If I Could Watch You. Please Let Me.

Don’t you hate when you look at the toilet paper after you wipe your asshole and there is, like, tons of blood and shit all over the paper?  Like, enough to spackle a wall?  Like, ‘did I shit myself just now’ thick? And you keep wiping and the tons of shit is going away but the blood is not?  And all the blood on the tissue is soaking through to your fingers?  And you think, What the fuck? And then you feel maybe you should call the hospital because there is no more shit and only blood and you are feeling sort of light headed?  And the toilet bowl looks like a miscarriage is happening but you have a dick so that is impossible? 

Man, I hate that. 

Private parts are disconcerting sometimes.  Dicks are like odd snowflakes.  Vaginas, open wounds.  All of them ugly people in a police line up of pinks, blacks and tans.  An entirely separate species of flesh and folds we only look at when we choose to.  Not like faces and elbows and eyes.  Is mine pretty enough?  Is the dark tinge on the edge of the pink lips normal?  How tight is it in there?  Do my balls hang too low?  What about this weird tonsil of skin under the head of my dick?  What are the standards?  The standards are there are no standards.  We just create them in order to feel insecure about ourselves.  Our sheltered parts.  Let’s keep the lights off.

Right now, my pussy smells like a garbage can.  No, more like the pile of used adult diapers I keep in my “cat room.”  No, my pussy smells like an old man being slowly cooked in a room with no ventilation during a record breaking heat wave. No, more like that time I pulled the lid off that ancient tub of sour cream that one time.  I mean, it’s an ambiguously disgusting smell.  Like that one time my dad forgot to take the dead deer pieces off the grill of the truck.  When my brothers and I would play that game where we’d sit and guess which pieces belonged to what parts of the deer.  The game of who could get the closest to the mess without covering their mouth and nose.  That’s maybe what my pussy smells like.

Whoops!  My pussy? No.  I mean, my breath.  I need to brush my teeth like a mother fucker.  My pussy smells like angel hair pasta smothered in peaches and strawberry crepes after a 3 hour shower.  I would eat my own pussy if I could.  All bendy and shit. 

I think if you know what a person looks like when they are sleeping, that is one of the most intimate things to know about someone else. 

“I know what you look like when you are sleeping.” 

I wish I could say this to more people. 

There are some people in this world who I really want to watch sleep.  I want to be able to say that to them.  

“I know what you look like when you are sleeping.”

I want to say this to others.

“I know what he looks like when he is sleeping.”

Or she.

 I feel it’s a secret, privileged power thing.  It can never be taken back once it’s given.

If you let me watch you sleep, I will know things about the heart of you. 

I want to know so much about the hearts of you.

I keep being a part of moments I want to tell you about.  I repeat what the moments are and how I will tell them to you.  I repeat them in my head thinking I will remember them, but I never do.  I should take more notes.

Like, this morning, I wanted to tell you about this moment when I came into a quiet house.  The house is so very big and therefore, the space you walk into has this “extra-ness” to it that, when so very quiet, you feel this pressure to fill it with something, but withholding the “filling” has a certain power to it.  So, I didn’t fill it.  I walked into the extra-ness of the quiet house and I let it give to ME.  I wanted to tell you about this.  About the gurgling in the sink that lasted for a long time.  Like the thirstiest monster was down there.  It was not enough to fill the extra-ness.  It was just a piece of parsley on the edge of a plate that was waiting forthe main course.  I wanted to tell you about the way I moved through the space.  Through the quiet.  How the light came through the windows, softened through fog.  How the dogs’ toenails sounded on the stone tiles.  The wispy sounds their tails made through the quiet.  The way nobody was seeing me.  How, in that moment, in that movement, it was all for me.  Only for me. And I wanted to write it all down as it was happening.  Because, it felt…important.  Worth sharing.  But I did not.  I lived it instead.  But now I am writing it.  Too late.  I think it was more then.  But now, it is now.  Time fades and changes things.  I am a writer.