to be in these desk drawers, other than what is in them now; past things used to inhabit: objects of girlhood. And what do you have here now – old magazines, notes for college classes. Here is your word processor, an old model but still trustworthy. It gets the job done; floppy disks: slow amp;sloppy. A printer that prints dot-matrix. It prints the things you write. And what do you write, little girl, hmmmn? Poems? Stories? Belles lettres? What are you writing now, what is here on the screen, these paragraphs amp;words, these words amp;sentences, what could it be, eh? Not a poem or story, no, that is not you; that is not what you do; it’s – lemme look – it’s a research paper on marine biology. You are on page five. So here, Kathy, here we have a college term paper, one of them anyway. How long have you been working on it? [1] Is it important? [2] Is all the time and effort worth it? [3] How much actual research did you do? [4] Do you have your footnotes straight, [5] your bibliography, [6] do you have an MLA Manual of Style? [7] Look here, this is your chair. How many times have you sat in it? How many times have you plopped your bottom in this chair and thought about things, looked at the things on your desk? How many words were in your thoughts? What did you look at on your desk? Did you look at the computer, at the screen, did you look at this camera sitting on the desk? Do you have film in this camera? You do. How many pictures have you taken? Do you like to take photos? What if I took a photo of you, sitting against the bed, naked and smiling at me? What if I did? What if I put this camera up to my eye and take a photo of you? Here are your clothes, now, your dirty clothes, all piled up in a hamper as well as on the floor, shirts amp;socks amp;panties amp;bras amp;jeans amp;skirts, you need to do your laundry, girl, these clothes smell. And here, here, here is your closet; more clothes; more clothes. Clean clothes. They all look the same. Here is your carpet. A rented carpet, actually. Like this apartment, this rug does not belong to you. Here is your bottle of wine that I drink from (and I do take a drink, a pause in my monologue, and when I am done I continue, she looks at me, sitting naked on the edge of the bed, and I say:) here is your bed, the bed you have slept many nights in; the bed, in fact, that we have made love in, that we have screwed in, balled in, banged in, fucked in. I wonder how many other men you’ve had on this bed? Over the years. No, don’t answer. This is your room; your rented room; this room does not belong to you; and you have to ask yourself well what the hell does belong to me? We own very little. But your body is yours; you own your body; this here is your body; this body that I have fucked twice this evening; this body I used to make love to until you stopped wanting to see me – but now, here we are, here we are again; again, here is your body. But what is in a body, what’s in a face? Nothing at all that death won’t soon erase. For a second there, I almost believed that your body was special, and just for me. [8] But here, here, here we have two bottles, here are two bottles of wine; one empty, one still filled with the divine. We drank all of this other, this poor, sad, stupid bottle. We also drank a lot at that bar: beer beer beer. But I think we need more – we need something else. Need something to keep us going. How I ask do you feel now?
She says a little tired, and a little tense, too.
Still?
She says yes.
I tell her lie down. She does, on her stomach. I sit on her butt, gently, and start to rub her neck and back. She goes ummmn and I ask if she likes and she says she likes and please do go on and I say that we are still-lives, time and everything else has stopped here: this moment we find ourselves in. She says that she has been thinking about her family, her mom amp;dad thinking about how they are all different, yet alike, I say yeah: the ingredients of a family.
She says take my sister for example; she’s a good example; she’s a year younger than I am. We look alike; she tends to be more feminine in nature than me. This is what I think, anyway. No one has actually come out and said this but I think they think – well, maybe I’m just paranoid, maybe I have an inferiority complex or something. My sister goes to a different university, one back east. Here I am going to a university on the west and she’s back there with all those silly-ass New Englanders. Natch, she joined a sorority. She’s probably having a great time. I know she is. She has all the good-looking, shallow-brained guys she could ever want. All she cares about is buying things: clothes amp;jewellery amp;make-up. A new car. She’s always talking about how she needs cars, new cars, all cars, cars cars cars. If a guy has a nice amp;fast car, you bet she’ll go out with him, no matter what he looks like or what kind of personality he has. Is she easy? Dunno. Does she put out for these car guys? Who can say. I’ve never asked; I suspect she does; she does. And she’ll go out and spend forty bucks on a new make-up kit she doesn’t need with the money our parents give to her and all I can think of is that forty bucks could have bought groceries for the week. My sister gets this from my mom. My mom is just the same: always buying things that aren’t necessary; talking about buying things; wishing she had more money so she could buy more things. The desire for the material – but I’m sure this subject is mundane. Mmmmn, you have a good way with your hands, you know. I dunno – I guess I also like material objects, but not in the same way as my sister amp;mother. I like computers, or TVs, VCRs, anything electronic amp;exciting. I have this fascination with technology. My father is the same way. I get it from him. Dad is always taking things apart and putting them back together, just to see how they work; he likes to know how things tick; tick-tock like a clock. That’s how I am. Those are the differences and samenesses in my family. But we are very close.
I say you’re lucky; I don’t think much about mine; I don’t like to compare and analyze. I hate it; just would rather not think of it, thank you sir. One Christmas I went hungry and I was alone and I thought – well, that’s a different story for later on in this text and it is really depressing. Promise.
I keep massaging her and asking do you like this and she says you bet and I move my hands down even more, I spread the cheeks of her ass, looking at the openings of both her ass and vagina; I rub a finger over her asshole, my finger to her cunt and ask if she likes that and she says you’re a nasty boy do you know that? do you know how naughty you are? and I tell her I do, moving mouth down, licking asshole, licking cunt lips, feeling myself getting hard, stroking my cock as I lick amp;suck, moving up, entering, Kathy gasping like film noir, and when we are done, when we are done fucking for the third time tonight, I see that there is no more wine; I want more to drink; so I get up, leave the bedroom. I go into the kitchen and open the fridge where I find a six-pack of beer. I open a beer, drink, turning to see Cynthia, Kathy’s roommate, sitting on the living room couch. She’s wearing a light lavender suit with black pumps and a white blouse, gold-rimmed glasses; she’s looking at me, I’m standing naked, my cock still half-hard, cock coated with the products of fuck, and I’m drinking a beer. I smile and say hello to her and she says hello back and I return to Kathy’s room.
I tell Kathy about it.
She says shit.
She says get dressed.
I put on jeans, shirt.
She slips on a long nightshirt.
We both go into the living room.
Cynthia is still on the couch, watching TV.
Kathy amp; I sit on the opposing loveseat.
Kathy says what are you watching?
Cynthia says nothing really; the news; something about the economy; always the economy and how it sucks. It does suck.
Kathy says sorry about Mike, he didn’t know you were here.
I drink beer.
Cynthia says I’m sick of all this economy bullshit. The recession. And all that bullshit.
Kathy says I said I was sorry about Mike.
Cynthia says sorry? why? I’m happy for you. You’ve been complaining lately about not getting any. I don’t know why you dumped him in the first place. You should keep him; keep him like a pet, like a dog with a wagging moist tongue.
Kathy says I mean about him walking out like that because we didn’t know you were here. I thought you were at work, I thought you had to work until nine or ten.
Cynthia says maybe I’m too quiet when I come in; I’ll make more noise in the future.
Kathy says he was embarrassed and she says to me isn’t that right, you?
