cock

There is nothing left of him but his cock. When he rolls over in bed it is there, pressing against the mattress or else tenting the thin cotton sheet which he uses as a shield against mosquitoes. It is hot this summer. There is talk of climate change, waters rising. The south pole has melted and the water from it hangs in the air around him so that every breath is a thick humid lungful. He sweats and there are different scents on his skin. His hair smells like clothing left too long in the machine. His armpits are sharp as acid. The scent of his shoes precede him particularly after a run. There are these smells, but more than these, there is the scent of his cock.

prostitute

I will prostitute myself because I am dry. My mouth is a trap for sand and earth lice. My mind is a place where ants forage for meger scraps. My words are leaves, fallen but not yet swept up. I would tear it up and throw it away if it were something tangible, but this is not how the work is now, it is stored electronically, beamed across the continent with the tap of a key. There is nothing to tear and burn and even if I took a hammer to this computer there would be record of it somewhere. Nothing is undone.

So I know I cannot write it and I also cannot stop. I have nothing but this wasted opportunity. Without it I am not held to the world. I am dry, but I can lube up my cunt and fake my orgasm for all who will listen. Hear this sweet acceleration of breath. See the pulsing which I mimic with the tug of my muscles. Even my eyes ca roll back and my neck snap tight. And the words that spill out of my cunt-mouth can arouse the millions who truck through me.

All this from the sad recline of the couch I cannot lift myself up off. I have plummeted and I have dragged all potential stories with me. There is nothing that you do not see on the surface of my skin. I am a bag of stretchmarks and lesions and boils. I am a little constellation of moles and a burst blood vessel. I am thick flesh with a generous deposit of fatty cells. I am some hair, some fine lines marking out a frown. I am the prostitute and I am open for your business.

Red

I paint my nails red. I do this to match my lipstick. I wear lipstick because, sometimes there are nice things said when I wear it. I have bought a red dress and I feel pretty in it. These small things to cling on to. Perhaps when I hold my fingers up to the light and see the light sparkle on them I will forget the trip to Meyers, the 17 different pieces of clothing, none of which came even close to fitting, the back view and the side view and the moment when I thought I would have to call a sales assistant or tear the dress completely.

I concentrate on the gentle little strokes of the nail brush, and although I never wait till they are completely dry, it only causes damage to the very tips of them. Mostly they are just a nice shade of red. I wear lipstick and nail polish and I put on the red dress although I know that he will not notice any of these things. They make little difference. I am still the woman who could not fight her way out of the tailored dress. I am still the one in the side view, the back view, the front view, which I am at least more used to. I feel a little prettier, although he would not use that word if pressed. Not pretty. Not beautiful. But then he is not so shallow. He likes to sit across a table from me and talk about books. He likes it when I am not so serious or self conscious. When I abandon myself to laughter. The straight-man who comes out with the occasional one-liner. He likes me then. He likes me. And maybe this is enough.

Like and love

I don't remember why I thought I liked him. Now, with so much time elapsing every day, I don't remember. I must remind mysef of this when the next one comes and the one after that. We do survive it and then, when it is gone, we are confused. I don't remember why I liked him with that kind of breathless, sleepless passion. I don't remember why my body turned towards him like a flower. I do remember that he was there for me at times when I needed it. Not always, but on a few select occasions. I remember our shared taste in movies, our conversations about books and philosophy. I remember his ability to find me funny when I am not known for my humour.

I know about the next one. I know why I like him. I like him for his loyalty and his intelligence and most of all his care. He tries to say things that will make me feel better. Sometimes he fails. Still, he is always willing to try to keep the friendship safe and for this I love him. One day I will look at him and I will wonder what that was all about, that gnawing regret, that endless self-hate which is based merely on the fact that he will never want me in that way. The cycle is about rejection. I have learnt this. Finally I have learnt.

This time I will keep him for the things I like. This time it will not end as it has always ended, torn between what I will do and what I would want to do and smashed against the unweildy rock of what he would refuse to do if he were asked to anyway.

This time I will keep the things I want. I promise. Just wait and see.

self conscious

People will read this. Not many, but a few. This is a new way of looking at it all. I write and sometimes it is with that same reckless abandon, that late night, all alone frantic writing, the kind that is too raw and too real and yet the kind that you might recognise yourself in. Sometimes I post in that same breathless moment. Yes. This is how it is. Press Publish Post. And then a momentary relief because I have been honest with it.

But things have happened in the interim. People I do not know have come up to me, on the street, on a ferry, once in the foyer of a theatre. People have added their spin to what I have said, they have identified with me, placed themselves where I am, feel a sense of ownership for feelings that I am barely aware I have.

I write a post and press publish and I take a step back from the screen. I see the people reading this, I put myself in their place, I see myself through their eyes. I re-enter the site. I find the post. I press delete.

This is a new thing for me, this odd self censorship, this taking back of what I have just said.

jealousy

I am jealous that she has written the book about jealousy before me. I am jealous because it seems so natural and she got in first and I will be seen as a follower and not a leader.

I am jealous because that girl has lost so much weight and looks so much better and if I lost that much weight I would look so much better and I could have started my attempt at the same time but she got their first and now I am furious.

I am jealous because they all have so much more humour than I do, and yes, I know Cormac McCarthy is absolutely humourless and Cormac is the man, but seriously, I imagine I could at least be Jeffrey Eugenides, or Don Delillo for christsake, although Lorrie Moore is just a tad forced and I would hate to develop my humour as she has done.

I am jealous because they can all have conversations that are light and airy, probably referencing figures from popular culure and television shows. For this reason they are more entertaining.

I am jealous because I look in the mirror and see fat girl who is absolutely humourless and that fat girl is slaving over a book that will never be particualarly good and she knows it.

I am jealous because when you say goodnight to me I see your little light stay on in a different tab as you are saying goodnight to other girls. You said goodnight to me first. Goodnight, see you round, and saved the best until the last. I watch your little light lingering and lingering and all their little lights, your other chat friends and because I was dismissed first I feel insignificant. Because of this five, ten second delay I imagine it is because I have not lost all that weight as she has done, or because I am humourless when they are not humourless. These tiny little details, these sharp nails I gather to drive into my forehead, one by one by one.

Perversity - dolphin

Just a link on facebook. Who knows if any of this is true. I imagine the guy who wrote it sitting in his room, maybe stoned, maybe giggling. He says 'dolphins' and the word makes him laugh so much he snorts. Not having had much to do with dolphins I have no idea if his description of their genitalia is correct. Perhaps this is all fantasy, a dolphin penis is not so long, a dolphin's ejaculate is not so spectaculary delivered that it might cause a human damage. I read the part about a female dolphin and the contractions of its muscles in orgasm and it seems real because we know how muscular a dolphin's body is, but there is no way to know if this man is merely taking the piss. Love them, he says, show them care and love and every word he writes takes me closer to the idea of sex with a dolphin. I remember my encounter with a dugong, the soft muscled place on it's belly, the way it rubbed it's stomach along mine, it's flippers firm in a hug around my waist. And so it seems real, this dolphin love. And there are moments where I feel a stirring reading it. The idea of the muscular contractions, the penis edging inside. The strangeness of the coupling. The idea of the animal's consentual participation. All of this attracts me to the idea. I read the web page and the images settle in me. So maybe it is a lie. Maybe he is laughing at us, the man who posted this, but here I am still wondering.

Perversity - kissing

The stuff of poetry. The idea that every kiss will be like a movie kiss represented by stars and fireworks, a beating heart, a flush to the skin. But each kiss is just a taste of another person's body, we guage their pace and rhythm by the force of their lips and tongues. We imagine slipping other parts of our bodies into theirs. We play this out with the clicking of our teeth, the pressing of our tongues. This small slug of desire let loose in one another's mouth.

Most kissing isn't movie kissing. Most kissing is a confirmation that we are not in sync but even then we could find some common rhythm that is different to our own. That one time, though, that kiss of rhyme and meter and the poetry of the act was spread open for me. One kiss and my lips were sticky with it.

Perversity - kissing like waking

He kissed me. It was not the first time I had been kissed but this was new. Lip to lip as usual, no special tricks, nothing fancy but the combination of the softness of his lips, and his gentleness transformed the act into something that was not localised in my mouth alone. No tongue at first, just a full-lipped gentle touching of skin to skin. This new thing. This kiss that was nothing like the other kisses. This seemed less about sex and more about a conversation, a communication of one person's style and pace and needs, delivered by the barest breath. This new thing that tugged at a soft place in the centre of my chest and when his lips opened just a fraction, the wet touch of a tongue, the string tugged lower still. Deep belly tugs. Like nothing. Like more than sex could ever be.

Perversity - kissing came next

why is sex about the mouth. The lips. They say, her lips, and they are talking about her vagina. A wet smile of pink flesh opening wide. Anais nin writes a story about a woman who uses lipstick, traces the outline of her lips, a wet mouth buried in a cloud of pubic hair. She looks up and smiles and her cunt smiles, wide and red, twin mouths, but which one to chose. The same grinning, welcoming sentiment echoed by her actual lips, covered in lipstic, opening wetly and closin. A penis could come into either mouth. We have twin kisses and double penetration.

And so here I am again, leaping for the point of things too quickly, greedy for the finale and forgetting about the pleasures of the overture. Perhaps this is why I did not discover kissing until too late. The hot ball of desire is wound deep in my belly and this has always been the way for me. While other little girls kissed their pillow, I wrapped my legs around it and kissed it with that other mouth, the lips that I could never speak with, the ones that knew no language but sex. Kissing was for fairytales. Kissing was for sleeping girls, a heart-starter, like a shock used for the sad or the comatose. Kissing was not in my repertoire and often I turned my head and let the kisses fall on my neck where they would be wet and feirce, for I was awake before the shock of it could be applied. I was always wired for it. My nether lips hungry. I saved my lips for sweet smiles and clever words and kissed very little if at all.

So why all the poetry? Why all the hearts and flowers and the idea that a lack of kissing would lead to a kind of emotional death. Why the need for romance. What is a kiss and why do we lean towards it with such fervour. Today is the first day of my exporation into this. French kiss, kissing booth, eskimo kiss, the germs passed back and forth, cold sores, consumption, killed by a kiss. The whole hot mouth to mouth thing. I wonder why? kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss.