This is a fiction I wrote up for a friend’s “Falling into Autumn’s Arms” reading. It was nice putting it out and I am very grateful for being asked to read and all the friends that came to support me ❤︎.
It comes as a re-engagement and preliminary world establishing exercise for a project I’ve been working on for the last few years (to be announced on this blog one day maybe). Said project started out as an investigation of pornography, the internet, vernacular and censorship, but has now turned into a psychosexual, spiritual, architectural, digital fiction. All the -al’s. The project is still on the foundations of what is used to be but plus some.
I spent more or less of a month working on this and writing it mainly while walking or in transit. It was pretty much a charette, so I am pensive about continuing it or just leaving it alone. What’s written below is straight from the notes app and I don’t plan on editing it and never really intentionally proofed it. Just read as is, so tw for unabashedly bad grammar.
It started in my stomach. I thought it was just constipation. I went to a party and spread some mystical healing sage gut region. It was being offered so of course I take part.
I: “Something has been up with my stomach.”
Smoke bearer: “It’s powerful you are able to intuit that.”
I: “... I guess We can call it that.”
This sensation began about 4 weeks ago when We exchanged I love you. Your test of my faith is something that isn’t new. That’s how you found me back in the spring: in need of a good testing.
But how We met is irrelevant, you always say to me. “What matters is that it happened.” And I agree.
Well this one, this test, came around while exchanging “I love you”. You said it to me, I echo it back to you and you gave me a test. “If you love me then eat a kit.” I don’t know what that is but I trust that you are benevolent so I wait for you to give it to me.
Description of what you call “a kit”: Some pubic hair, chopped up e-waste, a bit of trash and of course blood. “The order of operation doesn’t matter.” You say. “Just eat it and kiss me.” So as told I do as you demand. You tell me “I’m going to like failure” and I say “if it's by your hands I will”.
The day before the party, You went to the doctor with me. I was told I’m pregnant. I tell them I haven’t had a period in 3 years not had sex since We got together. You call me “Mary”. I assert that’s not my name. The physician looks uncomfortable.
This is the year I’ve really felt my body age. Heat catches itself in places it didn't use to. I feel the difference in my ankles and my knees and my hips when I change shoes. Honey has become too sweet for me. The process of maturation is an active one.
We talk at our spot by the shrine about this child that’s in me. I’m past confusion and straight to full acceptance. I’ve been told from when I was a child, like the child in me, that this is my fate. Its being affirms my reality… But you. I can see it in your eyes: The fear of parenthood. This is what We wanted, right?
Most of your tests involve eating. You say it’s your sex but not in a fetish way. I didn’t get it. I don’t get it. I thought that was an odd thing for you to mention but now I find it sexy. You value consumption, so let me eat for us.
You know, sometimes I think about the spring We met. A sweet mental treat. Behind some vines you live a second life that I’m not fully aware of. I concocted an aphrodisiac from the matter of your previous life: roots, algae and a mass of my pheromones… But there’s something wrong with it.
Sniff it out.
You know what the scary part is?
I don’t know why it stinks.
Useless. I soap it up, rinse it out and leave it for another day. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in dishwashers.
You are my dishwasher.