Day-2 Two Dollars and Change

Sleep deprivation is not new to me. I slept rarely as a child. Night time was waiting time. Waiting for bad things to come in on tip toe, the slow quiet turn of the door nob and never knowing which parent it would be, or what strange secret story was about to unfold but knowing it was coming and knowing it would be bad. There was waiting before the door opened and waiting afterwards for the sky to light up, to count the moments to my freedom. To getting outside to play or go to school.

I had babies and they weren't sleepers, either of them. With my first it was 5 years before he slept through the night, with my daughter, 3. The only sleep pattern I ever had for as long as I can remember is an hour or two only to be startled awake, by a memory, or a ghost scent that didn't belong, or a child crying, or now when children are grown, by my old cranky Siamese cat. 

Sleep is free but beds aren't so for several years now I've slept every night upright in this chair I've come to hate, and my cat will walk down my body as if it were a stair way till he finds his nest, in the middle of my chest, or on my belly or across my legs. He woke me at two this morning insistantly talking, as only Siamese do until I understood that his fancy white tea cup was dry. He won't drink out of anything else. So I groggily stumbled to the kitchen, my mind already all the way awake, my body still sleeping and I thought about the things we need to be good humans. Food and water and air and sleep and a flat place to sleep on. 

It was hard to get back to sleep and I never did really, my mind kept churning over this notion of the things we need to survive and what happens when we don't have enough of them. How the lack of things, a bed, a quiet, unhaunted mind, enough food, a door, some sense of alone and quiet, privacy can come between us and our sex. 

It struck me as strange that I would be having a class conversation with myself in the middle of the night with the morning looming in my head, a morning that would contain this new masturbation practice, this planned and intentional, intimate meeting of myself and the irony that how much money you have can get in the way of your own two strong hands and your pussy which is waiting, full of open anticipation for something that has been promised. Time and attention. And so my gait, every time I got back up to pee, to get water for myself since I couldn't sleep was heavy because of this heated,urgent warmth, this heaviness of expectation between my legs. 

I had strange dreams of the two dollar bills and a handful of change on my desk being laid out on a roulette table that was crowded with beautiful women in tight short shiny dresses and sweet cleevage and queer dealers who were brown eyed butches or hazel eyed transmen who looked at my change with pity. The wheel would spin and I would wait to see if I would win- and the prize was not a stack of smooth, round blue chips but an orgasm. My own orgasm. Awake I look at the my two dollars and change- all that stands between me and money that will arrive tomorrow. I look at my space which is stuffed with books and paper and baskets of photographs I haven't put up yet because I keep arranging this space trying to find a better way to breathe, enough room to move, a way to make this, little cut off piece of living room that I share with my daughter, truly my own. 

I woke without winning for the last time at five. Fed the cat. Went out into the cold morning grateful for all that outside space and dreamed of a hammock strung between two trees, a place I could swing in, alone, in the outside world, a place where I could touch myself without listening for footsteps, the sound of another person sleeping four feet away, the opening of a door of the one bedroom which will indicate that I have company. 

I go back inside and feel this heaviness and this drop between my legs as if it were the very center of me, of the world. I feel like I'm sitting there in the dark, close enough to touch my own cervix, my mouth lips and my pussy lips feel the same. The opening I feel is like my chest expanding on the in breath, the little spasm of anticipation is like the exhale. The world has been reduced to this small part of my body that is puffed up and ready to rule the world. I have made a promise and it's time to pay up, and I'm allowed sweat equity. 

When the last person has left my one bedroom apartment I put the television on something I don't care about because it's too early to play music. Sound carries in these apartments. I decide to take more time today. My masturbation started without me in the middle of the night. I've been wet since dawn and there is an ache now, a demand and a please but the please is in the voice of one who is being polite only because nothing else has worked. 

I do my best to get comfortable in my chair, slinging one leg over it's nubby textured, once cream colored,  arm, and stretch a little, move into opening I breathe in and out in this dark world that is opening more and more, from between my legs and I touch my way from the inside out first with tendrils of thought and then with fingers. I take the time to feel every sensation. Thick, heavy, hungry, open, slick, smooth, slippery wet. I feel that tension that builds bumping up against a womb that has been full of children in this lifetime, bumping up against places that have held too many wounds and yet, sometimes craves more. I do not fantasize. I refuse it. I do not remember. I do not read. I only feel.

I am surprised that this is working. That even contorted in the dreaded chair, covered by a light throw, I've forgotten about not having privacy, a bed, a door, a clean untarnished mind. I am just in, all the way in. I am wet and the tension is building and I know if I had enough time- if I wasn't worried about my daughter coming in or a neighbor coming by, or the UPS man knocking or the landlord ringing the door bell I could actually get there with my fingers, which is always harder for me than with the vibrator. Always takes more time, sometimes will fail. I'm still thinking maybe yes, maybe I will use my fingers, pointer and middle rubbing not too gently on the middle of my clit, occasionally dipping in for more wet- wet that if I continue, without the buzz of mechanical machinery- I will be able to hear. And I can hear my breath and little happy sounds in my throat, I can feel the possibility blooming and then while my head is tipped back aginst the backof the chair and my hand is busy finding it's way and my legs are opening more in this dreaded cage of a chair, the cat casually walks down from window ledge to the back of the chair, over my shoulder down my belly and because I freeze and then yell, he moves down in a huff to sit at on the ottoman and stare at me unblinkingly. 

Then I laugh. 

It's hopeless I think. And then I remember how close I was to finding my way in, to finding my way through in the quiet, without buzz, without doorbells ringing, without visual aids, or words, or bad lifetime movie edited old sick smelling fantasy and I laugh again. I somehow know if I had a bed, and a door and the space to stretch out, if I had room to lock the cat out, I could find a way to coming on my own, with my own good hands, my own good fantasies, dirty or not, full of the clinking of chains or the thick sound of leather just as it strikes but they would be my own dirty, my own twisty heat, not tainted, just mine. 

And then I look at the clock which says 8:00 now and know that my daughter might come home, that the doorbell will ring any minute and I reach for my vibrator and let the buzz take me there and the surprise is that the fantasy, the one I don't want comes up but that time before has gotten me something richer than the average quick buzz orgasm. It's big. It's full and round and says yes. It makes my throat rumble, it makes my eyes wet and my cunt contract in a very big way, a promising way that says this ride is going to be good so hold on and it was. It was full of all of that dedicated attention, full of my own good hands attentive work and listening, full of sweet hard clenching down and the spasms that build up into a secondary, different kind of orgasm, an echoing orgasm that makes me smile and laugh and cry all at once, my thank you emerges in a soft happy sigh and my body rests in all of that until the cat comes back form his exile in the kitchen to walk up me and sit on the arm that did all of that hard work where he ignores me and curls up to sleep. 

I let him for a minute. Think about how I need that same arm for typing and move him to the foot of the chair and start typing and even now my inner thighs feel stretched and happy, my cunt is still heavy but with sleepy delight and the promise of more if I can find a space, a bit more of alone I could have more. Even though I only have two dollars and change, no bed, no door and no real space to call my own. My room of my own is between my legs and doesn't care where it gets off, just that it gets off.