One day later and I’ve come to the disappointing realization that everyone here is uncomfortable with destruction. They jump at rain for fear of their skin getting wet. They smoke in concrete circles for fear of forest fires. They pluck guitars, they play badminton, they self-isolate in dorms and worst of all: they are sober. For fear of retardation. It is such a shame I find myself in this drought of enjoyment, in the concentrated company of “intellectuals” unable to praise life in the way only true depressives can—with destruction. Because, of course, destruction is the highest form of pleasure.

I need a drink. Or better yet—a party. There have been a few sober functions hosted by the school over the past few days, all impressively disappointing and awkward. The thing that makes a party good is alcohol. Obviously. But it’s because of the idea that a substance is overtaking all of us. The idea of seeing everyone in an altered state. It’s shared. It’s intimate. The best way to fast-track intimacy is sex and alcohol—the two driving factors that entice people to attend parties. You can’t really ask someone a question, even if it’s a good one, even if it’s a string of them, and know who they are. No, who we really are hides in our instincts. In fucking. In hungry. In angry. Once our invented personas drown in the inevitable wash of liquor, we are vulnerable. We are horny. We are looking. We yield to the same god. We surrender autonomy, we are carried by The Drink. Or even the suggestion of The Drink. The suggestion that we are more open. That someone could accidentally tell you their biggest secret, that any two people at any moment could jump each other’s bones. Coitus fueled by instinct. Chemical drive. We revert to animals. This submission is what builds community. (And we are in a crisis of community.)

Last night (Saturday) followed a group of young people up a mountain in hopes that they may lead me to The Drink. The higher we went, the closer we were to god. Stopped at a plateau and I found myself at the front of a small congregation. The adolescents had turned to me, they sat and I stood, I looked and they looked up. I tried to lead, stimulate something in the sorry group of high school graduates. Made everyone take my place, one by one, and deliver a 90-second sermon. Got pretty heated. Got pretty stupid too. I tried to focus on the sunset behind their heads. The blue clouds were the canvas, stretched across the sky, like a frame, and the bolts of lightning colored it in. I rolled my eyes. I was bored. I was sober.

Ended up running around campus with Max and knocking on random windows to get some attention.

“What brings you here?” Oscar asked, turning over on his standard issue twin mattress. Sparsely decorated room.

“Ennui,” I said, and we darted. The whole ethical peeping tom thing didn’t work for very long. Got bored.

“Seen everything?” I asked Max.

“Not even close.” She led me inside the dark lecture hall and found some student’s journals from 2023 crammed between the wooden pews and the tile floor. Pieced together Amul’s life detective-style with the clues he’d left in ink in his schedule-turned diary. Max is sweet-smart. The kind where you can’t look away when you can tell she’s figuring something out. And there’s something about her eyes. They’re locked in on you. All the way in you. Not exactly because she likes you, but because she’s looking. She’s looking for something. And then… she doesn’t say anything. She indulges in the opportune pockets of silence that haunt even good conversations. She’s looking at you, and she’s thinking something. You find yourself captivated, not because she’s keeping something from you, but because you want to know what it is.

After half an hour of half-hearted exploration, she wanted to go to bed cause me and Curly were going to smoke in the greenhouse and I think she’s opposed to underage smoking. Unfortunate for me. Was sad to see her go. She gave me one of her looks before leaving. Made me smile. Tried to do it back.

Told Curly in the greenhouse about what I’ve done for the past year while we looked at the mountains and listened to the wind rustle the trees that were all the way over there. Told him about the sex thing, told him about the drinking thing, told him about the sex-drinking-driving thing. Some lightning, some thunder, lots of rain. Could tell he’s becoming a bit enamored by me, mostly cause that’s what he told me. It is very easy to tell him what to do. I can make him follow me like a dog. Fun, I guess. I told him to ask me a question and I held my breath.

I said, “ask me a question that you can’t ask anyone else. Ask me a question only I can answer.” Can always tell if someone is worth talking to based on the questions they ask me. I’m mostly bored. Mostly disappointed.

He said, “what was the most stressful moment of your life, so stressful that you found it unexpectedly beautiful?” Well, I liked that. I told him my response. I told him a good one. Had the impression of putting on a show. I liked it. He liked it. We stayed up in the greenhouse for maybe two hours. Got bored. Got scared of boredom. He tried to comfort me in an annoying way.

I’ve grown to dread my situation. I cringe at the palpable deficit of art on the campus. The students do not inspire me, the mountains do not move me. Everyone and everything has become negligible.

Then again, I know that everything grays after The Drink. The closer one approaches total destruction, the closer one approaches total ecstasy. It’s like throwing metal balls over a glass table, the oversized spherical bullets whizzing closer and closer to the fragile surface. To the inevitable pile of shattered glass. Potential energy arrests us and we become obsessed. Colors only manifest in The Drink. Everything else is black and white.

Today (Sunday) went to the benches by the parking lot to have a smoke with Max. She doesn’t smoke but she’s always looking for conversation. Or for someone. Or some form of stimulation. I can tell she runs off of it—off other people and playing with them. I like that about her. Max knows everyone and she knows where they live cause she’s knocked on all their doors when she got bored one time or another. She’s always looking over her shoulder for someone she knows—in a good way, in an exciting way—in a way that makes me think that if she doesn’t talk to a certain amount of people in a certain amount of time, she’ll run out of battery and collapse to the floor like a charged-off robot. Like one of those wind-up toys—constantly needing maintenance. You never know who she’ll introduce you to and what they’ll say cause she’d never talk to someone twice if she thought they didn’t have something pretty good to talk about.

We sat together on the rotting benches looped with with plastic laurels and I lit my cigarette. Offered it to her like always. She shook her head. The crackling sound a cigarette makes reminds me of the crinkling of a condom wrapper and I like that. Same intimate anticipation. Same predicted rush.

Then Cowboy Boots showed up. Saw us. God. I don’t know much about him except that he’s from California and really comes across as a prick pretty strong. Cowboy boots reached up and picked an abysmal-colored apple off a tree. Hard-as-rocks green. Maladied-yellow. I rolled my eyes. He smiled at his display of adventure and spontaneity and he bit deeply into the (obviously) underripe flesh. Spat it out. Threw the apple behind him. I turned to Max and let out a heavy exhale through my nose. Turned back to not miss the show. Cowboy Boots moved to lean against the spindly tree. His hand slipped and he barely had time to correct his balance. I took a deep breath. I was bored. I was sober.

So it is a series of moments like these that have cemented my perfect assumption that I have unintentionally surrounded myself with a gaggle of academic idiots. Social handicaps. Intellectual incels. I wasn’t aware that we were required to take a vow of celibacy and sobriety in order to attend the monastery in the mountains, and the alcoholic whore inside myself is perplexed at my being here.

Been thinking about dropping out of college for The Drink.

• Last night in my childhood bed.

• No sheets. Raw mattress.

• Am sweating into the mattress protector. I don’t care. It’ll smell like me. It should. You should remember me if you lay in my bed.

• My skin is patterned from the streetlight coming in striped from the blinds.

• Must get up in a few hours.

• Can’t sleep though cause that means I’ll have to wake up.

• Listening to a song [redacted] gave me after we spent the night at my moms house, in this twin bed. It’s the kind of song where I have to make sure I don’t listen to it too much or else it’ll lose what I like about it. Visceral. I use that word too much.

• Saw [redacted] tonight. Went to the hilltop church and sat on the pews in front of the crosses with a view of my little city behind it. Chain smoked and talked about Thomas the Tank Engine and how we have no regrets. Felt very happy. Feel ready.

• Just hope they don’t forget me.

8/20

• Short yellow grass and entrails on the road.

• My mouth tastes like tinned tuna and coffee but not cigarettes.

• Been sitting in the car for far too long but at least there are windmills.

• My body’s so stiff I can barely walk towards the gas station when we stop to pee. Too many nights before this spent all the way up.

• The flatlands are grim but the sky is clear.

• Keep passing these houses the size of thumbtacks mere feet away from the highway. They slouch into the earth like perma-drooped old women. Like sagging tits and swinging arm fat. Deep wooden slats like deep wrinkles. Sunken eyes. Jutting brow bone.

• I feel bad for the people who live in the houses, and if there are no people, I feel bad for the houses.

• When I was little I went to the botanical gardens in DC and saw a Route 66 exhibit. They’d made little gas stations and vintage cars all out of plants. A mini diner, tiny road signs out of vines and buds and woven grass. Could’ve stayed there forever. I love little things. Think they covered everything killable in epoxy. The exhibit probably could last as long as me, as my body before I turn into a drooping woman with my tits in my shoes, as long as the plants don’t decay in their resin casing.

• Having a cigarette behind the gas station so mom doesn’t see. Honestly it’s making me feel sicker but that’s what I’m used to so I feel better I guess. Sun is beating down now. High noon, the day deepens, the sun sickens. I start to drip down my neck and back of my thighs. Funny cause I woke up so cold and the only thing I wanted was to feel warm again. I’m always uncomfortable. Letting my belly hang out to repulse all the repulsive men wearing swollen plaid and bulging yellow vests. Truckers who stare like they haven’t seen a woman in weeks. Treat women like treats. Like booze. Like greedy. Drink me up like a sailor who drinks up the whole sea. They hold the door open, nice I guess. Still gross, I don’t care. I used to suck in my stomach every time I saw a man, especially if he looked mean and wouldn’t stop looking. Couldn’t bear to not be sexualized. It smells like shit back here. In Dodge city.

• I think the dry heat is getting to my nose. Mucus and saliva drying up, air is too sharp, breathe in dust, swallow debris. Or maybe that’s because the only things we’ve passed are wheat fields and corn fields and soy bean fields and sorghum fields. Dairy farms, Dollar Generals, gas stations, body shops, wheat mills, slaughter houses. White spindly crosses, sad little towns, dried up river beds, abandoned and rusted rodeo gates. Grocery store ruins. Telephone poles. The food desert in the bread basket of America.

• I hope I see a tumble weed. It’d make the heat worth it, like cursing the cold in the winter except for when it snows.

• We’re on a two lane road that goes on for states. Yellow dash line on top of a rumble strip. You’ll fall asleep watching the flat horizon. The hypnotic scalloped telephone wires. Sickly white sky. Din of wind beating on the windshield. Then jerk awake to a vibrational alarm. Nice, I guess.

• Hungry again but I don’t want to eat. (Thank you, cigarette.)

• Think I see a cityscape in the distance but it’s just an impressive spread of factories.

• Getting closer to Oklahoma so there are oil rigs in dried up corn fields. They’re mini. Their small heads dipping slowly into and out of the hardened ground. Like those drinking bird toys. Mechanically innocent. Apathetically determined. Thirsty. Or like a guy in missionary who goes way too slow so you roll your eyes. And doesn’t stop when you tell him to give it up. Unnervingly rhythmic.

• It takes us less than twenty seconds to drive through these towns. If it takes us more than a minute to pass through a town we are lucky. If there is a traffic light, it is big. City limit. Dollar general. Mention of god. Factory. Factory. Cattle. Open road.

• There is a sage green quality that has entered Kansas near the state line. Suggestive of cacti and the desert. Still in Kansas though. It’s been eight hours. (I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto! We are. We’re still in Kansas.)

• My mouth tastes like oil and onion. I ate this chickpea concoction my mom made for me. One of those healthy things that are good for your body. Nice of her.

• Been so flat for hours an upright tree is something to gawk at.

• Mountains now. Or the beginning of mountains. They rise up from the earth like girl boobs. Sometimes I wish I had my girl body back so I wouldn’t feel the need to self-sexualize so much. But then, you know, the pedophiles.

• At the taco truck and Moon River is playing. Funny combination. Nice, I guess.

• Said I wasn’t very hungry so I didn’t want anything. That is not true. I am very hungry. But I have no reason to be. My stomach is distended from the tuna sandwich, protein shake, chickpea concoction, and crinkle cut sea salt chips I ate in the car (in that order). That’s three meals. I protest. I protest against my body. (Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels 😍 or something.) Don’t know. Don’t want to do something that I think will make me feel better and then it doesn’t. Would just be worse.

• Realized I’m a bad writer because I’m obsessed with aesthetics. I don’t want to tell a story. I want to say that we smoked in the empty kitchen and ate French onion soup with screwdrivers and talked until she dragged me to bed. Maybe that’s why I write about sex so much. The story is the aesthetic. The story is lightning striking as my legs shake and he cums inside me. It’s getting fucked against a window and I can see the whole city. It’s carving red crosses on our chests with my fingernails while we fuck. He says it hurts. I say it’s supposed to. That’s the story. That’s the whole story. Lips on lips, hips on hips, foreplay, climax, aftercare. Everything’s there. Nothing is better than sex.

• Mom got me tacos anyway. Ate them and felt better. Whatever.

• My lips are hella chapped.

When I met my best friend I fiddled the tab off the Bud Light I was drinking. I flipped it in my mouth, chewing on the condensed aluminum like bubble gum. She said, let me try, and we bit down on either end with our canines, an almost kiss. She said that was the first one. I don’t think it counts. I want the first one to be the one that counted to me.

I wish I collected all the soda tabs and beer tabs I peel off the cans I drink. But I just chew on them like I’m thinking, like I wish I knew what to do, like I wish I was kissing someone. Then I spit them out like loose teeth and I lose them. Under carpets and on the sidewalk and on the steps of the church down the road from her place. At work on the floor, somewhere in my sheets, in the pockets of my jeans, in the bottom of my purse. Never in the trash. I let them taste my mouth then live their life independent of me. But they wear my salvia like clothes till the end. Till the end of their infinite life cause they don’t die, cause they’re made out of metal, not skin. They rust, not rot.

Took a tab of acid last night and realized everything is exactly what I think it is. Just worse. Sat on the sidewalk in a neighborhood I didn’t recognize and cried till I realized I couldn’t stop. I don’t want to be doing any of this. I keep realizing nothing is helping. Everything is a distraction. Realized I never loved him. Or maybe I did. Everything is a distraction. Don’t think I can move on from any of this.

I wonder what I’d do with the collection if I’d kept them. I’d swallow a hundred beer tabs like pills, a whole bottle of them, and I’d wash it down with a twelve pack. After I’d be bloated and metallic and if you hung me upside down I’d shake and sing a tinny song in my stomach like the sound of clinking cans. I’d pierce my organs from the inside with the rough edges: bile running through my body like blood, acid dripping on my inside tissue like corrosive rain, urine and shit seeping into my veins and poisoning my bloodstream and fucking everything up till it’s all just piss and shit and bile replacing everything that was good. I’ll scratch the itch I have on my heart till it’s in pieces and strings. That’s it. That’s the final problem, solved. With a hundred beer tabs.

But I’m not a collector. I scatter. I’m in every place at once and nowhere cause I don’t know where I am. I’m under carpets and on the sidewalk and on the steps of the church down the road from her place. At work on the floor, somewhere in my sheets, in the pockets of my jeans, in the bottom of my purse. I’m in her bed, and his, and his, and his. I’m in a forest, I’m in a city, I’m in my mom’s house, in my shithole apartment, in Kansas City and Santa Fe and Bordeaux. I’m undercover, I’m no one I’ve ever been. I can only be myself. I don’t know who I am.

I’m a hundred beer tabs, and maybe I started out collected in a jar, but now I’m scattered, like dust, like dead skin and dirt, in every place I’ve ever been, but not in the places I’ll ever be.

I’m halfway away from home and my legs are shaking and there’s sweat on me like rain and I can’t breathe enough. But I can’t stop. I have to fantasize about something so I can get home.

When I was in high school I used to think about killing myself during my jog so I could get through it. Or I’d pretend I was a bunny so that if I ran hard enough my heart would explode and that’s when I could finally stop. That’s when it was finally enough. I could feel my heart trying to tear out of my chest, about to burst into pink streams between my ribcage. It was clawing to cut away the arteries keeping it in place to climb up my throat. I could have spit it out. Spit my own heart out on the sidewalk.

I used to think about running away from home, not coming back for water or rest, and sleeping on the side of the highway till I was run over by a semi truck cause I couldn’t keep going, and that was my punishment: flattened and gory. If I can’t continue it’s jammy pulp sticking to broken bones. My face without eyes or a nose or a mouth. Ribs ripped open and lungs sitting beside me. Stomach acid steaming on the asphalt in a puddle of what’s left of my stomach and spleen. I thought about what they would do once they found me. If the holes in my body would be big enough to make them vomit. Dissection via car accident. Would their repulsion dwarf any love they once felt obligated to feel for me?

I thought about coming home and my mother poisoning me. Making me a lemonade spiked with a bottle of baby aspirin. It would taste bitter and chalky and gritty from all the pills not all the way ground up, but I’d drink all of it anyway cause she was watching me. I’d blink my eyes up at her slowly, feeling strange, and again, and then I’d feel dizzy like overheated, like too hot but shaking like I’m cold. She’d watch me keel over and hit my head on the corner of the kitchen counter. Shaking and convulsing and spewing till everything stopped.

Now I’m grown up and when I’m having good sex I think about sex when I’m running. Or even if it’s bad sex. I’m always thinking about sex. Especially the kinky shit. I call him daddy and beg him to choke me and all of a sudden I’m going double time speed. I give him head in the bathroom and he likes it so much he fucks my mouth. I’m sprinting up the hill. He tells me I’m a good girl, he pulls my hair, he calls me a whore, he spits in my mouth. I misbehave, he punishes me. I can go for another mile. I’m getting fucked from behind like a dog. Being grabbed by the throat and put on a leash. I am a sex doll and I love it. I’m soaked with sweat and other things.

But I don’t really think about all that now cause I haven’t had good sex in months. Anyways, sex doesn’t help me like it used to; the thrill doesn’t linger longer than the half hour it takes for me to get home and wash away the leftover cum dried on my thighs. It doesn’t matter who it is, how good it is, my heart’s not in fucking anymore.

Now I fantasize about killing him. Make him regret the two months of hell he dragged me through when he made me feel so good I felt like heaven. I covered his body in kisses and let him get too close. I love you. I love you. Before he left, he asked me, what would you do if I disappeared? This is it. This is what I would do.

I’d show up at his place past midnight. Drive my car into his house. Get close enough to push a knife into his back. Hold his head up. Watch the life drain from his eyes like I used to watch him cum. And I want to do it. I want to do it. But first I’ll find a way back into his life. I’ll have sex with everyone he knows just so he can hear my name again. I’ll be a whore for him. I’ll lie in the mud. I’ll be filthy for him. Sick for him. I’ll give up my blood and urine, collect myself in small vials, and send the bits of me to doctors and test strips every three months just so I can keep fucking for him. I’ll follow him. I know where he goes. I know what he likes. I know who to kill so it’ll kill him.

I’ll show up at his party and I’ll get so drunk I’ll forget that I want him back. I’ll get so drunk that my skin will itch because his blood isn’t on it. I want to rub it on my arms like lotion. I’ll rip out his throat. I’ll look so good with his blood on my teeth. I can taste it. It tastes good. It tastes better than his cum.

I’ll watch him drive home. And once it’s past midnight and the doors are locked I’ll find him. I’ll crawl into his bedroom and wake him up by sitting on his sternum like a crude gargoyle. Tie his limbs to the bedposts till he’s spread eagle like Jesus the redeemer. I’ll crucify him in his own sheets and carve Christ’s cross onto his red chest and cleanse him of his sins. He’ll be so pretty once I cut him open. I can see his face: wet and red and fawn-like. Like road kill. It would be so easy to hurt him. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. It would be so easy.

I love it when he cries. It’s really fucked. His tears are a strip tease. He peels off his clothes as the teardrops peel off his face. They melt his happy skin, cut the corners of his lips. He’s naked and dripping in front of me and I want to fuck him. I want to hold him against me in my arms like a child. His head in my hands. I want to bring him to my breast. He can bite down, let my blood run over his mouth. Watch him fall asleep with it dripping down his chin. I’ll curl him up in my womb. I’ll make him born again, mine. And my blood will become the blood in his veins.

But I can’t get that close. He won’t touch me with an iron pole. I’ll have to get in some other way. By screaming. Bleeding. Crawling. I’ll break the window to the bedroom of his new place and I’ll cut myself on the way in. I’ll kneel down in the mess. I’ll shove glass shards up my nailbeds. But it’s not enough. It can’t just be me. Someone else needs to bleed for him. I know. I know who to kill.

I’ll find his new girl and I’ll fill her belly with the food in my cupboards and I’ll dress her in my clothes and once she trusts me enough to sleep in my bed I’ll fuck her till she forgets his name. I don’t have a cock but I have a knife. I’ll cut away her nerves till she can’t feel anything, like me, her adopted emotionally spayed sister. I’ll lay her down, I’ll bone her like a fish, I’ll lay out her skeleton and pick off the bits of red flesh, and then I’ll lay myself down in her mess. Wait for the maggots to finish with her then get to me. Our blood is mixed in their bellies. That’s how he’ll find me. Wearing her.

I’m almost there. I’m almost ready. I just need to get used to gore.

I met him in his oversized black SUV parked in an illegal parking space behind my apartment complex. At the front of the car, he was all business; he had a Fiji water bottle in the cup holder, he was playing his newly released SoundCloud house DJ set, and giving me that look that said, “I can’t believe this girl half my age is getting in my car right now to let me hit. I hope my wife doesn’t find out.” All while wearing those damn sunglasses I’ve never seen him go without. (I don’t even want to see what his eyes look at this point. Probably beady. Probably makes him look his age.) In the back, there was his daughter’s car seat, but I tried not to pay much attention to that. (I’d be forced to later, when my knee was propped up on it to give him better access to finger me.)

I first met him back a few months ago at my favorite club; the club he has a residency at. (Thinking back, I must have also seen him every Thursday cause he mixes once a week at this cocktail lounge I used to meet guys at cause the bartenders were too busy infusing gin with elderberry and sourcing vintage stemware to check my ID. I didn’t think much of him at the time. I still don’t.) He gestured me over to him with two fingers after we held eye contact in the smoking area for two seconds too long to play off as casual. I walked over.

“Hey…Mo, right?”

“No, it’s Dominic. We haven’t met.”

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand at me. “People confuse us all the time.”

I thought he was this other DJ I did coke with the night before and then followed to a sparsely attended afters in a closed workshop of some sorts. He had the same dark curly hair as DJ Married, same fuckass sunglasses that were just a little too small for his face. Same nonchalant-maxing, aura-farming, dumb-as-bricks expression permanently carved into his face probably put there to express some sort of blasé “I don’t chase, I attract” energy. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t work.

“Do you have another cigarette for me?” DJ Married asked.

“Sure.” I gave him one of my American Spirit blues. At the time, I smoked Spirits even though each pack was $12.50 cause my most recent situationship smoked them and put me on to like, the whole ‘natural tobacco’ and ‘biodegradable’ thing. And also at work I got longer smoke breaks cause it took a whole ten minutes to finish one cigarette. Seemed like worth my money at the time.

I think I was wearing this brown pleather top and a lot of smudgy black eyeshadow (not cool smudgy— smudgy cause I ran out of real eyeliner months ago and didn’t want to buy more so I just replaced it with a mixture of that black eyeshadow pan I still have from high school for pigment and my spit to give it some wear.) He probably asked me some dumb shit question like “You come here often?” And, yes, the truth is, I went to that club enough that if I had been legally allowed to get in, I would have asked someone I knew who worked there (I knew plenty) to be on the list. But there was the issue of the different names on the shifting spread of fake IDs I had access to. The bouncer probably knew. Every Friday and Saturday I’d show up at the front of the line, new ID in hand, and he’d say, “Hey stranger”, and make fun of me for all the shit I always brought in my bag. (I just can’t go without! You never know when you’re gonna need a Dum Dum or a screwdriver or a mini deodorant or a comb or three lipstick options, or a fidget block… the list goes on.) He stopped ID-ing me around the same time that the door girl stopped scanning my tickets.

That first conversation with DJ Married was pretty fucking dry and I only let it go on for so long cause he was, like, the DJ at the club and maybe even one of the owners, but after a few minutes I told him I was going back with my friends, cause, I don’t have time for that, y’know?

Since then, our story has been all romance. Once a weekend, he’ll slide into my DMs and I’ll play along with his dirty talk fetish until I convince him to come over to the dark alley behind my apartment to make out in his car till 3am when his wife expects him home. (No—it’s okay! They’re in an open relationship! Also, I work with this girl who used to be their barista a few years ago and she found out that his wife ended her own ten year relationship with this other guy by cheating on him with DJ Married. Now, she and DJ Married have been together for four years and share a few businesses and a three-year-old daughter. He’s told me a few times that he wants to watch me fuck her. The wife. The wife.)

Tonight, though, it was different. I could tell he wanted more by the way he said “I wish I could bend you over and eat it” over DM. It was 1:28am. Ugh. I sat up on the couch and looked over to my roommate. She’d fallen asleep. I turned off S2 EP 7 of The Ultimatum and checked my phone battery. 6%. Perfect. I unplugged my roommate’s phone to charge my own. Time was of the essence. If I played my cards right, I could finally have sex with DJ Married in his SUV. He was in my DMs asking if I was alone but I wasn’t sure how to tell him that I’d spent my Saturday night smoking weed out of a homemade eggplant pipe with my roommate, eating the pizza I brought back from work, and watching a lesbian reality tv show. (That’s okay. Less is more. Be mysterious and assertive. And get in the fucking shower already.) I told him I’d be free in 30 minutes and that I’d meet him in the same spot as last time.

30 minutes later, hair washed, body shaved, and just enough makeup smeared across my face to look okay in absolutely no lighting, I checked my phone and read another DM: “10 minutes away. Wear something soft so I can feel your pussy.” Yes, sir. I put on the only mini skirt I own (probably soaked with beer and vodka, but it’s black so you can’t tell) and then decided to smoke a cigarette last minute to calm my nerves and also so I smelled like I’d just gotten in from a night out. But like, in a sexy way.

In the car, we made out for a bit and he stuck his fingers inside me till he asked to eat my pussy. I tried to respond all breathy and moany to make up for the fact that I’m really shit at dirty talk, but it doesn’t matter. He definitely made up for both of us. “Are you a dirty girl?” “Does your pussy get wet for me?” “I wanna watch you fuck my girlfriend.” “Did you fuck your pussy after seeing me last week?” “I wish I had all night with your pussy.” Etcetera. (I’m not against the p-word, but goddamn, he said it all fucking night. It was like every other word he said. At least, out of the ‘sexy’ ones.) As he crawled into the backseat, he must have sat on one of those singing kids toys cause all of a sudden, a nursery rhyme filled the awkward silence that his own SoundCloud set had done little to quell. He tried to ignore it and bent me over the middle console but I had to cover my mouth to stop myself from laughing.

“Can I be a dirty boy?” He said, “Can I put my tongue in your ass? Do you want that?”

Sure! I mean… “Yeah I want that. Be a dirty boy for me.” He put his tongue in my ass and wouldn’t you know it, perfect timing, the nursery song resumed.

After that, he wanted me to suck his dick but it was so small and flaccid that I did a double take. At the time, I thought that that was my first encounter with a micropenis. (I’ve canvassed a few penis-owners since this encounter and have since discovered that the Shrinky Dink-penis affliction is in fact a very normal phenomenon and affects more people than you’d think.)

“Sorry, baby, I did a lot of coke tonight.”

…Okay. I tried my best to…help him out but there really wasn’t a lot to work with. I started out by holding the base with just my thumb and pointer finger and really going to town. (To be fair, it was sucking dick on easy mode. Like, it actually was the size of a lollipop. Or a Baby Bella mushroom.) Just as my cheeks were getting sore, I started to feel his penis grow in my mouth like Jack’s Giant Beanstalk. Triple the original size. Not bad. Acceptable, even. I stopped my work just long enough to grab the condom I brought from out of my purse but when I looked back, he’d gone soft again. My heart sank.

He gave me this half-smile and said, “Sorry, baby. You wanna suck on it a bit more?”

No! I do not want to suck on your micropenis again. (My mindset is that if you can’t get hard, that’s really not my responsibility. Idk. Maybe I’m just lazy. But, c’mon! I’m a hot naked girl! Stand up!) I told him that I didn’t think it would work out that night and (hopefully) crawled gracefully back into the passenger seat. On my way out, he stopped me and said “Can you keep this a secret?”

“Mhm,” I responded, thinking about his wife. I wasn’t sure if I believed that she really knew what her husband was up to between closing hours at the club and 3am. (Especially at the beginning, he was so paranoid about someone finding him out, and so vigilant about covering his tracks, like deleting his own DMs minutes after he sent them, making sure every place we met up was “chill”, and asking if any of my friends I brought up “knew about us”. Which is funny cause he said this like… he was a local celebrity. This man has 2k insta followers. Like, calm down. Who’s gonna recognize you?)

I left DJ Married in his SUV to drive back to his family and climbed back up the three flights of stairs to my own home. Quietly crept back into my apartment. Plugged my roommate’s phone back into her charger, peed, and crawled into bed. I couldn’t sleep for a few hours.

I ran my encounter with DJ Married over again in my head and couldn’t help but feel… bored. He was actually pretty good at what he did despite the micropenis, maybe even better than he was at mixing house music. (He’s not that good, it’s not a huge compliment.) But it was hard to…care. It’s been hard to care about anyone lately. No one’s been doing it for me. Nothing has been giving me that thrill. That rush of adrenaline. Nothing feels dangerous. Not even doing it with a married micro-celebrity in public.

Not sure what to do. I think I need to fall in love with someone who doesn’t care if I live or die in order to have good sex again. Hm. Will update soon. That’s all.

reread that story i wrote last semester about my gap year after my gap year when i didn’t do anything but drink a lot and feel pretty bad about myself. not much has changed except i’ve moved to the city and gotten a new job. i’m trying to make something of myself but not sure if it’s working. writing more. fucking more. i’m seeing a few people, but not the ones i want to see. gotten even better at smoking cigarettes and flirting with boys.

i’m back at my moms house, just for a few hours. a few loads of laundry and a few meals cause i’m losing money and i don’t want to spend any on groceries or shitty laundromats. i’m picking up her car from the shop as a favor cause i owe her everything. i’m walking, which is easy, which is hard: fall onto one foot, then the other. walking is falling. over, and over. listening to the smiths, which is corny, but i don’t care. have to make a decision about college soon, again. not sure what to do. not sure what to do.

had half-way sex with one of my new friends last night. thought i’d never sleep with them but i did. i guess i was waiting till i wanted to take something from them. have them fuck it into me. it was all very slow and new and we left it quite unfinished but somehow it was better than saturday night when i went home with tall dark and handsome from the club. i guess i didn’t like him enough so i was all closed up and it hurt like hell. thought he was going to burst one of my organs when he was fucking me doggy-style and bite my nipples right off my breasts when he was “kissing” me. he was nice though. clean. carried me over to the sink so i could wash my hands before we got into it. gave me a towel to wipe off my feet. folded my clothes into a stack, took off my jewelry and his and made a little pile of metal.

don’t know why i did it except for why not. that’s why i did everyone else. why i did my friend. sometimes it works and we’re holding each other all night, all sweaty, under a weighted blanket and in a dim closet and i feel safer than ever. and then sometimes i pee a little pink and my nipples feel like they’re going to fall off cause i didn’t know how to tell him his teeth hurt.

i feel good and bad. after i had sex with my friend i realized they remind me a lot of my relationship with [redacted]. i’ll tell them anything and we’ll go on adventures and we’ll talk about anything. chain smoke cigarettes and crush beer till we drop. it feels easy like how it used to with [redacted] in the beginning. it makes my love for [redacted] feel cheaper. cause i just did it all again. the timeline is even the same. got into it pretty fast. i don’t know. i still think he was the one (the first.)

last night at work i helped an old man home. held him up while he walked and felt his bones groan under his skin like dry wood. like the kind of sticks you crack in half when you’re a kid just cause you can. he had drool all the way down his beard and he couldn’t say his own name without wheezing. after i got off work and stopped moving i started to feel bad but didn’t know why so i had a smoke outside on the porch. gave a drag of my cigarette to the snail sitting across from me. earlier today i felt a hand that came from my heart grab my wrist. don’t know what that means but i’m pretty sure it means something. everything means something. everything is everything. so also it’s nothing. everything is nothing.

life is green. i still feel like a virgin. i used to think i’d be like this till i fell in love but im pretty sure im most of the way there and i feel more dumb than ever. sapling. nascent. beetle guts. i feel like i’ve done this all over before. (i’ll only write about you if it’s really about him.) i don’t think i can love anyone till they’re gone and i hate them. maybe love isn’t strong enough and it’s only hate that will move my heart.

feeling pretty lonely. feeling pretty green. that’s all.

been thinking about him and what i miss the most about it all. this is what i miss the most:

staining my bedsheets purple cause i covered his body in kisses, all over, and the tube of lipstick was pushed into the comforter when i pinned his hands above his head, and turned everything violet. (my lips, his skin, the sheets.) taking a shower together after cause we were all dirty and dripping, all slick, and then drawing a picture of two snakes in the foggy window. (falling asleep, clean, in each other’s arms.) waking up covered in sweat cause i never let go of him, not all night, and his body was hot, and it was next to mine, and we were tangled together under my heavy comforter. (the heat, trapped, locked between our bodies.)

i want to smell him again. want to kiss the same pair of lips i’ve kissed before. i want it how it was. last week we were at a party together and it was cold and i wasn’t wearing much and he took his sweatshirt off his body and gave it to me. it was warm from where it touched his skin, then mine. he forgot about it when he left.

would you believe that his sweatshirt smells like him? the collar smells like his cologne, the sleeves smell like his cigarettes, the hood smells like his shampoo. but mostly it just smells like him, all over. not his skin, not his smokes: him. his scent. his smell.

it feels like a dream the way it felt so good, the way it went so fast. it felt like sleep walking; it was so easy i could do it with my eyes closed. now i’m sorry i echoed his love, or whatever i thought it was. now i’m in my car listening to radio static on full blast and i’m crying about him. i just got off work and i’ve got a pocket full of bills from when it was busy and a poem i wrote about him from when it was slow. i wrote about my body and my organs; the soft tissue i gave up to him when he felt all of me:

i spoon-feed him my organs. mouth to mouth, i breathe life into him. the air from my lungs sinks into his lungs and soon everything comes up through my throat and goes down his. spleen, liver, kidneys. they slide down pink and slick with saliva. my stomach flips into his, a meaty splash of acid on flesh. my skin crawls off my bones and hugs his body. now, i am gore. viens inchworm into a net around him. eyes go with a pop and they tell me what he looks like from the inside: red, like me. blood goes, brain goes, bones break and i make him swallow the pieces. he likes it. he likes to chew me. not sure if he’ll be able to hold down my heart. i don’t think he’ll be able to stomach it, even though he has two (his&mine). my tongue i’ll keep to swallow and my teeth i’ll keep to bite and my lips i’ll keep to kiss him. that is all i need: a mouth. to consume.

he came up with a million excuses and reasons to be insecure; that was so selfish. he said he didn’t want to get hurt so he hurt me instead; that was so selfish. he told me he loved me and once i said it back he asked me what i would do if he disappeared; that was so selfish. he disappeared, that was so selfish. i guess the only thing i have left to say is: i’m so glad he had a great time with his unemployment and my pussy. but i wanted more. i thought he did too.

it doesn’t matter. i‘m wasting all my time thinking about how i’m not good enough instead of getting better. i want someone to fix me. i know it won’t be [redacted 2], but i can’t help it. you know how i can’t help it. sometimes i don’t know if i really love people, if i really miss them for the right reasons. it doesn’t matter. i’ll miss them till they’re sorry.

Woke up Sunday morning to cancelled plans for the third day in a row. My friend still hasn’t texted me back since Friday when I got too drunk and abandoned her in the club to throw up outside with a beautiful woman. [Redacted 1] is still ignoring me ever since I told him I loved him. And the (aforementioned) beautiful woman just rain checked our coffee date. It’s pouring outside anyways. Fitting.

Read more

woke up today and realized i’m medium fat, medium ugly, a medium bad person, and a shit writer. everything makes me nauseous. i used to want to smoke cigarettes and go home with strangers and now i do but i don’t feel powerful like i wanted to be. i’ve fucked myself into a sex object. i assigned myself a role. i said i was a whore and now i am one. i feel like maybe i should have a role model by now because i’m getting pretty offensive to some people and i don’t know how to act. sometimes i think that if [redacted 1] hadn’t fucked me so good i wouldn’t be so obsessed with sex. then i remember my childhood.

met someone else to get over how good [redacted 1] fucked me. [redacted 2] was different in all the good ways. i liked it when [redacted 2] loved me. liked being something of his. liked thinking less, liked linking arms. liked when i liked when he’d fuck me. now it’s done and he’ll move on. write songs about other people. meet other friends at the coffee shop and make better art with them.

it’s funny that we met on valentine’s day and funny that we started smoking cigarettes again together and even funnier that i told him i loved him on april fools day. its all a fucking joke. because i don’t care what he says, i remember what he said. i remember what he said.

i remember when he said he thought he wasn’t good enough for me. i remember when he said i was his muse. and then he said it again in his song. i remember when he told me he loved me, after the second time we met, the first time we fucked. i remember when he said he wanted me to hurt him while my hand was wrapped around his throat.

he always fucked me with our shirts and underwear on. he would pop his dick out of the hole in his boxers and he’d move aside my g-string so i could ride him. we’d fuck for ten minutes. he’d cum inside me. i’d pee. then usually we’d eat the pizzas i brought back from work while getting pretty high. sex with him felt like he was using my body to jerk off but that didn’t really matter to me cause i really loved him. still miss him.

still miss [redacted 1] too. still pretend he’s sitting next to me. i still pretend we’re running into each other in westport or at the club or by his apartment or anywhere he told me he’d been. he’s always there. he’s always here. i take him home with me today and he makes fun of my messy apartment, like i used to make fun of his. he likes the pictures i taped on my walls. i cook dinner for us, i even make a plate for him. we laugh because i’m not a very good cook, but he forgives me because he starts kissing me. kissing me. he’s kissing me... now i’m fantasizing about him finding out that everything i’ve written is about him. he reads through my whole manuscript and it’s all him. i cry. he gets angry.

want someone to fix me. it won’t be [redacted 1], or even [redacted 2]. sometimes i don’t know if i really love people, if i really miss them for the right reasons. doesn’t matter. i’ll miss them till they’re sorry.

As I’ve gotten older and gotten under more men and women, the shame has migrated from the act of sex itself to pleasure: a byproduct of sex, something separate (especially for women). When I was younger, I used to get this overwhelming sense of disgust for myself whenever I had an orgasm. Post-nut clarity or whatever they call it. But the guilt always had to do with the pleasure, not with masturbating or whatever I was doing. If I was feeling good, it was bad. Even now, the shame I have for pleasure comes up during sex. I feel fine about being fucked, but I don’t like getting head. I’ll hold myself back from cumming in front of someone else like it’s an Olympic sport. I fake it every time—but it’s not their fault (it usually is, don’t get excited). I have to do mental gymnastics mid-coitus in order to let myself be licked, touched, kissed. To let myself feel good even though they’re not getting anything from me. I must be useful. I must service my partner. If not, there is only pleasure and me. And the shame.

This shame is not a coincidence. It’s been ingrained in our society via religious structures and ideology. In the Mormon faith (what I grew up believing), church authorities don’t stop at shaming sex, they go so far as to villainize pleasure. In a 1974 speech, the leader of the church, Spencer W. Kimbal, condemned the modern “veneration of the orgasm.” Okay, this is from a while ago, but it’s also what I grew up with. This is what was ingrained in the heads of my teachers, my parents, church authorities. People I was told to look up to. The Mormon church requires women (and all members) to confess sexual sins (the regular sex-before-marriage bullshit) to their bishop. It is likely, during this process, that they will be questioned if they had an orgasm or if they enjoyed the sinful act. If so, the punishment is more severe. Traumas like this do not disappear generationally, they stick and slide onto the next.

This is also during the time when Kimbal declared that it would be better if a woman was killed than raped: “Even in a forced contact such as rape…It is better to die defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.” So a woman’s chastity is more important than her own safety, even her own life. It would be better if she was dead than dirtied. Better if she was killed than sullied. Her body, better broken, than her virtue affected. For men, for god, cleanliness is king. Purity trumps truth. That is a woman’s purpose, to be untouched…until she is meant to be touched. Until man decides she should be touched. In the absence of her independence, so too disappears her pleasure.

It’s an attack on pleasure. It’s everywhere around us; it’s in almost every culture, put there to handicap women. Pleasure is power. Sex is power. We can go so far as to mention the most extreme example: female genital mutilation. With FGM, all pleasure is excised: the clitoris, the inner labia, anything sensitive. It’s all cut away and replaced with a small bloody hole to let the men fuck her. Whenever they want to. The men who chop up these women justify the act by claiming that they are protecting her. They must protect the purity of these women, they must control their dangerous sexual appetites. Of course, a side effect of the nonmedical procedure is increased pleasure for the men. Men get to have pleasure, it is their god-ordained right, it is in their nature. But for women, pleasure is dangerous. Greedy. Gluttonous.

It’s a perfect and disgusting metaphor for what men want women to do. We’re ridiculed for our emotional sensitivity… until he needs it. We “cry like a girl”...until he needs mommy to come tuck him into bed. Until he needs mommy to tell him that he’s a good boy and that he’s never done anything wrong. He could never do anything to upset her. And then she rolls over and he fucks her.

Men get the pleasure during sex. There’s even this trend of men not wearing condoms or using birth control because it feels better to slide their dick in and out of a hole when they’re not wearing a latex sheath. So the role falls on women to use birth control. It literally changes our physical chemistry, it fucks with our hormones, it makes us moody and gain weight and it changes our natural bodies. He’s got it easy. We’ve got a handful of pills and cramps that would take him to the emergency room. It’s all for him. His pleasure.

Society’s attack on pleasure through the shame of sex limits women’s sexual freedom. Sex is pleasure and pleasure is power, so sex without pleasure renders women powerless. It’s no fucking wonder why women feel so much shame about it all. So we try to learn our bodies as we share them with people who don’t care. We sleep around for empowerment. Buy a vibrator for feminism. Try celibacy when none of that works. But it doesn’t matter. The shame stays.

When I was growing up, my mom warned me that the female body releases hormones during sex that make you attached to your partner. You’re chemically linked to them. Bonded by your own bodies. After, attachment is hard to shake. I used to think I was in danger of this: falling in love with the first person I had sex with, but luckily enough, once I ripped the band aid off, there wasn’t much feeling left besides some nausea. I thought I was in the clear. I thought I was immune. My body and brain just worked differently. I skipped along the path of life unattached and free, having sex like a man: without feeling. Don’t you want to know how?

The secret is, don’t have sex with people that you like. That are nice. That care about you. If they open your car door, do not proceed. You want the people who are spatially unaware and emotionally vacant. The guys who roll over after they cum, the guys who sexualize you from the beginning (that way you know exactly what they want). If he asks you if you peed after sex, do not go back. Let him take you for drinks, but only if he pays. Do not accept gifts unless they are expensive. Crafts and homemade cards are STRICTLY prohibited.

If he’s a nice guy, run away and warn all of your girlfriends. If he loves eating you out, he’s probably killed someone before. If there are tampons in his bathroom, he’s the devil, trust me. If he uses a vibrator on you, buy your headstone and coffin for the bundle price. It’s too late. You’re in the ground. Don’t take a shower with him in the morning—in fact, don’t stay over. Move like a vampire: at night, teeth out, with the readiness to draw blood if anyone crosses you. The less you see of him, the better. And definitely don’t agree to take care of his new tattoo. DO NOT rub hand-warmed Vaseline into his crusty peeling back. DO NOT let him make jokes or play music or rub your shoulders. DO NOT see him in any other context outside of sex. If you do (by accident), do not interact. Stay away from guys that are a little gay—they usually aren’t, it’s just performative. Pronouns in the bio? DNI. We’re not looking for the woke, respectful ones, okay? You want to have casual sex? Then listen up.

I have done extensive field research to come to these conclusions. You will not be successful in casual sex if you do not follow my instructions to a T. Falter, and you die. (Or worse, fall in love with someone who doesn’t care about you and only ever wanted you for sex. Surprise!)

I was talking to my friend about casual sex and he said he feels his soul splitting up whenever he has sex, that he leaves a piece of himself behind in every pussy he puts his dick in. Pathetic, right? Don’t fall into this trap. DO NOT give head unless you really (like really) want to. DO NOT kiss while in missionary. DO NOT look your partner in the eyes while they cum. And DO NOT cuddle post-coitus. These are all common mistakes made. I talked to my friend about this and he needs to follow my instructions. Loser!

But who am I to judge? I had something once. Something a little gay with his ears pierced. He/they in the bio. Didn’t sexualize me. He opened my car door for me. Trampled the snow on the sidewalk cause I was wearing stilettos. Took me out to a bar, and then we split the tab. Ate me out every time we fucked. Asked me if I was okay and reminded me to pee after sex. Made me a birthday card. Asked me to wash and rub hand-warmed Vaseline into his new back tattoo. Kissed me softly. Cared about me. Stroked my hair. Memorized my scent. Held me till the morning. Surprise! He only ever wanted to fuck me.

Oh, and this is important information: existing around someone who doesn’t want to fuck you anymore is punishable by death. You gotta get good at knowing when your expiration date is. You wouldn’t want to start spoiling and smelling rotten, sitting green on the counter, trash for him to deal with. You wouldn’t want that, would you? Then GTFO! Remember this: if you don’t know, you should probably go. And don’t worry, the people you should be choosing to have sex with will be easy to leave. That’s their best quality: they’re all very replaceable.

I bid you all luck in finding suitable sex partners, expanding your roster, and avoiding the regrettable (repulsive, loathsome, shameful, humiliating, degrading, offensive, abhorrent, hateful, heinous) situationship. I deem you all ready—lest you heed my words. Now fly, fly into the wind, pussy lips flapping like wings on the way to sex-heaven.

The party on Friday went pretty late cause I refused to leave when [redacted 1] and baby-bangs were still dancing (and then kissing a lot on the couches). Ended up in this beautiful girl’s house by 3am and followed her roommate who was smoking a cigarette downstairs. If mental illness was a gender, there were three of them in the basement. They were alternative in the way that they all looked British: the shaggy hair, the cross dressing, the slept-in eyeliner, it was all there. The whole goth-underground-London-art scene package. We chain smoked cigarettes in the ashtray room (they described it to me this way), drinking cheap beer, trying on wigs, playing our own music, talking about literature and concerts and drugs and anything else we could think of. There were other substances too, like erectile dysfunction pills and weed, but I didn’t take any of that. I was flipping a beer can tab between my teeth, chewing it over like a piece of gum, watching them interact.

[Redacted 2] eventually came down too with me and he joined in pretty well with the group. I stayed in my corner sitting on a pile of clothes. My role in the ashtray room: the laugh track. Spoke up only when I had something really good to say. I asked one of them if they had sharp enough canines to bite down on one end of the tab while I held the other between my own teeth. We tried at it but I realized soon enough that I probably shouldn’t start something because I’m trying to do this thing where I don’t fuck people I don’t like. Stopped doing that. Pretended to swallow the tab. It made them laugh.

They were so very much themselves: experimental and niche but also so very much belonging to a subculture. The amount of piercings and the length of hair and the words they used and the books they referenced placed them firmly in a category with a label that went very well. It seemed to me that they were very content to be labeled.

Made a face at [redacted 2] and he agreed that it was time to leave. A bit after 6am. It’s important to always know when to leave a party. Decided to leave a calling card to remember me by so I dipped my fingers in the (real) ash tray and drew a smoky face on the back of a planned parenthood brochure for starting estrogen. Drove back to [redacted 2]’s house and I like laying in his bed. I like having sex in other peoples’ beds because I prefer to feel like I’m in an unfamiliar place. It adds to the experience. A touch of danger. And maybe there’s still some unresolved shame. Don’t want my bedroom to be associated with sex.

Started to get into it pretty quickly after that but left most of my clothes on because I’m trying to learn to take it slow. But then again, it wasn’t my fault that my belt kept digging into his skin. And the buttons on his pants kept catching on my hips. And that eventually he wanted to feel me, skin-on-skin. Soon we were moving on each other with not much left between us, and I was getting excited, and I stopped being quiet like I promised.

The thing about [redacted 2] is that there’s someone haunting him. He lives with the ghost and she is the creaks in the floorboards and a door opening that isn’t us. She’s always there, even when she isn’t. Heard her walk around and felt her on the other side of the unlocked door. Held our breaths, frozen, naked, tangled. We sat up and waited for her to make contact but the ghost slipped away. We silently wrapped our belts around our waists anyway and we went to his car. Drove away to my house. Didn’t fuck until the next day (Saturday) around noon.

[Redacted 2] lit my incense before bed and so now the smoke clings to my sheets. I walk into my room, and he’s back. Now his voice is everywhere and I’m half-lidded. Fuck me, is he becoming an idea? Maybe only when I’m lonely. Only when I’m lonely. I’m lonely all the time. He says I smell like rainbows. Isn’t that so stupid? God, I love it. God, I love that he smells me. God, it’s everything I ever wanted.

Need him in a selfish way. I need him to complete me. I’m unfinished. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m incomplete. He said we don’t complete each other and I like that. But I need him in a selfish way. I feel like I’m outside myself when I’m with him. Feel like half without him. Maybe not missing him, but missing. Keep looking back at that picture he took of the orange right before we made love in my bed. That orange is sex. The glass of water on the cans of diet coke will soon be filled with the rest of the flesh we didn’t eat or feed each other. The blue and white striped pillow case will soon be spotted orange from the juice we let drip past our lips as we kissed. The brown paper bag will soon be pushed to the floor and replaced with our bodies as we braid our limbs together. Everything is foreplay. Everything is sex.

I am so horny to be held. Emotional whore. Slutty with my feelings. I’ll fall in love with anyone as long as you don’t care about me. Leave space and I’ll fill it right up. Leave me be and I’ll run after you. I can’t help but run. Can’t help but follow. I want to be in your arms and become something better than myself. Maybe you can’t save me, but I want to be changed. Enter me, alter me. Let me into your heart so that I can become unrecognizable to myself. Anything is better than this.

To be honest I’m tired of writing about everyone. Wish I didn’t need them to wake up in the morning. Need someone all the time because my mind is too big for just me. I am pretty much no one. I am pretty much done. When I wake up in the middle of the night my arm is dead and cold and I have to shake it awake. If I don’t, in the morning they’ll have to cut it off. Limbless. How would I write? I guess I don’t have to anymore. Also I’m doing this thing where I fall asleep listening to music from my headphones and when I wake up they’re all tangled and wrapped around my throat. Someone died from that, I heard.

Thinking about that. Thinking about what I’ve done to wake up tomorrow.

Thinking about Sunday when I sat in his lap and fucked his shadow. Before, we sat on the porch and I started speaking a language he didn’t know and told him to stay. Got upset that he didn’t understand. Lured him into my room with the promise of reading him Donna Tart and trapped him between my legs cause I didn’t want him to go. Had to really put on a show. Sink to the floor. My mouth on his belt. Felt so good when he gave in to me. Laid us down. Slid off his jeans. Moved my underwear aside. Felt so good that he wanted me and there was proof. Felt so good till I wanted to cry. He said, I don’t care. I want you hurt me. Put my hand around his throat and watched as he came. Didn’t know how to feel. I think I hurt him. I think he didn’t mean it. I think I didn’t mean it.

When we were done I became the $7 bottle of wine we shared as I was crawling on my hands and knees. The street light coming in striped from my blinds cut across my face and probably lit up my eyes. He liked that. He said, you’re being a very good deer in headlights right now. Didn’t know what to say cause I started to realize what I’d done. Became someone else to make him fuck me. Became a deer. Became the car. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know who that was. Don’t want to be that with him. Shouldn’t have done that. Don’t want to be writing like this. Shouldn’t have done that.

Fucked it all up. Fucked him when he didn’t want to. Fucked it all up. Feeling pretty much like a car crash right now.

That’s all.

Sex and the Single Girl (1964), stars Natalie Wood as twenty-three year old Dr. Helen Gurley Brown, a psychologist and sexual shepherd for single women seeking advice. The whole premise of the aptly named sex-comedy is the males’ obsession with Brown’s virginity after her successful self-help guide for navigating relationships with men, Sex and the Sing…

Read more

Let’s talk history.

So the other day I was getting fucked by this guy and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He likes doggy style like every other guy and he motions for me to show him my ass so I turn around and crawl on my hands and knees until he starts fucking me from behind. Hard. Harder and harder until I fall onto my forearms so if I was a dog it would look like I was asking to play.

I always thought this position was funny. There’s a dissonance to it: I feel violent stimulation, but I don’t see it; I see the other side of the room. I hear him, but I don’t see him. He’s behind me, he’s an afterthought. I feel like I’m floating a little bit. Like I’m alone and nothing is really happening. I feel like I could close my eyes and get away from both of our bodies if I tried hard enough.

I’m thinking about anything else but him. Anytime but now. I’m thinking about a million years ago. The Babylonians did doggy too, all the way back in 2000 BCE. I saw a worn plaque in a museum that was engraved with a woman bent over and a man fucking her from behind. The smoothness of their figures wiped away the lewdness of their genitals, but it didn’t wash away her expression. I have been her, I am her, I am being fucked. In ancient Rome, they called it coitus more ferarum— sexual intercourse in the manner of wild beasts.

So he fucks me like an animal and I pose like one. I take it like one. He is the animal and I am the vessel. He comes without a warning and for a few seconds he lies on me, his breaths slowing on my neck. His head falls and then he pulls out and flops on his back onto the mattress.

It’s interesting to think of sex as archaic, but humankind have been fucking since the dawn of time, more often than we do, freakier than how we do it now. It makes sense though, thousands of years ago they didn’t have smartphones or Netflix or porn on demand. When the distractions are taken away, so too are the extreme taboos, and you’re left with your human body to play with, and other human bodies. In ancient Rome, sexuality wasn’t seen as something to suppress. They didn’t pretend it wasn’t there. The absence of sex didn’t make people more comfortable like it does now. Their cultural celebration of sex, even a nationalistic approach, can be seen on pornographic mosaics in secret bedchambers, lewd frescoes in bathhouses, on coins, erotic statues, architecture. “Unlimited sexual license” is a term often used to refer to the Roman appetite. Few things were off-limits, though Rome was a patriarchal society, and their attitude towards sex reflected that. Virtus (vir meaning man), translated to virtue, was the Roman masculine ideal that translated into sexual dynamics. Self-discipline. The man is the master over his own cock; he has the control over sex, even to the extent of mimicking a god’s.

Being gay wasn’t a concern for the Romans either. They didn’t even have words for homosexuality or heterosexuality. Rather, they were concerned that the man promoted his masculinity by presenting as the dominant partner while fucking. As long as the higher ranking man was in charge, it didn’t matter if he was putting his dick inside some poor servant boy or a female prostitute. It was all about rank, virtus, and having a big cock and making sure everybody knew he could use it. (Observing erotic art, one notices the abnormally large phallus in comparison to the European’s tiny dicks.) Sexual gayness wasn’t discouraged, gayness in the vein of feminity was. Even outside the bedroom, Virtus applied to the Roman man. The way he presented himself publicly—from the way he dressed, to the way he held himself, to the way he talked to his peers—had to be hypermasculine.

Of course, there are very few records of what women were allowed to do in terms of pleasure. Pudicitia (translated as a more liberal and celebratory version of modesty) was the sexual term given to women to dictate their sex lives. Not exactly restraint, just basically don’t be a whore. Literally (prostitution was very legal and widespread) or figuratively. Kind of like how the noble Europeans in the 1800s were encouraged to indulge in expensive and rich foods as long as it didn’t turn into gluttony. Women’s attitudes towards sex can be inferred via the plethra of rape stories in Roman plays, mythology, songs, and of course visual art. Just look at her face when he’s fucking her from behind. Blank, unseeing, bored. Her back is arched to a comical degree, and her ass resembles something like an archaic form of a Roman BBL. She’s always portrayed as a caricature, the symbol of sexuality, not a real person. Me too girl, me too.

Things are pretty similar to how they are now. Modern porn is a terrible representation of real sex and real women. Lots of guys don’t care about women’s pleasure. I mean, they’re all still concerned about how they present themselves to society, the stories of their sexual conquests, the size of their dick, how much they bench, how much creatine and protein powder they dry scoop on the daily. It’s just that they don’t call it “virtue” anymore.

it’s midnight but he texted me the same time i was thinking about him so that means something. or maybe not because im always thinking about him. thinking about him. mainly about when he kneeled across from me and told me what he wanted me to do. and what i’d do. (he sat on his heels and told me to take my shirt off. while he watched me. sometimes when he looks down at me he looks so old. after seeming so young.) sometimes when i’m in public i’ll think about it and go all quiet and languid again, and i think that if anyone asks me to do anything i’ll do it without thinking. only thinking about him. in this receptive state for him. doe-eyed for him. deer-in-headlights, roadkill for him.

after we met up last night we drank a bottle of wine with geese on the label and read each other pages from our journals. sat on the floor by candlelight with the cocteau twins playing on cd. i told him the story of how i ate an orange everyday with my best friend from high school i was in love with. so he took the one he brought with him and squeezed it all over my chest. into my mouth. took a bite and gave me the pulp. we switch mouthfuls. i am orange-flavored. he licks me back skin-scented. we kiss sticky for a while and when that goes away i feed him wine but my mouth is the wineglass. he doesn’t spill a drop.

we had sex the way god intended: like lesbians trying to make a baby. like sharing a cigarette, how our heads would fill with this rush and we’d fall into each other. i kept my eyes open the whole time. i let my face go pink, i let him see how he made me open my mouth every time he touched me. wanted to see him watching me. wanted to see his face when i ran a finger across his hips. up his stomach. when he went all the way in. our limbs were really tangled and we were really holding each other every way we could. his head in my hands, our hips pressed together, our legs locked crisscross. i held on and he held me. all of our skin was touching, all of the time.

spent the whole time trying not to cry because i never knew it felt this good to be held this hard. when he came he did it saying my name. wanted to say his. didn’t because i don’t know how to admit things. wanted to say his name.

afterwards we shared a cigarette like we always do and even though there was snow on the ground i didn’t feel cold at all. told him i knew he didn’t feel the same way but that that was the most cared i’d ever felt in my life. he tried to say something but that was it. that’s all to say. played some of his music for me inside and it sounded like jubilant sin. like the indulgence of guilt. had sex again.

cried a lot when he left. not because he left, because he was here. because he’s always going to be here. because he’s going to see me and keep on seeing me. i’m thinking evil nasty thoughts and i won’t say them. worse than sex. worse and worse. thinking about things he might actually say. it’s worse than with anyone else because he might actually say it. he guessed right what i didn’t know. the one true sentence. the one true one. it’s true. it’s true. and i might say it. i might say it.

I met my cousin’s boyfriend first, a few months before they met. We worked together and his quiet disposition always hinted to me a more interesting personality beneath his choosy quiet. I’d stand near him and wait til he decided to say something. In the beginning, it was small things, but this mattered to me still. I was chosen. I was deemed safe and trusted to be a hearer of his thoughts. I’ve always felt honored in the intimate ceremony: the privilege of secret, or even just knowing.

His casual comments expanded into stories, and then as months passed, he started to color them in. Details of his life and why he did it that way. Thirty-second off-handed expressions about work turned into thirty-minute monologues about his journey with his mental health, his friends, his relationship with his god. I always listened. I always prioritized his noise when he was talking. I took his word and made it my gospel. When I introduced him to my cousin, I was chuffed to hear that she became jealous of our closeness, of his unabashed talking and my unwavering listening.

This is where my sixteen-year-old validation came from: the first man who wanted me around. Who valued my ear, if nothing else. I always wondered why this didn’t turn into anything deeper, a relationship, before his relationship with my cousin. someone who even had my blood. Because I was so young, I blamed my body, and the repercussions lasted years. During that time, I didn’t have the mental maturity to understand exactly why he did what he did with me. Maybe he did really trust me, but maybe it was for the wrong reasons. Or at least, but the reasons I thought.

The truth is, being a listener and not a talker is really valuable to men. They get to talk, and they don’t have to listen to you. Your opinion is irrelevant because you aren’t saying it. Because they don’t leave space for it. Men really lean into that if you give it to them. I wasn’t actually a good listener, it’s that my cousin’s boyfriend hadn’t given me the chance to speak for the thirty minutes when he was spilling his guts.

Maybe this is cruel to say, maybe I’m being too harsh on the opposite sex, but there is a difference when speaking with women. It is more interactive. There is space to be.

Men expect women to nurture them, with pleasure, and of course, with no expectation of anything in return. Be a good “mother” but also be good at being fucked. I call this the emotional cum dump.

Ate a popsicle before the art museum and was in an altered state the whole time. Lost myself in smudges of paint and big landscapes and sculptures that look like switch boards. Found myself saying things like how the work “looks like a pathetic attempt at human emotion”. I only wanted to look at the paintings if [redacted 1] was in front of them. Everything is better if he looks at it. I remember he stood in front of an orange painting and it looked so good with his face framed in it. We stood like that for a few minutes and I could have stayed there for the rest of the day.

He talks about art like he’s the one who made it. Like he can feel it all. I remember he was saying something about this one piece and my jaw just dropped. I didn’t know people like that were still around, who feel everything. After, we stretched out on the lawn and put our faces close together and looked right into each other’s eyes. We held each other in the sun-warmed grass, and it was just soft enough even so soon after winter. I could have stayed in his arms for hours. Mostly I’m just scared because I know that everything is something else and I don’t know what it is. I wish I still wanted everything from [redacted 2] but everything is something else and it never stays. I just want to be fucked and be useful. I want [redacted 2] to fuck it out of me.

Me and [redacted 1] went to a wine bar after this and split a bottle of rose from Spain and I told him close to everything. Let him read a piece I wrote about the guilt of calling myself an artist. It was the best glass of wine I’d had since I was in France. We drank it outside as the sun set in the street. It was Europe in a caricature way, in an imperfect, nostalgia way. Not there all the way, but close enough. We took the streetcar to buy some more wine from Whole Foods and I hung like a monkey on the handle bars. Kid on the jungle gym. Stretched out on the monkey bars. I feel so young lately. After feeling so old.

Saw [redacted 2] picking out cheese as I was on my way to the wine. I was already half-drunk but luckily so because I don’t know what I would have said if I was sober. I want him to be the first to see me, at least once, but I guess I’m always looking so I’ll always be the one to find him. [Redacted 1] and I drank the wine on my balcony as we took turns reading quotes from Rothko because that was our favorite painting from the museum. We smoked a cigarette, our first one in one and two weeks after trying to quit. I was nervous watching the flame light the end of my cigarette, then feeling the smoke settle into my lungs. After waiting a week to smoke, it felt like sex for the first time. Like fucking raw. We shared it, and both of our heads tipped back as the nicotine rushed up to our heads. I straddled him and gripped onto the railing as we kissed and smoked until we had to take the show inside. I put on a CD and we fucked for all of ten minutes. I really don’t mind because we’re really good friends. He said the whole day was foreplay and I agreed, even though he’s like eighty percent gay.

We took turns showering and I got ready for [redacted 3] to come over. Burned some incense to clean the air and turn the apartment back sexless. More wine. Shots. 11pm and [redacted 1] drives us to the club. The music is good, already: it’s jumping and head banging latin beats and [redacted 1] and I hold each other as we throw our bodies around the crowd. It’s already so good. And then he shows up. It’s this feeling that is so addictive. The feeling that someone is craving my body. That he sees me, and can see through my clothes. And it’s just enough that I’m begging for it. I’m kneeling for it. I’m wet for it.

I think we dance. Not sure how we got so hot and heavy. He must have held my hips against him and I must have loved it. Put [redacted 3] in an uber. She’s talking to the bartender so we drank for free and she drank too much. Me and [redacted 2] go to his even though he tells me he has house guests. They’re out partying, so it’s okay, but we can’t fuck all night, he says. Don’t remember how we got into it but we fucked for just over an hour and then talked for another. It was the shortest time we fucked but the longest time we talked. I got to ask him questions and he gave me advice for sex. Like, don’t tell guys I have an IUD because they’ll just want to come inside. But he actually did this the first time we had sex. Actually, he came inside me twice before even asking if I was on birth control. He told me not to take my shirt off because it ruins the tension. He also told me I should ask for more. Like, when he’s inside me, he can tell I need a break by the way my pussy feels. But he hasn’t stopped because of that before so I don’t know. He gave me clothes before I fell asleep so his friends wouldn’t see me naked.

Dreamt about him that night. Dreamt that he was slowly losing his memory in a damp apartment somewhere away from the city, and I was there to see it slip all the way away. Woke up and he was already awake, and even though his friends were in the other room, he still held me for some reason. For some reason. I don’t know what he wants from me. Maybe I hate that he tries to make me feel comfortable. I don’t care how I feel as long as it’s the truth. He can fuck me and tell me to leave after. It just has to be the truth. Don’t want him to rub my back because it makes me so pathetic that I like it. He drives me home and I’m wearing his sweatshirt for the ride but decide I should give it back. Strip it off. My little shirt underneath. We kiss before I go: the long, good kind like how you kiss right before you have sex. Maybe I think that just cause I want it so bad. I don’t know if he wants it.

He doesn’t wash his sheets and there’s trash in his car from last year but he tells me my lips are perfect so I don’t really have a choice. With [redacted 2], we’ve already kissed so the tension isn’t physical. It’s different, it’s smaller. It’s when we’re holding each other after we’ve done it. It’s when I tell him I could stay on his chest forever. It’s when he tells me he recognizes my smell; not the cigarettes, not the perfume, me. My hair, my skin. It’s not: are we going to fuck? It’s: are we going to fall in love?

Sex is the best way to fast track intimacy. Because that’s what we all want: to be known. That’s why sex is so frequently mistaken for love. Sex is serious. It’s vulnerable. It’s secret. It’s being added to a list. Sex is easy and love is hard. Sex is dangerous but love is death. Not sure which I want. Not sure what he wants. Made a list the other day called “all the sweet things he’s done” and realized that maybe he was just high the whole time. Maybe he said everything because he was just high. Don’t really want to write about him anymore because it’s pathetic and maybe I never cared. I never care. I never care. I never really care. It’s always just that I need to be needed. It’s always lies and it’s never true. It’s never true because I never care. I never care.

So that was all Friday night. Saturday night went out with [redacted 3] but didn’t drink because my body’s going on strike. But the music was too fucking good to be tired. The later the night got, the weirder the crowd became. Sweatier. Nakeder. Glitterier. Higher. People came to dance, people came to become, people came to join the crowd. Met some gays dressed very well and the one who likes to dance more than me gave us poppers. Smoked on the balcony and saw [redacted 2] come in. I’m always surprised to see him at the club even though he’s always there. I’m always thinking about him there. My night isn’t good anymore unless I see him. Didn’t talk much though cause I was too busy dancing myself to death and he was too busy with friends. I didn’t mind, I guess. Or I do. I die for the attention. Sometimes I wish he would just tell me to fuck off instead of being nice. That might be easier. But I think he doesn’t care about me anymore. It’s time to play games. He left and I made [redacted 3] go home with me.

Went to bed and the only thing on my mind was “you don’t have to fuck everything you like”. Felt very much like a whore. This morning (Sunday) took a mirror in bed with me so I could see how he sees me. How I look waking up next to him. The smudged eyes, the creased hair, my swollen lips. Practiced making faces so he’d like what he sees more. Sexy. Cute. Baby. Smoked all my cigarettes last night so I opened a bottle of red wine after I woke up at noon craving to get out of my mind. Drank it on the balcony next to my neighbor who gave me cigarettes after I begged her for them. We smoked six feet away from each other on our own balconies and the weather got worse outside as we talked. Sunny to hail. Told her about myself and realized I sound quite interesting. Living in France and going to Serbia and working for an NGO and going to the club. The image of me drinking red wine at noon wearing my leftover makeup from the night before in my Whitney Houston shirt. I like my neighbor. She told me about her night, a story of her restaurant closing forever and smoking in the kitchen and drinking top shelf liquor until four am.

After I got enough wine drunk I listened to love songs from the sixties and imagined dancing to them for him. Don’t have any plans for next week. It’s time to play games. I want to see how much it will scare him. I want to spook a six-foot-four man with the threat of love and obsession and truth. Honesty will make him jump. Feeling pretty lame over all. You don’t have to fuck everything you like.

As women, growing up, we’re taught to hate our bodies. Maybe not taught, but it’s at least a very easy thing for us to do, to learn: to be repulsed by the thing that so starkly contradicts with what society demands and praises. And when we hate our body, we’re desperate for validation, desperate for someone else (usually a man, the person society has deemed eligible to decide what is worthy and what is worthless), to tell us that they accept our body. Sex is a very good way to get this validation. But the secret is, men don’t actually want your body. They want to put their dick in it. They want to fuck it. They want to own it. For a night, or however long it takes for them to feel validated.

I didn’t have sex until quite late in my life (I was nineteen), and I used to think that my late-stage virginity would be a burden to the first person I decided to have sex with. The rhythm of it would be foreign to me, I'd be awkward, I wouldn't know how to make him feel good. I felt guilt about this: my lack of experience and my inability to please. Even before I started having sex with men, I felt the need to service them, be useful to them, be a vessel for their own desire so that I could fulfill my male-ordained purpose: to give men pleasure by being fucked. But it turns out that lots of men like being with virgins. They like you to lie still and not move while they do what they want. They like you to be new so you don’t know what to expect. They like to show you how it’s done, or at least, how they do it to you. They get to do anything and it gets to be ‘normal’. Your body aches and it’s okay because it was the first time. Wreaths of bruises on your neck and breasts and hips are nothing to worry about. You feel dirty and disgusting but it’s fine, you have nothing to be ashamed about. And you said yes, so you wanted it.

It’s not the feeling of sex that makes it so addictive. For women, it’s the validation: sexual, emotional, or otherwise. It’s getting to be able to play at being known. Pretending we are seen and held. Fast-tracking cheap intimacy. Cheating at love. For men, it’s also validation. By making someone small, they get to become big. They get to assume power. They get to control the affair because they’re guaranteed to come at the end. There is this satisfaction, for men, in the taking. In putting one’s body in another body and reaping pleasure. They take, and we take it.

Men like owning things. It makes them feel more masculine. It makes them feel big and important, like how society demands and praises them to be. So women have sex with men to feel okay about our bodies, but halfway through our pseudo-sexual liberation, we realize that none of it is true; we’ve been parading our bodies around for an uncaring audience, an audience just as desperate for validation as we are.

It’s Tuesday. Got up to go to work but got a call from my manager and he told me I was fired. Bam. Like that. Four years down the drain. Met my sister for coffee in my work clothes instead and we talked about how she is and what I’m gonna do next. Bought some frozen microwave meals after cause we both felt kind of pathetic.

I’m bad at knowing what to do with empty days. If I don’t have tasks to do, I’ll get stuck to the floor of the apartment and I won’t be able to go past the doorstep. I try to make a list of all the things I did so I feel better about being unemployed: invited him over. Finally hung up those paintings. Applied to two more jobs. Went to the park where I had a first date with that one girl. Remembered how she picked a spring of lavender for me. I think I still have it pressed in a book at my mom’s house. Sat under a tree. Called my friend. We talked about the weekend because she left the party on Friday early. She ended up ghosting the guy she met because she was wearing a wig and said that she was a different person that night when she kissed him. He was attractive in the dictionary definition kind of way. She’s got buzzed hair and she’s super cool but she gets nervous all the time. That’s why she left the party. She also told me the kid she watches has the mumps, and she’s crocheting a dress.

Picked up some pills at the pharmacy because I picked up a UTI over the weekend, but it’s okay because I had really good sex with [redacted] on Saturday. We fucked for hours. We fucked everywhere in his apartment: on his couch, in his bed, against the wall, on my knees, in the living room. Again and again we couldn’t get enough. We kissed, and we had to fuck. We danced, and we had to fuck. We fucked, and we had to fuck again. It was so wet I was dripping. It was so hot he was sweating. It was so good, we kept going. I’m so full of him, even now. God, I can’t get enough.

I like being pretty feminine when I meet up with [redacted]. I wear little skirts and lacy tops and black lingerie because I like that he’s big and tells me what to do in bed. I peel off each layer and I’m a woman for each one. Then it’s all gone and I’m only wearing my hips and tits so he’s really convinced that I’m desirable.

I’m thinking about what it means to be a woman, mostly because it’s so different from how I thought it would be when I was younger. There’s no such thing as sexual liberation, at least for a twenty-something. There’s no such thing as knowing what we want. In bed or otherwise. What does it mean to be a woman? I don’t know, but right now it’s kind of ugly. I feel like a creature instead of human. A punching bag of skin full of piss and shit and I bring it to a boxing ring for practice. To be a woman is to rot. To spread your legs. To be wanted. To want. To take, and take it. To be infected. To reek of rot. It is the flesh, it is dripping blood. It spreads on the skin: this yellow mold. It corrupts and we are corrupted.

An artist was at the party on Friday and he’s been texting me ever since I went home with him. Met him on Valentine’s day, and now I’m in his songs. Does he know I have his heart? Does he know it’s mine? I knew he could see right through me from the beginning. He could see all the way through to my ribs, he could see my blood. Since I sat next to him for the first time, bass thumping inside the club, feather boa tossed over my shoulder, he looked at me like he knew. Sometimes I think it’s fate and sometimes I remember god is dead. There’s something in his smile and I think it’s my life.

Trying to quit smoking again after going through two packs over the weekend. I’m quitting for a week. Just seven days. It’s day three, and I’m not gonna have a cigarette even though I got fired today. Went outside when I was feeling shaky and put two fingers to my mouth and took a really big inhale. I shoved the cold air all the way to the bottom of my lungs and held my breath until it hurt. Drank a really cold can of diet coke. Nothing stops the craving except the thought that nothing really matters, not even cigarettes.

Smokers are young, or at least they think like young people: they think that life is bigger than the consequences. Everyone knows that your days are numbered as soon as you buy a pack, but smokers just use that warning as a declaration of life. A mandatory decree: if you smoke cigarettes, you must live life to the fullest. Memento mori. We know that we will die, so we will live.

My artist is trying to quit too. One week ahead of me, day nine. He said something about cigarettes. Something about the intimacy of death and being able to hold it between your lips. Something like that; I thought it was pretty good. A lot of what he says is pretty good; he’s an artist. He called me a muse. He said he met me in false spring, when all the flowers bloom prematurely and then wither when the winter comes back. This means something. Everything means something when he says it. And me too. For some reason, everything I say sounds better when he’s listening to it. Is this what it is to be a muse? He looks at me, and art is being made. How silly. How ugly. How beautiful and repulsive. How intimate. It feels good, like cigarettes.

He’s coming over tonight so we can get wine drunk and get way too close even though we’ve just met. Don’t worry, we can’t have sex because of my UTI. I wonder what we’ll find at the bottom of the wine bottle, though. Maybe I’ll spill my secrets, maybe I’ll tell him about my own muse. Or maybe I’ll just tell him I’m unemployed and his wine is shit. Whatever I say, I just hope I make it to the weekend. Only four more days until I get a cigarette. Only three more days until the party.

Tonight is perfect. It’s so early Saturday morning that we’ll call it Friday night, and the whole crowd moves together and it’s beautiful. I hold my friend’s hand and we’re one. Strobing blue and yellow lights dye our skin kaleidoscope and we glow with the crowd. We turn into night creatures and move the way only music moves.

Tonight is perfect; I even found a replacement for you. I met him last week and he said he’d be here tonight. When we see each other around the fire pit we get so excited we jump up and down like kids. I tell him everything and he does the same. We go back inside and he moves to the music like no one else I know. He moves to the music and I want to go that fast. He’s faster than I’ve ever gone. He’s double-time speed. He’s every beat of the music. He’s laughing. He’s feeling everything. He’s feeling me. He’s… not you.

You’re half-time speed and your skin is fentanyl. Body to body and I want all of us touching, all of the time. First touch, and I’m sucked right in like a train. You’re addiction, you’re the words, you’re right. But you’re hours too late, and you know it. You can tell I’m with him. I think maybe you saw us together, legs tangled, outside when you came in. When you came. You came, you came. I wanted you to come. You’re hours too late.

I’ve never been happier than in this warehouse on this trampoline with you. It’s three AM and most people are gone but the music is still going. We’re still going. We’re making it count. You’re too big so you make me fall, but I don’t care because I don’t want to get up. I want you to fall next to me, I want us to sit at the apex of the trampoline. I want us to dip the net in the middle of this party and be close, body to body. Why did you come so late?

I’ve got to get back to him. We go to the dance floor and I’m dancing with him. He’s double-time speed and we’re jumping. It’s funny to perform for you. He and I go behind your back so you and I are both more comfortable. Me, out of view. You, back turned, so you don’t see. I slow down and come back to you at some point. Body to body. It feels like we fit together, back to belly. I lean into you and you’re right. We dance like we always do. You’re half-time speed and your skin feels like heroin.

“You smell so familiar,” you say.

“Cigarettes?”

“No, your hair. Just you. Your smell is familiar to me.”

I’ll think about this for the rest of the night. When we pass your car to get to his. When I’m kissing him on the way to his place. When I’m in his bed and taking my shirt off. When I fall asleep next to him. When we get coffee in the morning. Why did you say that? It’s just what I wanted. It’s to be known. It’s to be recognized. It’s to be wanted, again. This is so fucked.

We go back to his and I think he wrote a song about me. His bed is smaller than yours, but he and I hold each other all night unlike you and me. We skip to the coffee shop in the morning, holding hands. He gives me the coat he wore last night. The gray clouds are a cover and we feel safe to say anything on our walk back. We talk about love as he eats his bagel. He asks me if I agree with him, that life feels like one moment at a time. I say no, not at all. I’m anywhere but here. I’m in yesterday and four years ago and next fall when all the changes will be made. I’m almost never just here. When we say goodbye, he says he’s going to write about me. I say I will too.

I like him. He’s an artist and he likes what I say. He’s sweet and his mind is full of colors. I like him but I think we just slept together to fast track intimacy, because we wanted to know so much about each other, right away. And it felt like the universe told us that we couldn’t finish the night just there; that there was more to see. More to know. He’s good. But he’s not you. And I’ll only write about him if it’s really about you.

The whole next day I’m full from the night before. The music, the crowd, the lights, him. You. I’m so happy from it all that I don’t need to leave home. All day, I let the sunlight waste itself outside. It was spiritual. It was holy. It was all-the-way full. It was hands up and hips out. It was spinning and jumping. It was double-time speed. But I keep thinking about it. About you. I was looking for you, I found you. I wanted to see you, I left you.

The whole night was perfect except you were too late.