Nothing But My Body

by Tilly Lawless

  So I tangle with my dreams and myself. Wrestle with them bare-handed till my wrists are a crisscross of scratches. Attempt to get that clinging vine under control, that goddamn weed that climbs through my visions. I know I don’t need it, but I want it. (Why? Am I so brainwashed? Is it human nature?) And you can’t have it, because that would be a very bad idea. Yes I’m speaking to myself like a child because I need to be spoken to like that. Have to slap my own hand away from my phone when I go to text her: don’t indulge the fantasy. You know what you want from life and being involved with someone only complicates things. Be an ascetic about this. Practise emotional celibacy.

  For how long, though? Till I’ve broken whatever pattern I’m in? Till I have children? Till I’m thirty-five? Till I meet the right person? I don’t believe in that. It’s an ongoing journey, the tarot reader said, there’s no clear end. What was her name again? She had some epic Australian pun. Laurie something. Laurie Keet! That was it. Press my hand against my cunt; she still has that post-orgasm feel. Should clean her up, clean myself up, do something with the last of the day. Could wander down to the park, look over the graffitied sandstone cliffs to the harbour, chat to the teen bong rats pulling cones in the cracks. Could climb the Moreton Bay figs that stink of flying fox. Could play on the swings till my blisters burst. I’m feeling okay now that I’m sun drunk and high. Could almost forget the pervasive low, it’s gone, swiped like smegma from my hood, excised from my soul; I sneezed out the sickness like a cold.

  That’s what I think right now, but later today or tomorrow morning it will have come back with a vengeance, or before my period with a vendetta, ready to shed blood both from my lining and in conflict. I pick fights to appease the chaos within me; a black hole of insecurity and need and an anger I never feel at other times. The world is a mess and so am I. Am I too much of a mess for her? Has my mental health driven her away? You’re most attractive when you’re confident, my ex said to me; once you start to show your vulnerability it’s a turn-off. That’s a bit of a catch 22; means I’m bound to deter people as soon as I begin to give a fuck. Am I destined, then, to careen through life fucking people I don’t care about and crying in the girls’ room over ones who don’t like me the way I like them, coming up with an allergy rash from the dusty pillows? How is all of this bigger to me than the world ending? Am I inherently selfish, or is the world ending exacerbating the rejection, or am I leaning into it to distract from the world ending?

  Moving on from an internet fling is more difficult than I realised. With in-person things you can avoid the physical spaces that remind you of them, like the bar where you met or the cafe you used to go to together. When it’s online, though, it’s like they only existed in your mind – and how the hell do you get them out of there? Why did no one warn me? People always demean online relationships as less legitimate, phone sex as not counting, the emotions only a mockery of the real; when your mind is what you live in, though, surely bringing someone to live in there with you can mess you up as much as living with someone in the literal sense?

  The sun is already starting to go down and with it my mood. No point going to the park now; there’ll be a chill in the air with the breeze coming off the harbour and my fingers will freeze on the play equipment. The sun setting means she’s starting to stir, and my anxiety is on the rise because now if she doesn’t reply to me it’s not because she’s asleep but because she doesn’t want to or I’m not on her list of priorities or she’s over talking to me or she’s just over me as a person and I’m a gnat buzzing her phone up and she’d rather I just didn’t. Why did I ever get involved with her? Lockdown was the perfect environment for obsession to rot; with no outside distractions my mind turned inwards and preyed upon itself.

  Erghhh, I hate myself when I’m like this, so self-absorbed and indulgent. Reading over texts I’ve sent, wondering how I could’ve phrased them differently, how I could’ve crafted myself to be the cool girl that I’m obviously not and never will be because I feel my emotions loudly and am far too forthright, and besides I don’t even like reserved people, so why in these moments do I wish I was one? What if I’d never admitted I liked her, pretended to be chill, hadn’t shown that side of myself, never sent that text, never opened up, only been flippant and upbeat, not been demanding, not turned to her for comfort, just kept it casual like I said I would and thought I could – would we be somewhere different? Conditional clauses can send you mad. The happy of the high is disintegrating fast, my stomach is churning and I just want to take a Seroquel so I can pass out and wake up tomorrow feeling maybe better, maybe not.

  Is it even her I care about, or am I just fixating on my most apparent failing right now? Falling short of ‘enough’, whether that be not good enough, not funny enough, not pretty enough, not interesting enough, not smart enough – but whose measurements are they? My own: no one else is sizing me up by them. We should appraise ourselves based on our pros not our cons. I can apply that principle to others but not to myself; I feel entirely cons, a constellation of them as pervasive and unreachable as the pimples on my back, the acne of someone who works a physical job, has people sweat onto her in doggy and can’t scrub it off till ten hours later.

  I need a new perspective. I need out of this house and this state (of mind). I want to feel good again for longer than the length of an orgasm or the blur of a joint. I need to leave Sydney again but there’s nowhere to go. Can only go to the park at the end of my street and close my eyes on the swings and pretend I’m on a swing far away, where I’m no longer sad. Escape like I did last week.

  I went home on a whim to put 530 kilometres between myself and how I was feeling; I’m that girl who runs from things, got those long legs that flee from a room when someone raises their voice, got those fidgety hands that splice the split ends of my hair, got that impatient bruxism that leaves the inside of my cheeks mush. Got that panicked attitude, gotta get gotta get out of gotta get out of here stat, that propelled me to London this time last year to get away from this city and wanting to kill myself. I’ve seen my mental health as largely situational, contextual, something that’s not a part of me but just a reaction to stressors. I abstain from those things that I know make it worse – uppers, alcohol, lack of sleep, romantic relationships – and yet I still have days when I wake soaked in melancholy, a blue so deep I could drop right into it, fill my airways with it, have no way out. I grow increasingly frustrated with my mind. Can’t you see I’m caring for you? You’ve got nothing legit to be sad about! Why can’t I rely on you like I can my body? A 530-kilometre drive and I’m still stuck with you. Eight years on and I still think about cutting when I feel bad. Am I forever going to be defined by my lowest moments, forced to live alongside them, accept them even? I want to do better, be better. Not just for my own sake but so I can give more to the world.

  I went home on a whim to wake up somewhere different, so I could feel something different, and felt happy, felt at peace, felt effervescent, but it’s all just evanescent and the downs feel as if they carve a permanence into my skin. I’m that girl who wants to slip out of her own mind, tabula rasa, be simpler, feel a feeling with no fear that it’ll last too long or get in the way of doing things, brush it off rather than catch in it. I’m that girl who runs physically because I can’t run mentally but it’s all there, rattling around inside me and bruising my soul. My anxious, needy, fretting mind that I alternate between coddling and slapping. Wake up to how good you have it, be resilient, fight alongside me not against me, goddamn!

  saturday

  MY APPETITES ARE COMING BACK. I’M BOTH HUNGRY AND horny for the first time in months. I want to dance for someone I love on a foreign street in the rain, I want to flash my kitty at passers-by while I do, I want the rain to dampen my dress and my flanks and then my pubic hair. I want them to stroke my clit to size afterwards so that I’m doubly dampened.

  I want someone to slap-grab my thigh as if it’s a prize leg of ham and they’re weighing up its girth. I want
to drool while they fuck me in the arse coz it’s too much too much too much and my lips give way. I want a smorgasbord of sex. I want a charcuterie board too which I can’t even say, but I’ll eat it.

  I want to dine at a restaurant without checking the prices on the menu. I want to be spoilt but not spoiled, I want to be spent, loins soaked and cum smears, gasping for breath across someone I’m into, reaching for the glass of water bedside. I want to stay in that bed all morning. I want to hold hands.

  I want to scream at a cloudless blue sky, beautiful in its monotony. I want to swim along the ocean floor and come up with seaweed in my hair. I want someone to drink brine from between my legs like it’s sake, and then drink me. I want to sip elderflower lemonade.

  I want to see friends who only exist in my phone. I want better for everyone everywhere. I want people not to be killed anymore. I want the earth to survive us.

  I want to sleep without medication for the first time in six years. I want that client to book me again. I want to kiss lips softer than my own. I want to rub against someone like a cat in heat so they come away smelling of me. I want to laugh, always. I want to live.

  I’m getting one of those things, at least. Here I am at the nude beach. Not the mixed nude beach – the gay nude beach. It’s all hairy chests and taut buttocks, and teeny Speedos darting across the sand as the ice-cream boat pulls in and all the men stroll over to purchase an overpriced Golden Gaytime. I like being here because I don’t get watched or followed or creeped on in the bushes – and besides, I’m a fag hag and a dyke, where else would I belong? I like watching a gay threesome happening on one of the docked boats just as much as anyone else here, just wish I had a boat and could put on my own display. Lesbian sex doesn’t get nearly the public stage it should except in porn; where’s our exhibitionism? We curl up with each other in bed instead and tend to plants and buy a pink salt lamp and gift a scoby to a couple who’ve just moved in together and stop going out till all the lesbian bars close. We’re out in our lives but not out on the beaches, not like the gays with their knees sandy from giving a gobby at Lapa, a prime place for it with a pristine view. I should be a tour guide for sure: let me show you the ten best beaches for whatever dirty deed you have in mind. It’s not dirty here, though, not with this backdrop; it’s wholesome and natural and, yes, cum is vegan too. Just don’t litter, that’s the only no-no.

  I slip beneath the surface, still like the Mediterranean in this hidden cove, gently rocking waves that hardly break, and there’s a cormorant a few feet from me that dives again and again, popping up where I least expect him, feathers slicked back like the pomaded hair of a mechanic. I can see the city across the harbour, know that as my sight travels there so does my sound, from when we used to have raves in the deserted World War II bunkers with their low concrete ceilings perfect for heavy techno and packed bodies. We’d lie munted on the grass surrounds, make out with each other, take a coming-up shit in the bushes near the zoo, scatter when the cops came to shut us down after noise complaints from all the way across the other side of the water. When I first moved to Sydney and saw the orange glow of the sky at night instead of ink and stars I cried, felt sick from the light pollution; by the time these parties rolled around I saw it differently. ‘The sky is pink coz I’m in love!’ I exclaimed to a friend as we smashed through a pack of ciggies. I’d made the city mine by then and loved its idiosyncrasies.

  Just as I love it now, can hardly believe that as Melbourne friends risk fines for leaving their homes after curfew I can be here, free to move as I wish, naked in the sun, my only worry that I might burn my pale punani; she’s unused to the rays. Sydney, I love you! And I love you, pelican, don’t choke on that fish you’re downing; and I love you, water, and the way you caress between my legs, know that my vagina will vacuum you up only to gush you out later on unsuspecting clients, a trick she likes to play on tricks: they think I’ve squirted when really I’ve just let go; and I love you, gay boy posing for a photo on the prow of that boat and – wait a second, he looks familiar . . .

  ‘Oi! Marcus!’

  ‘Oh my god, babe, what are you doing here? Come on board!’

  I swim out to them and clamber nude up the ladder and there’s a bunch of boys lounging over empty oyster shells and glasses of prosecco. What a vibe and what a city to be single in, one where you can live that sylph life, float through others’ nautical parties and leave their lashes curled behind you, tip tilted from the airflow of your swift exit. They offer me a drink and a joint but I take only a strawberry. I’ve got a booking later, I say, have to be alert for that.

  ‘Oh, are you working again?’

  ‘Yeah, the broths have reopened, thank god. I’ve been doing two or three shifts a week. It’s been kinda busy coz a lot of girls haven’t come back . . .’ I pause as I think of how smashed we were that first week. Our clients had months’ worth of blue balls but there were only half the girls we usually had. By the third day of it we were tired but, as the Chinese girl next to me and I agreed, we had to work because what if we went into lockdown again? Don’t feel like working today, she said to me, and when I said, Babe, I feel you, she quipped, I tell them my pussy leaving at home, I forget my pussy today, baby, have to let me go home, and we both laughed till an intro was called and we had to steady our faces.

  ‘… But today I’ve got a private with a reg. And he’s paying me extra for a golden shower and anal so I wanna be at my most professional, you know how it is.’

  ‘How often do you do those?’

  ‘Well, funny you should ask that, coz I’ve only started doing anal again recently. I’ll always do golden showers if I’m asked but I’m always hesitant with anal coz I worry about getting hurt if they’re too rough. But then I did some rogue anal a few months back after not doing it for years and remembered how much I like it and what good value it is for money coz the guys come so fast. As long as their dick isn’t big it’s easy.’

  ‘I only do it when their dick is big, but I’m doing it for pleasure not business. Size queen.’ He looks smug as he ashes over the side of the boat.

  They’re having the time of their lives and it’s tempting to stay but I have to get going, I’ve got that booking, and so I air kiss them goodbye and dive off the side of the boat and swim to shore and then drip dry as I climb the shadowed path to the car park, all the while thinking about what got me doing anal again, how I was sobbing in the armchair in the girls’ room because not getting picked in the intros reinforced my rejection: she didn’t want me and now neither did these razzo guys. Work was meant to be a distraction but instead it made me feel worse, till I ended up on my knees crying. I’d given up on looking good, given up on self-respect, given up on being desirable because I wasn’t desirable to her. Amazing how an unreciprocated crush can rock your self-esteem so much. Amazing and terrifying and all the more reason to avoid crushes entirely. Look where it leaves me: pathetic and unable to work. Maybe you should skip this intro, my manager said. You’ve got a booking with a reg in halfa anyway, the only booking you’ll get today because you’re too tragic otherwise. (She didn’t actually say that last bit but she could’ve; it would’ve been true.) And I went into the room and it was the client who likes to put a blindfold on while he fucks me, which I was grateful for coz he wouldn’t see my swollen eyes, and we have this established role play where he pounds me in doggy and I beg to be allowed to touch myself, please, master, please may I come? And he rubs his cock on my arsehole while I whimper and say it’s too big for me. But that time I wanted to be taken outside of myself, do something outside my usual, and so while he was doing his normal anal tease I said just put it in, in the same tone in which I would say to a friend let’s get fucked up, all resolute and reckless, and he was shocked and hesitated, said really, and I said yep, just put heaps of lube on, and then he eased in slowly and for the first time I had sex in which I wasn’t thinking of her, coz it was slutty and impersonal and I’d never thought of her taking me that way and I came
so fucking hard and then I said sorry but I’ll have to ask for $100 extra for that, I know I didn’t say that before we did it, didn’t mean to scam you, and he said that’s fine I have cash on me, I didn’t realise you do anal though, and I said neither did I really, but now I do – and that’s something this round of obsession has brought me, more cash, so grateful for that.

  Weird the things that heartache will take you to – won’t say heartbreak, because it wasn’t really that: the manic decisions madly made to get out of your mind. The way that Indian boy sought me out for a wristy and spurt of sperm, and ended up just talking about her anyway because he carried her with him still, folded up nice and neat in the bureau of his brain, couldn’t access any memory without reaching over her to retrieve it. What was the advice I gave him? Be transparent; find out what the other wants before you invest. Why couldn’t I listen to my own advice? Maybe it wouldn’t have helped, though. I’ve always thought honesty begets honesty but I was wrong. Seems some people enjoy the ambiguities, the prevarications, the maybes, the somewheres in between that allow for all possibilities – if they give no clear answer they can flip and turn in those spaces, knowing that nothing has been ruled out. I certainly have no elusiveness in me, only frankness (I like you, do you like me at all that way? Would you like to fuck me some time?); I ask directly to allow them an easy no, but I’ve learnt that some people feel trapped by the directness, and that baring yourself is not beautiful to all. For some there is nothing alluring in clarity; it is the greys that add tone and depth and poetry.

  What would I say to him now, if he came to me again in a fevered state, desperate for any balm to ease the pain? Would I say you could behave strictly by your own moral code and still not account for how another behaves? Would I utter clichés like ‘I would rather have loved fully than not at all’ and ‘love conquers all’, sentiments that leak like faulty taps through the narratives of romance that we consume, that we sicken on, that even with my eyes open I drank and drank and still wondered why I choked? Would I say focus on your friendships, they are the true relationships to foster? Would I say whatever, love sucks and hurts and we go back to it again and again and that’s a part of life and we just have to work out how to minimise that hurt coz all vulnerability is a risk really. I thought I was wise, was in a position to give him helpful advice, when really I’m just cynical and at the mercy of my moods as much as anyone. Not as stoic as I would wish, Libra moon a bruise within me.