Butterfly Skin (36 page)
Authors: Sergey Kuznetsov
Try loving a man without any flesh. Try living every day dashing from one computer to another. Try seeing it, even as you go to sleep, that yellow ICQ rectangle blinking in the corner of the screen. Try picturing a man when you don’t even know his name. Try explaining all this to your friends. Try not being offended by their jokes.
22.12 Marina | Maybe he’s a freak? An invalid with only one finger? |
22.12 Ksenia | No, he types too quickly. |
22.13 Marina | A Chechen war veteran with no legs. A ninety-year-old impotent. Actually a woman. The mannish lesbian sadist type. |
22.13 Ksenia | Just a little bit longer and I’ll agree to meet, even if that’s all true. |
22.14 Marina | Even all of it at once? |
Try to explain. Try to find the words.
So what if I’ve never seen him. Women love with their ears.
Yes, yes, their ears. With the lobes of their ears. With the tips of their fingers. With a lip bitten so hard that it hurts. With aching nipples. With the inner surfaces of thighs, jabbed all over with a sharp pencil. With a damp throbbing between their legs. With their entire body.
Try to tell him about yourself. Try not to hide anything. Try to find the words. Try to remember everything: Mom, Dad, Lyova, Nikita. Try not to hide anything. Try to tell him about your work. Try to tell him your name. Try not to be disappointed that it doesn’t mean anything to him. Try to accept that all fame has its limits. Try to come to terms with the fact that journalists exaggerate the importance of their work.
Try to describe everything that you have at home. The cat-o’-nine-tails, the whip, the riding crop, the nipple clamps, the gag. Try to tell him how all these objects can be used. Offer several different alternatives to choose from. Promise to go to the special sex shop and buy what’s missing. Try to make sure that afterward you have enough money to last to the end of the month. Try to list the ordinary objects you used to use before. Clothes pegs, hair pins, sewing needles, shards of glass. Try to think up a few more. Suggest that he could bring something with him.
Try not to talk about sex. Try not to talk about playing. Try simply to talk. Try not to get aroused while you do it.
14.46 alien | Good. You told me a funny story, and now I want a frightening one. |
14.46 Ksenia | A frightening story about the tortures you’re going to subject me to? |
14.46 alien | No need for that. Just some frightening story. |
14.48 Ksenia | All right then. During the war in Yugoslavia a female journalist ended up beside a sniper. He was lying in an attic somewhere, the windows looked out onto a large square, with a clear view of everything. They were talking about something, and suddenly a woman carrying a box of food appeared in the square. The town was under siege, there wasn’t much food, so she carried the box with great care. The sniper took aim, and the journalist said to him: “Hey, what’s this, are you going to kill that woman?” – “No,” the sniper replied, “I’ll just frighten her.” He fired into the box and the food scattered across the ground. But the woman wasn’t frightened and she started gathering it up. And then the sniper killed her with his second shot. |
14.48 alien | A good story. Why do you think it’s so frightening? |
14.49 Ksenia | Because you can feel it has a hidden meaning that you can’t quite grasp. At first I thought it was a parable about the way we cling to material comforts when our very life is at stake: if the woman had run, the sniper might not have shot her. |
14.50 alien | And maybe he would have shot her anyway. |
14.52 Ksenia | Yes. And then, I told you the town was under siege, and maybe she was taking that food to her children – in that case she wasn’t just picking up what had fallen, she was trying to fight to the very last moment. And then I realized that this story doesn’t have any moral, it’s just a situation with a choice – and that choice is a parable about our life. There are three characters here: the victim, the killer and the observer. And when we hear this story, every one of us subconsciously associates himself or herself with one of them. So, I started talking straight away about what happened to the victim. I guess if I were a genuine journalist, I’d have asked if my colleague carried on talking to the sniper afterward, what she asked him about later, what his answers were and where the interview was published. At the very least, I would have tried to understand what makes journalists go off to war. |
14.52 alien | I think they don’t understand what war is. |
14.53 Ksenia | You mean, they’re trying to find out? |
14.54 alien | No. They don’t understand that what they find in war can be found without going outside the Moscow ring road. |
14.54 Ksenia | Risk? Adrenalin? |
14.54 alien | No. The most important thing about war is the insanity. Any war is a moment when lots of people are suddenly informed: listen, you’ve always been told you mustn’t do this, and this and this. Well, now you can. |
14.55 Ksenia | You mean to say that war is simply the moment when all of us are allowed to understand serial killers? |
14.55 alien | Yes. It’s that kind of insanity on a mass scale. And so you’ve only been in a war if you’ve been inside that insanity. When you’ve realized for yourself that it’s possible to torture and kill people. But I’m not sure there’s any need to go to Yugoslavia or Chechnya to understand that. |
14.55 Ksenia | But what if you’re outside it? If you take the position of the observer? |
14.56 alien | In that case, I think there’s no point. It’s no different from watching the news on TV. |
Try to work – at least sometimes. Try to turn off ICQ for an hour at least. Try not to rush back to the computer during lunch. Try to avoid the word
addiction
when you think about this.
Try to understand what you’re
really
talking about. Admit to yourself that you’re not really talking about playing, or about handing over control, or about sadomasochism, or about submission and domination, or about sex games. Try to find the words. Cruelty? Fear? Violence? Horror? Insanity?
14.52 alien | In actual fact there’s an important difference between us and the characters in this story. |
14.53 Ksenia | What’s that? |
14.54 alien | We can choose who we would like to be and attempt to analyze our choice, but the characters don’t have that opportunity. We have freedom, but they don’t. The journalist, the woman and the sniper can’t change places, even if they all want to. They can’t see any possibility of choice for themselves. The woman can’t help starting to gather up the food, and the sniper himself doesn’t know why he fires. They each have a set position. |
14.54 Ksenia | But they ended up in that position somehow! |
14.55 alien | Yes. That’s why I agree with you. It really is a frightening story. A story about the fact that while we remain outside a situation we have freedom, but we can’t use it because every choice seems equally terrible to us. And when we’re inside a situation, we still can’t choose, because we’ve lost our freedom. |
14.55 Ksenia | But is there anything we can do to avoid being there? |
14. 56 alien | Of course. For instance, the woman could have taken a different route. But the key element of this parable is that as a rule we learn that a situation exists when we’re already inside it. Or, even worse, we don’t even realize we’re inside it and simply stop noticing other possibilities. And then we bend down to pick up the food or press the trigger. |
14.57 Ksenia | But tell me, dear brother, can you and I find ourselves in the situation “two live people in the same room”? Or, if you don’t want it to be in a room, perhaps in a basement or some other place? |
14.58 alien | We can find ourselves in that situation. At least, I don’t see any particular physical obstacles to it. But I think the time’s not right yet. |
Try to love a man without any flesh. Try to ask less and less often to meet him. Admit that his refusal is a demonstration of authority. Try to imagine what he looks like: thin or fat, with broad shoulders or a stoop, with brown eyes, like Nikita? Transparent eyes, like Marina? Dark eyes, like Olya? Pampered hands, like Vlad, or rough hands like Sasha? Try not to ask him about this. Try asking. Accept his refusal to talk about it.
Try to tell yourself that external appearances don’t matter. Try to imagine you will meet sometime. Imagine how you will live when the malleable, pliable image with no specific features, hardens into a man over thirty years old. Imagine how you will try to find the alien who has said “hi” to you every day when you turned on the computer under the veil of his flesh. Imagine that your meeting is inevitable.
Get him to give you more orders. Try putting the laptop on a stool at home and typing, standing on your knees. Ask if you should scatter broken glass on the floor. Answer “ok” when he says “not yet.” Try standing on your left leg in the subway on the way to work, and on your right leg on the way home. Try to understand why he orders you to do precisely this.
Feel the pain in your tense muscles. Feel like a puppet in his hands. Regret that you can’t make all your body hurt at the same time. Accept this pain as love. Try to feel this love in every muscle, every square inch of skin, every bruise, every wound. Try to love even more strongly.
11.26 alien | have your lovers ever made you cry from the pain? |
11.26 Ksenia | No. I never cry. |
11.27 alien | But I cry easily |
11.27 Ksenia | You’re my big brother, you can do whatever you like. |
Try to hide your trembling from the other people in the room. Try not to go to the restroom too often. Try not to freeze over your cup, gazing into the empty cafeteria with unseeing eyes. Try to see yourself from the outside: blank stare, hair over your eyes, black circles from insomnia, nails bitten right down to the quick. Try not to tremble when Alexei touches your shoulder. Answer him: “Yes, I’m just fine.”
Feel how the hairs on your body standing up on end, notice the world scrolling up around you, pay attention to the way your hearing has become more acute. Imagine that you have no skin at all – your body is so sensitive.
Remember if it was ever like this before. Remember all your lovers. Remember your most intense orgasms. Remember your deepest depressions. Remember the moments of insatiable arousal. Remember the tortures that were inflicted on you. Remember all the instruments you have encountered. Admit that words replacing each other in a white rectangle have proved more effective than anything else. Remember the word
subspace
. Learn once and for all that it means simply what it says, and not “submission space” as you always used to think. Say thank you to him for telling you that.
Say thank you to him for visiting you on ICQ a month ago. Say thank you for all the orgasms he has given you. Say thank you for the pain. Say thank you for the pleasure. Say thank you for everything he has told you, for everything he has made you tell him. Say thank you to Someone Unknown for the fact that you met.
Do not be surprised that the word “meet” no longer means a meeting in the real world.
Try to lure him out into the real world. Try promising not to touch your clitoris until he touches it himself. Offer to have your nipples and vulvar lips pierced, offer to put on a chain, so that he can control you like a puppet. Offer to give him a severed nipple when you meet him. Offer him the choice of which breast he’d like it from. Try to admit you are really prepared to do this.
Try not to think that he might get bored with this game. Keep him here. Find the words. Talk to him. Don’t let him go away. Ask questions. Answer the questions he asks you. Make conversation with him. Be a smart girl.
15.16 alien | Have you even gone to a club for players? |
15.16 Ksenia | No, never. I think it’s vulgar. Black leather, masks, rituals |
15.17 alien | Right. It’s like an amateur choir meeting or a gathering of new school graduates. |
15.17 Ksenia |
|
15.18 alien | In fact the worst thing is that these people try to pretend everything’s all right, hunky-dory, safe, secure and consensual. Some boys like girls, others like boys, some like to wear high heels and some like to flog their fellow-creatures with a whip. It’s all voluntary, no animals have suffered in the course of the filming, nobody’s been hurt or offended. |
15.18 Ksenia |
|
15.19 alien | No. That is, yes. It’s not important. You know, when I talk to you, not only about sex, but anything at all – about politics, your friend Olya, the Moscow Psycho – I get a transcendent kind of feeling. |
15.19 Ksenia | A feeling of the tragedy of what’s happening? |
15.20 alien | Yes. The tragedy. And when I tell you “go down on your knees, raise your arms, and don’t dare toss off,” I can tell you that, and you can do it, because this feeling of tragedy unites us. |
15.21 Ksenia | Yes. |
