The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [15]
And when we’d fuck I’d climb on top of him and ride the art of his cock as hard as I could, wishing I was his guitar and not some fucked up damaged girl so that his fingers would strum me to death, strum me clean, strum me calm, strum me into a woman he’d write a song for. My shirt off and my tits white moons and my head rocked back and my hair crazy. And he’d cum so hard I thought my spine might shatter - because those long and lean guys have huge cocks - and then we’d breathe and look at each other in the dark of a home we’d broken into and entered, and then he’d become terrified again and jump up and zip up faster than the speed of light, leaving me like sticky residue on a movie theater floor. Laughing the laugh of broken girls.
God. Poor Phillip. I wish I could go back and apologize. He was never cut out for a woman like me with a rage in her bigger than Texas. Although I’ve since learned that extreme passivity has its own power.
Reason two: he was too beautiful. Way more beautiful than me and way more beautiful than a beautiful woman. Have you met these men? His too beautiful voice and his beautiful hands and his beautiful cock. But the beauty went all haywire on the inside because he thought he was shit. And that thinking he was shit? It transformed him into the exact opposite of me - the most passive man on the planet. Particularly around any kind of high energy or conflict. Which was basically me, in the flesh.
And when my rage would come, he’d … well, he’d fall asleep.
He’s the only person I’ve ever met who would fall asleep in the middle of an argument, his chin on his hand, his eyes closing just as you are getting to the moment of victory. I never saw anyone do that but him. Drove me crazy. All my mighty energy with nowhere to go. I nearly imploded or spontaneously combusted dozens of times.
Phillip came from a big ass southern Baptist Christian family, all of whom sang. So there were a great many family Christian hymn sing-alongs on family front porches with family harmony rising and falling in their voices. And his father was the voice of god once removed, and his older brother was the voice of god twice removed, and the other three people besides Phillip were sisters, so that third removed god voice fell upon his slender shoulders. I mean how many goddamn times can you sing “I’ll Fly Away” or the dreaded “Amazing Grace?” No wonder he was so tired.
And here’s why the micromovements of a girl woman’s sexual history matters. Phillip’s older brother had already been through the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking musician, have a family, return to the fold and take on the man mantle chapters. But Phillip had just hit the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking artist and carry around a guilt bigger than Texas. He was the outcast son, unable to join the hymns on the porch.
And me, it was a secret shame I was carrying.
When Phillip wanted hand jobs instead of fucking and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it, and when I wanted to suck his cock and he wouldn’t let me wouldn’t let me wouldn’t let me, we met our wounds in each other’s bodies. Guilt in the form of a beautiful gentle man and shame in the form of an angry girl became our sexuality.
The night he finally let me put my mouth on him we were listening to “Comfortably Numb,” which he’d played himself first until we got too high. In my mouth his cock made me feel forgiven. I don’t know why. But once I’d turned him, he went anywhere I asked him to go with me.
There we were that night breaking up in the snow. A still shot of drunken rage looking down on gentle beauty. Well, I went a little wacko, which used to happen a lot back then, and I started a fight with him. I don’t know why. I remember looking at the top of his head and thinking look, it’s an angel, and my very next thought was, spit on his head. I told you, I don’t know why. Why did I eat paper