Great Party

The party is in full swing, and I am bored. People mill about, chatting each other up, taking shots at the red solo cups at the end of the long table. I feel empty, having denied drink after drink, and a line. Sarah is nice. I’m glad to have her as a friend. She respects me, knows who I am. She can talk at length with me, indulging my bent for the fantastic and strange. She knows I am not one to take anything lightly. It has taken me a long time to find a friend such as her, and I’m glad to be at her house-warming.

I can feel the bass of the music in my bones. It spills out of the speakers, inky and dark. I have been searching the crowd for a face that feels like home, but I am coming up empty. I can feel the tight stretch of my skirt against my thighs, and the heels I’ve worn make me taller than almost everyone else here. They click loudly when I walk. I am no longer ashamed of myself, of the curves that make me, me. I know my breasts are high and full, and lovely in their rose-colored peaks. I know my eyes are deep and interesting. This does not make me full of myself. It only serves to remind me that I am not a lowly creature, a wriggling centipede in a pool of shallow, still, dirty water. I used to think of myself that way.

Truthfully, I want to be desired by another, though. I want to be adored, and for what I am.

Hanging from the ceiling are long paper streamers. String lights wrap themselves around the room, twinkling their lights at us like stars. I lean against the counter, taking another sip of the acrid diet soda in my hand. Someone is talking at me about their job, and I listen carefully. There are no open spots for me in this conversation, though. They only wish to unload their frustrations. That’s fine by me. I have become accustomed to this. I think, while listening, that I’d hate to work where they do. It sounds exhausting. Currently, I am drowning in an ever-increasing rate of debt, mounting up on my cards. I am trying to manage it, but within my limitations, I must be careful. I have to find a way to become more secure. Anxiety has always been a companion of mine.

Safety is a thing I crave, but along with it, I crave, I need satiety. Each night I undress myself, and I watch myself in the mirror. I comb my hair, and look into my own eyes. This is not an act of vanity, but is a preservation of my sanity. If I cannot see myself for what I truly am – who will? No one has ever spontaneously felt they must trace the side of me with their fingertips. No, I’ve learned that I can do that myself, and I do.

I revel in sensation. I have all my life. I love the feeling of hot, hot water falling on me in the shower, spilling from my lips as I stand under it. I like the feeling of being constrained, and I am tired of denying this. I like exploring my limitations within the realms of pain. I like accepting it into me and letting it take me to its heights, within reason, within safety, and as long as it doesn’t become harmful. Ice is a friend, and so is warmth- soft heat. I am never satisfied. Is it a flaw? Maybe. It certainly makes me feel separate, desperate, and strange. I feel alone in my desire for sensation, for defiling crisp clean sheets, for getting clean just to get dirty.

These days, I just play along. I play beer pong, though I don’t drink beer. I listen while people talk about politics, sometimes interjecting with my warped philosophies. I even dance. To someone who’s never asked, I am just like anyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy people. Listening is a practice all of its own, and I admire the pursuit of it. Yet, I wonder about the people, (there must be more like me,) who can soar high on simple things that escape words. I can turn scarlet with shame about the things that bring me true pleasure. They don’t always make sense.

Phrases like, “Good girl,” and “Come to Daddy…” Those phrases are phrases one should never admit make them churn inside, as though suddenly transported back in time, suddenly dressed as though it were the 6th century. Labels like ‘bitch,’ or ‘slut,’ are never to ascribe to, never to crave. It’s shameful, is it not?

I know this. I know what I should want. I know I should want to feel warm and fuzzy over what I see as mundane, what I see as basic, or boring, or, for lack of a better word, ‘vanilla.’

Yet, I remember the first time I ran a freezing cube of ice along my inner thighs til it melted, or the times I thought about villains saving tied heroines from the tracks, wondering what it would feel like if my ankles were held apart- having been captured after the chase. I thought about being unable to bring them together, and regardless of how all these fascinations started, they have remained. I have tried to snuff them out in many ways. Yet, I still remember my affections for an older man I found endlessly interesting, how in reaction to those feelings I’d tied my hair into pigtails, and then donned a lollipop and a pencil skirt.

Sure, call me a lush. Call me a ‘slut.’ Call me what you will. I am more than these desires, but these desires form a certain base of me. They live in the basement of my consciousness, where I categorize my lustful aches by right or wrong.

So tonight, I look for someone with a dark glint behind their eyes, and I know it’s wrong, because, after the fact, I’m still human, still a woman. Sometimes I feel small like a girl though, and I want someone to hold me, and tell me everything’s going to be okay. However, waffling, beating around the proverbial ‘bush,’ and being indirect- Well, it turns me to stone.

Am I broken within this? Is it wrong to want it?

In my mind’s eye there is a bed that stretches across the dimensions of an entire city, and ‘he’ and I find each other, (my imagined lover,) at the center of it. It is warm, and the sheets are linen, with enough bend to them that I feel enfolded.

It is warm, but not too warm. I feel heat, but also ice and sparks, and my nipples become sensitive. Right now, I do not want him to touch me gently, nor to ask me what I want. I do not want to wonder what he wants, to have to guess. I also do not want to be there just to fulfill him, though, leaving me with an emptiness that’s hard to describe.

I want to be taken, and kissed hard, and pinned down. I want fast, I want rough. I want to hear his voice, deep and low in my ear. I want to know just how much he wants me, that he wants me so badly, he’s been shoved into action. I haven’t had to beg for it, or send out clues. He’s sensed that I want him, and I want him to take full advantage of that fact.

I am not a helpless person. I do not have low self-esteem, though I’ve certainly journeyed with it. I am no longer lonely in my own company, and can see light in almost everyone I meet.

But, in the darkness, I want to climb. I want to burn, to freeze, to scratch, to wriggle, to blush, to moan and to cry. I want to hear his voice, as he’s deep within me. I want to be told I’ve been, ‘A Good Girl, or a Bad One.’

Yet, in the crowd around me, everyone’s talking about what they’ve bought, and just where they’re going. They’ve got plans. They want kids and ‘vacays,’ and hold their Coronas to their mouths like they’re drinking from the well of youth.

I see no sensation here, so up and into my mind I go, under linen sheets that spread a vast distance, or into the corner of a dark park, with warmth and with cool, with stern and with praise, with heat and with speed- I imagine someone who knows what I mean.