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.

What I have learned

I have learned things this year and sometimes I think that I am not yet ready to gather this small lessons, but if I delay it any longer I will forget. Mostly I have learned to stand by yourself. Stay fast by what you have written. I have found that there will be more people who like you when you have been deemed successful by some other party. There will be new friends. What I know now is that some of these new friends will be like yourself, dealing with the same things, finding their feet in a new world. Reach out to them because they are lost as you are lost and there is comfort in their company. But stand firm beside the ones who were with you before success. They are the ones who will last. They are forever, or at least for a longish time. This is just a beginning. I will think on it. There will be more to come.

Quiet end to the year

Everything is different. 2009 as trickling through our fingers and I look back on it and it was a year. It was the year. It was a year when I realised that success has its own problems. The insecurity that comes from high expectations, the inability to write because suddenly it seems I have a reputation to live up to. And all the joys. Not fucking up on book tour (except the toilet paper that one time but we won't get into that). The post card from Helen Garner. That surely was the best night. The wonderful quiet joy of recognition by someone I admire. This is the end of a year and it seems that everything has changed. It seems that I have grown older and wiser and calmer.

I thank my friends for this. The ones that have claimed my sucesses as their own. My solid army of supporters, and amongst them the few that I call my family.

Now 2010. Time perhaps for some new year resolutions. The next book / books and a commitment to keep myself honest. I promise to use this venue to keep track of my progress. It worked for the last book. Let it work for this. A return to the furious vagina.

More research. More reading. More good books beside my bed, less job-books as I consider myself more a writer than a bookseller. A month of solid work in Januar. Less chat, more words. The internet will be my friend and not a mere distraction.

2010. Lets look forward to 2010.