IN YOUR JAR
I sell my dirtied panties to the oily and sick fucks online. I shit and throw them into a box. I wrap the box with a pink ribbon and scribble name after name. Disgusting bastards. But the money is wonderful. An oversized cheetah print coat. Posterbed made of real wood. A small place with an overlook into the electronic pulse of the city sprawled ahead. The ability to spend Thursday nights in pink bliss, blotted by other men in the night club I frequented. I never told anyone how I made my living. I never told anyone anything. I had a couple of girls I went to the cafe with, blonde and romantic daydreams about various plastic crushes. A conversation made of cellophane because being alone all the time was frowned upon. I never brought men home. That was the rule. Sure, a couple of sour kisses in the back of the club beneath the wriggling neons. A series of bruises down my neck the next few days. Sure, a fake name every night. I was Amanda, Sarah, No One. I liked being anonymous, I liked shrinking into the shadows and staining their brains like a bad tattoo. I liked being on my own. I liked haunting the avenues with my silhouette, gone. I liked not existing. A night spent with the records playing loud, dressed in white panties, dancing and screaming along with Otis, dazzled out of my head, streamers stretching from my palms, the whole room dizzy and filled with bubbles. I drank a glass of water every morning to center myself. I was an empty girl. I was a doll you could dress. I could go polka, I could go southern. Anything you want. I could see myself on the ceiling at times. That always scared me. But my body was on the ground, beneath a man who would toss me around and then let me go into the cold. One evening-it was late hours, everything in the city was slow and distant like a dream slipping out of your memory upon awaking-I called my older brother–Tom, an army man, built like a GI Joe figure, stern and caring at once, always in a random country protecting ghosts from other ghosts, I still had no idea what he did, but then again neither did he, we were mysteries to the world at large, we did not exist, only in glimpses–and cried down his line. I’m a hallucination, a spirit you hear about, a storybook from childhood you just can’t recall the name of; I’m used, I’m thrown out, a garbage bag in the wind. He understood.
I see you, he said. At nine years old, I was eleven. And we are in front of the television watching cartoons, feeding one another crackers with jam on top. And you’re laughing and giggling and we are so fucking happy, so pleased to be in the light, to be together with someone who felt as we felt. It was magic. I think about this before I go to sleep every night. I miss you. I know your name. We stayed on the line for a while in a warm silence. And agreed to meet up next time he was in the states. I’d drive there. I’d buy a truck. Plans were made. That night, I pissed into a pair of La Perla panties. Satin. White for the utmost exposure. And wept into my hands.
The next time I was with a man, I whispered into his ear, cheap beer on the breath. Rebecca.
