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By Root 939 0

the smoke out of her face and going on and on, that I realized I had been mad at Judy, was still mad at her, and that actually she was probably mad at me. I hadn’t really spoken much to her since we’d climbed out of bed that next morning. Watching her talking, not letting anyone say more than a sentence or two before starting to talk again, I realized her manners were like her lovemaking—imperious, self-centered, and oblivious. I preferred the women I brought home from the pool hall, the ones who liked me biting them, liked biting me, liked whispering dirty words, wrestling, and shoving their calloused fingers between my labia until I bit them harder and harder, my mouth full of the taste of them, the texture of their skin, their smoky, powerful smell, soaking them up, swallowing and swallowing. Making love with them I rise right up out of myself. I’m happy then in a way I never seem to be otherwise, sure of myself and not afraid. I lose all my self-consciousness, my fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. Their strength becomes my strength, and I love them for it. I hate the men who hassle me on the sidewalk outside the pool hall, the scary threats and the all-too-serious screams in the parking lot, but I love the hall itself, the women in there, the way they make me feel when they stand in that yellow light and rub their fingers together, looking me up and down.

In Consciousness Raising meetings, one after the other, everyone insisted they did not fantasize. I looked over at Lenore guiltily, afraid to risk saying anything. There are days I am not here at all. Two cups of coffee and I run away in my mind to eerie dreams of lovemaking, the dance, the swirling turn of bodies catching the slow glint of firelight. In the mountain clearing with the women’s army, I give up hatred in the arms of a demon who knows no rhetoric. If I turn my head I can see her, the Black Queen, the one with the knives, razor blade under her tongue, and a smile like the one on Cass’s face as she lifts her stick to clean out some redneck boy thinks he’s as fast as she is. The gloves on her hands are spiked. She teaches me to use them. She uses them on me, makes tattoos up my thighs for anyone to read. Under my clothes always, the feel of her hands on me, where no one can see. Men and women, women and men, the unguarded, the unsuspecting. Is she a man? Am I a woman?

I do not have fantasies. Fantasy opens me up; I become fantasy. I am the dangerous daughter, thigh-stroking, soft-tongued lover, the pit, the well, and the well of horniness, laughter rolling up out of me like gravy boiling over the edge of a pan. I become the romantic, the mystic, the one without shame, rocking myself on the hip of a rock, a woman as sharp as coral. I make in my mind the muscle that endures, tame rage and hunger to spirit and blood. I become the rock. I become the knife. I am myself the mystery. The me that will be waits for me. If I cannot dream myself new, how will I find my true self?

“What about you?” Judy leaned toward me with an intent expression. “Do you have fantasies?”

The roar in my ears was my heart, an ocean of shame and rage. My leg muscles pulled tight and cramped. My belly turned liquid and hot under my navel. I would throw up if I opened my mouth. I would throw up. My muscles failed me, failed me completely.

“Not much, not really.” Peter denied Christ three times before cockcrow. I cursed myself for being such a piece of shit, such a piece of chickenshit. “Not any more, not really.” I kept my eyes on my hands where they twisted in my lap. If I looked up I might say anything, anything.

Waking up and not being able to go back to sleep, I sit with a cup of coffee and my journal. I’ve kept one off and on since school, after the guidance counselor told me it was a way to keep control of your life, to look back and see your own changes. I don’t look back at it much, though, never seem to have the time, but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes writing in it is a way of smoothing things out inside me. The morning after the concert, I didn’t write about the