‘Roll over now, I yelled at him. Now! Do it now! He wasn’t responding. I had to force his torso over by yanking his right arm over the left. The guy winced and screamed as I did it. His open skin burned. I didn’t care. I really didn’t care. And I pretended like I didn’t care either.
‘I was standing above him. He was breathing too fast. I opened my thighs. I was spreading my pussy and I hovered above him. He pursed his lips and made kissy noises, like some helpless baby who wanted his mummy’s breast. I wanted to stuff something down his throat. Shut up! I told him. His eyeballs popped open, so white and so wide.
‘I was smiling. I distinctly remember that I was smiling. I spread my cunt lips and I sank there, right there, I felt how it touched me, the ball of his eye. My body felt like it was made to be flying. It felt too good, so good, eye on my cunt. Actually, I didn’t know if I knew how to feel that good. How to make us both feel that good at the same time. I suspended myself for a second, caught my breath, heard his moans, and I did it again. Back down on his face, his eye on my skin, this time I couldn’t stop, I was sliding all over his nose and his cheeks, his throat and his lips. Both of his eyeballs were silk, they were rolling with me. My palms flattened down on the floor at his cheeks, I felt his whole head being held by my thighs, his eye on my clit, slipping and moving, both of us screaming and slippery, connected alive.
‘That’s how it was between me and that guy. God, it was good. Can you see how I thought he was something like you?’
I was hurting. My arms were going to break off.
‘Why’d you stop then?’
‘Because I want to be able to tell a lover that I love him and I want my lover to love me.’
The girl put her finger in her mouth and bit it. Her eyes looked down at the floor. I felt for just one second how it was good between us. I was sorry I had ever hurt her. I wished that she’d told me, right then, I wished she’d told me she loved me.
‘Look at you hanging there,’ she said quickly. ‘Your arms are going to fall off. I’ve got to let you down now.’
She got up behind me again and untied my arms. She let the pulley out from the hook at the wall. She was acting all of a sudden as if nothing was unusual. I had a circle of burns around both my wrists. My legs weren’t steady and I nearly fell to the ground. I put my head between my arms. I heard myself breathing weirdly and heavily.
She touched my shoulder. ‘Just take your time getting up. You’ll be all right. You can see yourself out, right? I have to go out in a little while. I’ve got to get ready.’
She left me there in her bedroom. I heard the shower go on. A lump started pulsing in my throat. I didn’t know how that had all just happened.
I crawled into her bed. The covers were clumped up. I tried to shake everything straight. My whole body felt strange. My stomach got bloated and I kept farting and farting. I lay there thinking: Why’d I hit her? Why couldn’t I have just been good to her when I had her? Why’d she make me do that? Why’d I do it even if she made me? If I hit her once, I’d hit her again. That’s how it worked, that’s how abuse always worked. I knew what she was like. I knew how she was in the world. I couldn’t deal with her like that. Especially when she knew how she was in the world too. She’d showed me. She just told me. I didn’t think that I could be with her like that. Smelling like pussy. Lips pursed out to kiss me. I would hit her again. In her face, in her lips, and she’d hit me back. She would hit me and fuck me and tie me up like she tied that guy up. I hated her. All that sex she had with me. Her crazed and her open … How when she saw me looking at her she just squeezed her eyes tight. Like she wanted to have her hair in her face and not let me really see her. I didn’t believe it! I didn’t believe her. I knew all she wanted to do was open her legs and let me see exactly what she was. That body, so warm, but those eyes, that whole face, making me feel like we were both cracking, that we were pressing ourselves together just to pull ourselves apart. When I looked at her when we were having sex I felt like I was looking at the face of all girls cracking open …
But I still wanted her to love me. I wanted to feel her body, warm at my back, while I slept. The shower turned off. I waited for her to find me.
THREE
Jupiter asked Tiresias: ‘In their act of love
Who takes the greater pleasure, man or woman?’
‘Woman,’ replied Tiresias, ‘takes nine-tenths.’
Juno was so angry – angrier
Than is easily understandable –
She struck Tiresias and blinded him.
‘You’ve seen your last pretty snake, for ever.’
But Jove consoled him: ‘That same blow,’ he said,
‘Has opened your inner eye, like a nightscope. See:
‘The secrets of the future – they are yours.’
– Ovid, The Metamorphoses
I know you’re still there. Come to me, please. Look at me. I want to tell you what happened. Come to me. Closer. Trust me, please. I want you to hear this. I am telling you this from my innermost parts. Listen. Everything just got so uncontrollable. I feel better now. Okay? Stay with me for a little while longer. I want to be with you. Closer. I’ll tell you what I did. Come to me. See, this is what happened:
I decided to stop being with that guy I loved. I knew I had to, I was too twisted up. It got to the point where I barely recognized myself in the mirror. I saw old grey smoke hanging over my skin. And when I’d stare at myself longer, it was like that smoke would fill up my eyes. Squinting, I could see what I’d been doing all that time – on my knees at his hips like a cock-sucking slave, doing it, taking it … Wait, don’t go! Please believe me. I wanted to change things, I swear that I did.
It’s just that it is almost impossible to untangle yourself when you are in love. It’s because you know you’ve got to find something on the body of that person you are in love with and you know that whatever you have to find is so near, it’s right there in front of you, so you’re searching for it, sucking and searching, and it doesn’t matter what that person does or doesn’t do to you, you have to find it.
I’d never cried over any man before. Because every time something ended with a guy, I’d look up and there’d always be another one wanting me. But trying to separate myself from that one felt like vomiting when you can’t breathe. That’s what my crying was like. I couldn’t find that thing on his body and so I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t leave. I was stuck on my knees, with his cock down my throat – I was trying to swallow to get closer to the place where I could hear it, swallow to get closer to the place where I could see it, whatever it was that was love there inside him.
But I didn’t want to be so close! I wanted to be far away, high away, in the air looking down at my lips and down at his cock, where I could see myself stuck, gasping for air, small and split open, always right there, lost like a slut trying to suck out his love … I know you see how I shouldn’t have been there! God, I knew it too. But look at me more, sucking right there and searching, do you see, don’t you see how I also look happy?
There was something alive down inside me, murmuring, Spend your whole, spend your whole life on your knees.
I had to lock myself in my house to try and separate myself from this! And all I could do was touch myself. I don’t know how that sounds to you, but I thought that I could only truly dissolve this thing by touching myself harder and harder. I needed to have a whole other body come out and overtake me.
I did it all over the house. I touched myself in the kitchen and I touched myself in the bathroom. There was this one time when I was doing it in the hallway. I had my back flat against the floor and my legs on the wall in a V. My head was propped up and I could see my fingers moving over my whole lower half like they were powered by fire. Ten fingers squeezing my lips like machine
parts. It felt like it wasn’t me who was moving my fingers that fast. My chest started moving up and down. My thighs fell open wider. Something started jolting down there, it made my head whip side to side. It was like I had these hard black rods pushing inside me, part of an engine about to blow up! I had fingers above and fingers inside and it was like a tube opened up, a passageway made in the head of a pin. I squeezed another finger up. My pussy was pounding. It wanted me there. The bone curved on top and the walls were sucking, round. I felt like I was going to implode from this touching, fall through the walls, melt down through the floor. I just kept going inside myself faster. I didn’t know why I was moaning so much, my body inside me as tight as a rope – I thought I was going to suffocate. Then, though, god, my chest started soaring. I was turning inside something mammoth – oh, how can I tell you? It was an endless dark route folding in on itself.
I closed my eyes and rolled onto my belly. My ass raised itself up. My hands were still under me, moving and poking. I imagined that the guy I loved was right there at my cunt, that he came to my lips, my fool’s hanging lips. He was licking me, sucking me, until I went limp. My lips slurred flat on the ground. I felt like a pit all dug out at his feet …
I opened my eyes, I wanted to stop! I had to remember what I was doing!
I thought that the light from my bedroom was flashing. It looked like there was something in there. I bolted up too fast and ran down the hallway. My head and my neck were stacked on top of each other too loosely, my feet smacked the ground and my limbs were all jerky. I got weird. I gulped air.
In my bedroom I heard people calling my name. I spun around a few times. I kept spinning. My room was a fucking mess that I was whirling through. I started to take off my clothes. I felt like I was dancing, stripping naked on a stage. There I was, glowing underneath the flashing lights. Me shaking my ass in time with the shouts of the crowd, the sounds of their voices shot right through my head: She is so fucking sexy! Let’s take her home! My body got furnace-hot. Burning wood. I knew that I had enough heat for everyone. Take me! Take me! I was touching my breasts and my hips as I danced. My eyes were closed but it was like I could see myself moving. It was like I could see the whole room through the back of my head! I saw all the people looking. I knew that any man would take me right then, my flesh all so loose, my hands in the air. They’d take me from the back, from the front and from the side. They’d swarm me to take me. They’d wait their turn to do it. And when they all got around me, I’d spread open wide, it would all go so fast like a train running through me: my temples, my head and my cunt steaming life.
I felt so heavy. I was down on the floor. I reached for my bed. My tongue hung out. I put my finger on my tongue to calm myself. I climbed into bed, sucking my finger, sucking inconsolably tight.
I knew right then that I’d sucked cocks so much because men gave me themselves when I did it. I mean that I got on my tongue what came out of their body that was white and light and unlike them. When I took in a cock, I knew what a man had hidden inside him. I liked men better when I sucked on their cocks.
Then my lips went soft and my finger slid out. I was coughing, twisting around on the bed. I knew right then that I could not suck that one guy’s cock like I loved him because I was sucking a hook, not a cock!
I had the urge to touch myself more, but when I started again it wasn’t feeling as good. This time when I pressed my fingers over my clit, it was too raw, impossible. I heard these crows cawing inside my mind. I tried to say my name but it came out all garbled. I heard it coming, I knew it was coming, the crows cawed, Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool! Gagging, I stopped, but it started again: Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool! Yelling deep in my head all shot through with caws: You are wrong! Fool! Everything you have done with that man has been wrong! Fool! Since that man mashed your breasts. Since your hand went down your pants! Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool!
It came out of me. FOOL! I lay there, ears open, my throat going numb. I pounded the bed with my fists. Revolted curls in my gut. FOOL! You’re a fool! God, it wouldn’t stop! I hunched over, heaving. I threw up on the floor.
I don’t know how long I stayed in that position.
When I finally raised myself up, I staggered off the bed to get over to the window for air, one foot in front of the other. My heart was pounding too loudly. But my feet didn’t lead me to the window. I walked into the closet instead, and I started ripping my clothes from the hangers. Then I grabbed for the shoes and the boots that were there at the back and I started throwing them out of the closet. I was shrieking like a hyena each time one cracked against a wall. I wanted to erase all my fucks with the smacks. The sound of those shoes whipped like dead against the wall. Every time I heard a smack I knew there was a reason that man had hit me.
He’d hit me for a reason, yes, a reason so big that it built up inside me. A reason so big that it was shining all over my face!
I went out of my bedroom and into the bathroom. I turned on the shower but I didn’t get in. I felt the floor, the blue light, and I stared at myself in the mirror. Under my eyes was so dark. My lips were parted and dirty. I closed my eyes and opened them. I knew right then, I mean, I saw it so clear – I got hit because my need equalled the man’s need. Do you see what I am saying? All that time I spent on my knees was this balancing act. I was trying to make something even. I know that might not sound so good, but that is what it was. I got hit to come down to his level. I worshipped the man to bring him to mine. I touched him and stroked him no matter what he did because I was trying to bring up the middle between us.
See, I knew where I was when I was on my knees. When it was like this, I wasn’t confused about anything. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I was beautiful.
I still feel beautiful when I walk out of my bathroom and I see his face. He is standing by the window. He has made up the bed. I feel my mouth in the weirdest smile. I know when I see him that I am over nothing.
Our eyes catch like hooks. And for once we are mirrored, for once we are looking at each other with ease. It’s the thrilling ease of seeing something you are. It seems funny to me all of a sudden. My smile gapes wider. I see all his teeth.
I know: this time things will be different because this time I am looking straight at him.
We don’t say a word. I still don’t know where to put all my desire. My desire for him always hurts when it rises. But I am pressing against whatever it is that is coming off him. I keep pressing into that place where I think I am falling, where I brace myself to fall, to come up again, to come and to fall.
I go down on my knees because I want to. I unzip his pants. I’ll take everything you give me, I am thinking so clearly, because I know I am taking in every part of you. With my mouth on his cock and his cock in my mouth I start to really relax. When I am here, I am right where I am: inside that place where I need to be badly, where he can feel everything, from right where I speak. I’m sucking his hook, I am swallowing whole. His sounds come out like the grunts of forever. I know he will have me, this time for good, love through his hands on the back of my head, I will always suck more to the sounds of this praying. I will always suck more to the end of all ends. I squeeze my whole life into this place, where his love meets my lips, shooting out like a piston. It’s the heart that he gives me. Half of a heart, a life full of secrets.
My man stops me and looks. His hand cradles under my chin. His cock is right there, as hard as a horn. Then he slides his arm around my neck, hugging my face tight to his thighs. My whole body instinctively jerks and draws back.
‘You love me?’ he says, still holding my chin.
I am looking at you.
‘I love you.’
We end up lying on the floor face to face. My legs are open wide. His hands stroke my waist. He is coming in naked. He presses on my mouth. His cock is inside me. I pull him all in. Our bodies go fast. It is hot
it is hot we are pulsing together.
This is what happens.
Do you see what I see? How I fell back to him? Why I stayed and I stayed near the shield of his chest?
It’s because nothing can really die between half-hearted people. We’re sharing our hearts and we’re down on the ground, where we can confess that there’s nothing we know about each other. There we are stuck, beating on each other’s chests, where all we know is what we’re going to do.
THE WAY
OF THE
WHORE
Sister, the Enchanter
has stolen my heart –
where can I go,
what can I do –
he took the breath from my lungs.
I’d gone to the river,
a jug on my head,
when a figure rose through the darkness.
Sister, it cast a sorcerer’s noose
and it bound me.
What the world calls virtue suddenly
vanished.
I performed a strange rite –
Mira may be a slave, sister,
but she herself
chose whom to sleep with.
– Mirabai, 14981550
MIRE
Things are different in the middle of the night. Rooms, legs, eyes, whatever. The air’s so full of static that no one can see, so everyone just acts, because all acts are fine.
The acts that have led me to the middle of the night reveal their inevitable order when I’m stuck. When all my soft and black thoughts slide into a chain.
Little Cat Page 8