Vagina :: The Zine

1991 Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Perfect Lovers)

Wall clocks, slowly fall out of sync. 

Nothing lasts longer than the lithium ones he said.

Do you know. I see you entered into a new space, such a cool room. The thermostat at constant with that quality of light on the wall. It is one warmly lit and we sit, at a table on a couch on a floor. Position depends on mood. Darling occasionally I am leaning on elbows across a counter my mind leaning weight moving through shoulders from the top. This is listening. Also shaving cream between fingers all over my little desk. Like I wish my love were that clean. Perhaps it is I have not yet learned to read, maps, or that, you I yet do not understand. Language is dependent on space. Love is temporal. The room is nice where we feel both old and young.

I have been reading. The text it pretends to help me understand. Her lover he would tell her often, No te preocupes. Práctica, y está. She took the book from me and spit sound like ten squeegees. All in a row, I near cried from the closeness. This is afterward. And It’s sharp. A whole big onion in your beautiful eye babe. Did you know she says she would rather read, poetry for a living. She would be a professional, reader of poems. If she wrote she would speak, but because she cannot sighs so will not and returns a loose grain tumbling. Anyway there is no money in speaking or foaming at the mouth. Pouring Crown Royal into a wine glass, her silence hits the air conditioning. Práctica. I sit a few feet back and read her.

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Sorted History

At first there was Sean. Star of the drama club with bulbous green eyes that sparked fire among all the girls in the theatre company. He was in high school and I was only an eighth grader. He took me to the movies and we spit out our gum, replacing it for pink tongues.

He dropped me then picked me up again, we smoked some pot and made out in the bushes behind the YMCA on a Saturday night. On Sunday, at the playhouse, he pretended I didn’t exist.

And then there was Adam. Dark curls and two years behind at Mary Queen. He would kiss me but never open his mouth. He would never let me inside. In his room, littered in CD cases, there were pill bottles in the fold of the beanbag chair. He took off the top I’d made from an old tee shirt with a black heart poorly stitched across the front. He wanted to go all the way. Later I found two lipsticks on his nightstand.

Matt didn’t last too long, but Laura and I took turns making out with him on the gym equipment in his basement. Laura let him have it all while I waited for my turn.

Seth darted his tongue in and out of my mouth like a wild snake. He bit my neck like one too.

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Gingerbread Man

Once she ran to see the distance her legs would take her. It wasn’t far.

She tried again.

She selected running because she heard it was some sort of release. She runs so endorphins, adrenaline, or some chemical she probably learned about in biology is exerted. Endorphins make her happy, adrenaline makes her run more. She runs more, she loses weight, and that makes her happy. She loses weight, she gets dates, and that makes her really happy. Eventually, hopefully, the men she knows will care more about personality, less about density. This is fine. Appearance might be an excuse but it passes for an understandable reason. If she was running away she could question, “From what?” She wanted to run because barring all of that, it seemed almost Zen. Simply sprinting, legs aching, mind clear, ditching all the problems and worries at the starting line. Gaining so much momentum that it can erase everything else for a moment. If someone goes really fast, it’s probably the closest a person can get to flying using only their own two feet. It seemed like being free, when she saw people soaring by. She spots a dedicated runner in the park and wonders, “you too?”

So, she goes. Only now that she started, she keeps hearing this line from a poem in her head. No, it’s a nursery rhyme. Where it’s from she has no idea. She can speculate about the story because she remembers, “Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man.” Obviously, there’s a gingerbread man. He’s leaving because someone is pursuing him. She doesn’t know if he’s a criminal or was falsely accused. Maybe he had gambling debts or ex-wives, but it creeps her out. Run, run as fast as you can. Maybe it sounds good to him, he wants a chase because he craves attention. It sounds like he did something wrong. He’s okay though. He’ll always escape, no one can catch him. She runs and runs but all she feels behind her is everything she’s running from. She can’t go very fast. It’ll get her eventually.

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