Fatal Attraction

‘Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? Why do women always have to come clean?’ – Chris Kraus

Only by my ears does he dress me down, separated by state lines. He disappears for moments at a time. For a refill, to check we are alone. In the light and in the dark I have counted the seconds. Contrition is all I hear, is all I feel.

He continues with me and he tells me, watch me now as one hand goes around your neck, the other will take care of the rest of you. 

I ask him, does he worry? Worry about what? 

I fear calling her by her first name. 

What if sex means something different for everyone? What if sex means nothing to someone?

Started on pieces of bread dipped in oil and balsamic and the tables are lined with porcelain cradling marbled steaks dripping in butter. I’m watching him watch me tie the cherry stem from my cocktail into a knot with my tongue. I’m watching his teeth rip and suck out the carcass from the bone. I’m watching him bruise my inner thighs. I’m watching dishonesty edge us. I get my teeth around his earlobes, his stubble against my lips just how he likes it. You know I’ll cum just from watching your forearms pay the bill. He laughs and it’s from the chest. 

I’m still hungry so he fills me up in the bathroom of the restaurant, his hands bigger than my entire face. One hand holds my mouth closed, the other is pressed against the mirror. His lips on my neck, hair wrapped around his hand like a noose, the noises from me begging to escape his hand, and I miss him already. I welcome the pain I feel against the sink. I press my stomach and it bounces back. What if sex means something different for everyone? What if sex means nothing to someone?

I watch as heads turn to watch him as he arrives at places, walks down the street, fills up his car. He is tall, heat and muscle, tattoos under skin, flesh red and mottled from the sun on his chest. Could you ever really regret at 42-year-old who looks like that? 

I have so many wishes for sweet dreams, so many wishes to be tucked in. Sometimes he makes me wait at the end of the bed, no clothes, as always on my tiptoes. He tells me to wait, wait, wait. You can’t come to bed yet until I’m finished looking at you. I wonder if he ever thought about turning around.

What if sex means something different for everyone? What if sex means nothing to someone?

He tells me I keep him up at night, my legs swing back and forth from the edge of his desk. He leans back in his chair and follows my feet with his eyes across his floorboards. On my tiptoes I have learned to live in the gaps in the silence. In his car with the baby seat in the back I am nothing but the sound of hitched breaths in the gaps in the silence. Touching the hems of her summer dresses in their shared walk-in-wardrobe I am sure not to be caught in the gaps in the silence. 

My hands are always tied, permanent lines on my wrists, his fingers alternate from me to my mouth, my bottom lip is just a salted ulcer from making it bleed, one eye is always watching me as I clean up the kitchen – you missed a spot. I’m special then I’m shattered.

What if sex means something different for everyone? What if sex means nothing to someone?