Usually, in the early morning silence of 35 Windcrest Lane, Dianna Jameson could hear his heart. 35 Windcrest Lane was located so far from the main road (or any other neighbors or sign of life that could create any sort of unseemly—or even seemly—early morning noise) that the place was silent as the grave until either Dianna Jameson or her lover, Malcolm got out of bed and started making their own various early morning noises—the opening of doors, the slamming up of the toilet seat (or, in Dianna Jameson’s case, if she happened to supersede her lover, Malcolm in the bathroom that morning, the slamming DOWN of the toilet seat), and the relieving of bladders. Since Dianna Jameson was often the first to rise, she could usually hear the beating of her lover, Malcolm’s heart when she woke.
But this morning was different. When she opened her eyes and stretched her slender form from head to toe, pressing her fingertips against the headboard and pointing her toes toward the end of the mattress, something felt strangely curious to her. Or rather, something SOUNDED strangely curious to her. She concentrated, imagining her ears opening like rosebuds to absorb every sound in the room. At first, she could not identify what unsettled her so. She heard the steady sound of her lover, Malcolm’s breathing—in, out, in, out… She heard the creak of the mattress springs as they strained against her languid movements. She heard the beating of—ah. That was it. She did NOT hear the beating of her lover, Malcolm’s heart (which, as I have previously mentioned, was something she was quite accustomed to hearing each morning).
In a panic, Dianna Jameson pounced on her lover and shook him violently. “Malcolm, you festering corpse! What have you DONE to yourself this time?” (It was well known to Dianna Jameson and her kitsch circle of even kitschier friends that her lover, Malcolm had a propensity for experimentation with anything and almost everything that could cause him bodily harm. He vastly preferred illegal substances for this purpose, with a partiality towards injectable heroin).
Malcolm’s eyes sprang open with an instant, wild expression of guilt and horror. “What? What, woman?” He looked about him frantically, his head tossing in every direction imaginable (other than backwards, since it is quite difficult to rotate one’s head one hundred and eighty degrees, even for experienced heroin addicts), searching desperately for the source of Dianna Jameson’s fervor.
“Where’s your heart gone, you rat? I can’t hear it! What have you done with it?” Dianna Jameson had seated herself on her lover’s chest, her thighs clenching his sides tightly as if she were trying to keep him alive in this way, which, I guess you could say, she was, since he’d apparently misplaced his heart.
Malcolm struggled to prop himself up on his elbows (a struggle because of Dianna Jameson’s location on his person) and peered inquisitively down at his bare chest. Dianna Jameson peered with him, and they both discovered, much to their confusion, that everything appeared quite normal in that region. His skin was unblemished and smooth, and there was no sign that a heart—or anything else, for that matter, had been extracted from his chest at any point in time.
Still convinced that she had not been able to hear her lover’s heart when she woke, Dianna Jameson pressed her ear to his chest. She bit her lip and closed her eyes, concentrating as hard as she could possibly allow herself, listening for the steady thud of ventricles pounding open an closed, propelling blood through heart and veins.
She heard nothing.
With great consternation, she swatted her lover, Malcolm about the head and pulled at his hair, shouting that he was an unbearable fuckhead and if he didn’t figure out where his heart had got to, she would personally see to it that he died a most uncomfortable and gruesome death for putting her through such agony.
Her lover, Malcolm managed to extricate himself from beneath her wildly flailing body and retreat to the bathroom, where he shut and locked the door tightly, slammed the toilet seat up and began relieving his bladder with a sigh of satisfaction. He didn’t exactly mind that his heart was missing. He misplaced everything he owned on a regular basis, and his heart was nothing special. Obviously, he could go about living and breathing and functioning, and of course, doing heroin without it—although the lack of an organ to pump blood through his body could possibly mean that he’d have to begin smoking the substance instead of injecting it, as he doubted it would have the same effect it had had when he was in possession of a heart.
“YOU BETTER FIND THAT HEART, YOU ASSHOLE!” Dianna Jameson shouted to her lover, Malcolm through the bathroom door, kicking it violently to emphasize her point.
Malcolm simply flushed the toilet in response and refused to open the door.
Dianna Jameson, frustrated at the apparent loss of her lover’s heart and not yet ready to take part in the day, seeing as she had not completed her morning stretches, stomped back into the bedroom in protest.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Monday, October 6, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Rusty Fire Arms
His skin is tanned golden brown and I can see underneath it the white of his bones, shaping his wide shoulders as he leans toward the fire in the dark. Blonde hair falling into blue eyes. My fingers itch to grab hold of those tousled locks, to pull him to me, our desperate breath warm in each other’s ears. A flash of firelight, angry orange and red, on his bare chest. He stretches and leans against the tree, linking his fingers behind his head, his elbows sharp points jutting into darkness.
He is mine. I will not share him. Ever. My chest tightens at the thought of him leaving, disappearing into the mountains to breathe with the trees there. I know he will go; nothing I say or do ever makes him stay, but still, I try.
The night smells of charred pine and heated skin. It presses against my face, warm and urgent.
“Don’t go,” I say, my voice crackling in my throat like burning paper, rasping across the fire to his sun-burnt ears. “Don’t go this time.”
His eyes flash blue at me, burning my skin hotter than the fire between us. He bites his lip, tosses his head to clear the hair from his eyes and reaches into the pocket of his worn blue jeans, his arm whispering against the bare skin of his torso. He pulls his hand from his pocket, uncurls his calloused fingers. In his open palm, his silver Leatherman knife glints in the firelight.
His arm is long, the muscles shaped, tight and smooth beneath his skin. I am beside him now, my fingers running the length of his arm, tracing the blue lines of veins until I meet his hand. I touch the Leatherman and fierce gooseflesh spreads from my fingertips, up my arm, and across my chest; the Leatherman is freezing, like it’s been pressed against ice cubs in his pocket.
He jerks the Leatherman away from me possessively. It is his. He will not share it. Ever. With a simple flick of his wrist, he dislodges the sharp, cold knife from the depths of the Leatherman, clutching it tightly in his left hand. He shifts his body away from me slightly and presses the knife blade into the muscle of his shoulder where it begins the gentle slope into his neck. Across the fire again, I watch as he saws into his arm, the small silver blade of the kinfe sinking into the smooth sun-browned skin. Dark red blood, black in the firelight, pools to the surface of his skin, welling and seeping from the gash, which reaches now from his armpit to the middle of his shoulder blade. Blood streams run down his arm, across his chest, between his fingers. The thick, red liquid drips into the dirt beneath him, the sound of sit echoing off the trees and melting into the cracking of the flames between us. He smells of iron and fire, charred and sharp.
He turns his head to me, still sawing the knife deeper and deeper into his own flesh. His face is blanched but blank, and his eyes lock onto mine, sparking and shining, a clear blue color, almost black in the firelight. His right arm hangs, gaping, from his torso, the bone a prefect white circle, clearly sawed through. Only bloody strings of muscle, sinew and skin keep the limb from breaking away completely. The fingers of his right hand, though, are still moving, his fist clenching and unclenching, his fingernails stained red with the blood pooling in his palm.
With one last jerk of the knife, so violent that even his hair shakes in front of his eyes, the remaining skin and muscle are fully severed and the right arm comes completely free of his body, floating slowly to the ground beside him.
Carefully, he leans down and uses his left hand to roll the amputated limb up his leg, into his lap, the hand now limp, fingers flapping with each rotation. He begins to gently fold the right arm into neat squares, each one smaller than the first. Blood seeps out each time he creases the fold, staining his pants and sprinkling the ground around him. When his arm has been folded to the size of my pocket, all the blood gone from it, he tosses the souvenir across the fire to me.
I catch it, cradling it gently in my hands, my waist tingling with the remembered warmth of that arm, usually flung across my body while its owner sleeps with reckless abandon behind me.
“Take good care of that,” he says, his voice muffled by the thread he holds in his mouth as he stitches up the stump left by his amputation. “I’ll need it back someday.”
I slide the neatly folded arm into my pocket. “I won’t let it rust,” I whisper.
When I look up, he is gone, the scent of blood and sun-burnt skin left by him smelling more potent than the burning wood. I call for him, wanting desperately to give him something of my own to take into the mountains, but he doesn’t answer. Only the wind in the trees, rushing through the leaves and blowing the smoke of the fire into my face.
“This arm isn’t good enough,” I say to the empty space he has left behind. “I want a leg, too.”
He is mine. I will not share him. Ever. My chest tightens at the thought of him leaving, disappearing into the mountains to breathe with the trees there. I know he will go; nothing I say or do ever makes him stay, but still, I try.
The night smells of charred pine and heated skin. It presses against my face, warm and urgent.
“Don’t go,” I say, my voice crackling in my throat like burning paper, rasping across the fire to his sun-burnt ears. “Don’t go this time.”
His eyes flash blue at me, burning my skin hotter than the fire between us. He bites his lip, tosses his head to clear the hair from his eyes and reaches into the pocket of his worn blue jeans, his arm whispering against the bare skin of his torso. He pulls his hand from his pocket, uncurls his calloused fingers. In his open palm, his silver Leatherman knife glints in the firelight.
His arm is long, the muscles shaped, tight and smooth beneath his skin. I am beside him now, my fingers running the length of his arm, tracing the blue lines of veins until I meet his hand. I touch the Leatherman and fierce gooseflesh spreads from my fingertips, up my arm, and across my chest; the Leatherman is freezing, like it’s been pressed against ice cubs in his pocket.
He jerks the Leatherman away from me possessively. It is his. He will not share it. Ever. With a simple flick of his wrist, he dislodges the sharp, cold knife from the depths of the Leatherman, clutching it tightly in his left hand. He shifts his body away from me slightly and presses the knife blade into the muscle of his shoulder where it begins the gentle slope into his neck. Across the fire again, I watch as he saws into his arm, the small silver blade of the kinfe sinking into the smooth sun-browned skin. Dark red blood, black in the firelight, pools to the surface of his skin, welling and seeping from the gash, which reaches now from his armpit to the middle of his shoulder blade. Blood streams run down his arm, across his chest, between his fingers. The thick, red liquid drips into the dirt beneath him, the sound of sit echoing off the trees and melting into the cracking of the flames between us. He smells of iron and fire, charred and sharp.
He turns his head to me, still sawing the knife deeper and deeper into his own flesh. His face is blanched but blank, and his eyes lock onto mine, sparking and shining, a clear blue color, almost black in the firelight. His right arm hangs, gaping, from his torso, the bone a prefect white circle, clearly sawed through. Only bloody strings of muscle, sinew and skin keep the limb from breaking away completely. The fingers of his right hand, though, are still moving, his fist clenching and unclenching, his fingernails stained red with the blood pooling in his palm.
With one last jerk of the knife, so violent that even his hair shakes in front of his eyes, the remaining skin and muscle are fully severed and the right arm comes completely free of his body, floating slowly to the ground beside him.
Carefully, he leans down and uses his left hand to roll the amputated limb up his leg, into his lap, the hand now limp, fingers flapping with each rotation. He begins to gently fold the right arm into neat squares, each one smaller than the first. Blood seeps out each time he creases the fold, staining his pants and sprinkling the ground around him. When his arm has been folded to the size of my pocket, all the blood gone from it, he tosses the souvenir across the fire to me.
I catch it, cradling it gently in my hands, my waist tingling with the remembered warmth of that arm, usually flung across my body while its owner sleeps with reckless abandon behind me.
“Take good care of that,” he says, his voice muffled by the thread he holds in his mouth as he stitches up the stump left by his amputation. “I’ll need it back someday.”
I slide the neatly folded arm into my pocket. “I won’t let it rust,” I whisper.
When I look up, he is gone, the scent of blood and sun-burnt skin left by him smelling more potent than the burning wood. I call for him, wanting desperately to give him something of my own to take into the mountains, but he doesn’t answer. Only the wind in the trees, rushing through the leaves and blowing the smoke of the fire into my face.
“This arm isn’t good enough,” I say to the empty space he has left behind. “I want a leg, too.”
Memoirs. Endings. Jack Kerouac (The Obsession Continues).
So I've been thinking about memoirs. Or creative non-fiction. Whatever you want to call it. And what I want to know is, how do you end a book that's about a life, when it's still happening? How do you sit there, Mr. Kerouac, in front of your type writer and think, "This story is about my life and my life is still happening and how do I keep myself from writing this forever and ever and never end it?"
I know people do it all the time; end stories about their lives. Hello, memoirs. But how do you choose where to end it? I can't even figure out where to end my novel--which is FICTIONAL, which means I can do anything I want with it (or really, anything my characters want). I could have a fucking fire-breathing dragon swoop in and rain destruction down on the little Philadelphia suburb my story takes place in. Probably no one would publish it if I ended it like that, but I could, if I wanted to.
But how do you choose? How do you say, "Oh, this is a good place to stop writing about my life," and make it work like Kerouac does?
See, my problem is that in general, I'm terrible at endings. I think it's because I'm afraid to make that final decision, put that last period down. Because isn't there more? There's always more. I want the story to keep going. I always hate it when a good movie ends, or when I reach the last page of an amazing book. I get so attached to the characters, their lives, the place, that I never want to stop. There has to be more, right? My mind just goes nuts with all the other things that could happen.
So I can't stop. I can never stop writing.
Which doesn't solve my problem with endings at all.
I know people do it all the time; end stories about their lives. Hello, memoirs. But how do you choose where to end it? I can't even figure out where to end my novel--which is FICTIONAL, which means I can do anything I want with it (or really, anything my characters want). I could have a fucking fire-breathing dragon swoop in and rain destruction down on the little Philadelphia suburb my story takes place in. Probably no one would publish it if I ended it like that, but I could, if I wanted to.
But how do you choose? How do you say, "Oh, this is a good place to stop writing about my life," and make it work like Kerouac does?
See, my problem is that in general, I'm terrible at endings. I think it's because I'm afraid to make that final decision, put that last period down. Because isn't there more? There's always more. I want the story to keep going. I always hate it when a good movie ends, or when I reach the last page of an amazing book. I get so attached to the characters, their lives, the place, that I never want to stop. There has to be more, right? My mind just goes nuts with all the other things that could happen.
So I can't stop. I can never stop writing.
Which doesn't solve my problem with endings at all.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Proof of my Insanity
Dear young man who might still be a boy and who makes me feel like I'm in high school again (which, I promise, is a bad thing), but who makes me laugh and lets me pull his hair,
You are my current greatest perplexity. How young you are, tall one; still floating between boyhood and manhood, on the cusp of adult. Where did you come from, with your long hair and mischievous eyes? What wave brought you to me, mad one?
You're bringing out the worst in me, tall boy. I mean, you're making me want to leave the things I have to do in the dust, and this other girl you spend time with, that makes big fat green jealousy rip through me until my stomach turns and twists itself into knots.
I hate you, tall boy, for your height and your ponytail and your wide, wide smile. For your big hands and the grin that creeps across your face after I kiss you. I hate you for making me stand on tiptoes to press my lips to yours, and for the way my legs fit so perfectly around your hips. I hate you for the lean muscles of your arms that lift me so effortlessly, and for the dark track of hair on your stomach that leads down past the waist of your jeans. I hate the way you fit so easily into what I've always wanted, and the way you are so unlike anything I've ever had.
You make my blood run hot, tall boy, rushing through my veins like rivers and flushing my face until I can't help but smile. I can't help but do a lot of things when it comes to you, and not all of them are so innocent as a smile. You make me so angry, tall boy. At you, but then not at you. And at myself.
Here's the thing: I want everything. I realize that's an incredibly broad statement, so let me both elaborate and erase all doubt of my complete and utter girlish insanity.
I want you to love me, but I don't want to love you. I want you desperate for the smell of my skin and the way I wrap my legs around you.
I want to crawl inside your skin, stretch my bones until they match yours, until our bones are twins, side by side beneath your warm muscles and smooth skin.
I want to nestle into your head, make my bed behind your eyes. I want to see what you see, hear the things you think, the secrets you keep.
I want hugs given with reckless abandon and kisses on the neck. I want late night phone calls, laughing. I want the feel of your eyes on me, even when I'm not looking.
You burn my brain with the way you are. I want to know you; I want to stop the games and move everyone else around us out of the picture so you and I can sit down and I can know all about you.
Where do you lay your head at night, tall boy? Do your feet dangle off the end of your mattress, limp with sleep? Do you sprawl across your bed, taking up every inch, leaving no room for an extra body to curl beside yours? Or do you make yourself small and stiff, unmoving and rigid beneath your blankets? I imagine you usually on your back, mouth open and slack. Maybe a thin line of drool pools at the corner of your mouth and a light snore pushes in and out from between your lips, and your arms are spread wide, chest bare, while your skinny body sinks into your mattress. Or maybe you sleep on your stomach, arms by your sides, palms up, face smashed against your pillow.
Why do I want to know how you sleep, tall boy? Because I want to lie beside you. Make spoons with me, tall boy! I want to feel the knobs of your knees fit into the backs of mine, your hips and stomach against the small of my back, your ribs against my shoulder blades. I want to tangle my cold feet with yours and feel your breath in my hair. I want to know what your skin feels like between my sheets.
I will write you into these pages. My words will tell the world about how easily you tear the neck of a guitar with your angry, thrashing metal notes. My words will tell the world about the smoothness of your lips and the peace I felt when I rested my forehead against your temple. In a story, I will capture your laugh and the eagerness with which you speak. I will capture the way you walk, or play football in shoes with no lace, or how your shirts, all too big for you, hang off your rolling shoulders.
But in doing this, tall boy, I'll expose myself to the world. Everyone will know how I am just like the ones that came before and the ones that will come after. They will all see that perhaps I like you a little too much, and that you are probably too young for me, and that you will inevitably make me crazy with your boyishness, but because that hasn't happened yet, I am pretending it never will.
I am just waiting for the words that live for you in my head to run out so that I can find a new skinny, tall boy to write about. I hope this one has tattoos and isn't so young and I hope his kisses make yours fly out of my head like they never happened, so that you and I can just be friends and I don't have to get so hot and bothered to kiss you.
I am trying to give up on you, tall boy, but I am not doing so well because all I want to do is run my fingers through your long, straight hair, pulling your head back so I can kiss your jaw and feel the warmth of your chest seep into mine.
You are my current greatest perplexity. How young you are, tall one; still floating between boyhood and manhood, on the cusp of adult. Where did you come from, with your long hair and mischievous eyes? What wave brought you to me, mad one?
You're bringing out the worst in me, tall boy. I mean, you're making me want to leave the things I have to do in the dust, and this other girl you spend time with, that makes big fat green jealousy rip through me until my stomach turns and twists itself into knots.
I hate you, tall boy, for your height and your ponytail and your wide, wide smile. For your big hands and the grin that creeps across your face after I kiss you. I hate you for making me stand on tiptoes to press my lips to yours, and for the way my legs fit so perfectly around your hips. I hate you for the lean muscles of your arms that lift me so effortlessly, and for the dark track of hair on your stomach that leads down past the waist of your jeans. I hate the way you fit so easily into what I've always wanted, and the way you are so unlike anything I've ever had.
You make my blood run hot, tall boy, rushing through my veins like rivers and flushing my face until I can't help but smile. I can't help but do a lot of things when it comes to you, and not all of them are so innocent as a smile. You make me so angry, tall boy. At you, but then not at you. And at myself.
Here's the thing: I want everything. I realize that's an incredibly broad statement, so let me both elaborate and erase all doubt of my complete and utter girlish insanity.
I want you to love me, but I don't want to love you. I want you desperate for the smell of my skin and the way I wrap my legs around you.
I want to crawl inside your skin, stretch my bones until they match yours, until our bones are twins, side by side beneath your warm muscles and smooth skin.
I want to nestle into your head, make my bed behind your eyes. I want to see what you see, hear the things you think, the secrets you keep.
I want hugs given with reckless abandon and kisses on the neck. I want late night phone calls, laughing. I want the feel of your eyes on me, even when I'm not looking.
You burn my brain with the way you are. I want to know you; I want to stop the games and move everyone else around us out of the picture so you and I can sit down and I can know all about you.
Where do you lay your head at night, tall boy? Do your feet dangle off the end of your mattress, limp with sleep? Do you sprawl across your bed, taking up every inch, leaving no room for an extra body to curl beside yours? Or do you make yourself small and stiff, unmoving and rigid beneath your blankets? I imagine you usually on your back, mouth open and slack. Maybe a thin line of drool pools at the corner of your mouth and a light snore pushes in and out from between your lips, and your arms are spread wide, chest bare, while your skinny body sinks into your mattress. Or maybe you sleep on your stomach, arms by your sides, palms up, face smashed against your pillow.
Why do I want to know how you sleep, tall boy? Because I want to lie beside you. Make spoons with me, tall boy! I want to feel the knobs of your knees fit into the backs of mine, your hips and stomach against the small of my back, your ribs against my shoulder blades. I want to tangle my cold feet with yours and feel your breath in my hair. I want to know what your skin feels like between my sheets.
I will write you into these pages. My words will tell the world about how easily you tear the neck of a guitar with your angry, thrashing metal notes. My words will tell the world about the smoothness of your lips and the peace I felt when I rested my forehead against your temple. In a story, I will capture your laugh and the eagerness with which you speak. I will capture the way you walk, or play football in shoes with no lace, or how your shirts, all too big for you, hang off your rolling shoulders.
But in doing this, tall boy, I'll expose myself to the world. Everyone will know how I am just like the ones that came before and the ones that will come after. They will all see that perhaps I like you a little too much, and that you are probably too young for me, and that you will inevitably make me crazy with your boyishness, but because that hasn't happened yet, I am pretending it never will.
I am just waiting for the words that live for you in my head to run out so that I can find a new skinny, tall boy to write about. I hope this one has tattoos and isn't so young and I hope his kisses make yours fly out of my head like they never happened, so that you and I can just be friends and I don't have to get so hot and bothered to kiss you.
I am trying to give up on you, tall boy, but I am not doing so well because all I want to do is run my fingers through your long, straight hair, pulling your head back so I can kiss your jaw and feel the warmth of your chest seep into mine.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Gay Man of my Dreams
I may or may not have lost my virginity to a gay man. He may or may not have been my first love.
It’s not like I was desperately head over heels can’t live without him gonna die without him in love. And it’s not like he was flaming flamboyant fashion slave stereotypical fudge pounding gay. He just liked the cock; so we had at least one thing in common.
The thing about Dustin, he was beautiful. Beautiful in that slightly dirty hippie move to Portland and clean up beaches and smoke lots of pot kind of way. He was beautiful in a wear lots of t-shirts and don’t cut your hair or shave your beard kind of way. Dustin was long and lean and his eyes were blue—clear, summer sky over Lake Michigan blue, and when he looked at you, he looked in to you. You know that look, the one that hooks into the pit of your stomach and pulls, or fire-cracks straight down to your groin and you feel that slight pounding twinge and ooooooh. Yeah, that look.
When we were growing up across the street from each other, before he knew he was gay and before I knew what an orgasm felt like, Dustin and I would watch each other. Like, when we were both out in our front yards at the same time and it was hot and summer and you were always sweating in the sunshine. I’d stand there in my bathing suit with the hose, spraying down our dry, sun-baked grass, or my dry, sun-baked brothers, or the dry, sun-baked little kids I babysat. And Dustin would sit on his trampoline, shirt off, reading a book. Or he’d kneel over on the lawn, pulling weeds out of the flowerbeds with his mom. And I would stare across the road, imagining the sweat collecting between his sharp shoulder blades and wonder what it felt like to kiss him. And he would stare across the road, imagining the sweat pooling between my breasts, and wonder how it felt to have a pair.
That summer, the heat just hung, thick and wet. You could feel it when you breathed, settling into your throat. I kissed Dustin a lot that summer, tangled my fingers in his shaggy hair and wracked my bony hips against his on his trampoline. It was always dark, after midnight, but never any cooler than the sticky days. Our bodies slipped and slid against each other’s, sweaty chest against sweaty breasts. I was fifteen and he was sixteen, and I couldn’t figure out why he never tried to have sex with me, why his fingers never found their way into my shorts, why our trysts on the trampoline involved only kissing and writhing and once—only once, his penis in my mouth (which lasted about thirty seconds and never happened again, until I graduated high school and conquered my fellatio phobia).
I called him my boyfriend and he called me his girlfriend and we didn’t have sex. That summer turned into that school year and I still called him my boyfriend and he still called me his girlfriend and we still did not have sex. And it seemed like he was afraid of my vagina. But I wasn’t particularly worried about it, as long as I had a boyfriend, a cute one. As long as someone was kissing me.
But then that school year turned into the next one, his senior year, and I still called him my boyfriend and took him on family vacations and went on his, and we snuck into each other’s beds in the middle of the night, but we didn’t have sex, and he was still afraid of my vagina.
“What gives, Dustin?” I groaned, frustrated and sweaty, the night after he’d been accepted to the University of Michigan. I’d spent almost an hour between his sheets, trying to take his boxers off, and he’d spent almost an hour artfully avoiding me.
“What do you mean?” He asked, sitting up and scratching his head, his fingers disappearing into his long, tangled hair.
I rolled my eyes. No longer was I the fifteen-year-old girl, happy to satisfy while remaining unsatisfied herself. I was seventeen, and smarter, more observant. I’d seen the way my boyfriend looked at the guys I worked with when he came to my restaurant, the way his eyes tightened with longing, the way his pupils dilated at the sight of their lean muscles and playful smiles. He didn’t look at me like that. He never had. I was beginning to suspect…something.
“I WANT TO HAVE SEX!!!!” I whispered loudly. “WITH YOU!!!!”
Dustin’s eyes widened and he sat up, the covers gathering at his waist. The moonlight through the window slid across his chest as it heaved. He looked at the wall, at his “Labyrinth” poster, then out the window, then at his hands, his bookshelf; anywhere but at me.
“Why don’t you want to have sex, Dustin?”
He said nothing.
“Dustin?”
“FINE!” He shouted, and I slammed my hand over his mouth. “Fine,” he whispered when I took my hand away. “Let’s have sex.”
So we did. And it was terrible. Limbs in all the wrong places, skin making strange noises where we rubbed together, and I didn’t come. Which is normal. But neither did he. Which isn’t so normal.
But we stayed together. And we had regular, bad sex. He graduated in June and we stayed together through the summer. The night before he left for Michigan, we lay on his trampoline together. It was the end of August and the nights were cooling off. We held hands and stared at our feet. We’d talked about whether or not we’d stay together when he went away to college, we’d talked about it all summer, but we’d never reached a conclusion. I was expecting him to break up with me, to give me the standard “We’ll be so far away from each other” speech that all my friends had gotten from their older boyfriends.
“I need to tell you something,” he said after we’d sat in silence for a while.
“I know,” I said. “We’re breaking up, aren’t we?”
He nodded.
“Because you’re going to Michigan, and I’m staying here, right?” I looked over at him, chewing my lip to keep the tears away.
He shook his head. “No, not because of that.”
This, I wasn’t prepared for. “What?”
“It’s not because of that. The distance doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Just shut up for a second and let me talk, would you?” His voice was wound tight in his throat.
I shut up, tilted my head back and looked up at the sky, and felt hot tears sliding down my cheeks.
“It’s just…” He paused, for a long time. Then, he pulled my chin, turned my head toward his face and looked right into my eyes, ice blue lasers locking in on me. “It’s just that I’m gay.”
My vision went white, then black. Little red lines danced across Dustin’s face and swirled around in the trees above our heads. My ears buzzed and whined, high-pitched and loud. “What?” I said, my body swaying.
Dustin tightened his grip on my chin. “I’m gay,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“I. LIKE. GUYS.”
He let go of my chin and I let myself fall onto my back, the impact bouncing both our bodies on the trampoline. I was quiet for a long, long time. Dustin lay down beside me, rested his head against mine and sighed.
“Are you really gay, Dust?” I asked after a while.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I definitely want to have sex with guys.”
“Me too,” I said, and we laughed.
It’s not like I was desperately head over heels can’t live without him gonna die without him in love. And it’s not like he was flaming flamboyant fashion slave stereotypical fudge pounding gay. He just liked the cock; so we had at least one thing in common.
The thing about Dustin, he was beautiful. Beautiful in that slightly dirty hippie move to Portland and clean up beaches and smoke lots of pot kind of way. He was beautiful in a wear lots of t-shirts and don’t cut your hair or shave your beard kind of way. Dustin was long and lean and his eyes were blue—clear, summer sky over Lake Michigan blue, and when he looked at you, he looked in to you. You know that look, the one that hooks into the pit of your stomach and pulls, or fire-cracks straight down to your groin and you feel that slight pounding twinge and ooooooh. Yeah, that look.
When we were growing up across the street from each other, before he knew he was gay and before I knew what an orgasm felt like, Dustin and I would watch each other. Like, when we were both out in our front yards at the same time and it was hot and summer and you were always sweating in the sunshine. I’d stand there in my bathing suit with the hose, spraying down our dry, sun-baked grass, or my dry, sun-baked brothers, or the dry, sun-baked little kids I babysat. And Dustin would sit on his trampoline, shirt off, reading a book. Or he’d kneel over on the lawn, pulling weeds out of the flowerbeds with his mom. And I would stare across the road, imagining the sweat collecting between his sharp shoulder blades and wonder what it felt like to kiss him. And he would stare across the road, imagining the sweat pooling between my breasts, and wonder how it felt to have a pair.
That summer, the heat just hung, thick and wet. You could feel it when you breathed, settling into your throat. I kissed Dustin a lot that summer, tangled my fingers in his shaggy hair and wracked my bony hips against his on his trampoline. It was always dark, after midnight, but never any cooler than the sticky days. Our bodies slipped and slid against each other’s, sweaty chest against sweaty breasts. I was fifteen and he was sixteen, and I couldn’t figure out why he never tried to have sex with me, why his fingers never found their way into my shorts, why our trysts on the trampoline involved only kissing and writhing and once—only once, his penis in my mouth (which lasted about thirty seconds and never happened again, until I graduated high school and conquered my fellatio phobia).
I called him my boyfriend and he called me his girlfriend and we didn’t have sex. That summer turned into that school year and I still called him my boyfriend and he still called me his girlfriend and we still did not have sex. And it seemed like he was afraid of my vagina. But I wasn’t particularly worried about it, as long as I had a boyfriend, a cute one. As long as someone was kissing me.
But then that school year turned into the next one, his senior year, and I still called him my boyfriend and took him on family vacations and went on his, and we snuck into each other’s beds in the middle of the night, but we didn’t have sex, and he was still afraid of my vagina.
“What gives, Dustin?” I groaned, frustrated and sweaty, the night after he’d been accepted to the University of Michigan. I’d spent almost an hour between his sheets, trying to take his boxers off, and he’d spent almost an hour artfully avoiding me.
“What do you mean?” He asked, sitting up and scratching his head, his fingers disappearing into his long, tangled hair.
I rolled my eyes. No longer was I the fifteen-year-old girl, happy to satisfy while remaining unsatisfied herself. I was seventeen, and smarter, more observant. I’d seen the way my boyfriend looked at the guys I worked with when he came to my restaurant, the way his eyes tightened with longing, the way his pupils dilated at the sight of their lean muscles and playful smiles. He didn’t look at me like that. He never had. I was beginning to suspect…something.
“I WANT TO HAVE SEX!!!!” I whispered loudly. “WITH YOU!!!!”
Dustin’s eyes widened and he sat up, the covers gathering at his waist. The moonlight through the window slid across his chest as it heaved. He looked at the wall, at his “Labyrinth” poster, then out the window, then at his hands, his bookshelf; anywhere but at me.
“Why don’t you want to have sex, Dustin?”
He said nothing.
“Dustin?”
“FINE!” He shouted, and I slammed my hand over his mouth. “Fine,” he whispered when I took my hand away. “Let’s have sex.”
So we did. And it was terrible. Limbs in all the wrong places, skin making strange noises where we rubbed together, and I didn’t come. Which is normal. But neither did he. Which isn’t so normal.
But we stayed together. And we had regular, bad sex. He graduated in June and we stayed together through the summer. The night before he left for Michigan, we lay on his trampoline together. It was the end of August and the nights were cooling off. We held hands and stared at our feet. We’d talked about whether or not we’d stay together when he went away to college, we’d talked about it all summer, but we’d never reached a conclusion. I was expecting him to break up with me, to give me the standard “We’ll be so far away from each other” speech that all my friends had gotten from their older boyfriends.
“I need to tell you something,” he said after we’d sat in silence for a while.
“I know,” I said. “We’re breaking up, aren’t we?”
He nodded.
“Because you’re going to Michigan, and I’m staying here, right?” I looked over at him, chewing my lip to keep the tears away.
He shook his head. “No, not because of that.”
This, I wasn’t prepared for. “What?”
“It’s not because of that. The distance doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Just shut up for a second and let me talk, would you?” His voice was wound tight in his throat.
I shut up, tilted my head back and looked up at the sky, and felt hot tears sliding down my cheeks.
“It’s just…” He paused, for a long time. Then, he pulled my chin, turned my head toward his face and looked right into my eyes, ice blue lasers locking in on me. “It’s just that I’m gay.”
My vision went white, then black. Little red lines danced across Dustin’s face and swirled around in the trees above our heads. My ears buzzed and whined, high-pitched and loud. “What?” I said, my body swaying.
Dustin tightened his grip on my chin. “I’m gay,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“I. LIKE. GUYS.”
He let go of my chin and I let myself fall onto my back, the impact bouncing both our bodies on the trampoline. I was quiet for a long, long time. Dustin lay down beside me, rested his head against mine and sighed.
“Are you really gay, Dust?” I asked after a while.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I definitely want to have sex with guys.”
“Me too,” I said, and we laughed.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
I could sleep I could sleep when I lived alone is there a ghost in my house? I could sleep I could sleep
Come hold me. Or, maybe not that. Come lie down beside me and throw your arm over my stomach and I will breathe into your hair and twist it in my fingers and smell you and kiss you and wrap my legs around you and maybe eventually, you will sleep, and I will sleep, and when we wake up, I will have more to write about.
Come lie beside me while I kiss your shoulder blades.
Come lie beside me while I kiss your shoulder blades.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
My Sexual Frustration Peaks-- Violently.
I have never want to touch someone as badly as I wanted to touch L. in class today. It wasn't even all sexy touching. It was mostly just touch touching. He was right there beside me, inches away, so close that every time he moved his hands, he was encroaching on my proverbial "personal space," and I was literally aching to know what his skin felt like. Blood pounded in my fingertips and I couldn't sit still. I wanted to pull the back of his t-shirt up and run my hand over the smooth, warm skin at the base of his back, feel his muscles moving. I wanted to press my fingers against each vertebrae in his spine, feel bone against bone. I wanted to touch his fingers; the knuckles, the chapped skin on his palms because he never wears gloves and Chicago winters are windy. I wanted to rub our cheeks together, feel his scruff grate against me, scratch me. I wanted to bump jaws and teeth and hips. My knees kept jabbing in his direction, desperate to knock knobs with him. My toes, hidden safely inside my shoes, wanted to kick up gently against his-- leather and leather, skin and skin, bone and bone. I wanted to climb onto his lap and sink into his ribcage and his sternum, press my cheek against his shoulder, smell his collar bone, kiss his neck. I thought my insides would burst out of my skin, sitting that close to him without actually touching him. But I made it through, somehow, and when I got out of the classroom, I could breathe again. But my fingers still burned for his back.
Regarding my crush on Jack Kerouac
"...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' " -from "On the Road"
I want to put Jack Kerouac in a box. One that will fit in my pocket. I want to fold him up, sew him shut with his own long strings of sentences and fit him into a locket, maybe one shaped like a heart and worn always around my neck, the metal warmed from resting forever on my chest.
I want to ring around his rosies, stuff my pockets full of his poems and the places where he once breathed so deeply he couldn't help but write about it. I want to stick Denver to my skin, whirling and drunk like he saw it, and soak Frisco into my hair, smoke-scented and sprawling.
I want the long nights spent talking-- the words left out in his mad frenzy to get where he was going, to see what happens next. I want to hit the pause button and just settle into a moment, wrapping "On the Road" around me and, like a rush of wild madness, feel it seep into me, sinking into my eyes and ears, nose and mouth.
I want to live this, breathing wild and frantic beside Sal and Kerouac and Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx and Remi and Eddie and Eddie's Girl and Major and Rita and everyone who ever took up a space similar to Kerouac's.
And so I guess I should admit it, now. I guess I should mention that I have a big, fat, juicy crush on Jack Kerouac. On him and his writing and his characters and his eventual, inevitable misery. Maybe I'm a couple of decades too late, but that boy is just the right amount of mad for me, for life, for being a writer.
The way he weaves his words, like he just closed his eyes and put himself back there, back to that second where everything was happening, and he just wrote it, typed the hell out of it, cigarette burning, eyes still closed, writing his life.
I want to be there, to see the expression on his face when he buries himself in his writing. I want to watch the way his fingers cramp and his shoulders clench and his back aches, the way the cigarette ashes float across the type-writer keys. I want to see the crease in his forehead while he crouches, taping together all those pieces of paper so he can just go and go and write and never stop. I want to witness his genius exploding across the page.
Perhaps I'm being a bit too dramatic. But what you have to understand is, I love him. I love Jack Kerouac. The kind of love where it is hard to find fault, the kind of love where all you can do is exist in awe, rapt and attentive, waiting for the next great thing he'll say, think, write, mumble.
Which is why I am too late. I was born too late to soak up the actual man, so now I just read, read, read. I don't care what they say about all of the other ones being crap-- I want to understand this man and everything he writes. Wrote.
I want to put Jack Kerouac in a box and take him out and listen to him spout lovely words and angry ones all full of passion. But since I can't do that, I guess I'll just settle for reading. Every word.
My Writing
"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." -Kurt Vonnegut
One of my instructors at Columbia College asked me the other day how I would describe my writing. This is my answer... sort of.
I think there is a difference between how my writing is and how I want it to be.
I want my writing to be like music, like a song, like notes floating across the air, singing into your ears. I want my writing process to be like band practice, hundreds of jam sessions all culminating in an amazingly mind-blowing, life-altering performance of those songs I've worked so goddamn hard on, poured my life and soul and body into.
I want my words to slam into you, careening of the page like a car crash waiting to happen.
I want my stories to be unforgettable.
But the reality of it is that my writing is usually flowery and cushy, sloppy with love and lust. Boys and longing leaning up against the walls and waiting their turn to lie on my pages.
My words tuck themselves into your pockets, digging down and nestling into the corners where your fingers never quite reach.
My stories are all the same.
One of my instructors at Columbia College asked me the other day how I would describe my writing. This is my answer... sort of.
I think there is a difference between how my writing is and how I want it to be.
I want my writing to be like music, like a song, like notes floating across the air, singing into your ears. I want my writing process to be like band practice, hundreds of jam sessions all culminating in an amazingly mind-blowing, life-altering performance of those songs I've worked so goddamn hard on, poured my life and soul and body into.
I want my words to slam into you, careening of the page like a car crash waiting to happen.
I want my stories to be unforgettable.
But the reality of it is that my writing is usually flowery and cushy, sloppy with love and lust. Boys and longing leaning up against the walls and waiting their turn to lie on my pages.
My words tuck themselves into your pockets, digging down and nestling into the corners where your fingers never quite reach.
My stories are all the same.
Unplayed Piano
I am an unplayed piano. Unplayed by you. My keys, all smooth and ivory, are gathering dust while they wait, dying to be touched. By you, mostly, but there are some days where I just want someone, anyone (almost) to play me, apply slight pressure here and there to make rich, fine chords come out, burst out from inside of me, clearing dust and age and sadness from my depths.
Make me sing, music boy. Write your songs on my spine and behind my knees and along my fingers. Kiss your lyrics into my neck and collar bone and hips. Fuck your beats into me, make me feel what you feel. Pound the keys, tickle the ivories, tell me a story with notes, chords, words, in a song.
I feel something inside of you when you rest your fingertips lightly on my black and white keys, barely making contact. Something that is almost ready to come out, burst out, sing out. It's moving inside of you and I feel the vibrations like bass lines under your skin. But then you take your hand away, the dust collected on my keys still embedded in your fingerprints, and let your arm hang loose and limp at your side. But your fingers are still buzzing, electric with the song we could have made, if only you'd played me.
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