Sometimes I drive past your house, your apartment, the park where we went walks, the bench where we sat, a tree – pockets of fresh air – and breathe deep.
I haven’t washed the pillowcase or the sheets since you left and I won’t. This is how I survive.
I remember the time we were finishing our lunch in a garden on a hill above Lyons. It was June or July and hot. Someone suggested that we take off all our clothes and jump into the pond.
I could hear Andre saying his girlfriend would be with us in just a minute but his voice sounded muffled through the t-shirt I already had over my head. And then, in the end, no one went in the water.
Andre fucked me first, slowly and calmly which was his way. Then Paco came and took his place on top of me. Paco’s body was different from Andre’s, and I liked it better. Paco was taller, wiry, one of those men who can isolate the action of his pelvis from the rest of his body – thrust without smothering you, supporting his torso with his arms.
This guy said to me one time, I can’t pin you down. Like a butterfly, he said. Like a rainbow with wings. Like you and me and the good ol’ boys
But the good ol’ boys are pounding bible verses like whiskey while you shove family values up their ass for a flat thousand (good job if you can get it) – and the world is filled with these sick motherfuckers, claim they know right cock from wrong ass, and who’s fore-arm fits natural-like up your pink pussy the way god intended.
But I can show you puzzle pieces you’ve never dreamed of: ’cause there’s a girl in me wants to dominate your smallest movement, and there’s a boy in me wants suck your clit, suck your cock right off.
And one time I was going to be whipped in this humiliating position – arms and legs spread – and I was perspiring, my body was taut with the pain. And then when Sally put the pincers on my balls – well that just hurts like hell every time – and I thought I can’t take this any more. I’m too old for this shit.
But then I was suspended by the handcuffs, and I felt the pain in my thighs, and I couldn’t turn my head to see anyone in the room, and Fiona put something on me – I don’t know what it was – an electric drill and mini-aspirator of some kind? While she was touching me with such a soft hand, and the sugar-salt smell of her perfume filled my nostrils so that it was unbearable and sweet at the same time, and this dizzying shiver shot through me. I was afraid I was going to piss myself with pleasure like a stark beginner, my thighs trembling –
And I’m soaked. And I’m soaked. And I remember the wail of my mother when my brother died – we thought she was laughing. I went into the kitchen. she was holding onto the counter where she had collapsed, and the phone was dangling from its cord, and I’d never heard a sound like that – like the sound my mother was making
And my grandfather was dying in the hospital. And then, one day, he escaped and went home, and shot his wife, and went back to the hospital to die.
And that’s what it means to be human. And that’s what it all means. Because we’re all just flailing.
Falling.
And whether you like to go out to the theatre, or to the opera, or would rather stay at home. Whether you like to be spanked or whipped – spanked or whipped – by an older person or younger, by a person in costume, or what costume exactly, and what sort of whip?
- Hard or soft?
- A wet towel or a bamboo cane?
- A riding crop made of peacock feathers?
- The eyelashes of a Tibetan goat?
- Hair from the head of a Franciscan nun?
Or in some special location? Church basement after mass? Airport closet back alley downtown train station? Or you count your lovers with both fists in them, and names like primary, secondary, tertiary – one motherfucker, two motherfucker – till you need a bigger barn to hold them all.
To hold them tight. You hold them tight. You hold them all real tight, that’s what I’m saying. You hold on tight, and never let go.