Desultory and Impulsive

[y=mx+b]

Conversations at work...

D: (crank pumping red anti-freeze coolant from 55 gallon drum into jug to be carried elsewhere for use) I wish [names girlfriend] gushed like this when she's on her period.

DL: ...

D: all the lubrication of it... gushing out like this. Taking my hand, smearing it across her asshole...

DL: ...

Me: But it gets sticky after a bit

D: That's why you don't stop. You gotta keep plumbing it out of her.

Me: (to DL) This man speaks the truth. You stop and it's like glue. Next thing you know you're tied together like two dogs behind the dumpster.

DL: honest to fuck...

D:

Me:

DL: (walks back to his work project without getting what he came over to get)

 

[Wife of Bath]

In my dream, I was at a funeral and we all stood in line talking quietly and I said how did she die? And someone said her heart slipped away one day and she didn’t believe she could follow

And I woke with tears on my face knowing how close I have come to that kind of death myself.

-Brian Andreas

 

[y=mx+b]

In my dream, I was at a funeral and we all stood in line talking quietly and I said how did she die? And someone said her heart slipped away one day and she didn’t believe she could follow

And I woke with tears on my face knowing how close I have come to that kind of death myself.

-Brian Andreas

I want to follow this with something beautiful
But I am at a loss

 

[y=mx+b]

Back before I created the prison that I did here on ampic I used to post and interact with others more regularly on the GB.

I was actually quite funny too. This one I think is my most favorite

 

[Wife of Bath]

The door to your prison is open, you know. You could fly out any time.

 

[y=mx+b]

The door to your prison is open, you know. You could fly out any time.

True words
Which apply to everyone
Stuck in their head.

 

[Wife of Bath]

I was so afraid of losing people

That it took me a long time to realize I am someone who can be lost, too.

-CF

 

[Misshotndeep]

The door to your prison is open, you know. You could fly out any time.

Come to my parlor said the spider to the fly...

 

[y=mx+b]

Nobody cares.

 

[Misshotndeep]

Nobody cares.

What do want them to care about?

 

[y=mx+b]

I was so afraid of losing people

That it took me a long time to realize I am someone who can be lost, too.

-CF

Yes
But hearts hold on

 

[y=mx+b]

Are you even still interested in me?
Curious about my touch?
The proximity of my body next to yours?

Not touching

...but almost.


What about the strength in my hands?
Or is that gone now

Lost
Like an autumn leaf
Fallen into a river
Tumbling below
The water's surface
Barely yet visible

What is there
Still of me
Still in you?

Where am I?
How am I?

Am I free to crush and conquer?
Or am I best left quiet
Under the surface
And caught up
Against the branches and rocks
Feeling the force of time
Push those things through me
Leaving me torn and tattered?

Or am I still that something?
That gravity
That dream that pulls at you
Sinks into you
And still touches?

 

[Wife of Bath]

My rapist is a body builder.
He was ‘cutting weight’ to get to a body fat of 4%
He was sweating
Something about the supplements he was taking and how they generate heat
His muscles were already so large it’s hard to imagine how they could be bigger but he assured me he was close to ‘peak weight’ while he ate plain chicken dipped in salt.

While he was on top of me, telling me to tell him how much I liked it, his sweat was dripping onto my face
Drop
Drop
Drop
One after the other
So large they splashed across my cheek.

He told me to lick it off my upper lip and tell him thank you. I did.

On my way home, I could smell his sweat on my clothes

They’re in the trash now.

I called my sister while I was driving but I was too embarrassed to tell her what happened so instead we talked about going apple picking on the weekend.

In the shower, I could smell his sweat in my hair while I scrubbed and scrubbed myself. As the water flowed over my skin I felt the rivulets of his sweat in all my most intimate places and I turned the shower head temperature up higher and higher until the bathroom was a thick fog of steam and regret.

Once I was in my pajamas I could feel his sweat running down the back of my neck no matter how many times I toweled it off

I texted my best friend and told him I could have fought harder, screamed louder, said no more firmly, that I could have stopped him and I didn’t. That I was as responsible as he was for not being more clear about my consent. That it was my choice to put myself in the situation. That it was my choice and I chose wrong.

I laid in bed and waited for sleep to come but instead the video of everything I had done played before my eyes and the shame was so powerful that I was awake until my first conference call at 7 am and hadn’t slept a wink.

He texted me ‘good morning’ and I didn’t respond. He texted again and said he’d seen I deleted my profile but that he had ‘really enjoyed our time together’. I blocked his number.

In the tub that afternoon, I sat in screaming hot water and could smell his sweat while I, a rational person, wondered how much scrubbing it takes to wash bruises away.

I refreshed the water over and over, sat in my bath for over two hours and still I could smell his sweat
And I could taste it.

I took conference calls from the claw foot tub, naked. I talked about business and did my job while I wondered how soon I could adopt a very large dog.

My skin was pink and raw when I finally accepted that there’s no physical way any part of him could be left on me; that I wasn’t going to be able to scrub his impact away with soap and a loofah

I got dressed and my velvet soft pajamas were a scratchy second insult to my tender skin.

My best friend sent me a podcast about consent. And women saying no in sexual situations. He suggested I listen to it.

I played it on my phone in between work calls. I sat in a chair in my living room with my no-longer-large-enough dog at my feet still wearing my pajamas and rested the phone on my chest while the journalist told her story. My eyes were heavy from lack of sleep. My body was heavy from his sweat. It was running down my cheeks, into my ears, into my mouth. It was leaking from my eyes and felt so much like tears.

Every few minutes my phone would ring and I’d have to talk about this or that issue and help solve million dollar problems while I wondered how he thought the night had gone. Why did he text me good morning? Why did I stay? Why did I stay? Why did I fucking stay?

I finished the podcast. I thought about how similar what she said was to my experience and I thought about the ways it was different.

I texted my best friend and told him that even though I shouldn’t have put myself in the situation I did, I shouldn’t have had to worry about being assaulted. I couldn’t have stopped him. He didn’t have my consent. He shouldn’t have done what he did. He was larger and stronger than me. I said no and wait and stop and he did what he wanted to do anyway. I fought him and I am strong but he was stronger. I yelled and kicked him and he hurt me until I had to hold my breath and then I didn’t yell or kick him anymore. That didn’t mean I should have said or done something else to stop him. I was clear.

I was clear. I was clear. I was clear.

He was a rapist. The only reason rape happens is because someone is a rapist.

I was clear. He chose not to listen.

I wonder when I won’t be able to remember that smell.

 

[y=mx+b]

And I think about the time
Of having not known
And wishing how I could go back there

But not just me

Everything


Everyone


All thing eternal and endless

Condensed down into a glass jar
That I could smash upon the rocks
Of some great void

For it to consume
Condense down even further
To a birthpoint
Where new celestial bodies
Come into being

And perhaps it is there
That we will be
With nothing between us

No past words
Thoughts
Emotions
Or events

Just us.
Together.
Being.

 

[Wife of Bath]

 

[Moochienanu]

I don't have girls.
I have women.

I thought this belonged here.

 

[y=mx+b]

I thought this belonged here.

Interestingly enough is that's exactly how I imagine all you women react whenever I come around and post.

 

[Wife of Bath]

*gets out curlers*

 

[y=mx+b]

What if I were to tell you all
That one of these women is here

Laying on the couch



Right in front of me?

 

[sammyIammy]

I’d say doubly blessed

 

[Wife of Bath]

What if I were to tell you all
That one of these women is here

Laying on the couch



Right in front of me?

How lucky you two must be.

 

[y=mx+b]

And now she is sitting in the chair I was sitting in last night
I am looking at her
She is tending to matters on her phone
And while she is doing so
I study her with my eyes
Just as I once did
Earlier today
With my hands

Our time is limited
So I take in
All that I can of her

The salacious
The innocent
Her smile
How she breaths
How she laughs

I take all that I can in
To remember
And to write about
The real things
And the things I want to make real.

 

[Wife of Bath]

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

 

[y=mx+b]

I sit here
At home

The house is quiet
A fall winter rain
Plinks and tinks upon the steel roof
Of this old farm house

I am sitting on the couch
Next to a now empty chair

There are no eyes to look into
No denim clad thigh to touch
No seam to follow along with my finger

I sit here left feeling...
...this was not how I wanted to say good-bye

But then... is there ever a good way to say good-bye?

 

[Wife of Bath]

You’re hurting, he said.

If you post about it you’ll bleed out all over the board.

A train wreck in motion, an oversharing poster that no one wants to watch but you can’t look away from.

And what good would that do? What good?