by Elle Nash
“I didn’t sleep with Patrick,” I whispered. “I was with Jenny. I wish you would believe me.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and then looked behind him. This man who fucked like a little dark god, who in my mind could have anything he wanted, looked back into the house like his mother would catch him doing something wrong. Mommy. The smell of rice and meat wafted out of the apartment and I had the realization I hadn’t eaten anything cooked in weeks. I sniffed in the cold, waiting for an answer.
He put his hand out and I reacted by handing him the book, my finger in the spot where the CD was hidden. I let his finger slide into the open place when I handed it to him, and watched his eyes as he found the CD there. A tiny flash of recognition, another secret. We were silent. He nodded his understanding.
“You can’t call the house anymore.”
Matt closed the door until just a crack was left.
“I will call you when I can,” he said.
Three days later, Jenny came into work with news. What was I hoping for? I didn’t cook rice and meat. I didn’t even think I could take care of myself, much less a child. Frankie did everything he needed her to. What would happen if we were together? Would I be the mother of Jett? My hobbies included touching myself, drinking cough syrup, and flirting with boys at RadioShack. Could I be anything else? I wondered if Matt had talked to Jenny and she’d smoothed everything out. Maybe he would finally call me. I could finally see him.
Instead, Jenny told me that Matt gave Frankie an engagement ring.
FROM TEETH
THOUGHTS OF MATT WERE an hourly fixation. My self-esteem was drying up without his attention, and as a result I spent an enormous amount of time trying to get Sam to sleep with me. He’d started dating someone, and this only made me want him more. I’d think about the movements Matt and I made with our bodies, sometimes I’d even think of Frankie, and since I could not have Matt in that moment I’d try, constantly, to come over to Sam’s apartment so I could reenact my fantasies with him. If I closed my eyes, it didn’t matter who I was blowing. I could pretend.
Sam took to fucking me on benches at local parks a few times a week. I wanted to be pushed further and further, and so we were doing more and more things that felt dangerous.
“Get naked,” he’d say. I got naked. I did it because I knew whatever girl he was dating wouldn’t strip in the middle of the night in a public park, and this was some kind of victory. I stood there, dropped my clothes onto the wet grass, and waited for his next command.
“Get on your knees,” he’d say next. Everything he loved about me involved the shapes my mouth could make.
I’d blow him, and he’d come on my tits. I’d close my eyes when this happened and think of Matt, the warmth of it comforting me against the cold night breeze. Sam would say, “You like it when I come on your little tits, don’t you.” And I’d say yes. I’d use my shirt or dress to wipe up, and then we’d either fuck in the back of his Camaro or he’d drop me off at home.
What he always said about me, why I was such a slut, I had an itch I could never scratch. I’d never come, even with Matt or Frankie, yet I continuously pursued sexual relationships. Sam had never tried. Not until years later did he seem to care that much about making me feel good. Not until years later did he ask if I was falling in love with him.
After we fucked in the park, he’d drop me off, and then it was just me and my hands and body and a half-empty bottle of Robitussin writhing in the sheets. They say you have to know yourself and you will know your enemy. So I learned myself and the dark, uncontrollable wet spots on the sheets, rhythmic pulsing, waiting for something to happen that never did.
I think the fucking eventually got boring for Sam, so we took a walk around my apartment complex one night. For a moment it felt good to be physical in the world with a man without being in a bedroom. We flirted. Sam got sentimental and I told him to stop. We got back to the trailer, and he sat on the edge of my bed after my mom was well asleep. He told me to sit. I sat naked on his lap, moved my anchored legs until they burned. I didn’t scratch the itch.
There were other men. One night I invited a high school ex over, the person I lost my virginity to. Another, Sam’s roommate, hit me up when Sam was out of town.
I wondered if the same men were always coming back because even though I couldn’t remember a single time they made me come, I still wanted them to come see me. Boy-I-lost-my-virginity-to moved back to the Springs and was dating a girl we both knew. I did the thing I always did, which was make a chaotic mess of his life. I played a game with myself, which was to see how sad I could make myself without his attention. It worked. His girlfriend worked on Thursday nights, and every Thursday night he’d come over, but we didn’t speak on any other days.
My obsession with Matt began to lessen from an hourly occurrence to only daily. I got bored of being sexual when I felt like a dead package of skin waiting to be unwrapped. In my boredom I became impatient, so I started telling boy-I-lost-my-virginity-to what to do. I told him to put his mouth there so he puts his mouth there, because I was older than I was the day we first fucked, and in that moment I thought I knew what I wanted. His mouth stayed there and I grabbed his thick black hair and pushed his face into me. I felt the dark of my single room close in around us and questioned whether or not god was real, which I knew it wasn’t, because I’d tried that trick before and I came up empty-handed.
The first time he fucked me wasn’t the actual first time, but I’d since forgotten what he felt like, since I was only fourteen at the time. The other new thing was his interest in putting his thin fingers around my neck and pressing down, and I let him do it until the skin in my face burned hotter than my crotch. When he did this, I closed my eyes and thought of Matt again and only Matt, and waited for him to come.
Two months had passed since Matt left my life, and I slept through half the day, dreaming. In my dreams, Matt’s hair was longer than it used to be, he was sweaty, heavy, his body ripe with fresh muscle. It was hard in that moment to imagine a world in which he could exist without me, but he laid me in a bed with dirty sheets and we fucked with most of our clothes on. The way he felt was safe and electric because it was that newness again that I was continuously chasing. He placed his thumb on the center of me; it was so easy for him to know where I needed to go. He didn’t put his hand on my neck. He put his hand on my head and directed me to kiss him. Our lips together created neon smears on my cheek, spit stuck to my neck, the crumpled clothes around my waist. His body like the Baphomet in Jenny’s cards was a cage over me. This was how I liked for it to be.
Sam and I lay in the bed together, arms soothing each other’s sides. He was a bottle of whiskey heavier on this night because his girlfriend had just left him. I was sober, surprisingly, because I worked early. I figured he called me because he was sad, or at least needed some validation. I was lonely and happy to oblige. On his back, he made the same snoring sounds my mother made, so I pushed his body hard until he rolled over, stuck in the drink and the sweat hot. I had never spent the night before but I didn’t want to go home. The grey glow of a silent TV flickered at the foot of the bed. I played a game with myself.
“Stay still,” I said, and I lay still.
I put headphones in, one ear open and one listening to a voice-mail on my phone. An old one left by Matt.
I counted the heartbeats in my head as I slowed my breathing down, sure not to twitch or move the mattress too hard. The game was that Sam couldn’t find out, most likely wouldn’t, his body exhaling whiskey dreams and heavyweight snores. He stirred, and I slowed down my circular motions until I was not moving at all. I tried to see how slow I could go until the rise came and I couldn’t take it anymore, quiet and holding every muscle tight until it was gone, eyes tight shut with all the red of my body holding together. I let go, breathed, grey cold light still there.
THE SATANIC BIBLE SAYS MAN IS THE MOST VICIOUS ANIMAL OF ALL
I SPENT THE BETTER part of spring fuckin
g Jenny, getting lost in her body, and getting drunk. I felt bad that she would let me do this, especially after the tarot reading and the Tower card. I thought about the villain’s fall from grace, how the card told me I needed to stop obsessing over Matt. After the reading, I became even more consumed by him. The smell of his skin was salt on the road. The color of his eyes was the tint over every other eye I saw. It overlaid the latent sadness in Jenny’s eyes, the hot pink feel of her skin, it darkened the peeling paint of her basement bedroom. When Jenny’s hands touched me, they were not hands anymore. They became objects with mechanical digits.
Jenny became an object in which I could place all of my feelings for Matt. I would see myself play fighting with her, our twin purple bruises yellowing out into our skin in little shark-teeth bite marks.
We both began drinking more. A fifth of Skol became a half gallon and soon we were killing one a night. I bit her harder. Drew blood from her skin seeking the taste of something else inside her, maybe Matt, or something to get me away from myself and into someone else. I bit her until the taste of her blood and cunt filled my mouth, spread across my tongue in thick mealy pulses of taste. Clouds of bruises dressed her stomach, neck, and arms.
Tonight we had something special, Monopolowa and Cherry Coke. We drank until the half gallon was near the end. I sat on the dryer and inhaled a cigarette out of the tiny window in her laundry room, letting the rush of post-sex pain take its course through me. I felt as though I was spending a lot of time acting upon Jenny rather than through her. I had been reduced to simple content. Rather than being seen as human, it was more as if I were a piece of entertainment to her, a block of text or commercial airspace which was mildly entertaining if only to fill out gaps in time. I couldn’t be sure of her intentions any more than I could be sure of Matt’s. His rejection of me was piercing through everything.
Jenny took my cigarette and took a drag. The rush wore off. She blew the smoke in my face and pushed me against the cold cement wall. Her lips met mine as the cigarette dragged against my arm, crushed between her body and mine.
“Ow!” I yelled. I pushed her off of me and slapped her before brushing flame off of my shirt and skin. I could feel the skin of my hand turn pink and burn a little, and my arm began to sear.
I was frustrated with her for hurting me, and for letting me hurt her. Her stupid Tower of Babel card, her stupid unwavering loyalty no matter how mean I was. She accepted my presence without question, and I could not determine what she really wanted from me. She made me feel like a predator. A meat eater. Like a pair of teeth with a stomach and no other purpose.
I pushed her again and jumped off the dryer. Jenny fell back and I laid on top of her, angry that she didn’t want to fight back. I grabbed her chin in my hand and forced her to look at me, the tendons of her neck swallowing beneath my wrist. Her eyes, their thunderstorm color, squinted at me, but she didn’t look scared. She smiled—she was playing. I pushed my hand harder into the thick chord of her trachea to see if her eyes would change and they did not. She moved her hips underneath me, so I bit her. She laughed and struggled a little, and twisted her wrists out of my hands, trying to push me off of her. I slapped her across the face again, harder this time. My palm buzzed. It must have scared the shit out of her because there on the floor, with me on top of her, she burst into tears.
“Fuck,” I said. I watched her face go red and splotchy and immediately felt a wave of regret.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” I spoke quietly, as if I were speaking to a baby or a dying animal. “You’re okay,” I said. I cradled her head in my hands and then kissed her. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re okay. I’m just drunk.”
I said it over and over again, but she kept crying. In my gut was this deep, terminal feeling, like I might be executed for my terrible sins, for the things I did to her. I put my hands on her cheeks where the tears were, where her cheek was red. The numbness left my palm and it left my body.
Her crying made me cry. I cried until snot came out of my face and she stopped. She put her hands on my cheeks, slid them down to my neck and held them there. I could feel where her fingers passed the bruises on my neck, tender broken nerves making thin puddles of watercolor blood underneath. I leaned in to kiss her and where our lips met, there were tears and salt and snot. We kissed anyway, all of the gross things mixing and making slime on our cheeks. We kissed harder and kept our eyes closed. I focused on feeling what was inside of me. It used to be that each time I’d kiss a new person, excitement would spark my body to life. But I wasn’t nervous anymore. I didn’t get butterflies. I was kissing to be kissed, tongue and teeth and snot.
I traced my hands down her shirt and unbuttoned her pants. The light was still on and anyone who walked by on the street might see us there on the concrete floor. I tugged off her jeans, some Juicy Couture shit she bought at a thrift store. The hair on her thighs stood on end and all of her skin prickled from the cement.
Jenny watched me. She was a person who had to see as well as feel, maybe. I could navigate my life blind. All I cared about was seeking the next high. When she looked at me, it was different than how Matt saw me when he had the knife to my face. It was different that how Sam looked at me in his bathroom after the pool party. I watched it happen. Jenny disappeared. I watched a person disappear into the shell of another human, of me, in real time. Jenny seemed to leave herself and move into me.
My teeth no longer felt the need to devour, so I used my tongue instead to feel the parts of her that made her feel good. The parts that made her vulnerable. I kept my tongue on the fabric of her underwear and could feel her wet and my wet melt together through the lace. She grabbed my shoulders and pushed my face harder into her.
The way I ate her was like a meal, in little parts. Jenny gave small pieces of herself away each time my tongue pressed into her. A little less of her seemed to come back with me. The places where we became one thing together like this, our open membranes raw and bleeding. The cave of her colliding into my mouth, the place where words form. The way our darks connected. I didn’t know what to think about how this felt other than we were here, alive and breathing and fucking, and maybe this was how it was supposed to be.
I took her to bed, laid her on her twin mattress, and placed the blanket over her. I wiped my face with a towel from her floor and slept on the mattress next to her, but on top of the blanket instead of under it.
The cigarette burn on my arm was not healing. I had been feeling slow, tired from the constant drinking every other night. If I was working, I was sober, but as soon as I was off the clock I was either with Jenny and drinking Skol, or in my room, snorting Vicodin and drinking any liquor that was in the house. I had taken to raiding the dusty cabinet underneath the china hutch in the living room while my mom was asleep. A few red wine bottles had vinegared, but I drank them anyway. A green, half-drunk bottle of shochu was in the corner collecting dust. It must have been my father’s. A couple bottles of Johnny Walker Red. A bottle of Black Velvet. My mom must have forgotten these were here. The shochu was at least over twenty years old. I grabbed it and the Black Velvet and headed back to my room.
I turned the radio on my alarm clock to a classic rock station, which was currently on an AC/DC marathon, and lit a cigarette. I didn’t have to work the next couple days, but Jenny was not returning my texts, so I took a swig of the shochu and chased it with an open bottle of sour red wine. My feet hung from the bed, and I kicked the trash underneath me, the empty plastic bottles of Robitussin and McCormicks juggling around dirtied paper plates and napkins, empty glasses crusted with rings of old cola.
I should’ve taken a break from seeing Jenny. She hadn’t talked to me since our last drunk night, and I was getting paranoid. If she wouldn’t reach out to me, I wanted to forget her and leave the whole thing behind before she could hurt me, too. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she did hate me, if she wanted space. The more time I spent with myself, the more I found myself grotesquely annoying. My ski
n had been breaking out—from the constant drinking and my poor diet—and no makeup was covering it up. I wasn’t showering much. My nails were dirty underneath, my legs unshaven. I could feel the oil built up in my hair and on my skin. I was gross. It was not a surprise that Matt no longer wanted to see me. I felt that I had peaked at eighteen, and nineteen was now just the slow slope downward. Right after high school, I had everything: good skin, shiny hair, a good body that liked to fuck. Right after that birthday, I had just started sleeping with my manager at work, and could add “fucked a boss” to my list of life to-dos. Sam seemed less interested in me now that I was nineteen and he was single. He was even scheduling me less at work, scheduling me at times when I wouldn’t be around him. At nineteen, I did not feel Barely Legal anymore. Somehow, whatever power I thought I had with my body had already begun to fade. I knew women lost value as they aged, but didn’t think I’d feel it so soon. I seemed to have wrinkles already, my body collecting scars. The bags under my eyes were getting worse. I wondered when I might start looking like my mother, acting like her, letting weight amass on my frame. We were both hiding in the same house with the same vices, a hole as big as a husband or father inside our ulcered, burning guts.
I lit another cigarette and picked at the scab on my arm, flinging the broken skin onto the trash heap of my floor. I didn’t seem to feel the pain anymore. I took another drink of the shochu, bitter like rubbing alcohol, and wondered if I might go blind, before putting my cigarette out onto my forearm.
The pain was sharp and I breathed it in, like lightning illuminating a dark landscape. It was exciting to forget I hated myself so much. I rubbed the ashes off and watched as the broken skin bloomed from raw peach to dark red. Then everything was dull again.
THE MAN I COULDN’T MAKE INTO A GOD
I HADN’T HEARD FROM Matt or Frankie in about three months. One day after an early shift at work, my phone rang, a number I did not recognize. For a while after the breakup, I had obsessively checked my phone for missed calls from blocked numbers, as Matt would always call me without giving me a way to call him back. He seemed to enjoy that: being able to show up and disappear without repercussions blowing back on him. At this point, my obsession and my heartbreak had somewhat lessened, so I was surprised when I picked up the phone and heard his voice.