The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  When you hang up, you feel even more depressed. Blood in milk is not a problem, and your friend, it turns out, suffered even more than you do now. You are not the first to face the tragedy of the nipples. You haven't even come close to her.

  - It's not very good for me.

  I try to smile, but give up trying.

  - Nothing, over time everything will form. Soon everything will be fine.

  He turns off the night lamp at the head of the bed. I turn it back on.

  - I do not think so. I don't think that everything will ever be fine at all!

  “Don't be so pessimistic,” he smiles, trying not to offend me.

  “Have you read this brochure for fathers of newborn babies?”

  - Uh, not yet. I did not make it in time.

  Shrugs and tries to get to the switch again. I throw my hand out and catch his wrist in the air.

  “So read this damn brochure, and then you might have some idea of what I'm going through now!”

  - Women have always been breastfeeding ever since they exist in the world.

  - What ?!

  “Well, you understand what I want to say - it's natural!” Women have always been breastfeeding since they were born and have children, ”he teaches, glancing briefly at one of my tormented breasts. - But this does not mean that since they appeared in the world and began to do it, they always liked it!

  “Naturally” does not mean that they are pleased or that they are doing well, ”I hiss.

  “Ah, why do you always need to complicate things like this?”

  “Why didn't you marry someone else who wouldn't complicate?”

  - You do not want to eat? - whispers mother-in-law from behind a closed bedroom door. “I could cook you something if you are hungry.”

  Overfeeding.

  (Ibid., P. 183.)

  The child eats for several hours in a row. There is something abnormal about this. You call the emergency service for nursing mothers whose phone you were given in the hospital. Specialists in breastfeeding explain to you that the baby does only what is natural for him. That the more he sucks, the more milk you will produce, and how all this constitutes a supply and demand system, and how the situation will improve when milk begins to arrive. “I wonder what kind of truck it would be?” You ask yourself.

  They explain to you that if you experience nipple pain, it is because you do not put the baby to the breast as it should. And how should it be applied in order to provide him with a proper feeding position. You don't like the way it sounds. You don't like how the word “position” sounds - as if you were attached to some kind of suction cup, which, perhaps, will never come off. You remember sticks and leeches (note, all these words begin with "p").

  When milk finally arrives, it arrives with a whole tank. You form milk balls under the arms, under the surface of the skin, they are hard, like marble, and it hurts to touch them. Your breasts become heavy, like concrete ingots, the milk pressure is so great that the veins around the nipples swell and protrude outward. They are riddled with ridges, as if in a horror movie, bursting their skin in such a way that they seem to be about to explode, spraying blood.

  - Feel how hard my breasts are! - I grit my teeth.

  - Oh my goodness!

  “It hurts me,” I whisper.

  - Oh my goodness.

  He is scared. Not for me, but for me - the way I look.

  “Could you suck them a little so that they are not so full?” I can not fall asleep.

  - What ?! - He looks at me as if I asked him to suck a bottle of cobra poison.

  “Please, could you suck me some milk?” This is not so bad. I tried a little bit. Looks like sweetened water.

  - Uh, no, I probably won't. It's somehow ... incestuous.

  “But we are not blood relatives, we are simply married, my goodness!” What kind of incest can there be? Why immediately shy away? I beg you! It's too painful for me.

  - Sorry. I just can not.

  He turns off the nightlight and turns to his side, getting ready to fall asleep.

  If you are breastfeeding, there are some advantages for you ... it will be easy for you to lose weight without going on a diet, and you will quickly become slim.

  (Page 176.)

  “You look like you're still pregnant,” he jokes. “Are you sure you haven't got one more left inside?”

  - Listen, fuck off, huh?

  A bulging fold of skin and fat is formed on your stomach, due to which the pubic hair is not visible. A dimple appears under the navel, which has not been there for five years. You think that maybe if you were breastfeeding your first child, you would now have a better chance of staying slim. A vertical black stripe runs across the skin of your abdomen, starting from the bosom, passing through the navel and ending almost near the base of the breasts. It seems to your painful imagination that this is a mark for the doctor, outlining where to make an incision if the birth goes wrong. The strip is not going to disappear - but in general, it doesn't matter to you, since with all this fat it no longer plays a big role.You are constantly hungry due to the fact that you produce milk, you eat three times more than what you usually eat, and therefore do not lose weight at all - you just do not gain it in excess of the excess fat that is already there.

  “You should eat as much as you want,” the mother-in-law says.

  She puts another eggplant on your plate, and your spouse puts her own there. The child in the bedroom begins to scream, and the mother-in-law is picked up to calm him.

  “Don't cry,” you hear. - Milk is coming soon!

  You want to yell at the whole living room that you have a name, and that name is not Milk! But you only silently eat your eggplant.

  The hormone prolactin, which causes the secretion of breast milk, will help you feel the “maternal feeling”.

  (Page 176.)

  “How long will this pain last?” You ask yourself. It is already the eleventh day of the torture of the nipples and the hell of motherhood. You call your girlfriend and complain about the pain, the endless pain you experience. A friend replies that some women get such pleasure from breastfeeding that they reach orgasm. You tell her that if this were the case, you would not mind breastfeeding until your baby was big enough to run away from you.

  Midnight feeding is usually the longest and most painful part of your maternal day. It takes from two to six hours. You move the baby from one breast to another, starting from an hour on each nipple, and gradually reducing the time to half an hour, fifteen minutes, eight, two, one - because the nipples become so painful that even a soft touch of the baby's diaper is enough to put fingers on your legs cringed in pain, and tears began to flow in a stream along the cheeks. You try to think about orgasms, while the clock ticks your suffering with its slow tick-tock. You are trying to think about sadomasochism. The pain is so intense, so cutting real, that you are not able to think of it as something that can give pleasure.You understand that you are still not a masochist.

  Since you must sit or lie down for feeding, you are provided with the necessary rest after childbirth.

  (Page 176.)

  You can no longer feed while sitting. You try to lie on your back to feed the girl lying down like a puppy, but the shape of your breasts is not suitable for this method. You seat her, leaning on the back of a chair, and feed her while standing. Her legs hang out, but in this position she is quite capable of sucking your exhausted nipples. You are thinking about hanging a sign on your back: "Milk dressing."

  Your ass is bothering you. You take a warm sitz bath because it helps for a while, and feel yourself in the water as carefully as you can. Between the vagina and the anus, you find several dense tubercles that were not there before, and hopefully imagine that you have grown a second, third, fourth clitoris. But when you come to the doctor, it turns out that these are just hemorrhoidal seals.

  - I tie. I'm all sick of it.

  “But you only feed two weeks!” Now is the hardest time, it will only get better, ”h
e encourages. Gently smiles and tries to kiss my nose.

  “I am telling you that I am ending this!” If I continue to feed, I will begin to hate the girl.

  “You only think about yourself,” he says accusingly, pointing a finger at me. “You can't think of anything better than breastfeeding, but you take it and give up like that!” I thought you were stronger.

  “Nothing to blame me!” This is my body, damn it, and I will decide what to do with it and what not to do!

  “You always do what is best for you!” What about my participation? Do I have no right to say in how we will raise our child? Shouts this Mr. Sensitive, Mr. Let's-Talk-About-Like-Adults-People.

  “Nothing happened to you?” - whispers his mother from behind a closed bedroom door. “You are not asking ..."

  - No! Nothing happened! Go to sleep! He yells.

  The child sneezes, hiccups and bursts into unimaginable howls, nasal and indignant.

  “Listen, I have to breastfeed her, I have to get up every two hours so that my nipples are tormented and drained to the blood while you are breathing!” After all, you never even got up at night to change her damn diaper, at least as a fucking symbolic gesture of support, so do not tell me what I should do with my breasts! There is nothing wrong with milk formula. I grew up on milk formula. You grew up on milk formula. Our whole generation grew up on milk mixtures and feels great! So it's better to shut up about it. Just shut up. Because it's not about you. It's about me!

  - If I could breastfeed, I would gladly do it! He hisses. He throws the blanket over and, stomping, goes to the crib.

  And I am laughing. I laugh because this bastard said it himself.

  Three twenty seven. The girl woke up again. Your breasts are heavy with milk, but you feed it with a mixture. Five fifteen. You feed it again, and your breasts are poured so that they lie on top of the chest like tight balls. They are ready.

  You change the diaper for the girl and put her back in the crib. In the muffled light of a children's night light, you see how she protrudes her lips, closing them around an imaginary nipple. She sucks even in a dream. You sit on the bed next to your husband and unfasten your bra buckles. The lining was soaked through, and the nipples, naked, sprinkled with a stream of sweet milk. The skin around the breasts is stretched tight, like on a drum, so tight that all you need is one small incision, so that the skin is parted. Like a zipper, the gap widens along the surface of your rib cage; guided by your fingers, it describes a complete circle around one chest. There is no blood.

  You lean forward slightly, and the breast gently falls into your clasped hands. The flesh has a thick red tint, and you are amazed at its beauty, the way the flesh becomes food when you do not ask and do not even want it. You put your chest on your lap and cut the second. Two pulsating spheres, still plucking milk from themselves. You carefully pull the blanket out of the powerlessly clenched fingers of your sleeping partner, unfasten his pajamas and bend its edges, exposing the chest. You stroke the hairless skin, then lift one of your breasts, followed by another, and carefully lay them on top of its flat, tiny nipples.The flesh of your breasts penetrates his skin, you hear the soft rustle of cells connecting with the cells, your skin fused with his skin, flesh to flesh, tissue to tissue, this is an intimate fusion that occurs in front of your eyes. Out of amazement and delight, your lips are folded with the letter “O”.

  The unusual weight of overcrowded breasts makes him move restlessly, a soft moan comes from half-opened lips. Breasts no longer sprinkle milk, but it flows from them in a continuous stream, running in streams along its sides. The rapidly cooling moisture causes him concern, and his eyelids tremble. Are opening. He focuses his gaze on my face, looks down and blinks quickly.

  - Something is wrong? He asks in a hoarse sleepy voice.

  - Nothing. Nothing at all. How do you feel?

  “Somehow strange,” he says uncertainly. - Some kind of strange feeling in my chest. Everything hurts me. Maybe I got sick? Yes, my whole chest is wet! I'm bleeding!

  - Shhh! You will wake the child, ”I warn, gently pressing a finger to his lips.

  He was just swaying from sleep, but now he was completely awake. Sits down. He looks down at his chest - at his two bulging breasts. Looks at my face. Then again on his chest.

  - Oh my goodness! He groans.

  “It's okay,” I instruct him. - Do not worry. All perfectly. Just do what is natural.

  A sudden horror flickers on his face, and he shoves his hand in panic to feel himself between his legs. When he realizes that his household is intact, relief flashes in his eyes, which is immediately replaced by bewilderment.

  I'm smiling. I shine right in the dim light of a nightlight. Then I turn on my side and fall asleep, sweetly, sweetly, firmly.

  Paul dee filippo

  Science fiction

  Wary, but with indescribable bodily relief in one of the neglected and even several frightening restrooms at Psn Station. Corso Fairfield blissfully directs a golden stream into a vast porcelain bowl. Distilled from several cups of tasteless Amtrak coffee. Trying not to stare at the play being played around. This is by no means motivated by Corso's anti-homosexual concern. And of course, not with prejudices rising in his liberal soul. Rather, it is a maneuver to attract the attention of homeless people. Crowding in the restroom, among the wet soiled scraps of paper towels scattered across the tiled floor. Washing their feet in the sink. And other, even more unappetizing parts of the body.

  Corso finishes his own noisy emptying. And packs back his penis. Not representing, of course, anything special, and in no way exceeding the size of the members of the poor around him. However, undoubtedly being his personal property. Which, unfortunately, is unlikely to be shared with a special female in the near future. Because his wife, Jenny, left him. Run away with his exceptionally gifted auto mechanic, Jack Spanner. Double loss. And it is difficult to assess the ratio of damage to him in the bedroom and in the garage.

  However, his lonely penis is now safe. For the strong zipper of his best trousers. Which he put on at home this morning, a few hundred miles north of here. Together with a white shirt and camphor-smelling wool vest, appropriate for meetings with publishers. And agents. And his bosom friend of Malachi Stiltjack. This rich bastard. A suit that also gives the right to visit good restaurants. For the purpose of business meals. And finally, the most important thing is to increase pride in encounters with expressions of genuine glee from the public. A rapt audience. Able to risk identifying the author from photographs on dust jackets. No matter how different they are.And this is considering the small and mean on the expression of feelings circle of his readers. Constantly located, as always necessary to believe, on the very brink of exponential growth.

  The problem is to wash your hands. Despite the fact that these loafers barricaded themselves all the shells. Corso hesitates, shifting his brand new soft portfolio from one hand to another, not yet socially sanctioned after urination. And then one of the beggars leaves his place. Leaving the taps turned on. So there is no need to even touch them. Risking contact with numerous New York mutant microbes, too vile to talk about.

  Near the sink. With a briefcase firmly sandwiched between knees brought together. Having pumped into your palm a certain amount of opalescent soap the color of cheap pink wine. Soapy hands. While the beard, the multilayer neighbor on the right balances, standing on one bare foot. And plunging into the tank the second non-shanked limb. Completely black from stubborn street dirt. At the sight of which Corso trembles internally. But this initial reaction can be called quite soft. Compared to the emotions that flood him when the leg leaves the sink washed. Because this leg cannot belong to man. In no flight of imagination - even as trained as that of Corso.

  Smelly water streams down the drain. Depriving the worn leg, like a fish stick, its masking shell, bare from under the wrapper. And discovering something more like an ostrich limb. Hard yellow ringed bony fingers. Ending with claws. Able to release guts with one stroke. And a
n ankle spur. Also potentially deadly.

  Stepping back from the sink. Dripping soapy water on your best pants. Moving like a crustacean in a heroic attempt to prevent the portfolio from falling onto the infested floor. And here also this huny with a bird foot began to take offense. At the sight of such a frank disgust. So not gentlemanly expressed.

  “Hey buddy, what's the problem.”

  Corso is looking for the right words for a polite answer. But in confusion, he is not able to bind together even two pacifying syllables. So in the end, he just mutters awkwardly: