Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Prose: "Riverbed"

Warning: the following is a LJ-cut for two reasons. (1) It's relatively long. (2) Its content is potentially offensive. So if you're easily offended (or underage), don't read it. It's also a draft...a very rough draft, copied more or less word for word from my midnight scrawlings. So if you do read it, I want feedback. I'm lying on the rocks - cold rocks, I can tell, my shirt pulled up to exposed my breasts and my back, my bra unfastened, denying me even that faint barrier between skin and rough, cold river-rock - I'm lying on the rocks like a sacrifice, however hastily prepared for the role, hair tumbling down to the river behind me, wetting the unbound tips. I'm lying on the rocks, knees spread, feet in their hiking boots close together - bound together by the bunched-up jeans he didn't bother to take off, as I didn't bother to take off my boots; why bother with the trouble of them? I am lying on the cold rocks in the cold autumn air, breeze tightening my nipples, pebbling my flesh, shivering me - or is that him? I lift my head with a tensing of night-washed muscles, look down at blond hair, fingers with chipped polish tangled in the short strands, his hands leaving warm spots on my thighs - the only part of me that is warm is the part his flesh covers, protecting from the heat-leaching air. He clutches at my thighs, his breathing harsher than mine, and I wonder in part of my mind, Why? Why this boy I do not love, but who nonetheless slowly heats my blood, this boy who did not hesitate to accept my selfish, loveless proposal? Is my frozen heart so craven as to take him and use him until, like a child's mobile, something else shiny and new catches my eye? Am I so cold as to take the warmth of hands and lips, no matter how indifferently desired, take them and sate myself on this offering of heat? Am I, as he so gallantly once said, am I broken? This is not the tool to fix me, not this boy of river-stones and moonlight, of the harsh white beams of streetlights only partially shaded by the overarching spans of the railroad bridge above us. This is not the tool, no. This is a misfit part, this boy, if I am indeed broken, a misfit part jury-rigged to keep me running, keep me from freezing completely through, until something better, warmer, more secure comes along. Until I can trust myself, warm myself, to love and be loved once again. He...No, I do not , could not love, him; what I feel is much the manner of affection one holds for a particularly charming dog, a bird that knows and can perform one flawless trick. And this is his trick, his training, his gift - his service to the broken I - if I am indeed broken - this is the single flame he gives me. He can do this one thing, and well, without asking for reciprocation. I am a sacrifice on these rocks: a sacrifice to self-indulgence, to pitiless, conscienceless hunger. I am a sacrifice to lust without love, as he kneels between wide-angle knees, paying his price of the bargain I named. And I - loveless, heartless, conscienceless I - I lean my head back; I close my eyes. I let the blind-eyed streetlamps, the pale and uncaring moon, the impossibly distant stars - I let them all bear witness to the contract we have rendered; I do not care. After all, as I raise one hand to muffle my cries, biting deeply, savouring the heat of my own mouth on ice-frozen fingers, the sharp sting of pain that reminds me I can still feel pain, after all - if I have purchased such a thing as this at the price of my frozen and undreaming soul, what do I care if all the angels must watch? The rocks are cold, as cold as the wind across my bared flesh, once he raises his head, watching me with hooded eyes. Boy's eyes. Dog's eyes, warm and hidden and all the things I do not desire. He does not ask me to reciprocate, to kneel myself before him; he knows he will find no such giving from my hands this night. He does not ask, does not even speak. He knows; he does not have the right. Why does that knowledge make me smile? And back to work.

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