X, page 13
As she was leaving the bathroom, she dropped her phone on the ground. I went for it. We got to talking. She played with her hair. I played with my keys. I gave back her phone, and she gave me her number, and then I watched her walk away down the hall.
The next day, I went to her bleach-smelling Bushwick apartment after work. I don’t know why. I hadn’t made an effort to get laid in months—I’d given up. I didn’t know what was different, except that something was, and it had to do with X. I brought my favorite cock with me for good luck.
The windows were small and draped. Her couch was red corduroy, a good sign that she was insane, but I took my shoes off anyway. On top of the coffee table were tarot cards, spread out like a bunch of big coasters. Great.
“Have a seat,” she said. A flicker of panic—did I really think it was going to be better this time around? When I lowered myself onto the couch, I remembered my body. It had only been a few days since the warehouse, and the bruises were livid purple, the scabs still soft to the touch. Not that it mattered. She was never going to see them. That made me feel better.
She brought me a glass of water and we chatted, running through the standard getting-to-know-you virtue signaling to weed out weirdos, trust fundies, neolibs. Prison abolition? What’s the most censored social platform? Coke or Pepsi? She didn’t work in my office building, but had been there meeting a friend for coffee. She told me about her job as a barber. I imagined a straight razor against her neck. What would happen if she flinched? How far would the blade have to slip to take her from human to something else?
Even though it wasn’t yet on my body, I could feel my cock getting hard. I interrupted her to ask if I could tie her up. She said I could. I stripped her, then told her to go lie on the bed, facedown. I got my ropes out of my bag and tied her in place. Wrists and ankles, nothing fancy. I was surprised by how relaxed I was, how easy it all felt.
For a long time, I didn’t do anything except look. I hadn’t seen a naked woman in months, aside from Camille, of course. Her ass was big and wide. It was firmer than I like it, but the skin was soft. I stroked it, then gently slapped it, listening to hear what sound it would make. I knelt down and examined the little hairs, the way they darkened around the inner thighs. I looked beneath for more hair. There it was. I wanted to grip it in my fingers and pull hard, but I restrained myself.
More spanking, playful to start. I touched the rest of her, too. I wanted to soften her, ease her into it, until there was no more resistance, no tensed muscles, no ticklish jerks, nothing.
Quietly, I got the rubber cane out of my bag. She wasn’t expecting the first hit. Her thighs gave perfectly, but she didn’t make a sound. I hit her again, and then again. No noise. Interesting. I got into a rhythm. Her shoulders shook, but she didn’t struggle against the ropes or speak, let alone ask me to stop.
I was glad I couldn’t see her face. It’s better that way, especially if it’s someone I don’t know very well and they can handle a lot of pain. But as I kept going, breathing faster and faster, I started to get a bad feeling. It wasn’t like the sickness I had been feeling since the breakup, the nausea every time I tried to get my dick wet. It was more psychological. With her face down, I felt like she was hiding from me. I started to get angry.
“Hey,” I said. Her ass was beginning to resemble her red corduroy couch. “Hey.”
She didn’t reply. I prodded her shoulder with the cane. I really felt like I needed to see her face. “I’m going to turn you over now,” I warned her.
The head shook a little. A deep breath. “Okay.”
Her voice was too quiet. I untied her as fast as I could. When she rolled over, her face looked normal, exactly the same as it had when we were talking about the weather. It was a smart face, both pretty and sad, but something about it disgusted me so much that I thought, for a moment, that I was dreaming.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
No. I forgot about her ass. I forgot about my cock. I wanted to hit her soft belly. I wanted to break her teeth.
“Hey,” she said. She lifted herself up onto her shoulder. I thought about shoving the rubber cane up inside her, and my chest tingled. Finally I got wet. I felt the rubber in my hand. I thought about it some more. She made noises. Then she pulled it out and pushed me away.
She forced a hug on me before I left, but that was the worst of it. No aftercare, thank god. I pulled my coat on in the hallway and put my shoes on standing up. When I lifted each leg, the pain on the front of my thighs met the pain shooting down my shoulders and into my lower back, cobwebbing in red darts that sliced every time my meat twisted. I took my time going down the stairs.
It was late, and outside it was dark and quiet. The brownstones were neat as chocolate bars, the black-painted gates shut tight before them. The cold air filtered through my clothes to land on the newly cracked scabs. My body hurt. I wondered what it would be like to see X and go through all of it again, but over these bruises instead of virgin skin. It would be even more painful, even more terrifying. And I knew I would do it. In a heartbeat, if someone gave me the choice.
That’s when I knew I needed to see her again.
####
A few years ago, I had this pup that loved getting scruffed like a real dog. Since humans don’t have that baggy sack of skin behind our necks, my pup had to settle for being squeezed, hard, beneath her hair. She told me that she wanted it—she begged for it, in fact—but it always made her cry.
“Stupid bitch,” I’d say. She’d hump my boot and I’d kick her, and she’d cry even more.
I didn’t understand the point of rewarding an animal that resisted correction, but after we hung out a few times, she told me she didn’t actually like pain all that much. She wanted to know if she could just be my puppy instead, the kind you pet and feed and train and let sleep curled around your feet at the bottom of the bed. I blocked her.
####
I didn’t know where to start. Mason Jar said that X had moved out of the warehouse, so that was a dead end. But maybe there were other people living there who knew where she was staying until she exported. I decided to go back. I had three weeks until the end of the month.
When I went down into the train station, the sun was setting. When I came back up again, it was gone. The warehouse was a few blocks away. I put in my headphones and queued up the latest murder podcast episode. The hosts sounded even more like each other than they usually did.
“I just think awareness is such an important part of safety, overall,” said one.
“It’s a safety issue,” agreed the other, or maybe it was the same voice.
“A safety issue for everyone, and women in particular. Now, you and I, we don’t victim blame people if something bad happens to them. But if even just one more woman took a self-defense class or called the police when she wasn’t sure, instead of just passing it off as an anxiety, then I’ll have done my job, we’ll have done our job, because—”
The murder podcast hosts used phrases like victim blame and slut shame and bad apples. They were talking about a recent news item: a woman on a London train had called the police because another passenger gave her what she described as a “very bad feeling.” According to the police, three bombs were found in the other passenger’s backpack.
“Who knows what would have happened,” said one of the hosts, “if she didn’t trust her instincts that day?”
“Absolutely,” said the other.
“Now, no one is arguing that we can tell who is dangerous and who isn’t just by looking at them. I would never suggest that—”
“We would never—”
“—But we have to stand up for ourselves, and for each other. And part of that is educating ourselves. When we look at other people, at strangers, what are the warning signs? We have to learn how to protect ourselves. We have to learn how to trust our guts.”
“Our gut instincts.”
“And I can see how some people might think we’re being paranoid, but honestly, I think it’s just realistic.”
“I feel the same way. I say, if you see something, you should say something.”
When X exported, I wondered, how would she do it? Would she take a train? Would she drive? As I rounded the corner on the warehouse, I imagined her getting on a big boat, a cruise ship like Marilyn and Jane, sliding through the Atlantic like a spoon through soup. To my right was the chain-link fence. I stopped in front of it and squeezed the diamonds again, squinting through the darkness and into the alleyway. I lifted a leg and felt the stiffness in my haunch. Some of the cuts—hashtagging my skin like the char on grilled ham—reopened if I moved too much. I decided to explore my other options before I tried to jump the fence again.
The front door was boarded shut and covered with SOLD signs, just like in an old movie. I couldn’t believe it. Less than a week since I had been here and the warehouse was already kaput. Fuck. So much for Mason Jar’s dibs.
Underneath the SOLD signs were even older pieces of paper. One of them, the flyer from the show, was still clean and glossy. Among the graffiti-esque scribbles, BE CRIME beamed. I made a mental note to text Syd. I didn’t know if they knew X, but it was worth a shot.
I went back to the chain-link and saw what I hadn’t noticed before—razor wire had been installed sometime since Saturday morning. I thought about climbing it, I really did. I even put a hand up, then a leg, but the pain stopped me from going any further. I wouldn’t have made it over the razor wire anyway, not on my best day, and I hadn’t had one of those in a long time.
The block was deserted. Wind stirred the empty lot across the street, and bits of trash flinched like startled women. A streetlamp slowly pulsed; I felt as if I was watching it through water. I wanted to go home, but all I had was a couch in Camille’s apartment, and she wasn’t even there. She had told me not to expect her back that night.
As I walked back to the train, I thought about X on her ship. I imagined her falling over the side and drowning. I imagined holding her underwater. I felt her fist in my mouth again, smooth and hard, tasteless at first, then giving me back my own taste.
####
Camille is smiling like the purple demon emoji. “Margot Kuhl?” she echoes, arching an eyebrow.
“Oh my god. What do you know?”
“Margot Kuhl . . .” She settles deeper into the easy chair. On the table beside her, the one that doubles as my nightstand, tonight’s second highball idles, gathering condensation like a storm cloud. Camille refers to all alcoholic beverages as highballs.
“What?” I demand. “Tell me!”
She chews on one of the giraffe-shaped swizzle sticks she buys in bulk to spice up her drinks. “I don’t kiss and tell,” she says, brandishing the giraffe at me.
Bullshit. Camille the Gossip Queen and Margot go way back. Before they were friends, they were lovers, which isn’t surprising in the sense that all these gays end up sleeping together but is surprising in the sense that Camille is a switch who prefers to bottom. “I can top in an emergency,” she likes to say, but it always sounds like a joke. What on earth she and Margot, Miss Bottom Supreme, got up to, I’ll never know.
“I don’t need gossip,” I say. “I just need to find her.”
One of the things I love about Camille is she rarely asks why, and she doesn’t now. I wouldn’t mind telling her more about the Margot and Syd situation, per se, but all roads lead back to X, and I still don’t want to go there with her. Not her or anyone. I don’t know why. That straight therapist I used to go to probably would have called it toxic masculinity.
Camille furrows her brow, opens her phone, and pops her thumb through some apps. The lamps flicker, then go out. “Perfect timing,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“There wasn’t supposed to be one tonight,” I grouse.
“Can you check and see how long it’s going to last?”
I look at the app. Energy savers are supposed to be shorter on weeknights, but the twenty-four-hour digital clock that tells you when the outage ends says 00:00.
While I light the candles, Camille goes to her room, returning a few minutes later with a little black book. “My hard drive,” she jokes, flicking it open bottom to top, like Hildy with her writing pad. Long excommunicated from most major platforms for social media, banking, messaging, and advertising, Camille uses this book to keep in touch with people. She pages through it, the candlelight illuminating the translucent yellow paper. A moment later, she turns the book around and points at a phone number. “Try this,” she says.
I take a picture. “So when was the last time you talked to her?” I ask.
Camille makes a great show of thinking, squinting and propping her chin on her free fist. “I can’t remember,” she says, setting the book down and picking up her highball. “But I doubt she can, either. Whenever it was, I’m sure she was more fucked up than me.”
“Sounds like Margot,” I say, sighing. So what if Camille can’t remember the details? A phone number isn’t nothing; when I unblocked the one Margot used to use, it had been disconnected. A new one might be the lead I’m looking for. “Thanks, baby.”
Camille twists the giraffe between her teeth. “XOXO, Gossip Girl,” she says, pursing her lips.
####
saw be crime play last weekend.
I stopped and deleted the text. I tried again.
missed you at the show on friday.
No.
I was at work, on the sixth morning after X—fifth, technically, since I didn’t meet her until after midnight—and a few of the smaller bruises were just starting to yellow, the hematomas encircling blank space like the chalk outline of a bunch of murdered bodies. They itched, and as I scrolled through my phone looking for Syd’s number, I scratched them through my jeans.
do you know X?
I almost sent that one. Like maybe straightforward was the way to go, given the situation. But then I thought about what I knew of Syd and realized it would probably just scare them away. I had already lost six days.
I can’t remember what I eventually texted, but whatever it was, it was obviously the wrong thing, if there was even a right thing. Syd didn’t respond.
####
Before my surgery could be approved, I had to convince a bunch of doctors that I really, truly, sincerely wanted to ruin my body. Like everyone else, I was sent to a therapist I couldn’t afford.
At the time, I bitched about it to my friends, figuring, like everyone else, that surgery would be semilegal forever. For six months, I sat in an overstuffed chair once a week so some heterosexual could feel smart for confirming that I am, in fact, a disgusting, fucked-up person. I didn’t know how lucky I was to have the opportunity to go so deeply into debt to be cut open.
As usual for someone so well educated, the therapist had nothing interesting to say. At first, I talked just to talk, making stuff up to pass the hour, but she was so credulous I shifted to honesty after the first few sessions, telling her about my life and Petra and the people I slept with and my shitty, boring job. Turned out it was kind of nice to have a place where I could talk through things. This was back before I would have worried about something like the notes she took on her legal pad. I would get going, and she would just melt into the background, a silent presence that would occasionally murmur, “Can you tell me more about that?”
I don’t remember the therapist’s name, or even what she looked like (do straight women look like anything at all?), but I do remember that she had impeccable taste in shoes and never wore the same pair twice, moving through a rainbow of chic flats, sleek mules, textured animal prints. At least my money was going toward something worthwhile, I thought. I mostly looked at her feet, which I judged were a size 7, maybe a 7½ (long toes), during our sessions.
Not that she was totally worthless as a therapist. She taught me about deep breathing and meditation and all that. She would occasionally share her theories about why I am the way I am, which I didn’t mind. Doesn’t everyone like to be talked about like their life is a story instead of a series of accidents? I imagined her back at her expensive therapist school clicking through a PowerPoint full of pictures of yours truly, a walking case study, with bullet points next to my body that said things like AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT STYLE and DISSOCIATION. The idea of it was flattering, in its own way.
When my six months was up, the therapist gave me my surgery letter and told me that she would love to continue growing with me.
“Absolutely,” I said. I blocked her.
####
The hosts of the murder podcast disagree about why people murder. That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it: Are murderers born, or are they made? Same debate people have about perverts and queers. No comment.
“I think it’s what we call the devil,” says one of the hosts. “Some people just have it. Maybe it’s their wiring, and maybe it’s their soul. I don’t know.”
“But that’s . . . I know it sounds stupid, but that’s just not fair,” says the other host. “Like maybe we’re all born with the capacity for evil, but I have to believe that something happens. Some kind of brain trauma or abuse or something, and a switch is flipped. Like if I didn’t think we all have some choice then I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
Of course, people only ask this question—Why are you the way you are?—because the answer is also a solution. If there is a way to turn people into murderers, then there must also be a way to turn them back. To fix people, whether it’s by hacking their genes or raising them in safety helmets. Personally, I can’t decide who’s worse: the people who think circumstance is the whole story or the people who think born this way actually means something. Like how many times did Richard Ramirez get hit on the head? How many times did a man rape Aileen Wuornos? What’s the magic number? As if there were an answer and as if, the way everything’s going, individual acts of violence are our biggest problem.
