kagablog

Blind Man’s Bluff

When I look in the mirror I wrinkle up my nose and squint my eyes into thin slits. I like how I look that way more than with my eyes wide open — through my slit eyes, my face appears blurry, a ghosted image with wavy dark patches instead of eyes or a mouth. “Expressionistic,” is how my painting teacher would describe the image, “a rejection of refined pictorial naturalism in favour of bold distortions of form and exaggerated imagery.” It’s the kind of face I’d like to have, a Munch Face rather than the round nose and soft chin I was born with.

One day Miles walks into the bathroom while I’m brushing my hair and catches me squinting into the mirror. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

I want to tell him about the Munch me, about the Expressionistic visage that lurks behind my plain features, about the vivid, jarring, violent me. But Miles is staring with a face that I know means he doesn’t approve, so instead I snap the brush through my hair and say, “I don’t know, I can’t see things this close unless I squint.”

The next day Miles takes me to the Eye Doctor. The offices are crisp and white with charts displaying dislocated letters hanging on the walls. I’m to look into the machine, not to blink at the tiny torch shining in my eyes, estimate the distance between two green dots, read the tiny print half way across the room.

The Eye Doctor tells me I have Macular Degeneration, a degenerative condition caused by the deterioration of the central portion of the retina, the inside back layer of the eye that records the images we see and sends them via the optic nerve from the eye to the brain. Symptoms can include: blurry or fuzzy vision, straight lines — such as sentences on a page, telephone poles, and sides of buildings — appearing wavy; an empty dark area that appears in the centre of vision.

The Eye Doctor tells me that there is no current cure for Macular Degeneration but that glasses or out-patient laser therapy may stabilise the condition.

Bobbing for Apples
I order an Iced Coffee and drink it all in one go, sucking up the flecks of cream through my straw and running my finger around the foamy rim. After that I dig around in my bag, light a cigarette and draw doodles on my note pad. I try to look busy, but everyone can see I’ve been stood up.

Hide and Seek
Finally home, I run to our room, shedding my jacket on the floor. I find Miles on our bed, the muscles in his face are still and beautiful. For a moment I think that he’s asleep … or dead? I throw my body down beside him. But he opens his eyes, grins, just joking. Then with a strength that jars my breath, he pulls me to him, nestling my head beneath his chin. It’s our little game — playing dead, pretending to be asleep. The thrill of getting caught in the act.

Spin the Bottle
Miles asks what everyone would like. Jesse and Ramon have popped in for a visit and we’re sitting in the lounge. Jesse says she wants Bourbon and Ramon says he would like some red wine. I say I want a gun because it’s the only thing I can think of that will hit hard enough, that might really blast through my awkwardness. We don’t have a gun, so Miles brings me a knife instead. It’s a big chopping knife with a stainless steel blade and a lifetime guarantee. He carries it in on the drink tray along with the Bourbon and red wine and everyone laughs. I spend the rest of the evening nursing the knife on my lap, wondering if I’d get more attention if I plunged it into my stomach or slit my throat. In the end I don’t need to do either because the way Miles and Jesse spend the evening staring at each other cuts deeper than any knife possibly could.

Kissing Catches
Miles says I have breasts like a fourteen year old, teenage breasts. He licks at each nipple, lapping until they stand hard and erect, then he puts my whole right breast in his mouth, his tongue still fingering the tip, sucking until it aches and I’m wet and dripping and dying to fuck. “Not a handful, a mouthful!” Miles says, “Teenage breasts!” He buys me teenage magazines that he gets from the kilo-shop down the road. He chooses ones with names like Bliss, Just17 and More that carry tips on dating and endless fashion shoots with thin limbed teenagers pouting their half-formed tits at the camera. We’re lying in bed together doing a quiz called “Love Him or Shove Him” that we find in Bliss. It’s meant to determine if you’re seeing the right guy or not.

1. Tick three words that best describe the boy you’re mad about:
Childish
Bossy
Shy
Quiet
Creative
Mature
Loud
Funny

2. Where is he most likely to spend his free time?
With his mates
Watching TV
In a bar
At home reading

3. What’s he most likely to say in the first few moments of a date?
“Sorry I’m late.”
“You look nice.”
“What shall we do?”
“Is it okay if one of my mates comes along?”

4. Tick the topic you and your boy usually find yourselves talking about:
Friends
The future
Your relationship
Problems

5. Tick three words your friends use to describe him:
Sweet
Childish
Funny
Selfish
Bossy
Laddy

According to Bliss my answers mean: “You may have thought everything was fine, but it’s time to question those feelings. It’s crucial that you don’t stay with him just because you want a boyfriend. After all you could be missing out on somebody loads better or having a great time with your mates.” The verdict worries me, but only for a few seconds, because Miles is already licking at my breasts, suckling and teasing until I moan.

Doctor, Doctor
Miles inspects my fingers, rolling each of them over in his hands. He holds them just above the first knuckle, tight, so the tip goes white and twists them to examine every angle. Normally he starts with the pinkie — moves on to the ring, middle, index and then thumb — but today he starts on my thumb. I’ve just made supper and my fingernails are strained with the black of mushrooms, tiny flecks of white cheese and blue ballpoint pen. It’s not the dirt that bothers Miles though; it’s the way I chew my nails.

At age ten, my mother had my habit diagnosed as a form of tension release/reduction. Our family doctor suggested she discourage the behaviour by having me wear cotton mittens or gloves. I liked the gloves, they made everything feel very far away, like there was a thin barrier between the world and me. Everything felt the same: smooth and soft like strong cotton.

Miles holds my thumb in his hands and shakes his head. The nail is chewed down to the quick and the skin around the sides has been bitten into. “I don’t mind the chewing on your nails, but why do you have to do it until you bleed? You’re hurting yourself. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.” Miles is using his stern but sensitive voice.

While he gets up to look for a plaster I examine the damaged thumb. The nail itself isn’t so bad but I’ve ripped the skin to the right of it leaving the pink of exposed flesh and a smidgen of blood. It burns when I put it in my mouth. We’re out of Jungle Book plasters so Miles brings back the Elastoplast Dressing Strip and a pair of scissors. “I want you to stop doing this to yourself.”

I stare down at my bandaged thumb and then I slide my fingers across his lap, slipping them in the gap at the top of his pants: our making-up ritual. Through the thin strip of Elastoplast Dressing on my thumb his penis feels strange; half erect and smooth like strong cotton.

Pin the Tail on the Donkey
Miles says he wants to take some photographs of me, erotic photographs like Richard Kern’s. “You mean porn pictures?” I’m terrified, Miles sees me naked every night when we fuck, but the thought of posing for him terrifies me.
“Well, yes, but not like that.”
“Well, like what?”
“For starters, you have nice legs.”

The next day I go to the library and look at pictures by Richard Kern. I look at a series entitled “Submit to me, submit to me now” from 1996. In the photographs Kern has asked people to act out their fantasies for him while he acts as audience and provocateur. In one, a woman stands seductively under a shower, but something about her expression belies her total availability. In another a smirking brunette is tied with thongs to a home gym. All the girls in the photographs look tough yet beautiful; self assured and mildly amused. According to the book it is Kern’s personalised treatment of his female subjects that transcends the pornographic.

I’m posed in front of the mirror wearing the white lace panties Miles bought me for my birthday. I stare at my reflection, sliding one hand down the front elastic, my other hand resting against a cocked hip. Sexy yet blasé like the girls in the Kern shoot.

Miles tells me I look great but a little stiff. “Baby, you need to relax, stop thinking about it and just, you know, let it happen. You’re worrying too much about the camera, forget about it, just do something that turns you on, act out a fantasy or something.”

In my fantasies Miles has me tied to the bed. My hands are tied with cords to my right leg, which is folded in under me. My left leg is free, bent at the knee and my eyes are blindfolded. He has a knife in his hand, I can’t see it, but I can feel the cold of the metal against my skin, the blade just nicking the surface. In my fantasies Miles pushes my face down on the bed, his left hand slapping against my raised ass while he forces his right hand up my cunt. The heel of a boot strikes. Now both heels. In my fantasies Miles throws me against the wall, biting at my neck, spitting and chewing on bruised nipples, yanks me by the hair, shoving cheeks and lips up against his glistening cock, making me suck, suck all the while, suck, pounding on my skull with both fists, suck, while he pulls at my hair and slaps my pink, teary face.

“You ready?” says Miles.
“Sure,” I say and I smile and cock my hips, because actually I’m nowhere near to ready.

this short fiction first appeared on litnet