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!