once she must have been a real girl, even in dresses, and so
maybe you could stop being so curved and soft and flimsy.
Each inch o f her uses up the space she’s in, introducing weight
where once there was air; she dislocates space, displaces it, it
moves and she takes over, she occupies the ground, as if she
was infantry with a bayonet and the right to kill. She’s nothing
like a girl. For instance, her shoulders are square, they take up
space, they are substantial and she don’t make them round or
underplay them or slump them, they don’t look soft as if you
could just walk up to her or in a conversation put your arm
around her, everything’s an edge or a hammer, not a curve.
She reigns, imperial; butch, m y dear, but transcending the
domain o f a bar stool, it ain’t role playing, or a pretense, or a
masquerade; if she were a girl she’d be a little doll; petite; and
there’d be a bigger male one whose shadow would fall on her
and bury her alive. She’d live small in perpetual darkness next
to him. Instead, she’s a certifiable Korean nationalist with an
altar and a flag who considers a hundred sit-ups an insubstantial beginning, foreplay but, in the male mode, barely
counting, and she don’t care about the pain. I m yself pretend
it’s coming from a man, because I know if he was on top o f me
I w ouldn’t stop; so I try to keep going by turning it into him on
me; you fuck w ay past pain when a man’s fucking you blind. I
can do maybe fifteen; I put him on top o f me and I get near
thirty, maybe twenty-eight; I put him in the corner o f the
room laughing and I get to thirty-five; after that, Sensei just
keeps you m oving and you don’t get to stop even if actually
you think your heart is contracting along with your abdomen
and it will convulse and cease, still you move, and she sees
everything, including if you hesitate for half a second or stay
still for half a second, or try to rest halfw ay between up and
down because you think she can’t see the difference but she
sees the molecules in the air and if they ain’t m oving you ain’t
m oving and her eyes nail you and she’s firm and hard; finally,
she will say your name to humiliate you; or assign you thirty
more; and so you keep m oving, the muscles are cramped, all
twisted up inside, swollen and twisted and convulsing, and
your heart’s collapsed into your stomach or your stomach into
your heart and there’s only a bed o f pain in the middle o f you
that moves, it moves, a half inch o f space over a period o f
minutes while the others have done five whole sit-ups, six,
seven, and you feel stupid and weak and cowardly but you
m ove the teeny, tiny smidgen, you keep m oving, you bounce
yourself, you use your breath, anything you can get to make
you m ove so it looks like yo u ’re m oving, and the muscles are
stuck stiff with pain, swelling in hardened cement, but you
m ove; barely, but you move; and o f course with m y intellect I
try to see i f she’s getting o ff on it because if she is that lets me
