Day 3- Not alone

I'm in the not alone. The walls press in on me full of watchful, full of oh no you don't, full of you can't. It's a tiny cage I'm in with bars that are shrinking. Some of this not alone is present time, some of this not alone is ghosts and whether they are real or just old imprints, flashbacks that are a hint and not a hard-on, I can't say. I just know I am watched and listened to. And leaning in towards myself from a distance as I did from up above in the way back days where I lay on the bathroom floor shivering and frozen to my center, lost in an endless loop of explosive sound, rage that bounced off the tiles and the bathroom plunger coming at me again and again,wielded by someone who loved me in the same exact measure as she hated me.

It's tipping the world upside down this claustrophobic feeling of bleak certainty that I'm not alone, will never be alone, will never not be under prying eyes that move over me inch by inch inside and out until I am just another wet used up towel on the bathroom floor, stained in blood and shit and piss. It's all backwards because this feeling usually sends me running outside or in, out on the grass barefoot running as if I were small and fast again, (this body will forget it's age when need be and just fly) or inside by dropping into thick gray silent gone, safe and still, insentient and impenetrable.

But see I want to be all the way in my body without disappearing. The heaviness of expectation and promise and the weight of commitment has my pulse beating between my legs, the seat of everything, where the sea rushes in and out with salty ownership, where I can escape everything by dreaming awake with gentle or persistent touch.

 But there is no safe place to drop my pants on the floor, to tug off my shirt, unfasten my bra, kick off my shoes. Even if the physical true people were gone, this watchfulness, the window eyes in the walls, the thick feeling of my old familiar ghosts who have died and are double ghosted, watching and licking dead chapped lips, is unshakable. I am right back in disconnect where this body is just on loan. Where every bit of skin and sinew, muscle and bone, every stretch of skin whether ever burned or bruised of torn or still safe, pristine, newly grown does not belong to me. Every bit of me, and every way in, every orifice does not belong to me, never did because I was born for this clever usage. I was born to hold all of it, spit and sperm and sin and blame, rage and  brutal need and most of all shame- I was born to swallow it all and hold it because they could not bear to or did not care to, hold it themselves.

And what about this needing? So incongruous against this strange backdrop?

Finding my way inside from the outside in, fingers slipping so quietly between my legs, the sense of danger and possibility in my mouth tasting like summer warmed skin or thick honey or brined olives or roasted garlic. Sharp, rich, salty, full- this is what my own desire tastes like. This is what my fingers taste like when I take them cautiously into my mouth, already full of fear. It is the only time I am not critical of my own scent. Where I do not reminisce fondly of the days of bleach and pinesol and thick bristled scrub brushes. The only time I don't need to use undiluted, Dr.Bronner's Pepperment Soap to wash, until every thing is burningly clean.

This familiar taste is just mine. Perhaps it is my truest rebellion to not be ashamed -of how I smell or taste- when I am alone because I am doing something so unthinkable, touching myself and meaning it. Calling my body my own. And I can't stay here long. The power of all those years does not wash away with soap or therapy or positive thinking. It just fades or is supplanted by what I taste over and over again until I know what my partner's cunt tastes like, what my own cunt tastes like. Not the cunts of my childhood which were over ripe and sour with the shadows permeating the women who owned them and me, already rotting. Perhaps that's why Durian fruit, with it's rich custardy velvet texture and taste that makes people swoon only tastes like it smells to me, like rotting flesh and unwashed feet.

Oppressive watching and listening is all around me. The need of this very full day is whispering in my ear. I can hear my daughter turning over in her sleep and the cat is tucked in against my leg. I am wrapped up in layers against the morning chill and I am chilled all the way through at all of this remembering, all of this residue that is still here with sticky fingers and cloyingly sweet perfume that is meant to mask the smells of them coming to get me but it only smells worse- like a hospital corridor or hospice- or gangrene chewing on an old lady wearing Jean Nate.

I do not know how to get beyond this today. I am upside down with the conundrum of wanting to touch myself in this room of old shadow. Normally I would clean something, run away, turn my brain off or write furiously. If only this were a regular day when masturbation comes to mind when I'm heated or stressed or restless. But this is an imperative, self driven need that arises as I open my eyes and I am not used to this. This idea of masturbating when the past has come creeping in on the present.

And yet my cunt is so brave as to be demanding. She is not hiding or afraid though my legs are. My thigh muscles are tense remembering. My cunt doesn't care. She just wants her due, the promise given and I will find a way to give it to her. But in this moment I cannot. In this moment I will have to wait and whisper to her, give her images to keep her content, and push in with my will against her opening, meet her half way. No fingers but a memory, a new memory I pull from the catalog file of what it feels like to have an entirely too large cock shoved in, heavy medical grade silicone with heavy medical grade butch behind it. And for now that is enough. She is wet and warm and content, chewing on that memory, biding her time until I can make a space, clear out the cobwebs, find a corner, close the bathroom door on the apartment, the sleeping people in it, the ghosts, the shadows and run the water till I can get my fingers quietly to the point.