LEDA by Nenet

Index

LEDA LEDA

NENET Boobs……………………………………………………...Page 3 ADRI MINOLITI Aborto Legal Es Vida (Photo)…………………....Page 6 LIV SCHULMAN -

LE DA

Trailer……………………………………………………..Page 7 LINFA OLOGRAMMA La Muerte De La Simetría (Photo)………….…Page 11 CEMENTERIO MARINO My Mom Wouldn’t Let Me Be A Lesbian…..Page 12 LINFA OLOGRAMMA (Photo)…………………………………………….…….Page 14 CAMILA DEL GUERCIO The Queen Of The Flowers………..…………….Page 15 ANA KHATCHIKIAN Dirty……………………………………………………..Page 18

Issue #1 1

NENET

My body wasn’t mine anymore to paint or play, but a property of strangers. Strangers that could gaze at my chest, my legs, hips, my non existent ass, and what’s worse, decide its worth.

Boobs When I was fifteen, I was slim and had a flat chest. I wore ragged jeans and camouflage t shirts; I didn't know how to style my curly hair, so I always kept it hidden on a tight ponytail. I can’t remember much about that year; I know I started writing poetry and left behind my watercolors of ducks and abstract houses. I suffered in school. I wasn’t good at numbers or at wearing the uniform and I was in love with the popular guy in school who –of course– didn’t even know who I was. I also thought I was inevitably ugly and fat. On a day like any other day, I looked down (the memory resembles that, the “Let’s cut to the chase” moment of human biology) and I had boobs. Big boobs, boobs that looked bad under my tomboy shirts, boobs that made me think of bras and a future plagued with crying babies. I hated them. I hated myself. I hated not being able to read a smart book about puberty and how to act, where to run; I longed for any source of consolation or comfort. I was angry.

Argentina is a country where men seem to have inherited the misogyny of old tango lyrics (“all women are the same” Dramas can be solved with a quick slap in the face) and the loudness of Italians that cat calls you in the street or what’s worse, grabs or touches you, like President Berlusconi turning professionals or athletes into mere objects that only exist for his visual delight. I didn’t know about feminism or female writers, artists and intellectuals or how they embraced their womanhood. “Examples” and “role models” in magazines seemed to live only to please (in the kitchen or in bed), learn how to give head to prevent their man to abandon them for a more suitable partner, and if you didn’t have a boyfriend well, your life meant almost nothing. It wasn't about love but about finding a man to fulfill you as a woman, to shout to the world that you were appreciated, that you were approved and finally –oh, the joy– complete. Before my first kiss, before having sex or dancing with someone for the first time, one afternoon on my way home, a guy walked past me and, with total impunity, extended his arm and rubbed it all across my breasts. I kept walking, feeling sick, shocked and abused. Back at school I was still the misfit who did well in Literature and cultural studies but poorly at romance. I was witty and funny, I had things to say and a purpose in life (to be a writer and lead an eccentric life surrounded by flowers, tropical birds and prints

from the XVIII century): I wasn’t a desirable object simply because I wasn’t an object. I believed in equality and had faith in love. My last memory of high school was a male classmate staring intently at my uniform polo shirt with his mouth almost hanging open. He poked his desk partner and said “check her out, she has boobs”. During the next five years, I wore baggy shorts, baggy pants and giant coats. I learnt to fight back. I exhorted friends to fight back. I met others who also learnt to fight back. I knew that there would come a day where my own words would set me free and like the poet wrote before me, today I celebrate myself and my sisters.

LIV SCHULMAN Trailer A movie's trailer disposes the exact dose of desire and frustration. Femme is walking around a room. A kind of gym in an apartment, two or three exercise bicycles, Femme is wearing some kind of sportswear made of spandex. Femme (me):

Second Woman steps on the treadmill, she starts warming up slowly, and then runs for a while until she becomes breathless. They are face to face working out. Sweat is filling the room and their heavy breathing steams the windows, and Femme is wearing glasses, looking like this desperately hopeless sexy character staring at Second Woman's legs that are heavily muscled while she is running and the room slowly fills with desire and Femme's glasses steam up more and more while Second Woman's legs hurt due to running and you can perfectly see her well defined muscles sweating.

This is all about making pornography. We're shooting in here.

Second Woman is actually a very tall, muscly and sensual transvestite.

The woman approaches one of the bicycles. The camera angles the bike as if it was an object of desire.

Muscles. Muscles and desire.

The woman is alone in the empty, tacky, completely redecorated room with a big Persian carpet.

Desire and plastic. Femme walks around in this carpeted gym, vaguely caressing the machinery.

All Femme could think about was plastic, plasticity, and wonder how was it like to actually look so plastic, because both women are wearing this heavily blonde brushed hair, this ridiculous sportswear that actually flatters their asses and they both look so superficial. And plastic.

Femme approaches the objects and shows them as in TV commercials. Femme runs a finger across the thingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; edges; she runs her tongue across her lips, lifts her leg, and starts stretching out. Femme runs her finger pulling her tongue out, she gasps, she caresses the machinery. Another woman appears but she stays in a corner for a while, she's dressed up as Femme, with sexy sportswear and leg warmers. The woman lies in the floor for a while.

Femmeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s secret job is to weight down computers with sexual spam that she writes inspired in real-fake conversations she holds online with ex-boyfriends living in other cities who are physically unable to really fuck her. Femme: I'm having cyber-sex with some guy, some guy I actually fucked five years ago but he doesn't know I'm faking it, I just pretend I'm jerking off online, but I think he really does.

Femme approaches the exercise bike and rides it. She pedals for several minutes. 7

I don't, I think it's ridiculous, but I still want to please him so I just fake it. I mean I'm desperate for virtual sex, I guess that all Internet sex is about anal sex, and how the forbidden thing in real life becomes this democratic thing in virtual life.

Do you believe in universal aesthetics?

That's how it looks, anyway.

Like the way being in a gym invites you to some passive desire. Like the way I’m looking at you makes me want to shiver under your weight.

We talk about the idea of me fucking him in the ass, just because he's a sensitive guy with an obvious bad taste, and he loves democratic situations. He says he's masturbating and I add “me too” mercifully. I'm a merciful person. I copy-paste the whole conversation and turn it into spam, and then I infest stranger's computers with spam disguised in penis elongation advertisements. Femme and Second Woman keep talking and working out. The room is so full of steam that you can’t see a thing. The mirrors are foggy and everything is physical, and both women start thinking about how nice it would be to rub each other hard.

Like the kind of way a table is always inviting you to fuck on a table? I wish I were feeling the coldness of your desk on my ass.

I know how moved you are right now and I know how much you love my smell, my sweat, how much you like seeing me sweat, and I know that you're just dying to blow me even if you don't dare to tell me because the whole idea was to be able to shoot a porn film without really fucking; to enter into this dynamic of eternal pedaling and running and talk about what's going on, just describe what you don't see, the way internet sex works and the way you just like to pretend you're doing it, you know just using the physical and virtual space to fill it with conceptual ideas about sex, and just to pretend things are going on while they really aren't, just create some intensity all from imagination claiming that is exactly the same to do something right, wrong, and to do nothing at all until making love becomes and endless vibration. But you know it isn’t true, and inconsolable anxiety takes over, and I look at you wearing those terribly tight tights and inside me I shake with desire and I just want to surrender to the fact that my desire for you is like spam and that spam is an infestation and that I'm being infested with desire for you, just like termites infest a house. I press my G-string over my pussy, thinking of you, I press it and I feel it pulsating.

Second woman talks: I know what you mean when you say merciful; I am very merciful too, I'm the kind of person that loves helping his brother out, like for example there's this guy that likes to come here once in a while. He's really small but has a huge cock. Although I'm not really that fond of cocks, I'm very tolerant. He comes here and takes off his clothes and he just gazes at me, as if I was about to dominate him but I just stare back.

Second Woman turns off the machine. Femme and Second Woman lay on the floor. They kiss, Femme goes down on Second Woman and inhales for hours, she slowly pulls her tongue out and licks her very slightly. She kisses her pussy, and then licks again. She puts her head on her thigh and masturbates looking at her with graceful love.

I look at him with no desire of touching him and he just tells me how good it is to fuck me on the gym. I never was very good at changing from one element to another; I'm never able to actually act on things. 9

CEMENTERIO MARINO My mom wouldn’t let me be a lesbian (A poem or a farce) When I was eighteen I met her at the park I took her for a ride in the backseat of my bike (This may sound like a lie but it’s true) We had a band we fell in love We wrote for girls we cooked we smoked on the sidewalk It was meant to last But my mom said “She is a witch

And I hope You don’t turn out to be a lesbian” I knew my mom wasn’t right So we walked together holding hands We kissed in front of Everyone and it felt so right

Then she had a girlfriend then I had a boyfriend And I only kissed another girl after I was 25

CAMILA DEL GUERCIO

The Queen Of The Flowers Of the flowers I had the pleasure to encounter I give my vote to the orchid. The orchid is commonly known as the queen of the flowers because it includes sundry species –each of them possessing an overwhelming beauty. Orchids have a strong endurance as shown in their survival of temperature fluctuations. One orchid specimen survives the coolest winter; at the same time, another struggles against the hottest summer. These epiphytes have a complex character –they are solitary flowers as regards other members of their own kind. Nonetheless, orchids enjoy the company of other vegetable companions. An orchid sinks its roots, as firmly as claws, to a neighboring tree and from then on a bound between them is created. The plant will live in an oblique angle to the ground –a similar position to the one performed by a bird in its daily routine jumping from one tree to another. It is well that the rarest flowers should be the best as well. The “Blue Magic” Vanda gives a clear example of this statement. This orchid is not only lavishly pleasant to the eye with its delicate purple petals mottled violet, but also it offers a challenge when the moment of cultivation arrives. Flower growers will have to carefully calculate the appropriate fertilizer dose if they want this fragile lady to last. Otherwise, she would fall in a period of sickness which it would capriciously refuse to overcome – according to many professional opinions on the matter.

Poppies had been my dearest ones for more than three years until I realized they were not as unique as I thought. One can easily obtain a specimen of such a beauteous flower if one happens to saunter through the Patagonian fields. The farmlands of the Argentinean South are overcrowded with their blazing buds, ready to blossom at any time. A positive attribute that poppies share with orchids is that they have a strong tolerance to inclement weather. They do not show the hysterical disposition of the more elegant species. My obsession with poppies reached a drastic point when I decided to immortalize the flower on my skin. I went to the shop and excitedly asked for a Papaver somniferum tattoo on one of my calves. Unfortunately, the results were not as satisfactory as I expected since it looked more like a daisy gone wrong than a wild red blossom. Iris germanica or, as it is commonly called, German iris is a plant which accompanies visitors of the ponds. The iris is a sociable flower for it likes to join clusters of the same kind as long as they share the same color. On no account my intentions are to touch a sore spot of German old wounds. Yet it is a natural fact that blue irises prevent themselves from mingling with their fellows –the yellow irises. Despite this fault, I am fond of them. I found the resemblance between the iris flower and the bird of the same name extraordinary. The Passion flower or passiflora is an utterly curious-looking flower which is number fifth on my list. Although it is distinctive and has plenty of character, it is a vine which means that once it is cut from the plant, it rapidly withers. Furthermore, it is used for medical purposes in Eastern Medicine –as a soporific.

Next to the orchid I place the rose. Roses came in an appealing variety of colors –from radiant red, through electric yellow, to ivory white. A rose harmonizes nicely with both the buttonhole of a gentleman’s lapel and the bodice of woman’s dress. They are the embodiment of femininity; although they always remain faithful to the owner, they do not have the same strength as orchids. Therefore, it is likely that the graceful gal succumbs to an army of greenflies after a boiling sunny day.

When you engage a gardener, the first thing to do is to come to an understanding with him about the Cape Jasmine (or Gardenia augusta). The best way is to settle an arrangement regarding the pruning of the Gingko biloba and palm trees. Let him do on his own accord and give him a generous handful of kumquats so as to receive in return the embracing perfume and paradisal scenery of a garden bursting with lush jasmines.

If you have a respectful treatment, jasmines will become as enthralling as a flower can be. On the contrary, should you neglect their watering for a moment, it will transform into the ugliest shrew ever seen by the human eye with yellow rimming the edge of its petals –a sign of decay.

ANA KHATCHIKIAN

Yet the orchids are resistant to decomposition. They undergo a period of thirty days without losing their original coloring. In their last stages, though vibrant, they narrow in width and dry. It is then when they changed and became useful as bookmarkers. In this manner, they perpetuate their existence longer than any garden plant would ever be capable of.

I moved to Argentina at the peak of my pre teenage years, I was 12. I immediately hated Argentina and all its unglamorous brands such as Telefunken, Grundig and watching Tato Bores on Sunday nights.

Since the deadline was too soon, I decided to use Google Translate. I hope it’s not a problem, you ‘all get the meaning I’m sure.

My dissatisfaction led me to punk music or punk led me to dissatisfaction. I talked about it at school to the only dumb kid who talked to me. He said his cousin was just like me: Pablo is just like you, half fat and listens to all that music you like (this school kid collected Magic Trolls with great eagerness). We planned to run into each other at galleries Churva, I would go to its entrance at 5 pm and they would happen to walk by. My father left me at the door. I pretended to look for CDs, I ended up buying Dirty. I saw a chubby kid with a Sex Pistols shirt that cliché-, and a chain around his neck with a bike padlock and Gloria Vanderbilt skinny jeans. He was his dumb cousin. My friend said: Ana, what are you doing here? This is my cousin, Pablo Acosta. We walked down Cabildo Avenue and a nun was handing out papers about Christ and how young people were evil. When Pablo walked by he spat at her and said “I'm the antichrist, bitch”. His rebellion surprised me and a cigarette in his mouth even more. I gave him my number. The next day he called me and invited me to his house at 4 pm. His room used to be the servants quarter, small and clattered with pictures of women with their legs spread open and cocks penetrating asses. At first I didn't understand the pictures, never seen one erect dick and even less in a hole. He said I was sweaty and that in a while he would make me perspire more. He put a porno in his VHS which hung from the wall. The moaning and

dirty talking started pouring from the TV. -Do you like my shirt? I had put on my new shirt with flowers. I didn't know what to say, but I guessed he wanted me to do the same as seen on the TV screen. I put my foot on his crotch. He gave me a kiss, my first French kiss, but we mainly banged our teeth. His mother interrupted the magic moment and I hid in his closet. When I came out of the closet he said that was the most disgusting kiss of his life. “Fatso, do you wanna lose weight? Take cocaine and you'll see how you stop being fat.” But we decided to sniff glue. I skipped school for glue sniffing on the terrace of my house in Villa Ortuzar. He sucked my tits and that turned me on. He had lady skinny jeans and military boots. He pulled down his pants and I saw his little penis, it went inside me. “We are going to fuck but without kissing”. From that day on all the punk kids came from Playland –the arcade on Cabildo Avenue and Monroe- to my house. They would all come to my house to get laid. I never felt so wanted and although I was fat and ugly they would climb on top of me.

At first I didn't mind ‘cause I was so thrilled to have him hold my hand in the street and take me to dinner, but then I started to think, wait, I want to make out with some other song, or, I wanna have sex now. When we had sex I was ashamed of my body and I wouldn't take off all my clothes, even though he begged me to take off my shirt. I would have sex with a shirt on so he wouldn't see my belly. He said that he loved my love handles, he was very positive but I still didn't want him to see my belly with pink tarnished stretch marks and loose skin. All I wanted to do was please him so one day I decided I let him fuck me in the ass. He had quite a big thick penis. I didn't even think about it, I just let him slip it in and man did that hurt. Anyway, after a few months we started to have less and less sex and once we went by a love hotel and I said, hey, let's go in. He just looked at it like, why would we go in there? The last time I saw him he had left a letter written on the Word Pad of my pc explaining why he was breaking up with me (maybe I should stick that letter here). I hated the way he made me feel so unwomanly, like I was not enough of a woman.

-------------When I was 25 I fell madly in love with a guy while I was trying to break up with my first girlfriend after a 7 year old relationship. It started very casual, he gave me his msn and we started to chat for hours every day he said he would stop by my new house. We watched gore movies spread out on the floor. While we were listening to Depeche Mode he looked me in the eye and said “Men receive beauty through the eye” whatever that meant but I took it like: You may be fat but I’ll still kiss you. A college mate told me: Oh, he must like guys to go out with you.

Next stop. I am an angry 21 year old college goer and the guy I get along with best in class has a small Subaru from the 80’s, really nice. We hang out a lot and one day we end up at my house. We start making out, I start kissing his neck and he stops me. 'Wait, I can't go on' he says. I dreaded whatever he had to say next. He said: 'I can't go on because I'm not ready to be with a body like yours.' I just wanted the earth to open and swallow me and never come back. Never ever ever ever.

That was the first time I experienced male dominance. He chose the music; he chose the movies, decided when we would make out or have sex. If I played music or something he would say, lets listen, do or watch something else.

Fatty fatty boo-hoo.

LEDA Issue #1 Edited by Nenet E-Mail Me nenetentamarindo@gmail.com www.vidayummy.blogspot.com