Little Cat (8 page)

But I still wanted her to love me. I wanted to feel her body, warm at my back, while I slept. The shower turned off. I waited for her to find me.

THREE

Jupiter asked Tiresias: ‘In their act of love
Who takes the greater pleasure, man or woman?’

‘Woman,’ replied Tiresias, ‘takes nine-tenths.’
Juno was so angry – angrier
Than is easily understandable –
She struck Tiresias and blinded him.
‘You’ve seen your last pretty snake, for ever.’
But Jove consoled him: ‘That same blow,’ he said,
‘Has opened your inner eye, like a nightscope. See:

‘The secrets of the future – they are yours.’

– Ovid,
The Metamorphoses

I
know you’re still there. Come to me, please. Look at me. I want to tell you what happened. Come to me. Closer. Trust me, please. I want you to hear this. I am telling you this from my innermost parts. Listen. Everything just got so uncontrollable. I feel better now. Okay? Stay with me for a little while longer. I want to be with you. Closer. I’ll tell you what I did. Come to me. See, this is what happened:

I decided to stop being with that guy I loved. I knew I had to, I was too twisted up. It got to the point where I barely recognized myself in the mirror. I saw old grey smoke hanging over my skin. And when I’d stare at myself longer, it was like that smoke would fill up my eyes. Squinting, I could see what I’d been doing all that time – on my knees at his hips like a cock-sucking slave, doing it, taking it … Wait, don’t go! Please believe me. I wanted to change things, I swear that I did.

It’s just that it is almost impossible to untangle yourself when you are in love. It’s because you know you’ve got to find something on the body of that person you are in love with and you know that whatever you have to find is so near, it’s right there in front of you, so you’re searching for it, sucking and searching, and it doesn’t matter what that person does or doesn’t do to you, you have to find it.

I’d never cried over any man before. Because every time something ended with a guy, I’d look up and there’d always be another one wanting me. But trying to separate myself from that one felt like vomiting when you can’t breathe. That’s what my crying was like. I couldn’t find that thing on his body and so I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t leave. I was stuck on my knees, with his cock down my throat – I was trying to swallow to get closer to the place where I could hear it, swallow to get closer to the place where I could see it, whatever it was that was love there inside him.

But I didn’t want to be so close! I wanted to be far away, high away, in the air looking down at my lips and down at his cock, where I could see myself stuck, gasping for air, small and split open, always right there, lost like a slut trying to suck out his
love … I know you see how I shouldn’t have been there! God, I knew it too. But look at me more, sucking right there and searching, do you see, don’t you see how I also look happy?

There was something alive down inside me, murmuring,
Spend your whole, spend your whole life on your knees.

I had to lock myself in my house to try and separate myself from this! And all I could do was touch myself. I don’t know how that sounds to you, but I thought that I could only truly dissolve this thing by touching myself harder and harder. I needed to have a whole other body come out and overtake me.

I did it all over the house. I touched myself in the kitchen and I touched myself in the bathroom. There was this one time when I was doing it in the hallway. I had my back flat against the floor and my legs on the wall in a V. My head was propped up and I could see my fingers moving over my whole lower half like they were powered by fire. Ten fingers squeezing my lips like machine parts. It felt like it wasn’t me who was moving my fingers that fast. My chest started moving up and down. My thighs fell open wider. Something started jolting down there, it made my head whip side to side. It was like I had these hard black rods pushing inside me, part of an engine about to blow up! I had fingers above and fingers inside and it was like a tube opened up, a passageway made in the head of a pin. I squeezed another finger up. My pussy was pounding. It wanted me there. The bone curved on top and the walls were sucking, round. I felt like I was going to implode from this touching, fall through the walls, melt down through the floor. I just kept going inside myself faster. I didn’t know why I was moaning so much, my body inside me as tight as a rope – I thought I was going to suffocate. Then, though, god, my chest started soaring. I was turning inside something mammoth – oh, how can I tell you? It was an endless dark route folding in on itself.

I closed my eyes and rolled onto my belly. My ass raised itself up. My hands were still under me, moving and poking. I imagined that the guy I loved was right there at my cunt, that he came to my lips, my fool’s hanging lips. He was licking me, sucking me, until I went limp. My lips slurred flat on the ground. I felt like a pit all dug out at his feet …

I opened my eyes, I wanted to stop! I had to remember what I was doing!

I thought that the light from my bedroom was flashing. It looked like there was something in there. I bolted up too fast and ran down the hallway. My head and my neck were stacked on top of each other too loosely, my feet smacked the ground and my limbs were all jerky. I got weird. I gulped air.

In my bedroom I heard people calling my name. I spun around a few times. I kept spinning. My room was a fucking mess that I was whirling through. I started to take off my clothes. I felt like I was dancing, stripping naked on a stage. There I was, glowing underneath the flashing lights. Me shaking my ass in time with the shouts of the crowd, the sounds of their voices shot right through my head:
She is so fucking sexy! Let’s take her home!
My body got furnace-hot. Burning wood. I knew that I had enough heat for everyone.
Take me! Take me!
I was touching my breasts and my hips as I danced. My eyes were closed but it was like I could see myself moving. It was like I could see the whole room through the back of my head! I saw all the people looking. I knew that any man would take me right then, my flesh all so loose, my hands in the air. They’d take me from the back, from the front and from the side. They’d swarm me to take me. They’d wait their turn to do it. And when they all got around me, I’d spread open wide, it would all go so fast like a train running through me: my temples, my head and my cunt steaming life.

I felt so heavy. I was down on the floor. I reached for my bed. My tongue hung out. I put my finger on my tongue to calm myself. I climbed into bed, sucking my finger, sucking inconsolably tight.

I knew right then that I’d sucked cocks so much because men gave me themselves when I did it. I mean that I got on my tongue what came out of their body that was white and light and unlike them. When I took in a cock, I knew what a man had hidden inside him. I liked men better when I sucked on their cocks.

Then my lips went soft and my finger slid out. I was coughing, twisting around on the bed. I knew right then that I could not suck that one guy’s cock like I loved him because I was sucking a hook, not a cock!

I had the urge to touch myself more, but when I started again it wasn’t feeling as good. This time when I pressed my fingers over my clit, it was too raw, impossible. I heard these crows cawing inside my mind. I tried to say my name but it came out all garbled. I heard it coming, I knew it was coming, the crows cawed,
Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool!
Gagging, I stopped, but it started again:
Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool!
Yelling deep in my head all shot through with caws:
You are wrong! Fool! Everything you have done with that man has been wrong! Fool! Since that man mashed your breasts. Since your hand went down your pants! Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool!

It came out of me.
FOOL!
I lay there, ears open, my throat going numb. I pounded the bed with my fists. Revolted curls in my gut.
FOOL! You’re a fool!
God, it wouldn’t stop! I hunched over, heaving. I threw up on the floor.

I don’t know how long I stayed in that position.

When I finally raised myself up, I staggered off the bed to get over to the window for air, one foot in front of the other. My heart was pounding too loudly. But my feet didn’t lead me to the window. I walked into the closet instead, and I started ripping my clothes from the hangers. Then I grabbed for the shoes and the boots that were there at the back and I started throwing them out of the closet. I was shrieking like a hyena each time one cracked against a wall. I wanted to erase all my fucks with the smacks. The sound of those shoes whipped like dead against the wall. Every time I heard a smack I knew there was a reason that man had hit me.

He’d hit me for a reason, yes, a reason so big that it built up inside me. A reason so big that it was shining all over my face!

I went out of my bedroom and into the bathroom. I turned on the shower but I didn’t get in. I felt the floor, the blue light, and I stared at myself in the mirror. Under my eyes was so dark. My lips were parted and dirty. I closed my eyes and opened them. I knew right then, I mean, I saw it so clear – I got hit because my need equalled the man’s need. Do you see what I am saying? All that time I spent on my knees was this balancing act. I was trying to make something even. I know that might not sound so good, but that is what it was. I got hit to come down to his level. I worshipped the man to bring him to mine. I touched him and stroked him no matter what he did because I was trying to bring up the middle between us.

See, I knew where I was when I was on my knees. When it was like this, I wasn’t confused about anything. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I was beautiful.

I still feel beautiful when I walk out of my bathroom and I see his face. He is standing by the window. He has made up the bed. I feel my mouth in the weirdest smile. I know when I see him that I am over nothing.

Our eyes catch like hooks. And for once we are mirrored, for once we are looking at each other with ease. It’s the thrilling ease of seeing something you are. It seems funny to me all of a sudden. My smile gapes wider. I see all his teeth.

I know: this time things will be different because this time I am looking straight at him.

We don’t say a word. I still don’t know where to put all my desire. My desire for him always hurts when it rises. But I am pressing against whatever it is that is coming off him. I keep pressing into that place where I think I am falling, where I brace myself to fall, to come up again, to come and to fall.

I go down on my knees because I want to. I unzip his pants.
I’ll take everything you give me
, I am thinking so clearly,
because I know I am taking in every part of you
. With my mouth on his cock and his cock in my mouth I start to really relax. When I am here, I am right where I am: inside that place where I need to be badly, where he can feel everything, from right where I speak. I’m sucking his hook, I am swallowing whole. His sounds come out like the grunts of forever. I know he will have me, this time for good, love through his hands on the back of my head, I will always suck more to the sounds of this praying. I will always suck more to the end of all ends. I squeeze my whole life into this place, where his love meets my lips, shooting out like a piston. It’s the heart that he gives me. Half of a heart, a life full of secrets.

My man stops me and looks. His hand cradles under my chin. His cock is right there, as hard as a horn. Then he slides his arm around my neck, hugging my face tight to his thighs. My whole body instinctively jerks and draws back.

‘You love me?’ he says, still holding my chin.

I am looking at you.

‘I love you.’

We end up lying on the floor face to face. My legs are open wide. His hands stroke my waist. He is coming in naked. He presses on my mouth. His cock is inside me. I pull him all in. Our bodies go fast. It is hot it is hot we are pulsing together.

This is what happens.

Do you see what I see? How I fell back to him? Why I stayed and I stayed near the shield of his chest?

It’s because nothing can really die between half-hearted people. We’re sharing our hearts and we’re down on the ground, where we can confess that there’s nothing we know about each other. There we are stuck, beating on each other’s chests, where all we know is what we’re going to do.

THE WAY
OF THE
WHORE

Sister, the Enchanter
has stolen my heart –
where can I go,
what can I do –
he took the breath from my lungs.
I’d gone to the river,
a jug on my head,
when a figure rose through the darkness.
Sister, it cast a sorcerer’s noose
and it bound me.
What the world calls virtue suddenly
    vanished.
I performed a strange rite –
Mira may be a slave, sister,
but she herself
    chose whom to sleep with.

– Mirabai, 14981550

MIRE

T
hings are different in the middle of the night. Rooms, legs, eyes, whatever. The air’s so full of static that no one can see, so everyone just acts, because all acts are fine.

The acts that have led me to the middle of the night reveal their inevitable order when I’m stuck. When all my soft and black thoughts slide into a chain.

Until at just the right moment, finally I’m lucid and I know how a cock can complete me. A good hard cock never leaves you alone.

But morning is broken on its way in. I don’t care what anyone says about the dawn. Its cracks break me too.

‘Men think a woman walking alone at night is a whore,’ John said once. He was pulling off my underwear. ‘It doesn’t even matter what she’s wearing or how she’s walking. If it’s late on the streets and she’s all by herself, he’s gonna roll down his window and stare at her ass. It’s like he’s waiting for something, Mira, that one tiny click when he knows that she’s going to get in his car.’

John had my underwear down at my feet. I kicked them off and twisted my legs together.

‘No girl’s going to get in a strange man’s car,’ I said.

‘You would.’

‘I would not.’

John laughed as he worked at wrenching my thighs apart. ‘Yes you would, Mira.’

‘Stop. I would not!’

‘You’d get in my car.’

‘No!’

‘I’d follow you and keep telling you how hot your ass is.’

‘Shut up!’

‘Oh yeah, I know you. You’d get in my car.’

I rolled my eyes and kept struggling. It was like this every single time we saw each other.

‘Come, Mira, come,’ John would end up crooning to my pussy. ‘Come, baby, come, please come, come, come … ’

My mind wandered while he licked me. I scratched my arms and watched his bobbing head. His eyes were slit and heavy between my bent thighs. It didn’t feel real. All I could feel was wetness on top of wetness.

I thought of how men were always looking at me. How it happened this one time when I was ten. I was at the supermarket with my father and the guy at the cash said, ‘You better keep a close watch on that one.’ His eyes squinted down at my chest when he said it, at the two lumps pressing up under my shirt. Then the guy made a noise, a grunt through closed lips. My father looked down at me and laughed quickly, too, but it sounded like he didn’t really mean it.

When we got in the car, my father didn’t say a word. He just turned up the news and started driving really fast. I put my forehead against the window and watched us pass all the cars. I could still feel that guy looking right through my shirt. For a second I thought my chest had pushed out more when he was staring at it. I heard my father’s breathing get loud. Air scratched past the hairs of his moustache. Then something started happening. Between my thighs on the seat I felt hot little beats, like a pulse or a bird was whipping around down there. It started getting louder. I had to squeeze my thighs tight. I was trying not to make any sound from the pulsing, trying not to let it come out in my breaths.

When we finally got home, I kept hearing what that guy had said, how it made them both laugh.
You better keep a close watch on that one
. I didn’t really know what it meant. I thought the guy meant – maybe – I was pretty, but when I tried to think more about what he really meant, I felt strange. Lying on my bed, the pulsing wouldn’t stop spreading. It filled up my underwear with hot little beats. It felt okay, it felt good, but I didn’t want it to keep happening, because I thought my father knew what had happened. I thought, in the car, he could smell it.

Things started to happen more often after that. I would get that feeling around men, older men, men in stores and on the street. It was always when I thought I saw them looking at me, especially the ones I knew I’d never get to meet. The construction men working in crews on the road. The businessmen with their kids and their wives. The guys on the subway who sweat strange perfume. That beating between my legs started happening so much that I thought those men could see right through me. Just from the way I was standing or walking, I thought it meant I wanted them to see. All those beats inside my body, throbbing so loud.

Sometimes I’d imagine a man in my house, a stranger in the bathroom, watching me shower. His two big hands would open a towel when I stepped out. Then he’d dry me, rub me, move the towel really fast back and forth behind my shoulders, behind my back and all the way down. My flesh would shake close to the man’s face. My ass red behind me, my eyes blooming wide. The strange man would follow me into my bedroom, his footsteps sounding in time to my beats. He’d stand over my bed while I pretended to sleep, one of my feet sticking out of the covers. Then one arm would fall out, an arm that led to my chest. If I rolled on my side, the man would see more. He would see how my breasts were starting to grow from my body, how my nipples were hard, how my hair down there was getting thick. If I rolled on my back, the sheet would fall off and the man would see straight up between my legs. I’d spread them for him, I knew I would. I was pulsing so much there I’d have to. I thought that if the man could see me naked like that, just silently watch me, then it would all be okay. I’d stay quiet while he touched me anywhere he wanted. I’d want him to come back every single night, too, so he could tell me how much more hair he was seeing on my vagina. How much more stuff he was feeling down there.

I’d never even really touched myself where I imagined a man doing it. Maybe if I had, everything would’ve been different.

‘Mira, you’re the sweetest,’ John always whispered after licking. He pushed his chin up onto my stomach and wiped his glistening mouth with the sheet. I closed my soaking wet cunt.

Maybe.

I met John when I was fifteen. I was working in this caf√© on the weekends and he started coming in every Saturday, always waiting to order from me. He’d sit there drinking his coffee for at least an hour, looking out the window, then looking at me. One day, he came up to the counter after he finished his coffee.

‘I have to tell you something,’ he said, leaning in. ‘You’re a very pretty young woman, you know that?’

My face got hot. I stared down at my hands.

‘What’s your name?’

My lips were coming apart to speak, but my tongue wasn’t there. John read the name tag pinned to my shirt.

‘Mira? That’s a beautiful name. Mira,’ he murmured. ‘Are you Spanish?’

I nodded, but I didn’t mean yes.

‘I’m John, by the way.’

He reached out a hand but I couldn’t lift my eyes from the counter. I was staring down at his weird rocky knuckles with little white scratches.

‘So, Mira, what do you like to do when you’re not here?’

I couldn’t believe it – this guy looked as old as my father! There was stubble around his lips and dark skin under his eyes. Didn’t he know I was only fifteen? I was squeezing my hands together so hard they were going numb. A creeping smile hooked into my cheek. I felt John looking down at me, waiting for me to say something. I knew he must’ve known I was embarrassed.

‘Well, it was really nice to meet you,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll see you again, Mira, okay?’

He walked so fast to the door it looked like he was limping. I didn’t think he would look back at me from outside, but he did. He turned around and waved. There was this thick feeling under my chin, like his fingers were still there. I was smiling again, that stupid smile that stuck on one side. I didn’t like how he’d made me look.
Better keep a close watch on that one
. I didn’t like the way he looked, I knew that – his black chin, his thick hair, those scratches on his knuckles – but throughout my whole next week, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I knew he was going to come in the next Saturday. I kept hearing every small thing he’d said to me:
You’re a pretty young woman. You’re a very pretty young woman, you know that?
No one had ever said anything like that to me before. It made that feeling beat up between my legs, this time more than I’d ever felt it. I had to cross my thighs and put my hands in between them to make it stop. I wanted it to stop because I thought it was going to make me do something with that guy even though I thought he was disgusting!

I told Nadia what happened, because I didn’t know what I should do when he came back. She said, ‘Go for it, Mira. Older guys know what they’re doing.’ Nadia cackled, like it was wet inside her throat. Her family was from Russia. I thought it was weird how much older her father was than her mother, who wore makeup and dresses and heels, even in the yard. Her father always sat there in his lawn chair with a newspaper in front of his face and no shirt on, but you knew he was still looking. It seemed like it was a rule of their house that Nadia’s mother had to look like that to show all the other women on our street – the mothers who wore sneakers to go shopping or pantsuits to work – that
this
was what a real woman looked like. I’d never seen her dad go to work. Nadia was older than me because she was born in Russia and she came to Canada when she was seven. They put her in my kindergarten class to learn English. I remember how Nadia used to scream in a kind of high-pitched gibberish at recess to make all the other girls freak out. I wanted to be friends with her. She reminded me of a rabbit, the albino kind. Nadia used to make these marks on my arms at the park after school. We’d sit together on the back side of the hill and she’d take my arm and put it in her mouth, sort of suck it, sort of bite it, just to make the marks. I got a pattern of heart-shaped bruises where she did it. I think I worshipped her. Nadia was fancy like her mother, kind of threatening like her dad.

‘Finally Mira is going to get laid,’ Nadia said, when I told her about John. She’d been having sex since she was twelve. There were always these young, kind of skinny Russian guys with jutted-out jaws trooping through her house. Nadia said they were part of her father’s business. I imagined that Nadia lost her virginity with one of those guys. I remember when she was twelve and I was ten, she looked like a woman. She’d strut around in her mother’s high heels and braid her hair princess-style. Nadia always talked about sex. She’d say things like: ‘I have to come like a guy does, Mira, I just have to freaking come.’

Nadia said that an orgasm was a muscle contraction and that if you didn’t have a muscle contraction, you didn’t have a real orgasm. Nadia showed me her hand with all the fingers open and said, ‘Like this, just like this.’ She opened and shut her fingers really quick over and over. ‘This is what it feels like. This is how hard it’s got to be.’

I knew that that feeling had never happened to me.

John came back to my work the next Saturday. He came back the next week and the one after that. I started to be able to look at him a little more. We never said much after that first time, just the regular ‘Hi, how are you?’ and ‘Fine, how are you?’ which was okay, because I still did feel a bit creeped out that maybe he was coming in just because of me. He’d started giving me pretty big tips after buying his coffee, too, at least a dollar in coins, pressing them right into my palm. It always felt like he touched me too long when he did that. I thought maybe it was just me, though, and I was worrying about it for nothing.

Then, one Saturday, John came in to see me three times during my shift. Right before he left the last time, he leaned in really close. He smelled kind of weird, like my mother when she made meat.

John said, ‘Do you like Chinese food? Have you ever gone out with your friends for Chinese food? I know a really good restaurant near here.’

I shrugged my shoulders and John touched my arm lightly. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’

That was the day he met me outside after I finished work. It was pretty warm out and he was sweating through his T-shirt. I could see the hairs on his chest stuck down in a line. He was shaking his head a bit, smiling at me. I was wearing a purple tank top and a purple skirt that came down to my knees. I wished that I was wearing something over my top.

John touched my arm again. This time he gave it a squeeze. ‘I bet you’d like something sweet to drink after work. You must be tired.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ I said quickly.

We started walking down the street and I could feel my thighs rubbing together under my skirt. It made me want to sit down and cross my legs.

John went into a variety store and got me a ginger ale. He bought himself cigarettes. I started drinking too fast straight from the can and I got the hiccups. We both laughed at the high-pitched sounds that were coming out of me.

‘I’m going to have to scare you, Mira!’

I couldn’t believe I was walking down the street laughing with this guy. I couldn’t believe that no one was really looking at us either. I didn’t know if John knew I was only fifteen. But I didn’t feel like doing anything to stop him when he put his arm all the way around me, or when his fingers started tickling my neck. He kept joking that it was to scare me out of my hiccups.

We turned down a street I’d never been on. There were a few old-looking houses beside this huge apartment building with foil on the windows. I saw two kids waving down at us from a balcony. I was going to wave back, but John shifted my shoulders to turn us off that street. I felt like a car he was steering.

I didn’t ask where we were going because John started asking me questions out of the blue, like: ‘Are your mother and father still married? Do you have a boyfriend?’