Entitlement November 15, 2008

I dissociate.  I am not a prepubescent girl being molested.  I am not a woman being raped.  I am a steady, calm voice.  I am large and empowered.  I draw my breath to bring my shoulders squarely down from my ears.  I look for ground to claim within my mind.  Here.  Here is ground where I can summon my breath, summon my words, summon my body and either demand or burn your unwelcome dick out of me.  I will my eyelids open.  I find your eyes and hold your distant gaze.  I imagine strength and steadiness into my voice as I say, “You are going to stop.  I do not want to fuck so you are going to stop.”

“Baby,” you say with your dick still inside of me.  “Baby, you wanted it.”  

It’s like pulling teeth November 15, 2008

You cannot predict the way each first will feel.

Ten years ago was the first Thanksgiving since Dad died.  I know we went to someone’s home, but I do not remember whose.  I know we smiled without feeling warm.  We prayed without believing.  We ended up at a Waffle House because there is no correct thing to do when it is Thanksgiving and your father is dead by means that are both intimately familiar and disastrously mysterious.  

I remember details that are irrelevant.  The Waffle House was startlingly clean.  I ate a pecan waffle.  We sat at the bar, perhaps so that we didn’t have to look each other in the eye.  The man who sat next to me was bald.

I remember details that are bizarre.  One waiter sexually harassed a co-worker, or at least it seemed that way to me.  The co-worker’s tooth fell out.  She was bleeding everywhere and trying to keep up with orders for smothered and covered hash browns at the same time.  I wanted to tell her to put her tooth in a glass of milk.  Isn’t that what you are supposed to do with a tooth?  

You cannot predict the way each first will feel, but you might feel warm and almost spiritual when the bizarreness of the first Thanksgiving without your father is reflected in the oddity that is Waffle House waitresses.

Unsettling moments with bodies November 13, 2008

I’m laying on the couch with you, my head on the pillow you say you’re using to cover your belly.  Earlier in the night, I was on my knees kissing that soft belly.

I haven’t seen you in two years.  We’re sitting across the table from each other, sharing sushi.  You lean in and say to me, “Sometimes I want to jump off of a cliff.  Just to see what happens.”  My eyes get wide.  I grin at you and say, “Sometimes when I’m in a crowd of hushed people, I want to scream.  Just to see what happens.”  Your eyes get wide.  We fall into loud laughter.

We’re in front of the feminist bookstore.  I parked my car next to the ramp so that my friend who is in a wheelchair doesn’t have to roll far and my other friend who walks with braces doesn’t have to walk far.  He gets in the front seat.  I close the door and put his wheelchair into my trunk, my joints popping angrily at me as I do.  I look at my other friend and his braces.  ”You should name them,” I say as if it’s a fun joke.  ”Do you name your arms?” he asks me.

Wild Eyed November 2, 2008

He grew up in Georgia’s southern woods.  He snuck around between trees and learned how to catch feral cats.

I would go to his bed late at night and leave before the sun tried to rise.  He didn’t know where my home was, where I came from or where I was going.

You can’t catch a feral cat, he told me.  You might be able to seduce her into being fine and cuddly for a time.  You might have the chance to breathe in a half-surrender.

On occasion, I would allow myself to rest in him and in the space of ceded control.  While I kept my hands in the places he asked of me, I would stretch my back out for him.  I whimpered under his touch.

Something would inevitably strike her the wrong way.  She would scratch the hell out of him and run off.

He tried to be good and gentle with me, but he always walked me to the door and always asked when he would see me again.  He always watched me go.  I felt as though he was gate keeping the door of my departure.  I felt like a caged animal who was allowed to leave only under the discretion of a caretaker.  I despised him for that.

You know she’s there, but she’s running wild eyed through the night and you can’t touch her.

I went to his bed less often.  There were moments of comfort that I collected, but I grew claustrophobic in his bed.  On the full moon, I ran without considering whether I should keep running.

The day I told him I would never return to him, a hawk escaped from the nearby zoo.  This is all true.