Maidenhead

‘Myra, listen, I want to be friends with you, okay?’ Lee said softly. ‘The free woman, the tender one, not the one in thrall of some violent American asshole and his girlfriend.’

‘Elijah is Tanzanian and Gayl is from Kentucky,’ I said quickly. I was anticipating sex: violence, assholes, annihilation. ‘Gayl is really smart. She’s an artist. I think you should meet her.’

‘They’re using you.’

‘They are not.’

‘Of course they are.’

‘I don’t care if they are.’

‘You should care, Myra.’

But I didn’t. I had money in my pocket. I had a thick envelope of cash. I wanted to see Gayl and Elijah with my money, with my freedom, and explode on the floor, come on the floor, show my tits tongue ass and knees to both of them together. I wanted to share the money from my mother. Somehow the whole thing made sense. Slave revolt cash for a slave revolting.

‘Myra?’

‘What.’

‘What are you thinking right now?’

I wasn’t thinking. I was shaking. Language cheats and conceals. ‘I am on this path of Absolute Knowledge,’ I whispered.

Lee didn’t respond. We were both silent for a while.

Then she said, ‘Bataille does n

ot believe in Absolute Knowledge, you know.’

I didn’t know.

‘Wait, just hang on.’

I heard her go through the pages of a book. ‘Okay here it is: “Circular absolute knowledge is definitive non-knowledge,”’ Lee read slowly, each word intense. ‘That is Bataille, okay? True inner experience can’t be mapped by absolutes. The whole Hegelian thing was too neat for him. Bataille was all about the cracks. Myra?’

The cracks? Knowledge is cracky? Was it hairy too? I started laughing. It hurt my jaw to laugh. Was cracky, hairy, uncertain knowledge the key to getting fucked a thousand times? Or was it the key to making annihilating porn with a violent asshole and an artist? Or was there no key to any of this?

‘Myra, let me come over there,’ Lee said. ‘I really feel like laughing with you.’

‘But my face is fucked up. It hurts to laugh.’

‘What’s wrong with your face?’

‘Black eyes. A red jaw.’

‘God, Myra. Fuck. I was right.’

‘You’re right. Bataille is right. I’m not suffering. I just have to write it down.’

‘Let me come over.’

‘No. Not now.’

‘Please, Myra. Let me.’

‘I have to write. I have to finish my essay.’

I heard Lee breathing loudly into the phone. I didn’t know if she was angry or worried or what.