This Body, This Place
I shouldn’t be left unattended at night. When I look at myself in the mirror I can see the arched point on my eyebrow that matches my mother’s. I used to turn the mirror around when I had it in front of my bed. I heard it’s bad luck to have it stare at you as you sleep. So I hardly look into it, especially at night. I want to feel warm. I want to be laid out across a cool metal table and inspected. I want my organs to be checked for maggots. I’m paranoid about things like slippery little flesh chowers that sneak right in. The worst part is that you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it when they’re eating you alive. All I can do is wait until you’ve disappeared.
I am unsure of what I am to you. If you see what I’ve built, the roof is made of chiffon that lets the air roll in. What is that to you? Is it just soft material? Did you have a desire to break it? What did you think you’d find once you got in? I am too easy to invite one in. Too easy to please and too eager to get my top off so you can start to like me again. In my house, I haven’t had a visitor in almost three years—
I thought I could be the easy chick. Seventeen stupid, stupid seventeen. I think of that sunny Saturday I saw you. I should’ve run away until my legs gave out. I should’ve gone back on the train to Brooklyn and stayed there until I learned my lesson on meeting boys at Flushing Meadows Park without my elder sister’s permission. I was a bad girl. I should have been punished.
When you leave me unattended at night my thoughts go unchecked—my questions go unanswered. I go to this other place. The same place I go when I’m writing a story.
I can hear their mouths when they kiss. Saliva stringing and pulling apart, making these obscene squishing noises that I am severely conflicted about. I hear it as I’m shifting underneath my comforter, the sound emitting from the room beside mine. It’s faint, so faint that at first I thought it was the leftover shower water dripping on the floor. Then the noises became elongated, and I knew it was the product of humans. The sound of their wet and smacking skin makes me an unready bud that’s been peeled open.
The sound makes me feel like I want to recoil into my shell, but I want it. I rattle the way my mug does when I turn the microwave on high. I want that feeling pounding against my skin like heavy droplets of rain. The disinhibited wanting and clashing of teeth and tongues but this time with somebody who really wants to take their time—
I remember being injected with a love so pure that I didn’t need to take my medication. I remember when being good was enough.
When I lose something it takes finding something new to get it back. I lost the freedom of exhaling with ease in the presence of young men who I don’t know, or understand. Last October I watched all three imaginings of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films in one night and allowed it to haunt me while I slept. Leatherface slashed my stomach in half with his chainsaw. He had taken the first layer of my twenty-one-year-old skin and my coffee-stained teeth. Sally, if she was a slut instead of a virgin.
I had cut a rip in my baby lavender tank and taken two tubes of fake blood and emptied them both. Some dripped from my forehead, some over my neck, some splattered across my chest, and some smeared across my chin and cheeks like war paint. That was last year when I wanted to be scary.
This year, my roommate, a girl with disheveled blond hair and a philosophy major, assigned Halloween my favorite holiday solely based on my oversized Metallica T-shirt and the smeared mascara under my eyes.
I like Halloween for several reasons. One, I get to cover myself in as much fake blood as I please. Two, nobody can tell me I’m weird because of it. Three, I can be sexy, dress the way sexy is supposed to dress, and talk the way it’s supposed to talk. Or, if I fail, I can watch other people try to look sexy. For girls it’s always clothing cut just below the thigh, so you can see almost everything. A loose, but form-fitting yellow mini dress: sexy traffic controller. For guys I suppose it’s a tight-fit superhero suit of some kind, like Batman: ripples indented on the abs to imitate a six-pack. Deadpool if he’s not like the other guys. Or a cowboy.
Cowboys ride around on horses with pistols in their back pockets. They’re like vampires who can smell the blood on me from miles away. Cowboys get turned on by the idea of conquering the already broken.
The perfect view of swaying green, right in front of me. I looked at the tall sets of wood and my fingertips grazed the fuzzy leaves. There is a humming under my skin as they tower over me, dancing crookedly. I stare at their bumping of branches, the brushing of bush. Like the brushing of an arm on an arm, young skin against young skin. Nobody understands what I mean when I point at them. They’re dancing, don’t you see it? These trees are the only place my body feels safe. We don’t appreciate them enough, the pure and clean air they bring to our lungs. Call me pathetic, but I’m a tree hugger, that’s right. I try to understand roughness that leaves my fingers in splinters. I look at them, the sky, then at my thigh accidentally brushing against another. I pull back suddenly, nearly trip over my feet running to the bathroom. A red solo cup spills on my foot.
I’ve always been afraid to cry in front of the mirror. I do it here because I’ve got enough liquor flowing through me to start a fire. I smooth my hair, disheveled from my American flag printed cowboy hat, blot the wet eyeliner streaks on my cheeks, and sniffle. I meant it to be ironic. A brown girl dressed like a whorish Uncle Sam.
I hear “Gimme More” blasting from the living room. It’s Britney, Bitch.
Dance, I do. I saunter, or do what I think is saunter. I kick a leg in front of the other like a praying mantis and wave my arms around as if I am pushing them through unclean pond water. That is not sauntering, it’s something of my own making because I can’t stand to abide by the rules of all that is defined. I stumble drunkenly in my skimpy booty shorts and tank top, which is tight enough to squeeze my barely-there breasts together. I think I’m successfully sexy. I down what’s left of my cup, licking my chin as it drips down the sides of my face.
I swear to God I can dance. My knees lower, I get to the ground with my star-spangled cowboy hat slipping off my head as post-head-shaving Britney Spears blares over the loudspeakers. That was supposed to be her comeback moment, swaying around lazily in her shimmery bra and tiny shorts lip-syncing to her own lyrics at the VMAs. She was supposed to be sexy. Instead, the tabloids called her a fat drunk.
For a second my knees dig into the sticky, liquor-covered floor. I feel the blood cells bursting and bruises forming. I have this need to be swallowed into the ground. I point outside the window, and nobody’s eyes follow because here I’m a shadow, nothing. I point to the lengthy bodies of swaying and kissing greenery. Why don’t you understand? They’re dancing and it’s all for you.
Was there a part of me that liked it? A sickly, poisoned stem that I’m not aware of? Was there a part of me that begged for it with my silence? Was there a part of me that was long gone from the physical plane? Was there a part of me that was wandering around, watching myself sink cowardly into the cushion under his heavy breathing, his rage-filled hands? Was there a part of me that accepted it?
Was there a part of me that could’ve said __?
Give me a gun, I’ll shoot it. In the air, in the mirror. I’ll take one of the pieces scattered on the floor, the piece that contains my left and only my left eye. You know when you look in the mirror and you stare for too long, and you start to think you’re staring at a demon? Then you look away because you’re scared the demon is starting to look back at you? That’s what the left eye is like. I read somewhere that the mirror is hard water. In the liquid void of reflection, I’m never-ending.
You can be anyone. You’re not special enough to be the sole you. I’m sure you wonder what I think about. This, I’m egotistic enough to be certain of. I suppose that you think about whether I feel anything at all. Most of the time, I try to appear as if I feel nothing. I try to crawl underneath my own skin as if I were born a turtle. If I were born a turtle, I’d have a shell, wouldn’t I?
Some things, some people, are just made to be unmoored.
This is how they made me. Out of control. This is how I was born. I used to throw eggs from the twelfth floor of my apartment building when I was a little girl. I’d watch them hit the windshield wipers and hear the splat sound against the glass. I’d watch them nearly strike the woman on the phone in her backyard. She didn’t even notice I was throwing them, so I kept going until she did. Do you want to know why? I was bored.
I went to the park that day because I was bored. The sun was refreshingly hot and bright. It looked like a yellow cast lamp under the substances, leaving a dot in my vision. I went to your house, allowed you to fondle with my breasts while I watched Jennifer Connelly grace the screen in a frilly wedding gown—because I was bored. I feigned a laugh at your mispronunciation of “Labyrinth.” Laby-rinth. My whole life, I’ve been bored. I wanted something that would take me out, make my soul tumble out of a vehicle as the tires dash at a hundred miles per hour. Trying to end the boredom, I became ruined. Trying to end the boredom, I walked down the stairs, but my body stayed limp across your pull-out bed in the attic. My underwear off and my top peeled down to my waist, no tears because the spirit had already left. This is a crime scene. I come back to the site to flash photos of my blood-stained, lavender lace panties. Trying to end the boredom, I realized all I wanted was a wet paintbrush stroking my skin, coloring me yellow.
My teachers used to scold me when I went to other places. Like on top of the imaginary pink pony that I told everyone was mine. I kept going to this place. There was a shell and then black and then a portal.
Inside the portal I found that I’m in between. Nothing, therefore, everything. A little mark with unruly black hair. I sat silently in the back and I stayed in this place.
This place is where the floor is made of cool marble. I lay myself down and press my cheek on it and feel my sizzling skin turn icy. This place is my house. In my house there is a chandelier, with flames in place of crystal, and a large bathtub. The bathtub is deep. So deep that when I sink in all the way only the top of my head sticks out. I sink under the water for a minute to understand the brink of death.
The water is warm. So warm that I feel my own warmth pool between my thighs. I could come from the feeling of it sinking just beneath the first layer of skin. This is the pleasure center of the house.
I have always liked the water. At the beach I wait for the waves to pick up so they can carry me. They push me gently back to shore, where it’s only up to my ankles. The nature of the ocean is gentle and motherly, it’s the nature of nature that turns it rough.
In my house the bedroom is floorless. I fall into it every night. Here I am falling through images. Through my imaginary ponies. My backyard that never was. This is the death center, where I hit rock bottom.
I had a dream that I said the word. I dreamed of my thighs being felt up by a man I didn’t know, and I could feel his dirty breath. It’s always that one breath that’s all the same. It’s like a black flame they share, an insistent, parasitic desire. It happens so quickly, the shift, the flip from shining pearls to pure black. Insistent desire, the wrong kind, the soul-sucking kind, the black hole.
Whenever I go to the beach, it’ll call me to submerge myself—and I will—but only up to my midriff. I’m afraid to go too deep, afraid it’ll kill me. Although I recall jumping into the deep end of a swimming hole, just once, on a trip to Madagascar. I stood over the water, my cowardly reflection rippling across the body of deep blue. I held myself, shivering and damp from the afternoon swim in the shallow end. My feet slipped against the gritty, wet rock as I waited for the right moment to jump.
I had a dream of being shaken by his touch so violently that the word spilled from my mouth twice. __, __!
I know this feeling. I know because I can hold it in my hands and put myself back in that place. That place is my house. That place is outside, where you are, where you’ve always been. The underground warehouse raves with your friends. Late one night, you opened the chiffon ceiling. You came into my house and set the roof on fire.
I took this feeling from my womb as you watched it pulse and drip blood from my hands.
So, why won’t you believe me?
You can’t fill the void unless you feel the void. I stood on the edge of the rock, still waiting. The only other girl on the trip told me she’d save me if I drowned. That god, Her god, is with me. She was a six-foot-tall Mormon girl with shiny blond hair and lifeless aquamarine eyes. She told me that I have nothing to be afraid of, and welcomed me from her spot at the center of the deep end, fresh water bubbling over the rocks. She welcomed me with open arms to save myself, the same way the Lord saved her. I believed her.
Fearing the void made me think I was dying. My chest pulsing harsh and fast, the rock scraping mercilessly against my slippery feet. But it called me quietly. Welcomed me to sink or swim. I jumped. The melody of the void is a deep gurgling and rumbling that brushes gently against my eardrums. The earth is separate from this; the earth is pavement and platforms, and this is just falling, forever. For a second I thought it would keep me. It lets me feel boundlessness, lets me feel the fear of sinking, my feet never touching the floor. For a second I am suspended in the void, and the nature of the void is neutral. For a second I don’t think about anything at all. For a second I’ve returned to my mother’s womb, curled up into myself. For a second the lamplight is dim, and my little body is beside hers on my bed. She’s singing me to sleep. The nature of the void is static.
I woke up in a sweat-muddled body. I woke up with the violence finally purging itself from me. The remnants of the watery, endless void still clinging to my skin like a breastfeeding infant. I woke up today unashamed.
I have brief moments of true sexiness. On the StairMaster, when I’m covered in a sheen of sweat and I’m huffing hot and moist puffs of air. Sometimes I get carried away on the steps. I put the speed on five and almost walk myself over the edge. The press machine. The one that forces your thighs to push down. Sometimes I hold them down a little longer, let it burn a little more because it makes my insides melt.
I’m in line for the girls’ bathroom. The material of my mesh blouse is damp with sweat as women line up behind me, and the air grows hot and silent. I can feel them looking around. I can feel them looking at me, and I would replace the floor with knives just to know how they see me. Whether they’re really seeing me, or seeing through me. The truth is they’re not paying attention to me at all. They’re all so focused on themselves, the mirror, their delicate hands, the loose strand of hair, and beads of sweat on their upper lips. We’ve been waiting in this line for a couple of minutes now. Today is the second day I have been bleeding. I want to rip my shedding uterus lining from me and feed it to the soil in my garden for roses to grow. Perfectly in season, it’s nearly eighty degrees.
Somebody has been sitting in a stall for too long. We hold our breaths waiting for our turn. This is so much more painful without my music. I didn’t take Tylenol for my cramps because the pressure doesn’t start until around 10 a.m. I woke up at eight in the morning, when it’s a delightful throbbing that feels manageable. I forgot about what happens at ten o’clock and I’m upset with myself, but I’ve accepted it. The stall finally flushes, and the door swings open. Swirling in the toilet bowl is my left eyeball, surrounded by the last layer of skin. The layer of slightly more youthful flesh that you liked because it was always soft and warm. I can feel her coming out of me; she plops into the toilet bowl in pieces, and I sigh in relief. My womb empties. I’m not afraid of you anymore.
God forbid a girl wear a shirt with her nipples visible through it. Sometimes I want to rebel without reason. I want you to see my nipples and the fatty tissue of my breasts bouncing because I can see how it makes you squirm. You stare at them, then look away quickly, and then look again like a toddler with no self-control. You’re ashamed of how perverted they make you feel.
Covered or uncovered doesn’t matter. Covered, your eyes find vulgarity in the shapes my mouth makes when they have nowhere else to go. You’d find pleasure in prodding it open if it were stapled shut. Uncovered, your eyes land on my areolas, whore first, Madonna second. I am not ashamed. Look at the body and sink in lust or swim past it as if it’s nothing.
My body in this place is a copper sculpture, fogging up with cold mist from the outer air creeping in. You stare up at it when you visit and quickly get bored when you find there’s nothing inside of it that you can take. Copper is a common metal, pounded into pennies and worth one cent. The body in this place is covered in thin drapery, similar to the chiffon ceiling. Nipples through the material and the V-shape between the legs are where your eyes go while a droplet of blood hits the floor between the insides of the ankles. You don’t notice, and you don’t care to.
There is no escaping your unraveling gaze and you’re angry at me, so damn angry that staring is all you’re allowed.
I can hear a girl’s classical music playing through her headphones as she click-clacks on her keyboard. I’d like to wrap my body in her spirit. How can she type coherently during times like this? Is she even really typing, or trying to convince her imagined audience that she’s still sane? The soft piano blasting out makes me violent with pleasure. The way it lulls me, I want to cut open my stomach and place a still chirping bluebird safely inside. So, I do. I take that bird and shove it beneath my rib cage. I’ll fall asleep tonight with its noise sending hot vibrations through me until sunrise. I promise, I will be whole again.
Moon Khan is a creative nonfiction and short story writer. She enjoys incorporating fantastical elements into her work and using her background as a psychology student to explore the concepts of human nature and social conditioning.