This is a fucking out of body experience.
Or out of mind.
Heat of the naked bodies slithering to the beat of the music
slower
faster
My eyes hurt from the nictating flashy light
green
blue
red
Someone touches my arse.
This isn’t me.
My mind is in my unpaid room.
This is my body, slithering with the others, sweating, convulsing to the drums and to the erected wishes of horny men. The rhythmic contraction and expansion of my arteries with each beat of the DJ’s choice makes me move, shake, twist and twirl
somewhat mechanically
nevertheless
my knickers are stuffed with banknotes
I’ll never be a dancer.
I lack co-ordination.
Two Korean granddads grin at me while I twiddle without feelings, in monotonous puppet-like kinks and laughing, they enthusiastically push my knickers into the ridge of my arse.
I should have worn a G-string.
I don’t own one.
I ignore them and continue moving.
They stroke my bottom’s cheeks and as I bend down with my legs slightly apart, caressing my thighs with my shaky palms, they cheer loudly, clap and stuff some more banknotes right under my vagina.
Someone feels my breasts
I’m
too
unwilling
to undergo emotional or physical
sensations
I. Want. To. Go. Home.
I can’t.
It’s not midnight yet.
Home is four hours away.
I perspire.
This isn’t me.
This is just another money-hungry woman, dancing at Zsa-Zsa’s.
TWO YEARS EARLIER
I don’t remember clearly, why did I decide to screw him, perhaps it has something to do with the fact, that I am the last virgin of the campus and he is a porn star.
Catholic porn stars don’t rate high on my agenda.
All his holy water übermachista schmooze counts nothing as much as
his big gorgeous hands, stomach I can walk on and his acute sense of irony combined with roguish benevolence.
And, he is as dominant as hell.
This is why we rock.
Think Dante, Virgil and Beatrice.
Dammit, my life is a soap opera.
My own private Divine Comedy lived with gusto.
I’m doomed.
So, I think it’s him I have to thank for my fucked up morale.
“Whad’you do?”
I ask and resolutely sip my Kalimocho. I’m bound to get drunk sooner or later. I am hoping for sooner, rather than later and I sop up a gulp of the red wine with diet Pepsi.
Music shakes my chair, the loudspeakers are right behind me and Martine is hopelessly imitating Madonna. Her make up is running, her group is plastered, and they are sucking up booze since the early hours of yesterday, hence the dissonance.
The decibels are over the limit, the sound intensifies and he overhears my question.
I shout at him.
“Whad’you do?”
“Like, for living, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I study medicine and frequent the movie sets.”
Good combination, I think, and I ask.
”Wow. What type of medicine?”
“Gynaecology.”
I cringe.
Not a good combination. I was hoping for a paediatrician, an ophthalmologist or something less offensive.
“What kind of movies? Are you a film extra or a fully blown star I failed to recognise?”
“I’m fully blown, but let’s say, you wouldn’t find me on your family’s movie shelf. “
He grins and explains himself.
“I shoot blue movies.”
“Well, fuck me.”
I regret the words as soon as they slide out of my mouth.
“Sure.”
He smiles.
He has good teeth and a large bulge in his jeans. I can’t help staring down.
“Didn’t mean it that way.”
I clarify, but my excuse is lame.
Smut combined with the gynaecology leaves me feeling lost somewhere in between aroused and nauseous.
I can put up with a porn star factor but a gynaecologist is an altogether different matter.
I’m not quite intoxicated yet and certainly not ready, but we retire to his parents’ house.
That is another low-rater.
One would think that a person over the age of twenty-five would want to live on his own.
Not him though.
It is nothing like a movie scene.
“Do you want to refresh yourself?”
He asks and I dutifully tiptoe down the dark hallway, hoping not to wake his parents.
The bathroom tiles are cold, I shiver and the mirror snarls at me.
It smells of a foreign soap, the light bulb wearily shuts the light on and off
on and off
and on
shadows play games with my fear of the next ten minutes.
I’m nude.
The hot tap leaks out residues of my grey matter.
I perform all duties of hygiene and slip back to his bedroom, pretending invisibility. It’s clear, I’ve lost my white matter somewhere in between the bathroom corridor and his bedroom. I’m light headed but it’s not thanks to the drop of red wine, I drunk with an ocean of cola.
Am I supposed to feel this ridiculous?
We met on the fun fair,
we had fair fun.
He walked the deserted night road on his hands
took his shirt off
kissed me beneath the warm dusky rain
and under the watchful eye of St Florian said
we’ll go clubbing tonight and after the disco
at my place
we’ll make love
I said
OKAY.
Just like that.
I knew him four hours overall.
The expected explosion of orgasmic intoxication does not happen.
Surprise.
It feels like a giant ball crossing the threshold of never crossed.
Desperately trying to ignore the thing puncturing me, I scream.
He hushes me quiet, heaving over me and whispering under my earlobe.
“Shut up! My parents sleep next door!”
My eyes are shut tight
the aching moist space in between my legs invites him in
he trespasses me with a primordial rage
“Geezis, you’re killing me.
Saint Mary, Mother of God, don’t let me die...”
I’m an atheist, but I guess a little prayer won’t hurt.
Not as much as his penis.
He explodes with laughter.
Am I thinking out loud?
I didn’t realize my pleas are so comic.
He lasts an eternity.
Pumps away my fear shame pain and
finishes while I wonder how to start.
“I am dead.”
I resign to the agony of his climax.
“Did you like it?”
I think I will kill him.
He stubs out his cigarette and stifles me with his weight.
Jesus, again?!
“Why are you moaning? I didn’t touch you yet.”
Sorry.
Bad timing.
While he fucks me, watching himself fuck someone else on his big-screened television, I think of all those guys who tried and failed to screw me in the past two years and I suddenly don’t understand my non-indulgent sexual discernments of the antedating timeline.
I’m losing it.
We meet each other’s family every weekend and after the regulated confabulate with the primogenitors, grannies, grand-papas, aunts, uncles and other loosely unrelated parentage we retire to his bedroom and fuck like demented hares.
His grandmother walks into one of our sessions and joins us on the three-seater, chirping about how blessed was the virgin.
I freak out, whilst he directs her out of the room and into her quarter.
My mother is livid.
“Can’t you pick someone of your own age?”
“What? Like an eighteen year old? No thank you.”
“What’s wrong with eighteen year olds?”
“Who in her right mind would want to screw an eighteen year old?”
“Is it only sex, that’s in your mind? What about innocence and holding hands and your school exams, by the way?”
“What about it?”
I ask.
“At your age I was gullible, naïve and inexperienced.”
“I’m sorry, mother.”
“Can’t you be more like me?”
“I don’t think there’s an option b).
But, we do hold hands, whilst we screw. Sometimes.”
“I give up. Anyway, I’d happily screw an eighteen year old. You don’t know what you are missing there.”
“Mother, don’t be disgusting, you are nearly forty. Anyway, what about innocence and holding hands and your husband, by the way? Is it only sex, that’s in your mind?”
“Piss off, daughter. And, wait till you turn forty. Eighteen year old chicken will seem just fine.”
She says and I laugh my way to my bedroom.
I don’t laugh for long.
It is the getting-pissed time again.
Her best friend joins her and they send me off to buy some booze.
I should inform her about the time I found ‘Banally anal’ in my mother’s secret vibrator draw. The one she thinks I don’t know about.
I guess the size of his member clearly freaked her out. Although, she stays rigidly polite in his company.
Or maybe, they were watching the smut together.
How the hell would I know?
“Put on some weight, girl.”
Neighbour nags.
“No, thank you.”
I answer.
Both, mother and neighbour, look like large-chested barrels of ripening wine. They smell like that too.
“You should, girl. Boys like girls with breasts. A bit of fat wouldn’t hurt you.”
“No, thanks, be my guest and keep the fat. None of my boyfriends complained so far.”
They laugh away and their silly titters follow me out.
I strum up to the town and get back with the requested liquors.
They drink late into the night, I fall asleep listening to their sottish giggles and I hope she does not cross over to the dark side, depressed by the booze.
Graveyard is a chilly place to break up in November.
Christmas is stepping on our heels and Allhallows Eve feels appropriate to kill my first relationship.
“Sorry.”
He says.
“Fuck you.”
I sniff.
It suddenly gets very foggy just behind my sunglasses.
My useless accessory is coming in handy. There is not a stray sunray in sight, but my oversized shades feel somewhat suitable considering, I’ll be spouting tears like a sprinkler.
“It’s pointless. Sorry.”
He apologises again and I start fading.
“What is?”
I ask, but I anticipate what is coming.
He didn’t see me in the last two weeks, although we almost brushed shoulders, sapping up booze in the same club.
Bad omen.
It feels worse than I thought it would.
I hurt and he didn’t even say it yet.
“I think we are wrong for each other.”
He announces.
There.
My eyes well with tears.
I fight to keep them in their sockets until the very last moment.
I don’t want to make a scene.
I’d hate to be known as one of those desperate losers who hold onto their leaving boyfriend with teeth and nails.
Hold on.
I am a desperate loser and I’m leaking tears, like a burst dam.
Superman, come and save me from myself.
“Why? Am I a bad person?”
I ask.
I’m rather fond of him, even though he fucks for living and learns to palpate vaginas for his future sustenance.
My life’s choices and their consequences are a mystery to me.
“It’s not that.”
“So what, you found someone who can suck cock better than me? Sorry, I’m an amateur.”
I’m who I don’t want to be.
“Don’t be nasty, it doesn’t suit you.”
He says and sits down on the grey-concreted edge of the grave.
Sink in, please, don’t wait up for me.
Fuck, what a perfect setting.
Graveyard is an ideal place for breaking up.
November is getting under my fingernails.
Washed out sky is colourless and the five o’clock moon is sneaking out of the jaded clouds.
The wind bites my exposed legs, I’m vain.
As always, I underdressed to kill the men.
Badly thought out, this time.
The men around me are dead already.
“It wouldn’t have worked.”
He says and stands up.
“What did I do wrong?”
I ask.
He picks two candles out of a big blue box and places them on the pedestals on each side of his grandfather’s grave.
He pats his jeans, looking for a lighter.
It’s in his back pocket, I know before he finds it.
That’s where he keeps it, together with some hardened hash and loose cigarette papers.
He tries to light the candles.
Wind is strong and it sweeps up any words he might have tried to say. The silence hovers around the grave like a big grey moth.
It takes a while to get the flame going.
It takes little to blow it off.
“What did I do wrong?”
I repeat.
He lights the candles and finally looks me in the face.
“Nothing you can help. I need a staunch believing Catholic girl, that’s all.”
I’m thunderstruck.
“Jesus.”
I exclaim.
“Exactly. I was thinking how will we bring up the children? You know, religion plays a big role, when it comes to the future of my children.”
Fuck.
Don’t try to box porn stars.
Unless the box carries an emotional health warning.
And there I thought that my parents and I would have the inhibition with regard to the possible off-spring and discussing of their father’s earlier career.
I’m stunned.
“You mean, it’s okay for me to accept that you fuck for living, but it’s not okay for you to accept that I’m not a practising Catholic? I’m lost for words.”
Little old women in black linger around the tombs stressing the cemetery, I push my shades into my face till it hurts and I slowly walk away, feeling as if my life was over.
I’m forced to return to the graveyard a few hours later. The street lamps are crazy, they flash the orange light out with uneven frequency. Moon hangs in the darkness, the air is opaque and I’m grateful no one reads my misery. I follow the family clan to the back of the cemetery, where the family tombs lie. I wish they would let me stagnate by the TV.
One visit a day to the graveyard feels more than sufficient.
We stop and mother bends to the basket to unwrap a bunch of brittle white candles.
My eyes sting swollen; I look sideways.
He is there, with his family, surrounding their own grave patch and preparing it for tomorrow.
I don’t have to pretend sadness tonight.
I’m fucking miserable, I think to myself and I snort a retarded smile.
His mother captures it and serves a smile back. Then she waves a discreet greeting. Nice would-have-been-a-mother-in-law.
I blink out some suppressed tears
“What’s wrong with you? Someone died?”
Mother is sarcastic.
Or pissed.
Conifers and Thujas guard the walkway.
I pick up the watering can and join the queue of several sombre grandmother types.
I fit in.
I’m eighteen going on seventy five.
Someone is pumping water out of the ancient cast iron pump.
The arthritic handle shrieks and the freezing well water rushes out into an old enamelled water container, splashing out on the frigid earth.
A few confused fireflies shiver over the frozen grass.
It’s chilly and graveyard feels like home.
______
Want to read more of Graffiti?
Are you a publisher or a literary agent? Do you want to read the full manuscript? Do you want to represent or publish me? Contact me at matya@matyadio.com
