by Cher Ladd-Vuolo
(4/04/01)
Clutter.
My skeletons make for nothing but clutter. I have so many skeletons in
my closet, that you might mistake it for a cemetery. The bones buried there
are generally hard, and I have touched each one individually, fingered
each one languidly. There is no flesh to be found in this fantasy, so
sorry Mr. Idol. I have been a slave, a pristine daughter, a virgin and
a goddess. I have played a bitch, the four legged variety, and howled on
command. I have been a cheerleader in bed, though I never was good
enough to make it onto the team in high school.
Bones. Nothing but bones.
I have a lover. We are monogamous. He thinks he knows everything about
me, my life and my sexual escapades. He loves that I have tasted other
women. He is encouraged that I am prone to spontaneous roleplay. He
feigns embarrassment when I start to dance erotically on a busy street.
Later, he will fuck me, telling me how hot I looked doing what
supposedly brought him so much shame. It is part of the hypocrisy that
is so distinctly male. Don't wear red lipstick, baby...that's for
whores. Yet every model he downloads online licks the tip of her own
nipple through distinctly red lips. I like you without makeup, baby.
You don't need to wear such a short skirt, baby.
Translation: I don't want other men looking at you, the way I look at
their women.
Back to my closet.
I have had well over three hundred lovers. He knows about fifty or so. We
have had the "so how many have you had" talk that all lovers are prone
to now and then. He feels cheap and sleazy with regard to the eleven he has
tagged in his tender twenty-six years. I have accumulated two hundred in one single
year. 1985. What an amazing year. If it had a pulse, I fucked it. Man,
woman, beast. It didn't matter. If I could have combined the efforts
of each one of these species into one huge fuckfest, I would have.
I cringe writing these words.
One person in my life knows about my closet. He is my ex-husband, and a
large part of that closet. He has rummaged through it, and been
horrified by it for the most part. Out of love, once upon a time, he
closed and barricaded the door, so that nothing accidentally spilled out
at inopportune times. Once we divorced, however, he ripped the door open
and laid the contents on the table, much to the delight of his lawyers.
Bones everywhere, with no meat on them for the sharks. You can't
penalize someone for having a past, except in our legal system.
According to some, justice is blind. This is not so when your bones are
on the table and custody of your kids are given to one of the
skeletons. The hypocrisy once again. So I fucked a lot. Sue me.
He did. He won.
I am amazed at how I have accumulated these bones without dying of the
diseases that come, when they come. I made it through the STD era. I
made it through the AIDS era. I was not entirely unscathed. I had two
abortions. Those tiny skeletons are buried in another part of the
closet. One I refuse to open, one I refuse to remember. The bones of
their fathers are buried in there as well. One father I didn't know.
The only time we spoke was at his arraignment. He was my rapist,
though, I consider him nothing more than just another lover. I was with
him longer that night than most of my one night stands. It shames me to
know that while he was violent and demanding, to me he was nothing more
than a roleplay gone awry. He cut my "cunt" open with a beer bottle and
left me on the side of a road to bleed.
I've had lovers do more damage to me with their words.
The other father of a set of baby bones was a lover I coveted. He was a
vampire, metaphorically. He sucked me dry in every fashion someone can
suck the life from a person. He drained my blood, because he was
kinky. He drained my emotions, because he was an emotional cripple
himself. He drained me financially, because he was a leech. He drained
me physically, because he fucked me until I would laugh and cry
simultaneously. I told him I was pregnant about nine months into our
lust-fest. He told me to purge myself of the "bag of cells" within me.
It was the first time I ever considered killing myself.
I did a quick inventory of my closet around that time. There was no
room for my own bones in there. I couldn't make them fit if I tried
to. I opted not to kill myself, but the progeny within and with it, my
relationship with its sire. I wrote a poem about it, and he read it
matter of factly. He laid it down alongside his crypt and fucked me
non-chalantly. He smelled like stale cigarettes to me. It disgusted me,
and I gathered my things and left him. The image never left me. He is
married now to a rotund little girl he met online and who enjoys playing
Holly Homemaker with him, while he skulks the nightclubs of N.Y.C.
looking for a new freak to replace me. He calls once in awhile. At
least I know I am not easily replicated. I hear the lock on my closet
door rattle. I hang up the phone before the door bursts open.
I have a lover now who thinks he knows me.
When we make love, I would swear it was my first time. I am in love with
him, but he is not in love with me. He likes me to tell him about the
things, the people, I have done in my life. I keep the count under
fifty. I repeat stories over and over again that I have told him before,
lest he think I have many new ones still in the library. He doesn't
like me to use the phrase "make love", but is aghast when I suggest we
fuck. He keeps me intrigued continuously, because he is like having
several men in one. Or, perhaps he keeps me intrigued because I am now
in my mid-thirties. Opportunities to screw younger men don't come along
consistently now the way they once did. He doesn't give head, but
doesn't mind me doing it to him several times a week. In fear of losing
this thing I have found, I pretend to be satiated by that. Sometimes, I
pretend that I don't think he is selfish. Sometimes I want to push his
head down there and demand it. Sometimes, I want to tell him that I
have had the tongues of three men on my clit simultaneously. I'm not
brave enough to tell him this story.
Sometimes, I wish my closet door would burst open and save me the
trouble.
