two things I do not need in the bath.

Wine and masturbation.

Some times I can just have a bath to read my book, or listen to a fiction podcast from the New Yorker. It is just an association. Pavlovian. I run the water and I crave sex and alcohol. Easy as that. Today I will refrain. I have a handful of pages left to read and I do not need the regular distractions. Today a bath is for cleanliness, warmth and a good book.

no porn

a vain attempt to return to normalcy. I force myself back to pornography. I skip. A second from here, a visual from there, none of it to my liking? What was it that I liked again? Certainly not the way he holds her head and forces his penis into her mouth. Perhaps it is the way he hits her, spits on her, does that fast and furious piston action with his hips. No?

I struggle to imagine what I could find sexy in it as my body readies itself for whatever I may settle on, the skin flushing, my nipples pulling erect, the thickening of the labia. Anything really. I could come from the thought of someone walking around upstairs. I could come from the idea that all the little green lights on my gmail are people watching me. I could come from the warmth of the water and from the thought of all that has come before. I come from the pornography. It is relatively easy but when it is done I feel nothing. There are no small aftershocks. Only tenderness can stay with me through the day. Only intimacy. Perhaps, only the idea of beauty in the form of tenderness. Perhaps, only from the idea of a kiss.

the end of it.

The end of it was very sad even though the course had been run and there was nothing left in it. Neither of them had anticipated this level of melancholy, although she had suspected it might make her sad for a few days and had bought a block of chocolate and a packet of fancy tea to get her through the worst

He moped, opened the refrigerator door, closed it. He opened packets of things and then realised this was not what he had wanted but ate them anyway. They would both gain the weight of sadness. Still. It was over. There would be no repair.

She found a hand towel with the scent of him still on it and thought briefly that she might keep it. A momento of something that was once nice. She threw it into the wash with the sheets and the socks and her underthings. When she took the towel off the line there was nothing left of him. It was the end then.

The nature of love.

Bec knows that David is watching her and for a moment the idea of this gives her pause. She pulls back from this new embrace, she feels the slick gloss of spit onher lips, knows that the lipstick she applied for fun will be smudged but perhaps that in itself is sexy. She looks towwards him. He is sitting on the edge of the couch and yes, he is watching her. Some men like to see women kissing. She has already removed the girl's tiny breasts from the scrap of lace that was holding them. THey are like little pillows of nothing on her chest but the nipples are huge and rock hard and he could be looking at the girl's nipples but David's eyes never leave her face.

Bec pulls her face into an amused frown. Perhaps he has been studying her kissing technique. She remembers David's kisses, big sloppy things that engulfed her whole face at times. The over-zealous enthusiasm of a puppy. Bad kisser. Good intentions. She is remembering this when he opens his mouth and forms silent precise words with his lips.

I LOVE YOU.

And again.

I LOVE YOU.

eratic

Ah eratic behaviour. Does the word have anything to do with eros? Perhaps grammatically not and yet one leads to the other ultimately. I am ridiculously inconsistent. I have always been so. I reconnect with his family and I remember how I flitted from one idea to the next. And yet, behind this is the solid guard dog of my love and care. Always. If I have said that I love you, I will love you forever. This is the truth of it. I may rage and tear my hair and unwind in jealous tangles. I may become some dirvish, some succubus, some crazed creature you would rather avoid. Still I stand at your door panting, through the decades.

I love you now and always is not some trap. I bristled. I thought it was meant to scold me for my lack of contact and my distance. I understand it now. Love, now and always, no matter how distant we become. Our separate parts of the world forever connected by this thin thread of concern that will never be broken.

end

so it fades out. Like this. with an aftertaste and the memories lingering. So something new begins tomorrow and we walk off into it, those who are still alive. We survive it. We do what we can with what we have been given.

I did love you. You know that. And I think you may have felt some kind of love too.

ah. well. that was something.

one about a horse

I am not yet ready to tell you the one about a horse. I start with horses because there are so many references. Equus, Zoo, the passions of my sister who drew horses obsessively. Little girls, their genitals rubbing in time to a gallop. I understand the appeal. A horse is all warm breath and sweat heat and muscle. They smell good, strong and sharp and healthy but with a pungency that reeks of sex. Soon I will tell you the one about the horse because it will be a good one, visceral. It will be full of words that mimic the pace of a canter. It will be arousing. I won't tell you yet because it will not be a true story. I must see the act. I must immerse myself in it. I must feel as close to the horse as any little girl or grown man who clambers up on a ladder to find his comfort and release. I must think about stallions mounting one person or another. The size and shape of it, the livid pink. For this true story I must be closer to the subject.

As a child, I was not so into horses. I prefered the dollhouse, the spaceship, the cave.

This then will be something new.