Trendsetters
I’ve found a trend in the men I fuck – they all reek of unfamiliar scents, each a shrine to cringing nostrils. Those tiny hairs begging for just
One.
Clean.
Breath.
But my logic is blinded by love, or lust mistaken for love, or maybe I’m thinking with a skewed perception of love; of fairy tales fed by an animated stranger called Disney. Or maybe I’m just thinking with my clit.
I ignore my senses, smothering them as I bury my face in his shirt, hoping. Hoping that my ingestion of today’s choice of toxin can amount to a fair exchange for a hand tangled with mine, or a heavy breath as he raids my body or maybe, just maybe, that thump, thump, thump that thrashes against his ribcage, the rhythm I search for when I glue my head to his chest.
God, they fucking reek.
Number one of white powder and burnt spoons.
Number two of energy drinks and sweat.
Number three of menthol and insomnia.
I’ve found a trend in the men I fuck – their bodies a canvas for scars. My hands dance across their skin, fingers like magnets to tiny dark hills in their flesh. My nails slide beneath their wounds, digging through layers of skin like a termite picks through bark. I yearn for that familiar warmth – that crimson pool forms then quickly wiped away, suffocating his pores. I can’t tell if I find more comfort in his bruises or blood.
Their skin is stained.
Number one with the kiss of a syringe.
Number two etched with the remnants of youth’s razor blades.
Number three scabbed by tobacco’s ember.
I’ve found a trend in the men I fuck – they’re shattered, but I don’t want to fix them. When they mask their wounds I panic, ripping at their progress like a day old Band-Aid. I fear their intent to heal. I want to embrace their pieces; to rub their shards with bare hands and combine them with mine for if they’re cured, where does that leave me?
Point blank – we are some fucked up kids.
Number two once said I “wear emotional baggage like it weighs tons.”
Number one is that emotional baggage and for today, I think I want to share it with Number three.
Here’s another treatment I did for Adaptation, influenced by the story “Naveed” by Dave Eggers.
Fat Girls Fuck, Too
A ratted pair of Converse chases a pair of black and white polka dot flip-flops up the concrete stairwell of an urban Philadelphia apartment complex.
The girl in the flip-flops is Sadie, a twenty-three year old who keeps her hair in black Bettie bangs and a bandana. Her thick thighs are wrapped tight with black jeans and her torso is hidden beneath a loose Black Flag t-shirt. She wears a frown on her mascara stained face.
The man in the Converse is Brett, a twenty-seven year old who spends too much time on his hair. His tan arms burst from a Hollister t-shirt and his toned calves peek from dark cargo pants. His lips stutter from beneath a perfectly groomed face as he says, “I’m sorry, it just came out wrong. But it’s true – I’ve never been with a fat girl before.”
A plump Calico wails at the door as Sadie storms into the studio apartment. Somewhere beneath all the books and paper are a futon and homemade desk. The walls are plastered with vintage B movie posters, a pirate flag, and strands of colored lights. Sadie drops her bag on the futon and the Calico wails again as she paws at an empty cat dish. Brett bursts into the apartment and before he can apologize again Sadie slams another door, locking herself behind it.
Sadie stands nude before a full-length mirror in a cramped bathroom, the walls in the reach of her five foot four wingspan. Her pale reflection shudders as she fights to cover her slightly mismatched breasts, the rolls of her stomach, the stretch marks on her thighs all at the same time. She watches her reflection with sad eyes. She turns to trace the shape of her ass, her back, her arms. She lifts an arm, flicking at the flab, watching it ripple in the reflection. She pokes at her plump cheeks, pushes them up, pulls them down. She sighs and sits at the edge of the bathtub.
The closet door opens. On hands and knees she climbs half way in, shuffling through miscellaneous types of products – feminine, cleaning, beauty. The shuffling stops and Sadie yanks out a dusty black duffel bag.
A corset is wrapped around her torso and her breasts are raised with the tight tie of each lace. Fishnets slide onto her legs just before a shiny black knee-high boot. A deep red gloss masks her lips. She fiddles with the end of a leather whip. Sadie stares into the full-length mirror, feeding her reflection a sly grin.
Sadie disappears through the door as it slams shut. From behind the door there is a thump. “Sit down and shut the fuck up.”
Filed under: Screenwriting | Tags: children's story, Screenwriting, treatment
Here’s a treatment for a fucked up children’s story I did for my Adaptation class. It’s based on a friend’s childhood memory about falling in the toilet. I’ve also been heavily influenced after watching way too much of Making Fiends.
Malischa in: A Shitty Situation
There is a mountain of pink quilts and pillows atop a jewel embellished princess bed, draped with a sheer canopy and accessorized with a plethora of plush kittens, bunnies and teddy bears. Birds sing as sunshine leaks through velvet curtains. Suddenly, a harsh alarm roars, the buzz blaring from a digital pink clock in the shape of a ballerina. There is a groan. The quilt-pillow-and-plush mountain shakes and Malischa, a frowning first grader, erupts from the bed. “I fucking hate alarms.”
Malischa sits in front of a majestic gold mirror as her nanny, Miss Merry, brushes her long black hair – it juxtaposes her frilly pink dress completely. Miss Merry asks which bow she’d like in her hair today and Malischa responds, “I fucking hate bows.” Miss Merry sighs, asking if her Mommy and Daddy would approve of such language. “They’re never around so how should I know?”
Malischa now sits beneath an enchanting chandelier at a giant dining room table while the delicate sounds of violins fill the room. There are enough settings for twelve regardless that Malischa sips her orange juice alone. A French chef enters, placing a silver plate in front of the girl. “I took the liberty of wrapping your eggs and sausage in a tortilla, quite similar to a burrito, in celebration of your parents escapades to Mexico.” Malischa groans. “I fucking hate burritos.”
Malischa waits at a bus stop surrounded by a dozen other children and their robe wearing, curler headed mothers who whisk them onto the mustard school bus, exchanging kisses on the cheek for brown paper lunch bags. Malischa is last on the bus. Her seemingly endless walk to the back of the bus is like walking the plank – she faces taunts from every direction, like “Princess Pee Brain” and “Frilly Pink Butthead”. Malischa is unaffected, her frowning face never melting to sadness until third grader Puck spits “orphan” in her direction. Malischa stops in her tracks. “What the fuck did you just say?” Puck repeats the word over and over in a sing-songy voice before Malischa erupts – “I’ll fucking kill you!” But before her grip can reach his neck, a bus aid comes to Puck’s rescue. Malischa is dragged to the back of the bus and receives a wag of the finger. She peers in Puck’s direction, serving him the death stare.
Children flood into the halls after a bell rings at Mammoth Elementary. Malischa butts her way to the front of the water fountain line right next to the boys’ bathroom. She pretends to drink from the fountain while keeping her eyes glued on the bathroom door. When Puck approaches she grins and hastily shoves him into the bathroom.
Malischa gives Puck a swirly. She holds his head in the toilet, ignoring his flailing limbs and flushes the toilet over and over again in front of an audience of other boys. They point and laugh at Puck, reminding him that he is, in fact, getting beat up by a little first grade girl.
Suddenly the sea of boys parts as Morella, Puck’s sixth grade sister, approaches the stall to fish her gasping brother from the toilet. “You are such a mean little girl, someone has to teach you a lesson, and that someone’s gonna be me!” She grabs Malischa by her ear and pulls her to the toilet, forcing her head into the bowl – flush. In one swift instant the toilet tugs on Malischa’s long black hair, pulling her entire body into the toilet. When the water settles in the bowl Malischa is gone. Morella sighs, “Aw, shit.”
Malischa is propelling through the clean and clear water of the toilet pipes, laughing as if on a ride at the water park. Suddenly, the water turns murky, then brown just before she plops into a whole new world – the sewer.
Malischa sits in a brown puddle, her hair a ratted mess, the pink of her dress undetectable, as it now appears brown. She screams as she pounds her fists in the puddle – “I fucking hate this shit!”
An almost inaudible voice sounds, as if someone is speaking under water – “Well that’s too bad.” Malischa cocks her head as she notices a bubbly patch just in front of her. Suddenly, a brown sludge-like creature erupts from the murky water. She looks around before asking, “Was that you?” The creature – Peppy – nods. “Well what do you mean?” He insists that she smell herself. “It smells like shit,” she exclaims, sticking out her tongue in disgust. Peppy grins, “Exactly. Our whole world is made of poo.” Malischa screams and it echoes through the tunnel, reaching other poo people who sit in poo benches reading poo newspapers, poo people in poo houses making poo meals for their poo families, to a poo zoo full of poo creatures that do not stand upright like Peppy, but on all fours.
Peppy grabs Malischa’s arm, begging her to go on an adventure through the poo world with him. She doesn’t budge. Peppy then begins skipping through the sewer as he drags Malischa by the arm – she is motionless besides her mouth, which doesn’t cease to spout obscenities between complaints about the smell. Peppy smiles and whistles as they pass all the poo people – he is sure to greet each and every one of them. Finally Malischa asks where they’re headed and Peppy promises that even tough it’s a secret, where they are headed will surely blow her mind.
The whole way Malischa complains about everything even though Peppy finds the good in whatever she bitches about – Malischa hates the smell, but Peppy is thankful to even have a sense of smell considering his Grandfather lost his nose in the Poo Crusades of 1942; Malischa hates the sludge they walk through, but Peppy likes it because you can slip through it as if on ice skates; Malischa hates how dark the sewers are, but Peppy appreciates that he will never get skin cancer because there’s no sun to burn him; Malischa hates the color of poo, but Peppy thinks it’s slimming and definitely brings out the color of his eyes. Malischa eventually asks Peppy how he can be so optimistic all while living in a world made of poo and he smiles – they have reached their destination.
Peppy points to the sky, at a hole in the top of the sewer – through the hole leaks the only ray of sunlight ever to reach the sewer. They can hear dim chirps of birds and laughter and traffic. “The best part about it,” Peppy ecstatically explains, “is that just across the street is a cookie factory. And once a week, you can hear the big bang of the cookie machine. Soon after, the sweet smell of chocolate or peanut butter or sugar cookies fills the air, and if you stand at just the right spot at just the right time, you can get a whiff of those delicious, oven baked gems.” He lifts some of his poo arm like a sleeve to check his watch then begins to anxiously count down from ten. When he reaches zero his eyes close and he inhales as deep as he can. Malischa takes a few sniffs and shrugs, but Peppy insists that it’s the most beautiful thing. Malischa asks how he can be so optimistic in the midst of all this shit and he smiles. He explains that it’s the poo that makes him happy; his crappy world forces him to search for happiness because even beneath all the shit, somewhere there’s a little sliver of sunshine and pastries.
Peppy smiles as he wipes a tear from his eye, then looks down to see that Malischa is gone. His head rises to see Malischa scurrying up the wall of the sewer and she pops through the hole to the street. Peppy sighs, then suddenly a voice screeches from above – “You’re really nice and all, and I guess I like what you had to say about happiness and shit – but I fucking hate happy endings.”
This is something I wrote my senior year of High School, just did some tweaking and SHAZAAM -
One Size Does Not Fit All
Sitting in the dressing room of a department store, I wait for a friend to decide whether this dress or that dress suits her best. The only available seat is one in front of a three-way mirror, which gulps my entire being at once. Finding disappointment in a mirror once again reminds me of my high maintenance grandmother – the one who battled breast cancer but still made it to the salon once a week, with a perfectly curled ruby mop and gold rings to match each shimmering fake fingernail. This mirror is my grandmother. It has the miraculous ability to point out both my flabby arms and large rear – often referred to as a “black girl ass” – simultaneously.
She critiques my clothes, first picking on the loose t-shirt, a popular choice among fellow plus size girls. Its purpose is to hide the faults of a large body – rolls, handles, flab – but in reality, only adds a whole new problem: said oversized tee creates an oversized effect, turning a possible XL torso into a 2X. But I refuse to admit it, and decide that this mirror must have been trash picked from the front yard of a Ringling Brother – I am looking into a mirror that is meant to reflect the image of a disproportionate body.
My daily dose of self-deprecation is interrupted when a peppy suburban girl bursts from the dressing room parallel to me, bombarding the circus mirror. Her glow is immediately lost when she meets her reflection and I feel a bit better because now I can be sure that this mirror is, in fact, a funhouse mirror. It must be if even a small girl like her can be dissatisfied with her looks. She turns to her side and grabs the smallest bit of loose cloth just above her waist. She sighs.
“I can’t believe they don’t have this in an extra, extra small.”
Before unleashing hell’s wrath upon the girl’s tiny frame, I grabbed my indecisive friend from the dressing room and stormed outside, into my car, and far, far away from the store.
That night I dreaded the shower due solely to the mirror in our bathroom – it covers the entire wall. This massive reflective monster just cannot be avoided, though, so I inched my way to the shower. I stared into the mirror, my body safely guarded by a towel, and let the water run for a while before my mother kindly reminded me that we don’t own the water company. Eyes closed, I dropped my towel and jumped in the tub. Although I was able to escape the horrors of a naked reflection, I faced the harsh reality of my body under the cascading showerhead. There, I had no oversized tee, not even a towel, to protect my body from my eyes. The foaming body wash may have served as a censor, but only temporarily. Within seconds the suds were torn from my flesh and I was left face to face with a tummy that seemed to extend farther than my tits.
With this realization in hand, I decided to take a seat in the tub. The water ran partially down my back, a few drops finding homes in the crevices of my hips, and partially over my shoulders. My belly and the water seemed to share a magnetic relationship when the streams followed stretch marks perfectly. I scolded the streams for pointing out the lines; the scarlet letters I’ve been provided with to constantly remind me that because of my bad genes, super sizing is not an option.
My mother knocked on the door to ask what the hell I was doing in there. I had spent about forty minutes analyzing my figure before deciding it would be a good idea to nestle back into my cotton skin. I rushed into my room, throwing on whatever was found first in my grip. It didn’t matter as long as I was covered, and I even went as far as to shield myself under a thick silk comforter, regardless that the summer heat sulked across my room, not a bit effected by the open window or fan set on high. I laid there for a long time, waiting to forget my collision with dissatisfaction. I decided it would be a long time before I’d meet myself like that again.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bondage, sex, writing, writing about sex
***DISCLAIMER: I hate disclaimers. I think apologizing for your writing is pointless; if you don’t have confidence in your work then how is anyone supposed to like it? BUUUUT (there’s always a but..t) I just want to make clear that this is absolutely a work in progress. I need to do a lot of editing and I may even add other sections. The point is that writing is a bodily experience, and I plan on extending this using different physical activities. But for now, I’m pretty happy with some of my images rather than the overall piece so I decided to put it out here. Enjoy.
“Cumming to Conclusions”
Writing is like fucking. It takes a lot of energy and the only way to enjoy it is to actually want to do it. It’s best when you find yourself really in the mood, you know, like you’ve been thinking about it all fucking day, all you wanna do when you get home from work or class or the grocery store is it. You’re all hot and ready, wet for it or hard for it, almost to the point where you contemplate taking care of it in the parking lot of Whole Foods, but then you realize it’ll feel so fucking good if you wait just a little longer. You get home and maybe light a candle, one of those smell-good ones, a warm scent like vanilla or cinnamon apple. Or maybe you’re a kinky fuck – you shove a CD in the stereo or smash the play button on your iTunes and wait for something loud and brash like Smashing Pumpkins or, no you need it even harder, something rough like Pantera’s “Vulgar Display of Power” – yeah, that’s the spot. Let the screeching chords leak through your speakers as you strap yourself in your bed or couch or, fuck it, you just can’t wait, you fling yourself to the floor, all sprawled out across a carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed in months, but you don’t give a fuck! Because the crumbs become part of the experience, they scratch at your skin like sand at the beach – it hurts and it’s annoying but you can’t go to the beach without experiencing sand in your toes and your hair and your ass crack. You bask in the crumbs of your carpet as you reach your climax – pen to paper or the click clacking of the keys on your laptop – you can finally write.
A lot of my friends give me shit for using lube – “It’s not like you’re eighty and your pussy’s all dried up and shit!” But listen, sometimes – most of the time – I just wanna get to the point. Foreplay is all right, toys can be fun, but dirty talk is awkward and definitely a no-no. I’m sorry, but when I wanna fuck, that’s all I really want – is to be fucked. And when I write, I just wanna write. I don’t do outlines, nope, no planning, just fucking go for it. I paint lyrics or essays or journals with my fingertips, letting my words seep from my brain only to clog my arteries, pumping through my bloodstream in a jumble of inaudible thoughts until they push, push, pour through the creases of the identification my fingers provide.
Screenwriting is tricky, though. You really have to plan for it, you have to build and love and grow crushes or hatred for your characters. And then you have to plot the conflict and adventures that they’ll encounter. I love spontaneity, which is why I fucking hate planning, but I think that’s why I get such a rush from screenwriting. I push myself through, almost drowning in the deep end of character studies and treatments and scene outlines. It hurts just like bondage. I hate setting up my choice of contraption for the night. Restraints are the worst but my favorite. You have to take your bed apart and disobey the rules your mother branded in your head about keeping the bed made – strip away the quilt and pillows and sheets (and probably your clothes), then throw the entire mattress off. Get on your hands and knees to lay the restraints out properly, corner to corner like an X. Then lug that mattress back over, laying it over your toy, but be sure the straps don’t slip under. This is usually a two-person procedure – one to do the heavy mattress work and one to keep an eye on the contraption, making sure it stays in place. Go about setting the mood if you must, then strap in and get to your fun. I get tired and frustrated a lot, so the procedure leading up to my fun can sometimes take up to an hour. But the climax it all leads up to, regardless that it may only take half the time, is so good – it leaks or shoots from you like the cries of a teapot – you anticipate it for so long it hurts until you reach the perfect temperature, until the perfect nerve has been pinched or fucked or licked and your steam can finally erupt. This is screenwriting. The pain of preparation is paid off when you slap that stack of a hundred and twenty pages on your desk, thick as the heartwood of an ancient tree.
Writing is masturbation. We write it for ourselves, basking in our own experience. We prod at our insides with fingers or hard rubber flesh, desperately fishing for feelings – any feelings – and get off regardless of what we find, be it a tickle or overwhelming pressure or pain. We bash our heads against the wall waiting to vomit some memories onto the page, then pick through our mess like a hungry person in search of a meal in the trash; in search of the perfect image. Finding it comes with a burst of energy – the words attacking the heart as it begs for breath, thrashing against your ribcage. The memories pulsate under your skin until your hands tear and the words spill free, staining the page.
This is how I get off. This is why I write.
Filed under: Nonfiction | Tags: childhood memories, fat kid, insecurities, overweight
“Playing With Myself”
I must have been three or four the first time I played with myself. Yeah, three or four, because by the time I was five we had already fled our cockroach infested, duct tape windowed apartment – the one perfectly adjacent to the same boulevard that later found two spots on the “Deadliest Intersections” list (congrats, guys, we snatched up spots three and one!) I think it was summer because my chubby thighs sprouted from nylon shorts as I lay sprawled across a dingy brown couch (probably trash picked or hand-me-downed). I may have been home alone, or maybe my mom’s boyfriend-at-the-time-current-stepfather was hibernating under pillows and comforters in the back room. Anyway, I remember being alone while playing with my belly, pulling and pushing at the piece of flab, watching in amazement as it rippled when retracting to its natural state. I then reached my legs to the ceiling and they seemed to dangle in the sky. I prodded my thigh with a finger, still amused by the rippling effect my fat could make. Prodding went to slapping, and I became way too occupied by the fact that my flesh could tremble.
I was startled when my Mom body slammed her way through the door (because if you didn’t push hard enough that god damn door just wouldn’t budge). My instincts told me to lie still, flat as a board, as if I would be punished for exploring my body – but it was way too obvious that I was up to something prior to my mother’s entrance. She shot a look in my direction, her eyes interrogating me.
“What were you doing now?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Bullshit. What were you doing?”
The anticipation suffocated my three-or-four-year-old attention span. I barely made it three seconds without succumbing to mouth diarrhea.
“Oh my god, Mom, okay, look. Mom, you gotta see this, it’s so cool. Ready? Okay, look. Wait, hold on.”
I stretched my legs to the ceiling again.
“Okay, Mom, are you ready? Mom, you’re not looking. Look, Mom! Okay, ready for this?”
Her tired just-worked-an-overnight-shift eyes barely gazed in my direction.
“Yes, Bree, I’m ready.”
“Okay, okay, look!”
I slapped my leg, the fat rippling once again. My mother was not amused.
“Mom – I can jiggle! Isn’t that cool?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“No – it’s not.”
She retreated to the back of the apartment.
“You’re not supposed to jiggle.”
Sixteen or seventeen years later and that day still protrudes from my memory. Beyond the torments of elementary school boys, beyond the fact that my insecurities never allowed me to “love” until a thirty-something-year-old drug addict decided to make my sixteen-year-old self his plaything, beyond my struggles with every single fucking diet and every single Richard Simmons VHS – my mother’s harmless, only half conscious words were branded into my conscience, marking the moment I became aware of my weight. I’m pretty sure my mom could never recall that conversation, but it remains the defining moment of my first self-defined identity – the fat kid.
In elementary school I tried masking my weight with my vocabulary. I littered my conversations with obscenities (though I’m sure I spouted nonsensical lyrics along the lines of “I hate that teacher fucking she always gives fucking me detentions because I say fucking bad words and fuck.”) My super secret plan was to blind my peers with the debris of F-bombs, forcing the site of my size out of their vision. But by the end of third grade I dropped the act when Randy Fernandez wouldn’t go out with me. He said I was too fat.
Middle school brought on a new wardrobe. I found myself drowning in oversized black Metallica t-shirts, baggy black pants and even bigger black boots. Beyond the obvious cloth barrier I created for my figure, I also adopted a further defined identity – the funny fat kid. I stalled most classes with practical jokes – stupid shit like hiding the teacher’s chalk or making fart sounds in between science and math lessons. I basked in my classmate’s laughter, almost forgetting that my doctor had officially coined me “obese”. Oh yeah, that was until Sam Hankin wouldn’t go out with me. He said I was too fat, too.
* * *
Sitting in the back of a station wagon, my childhood best friend analyzed my arm. She poked at the golden streaks that marked my skin.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, they’re stretch marks. My doctor says I grow too fast.”
My friend peered at me with jealousy. Although we were BFFs 4 Life we were very competitive friends. Who has the most CDs? Who has the longer hair? Who could hold their breath the longest? I finally had something she could never attain and it would be the first and only time a skinny bitch would watch my body with envy.
Though my friend’s envy didn’t erase my insecurities, it definitely poked a hole in it. I realized that yes, I’m different, but it’s not always a wretched thing to be different. Slowly the hole in my self-consciousness grew into a giant gap, and after something like ten years I’m finally finding comfort in my size (thus slowly relieving my hatred of skinny bitches.) I’m sure South Beach diets and ten minute workouts will forever phase in and out of my life, but I’m also sure that I can live contently with myself regardless of my weight. And, if nothing else, at least I can jiggle and – ha ha, I bet half of you can’t.
Filed under: Nonfiction | Tags: bisexual, identity, labels, self discovery, sexuality
“When I was a Lesbian”
When I was a lesbian I wore a denim vest. Not just any denim vest, but the most bad-fucking-ass denim vest ever – with a hundred pyramid studs pinned on by hand and a sea of red and black patches boasting names like Pantera and Lamb of God. I was comfortable and complete with a mohawk-by-impulse and an entourage of freshly out fags. That was until I got a boyfriend.
“You know, you don’t have to wear that vest since you’re not a lesbian anymore.”
* * *
The first time I remember being distinctly aware of sexuality was in sixth grade. I met a girl who was sixteen, which coined her all knowing and mature in my book. One day she revealed that she’s bisexual. “Yeah, I fuck dudes and chicks.” Being the shock queen that she was (her vocabulary was littered with “cunt” and she was first to take the taboo side of Courtney Love in the eternal Kurt Cobain debate) my friend was disappointed in my reaction, hoping for a gasp at the very least. But without even questioning her I silently sat registering the information – because it just made sense.
The following Monday I slipped into school with my discovery, earning myself an immediate girlfriend (though it didn’t last long – the bitch was under the impression that being bi meant you could string relationships with guys and girls simultaneously.) Looking back, though, I couldn’t have found her at more fault than myself. Instead of searching for our own labels, we settled with what few words had been handed to us, swiftly slapping them on to the mess of feelings puberty had dumped on us. So instead of digging for a better fitting term like, maybe, polygamist (or whore), she snatched up bi. In my case, I became a chameleon of sexuality, labeling myself in response to the people who found interest in me.
My label would fluctuate almost daily. When I held hands with Brian in the library I was straight. When Sharnae Brown insisted I meet her in the bathroom between classes – a lesbian. And at a co-ed mouth-orgy behind the mall (as in lips entwined only) I was bi. To my understanding, sexuality was a label of a relationship. But after a while I became uncomfortable with this because I didn’t feel gay, straight, or bi – I’m still not sure what any of that even means – and that’s almost my point. The word “identity” trickled into my vocabulary a few years later when being vocal about my confusion in a high school GSA.
“Off the top of your head, what do you identify as?”
Well, nothing. And that just stuck.
Though I now find comfort in my sexuality, others just can’t quite grasp it. “What do you mean you don’t have a sexuality?” Okay, that might be stretching it – I have a sexuality in the sense that, yes, I like to fuck. But I don’t have a label for it because I don’t particularly give a shit who I fuck (or like, love, and live for for that matter). Sometimes I nurse the conversation, spending a while trying to help my audience understand. But most of the time I say fuck it – I don’t need to explain myself just as much as I don’t need anybody’s approval. And in between my F-bombs and attitude, all I really mean is that I can’t expect someone to understand my disregard for labels just as I can’t understand others’ comfort in them.
* * *
At eighteen I began emptying my childhood bedroom while in transition to a new city six hundred miles away from my hometown. The vest-bashing boyfriend and I stumbled upon my denim gem.
“Dude, this vest was the shit. Why’d you ever stop wearing it?”
Apparently the previous memory of tearing my heavy metal heart out was lost in the fog of addiction. Apparently, he was in fucking awe of that vest. Apparently, he was the worst fucking boyfriend ever by forcing an all time favorite accessory out of the wardrobe of a naive metal head who would blend in to whatever definition her newfound bass playing, band having, tattooed covered boyfriend Xeroxed onto her. Apparently, he fucking sucked. But that’s a whole different story.
Did I mention I pinned over a hundred studs onto that vest by hand?
“Fucked By Association”
So I had this thirty-year-old boyfriend (FYI: we met when I was sixteen – yeah, real fucking winner). Long story short, he manipulated the fuck out of me – not only in the sense that I felt used and all that typical skeezy boyfriend business, but also in the sense that when we ended I was left with a manipulated perspective of myself and my body – but no biggie, dude. Within a week of breaking up I went on a dick binge and signed up on okcupid.com (“the best dating site on earth!” i.e. motherfucking generic ass site full of equally generic scumbags).
The site may as well have become my homepage by my third week (and coincidentally, third fuck). During an unexpected thunderstorm I found myself cocooned in the sheets of a thirty-two-year old Filipino pothead who lived comfortably on the unemployment list in a two-bedroom apartment snug in Wicker Park. To my defense, I didn’t find out until after we fucked that he wasn’t of the Hispanic (or remotely interesting) persuasion. We avoided all forms of contact for a week before I finally received that awkward yet necessary and almost mandatory “Sorry we haven’t talked in a bit” call/text/email/Facebook message, though his was more along the lines of, “Sorry I’ve been unusually busy lately…” Yeah, bullshit. We never spoke again. For whatever reason I crept upon his profile some time later only to catch this gem: “Message me if you have big tits. Or not… Message me if you…[like] having orgasms on the reg and think you can get along with an ‘immature, selfish, broke, sex-addicted, substance abusing man whore.’” Well, at least he’s honest.
Months later a friend of mine entered a lifestyle I was completely familiar with.
“Dude, I just wanna fuck.”
“How convenient, because I know just the guy who may share those thoughts exactly.”
Because of that conversation, I now share more than just a birthday with my friend, but a fuck as well.
Filed under: Nonfiction | Tags: childhood memories, deadbeat dads, single mothers
“Portrait of a Void”
1
He is leaving.
His legs are sternly planted in the carpet of my bedroom as he sets a hand on my legs, which dangle from the edge of the bed like a wind chime. He persuades me to cease my clanking limbs – it’s serious. Mom sits to the left of me, and if it weren’t for the creaks of my mattress I would forget she is there.
“I’m going away for a little bit.”
That’s it?
The prickles of his face scratch my cheek as he leans toward me. I squirm, unable to ignore the cactus his beard has become. He hugs me too tight.
He left.
His legs were sternly planted in the carpet of my bedroom – the only stability he provided in the fifteen years since he left. In an extremely selfless act, Mom sat to the left of me, just a foot or so away from the man who chose addictions to powder and pussy over her. Ten years later my mother would find the ability, while aided by wine coolers, to admit to a coke habit that my conception had cured. But he, on the other hand, decided partying and parenting were easy to juggle, and did so simultaneously. When it came down to doing lines at the dinner table, it was time to keep it outside of the house. Apparently, that meant inside of another woman. He fled, playing tag on the way to the courthouse and won. He got there first, and the divorce is still incomplete.
2
Red Halo
He is always late to pick me up, but today he is so late that the sun has fully set and Mom had to plead with my pre-school teacher to take me home. The door is shut, and just as the lock is in place, his big dirty white work truck screeches and clanks through the parking lot. Words are not exchanged and I am swiftly placed in the front and only passenger seat of the truck. The floor is made of bottles and cans and I can see my breath in the air as it wraps around my head, the only thing separating me from the windshield in the event of a crash. We glide through the only red light and when we reach our complex the truck slithers across the parking lot, greedily resting over three or four spots.
Before we reach the door his head finds a place against the concrete slab at the entrance. I cry after noticing that the halo around his head has stained the concrete red. He takes his hand from his head and in an attempt to lull my cries he cakes my new favorite dress with his blood. I wrestle with the front door and somehow make it through both that and the door to our apartment on the second floor. I make it back outside and he still lies sprawled across the ground. I pillow his head with paper towels, brushing curls and sweat from his forehead.
Red Horns
He was always late to pick me up, just as he was always late coming home. I think he was a factory worker, or at least something along those lines, and he would blame the dark, perfectly round blemishes around his neck on “work”. Some days he’d blame the pinch of a machine, other times a bruise from a falling box. But Mom is not deaf, dumb, or blind – not deaf to the “love yous” that had ceased, not dumb enough to ignore the ample time he began spending with the neighbor, and not blind to newly adorned hickeys that did not stem from her lips. Though she didn’t tolerate the idea of sharing her husband for long, I still can’t decipher which is a heavier burden – living a real life soap opera or cutting the cable chord. My mother chose the latter, giving her husband an ultimatum, which in turn drove him away. Though he didn’t get far – I’m pretty sure he landed somewhere in the suburbs of my city – he never found his way back.
3
Ninety Degree Tears
It’s been five years since he left. Me and Mom sit in a parking lot, housed in a used Subaru. Regardless of its white exterior the sun seems to collect in the black tar and injects through the car, swelling the interior with heat. I hang from the window like a puppy and though the car is still Mom pulls on the back of my overalls in fear of a collision with the ground. Her bright pink nails dance on the steering wheel, click-clacking like an obnoxious clock. I stare into the brick wall parallel to us. The wall radiates heat even more immense than the tar, shooting right into my eyes and frightening every bit of moisture that had nestled in the cobwebs of my tear ducts since I was three. I can’t decide if I’m gasping because my face is drowning or because Mom is holding me so tight. She pleads with me, yearning to know what’s wrong.
“I miss Dad.”
She admits that she does too and I can breathe again.
Teapot
It was five years since he left and I had never cried just as he had never called or visited or sent a fucking birthday card. Sometimes I resent the fact that I had virtually no relationship with my “real dad” but on the other hand I’ve found comfort knowing that his severe absence helped me to simply forget that you’re “supposed” to have more than one parent. I don’t know what came about me that day. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe all of the tears that should have been shed on lonely nights or empty Father’s Days sat in my belly waiting to be pushed, and it took a sporadic July afternoon for them to finally boil over. I never cried for him again, not until finding a high school boyfriend who mirrored him with white powder and burnt spoons. I’m sure I subconsciously seek aspects of him in the men I kiss and date and fuck and it’s not fun to wake up, naked legs entwined with a reminder of a man I don’t even know. I’ve tried ridding myself of this spell called “father” but I’m coming close to the realization that my contentment with him will remain just as hollow as his place in my life.
