SEX FOR MONEY
I crouch down to turn off the video, and an exhausted cool wind pushes itself past the window screen, brushing my shoulder. A cool breeze,
the relief from a few days
of dry-mouth sun. That familure
touch of a much
needed wind, nothing like it was in L.A.,
when that kind of breeze
was begged for.
I shut my eyes and I'm there.
Two years ago, longing it in the wee hours of the morning when no more clothes could be removed,
laying on the floor besides my bed
because the coolness of the hardwood
surpassed its hardness.
My pours bubbling over with sweat,
my body glistening with tiny white
flags waving vigorously.
Those nights, staring at a still ceiling fan
that hadn't worked since Reganomics was introduced.
A silver lining of dust on the edges of its wings.
I would lie there,
gazing at the flower-like, cherry wood fixture wondering if I had ever
made love to some one.
And if I did, had they known it? Did they feel it?
Did the inside of me feel different? Did I taste different?
Because I can only remember,
laying on my back, under something jerking
round me
inside me.
And I filled with hate and venom,
thinking that I was fucking them out of
spite,
out of wanting to take rather than give.
To prove to them they
knew nothing of me.
To prove to me
that they were disposable. That I could fuck,
and fuck
and fuck but they would
never matter to me. No one would
ever matter to me.
As soon as they mounted, I left the room
I was somewhere else.
Sometimes in the room, sometimes in
another time in place. Alone
or under someone else.
I always left the body though,
there was no way I could stay there for that
or what they would do to me
on me
in me
"with" me. I would lie on the cool wooded floorboards thinking of this.
I would peel off the wooden floor, and walk my shadow to the kitchen
for some water,
which by this time we'd permanently kept in the refrigerator, pour myself a nice
cool glass in the dark,
sticking my middle finger in the cup
to tell when it was full.
I'd open up the fake wooden front door
and stare out toward the L.A. river.
A hot August night
is unforgiving.
Everything is still in the heat,
not even good fucking on
those August nights.
That breeze would blow
from the river and brush up
against my shoulders and
I'd let out a little whimper.
That breeze blowing up the stench
of broken beer bottles that lay on the river floor,
the rusting shopping carts
caught on some dead shrubs,
the empty guns and floating sperm,
the must of it all would swirl around
and grace me with the gentlest touch
along my shoulders,
conjuring up goose pimples.
Goose pimples I've been praying for
during those endless hot nights,
laying on that wooden floor
next to my sweat soaked bed
starring at the still ceiling fan.
The summer is exiting stage left,
says the breeze. I thought of that tonight,
hundreds of miles north of my home,
that wind took a two-year trip to say hello.
To remind me I still had a home.
And soon, it would be time to return.
ALEXICUS MAXIMUS lives in San Francisco and is a writer like her father. Subsequently she's been waiting tables all her life. Like her father.
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