Self. Pleasure.

i

It’s evening, and I’m stirring. It’s evening in my body, and the light turns on. My skin is out and my tongue wags. My skin is out, my tongue wags, and the fuzz on my arms feels fine as a chick’s in an incubator. I’m hot and sweating, and the light turns on. It’s dusk in my body, and it’s warm enough for hatching. I run my hands up and down my thighs in the mirror, and somewhere inside me the light turns on. I’m burning hot and my skin is out and the fuzz on my arms feels fine, fine, fine. I run my hands over my body, and the me in the mirror pants slowly. I’ve got my tongue out, the light is on, and the fuzz on my fingers feels fine. 

ii

When he asks how I do it, we’re lying in bed—a sanctuary—light from the TV skittering across our bodies. “Maybe I could watch,” he says, and the me who wants me and me only turns her back to him, edges away. On the screen, someone’s trying to sell us something: a Caribbean vacation, car insurance, the perfect fabric softener. He raises my shirt and kisses my back so softly that the me who wants only me convinces me I’m probably making it up.

iii

Before I thought of my body as a body, I used to sneak into my parents’ room and turn the TV to the moaning channel—the one where arms and faces pulsed and swerved, where legs and torsos melted and puddled, then suddenly disappeared behind a wall of snow. I’d stare at the screen trying to make out the scene: Was that a woman in bed, a hand on a knee? The colorful lines wobbled and swayed like a Picasso painting. I’d squint my eyes and turn my head trying to make sense out of the picture, the only hints as to what was going on being the voices of the scrambled people I desperately wanted to see. Even then, I knew it as performance: the grunting, the panting, the high-pitched bleating. It didn’t sound like normal grownups talking; it sounded like animals begging for touch.

iv

“I’m ‘bout to [ ____ ] that pussy,” he says when he bends me over, and I claw at the sheets, my fingers furling and furling, because I know that’s what he likes when he hits it, beats it, tears it up. Pound. Bang. Nail. Smash. Inside, I’m as docile as a sleeping cat—my whiskers wet, heart barely beating. When he’s done, I stretch my muscles, roll my neck, the fur on my scruff tousled and tangly. I want to be petted and to scratch myself. I wag my tail, retract my claws. 

v

Alone with myself, I soak my feet in hot water, oil my scalp, slowly run a wand down the length of my nails and watch them change color. I make pasta, play crossword puzzles, sing in the shower, twist my hair. Sometimes at night when everyone’s asleep, I watch movies with women who touch women the way I want a woman to touch me. After all that foreplay, I’m brooding—my feathers, ruffled. Then, the me who wants me takes me to bed, undresses me slowly, covers me in kisses. I’ve always had a way with me: I know what I want and how to get me there. 

vi

Even when he loves himself, it’s violent: beat the meat, choke the chicken, spank the monkey, rub one out. You’d think it was a professional hit by a contract killer—quick and clean, one bullet to the head. But when I ask him how he does it, he’s reticent, shy. I can tell by the look in his eyes he wants to change the subject. Still, I can’t help wondering how his face might soften, his jaw relax if he, like me, had tender names for touching his body: playing the piano, plucking the guitar, buttering the muffin, polishing the pearl, tickling the petal, stroking the kitten, spooling the yarn, finger painting.

vii

When he wants me, he wants me. When he wants me, he wants me live and in person. One leg then the other, I step into myself, pull me up, find my armholes and zip up my body. I’ve got to preen and purr—lie on my stomach and push my butt toward the ceiling until my back arches like a kitten. He demands for me to tell him it’s his, and I say, “Baby, you own this body:” thick calves and itchy scalp, sweaty feet and pear-shaped breasts. “Yeah  yeah   yeah   yeah,” I scream, loud enough so they can hear me in the back.

viii

He wants me to purr and I do. He wants me to growl and hiss, to mew with my legs wide open. But when I’m alone, I’m quiet until the last possible moment, then “Sssh.” I only dare to speak in the whisperiest of whispers: “If I’m a pussy,” I say with a grin, “then I’m the cat that ate the canary.” 

ix

It’s 100 degrees in my body. It’s 100 degrees and the light is on. There’s a chirping in my body. There’s a pipping in my body, and I’m about to crack open. There’s a hatchling in my body, pink and wet like a newborn chick. I’m burning up and the light is on. There’s a candling in my body and me in the mirror. I’m holding a light up, and I’m ready to hatch, and the chick in the mirror is fine.

x

In the church of me, I worship myself: on the pews, on the floor, in the vestibule just beyond the sanctuary. The light coming through the stained glass colors the walls canary and coral, cobalt and copper. The pulpit is bathed in orchid, the color of my nails as I strum the harp, filling the chapel with glorious music. And, yes, there is singing! And, yes, there is joy! And, yes, there is clapping and the laying on of hands! The organ swells, I drop to my knees, and the me who wants me anoints me with oil. And last, the prayer of benediction: “I shall not want. I shall not want.”