His thick, inked arm felt like a fleshy cage, trapping her in the bed. In earlier days, it would not have occurred to her to wonder, but age had made her more civil: how long would she have to lie there before it was polite to scramble out of the suffocating warmth of his embrace, get dressed and leave?
Social awkwardness made of her a badly tuned engine, lurching forward in fits and starts, and underneath it – the cause of engine failure – the tar pit of claustrophobia, forever bubbling thickly beneath the surface. The dark crimson and tepid beige of the room’s decor. The acidic recessed ceiling lights. The smell that screamed ‘this is a hotel’, overlaid with the scent of spermicide and latex and sex and sweat.
She could not stand him now. This kind, good-humoured man who had, with skill and admirable stamina, relieved her several times of the burden of a decade of abstinence. Now, in the airless aftermath, with a sore cunt and muscles reverberating from successive orgasms, she needed to be gone. Gone from him, from there, from the memory of being so exposed, so penetrated, so masked, so covered, so frozen and unmeltable.
She’d chosen him because he was unavailable. Because they had very little in common. Because he had no tricks up his sleeve to turn her perverse wheels, no voice to reach past the tangle of razor wire. Because he had no way to touch her, and never would. She had chosen him because he had the wrong-shaped mind.
For all her care in choosing, there was flesh. Human heat, pores, the taste of saliva and come, breath on the back of her neck. Flesh, she had forgotten, had a terrible eloquence of its own. And even if it whispered all the wrong things, she could not be deaf to the cloying poignancy of human contact. She could only regret its waste.
In the interrupted dark of the back of the taxi, on her way home, it occurred to her that she had, perhaps years ago, passed into a desert without even noticing it. All the tender, urgent desire she’d clutched to her chest for the man she could not have was an ornate and intricate mirage. Like the hallucinations the brain manufactures while you’re dying, to mitigate the trauma of mortality.
Whether she never fucked another man or fucked a hundred of them, whether she loved them or despised them, it would make no difference. The line was disconnected.
‘The wrong shaped mind’ – what a wonderful, evocative way to put it!
I agree one hundred percent—my other favorite line is “Flesh, she had forgotten, had a terrible eloquence of its own.”
Lovely work, RG.
Thank you both. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’d like to work this into something a lot longer. I’m intrigued by the concept of ‘frozenness’.
Yes please to something longer! The notion of a frozen core (and the potential for a thaw brought on by human heat/warmth) has always intrigued me – esp in light of the notion of somatization and it’s effects on a cellular level.
Breathtakingly wrenching vignette. Another carefully plotted effort to escape her reality; failure almost expected. Falling back into a clear image of futility, certainly doomed to blur and curl into another attempt.
You have a gift for description and word choice. I admire that. “Flesh, she had forgotten, had a terrible eloquence of its own.”
A sad account of a woman who has reached the terminal of the tram line and now has nowhere left to go. Very poetic, I think.
Thank you!
Vivid, intense-effective work, with a great exit paragraph. I love this piece. =)
This is wonderful. Like Sessha, I also love “the wrong shaped mind”.
Minds- shapes? I love the concept. Seen it from the perspective of Anglican Church Schooling. If you don’t have pigeonholes for stuff, it isn’t stuff. Then it’s just personal.
I’ve met people who, unaccountably, possess erotic minds that seem to be almost a key to open the door to mine. It’s not even a matter of sharing similar kinks or finding the same acts arousing. It’s on a deeper level than that – not a shared vocabulary, but a shared structure of syntax.
And those people, when you meet them, are dangerous as hell. They can steal your heart and never let it go.
“All the tender, urgent desire she’d clutched to her chest for the man she could not have was an ornate and intricate mirage.” I read that and it made me cry. Stolen heart, indeed….
What elegant originality of metaphor and image. It took real artistry to divert a Mans imagination into the perspective of a Woman. Well Done.
Being a writer of of erotic fiction and poetry and having found nothing but crass and uninspired boring crap, I was surprised at how clever this piece is. I am guessing it is just the introduction to an actual story. I wasn’t even aroused by it as I was so interested in the poetic nature of the verses. especially this—She’d chosen him because he was unavailable. Because they had very little in common. Because he had no tricks up his sleeve to turn her perverse wheels, no voice to reach past the tangle of razor wire. Because he had no way to touch her, and never would. She had chosen him because he had the wrong-shaped mind.
This is poetry. really good poetry.
But i have to say i nearly threw up when i saw that animal’s photo above the piece titles fiction, lies and the jouissance of delusion. what is that about?…never mind i don’t want to know. but i look forward to reading more of your stuff.
I’m always kind of awestruck by your work. Beautiful and poignant and raw. I love it.