Confessions of a Slut (3241 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.83 on 63 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by SpikeGoddess (View user info) at 2006-03-28 15:08:49 EST
I can hear him in the other room putting away the dishes. He's angry. There's a lot of loud clanging, emphatic shutting of cabinets, dishwasher abuse. For so long I've been convinced that who I am is not as wrong as they all say, but even my stalwart defenses can't ignore that he's hurt and I'm the affliction. Maybe I was wrong to move in all those months ago with boxes of my books and a promise to stop loving so inclusively. I didn't mean to lie. I do love him. He was very compelling. Still is.
Three weeks after I'd moved in, the perfect Upper West Side apartment had been partially transformed. Our shared bedroom was still neat, and the kitchen had only morphed slightly with the addition of my massive coffee pot and a sad little basil plant that wouldn't quite die thoroughly enough for me to give up on her. The change wasn't so much visible as palpable. It was something in the air. Though I kept the door closed, the bedroom he'd designated as my studio gave off a thick, pulsating energy, insistent as swamp air from New Orleans that smelled like sex and old books and dreams and oil paint. He laughed at my piles of papers and messy collage fragments that I spaced out over the floor, and marvelled that I could wrap my fingers around exactly what I needed within seconds of desiring it. I kept the door closed, and we rarely looked at the mess, but it seemed to be creeping into the rest of the apartment, pressing itself up against the door and oozing through the crevices. The disorder spilled out like desire; it refused to be contained.
I'm one of those people who can always find my things but could never direct anybody else through the seeming chaos to retrieve something for me. He's one of those people who files meticulously and has his high school term papers neatly quarantined in his hanging file archive, but still loses his Metrocard every morning. His parents named him Jack, and it's not short for anything. Jack Wilbur, neat-freak, NYU Business School guru, 5K addict, and unlucky enough to fall in love with an unrepentant slut. Not unlike my artistic dis-order, my desires defy normal boundaries, ooze out from the cracks below closed doors. I thought that for Jack I could submit to quarantine, but even love this strong doesn't seem to be enough.
I confess. I cannot love in line, or lust in single file with each partner separated by a judicious amount of linear time. For me, the practice of love isn't clean. It isn't sanctified by church rituals or professions of sacredness, reigned in by conventions about who to love, and when, and how. I don't serve it slavishly, pine after it in the rare instances when I find myself lacking, or worship it like some gilded idol that has no hope of saving. Love is a mess. Love means getting dirty. Love's like horse-shit---somehow along the line it got a bad name, but if you spread it all around it's sure as hell gonna help some pretty things grow.
I tried to do it like the nice girls for a while. Patrick Loughran and I used to neck behind the fold-away bleacher before gym class, (capitalizing on our abilities to change clothes much faster than the rest of the sixth graders) and when he brushed his short fingers against my thighs and tentatively inched them higher, he made me promise that I'd always be his, as if he was thrusting some flagpole into unmapped earth where there were no colonists or Bibles. I said I'd love him forever and closed my eyes when he touched. The next Saturday at play practice Todd Mutz and I stared at each other so hard that I flushed as red as apples and Susannah pressed the back of her cool hands into my forehead, asking if I was running a fever. I was sure that I'd broken my promise. And I'd learned my first lesson of sluthood; never make a promise you can't keep.
"I promise, Jack," I'd told him over red wine at a new downtown bar where the walls were covered with thick drapes that pooled on the floor and made me feel like I was in a warm, red cave. It was very easy to promise then. Maybe I was so fascinated by his orderly life that I confused it with a different kind of love than I'd had with all the others. Maybe it was the way he found the exact words that I never imagined anybody'd say to me, or maybe it was the way that our sex life was so conventional, so conspiciously healthy. Maybe it was the way that his love for me felt so pervasive, or how he imagined himself into every piece I made and every article I sold. I never had the heart to tell him that I didn't write about him, or that the passionate slashes of paint across the wall, the gashes ripped through canvasses with razor blades, or the inspiration to make an installation out of dead plants all had nothing to do with him. Looking back, that should have been a clue. My art already felt like cheating.
His eyes were black that night. His pupils dialated so wide in the dim bar that I couldn't even see where they ended and the deep brownblack irises began. We drank to our love affair, to exclusivity, to the special love-rewards that he told me were to be found only within the bounds of something so committed and domestic as the adventure we were about to embark on, and I swallowed half a bottle of red along with his moral prescriptions. It didn't take that much convincing; after all, I am a junkie for the novel, and what could be more different from my past than a stable life with an Upper West Side buisness genius who still loved art and me but preferred to make love with very little noise and lots of gentle kisses.
The last time I kissed Jack was a week ago, before I left for the benefit. (It was a quick kiss, almost compulsory save for the little tongue trick I pulled at the end.) Penny Arcade had been working on a big performance art spectacle during her illness and was ready to explode back on the scene, and I hardly blamed Jack for staying behind to finish up some work. I pulled on white sweater and some very tall boots over my ripped black tights and hopped onto the C train, never expecting that the perverse, indiscriminant, horse-shit heart of mine would find someone else to love so soon.
(Possibly to be continued....and in case there was any question, this is fiction and is in response to Razor's rallying cry)
User Reviews
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2008-11-18 07:39:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I love the title and the story.
The title is the same as the one i use for my diary.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2006-04-06 12:27:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
forboding forshawdowing
Submitted by bob (user info) at 2006-03-31 15:38:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
melanie = awsome.
Submitted by SpikeGoddess (user info) at 2006-03-31 15:27:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
What's "mills and boon" in American? Is it like "junk novel"? I've never heard the term before.
Submitted by DanielH (user info) at 2006-03-31 01:47:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Will send review via email.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-03-31 00:18:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
i think iddy goes a bit far, and his sex addict talk sounds a bit loopy
the mills and boon reference though is probably useful - something to bear in mind.
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2006-03-29 21:44:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I loves me some spike.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-03-29 17:09:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
hooray for hores!
Submitted by iddqd (user info) at 2006-03-29 10:13:00 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
i got up out of bed jsut to write this. i would like to say that i respect and admire you as a writer on ubersite (for what thats worth), and im pretty sure you alerady know that.
this is a piece of crap and the people giving you +2's are doing so because of your name and usual standard. particularly (and this is why im writing this) after reading this:
http://www.ubersite.com/m/85970 (entitled: you called me back)
similar sort of material, though kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. except the other is poignant, genuinely moving and well written in a raw sort of way. this post youve written is trite, boring and jsut not a shadow of what you normally provide. the title is jsut horrible. its trashy - yeah you can say thats a reflection of the trashy character, btu really, fuck that, its jsut a bad title.
as i said in my earlier reply, this reads like a mills and boon novel, but worse. there is no genuine emotion, the protagonist is boring and some of the images, particularly the horseshit one, are clumsy.
what i would possibly suggest instead is actually discuss the thoughts of the girl. make her out to be a sex addict. like many sex addicts she could get no pleasure out of the act itself, jsut a compulsive need to fuck. temper this with her stable life and play-acting with her stable boyfriend, and the psychological issues this would cause for her, rather than describing their apartment and some shitty pair of fucking boots shes wearing
i mean really, who gives a fuck what shes wearing (unless its particularly showing us emotions or thoughts), tell us what shes feeling, whats shes thinking.
im sure ill be copping a whole lot of 'who the fuck are you to talk' from the peanut gallery, but fuck them, its my two cents. if you disagree with me, show me where im wrong with regards to this piece of writing.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2006-03-29 09:47:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
woo woo woo!
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-03-29 09:31:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2006-03-29 06:23:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm gutted that this was fiction. I've been hoping to use the expression 'ho bag' all week.
Submitted by Ainkara (user info) at 2006-03-29 06:08:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This was incredible Spikey.
Ooo, I'm coming to America! 75 days! I'll come visit you :)
Submitted by Goneril (user info) at 2006-03-29 05:27:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent, really enjoyed it.
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2006-03-29 05:19:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Really good.
The only problem I had was at times you got TOO descriptive, which made it a little difficult to read at times.
Looking forward to more of this.
-Dave
Submitted by VelvetElvis (user info) at 2006-03-29 04:41:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is easily on a par with early Erica Jong ("Fear of Flying," "Parachutes And Kisses"), her best work. In fact, your setting and subject are likewise the same as hers. Outstanding writing.
Submitted by ozzy (user info) at 2006-03-29 03:52:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is just sooo much better than the majority of stuff on Uber.
I wish I could write like this.
Submitted by Kale (user info) at 2006-03-28 23:51:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2006-03-28 22:22:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I signed in just to +2 this.
Submitted by iddqd (user info) at 2006-03-28 21:08:35 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
seems a bit mills and boon to me.
Submitted by Kracka (user info) at 2006-03-28 20:10:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
holy facocking hell. am i reading this right? the lovely spike is back to grace the pages of uber? damn this is cool.
Submitted by kimmy02721 (user info) at 2006-03-28 20:10:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You were always a favorite. Glad to see you back. Please write more for us!
Submitted by firefly (user info) at 2006-03-28 20:10:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-03-28 20:07:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
if you felt like it, an interesting experimetn might be to rewrite this in the third person, with a sllightly satirical or cynical, slightly comical, tone.
you could make fun of the woman taking herslelf and her role as Modern Woman Struggling With Social Restrictions and Repressed Sexuality Etc (and also her art maybe)a bit too seriously and self-indulgently.
if it worked, and it would be quite a task, you might find that the actual person beneath the facade started to emerge, and the relationship between that person and the facade, their struggle with the facade AND with the actual real issues of being a sexual woman (person) in this mad society, might produce some touching and suprising (yet mundane) moments.
from a thematic point of view, the idea that she has deliberately chosen a very orderly person to live with has great potential, re the conflict between being free spirited and creative etc versus some kind of need to fit in and be normal. but i would try and add to that an element of the artisitc woman having a feeling of superiority/pride because of her spontaneous creative nature.
fuicking hell, i'm supposed to be tidying my study. i just can't get started.
Submitted by Judoka (user info) at 2006-03-28 19:39:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is as self indulgent as always. Seriously, you are quite talented, good to see you back.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-03-28 19:26:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
spike, sadly i'm in the same state as you pretty much - agonising over which of my 'voices' are better or more authentic. it's such a mysterious and subtle thing. one day i might love somethign i've written, the next it seems pathetic.
i don't think using big words and carefully structured sentences etc is necessarily a problem, or even trying to be clever and show off. writing doesn't necessarily have to be wild and spontaneous etc.
in my case, the solution is just to finsih things and then write something else. keep going, experiment, etc. but i seem to lack drive. though i have started worknig on my own website where i am trying to put everthing together in a format that hopefully has, what's it called, synergy. ie i can insert links from the clothhead campaign to r and v to dog sex to my betrayal of my childhood friend rachel to my experiences with prostitutes to my campaign for virtual links between primary schools in australia and iran. the hybperlink thing, it seems, might allow for a website to be a kind of representation of the brain.
i'll read this again and see if i can make a specific suggestion or two.
Submitted by SpikeGoddess (user info) at 2006-03-28 18:51:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
You know, I forgot how fun this could be.
Shandy,
Yeah, I know EXACTLY what you mean, on both counts. The horse-shit line doesn't fit with the voice of the rest of the piece. Actually, I think the feel of the horseshit line is probably the voice I *should* be writing this in, rather than the pseudoacademic "knowing" voice that's dominating the rest of it. It's hard to find that voice. I'm very stuck in a self-concious, egocentric phase of my life and it completely infects everything I make. Conciously, I know I'm a fucking 22 year old idiot who has no answers about anything, but as soon as I write anything it sounds like I think I've got it all figured out. It's not just fictional writing that's affected. It's everything. I hear you, but I don't know how to get out of it. I'm hoping that if I actually subjected my shit to rewrites maybe I could break it up. If you have any ideas for how to go about that process I'd really really apprieciate them. I'm working on a bigger project right now that I'm hoping will be ready for a first re-write by the end of summer. Problem is, I'm not really a writer and I don't know what I'm going to do after I get a first draft down! This story isn't the issue so much, but it's symptomatic of a problem that *does* matter a great deal to me in other writing I'm working on.
BigMike,
Thank-you. Your +2's still thrill me! I really want to go back and read all of the stuff you've been working on in my abscence. That's the cool thing about being away for a while---there's no shortage of good material to read.
Filthy,
Your praise carries so much weight with me. Thank-you! I really apprieciate it. You're quite a rockin writer yourself.
Thanks everybody!
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-03-28 18:35:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
i quite like this, esp the mess business. and i liked the horseshit concept, although the wording you used to describe it seemed a bit out of synch.
what i find a bit offputting about this, and some of your other stuff, is a bit hard to explain. it's something to do with a lack of humour and self-deprecation, a feeling that female characters are taking part in the Great and Serious Issues of Whore Mummy Lover Godess Muse Artist Woman Good Girl Bad Girl etc etc. now those are great and serious issues, but sometimes it feels like they appear a bit too transparently in what you write, ie those themes should *seem* to emerge more naturally from teh characters and story, rather than the characters and story feeling like they are just tools of the themes. (unless of course you want to deliberately go for something that IS mainly concept/idea/theory driven)
and i guess i would also like to feel that you really were exploring those themes in a very questioning and critical and honest way, rather than just hitching onto them out of habit and your background as a Modern Liberated Artistic Passionate Woman etc.
does that make any sense?
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2006-03-28 18:30:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good bit of writing.
Submitted by Professional_Peon (user info) at 2006-03-28 18:16:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I know where this is going
YOU'VE BEEN PEEKING IN MY WINDOWS!!!
*sigh*
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-03-28 17:56:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I've missed you Spikey. I'll always remember how excited you seemed when I gave you a +2 for the first time. Here's another because when my mind read the words and touched the images it was as if I were touching silk.
Baby, you can write. I appreciate it.
Submitted by Durae (user info) at 2006-03-28 17:31:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Very good. Very very very good.
Submitted by matnotharry (user info) at 2006-03-28 17:14:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Love's like horse-shit---somehow along the line it got a bad name, but if you spread it all around it's sure as hell gonna help some pretty things grow
----
I liked that most of all
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-03-28 17:13:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:32:03 (#)
Ranking: 2
Thank You Thank You Thank You!
Please continue
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2006-03-28 16:45:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
We drank to our love affair, to exclusivity, to the special love-rewards that he told me were to be found only within the bounds of something so committed and domestic as the adventure we were about to embark on, and I swallowed half a bottle of red along with his moral prescriptions.
----------
liked the last phrase of that sentence a lot.
nice work
Submitted by Ashfish (user info) at 2006-03-28 16:26:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2006-03-28 16:14:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
More.
Submitted by cuberat (user info) at 2006-03-28 16:06:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I await the rest.
Submitted by BrownEyedGirrl (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:57:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Love's like horse-shit---somehow along the line it got a bad name, but if you spread it all around it's sure as hell gonna help some pretty things grow.
===========
Nice... well said...
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:53:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:39:52 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Hookhand (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:38:31 (#)
Ranking: 1
This just makes me hate my ex. Thanks for nothing. I gave it 1 because it was well written, but I can't give it 2 because it made me feel like shit.
=============================
It made you feel man. That's what a well written piece should do.
==================================
Exactly.
Submitted by MANICMOTHER (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:51:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Girlwithaclue (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:50:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I likesy write more please!!
Submitted by runswithscissors (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:49:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"Love is a mess. Love means getting dirty. Love's like horse-shit---somehow along the line it got a bad name, but if you spread it all around it's sure as hell gonna help some pretty things grow."
Loved that line (along with the rest of the piece.)
Please do continue!
Submitted by the_thorne (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:48:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Blame the boots and move on...
Submitted by jgreening (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:42:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Screw the rally cry.
Write to write, not to take back a site.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:39:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Hookhand (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:38:31 (#)
Ranking: 1
This just makes me hate my ex. Thanks for nothing. I gave it 1 because it was well written, but I can't give it 2 because it made me feel like shit.
=============================
It made you feel man. That's what a well written piece should do.
Submitted by maiorano84 (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:39:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
So THAT'S where you've been!
Submitted by Hookhand (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:38:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
This just makes me hate my ex. Thanks for nothing. I gave it 1 because it was well written, but I can't give it 2 because it made me feel like shit.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:36:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The fourth paragraph did me in. Hook, line, etc...
Submitted by Phate (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:35:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
It almost seemed like you used as many possible descriptors as you could almost in a way to make it seem like by showing off a vocabulary that it validated this as proper writing, I personally did not like that part of it.
But for the most part it was good.
(not like I could do any better)
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:32:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Thank You Thank You Thank You!
Please continue
Submitted by ubetidid (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:30:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
continue it to the "slutty" parts.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:30:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Needed way more sluttiness to keep Shlongy's interest.
Submitted by Scy_fy_junkie (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:30:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sluts should be a food group!
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:28:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:26:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Impressive writing.
Submitted by NotSteve (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:24:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Appropriate amount of cowbell.
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:22:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice. Like the fleshy, not flabby, writing style.
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:16:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
how is that slutty?
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:16:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by badassmofo (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:15:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I always like your stuff, this was good.
BUT CHRIST this must be the third or fourth post I've read today, by a woman, that started with
"He did..."
"I watched him..."
"He was..."
Jesus ladies...stop focusing on us men...it is too much pressure.
Submitted by nitty34 (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:14:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it.
Then again, I like most any sluts.
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2006-03-28 15:12:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Needs a bongo drum.
But otherwise quite nice.