feral

See this: a bare apartment, student class. No curtains or shades, sulfurous streetlight spills into the open windows blank as dumb eyes. No furniture, open bottles of beer sit on an upturned carton. There is the heavy bottomed twang of fresh paint. To the east a bedroom or three, to the west the kitchen and the bathroom. The echo of emptiness is damped only by that student ubiquitous indoor/outdoor carpeting, oranger yet in this sulfur light.

I’m young. Seventeen? Eighteen? It’s the very tail end of the summer; the days are warm but the nights are apple crisp, and school is starting in a week. The fair is just down the road from this apartment, and if I close my eyes and concentrate I can smell the maple cotton candy, the cow plop, the Zipper-induced vomit. I can hear the carnies’ calls. Almost.

I’m naked. So is the boy sprawled on the carpet next to me. It’s his apartment, here in Winooski, and he soon starts up school again at this Catholic college that his apartment abuts. I don’t really know him. I don’t really remember him. He has no name, no face now. He is an assortment of Sasha-doll brown limbs, a casual air of disregard for me, an ambient thrill of the masculine unknown and unattainable.

We fucked, this nameless faceless boy and I. I guess I probably faked an orgasm—it was before I learned how to come with someone else. I guess that I endeavored to perform, in all senses of the word. I guess I saw what I was doing in disengaged cinematic terms and that what I was doing was trying very, very hard to be very, very good.

I didn’t have a whole lot of understanding of my pleasure in those days. I didn’t really see how any man was going to be able to finesse the intricate steps to orgasm that I had mastered myself. I couldn’t relax. I didn’t really feel. I performed like a contestant and I didn’t understand what I was doing.

Like a trained bear, like a child actor, I found my pleasure more in the audience response than in my own enjoyment.

Except that occasionally, I stumbled upon it, this pleasure, and I wondered in it.

So we fucked, and I performed, and then I sashayed off to the bathroom, acutely aware of my naked body, and hoping his eyes were on it and were admiring, walking that way as if they were and he was. (He probably had them closed. He probably was examining his nails. Or thinking about how he could fit in his couch, stereo, street-sign coffee table, and still have room for the keg.)

The bathroom was bare as the cupboard and the light in there was that buzzing bluewhite fluorescence.  I peed, wiped myself, flushed the toilet, and then I paused before the mirror, as I always did.

(As I used to do.)

In the mirror, I saw my hair in wanton disarrangement, twisted and turned around. I saw my end-of-the-summer tan skin, my bottle-green eyes, the post-sex slack of my skin, that endorphin sheen. Around my mouth, though, were flakes of red.

Red smears around my face, my mouth, even my nose, like I’d been transported from some raw meat group gorge in some Neanderthal cave to this 80’s suburban bathroom and I knew not where or how or why. I looked feral.

And I liked it. I liked the way I looked, covered in my own blood in that the weird sci-fi light, the nameless boy’s semen dripping out of my pussy, the distant sound of traffic and the dropping echo of the rooms themselves.

Our fucking had brought on my period, unbeknownst to me. We had fucked and I had sucked his cock and then we’d fucked more and I’d probably sucked more, and in all this to-ing and fro-ing my blood had flowed, smeared, moved, covered my mouth like I was a cannibal.

And I guess in a way, I was. And I liked it.

I have found I have stumbled, faltered, lurched toward my sexual pleasures. They have taken me unawares, often, blindsided me and found me in the dark, and only later in some cold light do I become aware of them. This moment, this blood/sex/spit/semen/pussy/mouth moment, was one of those surprises.

I was fortunate that this boy didn’t freak out. He laughed at the blood, trundled off to the bathroom and washed his dick. He could not have cared less. He could have been a dick, rather than just pragmatically cleaned his. He could have made me feel badly about liking my blood; he didn’t.

In his response, he could have presented another obstacle for me on my way to finding pleasure. He didn’t.

But then maybe he liked it, even if he didn’t know it yet himself.
_____________________________

Thank you, KtotheE, for spurring this memory.

Comments

[Karl Elvis]

Always happy to inspire a memory, even if I'm not in it.

I'm liking this image, feral girl.

[ravenna]

Oh God you're good, CG, you can just open a window and let us climb right into your life and stand there marveling at it. This is a brilliant story. And as I looked in your mirror at that beautiful feral girl you shook up a whole boxful of my own memories and out popped a picture of me looking in a mirror at nineteen, smeared with my own blood from nose to knees, and a man behind me, the man I still belong to, laughing and saying something about how I looked like the "cannibals' candy cane," and making me laugh instead of shudder, and changing me forever. Thanks for writing this glimpse into your mirror (and triggering the other glimpse), I am just in awe.

[Goose]

I had an experience like that too, when I was about 20. Oral with my period and I felt very primal.
You've described a bit of what I felt and it was good.

[O]

I don't feel I can add anything to Ravenna's great comment above; I'd like to second it and add my own thanks too. I've had a couple of 'whoops! Period!' moments, and fortunately they're lovely memories. I like yours and KE's name for you: feral girl. ;) Love, O

[flint]

Reading your writing is a strange and wonderful experience.

[Bibydays]

In 1977 Wendy Wasserstein shocked everyone with her first play "Uncommon Women & Others" which had Swoozie Kurtz' character dealing with menstrual blood. As a 22 year old guy, it was strange territory...

[chelsea girl]

Yeah, it's amazing, the emotional and libidinal power of a bit of blood we don't need...

thanks you all for being brave enough to share,
cg

[scribe called steff]

That's pretty intense. Great posting. That's sort of along the lines of one of the things I was thinking about writing recently, and you've kinda cemented the desire to write about it -- the power men have over whether or not we become ashamed of our bodies' natural functions.

But even without that having been on my mind lately, I think I would have loved this posting, just because of the fierce lack of shame expressed in it. Well done.

[scribe called steff]

And I've been listening to the Stone Roses all morning. Good Times. :)

[CJ]

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I will not be with someone long-term who is uncomfortable with having sex during my period. Definitely a deal breaker.

[Ambler]

I love your visual imagery, I feel reckless and carnal after reading that. Thanks.

I feel ill at the sight of blood -- yours, mine, menstrual or not. I'm not a hemophobe, but I have a physical reaction to it. I've (accidentally) gone down on a girl on the crest of the crimson wave, and was almost physically ill. Blood was *everywhere*. I feel bad about it, but it's pretty much a biological reaction for me. I wish there was something I could do about it, after reading your thoughts I almost feel like I'm missing out.