at first

february:

"I want you to belong to me," he says.

Pulling my hair to make me look at him. With my head twisted I press back, my ass into his ivory pale hips, and for a moment alive feels real.

"Hurt me," I say. "Tell me I'm your woman."

"You're my woman," he says, leaning over my body; fingers soft along my skin, the tips of my breasts, my ribs, and down.

"My breasts, my belly," he says, touching me,

"my lips," he says, kissing me, his tongue deep into mine, tongue fucking, clacking our teeth,
still pulling my hair. Fucking my body--the rooster crows, out in the yard, and brought back to outside myself I realize I am screaming.

"Make it be real," I say. By accident. Is this praying?

Lying there watching the light come slowly through the tapestries tacked to the windows.
Smoke trailing lazily along the ceiling. His face in my neck he says it--

"What?" I say. "Look at me."

"I don't even--I don't want anyone else to see you," he says, "even to know that you exist.I want you to exist just for me. Like...a city for no one else."

River laughs.

"I'm ridiculous," he says.

I prop myself up, watching him. He closes his eyes.

"Feeling this way...I haven't felt this way since years ago, it makes me feel crazy. I hate it. Imagining you when you're not with me, that the men who look at you--I know it's not true but I
think about it. It makes me crazy."

"Aren't you sure of me?"

"It's nothing to do with you. It's with how the world works. Men are disgusting, they're animals."

"But people are animals, goof."

"Women are different. You don't understand it. It's disgusting."

"Of course I understand. I do the same thing--I think about fucking everybody. All the time."

He glares at me. I'm irritated and want to make him angry.

"It's not disgusting. It's natural," I say.

I laugh and roll over. "It's awesome."

"The natural world is revolting. It's base."

"But what is revolting is beautiful, because without darkness there could be nothing light, don't
you see?"

"I see and I don't care, I'd be happier if everything ended and it would be clean and empty.-I want a cigarette."

He rolls over and pulls on his shirt. His keys jingling. "How did we start talking about this?"

"Do you always get dressed just for a cigarette?"

"It's a habit," he says.

"I love habits," I say. I don't want him to leave me alone in this strange dark country house--
"I don't have too many. Tea on the porch in the morning. Runs at night."

He's standing there dressed, looking at me.

I don't have many habits. I have some irregular compulsions but thats different--in a way it
would be kind of nice to pick up smoking, kind of bring you back to yourself throughout the day.
A kind of punctuation. Always would know about the weather. Maybe I should take up
smoking. I would smoke cloves like River does, like a pretentious art fag, although River is
neither pretentious or faggy. It's just he likes things to be sweet.

I guess I was grinning about something.

"You love to be alive," he says.

"I love the sound of my fucking voice."

He smiles. His teeth are yellow and sharp. I wonder how they would feel in my cunt.

"You think you hate fecundity," I say. "Lushness, too ripeness. Ripe into rot. But really you
don't, though, or you'd want to be with someone sick and dead looking. Not the way that I look."

He kneels down, cups my breasts in his hands.

"Obsessed with you," he says.

"Ah, you don't hate anything," I say.

I stand and press his face between my legs. "You're just afraid if you love anything too much
you'll lose it." He moans--his dry hands running up my thighs, under my ass.

"...you make me wet."

"I want you again."

He groans. I push him off.

"Look at that. You love some things," I say.

------

It is late. The sky is wet. People throwing their beer over the apartment ledge.
Someone crying in the bushes; end of a night.

"You know, people looking at-at any woman-they look at more than just sex. At the shape,
at the idea. And maybe that's what seduction is-the suggestion of something..symbolic, ideal..."

"I don't think that's it," he says. "Men want to fuck women. They want to come all over your
face and your tits. Release. That's it. Throw away. That's it. Like a fucking rag. Strangers
looking at girls-You want it to be this beautiful thing-but you're only fucking stoned, babe."

"You know, I don't care. I just wanted to make you feel better about it. This dumb goddamn
hangup which doesn't matter anyway."

A cruiser pulls up. I am high, and paranoid now, because I have noticed there are tiny buds of pot stuck to my dress-"I have to go," I say.

River grabs my hand.

I don't care. Why do I do this? It's like an unclean habit. It would be better just to hang out with a dog all the time, because dogs don't say anything. I wouldn't have to listen to anybody's idiot opinions anymore and I could just jerk myself off and read alone in my room.

My dog would sit in front of the door and just be there.

Which is what I want.

"I mean, the difference is, I love you," River says.

I slip my hand free.

"Wait," he says. "I want to say-it's jealousy, maybe. If I was a woman-"
the lines of his face, the streetlight violet behind him; his eyes black in the night and their nameless lack.

"If I was a woman," he says, "I would want to be you. That's all."


I sit in my room and look at the tree through the window. Its buds are white in the nighttime.

Was this what it would be?

Part of me has flown away, sometimes I think about years from now standing with River in
the country, our country of love and black cigarettes, chickens, dogs, wildflowers. Are there
strong men? Maybe it is the way that I love, accepting everything, wanting more, more
realness. Maybe it is my fault that they become boneless, needing.

Feeding me their secrets like love. I eat secrets like fish flakes.

"Sometimes I don't know if I love you," he'd said, "or if I just want to, so much."

"It's okay."

"But how do we know?"

"Love isn't---the more you try to touch it, baby, the less real it will be."

"I do love you," he said. "Because I'm afraid. When you leave--"

Too much talking. Between my thighs he makes a fist. Turning it, slowly, against me.

"I need you so much," he said.

My breasts are sore; I ache for him. I eat my candy. I think he has probably told lots of girls
that if he was a woman he would want to be them. It's a good line. Who wouldn't say it again? I
would say it again.

His voice on the phone; I can't remember it ringing or his calling me. It is all one unending
eternal string of sex and candy and talking, crying drunk kissing the clove sweetness of his lips
and neck,

"Were you sleeping?"

"Yes."

"Can I come over? --just to lie next to you. I can't sleep."

"Aren't you back out in the country?"

"I'm not going to do anything, I'll just lie next to you. I'll be quiet and you sleep."

He drives back to me through the dark, brightly awake and wishing he could cry, comes into my
room and lies down on the carpet beside me. There isn't enough blanket.

"It's okay," he says.

Pushes his face into my breast, his arms around me, lies there whispering until he falls asleep
and something clicks deeper inside me and I think I am in love with him, his smell like Christmas
and his hair in my fingers and the way we fit together, like missing pieces.