The Loose Pearl - By Paula Ilabaca, translated by Daniel Borzutzky

Was it me?

Was that me?

Feed me when I’m hungry Drink me till I’m dry The dream of yesterday becomes another lie You feed me lies, distortion, the English disaster No one’s free, one love for one master Tricky, “Feed Me”

1

In a basic territory, in a bed, on an orange mattress, she dreams of licking white mares looking for a place to give birth. But when she wakes up she thinks of him, her master, an abrupt attempt to want him to stay.

She thinks of him, in a heap of awkward images that erupt, transformed into artifacts with neither color nor anger nor damage nor penetration.

That’s when the voices erupt, choirs, screeching strings, operas and rock songs; that’s when her form or the woman we were talking about collapses in exhaustion at the foot of the bed or maybe she’s on her knees in the bathroom, murmuring a single phrase a single sentence: It’s been a month since I’ve fucked anyone And then through the noise you can hear the words of a song: “this bed has seen it all/from the first time to the last.” And she keeps losing weight.

And she keeps losing weight, saying, reciting, saying: even if I eat everything even if I eat it. The mares graze, traipse happily. The mares in the orange bed, which is the basic territory, the rictus of her mouth when she feeds, which is another basic territory; or the shame, the damage, the fear. Which are not basic, they are not.

3

Imagine her eye sockets fall into the walls and the forms. Imagine that little by little she feels the eruption of a belligerent lethargy she can’t pull out of. Imagine she wants to come with the back of her hand. Imagine she’s too lazy to masturbate by herself. Imagine she walks through the tiny space of the bathroom, that there’s no window, that she grabs her hair and looks into the mirror. She looks at the gold heart hanging in the middle of her chest. The mares. Grazing. That’s it. The roundeyed plaster-cast mares, the dream, the song, the orange bed, the prayer.

That’s it. However you like it, however broken or simple. Imagine she looks into the mirror and says a prayer. Saliva slowly dripping because she’s had her mouth open for a long time. She thinks of him, of the eunuch, his stiff hair, his soft muscles. Then she cleans herself with a meticulous movement, with toilet paper, with a towel. Then, she’s sitting. She’s sitting on the toilet bowl and she repeats the same sentence, only this time she adds: It’s been a month since I’ve fucked anyone It’s been a month since I’ve gotten it on

4

It’s been a month since anyone lit my ass up It’s been a month since I’ve seen the light She says it in the simplest, most broken way. That’s it. A small fraction, tense from the infections that besiege her. It looks like one of the mares will give birth this afternoon. As she does the bed will start to creak, the bed and the shapes that stretch along the wall when the sun peeks through the curtains, without her wanting this, of course. The sun disturbs the pimples that havean popped up this morning, pustules on her coccyx. It’s nasty, and when she feels them on her body, she starts to speak or to babble: “feed me when I’m hungry / drink me till I’m dry.”

Then, looking at herself in the dark television screen, bringing an eye mask to her face, she asks in a low voice: my master, where is my master?

5

First person singular or the configuration the loose one’s voice

The first cut won’t hurt at all the second only makes you wonder the third will have you on your knees You start bleeding I start screaming.

Propaganda, “Duel”

7

It’s just like this. They take me by the neck and examine my pear. They inspect what they already know, the loose one’s face, the taste of she who has already returned. Today I will eat again. The master already knows. A new fuck starts today, today and later on, until there is no more stupid shit to remember. I see myself screwing in the bathroom, screwing in the bedroom and in the screw I’d like to have on the sofa.

This house is filled with apathy, this house and the shadow of a member that stirs it all up; this house, its clean corners, the drone of that famous song from Twin Peaks.

9

I remember a photograph in a magazine, then on my wall, then later on my headboard. I remember when one of the mares looked at me at a crossroads, I remember that time I made a decision, when I made a bet; the time I was lucky, the time I was allowed to love. But this time, only this time, I was not allowed to choose. This time I stay in the orange bed, orange like my smell, the way my body reeks. The stink of the skin that turns white, that turns opaque, that becomes burnt flesh; this is what I look like in front of the mirror when everyone has left, when I begin.

10

I’m not in love. A mare doesn’t fall in love. It’s just that sometimes there’s a voice deep inside of mine which sometimes circulates in the corners of this house, in the blood of my white saddle, it tells me to call, to search, to pester. But then everything stays the same, the same nights, the same battles, the same routines, the same mirror that reflects the image of who I actually am, of who I am in the middle of my gold heart, the one he gave me, the one he would not let me remove. Or me in the make-up I rarely put on, to hide the face of illness, the face of love. I’m not in love I’m not, I don’t fall in love anymore; a mare can’t be in love. So I think of my master, of my lord. I fashion my face in the mirror, a fierce face, a smooth face, with long, yellow teeth. I think as I eat without being sated; when they go by my bed and don’t meet, and I, I don’t. Later I think that maybe I should have half a gold heart for when I start over, for when I try to forget.

11

Intoxicated from the poison left by his neglect and apathy. Intoxicated from my master, my lord, who moves without me, who looks for action in other neighborhoods, other bodies, other latitudes, other roadsides.

Intoxicated because this is the last drop that drips on my apron, on my caricature, on my twin indiscretion, on the sound of the color white, on the itch that causes a spot on my eye, or a rash on my coccyx, the scabies that recently appeared on my writing hand, the fuzz on a leg turned white, grey. All for a gold heart with a missing half.

12

The party is ending, it’s ending, and it doesn’t matter how shiny the dress was or the makeup, nor how many wanted to fuck or hook up, the same face always remains, the same apathy and the idea of a high-voltage void. That’s why there’s a mirror on the improvised dance floor, so that I will remember the face of indifference, how opulent evil can be, or better yet, how beautiful a woman looks when she has spent the night in the anxiety of people she does not know, in the tension of when she gets lost and there’s nowhere to go, there isn’t.

13

When his instrument went limp and there was no way to get it up; when once I felt it soft, lifeless, almost disabled, and I cried and cried.

When I didn’t understand that he didn’t want a good night kiss, when he didn’t have the courage to say no. When he cheated, when he told me he loved me, when all he wanted to do was to go out and get laid.

Now everything makes sense, now it’s much simpler: I must accept the resurrection. And this is saying a lot, it’s a lot to dedicate lines to one who couldn’t get it up, and who I had to put up with all day all night, with his moping, his contempt, his sad fucking, his quick coming. Like they say in that song: ligero iba de prisa, pensaba solo en llegar. Because otherwise he’d fall right apart, and with a lie he would turn around and keep giving orders.

14

Already worn out by words, I lie down to think about the most recent events.

Am I beautiful?

Will he remember me?

And then I would yell at them, at my master, at those who know: never again will I let myself be chained to love.

Or be forced to eat out of its hand, in this city of night or in any other city

15

16

And the pearl thought she could hang on to something but she threw it all away

17

18

The master has disappeared. You see it in how these pages darken, in how the burnt ones recompose, in the appearance of the king. The master and the eunuch, who are the same, with his imprint, his killjoy, his contempt, his flaccidity, they collapsed at the perfect moment. The mares don’t graze anymore. They lie around, with their jaws open, their haunches entangled in the fibers of the threadbare orange bed, fragments of the departures, of the openings, of the orgasms of the woman who was singing at the beginning. The one who was saying something like it’s been a month since I’ve fucked anyone or she could also have said I’m demolished, I look like broken pieces in this constellation or when she sang this bed has seen it all or feed me when I’m hungry, etcetera, etcetera. Now, this woman took a name: the loose one. And she has a homolog, who is herself, who is an other, who is all of them, who follows the tantrums, and the forms she take to get it on with whoever is into it, so that later she can dump them: the pearl.

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20

Now, let something else come

Fate Up against your will Through the thick and then He will wait until You give yourself to him Echo & The Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”

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22

With a bacteria lodged in her throat, without talking, without the power to speak, without power. An infection has overtaken different muscles, creases, parts. This time it’s the throat. That’s how it is, how it will be.

Like a tongue turned into globs of drool that enter and exit. Without concern for the body, its desires or its mess. Cryptic. Cryptic. Cryptic.

Without power, without the power to speak, without the power to say what hurts the most, what she most desires or what pisses her off, what she already knows, what she imagined when no one wanted to stop her anymore. Inevitably, some come, others will come. There was a fuck, there will be millions. But it’s always the same itch. The same boredom, the same suffocation. And nobody knows the loose one.

23

Counting the days that pass, the loose one strolls through the basic territory, humming a song. She looks at her orange bed, thinks of the days when sweat and kisses embroidered the sheets, the pure and sacred piety. The same and the same. Drool. Pester. Come. Arrive. The bed.

Filled with prayers. There are some keys under the pillow, clasps for a necklace with a gold heart, which the loose one looks at entranced, because she doesn’t have a heart. Beyond, in another space or under another influence, the king sleeps deeply. And he doesn’t listen. And he doesn’t feel. And he doesn’t know that the loose one waits and waits for the precise flirtation to then escape. As she has always done, because she can’t, because she doesn’t know how to stay or because it simply annoys her, because she gets annoyed at anything that starts to get serious.

24

As she makes her charts, the loose one observes herself again and again.

She comes in and out of the bathroom, looks out at the street. She goes over to the balcony. She begins to water the plants on the terrace, which now burn from the cold of these last days of autumn. Soon winter will be here. And these, the burnt ones, are a reminder of that sunny day when the loose one told him: they are like our love; they have been born again. But it was a total drag. And the eunuch knew it and shut up, his phallus cowering as always. The loose one reconsidered, for example, when she would go by the window naked, or dressed, or horny.

And this was just one example of the traps she set for him. With the eunuch nothing ever happened anyway. Nothing. Or better yet: nothing had happened, because he was a closed container, and stubborn, a little clumsy, a little slow, limp fucks buried in memory, an imprint, a condition one could appeal to.

25

The loose one is like this. She thinks her flaws and disguises make her unique. I love this asymmetry she was saying one night while trimming her bangs in the bathroom. And she looked at herself over and over again in the mirror. Then, the trim became less precise when her eye glanced over at the orange bed. No one’s home tonight, the loose would say, just me and the crisis. Then she started to laugh. Then came the stomach pain and the itch in her belly was instantaneous. That same night she went to the window thinking: what’s going on with my eunuch, what exchange of secretions is he involved in. Will he even suspect that he left a parasite in my belly, the loose one mumbles, her throat raw from so much talking, talking so much in vain. Because even though she doesn’t love him, the word weighs on her. And what does she do now in the solitude of the word, in the cruel speech of the days: the loose one waits and waits. And when someone appears, she attacks.

Because that’s how the loose one is. When something is put between her thighs she doesn’t stop until it’s taken out and put back in again. The way she likes it or the way they like it. And afterwards nobody stops her.

Once the loose one gets going, no one stops her.

26

And the pearl had thought that she would never again cry for him, for the master, for the eunuch. There’s no way to singularize it, the loose one says, wiping a teary eye, the wound takes many forms, names, and twisted, languid memories. The loose one haunts herself all day. Exactly all day long. And at night she gets worse. And the pearl acts like it’s nothing but she can’t take it anymore. Meanwhile the loose one takes great pains to please everyone, but it’s not enough. They always suffocate her. Straightening her corset, she repeats herself for them: I’m not that one, why can’t they understand?

27

It’s like this: the two of them get together and act like it’s nothing, but it’s something. The loose one breathes melancholically while she comes down with diarrhea; the pearl acts like it’s nothing, as if nothing is wrong with her. As if nothing were running through her, like that, just so, with her usual nonchalance; then they look at each other and swap roles, swap conditions and souls. And inevitably one of them doesn’t care. Doesn’t care. She comes or finishes erratically, and closes her eyes with apathy. Now, let something else come, the pearl says, with the parasite boiling in her belly, her neck aching, her eyes dried up from so much crying. And in that moment, in another temporality, the king moves, scratches his head, tries to wake up, but remains lethargic and beautiful, anesthetized in the fury of a clear and silent night.

28

Suspiciously, after sadness comes hunger, the loose one thinks, as she fucks her way through the city. I’m so hungry. So. Hungry. Hungry.

Hungry. And she says it so many times that it becomes like a prayer, a command, a new way of begging. It’s at that moment when the king begins to slowly open his eyes. And throws her the look. Then the loose one murmurs: hopefully he’ll go down. And soon. It’s the only thing I’m missing. The only thing. And the pearl acts like it’s something, but she knows it’s impossible. Impossible to keep begging. Impossible to think that something is going on. But the loose one tells her to wait, to hold very still and to keep her senses wide open. To keep everything wide open.

29

Look at how the pearl gets lost and resists. And she acts like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t bother her. But it excites her to feel that again, that feeling she can’t pronounce or request. Whether they give it to me or not, I’ll go on. Take me, I’m turned on, says the loose one. Turned on and no one will bite. No one who I want, the pearl says and says again as she eyes her golden heart. Or, if you want, leave me, right now as everything is getting wet? She thinks of the eunuch. This is ending, the pearl says. Let the next one come. The king opens his eyes. Or in duet with the loose one: now, let something else come. And at that moment the king gets it up. It’s obvious. Just like that.

30

The king, hypothetically, was already in place. In the order of things, the events, the singularity of his labor. At the end of the day, everything was him. The entire night was his, all the nights, the cracks, the styles, the scorn. What he put on and what he took off, what came out of him, where he stuck it, which way he pointed it. How he spurted, with whom he came. That’s how he was. That and the space. And the music. The groping. The sound. The darkness. The king. And he didn’t care much about the complexity of that beauty, the pearl would say, acting as if it were nothing.

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