by Michael Gira
I’m laughing my guts out as we fuck. You’re trying to flatter me, telling me how wonderful I am (only because you’re raping me), and I’m dreaming of stabbing you through the ear with my knife. I’m devoted to the idea of your belittlement. It’s what I live for, what I think about every second.
While I’m at work, where I’m treated like a dog, only my body is present. My mind is standing on top of a monolith, looking down on a swelling crowd of cowardly men. It’s my position in life (I’ve always known it) to cut the throats of arrogant men, and weak, humble men also (maybe they deserve oblivion even more).
I’m breathing a red fog. It goes down into my lungs and fills me with my real strength: my lust. It’s my secret consciousness, my right to kill, as well as my duty. I love to hold your hand, feeling its buried strength, caressing it into impotence. You feel it too. You feel your power draining into me. You’re helpless. There’s nothing you can do about it. I’m a magnet that draws every particle of life out of your body. All you live for is orgasm, for the last drop of life to be sucked out. I’ll never understand how you can be so stupid as to strive for your own denigration. But it isn’t my place to understand you.
(1985)
BLIND
I’m alone. I can feel their eyes on me. I’m gagged. They put a urine-soaked rag in my mouth (my urine?). My eyes are taped shut. I can’t see anything but the red behind my eyes. It moves, changes hues. It’s the real source of death, the real evil, the thing that’s choking me. They want me to experience an absolute, numbing death, the corrupt stench of the red behind my eyes.
I don’t feel pain. They’re cutting at my leg. I can feel them slicing away at the muscle, then removing the muscle, lifting it up for everyone to see. Now they’ll eat it from a communal plate. I can hear them licking their lips, groaning. The knife comes again. They’re cutting away the entire leg at the knee. I hear something growl, then teeth gnawing against bone. I’m not in pain. The red behind my eyes spreads through my body and warms it. I listen to the chewing until it’s finished.
They’re pushing something cold, metal, into my cunt. It’s as wide as a man’s cock, but longer. They force it in until it reaches the underside of my belly, then remove it abruptly. They’re bored with this. I hear one of the women say that she wants it, that I don’t deserve it. They laugh. I hear them whispering their approval, and the wet sound of the thing sliding in and out of her. The only sound in the room is the sound of my breathing and the sound of the thing going in and out of her. Then she comes, screaming like a dying horse, and they congratulate her, laughing among themselves. They begin to bark like dogs, at first staccato and shrill, then blending into a deep, resonant, sustained howl. Its penetrates my skull. The red is wiping me out, erasing me. Then, rough hair and claws against my breasts, as the dog mounts me, his long tongue wetting my face. I spit out the rag and howl until I disappear into red heat.
(1984)
THE BOSS
If he doesn’t do what I say now, I’ll figure out a way to get him to act according to my needs later, and by then, my needs will have grown into something even more satisfying — they’ll include his humiliation, rubbing his face in the shit. He shouldn’t cross me, especially when someone else might observe it happening — like a child I saw jab at the eyes of its mother as she tried to pick it up, the disgust I felt for the mother is what they’d feel towards me, if I start to lose control... I gear every movement I make specifically for the purpose of control, of order, like an elaborately choreographed ballet, the formal structure invisible to the participants and only knowable from above — where I sit.
I’m stronger than him, than the rest of the them. While they’re busy vacillating, jerking around in spasms like beached fish, victims of useless conscience and inhibition, I’m acting out my desires, forcing them into reality by strength of will. The key to success in business: imagine, then act. And at this second, my desire includes his denigration. He’s an extension of my imagination — I can play with him like a child plays with its daydreams, molding them as they pass through its mind to suit it’s drifting fantasies...
He’s mine to play with, mine to use, mine to discard when I’m finished with him.
There he is, stinking, decaying, sweating, exhausted with heat and stupidity, the great mindless stupidity of putting one foot in front of the other, his self-hatred so thick in his throat he’s choking on it. He’s not himself, doesn’t belong to himself. He’s watching his boundaries dissolve as I control him. He’s moving through the toiling crowd. He feels his body expanding, then condensing in response to the opening and closing of the spaces between their slaving bodies, as they work, as they waste their time, which in turn fills me with the pride of my accomplishments.
He feels like he needs to be alone, needs to sequester himself, needs to remember exactly who he is, but he can’t find the place where he exists alone, without the interference of me in his mind, rearranging, shaping. What he needs is absolute isolation, sensory deprivation, to remove all stimulus, or, to repeat a predictable set of stimuli endlessly, until he’s floating in a thick liquid pool of his own unconsciousness, convinced now that he doesn’t really exist, drifting in the tide.
If he screams, if he fights back, put a gag in his mouth. Choke him until his eyes pop out. If he complains, punish him like a disgusting child — he’s asking for it.
(1983 / 1994)
A COWARD
I’ve wasted myself. I’ve turned myself into something I can’t control. I’m dwarfed, minimized by everything around me. I’m scared of what’s going to happen next. Any unpredicted movement, any sound I haven’t anticipated, terrifies me, lessens me. There’s a pair of scissors on the desk in front of me. I’m picking them up, opening and closing them, pressing the rings of metal against my bone. I’m sticking my finger into the blades of the scissors and squeezing as hard as I can. They’re dull. They won’t cut into me. It doesn’t hurt, it throbs, reminding me of the existence of my hand, which disgusts me. I hate my body more than I hate the objects and events that rub against it. I don’t despise the conditions of my life as much as I despise the existence of my flesh.
(1984)
A GRAVE
I use this room like a disease uses a body. I corrupt it, eat away at it, mar the walls with my hands. The room stinks of my blood. I’m in my bed. The mattress is rotting beneath me. My urine has eaten a hole in it. My lower back’s buried in the hole. I can’t tell where my body leaves off and the mattress begins. When I get up and go to the toilette, I tear my body in half.
(1984)
A TRAP
When I look at myself in the mirror, the heat comes to my face. I’m convinced time has slipped and I’ve just left the mirror: now it’s someone else standing there, pretending to be me. When I shut my eyes, they invade my body, so I have to keep them open. I don’t own my body.
Yesterday, I went through the phone book at random, picking out men’s names that seemed interesting, calling them up and inviting them to come over and fuck me. Finally one accepted. When he arrived at my door, I opened it but left the chain attached. He could see me in my nightgown. His body matched his voice, which had been rough and crude on the telephone. He was large and hairy. His face was dark, pitted. His hands were huge: I wanted him to choke me to death. I let him in. I undressed, lying flat on my stomach on the floor, hoping he’d see how vulnerable I was and kill me. Instead he kissed the back of my neck softly, then gently fucked me. I tried to squirm, to become violent, so he’d get angry with me and hurt me, but instead he reacted by losing his erection and apologizing. I stood up, looking down at him as if he were a useless, retarded child, and told him to leave. After he’d gone, I went to the mirror, massaged my breasts, pulled the nipples up to my mouth, and sucked them for hours. I lost myself, I forgot where I was, I lost control of my body. I don’t know who I am. I want to be obliterated. I want to be sucked up into my cunt.
ANOTHER TRAP
I’m a small thing,
plotting suicide, sucking my toes. I’m locked up in this piss-soaked public bathroom. They’re having a good laugh about me outside. I can hear them slurping their beer, burping, farting, cracking jokes about me, imitating my voice. I’m naked in here. The smell of my body overpowers the smell of their shit and piss. I smell like misery. It’s private, I know its strength. I usually keep it under my clothes. Right now I’m letting it come out and make me drunk. I love the way I smell. They could easily break the door open. They’d find me in here on the floor, a retarded infant. I’m better than they are. Their jokes feed me. They don’t know what I’m doing. I wish they’d break the door down. I think if they saw me in here like this they’d be ruined.
(1984)
A GAME
I feel nothing for you. I hold myself down. Keep to yourself. You shouldn’t touch me. My skin peels off my bones. I’ll give you a gift: cut the skin away from my stomach and stretch it across your face. Look in the mirror: I see myself through your eyes. My body’s on the ground behind you. You use it to amuse yourself. When you kick it around the room, you feel the impact of your boot in your stomach. Cry for me. Blame me for the fact you no longer recognize yourself. Lying here, I want the air in this room to consume me, to pull my body in behind itself while you stare down at me uncertain, if you’ve lost yourself in me.
You’re running your hands along the leather surface of your skin. The sound this makes changes pitch according to the area of your body you touch. Your thighs and your groin generate a low hum — the sound of my corpse releasing dead air when you kick me. Your face generates a continuous high pitched squeal — the sound I make when you burn me. I take you over. You forget yourself in my body. When you chew a piece of skin from your finger, you remember my body in your mouth, my bones cracking between your teeth. I love you. When you lick your hand, your sweat tastes like my blood. Conceal yourself. Close yourself off. Pull back into my skin. I’m inside you. The place on the floor where my body decayed left a stain on your memory. That’s the signature of my love for you. You can’t forget me without losing yourself. I’ll never die.
(1986)
MONEY’S FLESH
Your money’s warm. It feels like flesh. Your money’s in my mouth. I’m in your body. You’re fingering me. I’m weak, I’m a small thing in your hand. It’s easy to use your desire and turn it against you. Its’ easy to control you. Your image of yourself is a front concealing your desire to be fucked. I don’t like your weakness. I don’t feel it when you hit me. I don’t remember a situation that I didn’t control, that I didn’t own. My body’s taken on the shape of the things I own. My hands are mallets. I don’t own any hands. My hands aren’t attached to my body. My body’s separating from itself. Pieces of my flesh are scattered around the room. I’m kicking myself in the head. My head’s rolling away from me. You cut into my stomach with a dull knife. There’s no sensation. I don’t acknowledge your flesh. Your meat translates into money. You own my meat. I manipulate your meat in order to shape myself. I cut you up into an image of me, so the pain I feel when you humiliate me is reversed. I enjoy it when you arbitrarily degrade me. I’m strong when you ridicule me. You’re inert. I don’t consider you “living”. I enjoy stroking the contours of your flesh and watching your face change as I manipulate you. You deserve what I’m doing to you. You don’t exist outside of me. I made you what I want you to be. I want you to feel pleasure when I fuck you because I want to suck it back into myself and use it for my own pleasure. I want you to annihilate my perception of myself when you fuck me, treating me like a piece of flesh between your fingers. I need your money in order to get the things I need to excite myself sexually, the things that look like me and invert me, the things that turn me inside out so I can tuck myself. I use your hands on my body as feelers for myself. I want to feel what you’re thinking so I can excite myself through your misery at not being able to own me. When I take control of your mind, I’m disgusted at my ability to hate myself, and want to abuse myself sexually through the device of your body. I’m meat. I’m pleased to be meat beneath your corpse, your corpse living while it fucks the life out of my dead mind. My mind is eating you, because I made you into an image of myself I could fuck like I fuck myself. In order to allow you to dissect me, I lay myself out on the ground with my legs spread and show you where to cut. I can feel what you’re thinking. When you cut me, it doesn’t hurt me. I’m hiding in the warm interior of your stomach while you cut me, opening yourself up from your genitals to your chest. When I crawl out, you hold my infant body in your strong arms. My first instinct is to kiss your neck, then, when you’re lulled into narcosis, to rip it open with my teeth. Looking up at you, my eyes see through the roof of your mouth up into the interior of your skull. As you penetrate me, I’m stretched across the walls of your skull, screaming in your head. When you grind your teeth together, I feed off the section of your brain that gets hot in re action to the friction between your teeth. I want you to hold me down, keep me back, keep me away from the part of yourself where you exist. When you screw me down in place, I stuff your mouth with money. When you rape me, you pay me for the favor. When your rape me, I thank you and I rape myself.
(1984)
BASTARD
I’m looking for a man, someone I can coerce into suffocating me. A man stole my cock. I hate all men. I used my cock on weaklings, people unable to control their emotions or desires. Now, I’m revolted by my own existence. There’s an ugly hole between my legs, like a woman’s hole. My hole is diseased. My disease feeds on itself and keeps me alive. The symptom of my disease is that I keep living. My physical presence in the world is the key to my stupidity. I avoid awareness of my body. My skin’s crawling. My body’s a rotting shell, containing only the awareness of itself. If I had a cock, I could suck it, committing suicide by poisoning myself on my own sperm.
I’m oiling myself, toning my muscles in preparation for my murder. I want to look good while choking. I want my muscles to mirror the muscles of the man that strangles me, cuts off my air. I want to look into his eyes and feel his hard cock against my legs as he kills me. The stronger I am, the more perfect I am, the more he’ll hate me. I’ll be the perfect mirror of the weakness in his virility. As he fucks the hole where my cock used to be, he’ll fuck his self-hatred. Being strong, I won’t allow him to deny the power of his impotence. If I prepare myself correctly, he’ll hate his body more after he kills me.
I use myself as a device to amuse my other self. If I watch myself closely, I’ll lose my mind. When I look at my body, I dissipate. I lose the ability to exist. I trick myself into believing the part of me observing the other part isn’t the reverse. It doesn’t make any difference if I’m the victim or the perpetrator of aggression. I cancel myself out. I hate my body. I use it as a shield to conceal my hatred for men. The smell of the slit between my legs is a constant reminder of my inverted superiority to both sexes. When I bleed, I bleed like a man. The blood pours out from between my legs in thick, congealed chunks, mixed with sperm and muscle.
I’m stretched out on a slab. I can’t think. My mind’s aware of itself, fixed on its permanent emptiness. I’m glued to the slab. I don’t want to escape. I won’t move. I want the life choked out of me. The man is on top of me, his beefy hands digging into my throat. I’m foaming, trying to form words with my tongue. The man’s mouth is open, his tongue hanging out, draining spit down onto my face. He’s fucking my hole as he chokes me. I’m stronger than he is. I throw him off me. He’s a coward. He squats on the ground and begs me not to hurt him. I rip his cock out with my teeth.
A woman comes into my room. I despise her smell, her soft coy flesh. She brings her stink in with her. The beat of her heart works in opposition to the beat of my heart and destroys my ability to lose myself in the stupidity of my own pulse. As her mouth surrounds mine, I exhale sperm into her throat. When she passes out, I tie her to the slab, face down. I reach my fist up into her rectum and remove her intestines, filled with shit. I stuff her
guts into my hole. I pretend I’m soft, feminine. I sit down in a chair and sew my hole shut. I can’t think. I don’t want to think. My flesh is changing shape in direct response to the stupid whims of a mind I don’t own, don’t control.