i made these when i was little
posts tagged "mine"
i'm so sorry. my spirit's rarely in my body. ↘
i made this for valentine’s day but then i forgot. now is better, though.
this is trixie!
i also have a lenore, who is a little bigger and will only sit still when perched on my shoulder like a little parrot
the two big orange cats are completely unimpressed, so it’s good that trixie and lenore have such a good bond with each other
the patron saint of bathtub spiders
Early in the morning, in the bed of a man she barely knows, she finds a glass pendant containing a grain of rice with the name “Meredith” written in letters you have to squint to see. Oh. She gets up, stretches, rapidly pulls on her layers of soft black winter clothing. She feels dreadful about having shared a man’s affections with some woman who chooses grain as an adornment. Or maybe he gave it to this Meredith, as a present. She leaves him snoring.
On the bus, she realizes she is still carrying the ugly thing on its silvery chain. It’s in her pocket somehow.
They were popular when she was in 7th grade, rice necklaces. She briefly wonders if the man she barely knows might be a pedophile. She has willingly dated several of those before, aware that her eyes and figure make her a pedophile’s consolation prize. But probably, girls in 7th grade covet different kinds of jewelry now, as it has been thirteen years since she was twelve. Her mind feels like murky dirty bathwater. The sex was not worth missing sleep.
Meredith is a strangely prudish-sounding name, she thinks, and wonders why. Well. He had terrible taste in sunglasses too. She could have dodged the bullet, but dodging bullets is not in her nature. When she was little she fantasized about catching them between her teeth for a circus act.
The disappointment at moments like this is nothing like it used to be.
She actually misses feeling something deeper than irritation. She pushes up her sleeve to bite her own wrist, and surveys the resultant mark. Crooked and lovely. She avoids the looks of strangers. Her eyes and skin don’t allow for many secrets, despite the shadowy clothes and spindly boots she considers her armor. And unlike the man from last night, she only wears sunglasses when it’s sunny.
Home (or something) is up eight flights of stairs. Eight is unlucky to her but it doesn’t matter. Every time she walks up, she remembers the time that you visited. Right after she moved in, you came to see her in this bleak neighborhood you’d never visit otherwise. You held her hand as if to crush the bones. Your glasses were rain-speckled and her bangs were plastered to her face with rain. You took a shower together to get warm, where you took turns spitting water at spiderwebs in the corner. She could spit further than you. But she felt guilty for dislodging the spiders from their homes, and you rescued them in a cup as they slid helplessly down the shower wall. She thought: “I will let you break my heart.”
You fucked her precariously, one of her legs pinned up by your shoulder, the other balanced on highest tiptoe. Your little Gumby, you called her. She laughed and spat a mouthful of water in your face. You picked her up over your shoulder, slipperily caveman-like, and carried her to the same mattress that she’s throwing herself down on right now, although now she is clothed and alone. Frowning about jewelry and rice. But she lands facedown with utter abandon, similar to the way you threw her.
“If my name were Meredith I’d change it, not advertise it,” she’s thinking. Flexing her fucked-up ballerina feet, free of the pointy tough footwear. She is irked that she’s irked. Without thinking, on the bus, she must have looped the ugly necklace around her own neck. The pendant digs into her sternum. “I am losing my mind.” Closes her eyes.
Before sleep, even though it is 7:37 a.m., she says in her thoughts “Goodnight everybody” as she has done all her life before sleep. Who is everybody, though? Who are they all?
She always finds herself thinking and dreaming as if for an audience.
remember the time i went to japan, and took really vague photos that make me feel like i’m lying when i say i went to japan
Dolls
I moved in with Elodie Risk, whose name made me think of a naughty Bond Girl who kills men with her arsenic-laced edible underwear. I told her this the day I came to view the apartment. She hugged me and said “I love you already, Harriet the Spy!”
This period of time was a giddy hiccup between sorrows. I forgot myself a little, and dip-dyed my hair violet. In the back of the closet, I hung up your old overcoat which I always loved because it was long and dark enough to almost disappear me. Elodie wrinkled her nose at it and lent me something heavy pink brocade with a buckled waist.
We wore cheap jewelry shaped like birds in cages, and expensive stolen jewelry shaped like padlocks and keys. We ate little more than cocktail garnishes. Elodie was a bartender at a Jekyll and Hyde-themed restaurant, as well as an ever-aspiring model. They were always telling her that she was too short for the runway and too dead-eyed for print. But she remained optimistic!
I worked at Bloomingdales, where I applied makeup to the skin of tourists. They asked me questions.
“Your English is very good” a lady would say. “Where are you from?”
“New Mexico, originally.” I fidgeted with the cakey makeup brushes. It all made me want to sneeze.
“Oh! You sound Russian. Doesn’t she sound sort of Russian! Or maybe Australian.”
“My mother is Ukrainian. I’ve lived all over the country, but I’ve never left North America.”
“Isn’t that interesting!”
Elodie decided to do porn. A pornographer of sorts had come into Jekyll and Hyde’s and given her the hard sell. “Who cares if you’re under five nine,” Elodie said, “as long as you have a pretty cunt.” We were walking down a stately street; she was speaking loudly. Her work uniform was a gothic french maid ensemble with a corset. I loved her so much. “We should go into it together!” she said. “And make so much money!”
I was fired from Bloomies for my habit of leaning on my elbows and closing my eyes, or for stealing, or maybe because I never actually wore makeup except Dr Pepper Lip Smacker from the drugstore. I was bad for business. I don’t remember. What I remember is blowing my nose on the pleated silk of a Calvin Klein dress on the way out.
“You are very subtle,” the director said to me as I leaned over to buckle the black stripper heels. “You remind me of a young Cindy Sherman.”
(Apparently, I am always the kind of girl who people feel they have to win over with a reference to Cindy Sherman or Joan Didion or Jean Luc Godard. Even in a room full of sex toys, spoken by a man who looks like he could be the picture next to “pornographer” in the dictionary.)
“Oh.Thank you!”
“I bet you have cats at home, don’t you. Little orange fluffy ones.”
“My friend is allergic.” I nodded over at Elodie who was limbering herself in preparation. She was decidedly not subtle. “My cats still live with my mother, far away,” I said.
“Hmm.” His attention was averted.
I’d chosen the porn name Zoe Marina. Harriet is nobody’s idea of a sexy name. As Zoe Marina, “subtle” and violet-haired and naked in buckled shoes and a leash, I knelt between the thighs of obvious, ponytailed, pseudonym-averse Elodie Risk. She wore an innocent dress with the skirt hiked up and the bodice peeled down, pulling my leash, petting my hair, tasting like summer in January. She pushed me back with her foot. I crawled and arched. The movie turned out quite beautiful. I wonder if you’ve ever seen it, and how did it make you feel?
After it was over we walked out into the snow. Blinking and silent. We went to a bar and drank whiskey in the window seat. We went to a park and rode the carousel. It snowed harder.
“Do you want to go home?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
We walked to a toy store, holding hands like two kids who’ve accidentally-on-purpose wandered away from everyone else on a field trip. Lost, a little worried about what will happen at the end of the day, but also free to go look at dolls while the others are all stuck touring a pencil factory.
(i know it posted twice on porcupine concubine. i am having technical difficulties, sry).
let you brush my matted fur. ↘
bite my heart, pluck my thorns.
click the link above to download.
<3
where i store my venom
(good morning)
When I moved my numbed self into the apartment on the eighth floor, I painted everything in vivid colors to remind myself to be vivid. My tiny bedroom is pomegranate-colored and has a mattress on the floor underneath a mosquito net. The net does its job, and it’s disarming to wake in the morning and find bugs crawling all over its exterior as if magnetized by my sleep.
It is hard to imagine anyone ever sleeping in the bed with me. Before I fall asleep, I run my hands in appreciation over my sleek body with its secret perfect ratio of plush to bone, but in my sleep I dig my nails into my skin. I wake up with wet eyes and blood under my nails.
“You are wasting your beauty,” says Lila. “You should be dating.”
“Pff, you said the same thing — wasting my beauty — three years ago, for the exact opposite reason, when I told you how I had sex with four men in a month,” I say.
“Exactly! Balance is what you need.”
Lila is eating macaroons and sipping bubble tea. Lila wears mostly white clothes, and she keeps her phone in her cleavage. Her mouth never closes all the way, adding to her expression of dewy surprise and gasping, eye-blinking, perpetual childlike wonderment. Sort of like she’s always sitting on a huge cock and trying to keep it a secret, blaming her orgasms on the nice weather or a really good sandwich.
We used to share an apartment, and slept together several times when we were both drunk and sad. I am unsure whether she remembers. Her hair is the nicest to braid.
Tonight, we link arms and walk through the city on this last evening before we’ll need to bundle up in coats and scarves. We are opposites, with her billowy white low-necked dress and my tight, grim, shoplifted black velvet. Her red-ribbon espadrilles and my 1930s high heels that wobble strangely underfoot, like walking on loose teeth. I crane my neck like a tourist as we pass certain familiar hotels, hoping to see my self naked in one of the highest-up windows.
I contemplate asking Lila to stay with me tonight, despite the insects and nightmares, but she lives with her boyfriend now. We hug goodbye at my doorstep and she smells like burnt sugar and waxy houseplants. She rubs the prominent bony knobs on the backs of my shoulders.
“These are so cute,” she says. “I’ve always been kinda jealous of them. It’s like you used to have wings.”
I feel perverted and pathetic, drinking up her casual touches.
“No, that’s where I store my venom.”
