Dear Dirty Readers, At the beginning of this year, the idea was conceived of a literary forum where sexuality could be explored in a modern and liberated as much as liberating way. Though we may live in a more permissive society, a real discussion of sex rarely occurs in the public realm. Don’t be fooled by the plethora of Page 3 tits: Issues like gender and non-normative behavior are considered left-field, only of minority concern, or simply ‘unfit’ for polite conversation. Throughout the ages, it was artists as opposed to the mainstream media, that fought on the forefront of engaging with sexuality in a more progressive, creative and provocative manner. Literature has an infamous history of producing works initially considered so indecent that they were put on trial, censored and often banned for obscenity. Many of these works, including Nabokov‘s Lolita, Ginsberg‘s Howl and Lawrence‘s Lady Chatterley‘s Lover, went on to become highly acclaimed works of art by a more discerning audience. Highly sexual literature, especially when dealing with topics that divert from widely accepted, comfortable societal norms, require an open mind as well as a certain emotional and intellectual intelligence from writer and reader alike. When this is given, sexual preferences, kinks and phantasies might be expressed and celebrated shamelessly, offering a source of creative energy and empowerment to the individual and their sexual imagination. So, instead of relying on Katy Perry and the likes for the lowdown on 21st century kink, we began assembling some truly talented creatives. We sought purveyors of bold, sex-positive, honest writing, but also quirky, sensitive and experimental pieces. Now we can present to you the result, a stimulating collision of high and low art, hardcore smut and iambic pentameter: the first issue of Read Dirty to Me Zine. We hope you enjoy the read and find some food for thought. Laura J, Laura T and Josephine
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. Oscar Wilde
To be titled One of the most underrated aspects of sex is its capacity to enable the development of a person’s emotional maturity. Part of becoming an adult is to move away from following our selfish instincts and to come to the realisation that our learning and our adolescent experiences give us but a small glimpse into the way in which the world works. Left unchecked, our solipsistic viewpoint can become rigid as we see no reason to change. It is only through coming in contact with others that our views are challenged and our aperture onto the world opened up. We become more informed people through our engagement with others, through mediating differences of opinion and world views and coming to a more nuanced understanding. Sex is something that expedites this development although it is not readily discussed or promoted. This is because although we might fancy ourselves as living in a more permissive and more open society, sex is still something that is often feared, labelled as dirty or suppressed altogether in the hope of avoiding all the bedevilling complications. This is because sex, at a fundamental level, strips away everything with which we arm ourselves in order to conceal our true identity. We might be embarrassed about our bodies but we are also likely to be embarrassed by who we truly are. This is because our true self is quite different from that which we present to the outside world. Our sexual engagement might show us up as being not as confident as we think or the opposite, overbearing and sadistic. It is possible that we secretly want to be feared or to be dominated or to be humiliated, and the strictures of polite society do not allow for such eccentricities to be displayed without disapproval or heavy censure. This is due to the fact that during sex, not only are our clothes removed, bearing every inch of our bodies but in addition, every aspect of our personalities reveals itself, displaying aspects of ourselves that we might not be willing to admit to other friends with whom we are not intimate. Would you be comfortable telling a work colleague that you enjoy being spanked? That you become all aflutter at the prospect of putting a lead on your partner and telling them that you are only to be referred to as Madame Pain? Could you admit to a friend you have known for years that you yearn for the hours in which your partner urinates over every inch of your body? Probably not and this is due to the change in the way you are then perceived by the people with whom you would be providing highly personal information. The revelation of this particular side of yourself might provide people with leverage you cannot be certain of not being abused. Our collective knowledge of the acts that form part of sexual intercourse can often lead us to view it as quite absurd, such are the numerous sexual practices between adults that are foreign to ourselves and which we would never consider forming part of our own sexual conduct. But the plethora of peculiarities is not a reason for revulsion or derision. The sheer variety merely reflects the diversity of the human psyche and that the route to sexual fulfilment can take a number of different paths. It is no coincidence that the time in our lives when we begin to become sexually active is the same time when we are struggling to assert ourselves as fully formed people. Our understanding of who we are takes a long time to work out and it is problematic trying figure out our place in the world and how we relate to other people. This is often mirrored in our sexual practices where at first we are reluctant to reach out to others and we are quite insular. A lot of a teenager’s life is spent pleasuring himself or herself. On one level, this is beneficial as it is both important to explore one’s nascent sexuality and it is also difficult to reach out to others. But as we mature and enter into more substantial relationships, we come to know more of ourselves through our interactions with other people.
Sex presents the opportunity to truly acknowledge someone for who they are rather than the idealised version fixed in a person’s imagination. We think of ourselves as possessing sleek and incorruptible forms when the truth is that there is a scarcity of those who exhibit the ideal figure. The majority of us are not perfectly shaped in any way; there are parts of us that should be bigger than they are and there are parts that should be smaller than they are. There are asymmetries, marks and bumps that might seem strange or hideous. And this is all before every part of us withers and dies, succumbing to the ravages of age and creeping mortality, that which is already imperfect taking on new degradations in the form of wrinkles, sags and discontinued function. The same is true for our partners. Their bodies do not hold up to the ideals that are projected on cinema screens and that decorate advertising hoardings. We might find ourselves with someone who has one breast bigger than the other or whose back is overwhelmed with hair. Our partner may not have perfectly sculpted limbs or toned muscles but our emotional investment in them in people becomes more important and overwhelms any objective stance we might take on deviations from the prescribed figure. It is at this point where we realise that we do not need to keep chasing these ideals because they are revealed to be hollow and a false guide to reality. Our interaction with others on a deeply intimate basis shatters the preconceptions that were holding us back from seeing things as they truly are. This new wider outlook grants us a better understanding with those with whom we are not intimate. Sex is important not only for our own needs but for bringing us closer to other to others. Through sex, we are shown that whatever differences we may have with people, they are not a means of estrangement but the unavoidable consequences of expression of different identities.
Nick Purves, 27, has been living in London for five years, doing various bits of journalism covering film, music, art and food. He is Features Editor for The London Word, and writes various bits and pieces for radio comedy.
Weasel So Weasel, it has come to this; to your thighs like tall glasses of milk, your biscuit hair, eyes that are like any kind of deep water. It has come to those coiled, snaking guts we had when we were younger still – those balled-up sock guts of an afternoon stolen back from college. It has come to the spastic, ticking urges rising through skin at the simplest repositioning of your weasel hips, or the one in twenty-seven kisses I might land about your mouth, of the right temperature and diction. Was I even hungry once for eating? Were you ever not the end to all fasts?
How shall I say this? I was sick as worms and knew it from my aching balls to my heavy tongue. I lay on the forest floor, the beetles rolling their dung loud as boulders. You should not be up here alone she said and pushed to my chin the bulbous lump of a fig, pressed its cool suede skin to the side of my face. We rolled it together, to the edge of my mouth. A shock of macaws took off, colour rushed to our cheeks as sap foamed from the wound of a nearby stump. I had never eaten… How shall I say this? I had never eaten from a woman’s hand nor had she fed before such fruit to a man.
Learning from Father My father sang in church like the thud of god, as if the walls could not contain his fear. A girl’s mind is ramekin, so easy to over-brim with littleness. One thick gasp of back-lane air and I was wayward, men-stranged, keen to please each gawping fish in the village pond. A small thing went wrong. Father broke it in. The book I took instead was bright and wise and short and red. It was over very quickly. And with Father stood above me, dictating, the only guilty eyes I felt were my own, reflected in the studs of his leather belt.
Jack Underwood was born in in 1984. He graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in 2005 and is currently studying towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, where he also teaches English Literature and Creative Writing. He is a librettist, musician and co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and was named a Faber New Poet in 2009. His debut pamphlet was published by Faber in October 2009 and his poems also feature in ‘Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st Century’ from Bloodaxe. He reviews for Ambit and Poetry London.
Devotion 'I'm just going to the loo' says Kylie. She walks wobblily into the bathroom and sits down on the toilet, balloon in one hand, canister in the other. While taking a piss, she fixes up a double balloon and sucks the whole thing into her lungs. Her mind, sight and hearing all throb as she inhales, and she forgets where she is. It is ecstasy. Letting the flaccid and empty balloon slip through her fingers and fall to the floor, she tilts her back against the wall and puts a cigarette between her wet lips. She clicks open the lighter and her head blows up. Twenty minutes pass, and Jason is prostrated on top of the black satin sheets wondering where Kylie is. Wet trusses of bleached white hair dangle before his sunny blue eyes. He rises from the bed, slips on a pair of black jeans and picks up the silver revolver before stumbling to the bathroom. He finds her limp, naked and headless body slumped over the toilet, but still sitting relatively upright against the wall. Blood and grey matter squish between his toes as he edges tentatively further into the room. He affords his eyes time to ruefully peruse the scene before offering his verbal assessment of the situation. 'Deep,' is the lengthily uttered conclusion. He looks about him surreptitiously. He really needs to go himself but cannot bear the thought of touching the body. No one is about, no one would know, so why not? With this in mind, he unzips and starts to piss, and a golden rainbow of urine glitters as it cascades between Kylie's legs into the bowl, shattering the silence of death in the room like a bullet through a sheet of ice. A wasp watches Jason voyeuristically from his perch on the window. This precious moment is their secret. It is their single, shared, fleeting snippet of irrevocable solace before the advent of a new dawn of pain for both of them. Jason looks about again. Again, no one would know. Justifying his actions as a lover's gift, he points upwards slightly so that the last drops fall onto Kylie's stomach, before shaking, swatting the wasp, calling the ambulance, putting the nozzle of the gun into his mouth and firing.
Tom Sherriff , 21, is a South Londoner currently studying History of Art in Manchester. He has been writing music reviews for the Manchester magazine High Voltage for a while, but has not had any of his more creative writerly endeavours published before, but you can read them on http://jealousyj.blogspot.com
Relations with the Absolute He began to pay for company every evening. On Mondays Christina would visit. They had established a routine in which he would carefully wash her from head to foot, slathering soap over her entire form, running his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp with shampoo, before applying a number of towels as she stood upright and still. After blowdrying her hair and brushing it repeatedly with thick, languorous strokes, he would perform a thorough manicure, followed by a foot massage. Covering the bed with pristine white cotton sheets, he would direct her towards them and she would lie down upon them entirely naked, her soft breasts and blue eyes and gaping cunt staring upwards at him, whilst he gradually coated every available inch of her flesh with a very thin layer of icing sugar. He would then proceed to lick the substance away from her with an extraordinary slowness, lingering in particular places for long periods, often only dabbing the very tip his tongue on to the surface of her skin, so that only a few specks of the sugar would be removed by a single motion of the tongue. Her cunt was always the very last destination, and could only be explored once all of the sugar had been removed. The fleshly, sour human flavour of her sex was always shocking to encounter after so much sugar. Each week Christina would become quite wet, but would never have a full orgasm, although he certainly attempted to make her do so on every occasion. He would never penetrate her during these sessions, preferring to focus efforts on his mouth. They always parted very amicably. On Tuesdays Maia would visit. He would be waiting for her, suspended from the ceiling, held aloft by a contraption he had assembled, a cunning torturing device of his own invention, consisting of an array of ropes, straps, buckles and harnesses. Whilst his naked form hovered amidst them, Maia would alter his position on a whim, tightening the grip around one of his limbs until he experienced excruciating shudders of pain, perhaps to be relieved by a feather against his prick, or a fleeting stream of kisses travelling over the length of his belly. At any moment, this feigned affection might give way to further smacks and slaps, dramatic insults intoned in a vicious gleeful voice in a steady ritual parade of torment and humiliation. He would savour the sense of anticipation, knowing that he was not allowed to take things as far as he wished to until later, and that he would receive inevitable punishments if he attempted to do so. On Wednesdays Fiona would visit. He expected her to read to him from whichever book he had left at the end of the bed. Shedding all of their clothes and lying on top of the bed, she would mount him with her back turned to his face, giving very slow and gentle thrusts, whilst reading the pages of the book that had been marked up for the purpose. He would always know the passage well and begin to work towards his climax when the reading he had selected was beginning to reach the end. Ideally, he would always ejaculate whilst she was finishing the last sentence, but if this did not happen then he would attempt to do so as soon as he could. The texts that he chose varied greatly. Only occasionally were they of an overtly sexual nature, for the most part being poems or portions of prose that he believed constituted great literary works and which subsequently aroused him enormously. Bringing such elevated, lofty ideals to an act that he had for long considered base, felt like an exquisite act of intelligence and refinement to him. As soon as she uttered a single word, he would always find himself erect immediately.
On Thursdays Lucy would visit. She would provide an hour and a half of entertainment whilst he lay horizontal, masturbating, as she tantalized him with a variety of outfits, poses and manoeuvres, arriving so close to his body at times that he could feel the warmth of her breath upon him. However, there was a strict rule of no touching whatsoever. She would shimmy and wiggle, waving her breasts in his face, shuffling back and forth towards the bed and then away from it again. After prolonged teasings with bikini straps and stockings, she would finally reveal herself, baring her breasts and massaging them, before performing a series of cartwheels and handstands, always ending with her balancing on her head with her legs spread outwards in V-formation, at which moment he would allow himself to reach a climax, spurting warm come across his belly amidst a chorus of groans. At this moment Lucy would move into another room, quietly clothe herself and discreetly take her leave. On Fridays Angelique would visit. As he lay on the bed, Angelique, bereft of all clothing, would carefully place caterpillars on to different parts of his body. Slowly, with delicate, carefully measured movements, she would place around thirty of them on his legs, groin and chest. Gradually she would then take them away, equally slowly, so that the entire process would usually last for about an hour. They would proceed to crawl from one region of his body to another at will, creating exquisite stirrings inside the cells of his skin. The feeling of having hundreds of tiny legs pattering across him acted as a thrilling prelude to the human caresses that he knew would follow. The haphazard movements of the insects brought on an unparalleled erotic charge. They incited an urgent, hungry itching sensation just underneath the veneer of his flesh. At times during the procedure he would groan with the pleasure of aggravation and deliberate postponement. When his ordeal was finally over, with all of the caterpillars removed and safely locked away inside their case, Angelique would mount him and begin thrusting softly. Everything would be over very quickly on most occasions, as the excitement that had built up within him by this point was usually one of enormous proportions. Once they had finished, Angelique would always give him a brief kiss on the lips as he lay back exhausted, before dressing herself and going home. On Saturdays Lorna would visit. He would engage in long conversations with her. From the outset he had attempted to convince her that he was a private detective. Smoking in bed, he would recount tales of adulterers and business men whom he had trailed and on occasion fought. Lorna had been chosen for this role because he believed that she was the most gullible of the girls that he was meeting. She found the stories genuinely romantic and alluring, a fact that he sensed easily. Whenever he touched her with his stories, the act of deception was a pleasing turn-on for him. He liked that he was successfully embodying a masculine archetype of strength and virility. Playing this role once a week suited him. Other smaller lies would also enter their conversations, so that he used his time with her to explore a variety of fantasies of conduct. These many deceptions made sex with her an almost intellectual exercise. Even if the physical details of their relations held nothing unusual about them, he still felt that their sex was somewhat distinctive and rare.
On Sundays Abigail would visit. After walking into the bathroom she would change into a white lace wedding dress. Once attired in this way, she would meet him in the living room where he would slowly grope and paw at her, burying his head into the folds of her dress, smelling its freshness, noting stretches of smoothness and sudden creases, following the progress of its shape and length all the way to her feet, which were encased in white leather heels. Gently taking them off, he would put them to one side and begin kissing her feet, then brush his head against her calves and shins, before travelling up through her dress towards her thighs, where he would move his head upwards to observe her white lace underwear adorned with swirling floral patterns and tiny ribbons, with the dark growth of pubic hair visible underneath. At this point he would slowly unzip the back of her dress and drag it towards the ground where it would fall into a heap. Stepping out of it, she would stand still and upright as he unhooked her bra and pulled her underwear off, sliding it down the length of her legs. He would bend her over on the floor, lower his trousers and penetrate her from behind, pounding into repeatedly, before turning her around, allowing himself to come when he had placed both legs on his shoulders.
Alex Novak, 28, lives in Hackney, is unemployed and ‘despises the structures of contemporary society.‘ His piece ‘Relations with the Absolute’ is an excerpt from his forthcoming publication The Currency of Paper, a novel about a reclusive counterfeiter who devises a series of elaborate schemes for spending his money throughout London between the years 1950-1999
When in Arizona. Pink neon lips pucker up to invite him in, pants tightening at the promise of Sexiest Girls- Nonstop, and smaller We’ll Make You Feel Like the Man You Are. Speeding down the last miles of the highway, he leaves all his romantic inclininations and notions of morality behind. He needs this too much not to, and guilt can soften the sturdiest lover. They never turn off the lights in whorehouse lobbies. The buzzing halogen brightness bounces off the white walls; and the shutters infront of the girls’ bedroom windows don’t come up. Constant nighttime on demand. The unnaturalness of it all puts him at ease. Come in, girls! He digs his fingers deep into the plastic covers on the peach sofa, and fixes his eyes on the bouquet of plastic orchids monumentally piled up on the table infront of him. He thinks that real flowers could never be quite as beautiful as these fake ones, and smelling them tickles his nose in an unpleasant way. Which one do you like, honey? Hairtips pointy with perfumed gel brush against the back of his neck. The sweet smell of sticky Baileys liquor, baby oil and cotton candy bubblegum threaten to swallow up his consciousness. and he suppresses an overwhelming urge to hold his breath. He feels dizzy, and the orchids have gone out of focus. Raising an unsteady bottle to his lips, he gulps down some beer, lukewarm from his sweaty hands. The liquid down his throat and the rhythmical sound of heels clicking on linoleum pull him back before it is too late. Which one does he like? In a pathetic attempt at cockiness, circumsized by the nervous quiver of his lip, he clears his throat, uncrosses his legs, inflates his chest and flexes the muscles in his arms. Most of them are from all the nights spent in lonely motelrooms with only himself and pay tv for company. There are eight girls lined up. Five of them are brunette. He has only ever paid for blond whores, and he intends on keeping it that way. Clichées of the cheapest turn him on, years of experience have taught him. Of the three lighthaired girls remaining, one looks like his baby sister. He will not allow himself to consider her. Down to the last two, it is an easy decision. That one. His voice comes out thinner and higher than he anticipated – his ex-girlfriend used to tell him he had a ‘husky growl’ … – as he points to the blonde on the far left. The way she twirled a honey-coloured hair extension around her finger and winked like she wants only him with mascara-hooded eyes made the blood rush into his groin. In the back of his mind he registers it as a business move, but his crotch begs to make-believe otherwise.
The chosen blond giggles triumphantly. Instantly, he regrets his decision; her voice makes his toes curl, but it is bad taste to ask for second chances in these kinds of establishments. He notices that her thighs wobble when she walks, and he hates the silver shoes she is wearing, they remind him of prom night and all the angsty, unsuccessful fumbling it lead to. The blood is out of his groin and back to rushing in his ears. Having made her way over, she bends forward, displaying her unevenly tanned, obviously fake and invitingly large breasts. A hint of approval creeps onto his face but vanishes the second he notices the nicotine stains on her two front teeth. He gets up in slowmotion, buying time. It is only the $50 he has put down that make him stupidly shuffle his feet without a leap and run to follow. He can feel a hairless arm draping itself possessively around his hunched shoulders. First time,hm? Insult to injury. Head hung in defeat, he nods, lying. I’ll take good care of you big boy, you just have to lie back and relax. Furiously knotting his fingers, his last attempt at retaliation gets stuck in his throat. Walking towards her bedroom, pink neon haunts him, pounding before his eyes: We’ll Make You Feel Like the Man You Are!
Berlin-born Josephine Porath, 24, is a writer, reader, American Literature graduate, and regular contributor to Metal Magazine. Josephine obsesses over ‘William Burroughs, the aesthetics of failure, pornographic poetry/poetic pornography and transgressive identities.‘ See Josephine and photographer Laura Jung’s ongoing collaborative photography/writing project at www.ifyoulivedhere.squarespace.com.
A Piece of You You could have been posing for photographs in wrist-cuffs, bending on command, a stranger’s hand-print on your arse. I could have been trapped in your head, trying to find the exit like a bad escape artist, making everything harder for both of us. Who did you want me to be? Your gaoler, with the skeleton key? One year at Hallowe’en you forced me to dress up as Bluebeard and you went as one of my wives, your face white, your throat dripping with red. Such a pretty neck, I was supposed to have said. Don’t think so much, you used to say, when I had to stop halfway. You were never afraid; you ate apples whole, including the core, you gnawed meat to the bone. Once we saw a girl pour hot wax onto her breasts in the shape of a heart – you were not impressed. Why did you provoke me, when I always planned to be gentle? You bought me a pair of leather chaps; they’re wipe-clean, you said. It’s true I was the one you called Master, because you wanted to. And I did what you asked. I only did what you asked me to do.
Two Budgies The mango’s bone is like a cuttlefish, I said proudly, domestic. You looked on holding the pulp. I remember the pull of your mouth on me certain mornings I made a fuss enough, your hair in my hands the colour of a penny. I remember my scream and your sigh; the same row of silence. Once we saw two budgies in a chip shop window. They need something to gnaw, you said. We give and we take away – don’t say I invented romance where there wasn’t any.
Thirty-two Fouettés The first man to worship my feet was the crushed ex-lover of London’s finest domme; he showed me the ring of her name tattooed round his finger before he lay on the ground and touched the soles of my shoes with his tongue. When I was a child, my father took me to Swan Lake to see the famous thirty-two fouettés. I was too young to understand beauty or grace. I sucked ice cream from a tiny paddle; the cold bit my teeth at the root till they squeaked. I was still just a girl when I first held a crop, wore shoes so high I stood en pointe. My girlfriend is a ballerina, my lover sang, as if I danced just for him. It was here in The Cavern, where I learnt the art of discipline. This is Mistress V. She wears rubber sucked to the skin. Her body undulates like a beach licked into irreproachable curves by the sea; for correction her weapon of choice is the cane, for the wolf-whistle, crack!, the straight line of pain. Mistress Kate is zipped in leather neck to toe, a black cosh strapped to her groin. She carries a golfer’s bag full of whips. Dolly is the maid in PVC, gagged and bound to her tray. I’m just mad on restraint, she says later. Do not get in the way or crowd scenes, the guidelines state. Take care not to walk into a backswing. If you are hit you have only yourself to blame. I wear a skirt as short as a trick. Underneath, a mesh tutu like a ruff round a dog’s neck: these knickers were bought especially. Slave X kneels, red-cheeked, chained to a fantasy. This is why he came. I am the sugarplum fairy, dressed in pink. The air parts, making room for him. Where my wand falls, I shed glitter. If he cries stop he won’t mean it. Once, in a dream, I danced with Pierina Legnani, Italy’s prima ballerina. She spun rings round me. Afterwards I sat and watched her tenderly cleaning the blood from her feet.
The Turning They have spoken softly to one another all evening, eaten pasta tossed lightly in olive oil, drunk red wine that slipped from the glass. A great key lies between them. They drank the wine till the bottle was empty, to its last purple drops. They smoked endless cigarettes till the air was blue and their throats rasped. ‘Pass me the lighter,’ she said. ‘Do you believe in life after death?’ she said. ‘Do you love me?’ she said. He touches her fine cheek. He pulls at his trousers caught in his crotch. ‘I have never really been loved,’ she says. She’s crying. She’s holding his hand. He’s holding his breath. Her eyes are closed like buds. The late smudge of colour on her skin. He reaches for the key. When his fingers touch its silver breadth, she flinches. ‘It’s the key to my heart,’ she ventures. They laugh. ‘Stroke my hair?’ she murmurs. It’s dark in the room. The food has been cleared away. He’s laying her down. Their glazed eyes meet. Their lips. He’s putting it in her. Its rusty touch and scrape. He has to put all his weight behind it to turn the key. It’s turning. He’s crushing her. She’s dreaming. The pressure on her chest. The blood rush, the twist in her flesh, the quick, thick jolt of impalement. He takes possession of her. Peace passes over like a changed sky. They sleep. In the night a door slams and he wakes to a room lit by the turn of the dawn. He dreamed a key was burning a hole in his hand.
Emily Berry, 29, lives in London where she works as a freelance editor. Her pamphlet, Stingray Fevers (in which some of these poems appear), is available from tall-lighthouse. She recently received an Arts Council grant to help her complete her first full-length collection and is currently co-writing a book about breakfasts called The Breakfast Bible to be published by Bloomsbury in 2011.
When I get drunk I sleep with girls who are way too good to me. History has proved this. The first time this happened I was seventeen and I was still living at home, but I got drunk in London. It was Soho and it must have been after midnight and I had been drinking heavily for a couple of hours. In a group of twelve, L.K. was the girl with the diamond eyes. She was telling me all about her novel and sortof implying that she might ask me back to her place. I bought her a drink and when we finished she asked me to come back to drink some more. I told myself it was fine to accept an invitation for drinks with a friend, I'd get two free drinks and then leave. We took a taxi to her place and in the cab she put her hand down my pants. She was tall with dark hair and later when I touched her belly it felt soft like a water-balloon and funny under her skin. She had a nice house, her parents seemed rich, and there was a picture of her dad with a much younger woman on a desk and i wondered if he knew. We had some expensively strong drinks and made out for a while on the couch in the living room. She was pushier now, with a few drinks inside her, and she told me that she wanted me to give her a massage. My heart was pounding and i said, "Without my clothes on," and she said "Without mine." So we went into her bedroom and a little while later my head was between her legs and she said, "You like how i taste?" I did, but I couldn't answer right away, my mind was bent to focusing on keeping up a decent rhythm. Eventually, she came pretty hard with her clit in my mouth and almost cracked my head in two like a nutcracker. I lay back and she went down on me and when I came she got out of the bedroom and washed out her mouth in the bathroom sink. And then we must have slept for a while, all the drinking had caught up with us, and I was sleeping on my back and when I awoke she was rubbing my dick along the crack of her ass and I didn't stop her. With her back to me she worked me inside her and it took a while but when it was in she moved back, to take in a little bit more, and made a moaning noise, a sigh, and she raised her hips just the slightest and rocked back and forth with a steady rhythm. We started to pick up speed and I lay flat on my back and she came down, again and again, harder each time, and I started pressing my hips forward to meet her. I loosened my hand from the corner of the bed where i was holding on and my shoulder was driven down, and guided her hand as she reached back to touch it go in her. When she was done she lay beside me and said "That was grand," and it was the first time i'd noticed her Irish accent. After the drinking and with the dawn arriving we fell asleep. When I woke she was standing over the bed, she was angry. I couldn't tell who this new anger was directed toward so I didn't say anything. "If you were afraid you shouldn't have come back with me," I said after a time. "It's too many things meeting in the middle," she said, "Where do we go from here?" I nodded but at nothing in particular. It's funny the things we forget and then remember, she wasn't so angry, just scared and not so drunk anymore. I got up to let myself out. With her back to me she asked "Will you be around tomorrow?" and I said, I don't know.
Gordon Macrae, 23, is a freelance writer living in London. He is currently interning at Green Futures. His writing has also appeared in Verfreundungseffekt Magazine, Off Modern, No.Zine and Shebang.
These images were shot by Laura Jung in summer 2010 in the Foundry building. For more from these series, go to www.welcometotheitch.com.
Pageturner I find lunchtime to be the most difficult time of the workday. You have a brief vacation from the mindnumbing boredom of the cubicle, and just as it gets good, you have to go back. Eating lunch tends to take up most of the break, so it's easier to munch while you work and then take the hour for a walk in the park. Or, like I do, you can pop into the library for a browse through the magazines you'd never pay for and feel embarrassed to have on your coffee table. It was with that in mind I entered the library a couple of blocks from the office and headed to the magazine racks. There was a warm summer rain outside, just a drizzle, the sort of day you don't mind getting wet in; just as well since I had forgotten my umbrella at home. I entered the building, shaking the wetness from my hair. It's a nice set up, the racks close to a little tucked away nook that's perfect for undisturbed reading. There are only a few chairs in there, but it's cozy, and usually empty around noon. I grabbed a couple of glossies and stepped around the corner to the nearest seat, settling in and opening to the first page, the patter of drops on the windows creating a soothing background soundtrack. I heard the click of heels behind me and didn't bother looking up, figuring they would leave as quickly as they came. But the heels moved past me and into a seat across from mine- I caught a flash of fishnet and patent leather, and my attention was no longer on my magazine but the beauty reading not far from me. She was all hips and breasts, a fitted jacket emphasizing her waist so she just seemed to spill out from either side. Her hair was piled onto the top of her head, held in place with a barrette; a few escaping tendrils made her look both glamorous and carefree. Some called it the hourglass figure. I called it divine perfection, and there it was. She must have forgotten her umbrella as well, since her hair was damp. Water that on my head had just made my hair drippy decorated hers like delicate rhinestones. Her glasses were fogged; she removed them, wiping them clear on her skirt hem. The movement exposed her cleavage as she bent over, and I tried not to stare. She almost caught me looking as she straightened up, picked up a book from beside her on the table, and began to read. I felt myself getting aroused at how our eyes almost met. She appeared engrossed in her book, something about politics from the flag on the cover; she didn't seem to notice me, sitting a few chairs away, my heart beating double-time. Turning a page, she shifted a little, the tight skirt tugging back to reveal deliciously plump thighs and that tender spot, just behind the knee. I swallowed hard, and the sound seemed to echo through the library. Reaching one hand up to brush her bangs out of her eyes, the brunette raised her eyes to me, meeting mine for an instant before I glanced away, a sign of yielding. They were like maple syrup, rich and amber. I felt myself wanting to see those eyes glitter as she laughed, flutter shut as she drifted to sleep, widen as she gasped under my hands and lips and tongue.
I stole another glance, my magazine forgotten. Now one neatly manicured fingertip drifted towards her shirt, and began to fidget with a button. I noticed her white shirt was made slightly sheer in places where raindrops had soaked through. Still absorbed in the text, she left the button undone, a little black lace peeping out as she turned another page. Her finger curled around her long wavy hair, twirling it into a tight coil and then letting it fall. Never glancing my way, she began to fidget with the next button, pushing it in and out of the buttonhole in a way that seemed both dreamily unaware and incredibly bold. Another button was forgotten as another page was turned, and the shirt fell away to expose the soft, heavy curve of her breast, and... was it? I strained to see, giving up entirely on being inconspicuous. Yes, that was definitely the dusky outline of her areola... she must be wearing a shelf bra under those office clothes. With those lovely breasts, that shelf bra must be overflowing with creamy skin, skin I wanted to stroke and taste. I knew I needed to know what she had hidden under that pencil skirt- was it a garter belt and thigh highs, clinging to those gorgeous rounded thighs, or crotchless fishnets, hugging her ample ass and grabbable hips? I had to speak to her, I had to hear her voice, had to get her to let me ravish her without seeming too forward or awkward. I approached her, almost unsure what to say, how to rouse her from her reading without disturbing her. I was almost next to her chair when those eyes flew to mine again. On her lips was a pert little pout, but I could see a sparkle in her eyes. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. The pout inverted and spread into a wicked smile. Putting her book aside with feline grace, she stretched and stood. Even in her black pumps she was a couple of inches shorter than I am- but there was no doubt who would have the control when we tangled together between the sheets. "You win," I croaked at last, reaching for her. "You didn't even last ten minutes," my girlfriend said huskily, linking her arm in mine as we left the library for our shared flat. The rain drenched us both as we ran to fill what was left of my lunch hour with something better than magazines and books.
Kitty Stryker, 26, is a Queer Contemporary Courtesan whose head is in San Francisco but her heart is in London. She has written for Carnal Nation, Filament, Pull the Other One and She Loves Sex, is a founder of Kinky Salon London, and blogs about being a queer femme Daddy at www.purrversatility.blogspot.com.
Your Pulse Tells Me I have All sorts of ideas about what I’d like To do to you. But I have never and I will Never cross this canyon of immoralityUntil you reach across thoughts and anticipation To my waiting hand. Speech is arrested. Silence. Breathing. Yr pulse tells me that we are Weighing the consequences together, That we cannot wait much longer. Evil love is erupting on this very sofa! We kiss, furious at time and circumstance. We devour each other, tongues lashing On skin, rapidly becoming more bare. Shirts & trousers & secrets are unlocking Unfolding and tumbling on the edge Of the ever approaching bed. And I finally experience the real Blurring of our bodies, The Shade, And the sunrise.
Margo Fortuny works as a journalist in London. She is currently the Features Editor at EXIT Magazine and contributes to SHOWstudio, Metal, and Dazed Digital. Check out her column The Fortunyverse for Motilo (http://magazine.motilo.com/category/the-fortunyverse/) and her blog www.margofortuny.com.
Cunnilingus Corzetti, it buzzes off my tongue like pizzicato strings. Dipping down upup to the finalti when I gasp-howl-scream that there is nothing better than this - except maybe spaghetti, no there is nothing better than this. My knife and fork spoon in mutual awe and I think I’ve had my fill, until you bring me Ziti then Ditalini and oh-my-god Linginuni. I gorge on your Cappellini, Fettucine and more I can’t pronounce. I chew, chew, chew then bloat in your arms, never asking for more. But you insist that I will adore it. What? Gnocci? I made it once and watched it burst into ecstatic flour clouds. Umm, sort of, you laugh and knowing I will never see, you slide your tongue down my chest and start to spell it out for me.
Ruth Newton, 21, has recently graduated from Goldsmiths University and is hoping to start a Masters in Screenwriting next year. She has had three plays at Edinburgh Festival and produced a series of shorts at the Landor Theatre, Clapham, last year.
57 Strangely, after 30 years of familial noise, she enjoyed the quiet luxury of living on her own- no one to run around after, no one to cook or clean for. For a few months, she had taken to slobbing around the house- she stopped cooking and lived off take-aways; if she couldn’t be bothered to eat, she didn’t. She had stopped cleaning - mounds of dishes had littered the kitchen counters, growing mouldy as the stacks grew higher. Stains marked the toilet bowl and tub in the bathroom. She enjoyed her own filth, enjoyed the grim satisfaction of seeing the chaos she had inflicted on the house. Well... she’d enjoyed it for a while. Eventually, she tired of living in a state of decay. So she cleaned up, bought herself some groceries, crockery, clothes; she bought a new sofa, tables and carpets. She decorated. It took a while, but eventually the house went from being their home to being hers. Recently, she had turned her attention to the possibility of dating. She hadn’t been on a date in over 30 years, not since she met her husband. Ex-husband, she mentally corrected. Fault of habit. Since they divorced, she had been reluctant to pursue another relationship. She was anxious about involving herself with someone new. She had borne him 5 children; borne the silvery marks they scarred her body with; the sagging of her breasts and bottom as her body expanded and contracted to meet the needs of the life growing inside of her. She had even borne the pain of surgery to ensure that no more life would grow. For him it had meant nothing. She didn’t begrudge the sacrifices she had made; she loved her children; they were her proudest achievement. But somehow, she felt discarded, first by them as they left home, one by one. And then by him; he left home, for life with a woman 20 years her junior. Now single and middle-aged, she dressed in clothes with price-tags she would have never dreamed of buying with five young children to feed. She paid someone to cut and colour her hair. She went for massages and spent her days ‘working’ as a volunteer for Oxfam¬ and why not? She had money. She had no need to work for more. Paul had thrown it at her in the settlement in an attempt to alleviate his guilt at leaving her for the woman whom he had impregnated; the woman he now intended to marry. Could she love too? She scoured the lonely hearts column sceptically on a weekend; advertising for loveshe laughed. Could you do that? Advertise for love? She’d been out a few times with a man called Robert. She had met him down at the local church she attended; they hit it off somehow and she had found she had agreed to lunch with him. On their second date, he kissed her. She knew people kissed on dates. And yet, when he leaned it and pressed his lips against hers, she was completely surprised. She’d even giggled. The shock caught her off guard, and embarrassed, he’d never called for her again. Yet despite the embarrassment, she had learned from the experience. She wasn’t ready for a relationship, but physical desire still lurked within her. She had felt it when she had kissed him, that burning heat between her legs, and the pulsing when she lay in bed later that night thinking about what could have happened. Masturbation was something she never talked about when she was growing up. As far as she was aware people- especially girls- did not masturbate. The pleasure her younger self discovered was one she alone had found. Though she didn’t know what exactly it was she was doing, she coveted her secret pleasure
Her sex life with Paul... well it had petered out towards the end of their marriage. She had finished the menopause already- the change had taken years, a time during which her sex drive and selfesteem plummeted. Paul had been frustrated, but understanding. Eventually, he was just frustrated. Three times a week turned into every few months; gradually, it turned into never. Somewhere along the line, he turned his sexual attentions elsewhere. It hadn’t been her fault; she was angry at Paul for his betrayal. But she was also angry at herself too: he couldn’t understand how she felt about the change in her, about how her body felt. She was partly to blame. She had refused to see a doctor or talk to anyone about her sexual anxieties. It was her own prudery that had stopped her. Her own shame. She had moved on. Base empowerment reverberated outwards into the far reaches of her life. Her home made her happy. Her independence made her happy. Years of self-consciousness began to fall away and turned into self-awareness. She thought back to Paul and missed those early days they spent in bed making love. Her attention to herself had waned; sexual needs were replaced by maternal demands. But those demands were no more. She felt a longing for contact with herself. She slid her hand down the front of her trousers and rested it on the outside of her underwear. It melted against the curve of her pubic bone. She felt the heat radiating against the thin membrane of fabric that separated the two elements of herself from each other. She smiled. Pushing her underwear aside she gently stroked the hair she found there, enjoying the dampness that clung to the individual curls. Her own arousal surprised and excited her. Slowly, she moved her hand, her fingers searching for the tender lump that stood hard beneath her touch. Her stomach muscles contracted. Her fingertips moved lightly over her clitoris- sighing, she worked it in delicate circles, remembering the pleasure she had long since given up. At 57, she enjoyed the sensation more than she had as the teenager who spent secret afternoons alone in her bed, wondering what marvellous discovery she had made. That teenager now shared that secret with her older self. Shivers ran through her body crafted by her own hand. With long strokes, she moved her fingers down towards her entrance; how quickly it came back to her, the intimate knowledge of herself. She slipped inside of her entrance, her walls clamped tightly around her fingers, flexing forcefully as she pressed against her front wall. A moan. She felt a stirring deep within the concave of her body. She was in no hurry. She roused herself from the wicker chair and left the conservatory to mount the stairs. She burned against the salty dampness of her underwear, her thighs brushing with every step. She wanted more fingers, more rubbing. She went into the bathroom and turned the water on, filling the tub. Slipping her clothes off, she stood looking her reflection in the mirror. Scarred with life, she felt beautiful.
She stepped into the water, allowing it to engulf her. Ankles, bottom, stomach, chest; her breasts floated almost weightless; her nipples hardened peeking out above the waterline. The breasts that had nourished her children returned now to her own possession; now they were tender with desire. The slick wetness between her leg was different to the wetness of the water; it remained intact at her entrance, begging further attention. Taking the showerhead from its rest above the taps, she turned it on. Luke-warm water blasted out, rippling the surface of the water. Beads bounced up the sides of the tub. She plunged it beneath the waterline. The blasts went slowly up the inside of her leg before she rested it loosely against her pubic bone. The jet-stream bubbled against her clitoris. She pulsed the showerhead against her groin; the water slashed about; the jerky movement of her hand got quicker, sharper, more exact. Her pelvis rose to meet them guiding the water stream. On and on, pulsing, pumping, the pressure seemed to rise as her orgasm built within her. The water level rose. How long did she go on? The water was above her shoulders. She came silently.
Lauren Wood, 24, was born in Newcastle and is actually called Betty. Working as an ‘exceptionally trendy‘ TA with teenaged students with special educational needs by day, she moonlights as a freelance writer-cum-blogger. You can see more of her work on her blog www.bettyhammer.com.
List of Power Stations I wake up at 5.30 in Watt, California and take a 20 minute shower immediately: twelve minutes for the shower, eight minutes for ‘other activity’. Staying in bed with my wife once I’m awake is no longer an option, it’s just not fair on her. I have breakfast and focus on every slow chew, no rushing. The radio and the television have to stay off. Sounds and fast moving images encroach on my movements. Fingers start tapping, knee starts bouncing. Deciding to stay collected keeps me my job. There are bad days, and bad days make me late. Dressing can, understandably, get me excited. If I don’t dress quickly enough the material makes my skin sensitive. The moment I feel I’m losing control I try to quickly undress again. I don’t wish to sweat in my fresh shirt before I’ve left home, and the sooner I preempt that I’m starting to slip, the sooner I can finish, redress and leave. A few times in the past I’ve lied to myself that I can hold on until I can get into work, complete dressing, wet and comb my hair, lean over to tie my shoes by the front door with extreme difficulty. Straightening up creates a pull, my eyes close, my forehead moistens. Blankly, sternly, I stroll along the corridor, lay out my jacket, shirt and trousers on the couch and go to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet seat, tap on my thigh with my right hand, and jack off with the left. Just before I cum, I stand and turn to do it in the sink. Wash self, wash hands, re-comb hair, redress, rush from the house. I hate rushing, but denial spoils your plans. That first poor decision to not accept an unstoppable event sets off a car crash. Running to the bus causes a new friction to start and the ride will be excruciating. I’ll want to touch. Once I even placed my briefcase on my lap and ran a fingertip up and down my zipper. I could barely stand up for my stop. After that I’ll have to storm up the drive to the building, avoid goodmorningprofessor at every turn, go to my office, lean against the unlockable door and throb into a handkerchief. Could be twice more before I’ve even had a coffee. If I don’t rush I can normally focus my mind away from the tingling in my crotch for the journey and enjoy the walk into the university, pick up a newspaper in the shop, pick up my mail, brew a pot and learn the news while I gently begin to allow my arousal. For years the arrangement has been that I don’t give or supervise a lecture until past ten o’clock. It’s a measure that I greatly appreciate. Most of my colleagues understand my build-up routine. Rumination, notation, ejaculation, meditation. After greetings, I begin speaking at the lectern clearly, full of hope. ‘Government deregulation and failed regulation of the commercial and investment banking industries were important contributors to the subprime mortgage crisis,’ I’ll say, followed by ‘these included allowing the self-regulation of Wall Street's investment banks and the failed regulation of Wall Street rating agencies, which were responsible for incorrectly rating some $3.2 trillion dollars of subprime mortgage-backed securities’. A few years ago I’d be able to go on for at least half an hour, but these days I have to sit down after a few sentences. They provided me with a chair, I cross my legs and stare ahead. After a time the students barely registered the transition. At the end of lectures no one asks questions, they know to email them. I remain seated as students come up, nod and smile, pass me their papers and leave quietly. They probably guess that I head to the store cupboard to crouch and get off just to be able to walk out the hall straight. I stopped eating lunches in the cafeteria and now keep to my office. It’s not an oral fixation thing, it’s so I can phone my wife at the Devina Opera House where she is a Composer in Residence while I eat the salad or sandwich or cold lasagna that she’s prepared for me. Eating and calling is like taking a tranquilizer, it means there’s no thought process space left for my dick. After lunch I usually take one-on-ones with the student body. These are done in fifteen minute spurts, and we leave the door open to reassure them, as well as myself, that I will not be doing anything rhythmic save for sharpening my pencil. Of course I have jacked off under the desk during meetings, but never with students, only longer occasions with other members of faculty. My oldest colleagues, my friends, know that long periods of time without release can create a tension that is almost an agony. As the conversation progresses I start to mumble, my chin dips, and my eyelids loll, inexplicably, kindly, they direct their words and looks away from me without a pause, and silently allow me to tick-tock in my underwear.
By the time I’m home I am exhausted, sticky all over. I wash while my wife plays me new recordings. They soothe me. We sit and eat dinner, side by side, to warm her up to my presence. The moment we finish eating we have sex; I love spending time with her in the evenings, and feel immeasurably guilty if I have to leave her to masturbate. She knows this, understands I love her, dinner is foreplay, shoulders and knees softly rubbing is foreplay. We lay on the floor and I try to hold back that yelp of urgency while she undresses. I cup her face in my hands, look only at her eyes, nod and smile while I try and fuck her in a consistent way at least. The evening is spent relaxing or working together in the lounge. She sits on the floor effortlessly curling note tails, while I sit apart from her on the sofa reading journals, covering my heat with my laptop. In those hours I want to cry, I want to scream. I want to tie a dog leash around my wife’s throat and drag her upstairs. I want more than one bathroom break. I want to sit naked, stare at the television, dribble down my chin, dribble into my hand. At bedtime we brush our teeth while she touches me, this is the time she likes to enjoy me, and then we make love and laugh, work out the weekend, and I quietly pray that I’ll fall straight to sleep around her so she knows how I feel when I’m only warm and not hot.
Jen Calleja, 23, is currently studying for an MA in Language, Culture and History specialising in German. She is the editor of Verfreundungseffekt Magazine, Sub-Editor and contributor for Off Modern and contributor for No.Zine. You can see her work at www.jencalleja.com.
A Reading So, this one’s about sex. I wrote it after a love affair at sixteen, He had wrists the size of monkey nuts And he used to play this game Called ‘duck tongue’ when he wore His sex pants, the colour of a mallard’s head. In summer, he used to force me to sleep with him In a cemetery near his flat. It was weird, I felt the woodlice judged me When they crawled out of the wet pebbles. His hands were always covered in cobwebs A bit like lace gloves. I told him once and he ruffled his Fictional feathers in embarrassment. One night, he woke me up saying someone Was calling out by the mausoleum. We ran like idiots round the back of flats. He stood in his doorway and shrieked at me To come back to him, pointing to his dick. If I can live through it you can all hear about it
Alex MacDonald, 24, currently works and lives in London. He has been published by OOXXOO and has two poems being published in upcoming issues of No.Zine . Check out his blog for his poetry, reviews and literary recommendations: http://selectedpoems.wordpress.com/
The Magic O Fuck. Fuck me harder. I can’t fucking breath, you’re hurting me and its giving you so much pleasure, making me fragile and bending my legs back all the way back, I am so exposed; trying to push my hands on your chest, beat like a toy drum, so half hearted. You’re so dumb, Im making you do this to me, every stroke of your body only consecrates my hate which has been cemented under the fine stretch of my skin and beyond. I want you to break me so you can see and then feel this hate, your fingers crawl into the spaces between my ribs. You’re breathing like a pack horse, your face is deformed ,your biting me, you’re telling me how big your cock is as you ram it between my thighs, your arms are stronger than mine and they pin me down as I squirm , you’re sweating and I can feel it sticking to me, you’re trying to brand me, I know your going to cum over me, I don’t want to smell like you, I’m laughing at you and I’m screaming from the pain. My womb is on fire and my organs are rearranging themselves around your cock, the passage you punch through feels raw, you have destroyed all softness, im clinging on to grace. The scales on your back are shimmering and my eyes are smoke and mirrors. I’m loosing my head, I’m tipping it back against the wall but the wall has disappeared and I’m falling through a racket and all your chaos, the chaos has a hard ground, black, scratch through to make the silver line. I’m laughing and screaming from the pain, now I’m begging you to stop, I can feel bruises in my thighs emerging out of the chaos like Sylvia Plath’s mushrooms. laughing again, head thrown back into nothing, im laughing at you and telling you that you can’t fuck me any harder. I want you to kill me and I want to cover you in my blood. You’re shaking, you’re deformed, you look like a beast, your skins going to rip open and expose your secret self, I can see a dim light shining from the cracks forming in the seams of your body you know your going to be ripped open.
I have forced you to loose control , all strength pushed into your cock, ripping me open, your head starts rolling like a rag doll and frothing with one last death rattle you cum all you have, all those sad thoughts in your sad head, the unspoken words, the whispered memories, the half formed emotions, all of them flung into me and now your dissipating like a wave your collapsing on me. I can’t move and stay, my legs wretched open, I can’t even shake but I coo in your ear like an animal and moan, you have collapsed onto me I can’t even fucking breath. You roll to the side and you can’t stop shaking, your eyes open and your begging me to forgive you and you look so scared, you mouth is stuck in apathy, you’re too scared to even smile and finally you whisper that you are at my mercy, and all my hate goes, when I see that fear in your eyes and how broken you would be if I didn’t forgive you, or if you read this and I’m so addicted to you and I’m so sad, I stroke your cheek and kiss your forehead like I love you, I unlock my thighs and crawl around your back and rub my cheeks in the down between your shoulder where your skin is so soft, I’m so sad soon I will be overwhelmed, soon I won’t even be able to comfort you and we might both be alone. I slap you on your cheek, to make you feel better, as if this would dampen the fire in my cunt that only burns brighter as time collapses beneath us . I’m so sad, I’m so tired, I wont sleep but exhaustion is pushing me down, I’m an animal, I’m empty, I crawl under the blanket, your watching me, worried, Im hidden from you and now I cry and the tears soak the soft beneath me and I stick out a hand, which you immediately clasp in your own. You must think I’m sleeping, I’m so far away from your sleep easy world , I’m so alone I pull your hand like a child, pull you into the space under the duvet, the space which is now my whole world. I let you wrap your self around me, I do not move and you accommodate your self in the negative spaces of my body. You don’t see me cry, I wouldn’t let you. Your pulses are stroking me, your so warm, your cum has almost dried now, and it is gluing us together, I can feel your mind slowing down, slowing down into the frequency of the dream world and I let you take me with you, and am comforted by the fact that a singularity will always fall back to the number zero, the magic 0, let us shoot arrows through the empty of our own singularity precious darling, until we too are nothing, no more, smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.
Rosie Rabid, 19, is a writer and sculptor based in ASC studios, South London. This extract is taken from an ongoing written project titled Cult of The Milk Bath. The project is auto-biographical, documenting the explosive first stages of love and collating various impressions of eroticism through poetry, prose and short stories. If you have any questions or would like to read some more please email Rosie at Rosierabid@gmail.com.
HERMIONE AND FROG Duress She loved the soiled hem of her dress, the opened seams of her stockings. And their wedding day. Such colour, such sweet calamity, the wedding still floating on a week after they’d sworn. The house was a love-house, a fine mess. Frog was calling from upstairs: ‘‘The wallpaper is undoing itself, dearest…’’ Hermione thought of the walls bared to the afternoon and rose light in the cracks. She could feel with the little palms of her mind all the relief of the old brick. But how happily she’d give in to this— being under someone’s duress seemed to unpin a tightness inside her. It took her lungs with hardly the first of her lovely, bright, breathless attacks.
Honeymoon Days in the Blue Hermione’s swimsuit is antique, full, keeping her for frog’s eyes, who breasts wavelets in white bloomers. The equatorial sun has changed him, dark circles bloom over the olive, his lips are flush and tender. Behind them a jungle smoulders in rain mist, fruits swell the armpits of trees. Later frog picks a papaya from the ground and splits it for his wife. Red juice spatters the sand and becomes sand as it loses itself to the grains. Hermione cries out
not that!
as frog finds another fruit to dash on a rock, the rosy bulge a fontanelle, the child of a tree like any kind of child. This is what Hermione sees. The tropics are strange and sore and various— the frigate’s red balloon, a nephrop’s pale armour the barracuda’s impulsion life swimming or gliding or with two or more eyes idly watching nothing so peculiar as a frog and a woman just going down to the sea.
Hermione’s Dream Dreaming Hermione wanders through timber, to a sudden clearing of smoke and wet grass. Dragonflies flit on their long spindles, fly agarics bulb up from the damp. Dreaming she arrives at a pond furred with vegetation, skittering life. By the edge she tips her ankle, slips off one pretty sandal, then another and falls snub-nose-first into the emerald water, into frog’s submarine consciousness, the dead roots and caddis larvae. Kicking she sees clearly the whole extent of frog— his head laid out in this tangled panorama. And down here she squints up to see – gosh – herself gazing into this clouded well to where she is held, breathless.
Matthew Gregory, 26, was born in Suffolk. He studied at the Norwich School of Art and Design and Goldsmiths, University of London. His poems have appeared in the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives, as well as Poetry London, The Rialto and Magma, and have been performed on BBC radio. In 2010, he received an Eric Gregory award. Recently he has been collecting material for a documentary-film about the lives of the young poets he knows. He is currently living in Naples, Italy, and working on his first collection.
Waxing Lunar The entire night, she sits up there...tantalisingly reachable and radiating cold, my ice queen; perfectly formed as a duck egg. She looks like a saucer of milk; pale silver dotted like concave bubbles on otherwise flawless skin which takes on a new hue, each night. This alone, though, is not all. There are other reasons I want her; to hook first one claw, another, then teeth, into that impenetrable surface and draw her here. She can never be as close as I want. I crane my scrawny neck near as I can to her, and my whisker tips still refuse to feel; refuse to touch the snowy edge of that maddening sphere. It’s the same story every night. At dusk, I stalk down my alley to the metallic, man-made thing at its mouth. I perch patiently atop it, in wait for her imperious presence to glow into being, in a sky slowly bruising darker from blue to thick black velvet. Each of these nights will eventually fade to dawn, and always she leaves me here alone, un-sated; the captivating, perfect pearl of her sinking and dissolving with the garish sunrise and with it, all my desire. To the say the least, I am disappointed time and again with her impassive nature. It’s like she refuses either to understand or acknowledge that I exist, even though I watch her every night, all night; bewitched, and tracing her milky face, all the fascinating small details and un-subtle curves with a ravenous eye. Perhaps, if she understood my quiet sighs and mewling (and yowls of desperate longing I throw up to her, in my more impassioned moments) ...would she change her nonchalant ways; drift closer each night to my alley, to me? She is very stupid, I think, if she cannot understand my pleas - just a pretty face, I guess. It is midnight again now, and another night of coaxing, of begging her descend on me fails to yield results. I have been contemplating climbing a building she always goes to hide behind at daybreak...but then, the dreaded pitter-pattering begins. I prick up my ears in apprehension, catching the scent of a storm, and soon the heavens open up. With a cry of dismay, I clatter from my man-made perch and into the dry enclosure beneath a car. So, my plan to sneak up and lay in wait has been ruined by the on-setting downpour. Even the weather, it seems, conspires against me, tries to come between the object of my infatuation and my good feline self. Disgruntled, I look from between the wheels to check if she has been offended by the miserable scene before her, but all I see are greying, rain-slicked streets; bleached by ancient dirt and grime, rivulets of storm-water making filthy rivers of drain fodder. I will outwit the rain; I’m a cat for goodness sake, we’ve been doing battle for billions of years. This bravado is hard to fake when braving the shiver-inducing feel of wet saturating fur, whiskers and paw, making everything cling and masking my scalpel sharp senses. We cats have a funny relationship with rain; when a chap’s not in the mood there is nothing more infuriating or unappealing than the feel of it soaking him to the skin. At other times, it can feel incongruously and sublimely intense; half-painful pinpricks which feel the way a breathtaking rainbow or sunset looks...not the easiest sensation to explain. A panicked dash from my car shelter, and I reach a doorway. Panting with discomfort and constantly attempting to shake myself dry, I ready to leap directly onto a fire escape ladder extending from the top story of the building. My paws slip through the battered holes of the metal structure, as I climb. There’s a heart-juddering moment where the wind rattles the precarious top section of ladder, and I make a lunge for the roof, claws latching on to rain-soaked brickwork, springing onto the roof. Only to be overwhelmed by the stench of rats. How will She be able to tell my smell from theirs now? Those petty, bloodthirsty parasites find ways to ruin everything. Forlornly, I cast my gaze back to the object of admiration and her silvery visage; still cold and deathly silent. As ever, she pays me no mind, even though we now face each other across the rooftops, eye to eye.
In the briefest instant, from nowhere comes a streak of blinding white. I watch it soar fast towards me across the skies and stream over my head, and it’s over, gone without trace in the space of a heartbeat. She seemed so very close, just there, I think. Down in the street a woman bafflingly tells her companion “...make a wish.” And then, slowly, like the day bleeding away the night to replace my elusive sweetheart with a cruder, brighter sibling - a glimmer of something emerges in the puddle at my feet. It is hope-white, dove coloured; mottled and brilliant as a ten pence piece. Pulse quickening and loins aflame, I duck my head and let feverish whiskers brush liquid cool, and think, after all the wondering, this is how she feels. Every bit as cold and smooth as she always looked, and yet strangely wet, like the rain that torments the senses to rapture in us cats. She shivers and ripples with my touch in so thrillingly tangible a way, that the sharpest spark of satiety spirals through me, nose to tail.
Hannah Dunton, 22, ‘studies by day, works in a pub by evening, and writes in the wee hours’. She describes herself as having ‘many hobbies, but virtually no skills; I am, however, fluent in both self-aggrandising and self-deprecation.’ Her poetry has been published in London Metropolitan University's 2009 anthology, and a piece of non-fiction will be included in Little Episodes' Crazy Days anthology.