i mean come the fuck on. is there anything you would change about this body?!
…if you didn’t immediately answer no, you can kindly get the fuck out.
FAT & SEXY 2012
i want this body all up on my tumblr slash all up on me.
fuck everything; heart of glass
Marc walked across the beach, letting the sand slip between his curled toes. Small, shelled creatures crunched beneath him like shards of a messily-cracked hazelnut, the shuffle hidden through the purr of surface-licking waves. With the clouds, the light trying to tickle itself against the water’s complexion, it was difficult to tell where the sun was. He saw the waves tripping up on a white shape beyond the ocean’s oily curve. Marc quickened his steps towards the form.
A lace-work of shadows moved slowly across her body. Around her throat was a line the colour of ruptured fish eggs; as the waves scraped across her, the line wriggled, swelled, and faded, regrowing itself even thicker. He knelt down to ease his fingers on her neck, feeling his knees crack. These small sounds - the stretch and give of pants, his changing breath - seemed stark and amplified on the empty beach, even over the wind-pushed water. Marc cringed up with the imagined tap of his lowered hand, and the meeting of dry heat to cold wet. There was no pounding beat to match his fingers’ knock; the movement of her body into the waves couldn’t be confused with working lungs. Marc brushed aside one hair that prodded painfully into her open eye; the tanned strands seemed green against the darker sand. He exhaled slowly, lips in a pucker, and saw the translucent thought of a crab step around the straps of her dress. He wished her eyes weren’t so raw and swollen; he couldn’t be quite sure what their colour had been. The pale of her lips, displaced by the reddening slit on her throat, made his eyes readjust, elongating her face and distorting her chin. Marc dropped his shoes, sliding his feet into them despite the dirt and grit, and looked back across the beach.
With her body flopped over his collarbone, Marc could feel her arms thud nervously against each other and imagined her clinging to him; he shifted her weight to give them an even warmer placement, something like a hug. As a body she was light, but the drips of water slime against his thighs, and her blood smears like lipstick prints on his arms, added effort and precision to his walk along the beach. His teeth kept count of the distance with slight nips into his tongue, seeing how many it would take before he needed to move the bones lying languid across him. Underneath the parking lot was a steep, eroding push of land and cement, tied down with a holey and rattling set of steps. As her body’s broken jolts pressed against his stomach and the rusted railing, Marc cooed breathy reassurances onto the empty ears and blank cheeks. Marc’s car was the only break in the flat mist frosting the lot. Two small birds bounced and scuttled, trapped in the fog like smoke’s embers. They hopped aside as Marc neared his car; their wings flicked, showing off long bones beneath molting feathers. Pushing the handle first, Marc slid the door further with one knee. He lay her against the back row of seats, deciding before turning to strap her hips in and prop her neck against the window. He pushed his own seat back as he shut the door, allowing unnecessary space for the corpse’s stiff legs. With the car sealed, the air smelled deeply like an ocean, like a woman.
i went to the library again today. i had more time but was still too intimidated to just laze around through the books. i had what i needed and curved down the rows to the escalators. this short woman with a heavy chinese accent stopped me. she started to talk about a bible study group and i listened, knowing i looked like i probably needed to be saved: greasy hair, black silk shirt flashing all my flesh below the last rib, chipped nails and violent boots. i had howard zinn’s people’s history and a book on sadeian women in my arms. too; i shifted them more comfortably to listen to her. her group, she said, was about understanding god the mother. she was rehearsed and waited for pauses or contradictions that weren’t there, so she was quick to let me know she didn’t mean mary. she told me that frogs and dogs and people all had a father and a mother, so why — she asked rhetorically, i believe — wouldn’t the human spirit? she got tentative with me but she didn’t need to; i was so interested, my goodness so interested. i wanted to go to this study group. i love how people play the bible to fit these different needs. there was a book by some guy who hollowed out tvs to make planters, and joined a tent city, and i don’t remember what else, in the name of his christianity. carol queen makes art where she puts photos of vulvas over la virgen de guadalupe’s folded robes. chris ofili made his religion take on the politics of censorship, racism. the goddess figure is beautiful and powerful and i don’t need a religion to be seduced by it, i don’t think. i tried to give her my email to let me know about future meetings but she wanted to rescue me right then; she said she could meet me at work, closer to home, anything. i was done then, and handed her my number looking rushed.
right above the red line subway another woman stopped me and started to tell me the same thing. i figured that it was an outreach day, but then her friend — the woman who had spoken to me earlier — ran up and grabbed her friend’s hand and said, she was in the library with us, i thought she should come too.
these two women both thought i needed the same thing, i guess. it made me feel a little prickly. on the way home i talked to elyse about dick-sucking and intense, scary men. i flipped through my books.
this morning i found out a lovely couple i met at a wedding in new hampshire split up. one woman was a gorgeous redhead with a rocky horror tattoo and the most precocious ginger baby. the other was distinctly butch in a very classic way. after the wedding they invited sas and i — the only other lesbians in new hampshire, probably — over to smoke and talk about how similar we were. i guess the redhead slept around, a lot according to the other’s posts about it on facebook. they were married several times over and i’m sad for them, but they’re both going to find the right person for them, or not as they require, and be happy. i know they will.
sleeping around seems like the strangest reason to leave someone. i suppose if you know it’s a deal-breaker, it’s a cheap but enjoyable way out of a situation that’s no longer suiting you. i don’t think people who aren’t supposed to cheat do so on accident, anyways. it’s always been very intentional for me.
smiles and arousal; get-me-out-of-bed music.
peter paul rubens, anatomical studies: a left forearm in two positions and a right forearm, c. 1577
pen and brown ink
Dragging on knees tangled to an oversized shirt, Caroline squinted into the stream of light her flashlight allowed. The crawlspace wasn’t off-limits to the eight year-old, but it had the intimidation of sealed boxes and dark; this was the first time she remembered hoisting herself to the chalky concrete instead of stepping into the warm give of a palm. Caroline imagined the boxes stacked with rope-bound children, girls mostly, sealed with a liquid dress train of ghost matter. She wasn’t sure where the image came from — a haunted movie or light tricks in an amusement park. She thought of ghosts only in how cold it would be to drink yourself.
Caroline wasn’t scared, though. Her pride left that assurance repeating sternly behind the thumping pulse. Her flashlight swayed against the dust-cluttered cobwebs and shapeless figures of home goods, and she squinted at the objects too dull to reflect back. At the base of a box lay something out of place even against the rest of the disorder. Caroline pushed her wrists forward, copying the careful search of a morning inchworm. Between the brown shadows rested seven mice. Their tails were tangled around their bodies, emphasizing the breathlessness. Without touching them, Caroline knew they were cold and much lighter than the ones whose nails scritched between the house’s roof, even lighter than the one she’d seen split by a metal trap. She couldn’t remember hearing about nests of mice babies dying together; she wasn’t sure if it was common. Her hand rested against their fur as her flashlight flicked once. With her eyes closed, she didn’t notice the light go out.
this is how i feel about life. i’m headed to the harold washington library, floors one and seven and maybe some more.
