The Real Lea

“The reason you don’t see is that they . . .”

“They? Again, they? Who are they?” Beth enunciated the statement with two stamps of her foot, her face wearing a strained mask of disbelief and love that belied anger and disgust that I suspected lurked underneath.

“They coin aphorisms.” I said, further manipulating her into the role of straight-man. I snubbed out my cigarette and stood to unlace the violet steampunk she bodice wore to the office, despite the conventions of common sense. “They fucking coin aphorisms,” I murmured affectionately, my midsection swaying slowly. “You know what they say . . .”

“Aphorisms, asshole? That’s why you yell the word ‘cunt’ when I’m not at home.”

I took the hand she held out at the elbow and attempted to press it to my heart but it wouldn’t move. “No, baby. I want to be one of them. That’s why I coin aphorisms.” I smiled into her bulging eyes and stooped to take her breast in my mouth, guiding her down to the carpet.

“Just because you haven’t shit in three days doesn’t mean you don’t have to eat?” she whined in a voice that cracked as my tongue flicked at her nipple as I forcefully sucked her into mouth.

“They’ll say that one day too,” I mewled affectionately, not bothering to hide the edge in my voice.

“When, Bobby, when??” she groaned.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But hopefully soon. Let me explain. I’ll explain everything. I yell cunt because I want to destigmatize the word.”

“I want you to stop.” She placed her hand on the back of mine, making a clumsy attempt to intertwine our fingers. “You’ve got to choose. Bobby? Choose.”

“Between you and yelling cunt?” I mumbled almost unintelligibly, my left hand moving to cradle the back of her neck.

“Oh, holy fuck God!”

“I don’t crap on your dreams.” I crawled up the carpet to hover above her.

“Throw it on the pile with the rest of them,” she spat as I bit her lip and she flooded the room with the smell of her pussy. “You fucker,” she sobbed “I hate my life.” She crawled out from beneath me, weeping openly.

“This is why we don’t drink on the mood stabilizers, baby. You’re not supposed to drive on the railroad tracks either. That’s for the sort of losers who can have fun without alcohol.” I pulled myself to my feet. “Let me get you a scotch. Ice?”

“Water.”

“I can’t hear you,” I called from the kitchen.

“Wah-ter!”

“I think your brother already watered it,” I called back.

“Dick!”

“Do you want your arthritis medicine too?” I asked from the doorway, admiring Beth’s numb stare and bare breasts. I placed her scotch on the end table and squatted down before her. She lowered her gaze to meet mine. “Where are you?” I asked softly, afraid to cup her face as I wanted to for fear it would break the spell. I smiled, “I’ll never know, will I? I will die without knowing where.” Beth’s smile was wry bug genuine, so odd. “You know that you’re worth my while, I hope. I mean, in addition to loving you and wanting to be with you, near you, you’re also worth my while.” Beth blinked and a tear ran down her cheek. I reached for the scotch and took a sip before offering it to her. “Do you want your arthritis medicine?”

“Is early.” Her voice was raspy.

“I know,” I said dolefully, hoping I was half as cute as I felt. “I was just sort of hoping. See, it’s just when you sleep, you sleep so much better with a bedtime story. And I thought of a good one, but I’m self-conscious because maybe it isn’t any good and you won’t like it so I want to tell it to you when you’re too tired to stop me. So I thought you could take a dose later.”

Beth’s mouth grew to a Felix the Cat smile. “Do you want to turn in early tonight then?”

I frowned to hide my amusement and shook my head.

“You want to fuck me while I’m catatonic,” she stated.

“Who doesn’t like getting fucked on the edge of consciousness,” I asked with a shrug, holding onto my act.

“You know I’m okay with your Mommy fantasies.” Beth sat back, crossed her legs, and took a large gulp.

“Boys and their mothers,” I said dismissively. “Any woman would be. It isn’t that.”

“Baby, I’m okay with your mommy fantasies. Yours.”

I shrugged again.

“Oh, is it so you can come on my face again?” She picked up her scotch, seemed set to throw it, then merely splashed it on me. “My fucking face! You didn’t think I would remember that?”

I fell back on my butt, laughing. “You didn’t say anything.”

“Would you like coffee too. Oh, by the way, Bobby, I don’t want you blowing your load between my eyes the next time you seduce me with liquor and opiates and initiate half-consensual sex.”

“‘Initiate’ being the operative word. What were you dreaming about?”

“The Harlem Globetrotters and an ice sculpture pissing motor oil.” Beth looked down at her breasts. “There’s nothing sexier than a woman rubbing motor oil on her breasts.”

I bit my tongue. We’d had this conversation before and I didn’t want to tell her I’d thought of something: raw sewage. I pulled my shoes off and lay on the sofa, wrapping my legs around Beth’s stomach. I unzipped my pants.

“You are so fucking lazy!” Beth cried in disbelief. She held her glass out, shaking her head. “Another, nurse. Actually,” she said, throwing my legs off her and standing. “Bring it to the bedroom. There’s something in there I want you to stick your dick in.”

“I’m not some sort of slut who’ll screw you every last time you’re in the mood.”

“Bobby? Get the scotch.”

Beth’s superabundance of enthusiasm in bed troubled me. I never said anything because I didn’t want her to feel dirty. I understood she was trying to make up for her near-inability to engage in emotional intimacy with her sexuality, so I wallowed in a limbo of sleeping with a drunken, coked up forty-year-old, losing her virginity, too shy to say anything for fear of causing emotional damage. That isn’t fair. She could engage in emotional intimacy with facilitation.

Beth was out of bed and at work when I awoke. I pushed her dog off me twice in the kitchen before reaching down to pet him. “Who’s a good boy?” Beth had raised a surprisingly well-adapted dog despite her lunacy. He wasn’t overly needy and he didn’t beg for every scrap of food he could possibly get. His idea of play was to have his toy thrown once, after which he would preoccupy himself with it. As much as I didn’t like dogs, I liked Ollie. Kukla and Fran, the cats, were another matter. Kukla was bad and Fran was good, or so Beth claimed. In truth, she was projecting her split self-representation onto two animals just at the threshold of self-awareness. They never exhibited any of the behavior Beth claimed they did. I never came right out and said so, but I once tried to gently mock her into seeing my point by telling her, “I don’t think Kukla likes it when you eat after 10pm.” That earned me a “fuck you.”

I opened my laptop on the kitchen table and began a literature search to make sure my lecture notes were up to date for my fall courses. The principle joy of being a college professor was sexually harassing the students near campus. I would routinely call from my car, “Oh, come on, I’ll buy you a unicorn. What the fuck?” at 18-year-olds on the street. The other joy was scrambling for grant money for psychology research that not even the National Institute of Science was dumb enough to give. A colleague of mine was rounding up a run of diabetes research, type 1. Do diabetics feel stigmatized? Do diabetics feel more stigmatized when they don’t stick to their insulin regimen? Are diabetics who stick to their insulin regimen more likely to be homosexual? Do homosexual diabetics who stick to their insulin regimen make responsible use of condoms? (yes) I was presently trying to quantify the negative reaction men had towards going bald compared to women. Women, it turns out, like going bald less, but the important thing is to put numbers to it. This morning though, I was bringing my lecture notes up to date. Until I heard a voice outside the window.

“Why don’t you shut your cunt fucking mouth and leave?” I called, happy the game was afoot.

“Asshole!”

“Yeah? Well at least I have a dick!”

“I’m going to call the cops if you don’t shut up!”

“The cops won’t do a damned thing for you, because you can’t play in a man’s game! Take it up with the legislature.” Now this was interesting. Singular value decomposition was now being used to detect burnout in air traffic controllers. I didn’t know what singular value decomposition was and couldn’t understand what I was reading — I was a psychologist, not a statistician. Still, fun fact for the students. It wasn’t as though any of them would ask me to elaborate.

“You insane prick!” The voice outside yelled.

“Yeah, well at least I’m not a no-good drunk who can’t do nothing for herself!” When I didn’t hear a response, I followed that with, “Hey, cupcake. Why don’t you go home and stick your fingers into the dirty, needy fuckhole you call a cunt and cum like the whore you are? Make daddy proud!” I took a sip of coffee.

Once you begin yelling “cunt,” the tendency is to want to continue, so most of the morning consisted of finding ways to incorporate the word into taunts, insults, jokes, and ostentatiously poor pickup lines. I was productive through most of it, needing to get things done and also because experience had taught me that giving the matter my full attention let to problems. After I’d had my fill, I masturbated, opening the blinds first in case my neighbor or her husband wanted to watch. The wife was a svelte woman with a face that had seen too much sun. In her mid-50s, she usually wore her long corn silk blond hair through the back of an Astros cap when she worked in the yard, the front yard. The back yard received less attention. She was a bit of a lush. I knew because we’d call out to each other when she had the house to herself and sat on the back deck, always intoxicated when she was willing to participate.

“She’s setting up shop as the neighborhood whore,” Beth had claimed.

“I’ve never seen anyone come by.” This wasn’t true. For a few months after we’d moved in, a van sat in the driveway every day to leave around 3:30.

“You don’t know what to look for.”

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

“Only the shadow knows. Don’t get me off track.”

“Which Spinal Tap album did ‘Lick My Love Pump’ appear on?”

“Shut up, Bobby. That woman’s a whore.”

“She’s truly very nice.”

Beth glared at me. “I’m going to shut her down.”

After I finished masturbating, I called in a voice that would have boomed in the back of an auditorium, “Where’s the cunt fucking bottle.”

“Asshole!” a voice laughed.

“Hi, Mrs. Neighbor Lady,” I called back. “I haven’t seen you recently.”

“Do I need to have a talk with your girlfriend?”

“I wouldn’t. She’s trying to shut you down.”

When I saw how little scotch was left, I texted Beth to pick up a bottle on her way home. “1pm,” she answered.

“Omfgidc.”

“Make paella.”

“K”

“<3”

“Something happened today,” Beth said over dinner, “something that’s got me really tense. It makes me want to cry when these women do this Bobby. Carrie came into my office spent twenty minutes complaining about how her daughter’s sexually active with an boy who turns 18 next month. Bobby, when I was her daughter’s age, I was having sex in an alleyway with a man I thought was my boyfriend.”

“You know how I lost my virginity,” I mumbled in a flat voice.

Her eyebrows narrowed. “You tell a different story every time!”

“I snuck out on the baby sitter and came home drunk. She was freaking out, said she’d almost called the cops. I was thirteen and she was sixteen. I lay on the floor at the foot of the sofa where she sat and began to talk about how ugly she was. I don’t remember what I said exactly. ‘You’re so ugly. It’s like your face, like it isn’t even a human face. There are shapes of skin and bone that stand out but like on a doll in a movie that comes alive in your sleep. Your forehead. It stands out so much above your eyes. And your cheeks are so high and puffy and your nose. It’s part of someone else’s face.’ After just a minute or two of it, she pulled my pants off and made me a man.”

Beth shook her head. “I’m not sure you know when you’re lying.”

“You know I’m joking.” I planted my palm in my cheek and watched Beth talk, adrift in the haze of alcohol. She was so pretty, and seemed pleased, becoming more animated as her lips move. Bedazzled and adrift in the sound of her voice, I considered saying something to contribute to the conversation but decided against it. She came even more to life, making cute little gestures, stabbing motions with her fork, beautiful and erotic as she bit a piece of sausage from it. Her brows furrowed.

“Bobby!” she snapped. “You weren’t listening!”

“No, I was. And you’re right. If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.”

“Prick.” Beth picked up our plates and took them to the sink.

“Mom, can I have another scotch?”

Her hips shifted. “No, Bobby. You just had one.”

“Can you have another scotch?”

“Of course, dear.”

“If you can have another scotch, can I have another scotch?” Beth turned around. “If I have two more scotches, can you have another scotch?”

Beth raised her arm then paused and put her hand to her chin. “Quit being such a slut. Now I want your take on this.”

Puzzled by the gut-wrenching ‘why’ of the moment, I dipped my head and felt a rush of relief that the floor under the table seemed an appealing place to migrate to. I slid down onto it and swung Beth’s chair out, patting the seat.

“This is not the solution to all of my problems,” she said in an irate tone, pulling her boots off.

Two things need to be noted here. Whether you view humans as evidence of a creator or an wildly improbable result of organic chemistry and evolution, you have to concede that the existence of the human being in a miracle. If you are honest with yourself, you will also concede that the experience of being you isn’t adequate justification for this miracle.

Beth slept in the spare bedroom four or five nights of the week. She had a sense of when I didn’t want her to remain in bed after sex and without me saying anything would simply disappear. I would join her later sometimes, in the middle of the night, but not often. That night, I lay awake until I was sure she had drifted off and then slipped into her room and crawled onto her arm and clung to her. I woke alone, spent the day alone, and went to bed alone. I wanted to sleep in Beth’s bed but couldn’t give her the satisfaction of finding me there in the middle of the night. I woke to an empty house. I was on my second cup of coffee when the deadbolt turned. Beth strode in with wet hair, oblivious to everything.

“Are you feeling like your old self?”

She smiled at me. “A bit.”

“You’re pissing me off.”

“How?” She asked, absorbed in sorting through the contents of a cereal box for freeze-dried strawberries.

“Not important. Only, that’s how I knew.”

“Please don’t. I had to jerk off three times to get my heart started this morning.”

“Mmm. You’re playful.” Beth stomped off to change out of her day-old clothes and I turned back to the paper. “‘God made you wrong. You don’t know how to love.’ Sagittarius? No kidding.”

“Asshole!”

I followed her into the bedroom though we didn’t speak as I pulled together clothes for the day, a red lace dress, lavender corset, white garters, and one or two other things. I sat on the edge of the tub and ran the water to shave my legs. I turned to see Beth’s angry face leave the doorway. “I’ll be home for dinner,” she shouted before slamming the front door. Sad, I returned to my legs. I hadn’t shaved in ten days so the process was a chore. I had my back waxed. Everything else from the neck down was done with a razor. An hour and a half later, I emerged from the shower, my blond hair that would have been too long for a woman my age detangled and my back sore. Irritated that there was nothing girly to be done in particular, I took my time dressing and doing makeup and had my bag in hand at the door at about half past three.

I wound up at the wine tasting room a half mile from home. It was a bar. Things were friendly there. Only once had someone made a remark, and he had been shut up promptly by the bartender. I saw a younger man tending bar through the glass doors as I entered. I remembered him but not his name.

“Haven’t see you in a while,” he said, busy staying busy in the empty room.

“I missed you too. And I don’t even know your name.”

“Mike.” He supplied, checking the labels on bottles in the refrigerator at his feet.

“Will you do real limes for me if I order a kamikaze?”

“Double shooter? Of course.”

I didn’t see her come in and I didn’t hear her behind me. I only heard the rustle of fabric on fabric and a gentle brush. I turned to see a smiling Asian woman who, at a blush, struck me as a fallen angel whose nature was unclear. Did she smile like that for everyone? It advertised what every man wanted to be a part of his life as seamlessly as it hid who she was. She spoke to the bartender then turned and took the tips of my fingers that I’d unconsciously raised in her hand. “That’s a beautiful ring.” The words came out slightly out of time with her lips, finishing a bit late as her smile returned.

“It might be paste,” I answered softly. “I’m not sure. It was my grandmother’s.”

“Can I ask your name?” Her smoldering amber eyes assured me that she was foolish enough to allow me to pass for who she thought I was. Then her head bobbed, nodding.

“Nikki.”

“Guang.” Mike deposited her drink wordlessly before her. “You’re right, you know. Nikki.”

I smiled foolishly, taken aback. “No I’m not,” I laughed softly. “Nothing ever is.”

Guang leaned forward far enough that she had to glance up to watch my face. “Yes?”

“Effortless.” The word exploded out of me in another laugh.

She turned to her drink, her face somber and her posture guarded.

“So, can I just start talking then?”

Guang’s lips split into a broad smile. “Yes, please,” she chirped.

I took a sip of my drink and launched into my spiel: “Do you know where Formica comes from? Bear with me. There’s a point here. Formica came straight out of the McDonald’s labs for use in the tabletops at their restaurants. That’s right, Ronald McDonald invented Formica, then he promptly set up The McDonald House as a tax shelter for the patent revenue. Initially plastic surgery was performed there, at cost, to maintain its non-profit status. Then, when Ronald died without an heir, because clowns can’t have children, conservatorship of The McDonald House passed to a board of trustees and it became the charity it is today

“Speaking of which, I bet you didn’t know that corduroy comes from a small goat-like animal of the same name raised in Peru and Northern Chile. Something about the high altitude and mountainous clime is ideal for breeding them.. They breed like cockroaches there, and they need to because you can’t shear a corduroy. You have to skin it. That’s why, in third world countries, you’ll see corduroy pants where the stripes don’t line up because they’re made from scraps. You don’t see them here because they’re dangerous to local citrus crops or something. I’m not sure what.”

Guang smiled at me with sharp teeth. “You know exactly how insulting that is, don’t you?”

I cocked my head and raised my eyebrows, quizzically.

“There’s a school of thought known as narrative psychology,” she began, her index finger and thumb pinched together, trusting in a stabbing motion. “What it tells you is that what someone says doesn’t show you anymore than what they mean to talk about.”

“I just try to be original enough not to use intimacy as an interpersonal marketing tool. We’re the product of the encounter group generation. It grows stale after a while.”

“So you lie. Not at all passé.”

“It’s what I choose to lie about.”

Her smile broadened but wasn’t cheerful. “You behave like a bitch to mock women.”

“No. You’re wrong there. Please don’t leave,” I said, shaking my head. “I just do that, what I just did. The wrong thing. It’s a reflex I have when a situation’s overwhelming. I do the wrong thing to dispel the tension, and ruin everything in the process.” Guang’s game face broke into a chuckle. I nodded. “Interpersonal intimacy.”

“So you want me to leave, then?” Her chin rose and swayed back and forth, shaking out the long black hair behind her jacket. “You can do it again, you know.”

“I’m afraid.” The words were soft. “I’m afraid I’ll do or say the slightest thing the least bit wrong and you’ll effervesce in little bubbles onto the ceiling, spread in an undulating mosaic of colors with makeup names and boil off into a wisp of smoke I breath in that never goes away.” I closed my eyes and Guang’s voice breathed over my thoughts.

“Tell me. The other half. Yes. Her. Me. Guang.” It slid in through, between the murmur of my autonomic functions

I blinked. “Who am I?”

“Mine now.” Her posture, the way she leaned on the bar with her arm, her agape mouth and lolling stare, these were not her own mannerisms but a mocking reflection of how I felt. “Don’t worry so much, pretty Nikki. You should have faith you might be what you know you’re not.”

“A match for you,” I stated dryly.

Gaung shed fifteen years as she seemed to hop upright in her stool, grin as an eager child would, and excitedly giggle, “Yes, for me.”

“A match for you,” I repeated.

She reached out and brushed at something on my cheek that I wasn’t sure was there. “Don’t be silly.” She patted the bottom of my chin and frowned. “I want you to believe everything I’m about to tell you. I don’t want you to take any more or less away from it than is actually there. Nikki? Listen to each sentence to hear the end. What you’re feeling is fatalism. It’s familiar, I know. Too familiar. You’re a fatalist in love. Que sera sera. If whatever will be will be, you can abandon accountability. Don’t worry. The knife edge you balance your mind upon to keep from falling into tractability, to keep from being bound by fate, to eschew permanence, to believe what you want.” Her voice grew throaty. “When you are ready to fall upon it in shame for all you could not have, I will be there to nurse at your heart’s blood and bind you fast with a forever you will finally believe.”

Freed from trance, my lips parted and my mouth dropped. Tears welled in my eyes and I shook my head, but that didn’t seem to indicate refusal because then her eyes broadened and I closed mine.

“I came here for you today. I watch. I watch.” I drifted in black silence, wanting for nothing. “I watch over you. I’m an angel without a soul and you are going to wake up”

Guang was again the woman who entered the bar. Composed, smiling but distant, and without a care in the world but what worried mind which she never shared, as though part of her were standing over a kitchen sink, cinching a belt tight with her teeth and another was plotting world domination and planting perennials. She spoke before I could call her a bitch, which I sorely wanted to do, not to be mean, but simply to point it out. “I was telling the truth, remember? I have an office off Birmingham. Laurel Street. It connects that strip mall with the tire store to the strip mall with the sporting goods store.”

“We have parking.”

“So does rural Oklahoma.”

“Theirs is gravel.”

Guang climbed a bit too quickly out of her stool to seem comfortable. “Turn at tire store. Three buildings on left. Green roofs. I’m in the middle one. East End Therapy. Don’t stare at me like I’m silly. I’m still working on the name. Drop by. There’s no receptionist.”

“I could call?”

She shook her hand negatively over her head. “That’s a dance I’m not going to do with you.” Bag in hand, she paused halfway to the door and lowered her head. “Yes,” she growled, angry, resentful, hungry. “Now let me get to the door without saying anything you think might is funny.” As she closed the door, she pointed up at the clock above the bar and mouthed the word, “Drink.”

Her wide eyes softened when I brought myself to my feet and clipped forward as fast as I dared drunk in pumps. I caught the door and pushed it back in her hand. As I lowered my head to kiss her, her hand rushed up to pull me to her. Silently, we squealed and sighed with our lips and tongues, relief at having our own pleasure accepted, nothing more. Relief and sublime with beauty and pain because it was in no way enough..

“I wanted to make sure.”

“I’ll see you,” she said, unreadable except that she was happy.

“Two days. I don’t want to seem too crazy.”

“Eagerness is a good thing.” The little girl smile returned and she tried to break our embrace. “Oh my God,” she moaned in disbelief as my tongue plunged into her mouth. She cupped my face and pulled away. “Two days.” She pecked me on the lips and walked off muttering, “Sometimes your body tells a lie even when your words do not.”

“You’re speaking out loud, you know!” I called after her.

Guang only shook her head and headed off towards her car.

I slipped back in the bar. “It’s time to get down to drinking, Mike. Tell the band to play the blues.” Home was within walking distance, but not in pumps. I drove. Beth was asleep in “her” bed. I decided not to wake her. There would be time for her tears in the morning. A sleeping girlfriend and a dark home. You can always spot the player in a relationship because he or she goes to bed late. In part, it’s for reprieve, but it’s more to mourn. A dark home, a cup of coffee, lights still on in the other houses. If ever there’s a time for reflection, it’s in a dark house with a woman sleeping in your bed. It’s then that you’re sure everyone in the world is happier than you. And the dice that roll in your mind when you try to imagine just what happens on the other side of those lighted curtains in other windows that never settle, but how beguiling to feel them roll. The literature teaches us that one in twelve people who attempt suicide eventually succeed, so every attempt should be taken seriously. But we’ve all lain in the bathtub, shotgun in mouth, toe on the trigger, with a tear-streaked face, screaming, “Do it, you pussy!” I digress.

Two days later, I approached Guang’s office from the sporting goods store end of Laurel. Most of the parking spaces before the three buildings she’d mentioned were empty and most of the signs adorning the lots held slots to post more businesses. A bell dinged when I opened the door to her office. There was a small receptionist cubby hole but no receptionist. Light poured from beneath one of the two office doors. I opened the door without the light and the same bell dinged.

“Go in,” Guang’s voice called.

A bare mattress lay on the floor, new, covered with pillows without pillowcases. Next to the head on the driver’s side sat a crystal platter inlaid with a silver disc embossed with an image of twining vegatation. A bottle of wine sat atop it with two glasses. Candles laid about the floor and I realized the room was windowless and without a lamp. I lit a few before closing the door, feeling caught in a teenager’s fantasy for screwing his friend’s mother. It seemed right to undress, to avoid the awkward preamble to what she had laid out to be sex. A red light began to blink by the mattress. The phone. I punched it before layout flat on the bed, arms and legs spread wide. Guang’s voice rose from the speaker.

“Let’s play pretend and call them needs. Politics aside, we’ll call them needs for a moment. We all have them. They draw us through life, they’re compulsions that we struggle to obey or deny. Let me tell you a story. A short one. There’s a man I met just this week that I feel compelled to convince of so, so many things. Only I can’t say them because he’ll just think I’m lying. And they are far-fetched, these things.”

“Sell your snake oil, cunt slut.”

“Okay, it’s not the best day. So, you’re intent on traveling backward through time to possess the minds and-or bodies of the various men you’ve mentioned to rape your ex-husband early into puberty. What I’m going to do without any sudden movements, and it I would absolutely love it if you didn’t make any either, is write down the name of a psychiatrist. They can give pills. Better doctors, in a way. Yes, real doctors. So this is for you. Now let me close my computer and gather up Drama Queen and Blinky and you can let yourself out.”

Guang cracked the doorway and hissed, “One second.” She glanced down at my penis and her mouth opened.

“It’s adorable, isn’t it?”

She pulled off her pink silk scarf, wadded it up, and threw it at me. It barely made it to the foot of the bed. “Put a bow on it. Now one second.” Obligingly, I tied a shoelace knot with her scarf and drained one of the two glasses of wine that had already been poured. Warmth and the most beautiful exhaustion overtook me. Life turned into a movie I wasn’t paying attention to because I was too distracted by the darkness. Guang was touching me, teasing me until I became so used to it that it that it was always there. There was something else long ago, but this was reality now. I saw her face in the dark, felt her hair trace over me. Her hands, her lips. Then, and this was very clear, she was astride me, rocking very slowly. Very, very slowing, her face flat and expressionless. And her eyes. Cold, cold eyes that revealed a thought, a truth that wracked me with pain and loss. Her eyes made a statement: I own you. Mouth agape with fear, I watched those eyes for so long until I felt my hot cum bloom around the head of my penis inside her and her face broke into a happy smile. She slept on my shoulder after speaking for a long time about what love meant. The words were so pretty though I didn’t understand them. I woke up shaking like a leaf in the black and alone with tears welling in my eyes and her words in my mind. “There will be tomorrow.” Then there was nothing. I grabbed the pillows in my arm and babbled apologizes. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. Please? I need you so bad. I need you, I need you.”

“Do you need a chicken salad sandwich?” Guang’s voice chirped. I felt her slide behind me, her breasts on my back and her voice in my ear. “I swear to you that I will never forget what just happened. Please don’t be ashamed. It was a gift, Bobby. A beautiful one.”

“Do you love me?” I whined.

Guang answered in slow, even words. “So much I can’t breathe.” She began sucking at my neck, biting it, kissing it while I lay in a state of shock that drifted off into the distance, or perhaps I receded from it. Thoughts began to pull away until only a pinpoint of darkness lay inside me. Then it popped and the world disappeared into a mesh of pain at lies I wanted so much to hear. A voice lulled me awake. I saw Guang in the returned candlelight and without thinking flipped her on her back. Astonishment and euphoria filled me as I watched her head thrash on the pillows until I noticed that she was watching me with burning eyes, nodding. I was flooded with fear, but she was nodding. There was nothing, only a flat sense of being dutiful at the very back of my blank mind and then a sublime understanding that there was nothing to desire but this. A black oblivion of unending need descended as I fell to her breast.

When she urged me to the other, I rose and gulped down the other glass of wine. “I don’t want to go.” I fell back onto the mattress and watched her smile down at me as I fell to oblivion.

The sky was dark when we ventured outdoors again. “A day and a half, I take it.”

Guang laughed. “I need a shower.”

“Did you work today?”

“In the morning. You were hoping for more, I bet.”

“More would be scary.”

“That’s why.”

I spun around and walked backwards ahead of her. “We are in love, right?”

She dipped her head, laughing. “I am. I already was. You want to know what this means, yes?”

“We can’t just let it be?”

She laughed again. “I can.”

My irritation popped. “You want more.”

“Shhh. I don’t want you scaring anyone.”

I grabbed Guang and kissed her before she could open the door to her car.

“Come back when you can. I only work mornings. I write in the afternoon. But by Monday. Please.”

“What do you write?”

“Poems.”

“Can I read one? Do you have one on your phone?”

“They’re in Korean, Bobby.”

“You send them back home?”

“Yes. I’m published.”

The walk from the car to the front door at home was out of a movie, only without my footsteps amplified by foley artists. Everything was crisp, fluid, and very distant. I paused before testing the lock. “Everything, everything,” I muttered to myself and pushed the door open. “Beth!” I called. “Is this one of those days when your mood is unpredictable and entirely false. I find that so charming.”

“I love it when you lie about who you are, baby,” she answered from the kitchen. “Now shut up and get in here.” The TV was playing a video of a man carving at a block of mud covered with ketchup with a table knife. “He’s going for broke. A whole pound of peat.”

“Christ, I would have said, ‘That’s Not Food’ last week when they asked him to lick out the insides of those petri dishes of streptococcus.”

“Everybody likes cash and prizes,” Beth mused, raising a champagne flute to her lips.

“What’s the occasion?”

“It’s gin. I just wanted to try out the glasses. They’re for Shelia’s wedding. Would you like one before finding out this leaves us?”

“I’d love one angel.”

Beth filled another flute from the bottle in the freezer. “One of these days, Bobby,” she said, handing it to me and turning away.

I felt my temper flare. “Coffee and pie.”

“Excuse me?”

“Laurel and Hardy.”

“Easy as cake?”

She had turned away from me and planted one knee on the barstool by the counter. Her butt was thrust out and her spine was curved in an S-shape as she sipped her gin.

“You wouldn’t have to do that if you ever fucking smiled.”

“And if you had an ass like mine, you’d be getting fucked every night. Let’s not quibble. Or do you want me to smile? You’re getting at something.”

“I miss your disaffected youth shtick.”

“Really?”

I shrugged. “No cliché too banal. You wear it well.”

“Some guys have all the luck.”

“Fuck you.”

I kept my promise of returning to Guang that week, showing up two days later to receive a cherry four-poster bed, a small table, a bureau, and two straight-back chairs for our spare room. The deliverymen didn’t react to my white lace dress and black fox stole. I called for vegetable primavera and drew out making the bed, rumpling it to meet my eye for “lived-in.” I stashed a few personal items in one of the bureau drawers and grabbed my bag to get the food, making mental a note to buy plates, something nice to fit in with the rest of it. And silver cutlery. I took a deep breath to quell my panic at my fanciful thinking and rushed out the door.

Her office door was ajar when I returned. Phone in hand, she spun to face me as I slid inside and continued to spin to face me as I sat on the sofa opposite the desk and continued to spin, tossing her feet up next to me. I pulled off one of her turquoise shoes tickled her foot.

“This moment just isn’t the best time,” she said into the phone, eyes narrowed and glaring at me.

I held onto her leg while she struggled playfully but let me keep it. When she tried to suddenly jerk it away, I pulled back too ha rd and her butt slid out of her chair instead. I crawled off the sofa, a wry smile masking my obsequious contrition, and sat beneath her.

Guang straightened her legs and I lay back keep her from hitting the floor as she slid off the chair. She smiled down at me and cupped my face. “It’s a delicate matter as well. Sigmund Freud believed that a purse in a woman’s dream represented her vagina.”

I mouthed the words, “I need you.” She stood. “I don’t understand why it would violate part of who I am if I were not to love you, yet it’s so like the air that I, oh.”

“So her license is her identification, her ID, her identity. And so her identity is what she’s searching for.”

It was a ritual I had performed many times before but not one time that had been real. I received no pleasure, Guang’s reaction was incidental. It was the ritual that mattered.

“Indeed, her identity has been swallowed by her vagina cunt. Her vagina purse.” Her breath caught and she wheezed slightly. “One thing I want you to remember is that the womb is a place for growth, nurturance.”

“My soul,” I moaned, unthinking.

“Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Your friend is a fucking fucking cunt.” I heard the phone hit the floor. “How much does all this frighten you?” she asked on our bed an hour later.

I shrugged. “It’s what I’ve always wanted, helplessness and safety, being an object of desire enthralled by the woman who desires me. An object in the sense that you’ve let me fall adrift to bob upstream in the frothing torrent of love and pain and need that flows from your heart, and that you watch my course with large, intent eyes. It’s seemed both dark fantasy and fear yet at the moments I know it’s so, there’s bliss and understanding that the world could not be right without it. I’m wondering if that’s true or only what I want.”

She was already upon me, hands holding my face, her tongue deep in my mouth. “It’s fucking true,” she hissed. Glaring down at me with wild eyes and nodding, she pulled my head to her breast and filled me with pain as I began to nurse, everything a too-fast oblivion of need. I could feel her pain, draw it from her. It coursed and prickled through my veins, not shared but shamelessly offered and, with it, her. Enlightenment describes nothing, not one thing in this world. To call anything enlightenment is to profane the word. Anything but this. I felt no shackles of a conjoined spirit, but we understood each other and, with that, clarity — numb to the pain of understanding. “This is right.” The cold breeze of her pleasure. “Peace is so fleeting.” She smiled, lolling her head at my rictus of fear. “You can have me, Bobby. I’ll course through your blood until you scream for escape from what we’ve become, though your only happiness will be found in accepting it, in submitting.” Guang leaned in close and with more sing-song to her voice than usual, said softly, “This is forever.”

“Forever is a world children use.” I tucked my penis back in my panties and pulled my white lace dress down over my knees.

Her eyes blazed with anger but her voice soft. “No, Bobby. It’s not. Offer me something I want and I’ll make you believe.”

“Would you believe if you took it?”

Guang rose to her knees and shook her long raven hair out behind her back, a sneer on her lips and wounded eyes. “Plaything, I know already.”

The world exploded in a white flash and my thoughts ran to gibberish. There was nothing I could say to those eyes, to that word.

“Plaything,” she whined.

My chest heaved, the room taking shape again. I fell forward, prostrate before her, both fists over my heart. “Oh God, I love you.”

Hands were pulling my dress, my panties were being snapped off, and not to long after I heard a voice her voice brushing past my ear. “This is the moment you’ll try to remember for the rest of your life.” I readily welcomed her into me. I held onto the moment as best I could, deep breaths and chest rattling groans, rather than playing the role I so loved playing until it took on a life of its own. I wanted to offer her the truth. My breath caught in my throat and I remembered what the truth was. It was lovable, what she did to me. It was something to be in love with as helplessly as I had ever loved anything. As much as anything ever, this was the truth of who I was, and I could not and did not want anything else because I had surrendered to the truth that I could not be anything else. My love for her eroticized my belonging to her. The words and pleas that rose to my lips, obscene beyond anything I had ever heard, could not have convinced her that I was a helpless victim to the pleasure of her possession of me. She did not have some sort of hold on me and we did not have an unbreakable bond. I dwelled within her soul, inside the soul that had escaped her body to engulf both of us, the soul that I offered my pleasure to the way a penitent would offer the life of his son to a god. My knowledge that I was her possession served as worship to what she meant to me. And she was everything.

The night ended in a bar situated on the rear side of a strip mall that was only a bit wider than my kitchen. I felt out of place in my white lace dress and black fur stole, even after twenty drinks, but Guang was slapping her palm down on the bar hard, lifting her shot glass. I took mine as well and she pulled me off my stool and dragged me to the bathroom, which consisted of a single toilet. Angling around me, she blocked the door, hands outstretched and pressed on either wall. “Lick my pussy, Bobby.”

I woke alone in a dark hotel room, stood and walked to peer out the window at a sky more plentifully strewn with stars than normal and a blanket of snow a month out of season over the ground. I woke and it was day. I fixed my hair and rushed outside to see in the daylight that my car wasn’t in the lot. In the elevator, I noticed it and, feeling myself up, there it was: a bow on my penis, tied in red felt no less and a car run through by it. I shook my head at the madness of it. The room was considerate, at least. My phone read, Nebraska. “I thought I was dead,” I muttered. The card read, “Find me if you can.” Guang had a poetry page indexed by the English end of Google and on the very right of the title bar was a button labeled, “You.” I clicked it and was prompted for a password. Shaking my head, I entered “Yours” and was taken in. One poem after another with a wordy apology at the top for having had only a few hours to write them, and then in English.

You knew what I said was desperate and mad

You knew your responses were lies you believed

Everything you know is wrong. Your hopes hold the truth.

Breathe me in so we can share you together

Let me pour into your blood to taste your desire

Your black need redolent with soft beauty

Love is a cliché atop which the world spins

A word for retarded children that it’s legal to fuck

Always, everything, inexorable, peace.

I will have you because you need to be mine

Truth and beauty, stumbled upon by my pen

I see an axiom that governs God

I’ve seen you writhe in exquisite pain, ravaged by need

You begged for mercy in one word, with my name

We found absolution in each other that night.

You made a lovely addition to my kitchen.

After finding the wrong house, wry fate

Tearfully meets the gaze of mirthless karma.

We knew tea would end with our companionship

More could not be had by the interplay of our desires.

I listened without one playful thought to your soul’s overflow

You anchored your dreams to fears and to needs,

Walking the precipice of love with an easy grace

Amused eyes invited me to your dance

I could not wake from the blur of life to make one second

Not for a boy not yet twenty or a desire that amused me

And now the sun dawning in the blue eyes of a beautiful virgin

“The right girl might be good for you,”

My voice clipped, exacting forthrightness

“I haven’t wanted that” rode out from your mouth

Your fear intoxicated me with vanity

Your wounded eyes made me sing with love

We bite when it’s right to, or are invariably boors

I offered you a soft bass dirge with a piano trill

“I would love to make you feel better. May I?”

It humiliated you to even nod. Youth.

I sipped my tea, unable to escape your eyes

Taut with need, inexorably drawn to mine

A kiss is just a kiss and you whined please as I rose

“Speaking that word in your head

Would dispel our world with its truth

But you cannot hear it because you are distracted by this:

“I want to play with you because you do not count

I don’t expect to dismiss you when you disappoint. And I will.

I will eschew reality itself to reach for what I lose

“I long to love but cannot bear to be given it

Only a foolish slut would want me for sex and then abandon me

You are unique in the world and it renders me irrelevant.

“My lead crystal heart cries outraged pain to a cruel world

I do not care what love is, I do not wonder at its nature

I will teach my heart to sing to stop this need unending”

Do not be angry, plaything.

Consequences still didn’t matter

So then I thrust in the knife

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t let me worship your heart

I can’t ease your suffering without permission

I don’t think of fucking you because I have no right”

“May I enter your lead crystal heart sunk in woe

Can you tell me that word in your head

Or do you fear it will be too pedestrian”

“It takes shape. Let it slip your lips.

Do you know it? Can you hear it within you?

Flat and drab, vulgar. It is everything you feel.”

“Such sweet punishment will pass my lips

“Fuck,” Bobby. “The word is fuck.

It means everything.”

She broke into prose. I had thought it pretty to tell the story in sogi. You deserve even better, dove. You deserve the clarity that I’ve deprived you off with a black fog that steals the truth away and, with it, I suspect the world. The air shown like crystal ringing with moonlight as I took you, which is in every way a better story. And so clarity will have to wait. I stole your wallet so you couldn’t get a flight, but there’s an obscene amount of cash in your purse. Go shopping, if there is shopping. Buy gift carts and overnight pretty things to yourself if not. More waiting for you by noon tomorrow. I my words to be the only familiar thing in your world. Give me the week we deserve. Women but no wine. You should have seen yourself Wednesday night. I cannot expect you to tell every stranger in the establishment every time you perform oral sex on me in the bathroom. I know I simply cannot expect that, but thank you.

Beneath this was a picture. I shook violently. I barely recognized myself in it, and the smile. I’d only seen it on a handful of women and Guang was not among them. Now it was stretched across my face. I was nineteen and my head lay on her shoulder. She looked as she always had, even her hair. Her smile was different.

Heedless of the stubble that crept through my worn makeup, I approached the clerk and booked six more nights. The hotel was a Hilton, but only ran $700 for the week. I replenished my makeup in the mall across the street and bought two a pair of separates and a nice set of boots. After fixing myself up, I walked to the drugstore on the corner to max out four Visa gift cards for two thousand dollars and spent the afternoon shopping online. Panicking with remembrance, I dialed my office.

“Claudie, it’s Bob.”

“How can I help you, Dr. Pearson?”

“Cancel my classes for the week. Put a sign on the door, please. I’ll email the students. I’ll explain to Sandra when I get back. I don’t want to go into details . . . it goes beyond a death in the family.”

“Yes, Dr. Pearson. Are you well?”

I coughed. “Yes. It’s like this. Think ‘abduction’ but without the ransom.”

“What’s her name?” she chuckled.

“I finally see why they put you on our committees.”

“No, I just like to be heard. Find your way home, Dr. Pearson. Soon.”

“Thank you, Claudie. Goodbye.”

I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling for a very long time and then dressed before making my last trip out for the day to buy a laptop so I could work a bit and, in the spirit of being a bitch, two more cards for the purchase of a nice pair of shoes that had to be negotiated with the support team at the Louis Vuitton site. Still a bit under the spell of the Seconal, I fell asleep immediately thereafter.

I had resisted Guang’s website until showering and dressing at half past two. You. Yours.

So intoxicating, sitting on the sofa and at any noise I made, I would see you in the doorway. My smiles faded to concerned eyes that could not read and you would sag and slink away. I would brim with delight to the point of bursting, my mind glazed with stupid joy, remembering the last time you spoke and anxious and then eager to see things through. Horrible wording and I apologize for it. Dove, I wanted to give you what you merely wanted and what I was growing to need.

I stole into the upstairs bed you had made your own to sit in the dressing chair to read to you, heedless of whether it woke you, so you could lie awake in the dark with the sound of my voice. Once we were both comfortable with the ritual, I wrote something. You stirred when I cleared my throat. “Why cry at the stars that they should be mine? Why lament that the ocean would drown me? Surcease from loneliness is such a tired desire, a cliché both pedestrian and foul, beneath the beggars in the streets even. I would not have condescended to be ensnared with it but for you, for you whom I cannot touch, whom I can no longer make out through my mind’s dreams. You, an angel that will not abide within your form, and my love for you a poltergeist that playfully strives to catch the barest glimpse of divine beauty and fails. I would be left to wonder if it is the poltergeist that is beautiful and perfect, yet cannot consider that because it is mine. Can my drab love ignite divine beauty in you? I cannot say this world would make more sense if my love could conjure love for me in you because I do not know I would care.”

I set my phone down and slid into bed with you.”Do you think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes.” Your voice cracked.

“Show me.” When you broke our long embrace, I told you,”I wrote that for you.” You trembled wildly when I took you in my arms again.”This happened when we wake,” my voice hissed in your ear. “Promise me this happened.” I smiled up at you while you struggled with my clothes, knocking your hands away and sliding from beneath you when the frustration appeared to be too much for you. I choked and gurgled words I could not understand as cold, crystal air that rang with moonlight gripped me as I began to take what you had kept so long for me. I would not allow it to numb my feral stare that fixed your gaze as it seemed to hold each pose of passion fixed in stilled time. “Love me, love me.” The words heaved and howled, a gutteral growl.

“Guang! Oh my God, Guang!” you cried, a symphony that toyed with every fucking one of my desires.

I shook my hair out, composed again, and turned your chin to meet my cold, flat, shining eyes and blank face. Your fear told me you understood. And so, slowly, mechanically, I ground your knowledge that I owned you into your body as you nodded, accepting your fear and dark fantasy as truth, sheathed in the cold crystal air that rang with moonlight.

Now let me explain everything. I stood aghast at what I knew. I stood before the vanity mirror in my terrycloth robe and closed my eyes. I felt your arms slide around me and heard magic words in your voice, “This atones for a great deal.”

I exhaled and my breath carried the words, “Love me.”

“Can I confess it?”

“Profess, baby.”

“I think this is heaven,” you answered with closed eyes.

“You love me more than you know. You shake your head, but it’s so. When you see you cannot be you without me, when I retract the knife and you hurt. So much more fun when the knife hurts more as it comes out, and so it is with love.”

“Do you, then? Love me?”

Such a curious thing, the way I doubled over crying, “I hate!” as the walls buckled. But only so curious as it seemed not to have happened. I spun and told you, “I am an object of desire. It is simply not permitted me.” I traipsed past you and your smile. “Thank you, dove. For taking it as a challenge. In the meantime, when I want, I will be what you want. You will control me. It will only feel the reverse is true.”

“Well,” I said, smiling broadly into my closet. It was the oddest thing. The clothes that had been steadily blossoming into your closet now occupied half of mine. My clothes, which had been wearing, were gone. I pulled on a pink T-shirt with the words, “I can really make lasagna” stenciled across my breast that barely covered my sternum and a pair of black capri pants. “You can’t expect me to wear this,” I called to the ceiling.

“Don’t talk to it,” you said in low tones then smiled at me. “Please do.”

“This is not fair, not at all.” I tossed a pair of black wool pants and a black pinstripe shirt with black snaps and French cuffs on the bed. “Your hair’s getting longer.” My voice was cautious.

“I know.”

“What have you been putting in it?”

“I found some gel in the bathroom.”

“I could trim it.”

You made a little noise. “No.”

“Go downstairs, then. I’m washing the sheets.”

“Why?”

I looked. Pink satin, even new pillows. I fell into them, laughing, and hissed when I felt your hands at my waist. “Put on your clothes. I appreciate that you really like sticking your dick in me but, uh, no, never mind. Forget I said anything. Remind me you love me.”

Your face held such longing. “I can’t.”

“What do I mean to you?” You only shook your tortured face. “Thank you. I know.” I pulled your head to the pillow. “Now tell me. You’re safe. I promise.”

I will never forget how you looked me right in the eyes and with a steady voice told me, “You’re everything to me.”

“You like nailing your everything, don’t you? Do you want to fill my womb with your cum? You can if you need to.” You winced and poured into me as I put my hand over your lips and turned my head, laughing. “I meant to say that in Korean. I swear.” I was lying.

Sitting on the sofa once, the clock still comfortably shy of midnight, you announced we must name the miracle that we never spoke of for fear of it being a soap bubble miracle that is easily popped. After a few minutes, your phone chirped “두 사람을위한 세계”

How about, “사랑으로 지어진 집” I said dismissively. “The house that love built,” I replied to your raised eyebrows.

“영원히 모든 것,” you chirped.

“내 죄의 무게” I answered flatly.

“영원히 모든 것?”

I lay down and wrapped my legs around you. “Better.”

“영원한 자정?”

“I like it.”

“영원한 영혼의 자정”

“Too much.”

“영원한 순간”

“If you change your mind tomorrow, we’ll have to do this all over again.” To show you I loved this romantic streak I hadn’t yet even guessed was within you, I unraveled my legs, pulled the cushion from next to the armrest to make sure your mind didn’t plunge into the gutter, dropped it in your lap and plopped my head down upon it. “Bobby, love, could you repeat that yourself. Sweetly.” I gazed up at you with broad smile and eyes that sparkled like yours. Only mine were narrowed, of course. It was only important to me that you loved me and I couldn’t believe being delightful would hurt. “Without playing it again.”

You stammered unintelligibly.

“Oh, say it.”

Again, you stammered.

“We’re not going anywhere.” By the tenth try, your eyes were hazy with dreams. “Do say it. Please?”

“I’ll love you forever.”

“It’s lovely to you to think so, I know. And if I could grant your wish, all your other fantasies would fall in line. But forever is a word that children use. Now say it or I’ll pretend to cry, which I’m quite good at.”

“Everything, could you please retract your claws from my soul?”

“Yes, Bobby.” I closed my eyes and my act drained from me. “Call me exactly that. Do you prefer baby, love, or dove?” You couldn’t hide your smile as your eyes darted away. “Dove. How lovely. But you’re plaything too.” You stood to cut out the light and returned to me, returned my head to your lap and leaned back to comfortably stare down at my smile of wonderment. My skin tingled, ringing with the crystalline air that chilled my warm eyes. I reassured myself that my mind was playing tricks on me and you weren’t really mouthing words you were not ready to say. I slide further up the sofa propped my head up on your arm. “Tell me, dove.”

“I could but then you’d know.”

“And if I want to know.”

“You do, but I don’t want it said. We both know, and we’re both certain because we don’t talk about it. Are there words for the way you play with your hair offsets your sharp eyes? What are the words?”

“Are you sure?” I whimpered, aflush with concern.

You nodded twice and your head dropped.

“No more words.”

“It’s getting late,” you murmured.

“Shhhh.” After a very long time, I asked. “You know, don’t you?”

“I suspected. Will you ever say it?” Your tone was flat, despondent.

“I don’t know.” I straddled your lap and gazed over the back of the sofa, haunted and desperate for you to lose yourself in me. “Dove, I need it. Soon.” Your hands grasped my waist and rocked me against you. Fear and pain poured from my taut tissue and welled in my eyes and throat. “I want it so bad,” I moaned. Your mouth covered mine and reassured me it was all real. A soft glow of warmth filled me that burned brighter and hotter till the crystal fell from the air. I clung to you and felt the void pull away. For the first time in so long, I had enough. I was a newborn girl in your arms, staring at the face of the first man in this world to love me. 그런 다음 당신의 성기는 당신의 영혼을 내 자궁으로 펌핑했습니다. You must have wondered at the why of it, what you find with me. Perhaps you don’t after all. You likely haven’t changed much. But Dove, reading this, you are about to know it’s true that you find something with me that you’ve gone too many long years without and never want to part with again for so much as the briefest moment, though you must at times because it is only when you fuck me that I give you the opportunity to commune with your own soul. So much of you has died within me as you clung to my breast though, truly, it was your own fault, plaything. The fear on your face told me what you never could, that you were about to become even more mine. I smile when I remember all the times your inability to ascribe the word inexorable to the whole ordeal and would lie on my shoulder, babbling pretty apologies while I watched you pull your own cum out. The desperation on your face told me that our moments together would have always ended in such a juvenile way if it weren’t that you knew I wanted otherwise. Your desires, the ones you worried would make me blush, and the ones that did make me blush of course, and all the other emotional needs and whims, fantasies about being yourself, everything you ever wanted that could be gotten from a woman except a child, they were strings on a harp that I learned to play enchanting melodies upon. Not for your pleasure, but my own. I’m a bit suspicious that I’m the only reason you even want to fuck. But metaphysics can wait. Do what you will with the day. I will tell you more of our story tomorrow.

You must have wondered at the why of it, what you find with me. Perhaps you don’t after all. You likely haven’t changed much. But Dove, reading this, you are about to know it’s true that you find something with me that you’ve gone too many long years without and never want to part with again for so much as the briefest moment, though you must at times because it is only when you fuck me that I give you the opportunity to commune with your own soul. So much of you has died within me as you clung to my breast though, truly, it was your own fault, plaything. The fear on your face told me what you never could, that you were about to become even more mine. I smile when I remember all the times your inability to ascribe the word inexorable to the whole ordeal and would lie on my shoulder, babbling pretty apologies while I watched you pull your own cum out. The desperation on your face told me that our moments together would have always ended in such a juvenile way if it weren’t that you knew I wanted otherwise. Your desires, the ones you worried would make me blush, and the ones that did make me blush of course, and all the other emotional needs and whims, fantasies about being yourself, everything you ever wanted that could be gotten from a woman except a child, they were strings on a harp that I learned to play enchanting melodies upon. Not for your pleasure, but my own. I’m a bit suspicious that I’m the only reason you even want to fuck. But metaphysics can wait. Do what you will with the day. I will tell you more of our story tomorrow.

You were a beginning in a world without them. I sat so often at the edge of the bed, talking to you in your sleep, until your eyes opened and a new day dawned with your smile. A half hour at the bedside only to scamper from the room when you woke in increasingly ridiculous clothing — one day, the closet only offered me black pleather. With a riding crop atop a pair of over-the-knee boots on the floor. “Do you honestly like this?”

“Who doesn’t want a Korean dominatrix?”

“Hmm. I think this pink cardigan is cashmere. There’s no justice in this world. Wear it with the tweed.”

“Do you honestly like this?”

“This demon is playing with my daddy issues and I’m not the least bit amused.” I continued to tear through the closet. “What evil fuck decided to start making crotchless fishnet body stockings outside the plus sizes?”

I stared long into space, wondering what madness reality had taken the form of. Every desire, every need was real and new and had always been a part of me. It was as though Guang had laid a hand on my back so gently that I could not at all feel it and had let me to the truth of who I was and what I wanted but, when I turned around and told her of it, she did not or could not hear and I was without the courage to press things and so felt a warm knowledge that I could make her see it as well in time. I showered and put on the silk sheath dress I had overnighted from Saks Fifth Avenue and headed out on the town. I met a new couple instantly, not even a couple, on a first date and my drinks were being bought for me in short order and I watched the man brag about his work in between stepping outside for cigarettes, when I would listen to his date tell me how she wanted nothing to do with him. After he revealed that two of his brothers had passed of sudden infant death syndrome, I wished her fun being raped and left for food. I picked up a man at the hotel bar near midnight and wouldn’t let him make me climax. Hopping off the bed immediately afterward, I assured him he was a good fuck and returned to my room.

My phone was in my hand in the hallway. “Remember.” The world faded to bright pastel streaks of color as I struggled to hold onto awareness. A pop came, a blink of my mind’s eye, and there was only black.

Guang rose from my shoulder, her hand pulling her hand away from an expressionless mouth that I had grown to think considering, I had seen it so often. Her kiss seemed to say, “I’ll believe in you.” I watched her rise and retreat to her bedroom, guilty that I did not want to follow.

“Why is this so strange?”

“It’s become habit, dove. We don’t look at it from without. It is our life now. No more, tonight, please. I’m no good at this right now.”

“You’re everything,” I mused, toying with a strand of hair.

“I know,” she answered in a cracked voice. The latch on her door slid into place.

I rose and walked to her door, afraid to test the lock. “You’re not happy.”

Her voice flowed over me like the tide, high, an exhalation. “I am happy.”

“How can I make you happier?” I asked the door.

“I want to talk about what we do not talk about.”

I opened the door and instinctively flipped on the light. In the large mirror that served as her headboard, I saw myself in a burgundy and black cosplay Lolita dress. The petticoat had become entangled with my garter belt.

“Leave the light on. It will be more intense, much more fun. Now, come, lie in the other pillow.” Her hand cupped the back of my head and moved us to eye level. “Bobby, when, if ever, do you notice your soul within you?”

“It isn’t within me any longer. I can commune with it when we fuck, but that’s all.”

“How do feel about being my possession?”

“The idea frightens and feels like something I can’t have.”

Guang smiled demurely, mouthing words, locked my gaze with eyes that grew wide that I lost myself within, asked, “How do you feel about being my possession?”

“It’s perfect and as it should be, but the truth of it horrifies me.”

“What do you desire most?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“My desires exist for you, for you to grant or toy with or be pleased by or manipulate me with or deny. You’re the only reason I even want to fuck at all. I want to be your angel, fallen from grace, that you will not let slip the tether of your need. I want to be everything to you.”

“It hurts me when you lie.”

“How do I make myself yours alone?”

“How do you make yourself mine alone?”

I shook like a leaf. “Please. Please. Please.”

One word answered me, a gift, a gift that fell like a piece of magic from Guang’s lips. “Baby.”

Hunger eventually drove us from bed the next morning.

The closet had laid out a stocking-thin black silk robe with sleeves a foot longer than my arms that trailed four feet behind me on the floor. “Take care if that. I think it’s sable,” Guang said, fingering the fur along the fringe.

“Can we turn the heat up a bit?”

Guang shook her head, lacing her wool-lined camel hair shrug over her white body stocking. “You know, this is not the worst so far. I wouldn’t have thought it could have been made to work.” She reached for her suede leggings. “Be a good girl and start a pot of water.”

“Yes, mommy,” I chirped as though I had called her that and hurried away. I thump turned me around. I turned to see the leggings on the floor, fallen out of Guang’s hand. Her mouth closed and opened again then she turned to me with amused, glowing eyes. “I realized I forgot something at the store,” she laughed.

“We’ll make an offering to the refrigerator demon and it will provide.”

“Baby, I don’t want to think of them as demons anymore.”

“Ghosts?”

“No, baby. Karma. All of it. Our karma will provide. And, baby?” She stepped out of her leggings and crossed the room to me, legs compact in black patterned fishnet with pink flags and stitched in pearls fleshing out enormous roses. She rose to her tip toes and dropped then eyed me quizzically.

I drew her into my robe and kissed her deeply. “Mommy?”

“Yes, baby. I know. It’s so we accept it, until we understand it. I’ll raise you how I see fit, but I don’t need you calling me mommy as I do it. And please don’t fret. I promise very much that, when you understand what you are, you’ll be quite happy.”

“What am I, Mommy?”

“My slut,” Guang spat. “Oh, that came out just about right. But you’re other things as well, you know.”

“Like the love of your life?”

She blinked and then with downcast eyes, repeated slowly, “Yes, the love of my life.”

I turned away.

“You know I hate myself right now. Bobby, I just never even fucking considered.”

“What, Mommy?”

“That he hadn’t come and gone.”

“Then you know?”

“I don’t care.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes,” Guang screamed and I turned towards her again. “Yes, Bobby! Yes! Every night I fall asleep with a sad sigh that you won’t be there when I wake. And every night I dream about you and every time I wake, I watch your face, marveling at how much I love you. And you don’t see it because I want to protect you. From it, from me. I don’t want you to know that I’ve already lost you only you haven’t decided to leave. This drivel! God, this fucking drivel! Bobby! Make it only you.”

I swooped in to catch her before she could sink to the bed she retreated towards. “I am only me.”

“And you’re enough. Stop it, Bobby. You’re enough.”

I was determined to raise you right and you resisted at every turn. I sat, reading a copy of the ludicrous newspaper that would appear on our coffee table every so often. Someone had devised a gumdrop that did not melt in the sun and had announced breaking ground on a community of candy houses. A certain brand of malt liquor had been empirically demonstrated to increase penis size. “Here’s something interesting,” I chuckled. “Men who dress in women’s clothing do so in order to fill their mother’s wish that she have one gay son in a paradoxical effort to seduce her, studies report. They invariably strive to find more mature women whom they put into mommy-role to sodomize them in order to become content that it’s truly who they are. This is supported by the specific wish to become a slave to their mother’s will and not to supplant their own fathers but rather to be taken away from them out of a desire to become as important to their mothers as their mothers are to them. Reuters.”

“I love the feeling that I’m playing a game without knowing the rules or, moreover, the purpose to it,” you answered from across the room, adroitly spinning on your heels without shifting the books atop your head.

“I hate you, slut. Etiquette next.”

“When are you going to capitalize on the whole me being a slut thing.”

“Midnight. I’ll dress you as a man one time in three. You can dress me the other two days. Carte blanche.” I reclined on the sofa, one pleather knee up then smacked the table hard with my riding crop. You had to keep your books from sliding off. “Focus.” I smiled. You made me go nude the next day. I was worldly enough to know that table manners consist solely of conveying that the way you are eating is the correct way to eat, but I wanted you to at least know what to do with your napkin, that only lipstick was to be touched up outside the bathroom, and how to cross your legs in a low seat.

“What do you think about the neighborhood of gumdrop houses?” I asked over dinner.

“Finally I can truly have what I’ve wanted most.”

I did my best to blink harshly. It was obvious to you that our days apart troubled me more than you. One evening, as you took the sofa laying across from me, shifting, trying not to pose in a dress I would have sucked dick for, I tapped my nail on my laptop. I had begun writing poetry again but couldn’t focus, remembering what the clothes demon had left in the dresser. The second hand ticked. Twelve minutes till midnight “Upstairs. Now. I want you.”

“Really, Mommy?” You blurted, sitting bolt upright.

I shuddered inside. “Really, dove.”

At some point, I’ll have to ask you what you’ve been up to the past few years. I simply don’t know. As you might guess, my perspective is different. Things ended rather abruptly at midnight. I woke in the morning and found your body gone and set about finding you right after shampooing my own fucking brains out of the carpet. Such a cliché, however well it suited us.