure. Instead, I go quietly mad from the lack of release. There is no way out of this, there is only a way to live in it and with it. And so I settle back into the pattern of it, knowing that tomorrow I might be somewhere between hate and love, back up on the seesaw once more.
I have denied myself the pleasure of an orgasm for days. I have not allowed myself the humiliation that comes with using you in this way, as if my abstinence will somehow atone for the months of pleasure. Instead, I go quietly mad from the lack of release. There is no way out of this, there is only a way to live in it and with it. And so I settle back into the pattern of it, knowing that tomorrow I might be somewhere between hate and love, back up on the seesaw once more.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Furious Vaginas
Me telling myself these gentle truths, whispered in intimacy of late night wakefulness.
Me telling the world which is the same thing really, just me, admitting to dark places and the audience in shadow, an amorphous blur of almost-faces, just a sea of dissacociated ears, on an endless tide.
Me telling you, which is intollerable and addictive at the same time. I read back through the collective Furious Vaginas and I have been banging on for so long about you that it is beyond embarassing.
I dislike myself. I weigh myself up against your other friends, the new brash sexy thing, the quiet flower, the intellectual, the one that stole your heart, and I step away. I will not compete. This is my nature. But I have some of you in me now, a viral duplication of ideas. I have your voice which I have stolen and a few precious memories, transcripts of conversations where you are perfectly behaved and I am not.
I will continue to communicate with you through the work. I will not deny myself the stories that sit in my life like something precious and multi-faceted. But I am closing up again. Not like a flower, but like a shellfish pulled tight in her ugly carapace. Here in this unnatractive package I am safe. I stare at the world angrily, anticipating conflict. I have stopped believing in love, all of a sudden, anenome-like. Snapped shut. Going, going, gone.
Me telling the world which is the same thing really, just me, admitting to dark places and the audience in shadow, an amorphous blur of almost-faces, just a sea of dissacociated ears, on an endless tide.
Me telling you, which is intollerable and addictive at the same time. I read back through the collective Furious Vaginas and I have been banging on for so long about you that it is beyond embarassing.
I dislike myself. I weigh myself up against your other friends, the new brash sexy thing, the quiet flower, the intellectual, the one that stole your heart, and I step away. I will not compete. This is my nature. But I have some of you in me now, a viral duplication of ideas. I have your voice which I have stolen and a few precious memories, transcripts of conversations where you are perfectly behaved and I am not.
I will continue to communicate with you through the work. I will not deny myself the stories that sit in my life like something precious and multi-faceted. But I am closing up again. Not like a flower, but like a shellfish pulled tight in her ugly carapace. Here in this unnatractive package I am safe. I stare at the world angrily, anticipating conflict. I have stopped believing in love, all of a sudden, anenome-like. Snapped shut. Going, going, gone.
shy girls
When I am a shy girl I will say nothing and look quite wise as a result of it. People will say "she is deep" and spend time trying to get to know me. I will be shrouded by mystique. Nil by mouth. Barely any sustenance going in and to get something out of it is like pulling teeth. I will be pale and luminous and wear little summer print dresses in duck egg blue. I will leave so much space that people will be unafraid to stare at me. When I am spoken to I will look away, or giggle prettily even if I do not understand the joke. I will be good at building other people's egos because I have none of my own to speak of.
I will not necessarily be sexier because of this, but people will come closer, expend more energy for me. They will carry my bags and buy me drinks and want to tell me little secrets which I will dutifully keep. I will make no choices with my own affections. Shy girls do not pick they are picked, and wilt in time. I will therefore not pick you and cling to the idea of you as if you were something particularly special. When I am a shy girl I will float in the wake of whoever tries to keep me. I will drift, as diaphanous as cheesecloth, as pale and pretty as ice in the process of melting.
I will not necessarily be sexier because of this, but people will come closer, expend more energy for me. They will carry my bags and buy me drinks and want to tell me little secrets which I will dutifully keep. I will make no choices with my own affections. Shy girls do not pick they are picked, and wilt in time. I will therefore not pick you and cling to the idea of you as if you were something particularly special. When I am a shy girl I will float in the wake of whoever tries to keep me. I will drift, as diaphanous as cheesecloth, as pale and pretty as ice in the process of melting.
innocuous
this is an innocuous post because I feel suddenly self conscious about all this rampant disclosure.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
wrung out
I am all wrung out by longing. I am buffeted between conflicting states. At once, I am swelling like dough under a damp cloth into the idea of you. It is a physical thing, some strange alchemy that blends smell and flesh into some pheremonal melting pot. I harbour secret flashes of possible outcomes which inevitably include climbing into your lap, fully clothed, but with no underwear under my skirt. I imagine hand holding in libraries or lying on the grass or in the cinema. These random images are thrown up at the most inappropriate moments, in company, on the bus, at work. I catch my breath before it comes out in a moan or a little sigh.
At the same time there is a rock solid care that might be forged in volcanic turmoil. It is familial, the kind that you would imagine a big sister to have for a beloved brother. I would fight for you, scuff my knees, if you called in the middle of the night you would find me at your side without any subtext. I can be distracted from my longing by the permanency of love.
Still, I would eat you if I could. I would carve through your flesh with a spoon and gorge myself on you. You bring out the best in me and I cling to the steady ledge of your presence, threatening to fall off into the abyss of my own madness.
I am mad with the lust which feels like it will consume me. I turn in on myself, wondering what I might do to illicit the same kind of passion from you. I would never follow through with any of it, I suppose, but the idea that my emotions are reciprocated would bring me some sense of balance. Even as I say this I see the pattern in it. I know. I am not blind. You will never want me.
I blame my physicality, my age, my erratic nature. I would remake myself into someone else to catch your attention. I wonder if you would love a thinner girl. That pretty blond thing I saw you with with sunken eyes and skin that looked as if you would bruise it with a glance. I would carve myself up into pieces to have you look at me that way. I would stop eating. I would run. I would learn to wear makeup and perfume like a real girl. I would be deconstructed.
But, strangely, I am also comfortable with myself at the same time. When we connect over literature or art there is no bodily me left, there is just a comfortable fit, your opinion and mine, different but accepting. It is the hand-holding that I was longing for. I feel suddenly perfect and in no great hurry to change. When we discuss a book we are lying side by side and there is a gentle cradling and there is no madness in it.
I will make art out of this. What use is a great passion if it remains unspoken. You say that you once had a crush so strong that you couldn't eat. I know how this is because my chest hurts and I am tearing myself into pieces.
Still, I am writing and it is not lost. I have an open book to stuff it all into. I will write it and then it will be there where it cannot hurt us, trapped in the body of a work, calcifying, a historical document. Until then I cross my fingers and hope that you will remain tolerant of my erratic behaviour. I am just writing through it. Surely you know how this is.
At the same time there is a rock solid care that might be forged in volcanic turmoil. It is familial, the kind that you would imagine a big sister to have for a beloved brother. I would fight for you, scuff my knees, if you called in the middle of the night you would find me at your side without any subtext. I can be distracted from my longing by the permanency of love.
Still, I would eat you if I could. I would carve through your flesh with a spoon and gorge myself on you. You bring out the best in me and I cling to the steady ledge of your presence, threatening to fall off into the abyss of my own madness.
I am mad with the lust which feels like it will consume me. I turn in on myself, wondering what I might do to illicit the same kind of passion from you. I would never follow through with any of it, I suppose, but the idea that my emotions are reciprocated would bring me some sense of balance. Even as I say this I see the pattern in it. I know. I am not blind. You will never want me.
I blame my physicality, my age, my erratic nature. I would remake myself into someone else to catch your attention. I wonder if you would love a thinner girl. That pretty blond thing I saw you with with sunken eyes and skin that looked as if you would bruise it with a glance. I would carve myself up into pieces to have you look at me that way. I would stop eating. I would run. I would learn to wear makeup and perfume like a real girl. I would be deconstructed.
But, strangely, I am also comfortable with myself at the same time. When we connect over literature or art there is no bodily me left, there is just a comfortable fit, your opinion and mine, different but accepting. It is the hand-holding that I was longing for. I feel suddenly perfect and in no great hurry to change. When we discuss a book we are lying side by side and there is a gentle cradling and there is no madness in it.
I will make art out of this. What use is a great passion if it remains unspoken. You say that you once had a crush so strong that you couldn't eat. I know how this is because my chest hurts and I am tearing myself into pieces.
Still, I am writing and it is not lost. I have an open book to stuff it all into. I will write it and then it will be there where it cannot hurt us, trapped in the body of a work, calcifying, a historical document. Until then I cross my fingers and hope that you will remain tolerant of my erratic behaviour. I am just writing through it. Surely you know how this is.
the erotic potential of water
I step in and my skirt catches air and billows briefly. I am jellyfish wide. I am in my element. It is all airless and soundless and the water is a coocoon for the skin to hide in. I could drown and there is comfort in it.
To run into the ocean fully clothed is a joy that surpasses nakedness. It is the crossing over between worlds. It is the coming home to water. It is perhaps a thing more wonderful than sex. I am sea-wrack. I am insignificant. I am a feed for a shark or the little nipping of fish. I am home.
To run into the ocean fully clothed is a joy that surpasses nakedness. It is the crossing over between worlds. It is the coming home to water. It is perhaps a thing more wonderful than sex. I am sea-wrack. I am insignificant. I am a feed for a shark or the little nipping of fish. I am home.
Monday, January 12, 2009
dickhead
you know that feeling when you thought that someone likes you when they don't? That moment of joy so quickly followed by the realisation that you have been mistaken? Not just that, there is also the realisation that they do not now, nor ever could find you attractive. And then the small step towards realising that that is because you are not attractive.
Then you see yourself though their eyes for just a minute and you are suddenly horrified.
Of course, you say, that is how it is. How could I ever have been so myopic that I could have thought otherwise. And then you realise that this is not the first time you have made this mistake, and that there will be more times. Because you do not see yourself as you really are.
Sometimes, hidden inside the shell of your head, you imagine that you are beautiful.
Then you see yourself though their eyes for just a minute and you are suddenly horrified.
Of course, you say, that is how it is. How could I ever have been so myopic that I could have thought otherwise. And then you realise that this is not the first time you have made this mistake, and that there will be more times. Because you do not see yourself as you really are.
Sometimes, hidden inside the shell of your head, you imagine that you are beautiful.
Wanting
I am scratching at the self-destruct button. Things have been too good for too long. I am not used to this unrestrained fog of joy. How can I have all the things I need. And so, after a good time, I work to wreck it all by wanting you.
What was there was enough, this easy intimacy, the perfection of the weather, the conversation, the company. Too perfect, like a pond and it is in my nature to throw a stone into the centre of it or dive bomb, full bodied, breaking the glassy calm of the surface.
Instead I stop now here, when it is over and remains intact. I kick the thing, hoping to prove that it is not permanent, that I am not worthy of this. I say it is not enough. I say I need a reciprocation of impossible desire. I stomp on it hard-booted and wait for it to break and for you to leave but you don't.
You shrug. You will get better you tell me in that calm way you have. I am tempted to refrain from contacting you again. I will become a stranger. I will keep my distance, just to prove that I can be replaced easily. There will be other people who will become your intimate friends. There is someone waiting and she will be less problematic than I have been. I exhaust you. I know this. I exhaust myself.
I step away. Now, at the height of the thing. I turn my back on it and curl tight into a spiked ball.
What was there was enough, this easy intimacy, the perfection of the weather, the conversation, the company. Too perfect, like a pond and it is in my nature to throw a stone into the centre of it or dive bomb, full bodied, breaking the glassy calm of the surface.
Instead I stop now here, when it is over and remains intact. I kick the thing, hoping to prove that it is not permanent, that I am not worthy of this. I say it is not enough. I say I need a reciprocation of impossible desire. I stomp on it hard-booted and wait for it to break and for you to leave but you don't.
You shrug. You will get better you tell me in that calm way you have. I am tempted to refrain from contacting you again. I will become a stranger. I will keep my distance, just to prove that I can be replaced easily. There will be other people who will become your intimate friends. There is someone waiting and she will be less problematic than I have been. I exhaust you. I know this. I exhaust myself.
I step away. Now, at the height of the thing. I turn my back on it and curl tight into a spiked ball.
foot
I cut my toe nails. I did this because you touched my foot and I was suddenly embarrassed about my personal hygiene.
Her feet are perfect. Her nails are pared back and coloured like jewels. Her skin is the softest thing I have touched, like butter or silk. Her hair is immaculate. Her dress is so careful and elegant. I do not dislike her for this but I see the ragged edges of myself and I think that maybe I should start using moisturiser. I imagine that I smell bad. Strong. Musky like a possum or a bat, something that feeds at night and leaps out to scare you when you wander past unsuspecting. I am a tatter. I am a hurried afterthought. I am all spilled out and picked up at a run. I am a clumsy scattering of disperate things. Bag lady chique.
So even though my toenail is the tallon of said possum or bat, the caress of your fingers reminds me of the times that I have disregarded this. The hard dead skin edges, the calloused, result of neglect, neglected again as I wet my toe in the juice of her and slip it inside. I am reminded of the warm wetness and the almost climax that can be achieved when my leg is extended and my toe is buried. The idea of my whole foot disappearing into her, but for now, just this toe this one toe that you are holding so casually and without any subtext. People always rest their feet in your lap. Here is my toe and you touch it and it is a simple pure note of your affection for me.
You are not to know that it is that toe, that same toe and that the warmth of your hand places me right back there with her body. And the fact that I ignore the gesture reminds me of her casual acceptance of my toe in her vagina. No signal that she was aware of my presence, just a cat-like settling down into the pillows of the couch. Her eyes heavy, on the brink of sleep. I do not want you to let go of my toe but this has to end. Does this have to end? A throw away line that has its barb in me. You look up at the sky which holds more interest than my ragged toe nail and rough skin.
I cut my toenails and I think about her careful pedicure and all the womanly things about her that are so different to me and the melancholy I feel does not make me jealous in that way that I have which leads to dislike.
I wonder if I will rouse myself to make more of an effort with my skin, my hair, my toes. I wish the strong wild smell would disappear and leave me with the scent of flowers and that delicate cinnamon that I have tasted in the juices of several women I have known. Can I change? Even at this late stage can I become her? or am I destined to be me. Forever. Always, the slight disappointment of my vague and half-hearted attempt at cutting my toenails and remembering to wear perfume.
Her feet are perfect. Her nails are pared back and coloured like jewels. Her skin is the softest thing I have touched, like butter or silk. Her hair is immaculate. Her dress is so careful and elegant. I do not dislike her for this but I see the ragged edges of myself and I think that maybe I should start using moisturiser. I imagine that I smell bad. Strong. Musky like a possum or a bat, something that feeds at night and leaps out to scare you when you wander past unsuspecting. I am a tatter. I am a hurried afterthought. I am all spilled out and picked up at a run. I am a clumsy scattering of disperate things. Bag lady chique.
So even though my toenail is the tallon of said possum or bat, the caress of your fingers reminds me of the times that I have disregarded this. The hard dead skin edges, the calloused, result of neglect, neglected again as I wet my toe in the juice of her and slip it inside. I am reminded of the warm wetness and the almost climax that can be achieved when my leg is extended and my toe is buried. The idea of my whole foot disappearing into her, but for now, just this toe this one toe that you are holding so casually and without any subtext. People always rest their feet in your lap. Here is my toe and you touch it and it is a simple pure note of your affection for me.
You are not to know that it is that toe, that same toe and that the warmth of your hand places me right back there with her body. And the fact that I ignore the gesture reminds me of her casual acceptance of my toe in her vagina. No signal that she was aware of my presence, just a cat-like settling down into the pillows of the couch. Her eyes heavy, on the brink of sleep. I do not want you to let go of my toe but this has to end. Does this have to end? A throw away line that has its barb in me. You look up at the sky which holds more interest than my ragged toe nail and rough skin.
I cut my toenails and I think about her careful pedicure and all the womanly things about her that are so different to me and the melancholy I feel does not make me jealous in that way that I have which leads to dislike.
I wonder if I will rouse myself to make more of an effort with my skin, my hair, my toes. I wish the strong wild smell would disappear and leave me with the scent of flowers and that delicate cinnamon that I have tasted in the juices of several women I have known. Can I change? Even at this late stage can I become her? or am I destined to be me. Forever. Always, the slight disappointment of my vague and half-hearted attempt at cutting my toenails and remembering to wear perfume.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
coming down
It is a drug. Some people are addicted to chocolate. The little connector in their brain is a perfect fit with the molecular pattern that is present in the chocolate. A little gift from the gods. Some people find that their addiction will be to nicotine. Same snug fit, different drug.
My drug is sex. The possibility of it takes hold of my brain and I am snatched away from myself. I am someone else. I have the confidence of a person who is on cocaine. I am suddenly devoid of ugliness.
When there is a whiff of sex in the air I am high as a kite on it. The smell of it. The potential for someone to find me sexy. The idea that, in a different life, I might relax into the gentle roll of groin on groin.
But it is a fabrication. I am myself and I catch a glimpse of me, the true self captured in a camera or reflected in someone's eye and I am suddenly deflated. Like the morning after taking LSD. The down. The close to tears tenderness and the sudden sensitivity to light.
My drug is sex. The possibility of it takes hold of my brain and I am snatched away from myself. I am someone else. I have the confidence of a person who is on cocaine. I am suddenly devoid of ugliness.
When there is a whiff of sex in the air I am high as a kite on it. The smell of it. The potential for someone to find me sexy. The idea that, in a different life, I might relax into the gentle roll of groin on groin.
But it is a fabrication. I am myself and I catch a glimpse of me, the true self captured in a camera or reflected in someone's eye and I am suddenly deflated. Like the morning after taking LSD. The down. The close to tears tenderness and the sudden sensitivity to light.
Friday, January 9, 2009
the erotic potential of a calf muscle
A hand curled around my calf muscle. Which doesn't sound like much but it is perhaps the context. It is the air electric with the hidden possibilities of flesh. it is the layer of clothing between the fingers and my skin. It is what is hidden and unspoken that elevates this small touch. It is to be touched, and yet to remain distant, leaning back, where I am not intimidated by the gesture. The round swell of my calf suddenly becomes the globe of my breast hung close and cradled in a palm. It is all one thing substituted for some other. It is a surrealist painting. It is the overwhelming throb of sex that makes me thick witted and slow to answer. My conversation becomes stilted and it is all because of my calf muscle which has suddenly become my breast. I am drunk in a way that reminds me of reading my books on philosophy. A sudden overwhelming of the senses. A bombardment of ideas each one crossing the next and my senses are lost in the maze of it. A burning giraffe, an egg that is an eye. A colour that has tone and texture and can be touched and listened to.
A whisper that I hear but do not respond to because they may be my words or they may be yours. This is a painting. This is an instillation. This is all my body revealed as in an x-ray. This is the fat curve of my calf cradled.
One time, before, so long ago I rested my calf on his ankle and he played a guitar and there was music and I could smell it and I thought it must be love or perhaps lust. But it was only music reverberating through my leg.
I remember that now.
A whisper that I hear but do not respond to because they may be my words or they may be yours. This is a painting. This is an instillation. This is all my body revealed as in an x-ray. This is the fat curve of my calf cradled.
One time, before, so long ago I rested my calf on his ankle and he played a guitar and there was music and I could smell it and I thought it must be love or perhaps lust. But it was only music reverberating through my leg.
I remember that now.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
erotic potential
The erotic potential of other parts of my body.
calf muscle
heel
foot
knee
hand
and we knew about the back of my neck
the head and the body engaged
the story of the eye
Does this have to come to an end?
The whisper
the wide awake erotic potential of a pillow
the water against my skin.
and if I thought I had run out of things to kiss and tell about,
I realise now I have an entire back catalogue of the erotic potential of so many untapped parts of me.
The tremour in a hand
the thud of blood in my chest
the tug of a nipple,
or have I mentioned that one already.
A heady well from which to draw drink.
this now, a first sip and the rest to be savoured later.
calf muscle
heel
foot
knee
hand
and we knew about the back of my neck
the head and the body engaged
the story of the eye
Does this have to come to an end?
The whisper
the wide awake erotic potential of a pillow
the water against my skin.
and if I thought I had run out of things to kiss and tell about,
I realise now I have an entire back catalogue of the erotic potential of so many untapped parts of me.
The tremour in a hand
the thud of blood in my chest
the tug of a nipple,
or have I mentioned that one already.
A heady well from which to draw drink.
this now, a first sip and the rest to be savoured later.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Jealousy
This is the physical representation of an emotion. It is sudden and overwhelming like the moment before you vomit or the point at which you faint. There is a heat with it and the heat starts at the base of the neck where it meets the shoulders and spread upward and out until there is a general wash of heat like a creature clinging to your back. You step away, shrink tight. You become diminished all of a sudden like you have snapped up into an angry little ball. You do not want to be touched. You want to sever your ties with the world You have an overwhelming urge to hide on an island with paints and canvass and make colours shout out for you. A voice in your head says 'step down. you cannot win. don't try to compete'. It is a clear voice. It is your voice but it is not your voice, also. It takes so long to settle. A long conversation might talk you down. When you have calmed again you feel defensive. You are aware of your differences and your failings. You are happier to remain alone. You know that it is just jealousy and you are wise enough now to know that it is a reaction, but it is physical, like an illness and you must learn to ride it.
the end of pornography
Could this be the end of pornography for me?
We have been bumped back to the speed of dial up. There is no point trawling for my 30 seconds of stimulation. The interminable waiting is an end to any desire that I might have had in the first place. I search though my bookcase. I am looking for images. I am used to structuring my 2.5 minutes of pleasure around a series of images. I have books of photographs. I have magazines. But my finger finds the pretty blue spine of The Story of The Eye by Batailles and I shrug.
Batailles. A bull fight, blood, an eyeball, an egg. These are the images that lodge in my groin and keep me there. I flip through pages, aroused, and yet there is more to it than that. I can feel my brain engaging with the work at hand. This is more than a bodily response. This is a slideshow of ideas. I remember the 30 second clips that have randomly lodged themselves across the many spaces inside my computer, popping up in itunes, brazenly exposing themselves on my desktop or in documents. The plastic people who I would not desire if they were actually in a room with me. I suddenly want them all removed. I want their faces gone, their bodies. The casual disinterest of their love making vaguely hidden behind a facade of groans and wails and eye-rolling. I can not bear to think about their digital presence so close to the tapping of my fingers. I am repulsed by them.
Today it is all about literature. The words, the symbols, the ideas that are erotic in themselves. I want to be romanced by the interplay of the body and the mind. I sit in the aftermath and I am alive with the idea of sex, I am sharpened by it, instead of falling into the usual drugged haze of post-pleasure, and yes, Mr Batailles, with you at my fingertips, I could indeed go again.
We have been bumped back to the speed of dial up. There is no point trawling for my 30 seconds of stimulation. The interminable waiting is an end to any desire that I might have had in the first place. I search though my bookcase. I am looking for images. I am used to structuring my 2.5 minutes of pleasure around a series of images. I have books of photographs. I have magazines. But my finger finds the pretty blue spine of The Story of The Eye by Batailles and I shrug.
Batailles. A bull fight, blood, an eyeball, an egg. These are the images that lodge in my groin and keep me there. I flip through pages, aroused, and yet there is more to it than that. I can feel my brain engaging with the work at hand. This is more than a bodily response. This is a slideshow of ideas. I remember the 30 second clips that have randomly lodged themselves across the many spaces inside my computer, popping up in itunes, brazenly exposing themselves on my desktop or in documents. The plastic people who I would not desire if they were actually in a room with me. I suddenly want them all removed. I want their faces gone, their bodies. The casual disinterest of their love making vaguely hidden behind a facade of groans and wails and eye-rolling. I can not bear to think about their digital presence so close to the tapping of my fingers. I am repulsed by them.
Today it is all about literature. The words, the symbols, the ideas that are erotic in themselves. I want to be romanced by the interplay of the body and the mind. I sit in the aftermath and I am alive with the idea of sex, I am sharpened by it, instead of falling into the usual drugged haze of post-pleasure, and yes, Mr Batailles, with you at my fingertips, I could indeed go again.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
All about longing.
My new posts are all about longing. They edge towards the romantic. I am going soft in my post-40 fug. I wonder what I would be like, unleashed into the world. Would I mistake my lust for love, just as now I mistake love for lust. Would my choices become erratic? Sleeping with random strangers just to have someone to lie in bed with sipping tea? Is that actually such a bad thing?
My body betrays me, trudging towards its eventual decay, but I am more clear now about my desires, more confidant perhaps to delay your gratification till my own has been achieved. I will have more orgasms than I used to because I will demand them.
I have learned, also, about the erotic potential of conversation. Perhaps I will flirt. Perhaps I will demand that a potential lover has some knowledge of literature or film or art. We will talk for hours about Delillo or McCarthy and I will come to him or her, lubricated by Delillo's smell of burned toast or the scent of a McCarthy battle leaching out into a sunset.
All of this is anticipating an eventual fall from grace, the loss of my lover, my beautiful boy who talks passionately about films and the structure of a novel. Without his perfect body that matures like fine wine, I would be dissapointed by all the lovers who do not take the kind of care that he has developed over years of practice.
Today I am sad and endings seem inevitable. Inevitable too the sad, low creep towards loneliness. A consolidation of the sense of loss and longing that underlines my general day to day.
My body betrays me, trudging towards its eventual decay, but I am more clear now about my desires, more confidant perhaps to delay your gratification till my own has been achieved. I will have more orgasms than I used to because I will demand them.
I have learned, also, about the erotic potential of conversation. Perhaps I will flirt. Perhaps I will demand that a potential lover has some knowledge of literature or film or art. We will talk for hours about Delillo or McCarthy and I will come to him or her, lubricated by Delillo's smell of burned toast or the scent of a McCarthy battle leaching out into a sunset.
All of this is anticipating an eventual fall from grace, the loss of my lover, my beautiful boy who talks passionately about films and the structure of a novel. Without his perfect body that matures like fine wine, I would be dissapointed by all the lovers who do not take the kind of care that he has developed over years of practice.
Today I am sad and endings seem inevitable. Inevitable too the sad, low creep towards loneliness. A consolidation of the sense of loss and longing that underlines my general day to day.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Knee
Some part of your body in contact with mine. The brush of a hand in the small of my back, the warm brief pressure of your knee. This is all of my body pressed against yours, a screen kiss with the naked pushing of breasts against your chest, groins locked together. Of course it is never like that. It is always elbows poking and teeth clacking and a clumsy redistribution of weight. But this small point of contact is perfect in itself. All that I need, I say, but it is not. I indulge in the necessity of full body contact later, with my eyes closed and the little slide show flickering on the dark screen of my imagination.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
flirt
That little upward motion in my groin. Not in my stomach, it is lower than that, it is all centred around my inner thighs and my clitoris. And it will not leave me in peace. It is a distraction. A ride on a roller coaster that just keeps going around until I am forced to physically put a stop to it. The embarrassing rise and fall of my nipples in a public place. My body reeling out of control, and yet I have some control over it. My face is impassive. You wouldn't know about the intermittent contractions unless you placed your fingers just there. Small spasms that are not reflected in my face. I have practiced a rather bored attitude and I wear it now to mask the crazy oscillations of the flesh. I used to orgasm in public frequently. Once or twice on a bus, a small clench of the legs, a bored yawn to mask the moment of climax. I walk in front of you without looking back as if your physical presence means nothing to me. You noticed my breasts and I am suddenly unable to stand. All of this tumult and I glance up when someone says hello as if it is nothing. This tiny flirtation that is amplified by a body tuned to the subtlety of your nuance. I am your sympathetic vibration. Speak and I will hum in harmony with you.
Sexy Book
I want to know if you masturbated whilst reading my book. I want to know which parts aroused you. Surely you could not read it without thinking about sex at least once. It is not like you can check a manuscript for a cracked spine. I want to know that you have been reading a passage and become unsettled. I want to know that you had to take a break, locking yourself in the bathroom for a minute or two. This is the question I want to ask of all my readers. Did it make you come? Which parts and how many times.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Reading a Graphic novel
You are always looking for sex when you are reading a graphic novel. Firstly there are the panels, a few of them, three or four that show the protagonist in bed with someone. It is always furtive sex, abortive, drunken, unwanted, prematurely over, clumsy, full of apologies and ending in regret. There is something so truthful about the sex in a graphic novel. Of course they leave out the hysterical laughter, the play, the segue into some other game, but they leave in the stretchmarks and the middle age spread, or the teenage acne.
There is more to it, of course than the four or so panels of naked entanglement, there is the rolling over from one panel into the other. There is the physical negotiation of the space that often feels a little like a dance except if you imagine that you are naked and the artist is that awkward, prematurely ejaculating nerd in those three or four panels, and he often is. Or that girl who feels lost and empty and awkward and misunderstood. With a small shift of perspective, this dance is lovemaking, you and the artist via the slow waltz of images. You are physically embracing this story, you and he or she. You are following the same side step back step down step and you could physically merge with the ink, the colour overwhelms you, a muted colour, not a gloss, just a pale tan or blue or sepia.
And sometimes you are so enchanted with the work that you flip back to that single panel, the one where there is a breast displayed, or a flaccid penis beside a stain of semen on the sheets. So you masturbate, but not with your usual distracted leaping from clip to clip, abandoning the images ultimately and burying yourself in what should by now be a tired old scenario with your current crush. This time you settle on the quiet embarrassment of a single frame and you are there with it. You have entered it. You have become that sad flaccid boy in the disappointment of a bed. You have become the artist inking the panel, alone in his grandmother's basement with cold Chinese takeaway returning slowly to its glutenous roots at your elbow. You are colour and you are form and you are the slow dance of image after image paused for long enough that you can orgasm in sepia and washed-out blue.
There is more to it, of course than the four or so panels of naked entanglement, there is the rolling over from one panel into the other. There is the physical negotiation of the space that often feels a little like a dance except if you imagine that you are naked and the artist is that awkward, prematurely ejaculating nerd in those three or four panels, and he often is. Or that girl who feels lost and empty and awkward and misunderstood. With a small shift of perspective, this dance is lovemaking, you and the artist via the slow waltz of images. You are physically embracing this story, you and he or she. You are following the same side step back step down step and you could physically merge with the ink, the colour overwhelms you, a muted colour, not a gloss, just a pale tan or blue or sepia.
And sometimes you are so enchanted with the work that you flip back to that single panel, the one where there is a breast displayed, or a flaccid penis beside a stain of semen on the sheets. So you masturbate, but not with your usual distracted leaping from clip to clip, abandoning the images ultimately and burying yourself in what should by now be a tired old scenario with your current crush. This time you settle on the quiet embarrassment of a single frame and you are there with it. You have entered it. You have become that sad flaccid boy in the disappointment of a bed. You have become the artist inking the panel, alone in his grandmother's basement with cold Chinese takeaway returning slowly to its glutenous roots at your elbow. You are colour and you are form and you are the slow dance of image after image paused for long enough that you can orgasm in sepia and washed-out blue.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
magazine
I am not present in any of the photos in the magazine. There is no hint of me in the doe eyes or the protruding collar bones. I am not in the ads on the television or even in the junk mail. I am nowhere in the upmarket fruit shop down the road, and the cafes are empty of me. I am not in the eyes of my love who describes me and the reflection bares so little resemblance to the person I inhabit. There is the potential reflection of me in our conversation, but maybe not. It is easy to pretend at such a distance.
Unique perhaps, but lonely. Always lonely. So I know what it is like, the hollow loss of something that you have never had, that sense that one good thing could right so many faults that we find in ourselves.
A letter of rejection sends seismic waves that crack what may have seemed like strong foundations. All this is reparable. In time that one good thing will come to shore us up. Even the ravages of so much disappointment will be hidden by the greatness of this final success. But sometimes, when we are tired, or down or lonely, as we always will be lonely, we will wander down into the place of hurt and touch the fissures and remember the pain and the rejections and the insecurities that still scar us and this, my friend is the place where you and I find the strength in our work. Our writing sings with the kind of real hurt that just can't be magicked out of thin air.
So now I feel what you feel and it is not in the faces of the people in the magazines or on the television. It is not in the perfect bodies of the folk at Cirque or La Choquette. It is in you and it is in me and I look at you and I see a reflection of myself and perhaps it makes me less lonely. And I hope that you will feel less lonely too.
Unique perhaps, but lonely. Always lonely. So I know what it is like, the hollow loss of something that you have never had, that sense that one good thing could right so many faults that we find in ourselves.
A letter of rejection sends seismic waves that crack what may have seemed like strong foundations. All this is reparable. In time that one good thing will come to shore us up. Even the ravages of so much disappointment will be hidden by the greatness of this final success. But sometimes, when we are tired, or down or lonely, as we always will be lonely, we will wander down into the place of hurt and touch the fissures and remember the pain and the rejections and the insecurities that still scar us and this, my friend is the place where you and I find the strength in our work. Our writing sings with the kind of real hurt that just can't be magicked out of thin air.
So now I feel what you feel and it is not in the faces of the people in the magazines or on the television. It is not in the perfect bodies of the folk at Cirque or La Choquette. It is in you and it is in me and I look at you and I see a reflection of myself and perhaps it makes me less lonely. And I hope that you will feel less lonely too.
Resolution
New Years Resolution:
More words on paper
Learn from the writers around me
More new things
More music whilst making love
more music whilst walking
More reading
Only time for people who deserve it
Be kinder to myself
More outdoor activity
Less paranoia
No hating anyone new
No hating those old foes
More tollerence for those who chafe against me
Work hard to take those I love with me
Be kinder to myself
Less alcohol
Less rich food
More time in water
More time with books
More input
No letting go of the people who love me
Learn from the writers around me
More art
More making art
Be kinder to myself
More words on paper
Learn from the writers around me
More new things
More music whilst making love
more music whilst walking
More reading
Only time for people who deserve it
Be kinder to myself
More outdoor activity
Less paranoia
No hating anyone new
No hating those old foes
More tollerence for those who chafe against me
Work hard to take those I love with me
Be kinder to myself
Less alcohol
Less rich food
More time in water
More time with books
More input
No letting go of the people who love me
Learn from the writers around me
More art
More making art
Be kinder to myself
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)