Work Text:
"I take the frozen laundry from the line:
stiff bras and panties, solid jeans shatter
and lie splintered on the snow.
My fingers crack and fall off too.
They are my ten tongues,
punished for their honesty."
- Mary Stebbins-Taitt
Jeremy can’t define reality like he used to. Reality and imagination coincided together so often under lamp light that the venn diagram of distinction was a foreign thing. The overpowering smell of alcohol and the intrusive hands under the waistband of his underwear were the things that felt most tangible - something undeniably grounding in the midst of a fever dream. An outlier in the pattern. An idea that he was used to, that now disturbed him in ways that urged him to stop thinking at all.
Jeremy clenched the sweaty sheets, legs dangling over the side of the bed, heavy breathing. His insides: miniature typhoons of bile. His hands: thick purple tributaries of veins. His limbs: near perfect perpendicular. The cicadas outside were loud, like the beating of his heartbeat and the internal punches in his mind, a repressed memory pleading to come out. He clenched and unclenched his fists to relax them.
Breathe.
He’s been through this before.
Breathe.
Jeremy clenched his toes, forcing his eyes up toward the ceiling. He needed nuance.
Breathe.
He observed the ridges of the popcorn ceiling. Mold grew in the shadowed corners. The green fluorescent light from his lamp cast light over the small ridges. A green sunset over small plaster mountains and mold between the gaps. He raised his shaking hands to the ceiling, pretending to feel the ridges, bits of the ceiling crumbling from his phantom touch. A sort of vague attempt to visualize the idea of being real. A sort of vague attempt to deny what was happening. It was a daily ritual. Hands up, feel the plaster. The plaster in the shape of wisps like turtle paced clouds after confrontation and losing it all after a gamble.
Stretching veins, expanding fingers, using fingernails as an extra half inch closer. As if he was there, in transparent white, a touch closer to a benevolent god. In blind light and turtle dove torture, he could find benevolence if he pretended to. He liked to imagine that he deserved it. A peace and serenity in calamity. The calamity was a thing he liked to say was in the form of Michael or the pill of maybe her pink fingernails. Pink fingernails.
He didn't believe in God a whole lot lately. And maybe it's his side effect of hurting.
Since the vague timeline of before, during the Halloween party, and afterwards. Before and after a twelve year old friendship. Before and after the claustrophobic atmosphere of Jake’s parents room, and her pink fingernails and her velvet lace underwear and one sided lust and subtle violence. The room was a fish tank - filled to the brim with Hennessy and Tequila. A detail he remembered too clearly - the smells that he’d started to identify out of second nature after all the parties in the autumn.
Pink fingernails. Clench, unclench. Breathe. Ceilings.
The fabric of his blanket was delicate. The tag at the tangled end brushing his abdomen in a familiar way he didn't like knowing. He hated how everything reminded him of something else. Her hands.
Her hands brushed a crevice. Past the waistband. Lower. It was a possessive kind of grip. Sloppy, firm. He didn’t know how to move. Maybe it was his fault that it happened. He should’ve moved. His hands were stiff, his mouth unable to formulate sentences. As if it was harsh pushes of gravity unwilling to let him go. Simple syllables had power and he was unable to exercise it. He hated himself for it.
Velvet lace underwear. An unclipped bra. Unreciprocated moans.
His eyes stung - he didn’t know if it was from the perfume or the intrusion. He was too ashamed to cry. His body and her body crashed against each other, then inside. He was unable to distinguish where each part of his or her body started or ended. He prayed to a benevolent god.
Half of her figure was covered by floral sheets. Her breasts were limp against the tangled folds. Cloths in pairs were sprawled on the carpet. She was quiet and still. The lamp glowed in Jake’s parent’s room - amber light, stiff, sharp angles on their bodies. Cicadas buzzed in the abnormal heat of October. The ceilling was covered with cheap plaster.
Jeremy closed his eyes tight. He opened them. Ceilings ceilings ceilings. Unclench, clench. He pushed his chest back with his hands - too fast. Breathe.
Every time he woke up in green light, half paralyzed, her body over him - he wished that he had wanted it.
The cicadas buzzed.