The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [53]
It wasn’t in the pool that the pussy revelations happened. And it wasn’t later in my blue Toyota pickup truck after we went to Rite-Aid to buy her sinus medication, where she asked me things about my body, having seen me swim. Though being asked questions about your body by Kathy Acker is definitely enough to make your car seat wet. It was later, at dinner, with 14 other people sitting around. Between bites of dinner and sips of wine she self narrated about how she didn’t much cum from penetration and loved to be spanked into orgasm. I was sitting next to her. I’ve never been that wet sitting next to someone just talking in my life. I thought I might slide off of the seat and dribble to the floor right there, sucking her ankles and whimpering on my way down, begging her to go under the table with me.
I talked with her other times. People who knew her would agree with me - she was wide open mouthed about traditionally sexual things - she was precise and clear and fully descriptive. It was smaller, ordinary, human things she’d go all quiet or shy or girl about. Like an inside out woman. Like all the swollen red gushing salty complexity of a woman on the outside. Going THIS.
The night after we swam together at the Best Western, after her jammed to the walls packed reading, after the take the writer out to a bar so people can drool on her and crowd her into claustrophobic hell, at approximately 4:23 a.m. I think you know what happened.
I got the motherloving juice spanked out of my pussy until the bed flooded. It was not like with the photographer. I laughed. I laughed with pleasure.
I had a few other encounters with her. We exchanged two letters about sexuality. I talked to her on the phone once when I thought I might be in love with a transsexual person. That’s it. And this. She read my writing and said: “You should keep doing it. Not everyone should. You should.”
Kathy died in 1997 of breast cancer.
Kesey died in 2001 of liver cancer.
Sometimes in my head she is the good mother. He’s the good father. Me swimming in words.
IV. Resuscitations
A Drowning Scene
MY SECOND HUSBAND WAS A CHARISMATIC NARCISSISTIC tender hearted frighteningly attractive artistic drunk. With hella black curls of hair traveling halfway down his back. And black eyes. It seemed. And a tiny zipper scar across his left wrist. My break up with Devin - poet, divine one - it took 11 years. Goddamn it.
I took an informal poll of all the incredibly intelligent, intriguing, beautiful women I currently know on the question of why we find ourselves driven like moths to fire toward men who fuck us up. They said things like: “Because in loving his darkness I found my own.” Or “I learned from an early age that if it feels bad, it’s good, and if it feels good, you are bad.” Then there was the ever popular “Between slut and saint I choose slut.” And this one’s a classic of course: “Bad boys are more interesting than good ones. If you can survive it. And I still feel that way.” Also: “Suffering makes a stronger bond than love,” and “I’d rather feel alive and die than feel dead and live.” This one nearly made me cry: “He made me feel like someone somebody would risk something to choose.” But the one I personally identified with the most was, “He celebrated a death drive with me.”
The first night I slept with Devin we consumed 25 bottles of Guinness and two jumbo bottles of wine. I barely remember the actual sex but I remember exactly what we drank. We listened to Jim Morrison all night in his bedroom. Strange Days and LA Woman until it felt like it was in our skin. When I woke up the next morning and looked at the desk across from the bed I saw as many bottles as I was old. I laughed and burped