Silence and the Word (5 page)

But when I put the words to it, when I say,
“I want you to fuck me, please… . ”, then I can’t pretend that I
just happened to fall into this bed, oops!, or that I was simply
overwhelmed by my body’s desires, ’cause there’s my mind forming
those words, sending the message to my mouth to open up and say
them out loud.

I have to admit to my lover and even worse,
to myself, that I consciously choose to be here, having sex, and
that goes against everything I was ever taught.

I know not all of you have my background, and
I do wonder how much of my difficulty comes from the way I was
raised (of conservative family, in a culture where sex came always
after marriage and a woman’s needs were often subjugated to a
man’s). It would be easy to put it all down to that; to being
female and Asian and unmarried. That’s undoubtedly a lot of it, for
me—but it can’t be all of it. More than a few of my lovers have had
similar difficulties, and while they are also unmarried, they are
neither female nor Asian. It seems to me that most cultures teach
us to deny our sexuality, deny the strength of our desires.

Strong desires aren’t polite, aren’t
civilized—it’s no wonder society wants to control, soften, silence
them. But if everyone tries to silence their own desires—then no
one gets what they want. We just end up all being polite, and
deeply frustrated, together.

She has been with one lover for eight years
now—long enough to trust him, a little. She has written him notes,
said a few words in the darkest part of night, written messages
with her finger on the skin of his back. He doesn’t always
understand, but he has never laughed at her.

A few months ago she called him up and left a
message on the machine.

“
I wish you were here.

If you were here I would like to

go down on you.”

There are long pauses between the phrases.
When he listens to the message, he can tell that she is having
trouble breathing, that her throat is tight and that she stopped
partway through to bite her lip, to swallow.

“
I would like

you

to go down on me.”

She wanted to be more explicit, more
detailed. She wanted to tell him how she loves the taste of him,
how she longs to bury her face between his thighs, and then have
him do the same to her, have him lick and suck and dig his fingers
into her ass and lift her off the bed, but she couldn’t quite
manage the words. Still, it’s more than she would have said to his
face. She asks him later if he liked the message.

He says he did.

She is thinking of leaving another message
sometime soon.

I could stop here, say nothing more than I
already have, not push any further. The sex is pretty good at this
point, after all. I’ve had a lot of practice, and I don’t really
need the words.

But the desire is still there. The desire to
speak, to be naked, to be known. To be honest about desire, to be
able to trust someone that much, with something that scary.

It’s the same desire that drives me to write
erotic stories, and to keep an online journal and to write this
essay to you. I am trapped in my separate, often confused, head.
And one of my deepest desires is to first know myself, and then be
known for who I am, to be loved
as
I am. An entire being,
sexuality included—however naked and embarrassing and ridiculous
that may be.

Writing the stories, writing to you,
scribbling notes or signing letters: each attempt is scary. Though
exciting as well—you should understand that part. Writing down the
words makes my throat tight; I was shaking as I typed some of the
sections above. My breath came fast, and my fingers are still cold.
I write best when I’m scared and sweating—and the satisfaction when
I finish is sometimes just as good as being fucked really well.
Sometimes better. And that satisfaction comes whether or not I ever
show the piece to anyone else; I am admitting something to myself
in the writing of it. But sharing it takes the writing a step
further.

When I first started writing erotica, when I
put those words on the screen and then sent them out over the net,
to hundreds or thousands of readers, it was a huge relief, an
opening that let me start exploring desires that I had no other
access to, desires that had been deeply buried and unspoken. I
could say so much more with my fingers than I could with my throat;
it gave me a freedom that I had never known—a freedom that at the
same time only went as far as I could handle, that I could take in
small steps and stages, so it wasn’t quite so frightening.

When I write about sex, I can control how
much I expose myself, my desires (just as I could in all of those
intermediate stages above; I could always erase that machine
message). I can hide, a little, behind the name of ‘fiction’, or
limit how much truth I spill in nonfiction. (That’s not really me
who wants to be tied down to a bed and spanked—that’s just an
example, just a character. Right?)

I can hide behind the relative anonymity of
the pages—and that protection lets me push myself further. My
characters can be as exhibitionistic as they desire… and when they
are, a part of my own truth steps out into the light. Every time I
manage to communicate my desires to a lover, a reader, a friend—it
gets harder to hide. I’ve spoken a scary truth, and it’s out there
now, inescapable.

And when that trust is rewarded—every time a
lover, reader, friend responds by accepting who I am (and sometimes
sharing some of their own scary desires)—it’s the most intoxicating
feeling I know. Like riding a rollercoaster up and up, nerves taut,
the heartstopping pause at the stop, and then screaming all the way
down. Every time it works (doesn’t fling me off, doesn’t crash and
burn) makes me want to try again—and push a little harder, go a
little faster and farther this time.

So that maybe, eventually, I can be
completely naked and unafraid.

Every once in a while, if I speak very
quickly and don’t think about it at all, I can just say what I
want. That sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It should be easy.

I want to tell you what I want.

At the edge of the fabric we hang, swinging
freely

over the drop, hearts in our throats, hearts
in

our hands. Roadsigns long since
disappeared;

so few songs and tales to light the way,
here

in the outer reaches. It is frightening,

being first. Lonely too, and there is
always

the possibility that we are truly lost; that
we

are not simply searching out the best route;
that there

is no pass over these high mountains.

Should we turn back? It’s warmer near the
center.

But oh—the clear cold beauty of the
mountaintop

at night, under the unforgiving stars…it
is

easier to breathe here, isn’t it? Am I
wrong?

I know. You’re tired. I’m tired too. My
legs

are so sore these days. Here…let’s build a
fire.

We can stop for a little while and rest in
the light.

We can decide where we’re going in the
morning.

But you know—I don’t think we’re lost
yet.

It was the summer before I started college. I
was working in the factory and living with my family, saving up the
money to buy my books and pay my rent, ’cause even if I
had
gotten a partial scholarship, it wasn’t going to be near enough by
itself, and my poppa didn’t have anything to spare. Though he was
proud, I think. None of the men in our line had ever even finished
high school before. Just my momma’s sister, who married the doctor,
and Cassie, of course. Though it’s not like Cassie’s really my
sister. She’s just the daughter of the woman my poppa married after
my momma took off. She doesn’t look anything like me; she’s little,
y’know? Little like a bird, a little chocolate stick of a
thing.

The guys in our family, the women too—they’re
all big-boned. Big-boned with some flesh on ’em, momma and poppa
types, ‘generous’ as my momma used to say before she took off with
that rich guy. That’s what my poppa says she did, anyway. I don’t
remember her saying that. I remember the day she left, though.
Jamie and Jase had started up another one of their hollering
fights, which had progressed to whaling on each other with their
fists and making an unholy noise, and I was all ready for momma to
turn around from the sinkful of last night’s dishes and lay into
both of them.

Instead, she just turned and stared, stared
at those boys until they froze stock still. She stood there in the
kitchen with her hands on her broad, heavy hips, with a dishcloth
on her shoulder and this look on her face. This look like if she
had to put up with me and Jamie and Jase for one more moment, she
was gonna strangle us all the way she wished she’d done when we
were born. She’d say that sometimes, y’know? “Sweet Lord Jesus
forgive me, I should have strangled you at birth.” In that flat
voice, that said she was gonna crack, just split wide open like a
bean pod, spilling out green bits. She didn’t say anything that
time, though. Just picked up her purse and walked out, with the
blue striped dishcloth on her shoulder, and she didn’t come
back.

Cassie’s momma is a lot like my momma. She
moved out here from the big city, moved into the old Manelli house
down the road and took a job at the plant, working right next to my
poppa in the assembly line. That woman was so angry, so bone-deep
angry, she told everyone she met that she had had it up to here
with
that man
, and she wasn’t going to put up with that
kinda crap no more. That man had cheated on her for seven years.
That man hadn’t been able to keep his hands off any woman over
eighteen excepting maybe his own daughter. That man had given her
no peace. What Cassie’s momma wanted more than anything else was
some simple peace and quiet. Why she married my poppa then, I don’t
know, considering. Maybe just ’cause they were both lonely. Them
getting together caused a lot of talk in the town for a while,
’cause some people here don’t like white folks and black folks
mixing together. I about thought my friend Pete’s momma was gonna
have herself a stroke, but that’s mostly quieted down now.

Cassie isn’t like either her momma or mine.
Cassie wouldn’t put up and put up and put up until the day she
cracked. You say one word, look at her wrong, maybe pinch her butt
as she walks by and she’ll be on you so fast. “Fucking bastard!”
She’ll whip around and she’ll be sticking one long brown finger in
your face, hissing like a snake, promising to get her homeboys from
the old neighborhood to come kick your face in if you push her one
more time. And it’s scary for a second, that fury exploding out at
you, bright colored sparks flashing and screeching and you maybe
take a step back. Hell, Jase’d take off running. Jamie’d blush
bright red and look like he wanted to run and then he’d stand his
ground. What else could he do—she’s nineteen, older’n any of us,
but she’s so tiny, we could stomp her into the ground. He’s gonna
admit he’s scared of that two-bit little girl? So they’d hiss at
each other, and you could practically see the hair rising on their
necks, their tails swishing as they turned and walked away. And me?
Me the eighteen, me the should-know-better? Me who can’t help
grabbing a bit of that skinny butt as it walks by?

I just laugh when she explodes. I always step
back for a sec, but she’s so funny-looking, like an angry baby
bird, and besides, I can tell she’s bluffing. Just making this shit
up, about homeboys and the ’hood, trying to make herself sound all
city and tough. I can’t help but laugh. A strangled chuckle and
she’s still shaking that finger, and then my mouth opens and a big
belly laugh comes up from my big belly, and she’s looking like all
the brown’s gonna wash away to white she’s so mad… . Most times,
that’s how it ends. Cassie looks like she’ll explode, and my poppa
hollers, “What’re you doing to Cassie?!” I catch my breath and say
I’m sorry, very calm, like a gentleman. And she can’t do anything
but take it.

Only one time, it didn’t happen that way. I
was sitting on the front room couch, that old cream-colored thing
with the wide arms so comfy to lean against. I was sitting there
reading so quiet, reading this book about kings and elves and
rings, liking it a lot more than I’d expected I would, when Cassie
came walking by. Cassie’s mom had gone off to church, and poppa had
said he was taking the boys to baseball, and maybe Cassie had
thought he meant me too, and she’d have the house to herself. But
I’d twisted my ankle coming down the stairs that morning, and so I
couldn’t go, and she’d maybe forgotten. ’Cause here she was walking
down the hallway past the front room wrapped in nothing but a white
towel, with those skinny long arms and legs sticking out of it so I
whistled, ’cause what else is a brother to do if his sister walks
by dressed like that, even if she isn’t any kind of blood relation
and he’s only known her for a few months now? She’d been so careful
around us boys that I’d never seen above her knees or even above
her elbows before this. Nice.

So she whips around the way she always does
and storms into the room, almost tripping over all the kids’ junk
on the floor but catching herself. She starts shaking that finger
in my face. And I’m feeling a little guilty already so I hold back
the laugh and let her harass me, let her holler in my face about
her homeboys and how they’d kick my ass from here to next Sunday,
and she’s shaking like crazy with all that energy…and that towel
starts slipping.