Thursday, August 18, 2011

Ella


Ella:  “I’m so angry, I could spit!”  is what my grandmother used to say.
I say it to myself:  I’M SO ANGRY I COULD SPIT!
Only, it doesn’t work.  I mean, I don’t want to spit.  Spit?! 
I’m so angry, I could cry is more like it. I am crying.  I always cry when I’m this mad.
It doesn’t even matter anymore what I’m mad at, or what I was mad at.  Now I’m mad at myself.  For being mad?  For being me.  And the worst part is, I can’t go back, I can’t ever be unangry.  I can’t NOT have told my boyfriend that I never want him to talk to Jayla again, and I don’t care if they’ve been friends forever, and if it doesn’t mean anything like we’re going to break up, or anything to do with me at all – that’s what he said, but I didn’t – don’t – believe him.  Still, I shouldn’t have said anything.  Then he wouldn’t have gotten mad, and we wouldn’t have had the fight we had and he wouldn’t have left all pissed and maybe going to break up with me, I don’t know…
All I can think about is scraping a piece of glass up my arm.  Slashing thin lines of blood.  I know where to cut to really hurt myself, I slash up by the crook of my elbow instead of my wrist.
The broken glass works.  A flap of skin is free, hanging, and blood is running down my arm, and I feel better.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Meghan


Meghan:  He touches me, and I expect more.  I mean, where’s the thrill, the shiver down deep, the roller coaster ride, stomach in my mouth, rush through my crotch?
When my mother was drinking, she and I used to have these great talks.  I was ten when I asked her what was so great about sex, why did people do it?
She told me that it’s all about the orgasm, which feels like when you’re careening down the tall slope of a rollercoaster, that feeling in your gut that goes through your crotch.
Well, so here I am, and I’m not getting it.  I mean, if eventually I’m supposed to feel the rush of going down so fast you can’t breathe except to scream… shouldn’t I be feeling that tension of slowly rising up the coaster?  That, “it’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna feel good, feel better than anything” – like that?
Now his hand moves over my shirt, rubbing circles over my nipples. 
Okay, that’s not bad.
I’m starting to get it, starting to feel it, but then –
Not.
I shut down.
I get off the ride, metaphorically speaking.
I remember asking my mother what the big deal was about putting your privates together with a boy’s.  She said – besides the rollercoaster part – she said, you know the emptiness you feel inside sometimes?
I did and I didn’t.
She said, well, when a man puts his penis inside you, it makes you feel whole.
I want to feel whole even more than I want to feel the rollercoaster rush.
But all I feel is Mathias’s random groping.  Reaching lower, but I get nothing.
What is wrong with me?