Chapter 13
13.
In one week, I have made love to 21 different men in 8 different states and 6 different positions. Why, I don't know. I think I was sowing my wild oats. I think I was getting all of the messiness of heterosexuality out of the way.
I am now parked outside the return address of her letters. I am now fully able to give her my heart. I am now scared shitless.
I open her letters for reassurance.
Dear Emma,
Hi! I bet you never thought you'd hear from me! I've been really busy! Edward decided that we should buy a house, so I've been going to showings and looking for something pretty but not super pricey. It's tough work! It takes up almost all of my time.
It's pretty nice down here. The weather is great and there are lots of nice restaurants and beaches. So when I'm not running around town looking at houses, I'm at the beach working on my tan.
We need to get a new place soon because the apartment that Edward has now is really small. I'm always getting in his way! What's more, he hates having to share a closet!
Well, I guess that's all. I miss you! Take care!
-Nina
Dear Emma,
Guess what!?!?! I found a house! It's not huge, but it's really nice and has a (small) pool and even a guest room (so you can come visit!)! We have access to some tennis courts down the street too!
I got your letters and they made me really sad. I miss you a lot too and I'm sorry if I hurt you. But I had an idea! Why don't you come down here?!?! You could help me decorate the house! I could so use the help! I'm sure that you would have lots of great ideas (you're so autistic). And maybe you could stay for a few weeks and help me. Edward might even pay you to do it!
I guess I'm just looking for an excuse to see you. I would love to "be" with you (if you know what I mean). I love Edward, but it's not the same as "being" with you. So write soon and let me know if you can come!
Hugs & Kisses,
Nina
Dear Emma,
I haven't heard from you in a while. I hope you're okay...
Well, I have some good news and some bad news, but they're both the same thing. I'm pregnant. Can you believe it? I can't! Edward couldn't either. He wants us to have it, so I guess we're keeping it. He said we may even go shopping for wedding rings!
YAY!!!!!!!!
I really really REALLY want for you to come now. I'm sick most of the time and woozy and I it would make me feel better to have you here. I can't do all the stuff I need to do AND be pregnant at the same time! I need you!!
I just wanted to tell you the news. Write soon, okay? I'm starting to worry about you...
luv,
Nina
I put the rest of her bullshit in my bag. Pregnant. With Edward's baby.
I never imagined that body could be fertile. That it could do womanly things. I never imagined that it was the body of a woman.
I couldn't imagine that it menstruated. Couldn't imagine that those hips could bear the weight of motherhood. I could not imagine the sweet slim caverns of her body bearing the pain of exorcising the demon that lay sleeping within her.
If pregnant, the body would be distorted. It would stretch as everything stretches- with use and mistreatment. She was meant to be full of air and hope and bittersweet skylines. But now she would be filled with unborn children.
I had much preferred the uncertainty of ever having her when I felt perhaps her love was unrequited. Now I face the uncertainty of keeping her, now that my love is much more profound, but the question of requitedness lingers.
Pregnant, of all fucking things.
"Hey!" she squeals, throwing the door open as wide as she. She grabs me and hugs me. I am almost impaled by her protruding belly. "I'm so glad you finally came!" She whispers as she holds me. I think I'm going to be sick.
She ushers me in, still holding tight to my hand. "I got your napkin, so I knew you were coming. Do you want a tour of the house? No, first your bags. No, first we should talk. How have you been? Wait, hold that thought, you probably need something cold to drink. Is lemonade okay? I'll be right back. Take a seat-"
She waddles away as I crumple into a chair in disbelief.
I can't believe the eyesore that lay before me. Can't believe that all that I had ever loved and coveted has been replaced by a disgusting, bloated, maternal creature. All I can see is the result of the fornication between a man and a woman. It does not interest me in the least.
The body is no longer my own. It is a worthless body. It is the body of a woman. She is a woman.
How the body can lie! The body is a cheater. It is a worthless body. It is no longer mine. She is a woman.
Once again, I am betrayed. First by the body, then by the spirit. Now, again, by the body. But it is all betrayal. It all feels the same. The body, the spirit, they are one and the same. They are inextricably linked, and not like yin and yang or two peas in a pod. They are identical. There is only one thing-- the person-- which embodies both the body and the spirit. When one becomes worthless, both become worthless. The person becomes worthless. She may be discarded. She may be fed to the wolves. She may die, for all that was life, all that was worth living, is gone. She may die, now that she is stripped of her body, her soul, her self-possession. She may die without an identity, for the identity she had has been taken from her.
If any girl is capable of love, the act of fornication is a crime. She is being robbed of her soul, of her humanity, of the body that encases it all. The man is a thief. He takes her. In her own bed, he takes her. He possesses, he dispossesses. He does not want all of her. He wants only his pleasure. The man is tired. He is selfish. He is a thief. He has taken her flowers and left only the ugly scent of sex. The muddled, mud colored flesh of sex.
The man is a murderer. He is incapable of love. He knows only the sensations of the crimes he commits; the blood rushing into him, magnifying him as he takes and takes and takes.
The blood.
It is the blood that lets him know that he is alive, that the pulse of his blood fills him, fills the girl, his victim. It is in giving him life that the girl dies. In his arms, she dies.
But the sadist, the man, is not satiated. No, he will not be satisfied until he defiles the temple that was once a girl. He desecrates it with fertile ooze, spitting on the alter of the virgin. Now that he has raped, pillaged, murdered and defiled all that was once and at once beautiful and peaceful in a girl, he may retreat.
He has proven that he is a man.
You are left only with the shambles that were once a girl. Everything is ruined, dirty, bloody, sullied. Everything reeks of the man. You clean it, sobbing. You clean it with the last girlish thing that you have, the one thing that he has not taken: your tears.
Then you pretend that everything is back to normal. But pretending is a child's game and you are a woman. Still you try. Still you fool no one. Still, you lay under his weight.
You slowly break your own heart trying to resolve this issue.
Imagine that this happens not once, but often and at his volition. At his voracious volition that begs to be acknowledged.
Did you like it? he would ask.
Yes. You would lie. Yes.
I am surrounded by worthlessness.
Alone, wedged between Edward and Nina at a trendy little bistro, drowning out the incessant babble that flows from her lips like mucus down a child's face in winter. Edward and I are mutually distracted by and attracted to the pretty girls that frequent such hot spots. He looks at them the same way that he looked at me when we first were reintroduced: carnally, with a glimmer of possibility in his left eye. He appreciates the pounds I shed in lavatories along the east coast.
Alone, as I shall be when Edward first visits my room in the night. I will lay asleep in the dark room, the door unlocked.
He will undress and take me. Brutally, hungrily take me. Perhaps I will fight him. Perhaps I will just lay there. Perhaps I will not be scared. Because I will recognize his scent. I will know and not be afraid. I will just lay there and let him take me. The room will reek of pleasure.
It is the suddenness of it all that will make me gasp. All of a sudden my dreams will be interrupted as he penetrates. The only noise to fill the room is to be the ticking of a clock and my breathing. My heavy and helpless breathing. He will make no noise. He will be too intent on the pleasure.
The body will already be weak with sleep. It will offer no resistance. All my heart will do is flutter beneath his hand, his mouth. And though we are together, we will think only of our own pleasure. Each will be excluded from the other. It will be perfect.
He will not stay the night. He will not sleep in my arms. As quietly as he came, he will go, back to the arms of the other woman. I will resume my sleep. It will be a dreamless sleep in the quiet room with the unlocked door where I shall wait, alone.
She will be able to keep her lover because of me and me alone. I who have starved and vomited myself into oblivion so as to not be sexual. I must do it because he will not stay with her if he does not have a victim. He has already left her body, her temple, in ruins. He must wait until it is rebuilt, restored, before he can destroy it again. But in the meantime, he must fulfill his desire to vandalize. Out of love for her, I shall ask him to destroy me. If the murderer knows there is something that he can abuse, he will be satisfied. He will stay with her because of me. He doesn't love her, he loves only the body, which is twisted and deformed with child. But he will stay because I will lay down for him. Out of hatred of myself, out of spite for her, I shall ask him to destroy me.
Alone in my realization that I do not love this woman. I do not love any woman. Not even myself. I stupidly waited for make-believe. And it's for the time I lost that I now grieve.
Any day now I'll be happy to be alone. I'll relish my solitude like a lost love. For I am all alone in the world and I shall always be this way- forever and a day and another day as well.
All alone in the world.
I always wanted to be the ugly duckling. Always dreamed of being the awkward, gawky girl that one man would take and say, "You're all blind. She is just so beautiful," and go on to love me as I've never been loved.
I guess fools are the concubines of their dreams.
