liquor and linen

liquor and linen (click on image below to read)

Wax—a confession of sorts (with audio)

She is nervous    It is her first time She removes her cotton underpants    White    They bear a large font    Bonds    This is written below her navel in cream

You instruct her to lay down    Do you want to freshen up, you ask    You point to a packet of baby wipes    She does    And you leave her    From outside the door you hear her position herself    You wait    For a moment you wait by the door until you hear the creak of the bed fall silent    You know she is ready

You walk in confidently    This confidence, you reason, will allow her faith in you    She will be less nervous if you take control    You fold her leg into a ballet position, bent as one would to pirouette    She is naked from the waist down    She feels exposed    You explain that this will hurt but it will not be so bad next time    You turn your back, find the clippers in the drawer, you say, It will hurt less this way    She nods    And you trim the hair that spreads itself wide over her pubis    The hair is fine, full and long

She tells you about her boyfriend and you ask questions to sway her attention from the dominant buzz in the room    Her toes are curled     Anxious

You know you must gain her trust now, while it doesn't hurt, while the clippers skim her skin, untouching, the blade secretly harvesting what will later be disposed of    You will do well to charm her now with your even voice while it doesn't hurt    (You deepen it at first, she will understand this, you, as authoritive though it will not be the voice of a teacher or a police officer    It is the gentle yet firm voice of someone there to make the pain bearable though you, the someone, are the inflictor of this pain)    She does not watch as you dust away her hair What is left is centimeter-long armory     A barrier that you will soon remove

If it were not for the backdrop of the bed, from the waist up she could be any woman chatting in some cafe    If there were a fashionable table to divide her torso you would not know    But today there is no cup of coffee in her hands    They are placed on her stomach    Folded neatly, her nails a pearlescent shade of peach, short and groomed

You place the clippers back into the drawer and now you work with wax

She flinches

You raise her leg to ninety degrees, upward, and her foot hovers high above her belly    You can see the way her flesh darkens as thigh becomes a wash of something else    Something more, more than thigh or things that few lay hands on    But you do not see this It is just flesh to you    It is there before you but now these days the texture, tone, shades of flush escape your attention   You understand the variations there, yes    And once you might have been more curious but not today     Not any day these days    Your arms move in the perfunctory way This is routine and while your eyes flick between hers and your task, your attention is on her words    The things that move her    Life

The ceiling fan marks a rhythm and you work to time    You are hot, a little bothered but you speak to her in gentle tones     And while you do as she has asked, she talks quickly about her work, her evening plans, her life     At times she might flinch but this is short lived    Yes, she is nervous but she keeps her voice steady    You are fast and gentle and she sees this    Though pain is there pressed into her skin, she trusts you

She perspires lightly and your gloved hands do not feel her small panic    There are buttocks and folds and things you prefer not to name in casual conversation or words    You do not name them    For despite your work, despite knowing the intimate parts of her and many others, few know what it is that you do

Seldom do you confess to those who do not know you well     Though today you feel liberal    Today, in this place, well beyond the door that separates you from her in that room where she fusses below her waist, you will hint at something that you did not intend to    You will hint at this because it has been too long between confessions    Because the lack of other meaning in the day, a day full of wax and flesh, the confessions of others, demands that this; this woman, the wax, the work, be poetry rather than shame.

(image: Martin Witfooth)

Audio:

YourMic Home

Boots from Canada

Boots from Canada

You sleep softly on fire in a city that knows her footsteps from time to time    Your bones slip into each other    Your bones slip into her honey-milk hands that are framed by the brown couch in the lounge room    She looks like home    You sit on the couch and it cradles the shy-love-lust and her brown-cow eyes bore into yours    Several cups of tea and wine entertain your hands until the glasses and mugs are dry    You blink and she's still staring and you're not sure of what to say so you tell her everything except for what you want to    You don't know how to interpret any more than the back of her hands     She's gone now    And before she went you said goodbye    A cold porch under your bedroom-feet and her in boots from Canada    And you wanted to raise your voice to bridge the distance but you realised that she speaks only in whispers    So you're here on this bed that she passed by once    You're here on this bed with bones and a bare mattress in a crowded city that she once drifted through

(image: Emma Jay)

Published in Page Seventeen, November 2010

Popular Carver: Popular Mechanics.

There are few moments where I clasp my hands to my mouth. Fewer still where I simultaneously drizzle tears. Today I did both these things.

Raymond Carver was the man everyone tried to set me up with. I’d heard a lot about him, everyone else seemed to know him well and felt that I should too. These friends were full of accolades—sure my curiosity was peaked, but with all the gushing I was dubious.

Working my way through 'What we talk about when we talk about love' allowed me several moments with Carver, seventeen to be exact. Each moment had me wanting another. And with each, I found my courtship with Carver moving from like into something more like love.

It was 'Popular mechanics' though, a brutally sparse five hundred words that left me feeling utterly broken. In this he both wore me down and won me over.

Carver takes a simple domestic argument; a moment in time where a husband is leaving his wife, puts a child into the equation and in doing so shows human desperation at its most abysmal.

There are those films where you hear the dad say something to his kid like, “Sonny, It’s about time you saw what life was really like.” Reading Popular Mechanics, I felt like that kid. I felt like that kid watching the nice neighbors through some slit in the curtains go at it full throttle, watching their story and my little ideals about the world shatter.

Carver uses understatement like a knife being slowly sharpened for the final line: “In this manner the issue was decided.” Never will such matter of fact words wound you so deeply.

Carver is my man.

A non-nokia new year.

I own an old Nokia phone. A 6610 model to be exact. When the old one broke, one that once belonged to an ex-boyfriend, I was relieved. In that old phone he had set reminders for his friend’s birthdays, there were old messages in nooks of the memory space. There were slivers of him in that phone—slivers that I thought I'd sliced. And despite erasing each reminder he had left as its alarm went off there were always more alarms, more reminders through the year—reminders of a past that I really wasn’t part of anymore.

The phone broke some time ago and, because I’m technologically challenged I tell myself, I purchased the same model on EBay.

It is the second of January today. My phone has just reminded me, by way of an alarm, that it is Stuart’s birthday. I do not know who Stuart is, nor do I know who put the porn on my phone or why they chose an Eminem cover for it—Eminem stands proud, his tattooed bicep flexed and a rather tough smirk is on his face. There are ring tones by Lincoln Park and images labeled: ‘Morgan’ (she has large assets), ‘Car’ and ‘Ass’ and ‘G-String’.

At the cusp of a new year we make promises. We let go of the past year and with determination clasped firmly in hand we stride or stumble through midnight and into the hope that another beginning brings.

2009 now lays like some vacant lot where the home of my last year’s experiences has been joyfully demolished. The best, salvaged while moments frozen in their infancy are left behind, discarded—things not fully grown but from which lessons have done so instead. There are lovers and portraits that no longer resemble those in them. There are messages, photographs and transitory strands of time. All these things are happily left to burn out like fireworks at midnight.

It is the second of January 2010 and my phone reminds me that it is Stuart’s birthday. I do not know who Stuart is, nor do I know who put the porn on my phone or why they chose an Eminem cover for it. I do not know the women in the photos nor the numbers left behind.

It is 2010 and my two day old memories are rich. The strange alarms and old messages, embers from someone's forgotten past, are gladly no longer my own.