eros, logos: fucking rage

Thursday, November 16, 2006

fucking rage

I don't know what he's doing here at this time. I know he had to tell a lie to be here. I don't ask. I would have, once; now i don't want to know. This is not my fault or my problem; I haven't asked him to be here this night. Fine, I say, when I recover from the shock, come on up, I'll buzz you in.
I don't bother getting dressed. I'm at home writing, I am trying to work. I am not thinking about him. Much.

You're cruel, he tells me. When you've been hurt--you close up
completely, you become very protective of yourself. You say things
that are calculated to hurt and timed to cause the most damage.

Is it true? It might be true. I loathe my capacity for anger and I am
fearful of it. I am incapable of raising my voice in anger---what i
feel when I am most angry just as when I am most wounded is cold, so very cold, like nothing will warm me again. I feel very far away from anything, including myself.
And so I speak quietly and coldly and yet this is so much
more damaging than the raised voice, the namecalling,
doorslamming--the things I won't do.
Maybe it's true. I am genuinely unmoved by the opinions of most about me, good or bad, if I don't value their opinion. But if someone whose opinion I value says something painful to me, especially someone I care about, I sit down and turn it over and over, looking to see if it's true. If I love you I'll discard the good things you say about me, but never the bad.

--So this statement from him hurts me deeply. I don't want to feel but I will have to think about this, I feel it sinking into me.
It feels like having been hit.

You put me in a position where I have to choose between my children or my wife and you. I can't do this. You do it all the time, you force me to give you more time than I have. You do it all the time.

This is when my rage breaks. It's like a vessel in me breaking and now it spills out. I can't contain it. Now I feel heat. This, this statement is bullshit--this is his guilt and anger at himself, this is me being blamed for it. What I'm thinking--i'm thinking of all the times I set my alarm for him, to tell him he must leave.If I don't remind him, if i don't make him, he doesn't.
I'm thinking of all the many ways I deny myself. I'm thinking of all the things I don't tell him about how hard it is for me because i don't want to make it harder for him.
I think about how I haven't written here about what it's like. I've had to ask him not to read, because what I must say will hurt him.
I will look honestly at myself to see if I've been cruel, but I know I've never, ever, consciously taken him away from his family like that. It's the one thing that allows me to do this, that allows me to go on, this promise I've made to myself never ever to do that. Sometimes it feels like cutting off part of myself but I do it, and I never tell him.

(This also shakes me--my god, have i done this unconsciously?? am i doing this? I will have to look, i will have to ask myself. I can't ignore this possibility, maybe I do this.)

But i don't have time now to look and see, and so I think, is this what he thinks of me? Is this the kind of person he believes I am? why the FUCK is he even talking to me then?

I have what most people want, he says out of nowhere. I have everything.

Now I am too angry to think or be rational and this almost never happens to me.
I step into him, get up close. You have to be close if you're holding a knife, after all, even this metaphorical one.
I get up close to him, as close as i can without touching him. He doesn't touch me and he doesnt move away either and this small space between us is filled with what we've said and haven't said, and the memory of the things these bodies have done. He doesn't flinch. I smile at him when I say
No you don't.
If you already have everything----why are you here now?

why did you come here, (X)?

I realise too late that it's the liar's paradox again. He's not trying to convince me he has everything--he's trying to convince himself.

He grabs my arms, it hurts me. I tilt my hips into him anyway, we're
too close now, and I can feel him. He's already stiff and I can feel him getting harder now.

I say, I think you're here because you want to fuck me, (X), and you're angry about it.

I grind into him, slow, hard, dirty.
now I do the only other thing I can think of to push him over the edge, to make him as angry as I am now.
I laugh.

He pushes me hard against the wall, it's right there. My breath stops, I'm shocked, even though I want him to. I almost feel fear. Ihis intensity here between us, it feels like violence, like it could be, so easily. Like we could spin out of control--It's thrumming in the air between us, it has to go somewhere.

I do feel fear. No one in the world knows he's here right now, only him and me.

One hand drops and covers my breast through the thin cotton tanktop and he rolls his thumb over the already hard nipple and then pinches it, pulls on it, twists a
little--it hurts--he hasnt hurt me like that before, I can't help moaning. I can feel the same tugging in my clit, I feel how wet I'm getting, wetter. I hate it. I love it. I want to kill him. I want to fuck him to death.

He says, But I think you want me to fuck you. Don't you.

yeah. I do.
I won't tell him that though. I cant control the body or my breathing and he knows the answer but I won't give him it, not yet. He can't make me say it yet.
(but aren't I enjoying this? isn't it making it hotter for me,
resisting and knowing i'll break? even my body betraying me like this, don't i like that? Yes, yes.)
(don't I feel that again now? oh yes)
((doesn't this remind me of something else, isn't it like when I was younger. Isn't it like being hit as a child, promising yorself you won't break and cry but of course you always will, if it goes on long enough and the pain is enough. Yes.))

I won't say it yet. I feel so vulnerable, I'm almost naked, he is not.
He's pressed up against me, I can feel how stiff his cock is, through his pants, through my panties. He's bent his knees so it's pressing into me. I squirm against it. I want to make him want me, break first.
----------------------------

When he thrusts into me I want to scream. He's not gentle. He splits me open and he knows I can't take his cock like that right away, I need him to work it into me, but he rams into me balls deep, brutally, he wants to feel me running all over them, I know it.

I bite him. I can't help it. I've never bitten him before, I've always been so
careful to never leave a mark on him. I catch myself always about to dig my nails in and I stop--not this time. I bite his upper arm, his shoulder, to hide the sounds. I want to hurt him a little.
I'm pushing that line, breaking a rule I set for me. I love the taste and smell of
his skin, I have to bite and I do, hard.

o you fucking bitch, he says, low, at the pain, but it sounds like a prayer not a curse the way he's saying it.
I know it's both.
I see utter shock on his face that he's said such a thing, and then also pleasure.
He's never spoken to any women like this before, not even me.
He wraps my hair in his fist and pulls my mouth off him, pulls my head back. Fuck you!, i hiss at him, and he says Yes, fuck me but then his mouth is on mine,

Now he's thrusting, long and smooth and slow, giving me the full length of his cock the way he knows I love. He's pounding me. I'm hitting at him but it doesn't help. i dont want him to stop slamming into me like this, I just want to fight him. I scratch him and he gasps, grabs my hands and holds them down hard. I kick and twist but it doesn't matter. Soon my twistng is not about getting away, it's about thrusting back, into him. More.
I feel it coming. I don't want to. Not yet. It bears down on me like he
does, and yes he mutters to me, filthy-sweet, that's right, show me now, come on me. Come on me now. I do. breaking open, spilling, I hate it.

I hate and I love and I don't understand how this can be, but I am whole.

I always have come when he called me, like the bitch I am. Like his bitch. This is no exception.

--------------------------

Later, much later, after I've come again and he has. All anger washed away, exhausted. He's on his stomach, I'm lying on his back.
He says quietly,
I am so desperately entwined with you.
I act like this because i hope you'll tell me to fuck off, because I am so fucking weak, so abysmal at staying away from you.

The truth is that all you have to do is tell me you need me, and I will be late to pick up my kids, every time.
And that fucking pisses me off.

I understand some things now that I hadn't. I understand his anger and guilt and shame and why I am blamed for them.
I've been feeling so powerless but now I understand--he is powerless too.

I don't say anything for a while. I rest my cheek between his shoulders. I don't know whether I hear his own heartbeat or mine. We're breathing in rhythm and the room smells like our fucking, like the ocean.

I think about how in my bathroom I've bought the brands of the soap and shampoo and even toothpaste he uses, so there will be no smell of an unfamiliar soap to betray him. I did this on my own, I asked him the brands and did not tell him why. It would not occur to him. He's never acknowledged I've done this and we don't speak of it--but since I bought them he takes care to find and use those, and not my own.
He dreams awake, and has never cheated before on anyone, and being with me does him violence.

If I do really love him, if my principles mattered, I'd tell him to go. I can't though. I am too selfish, greedy, when it comes to him. I can't do it.
I hate this and I realise I hate him for making me betray myself like that. I act against what I believe is right and what I believe matters most to me.
I realise also that he loves and hates me in the same way, for the same reason.

After a long time I say, We're addicted.

I press my mouth against the back of his neck. I want to taste him, inhale him, drink him. I don't want to say more.
I don't want to say the word love, though he has many times and I have answered. That word has only four letters and is too much and not enough. If I would speak, what I might say to him is, When you pray, what is it that you think you'll see?

Yes, he says. I feel him breathe out, relax, his clenched fists loosen and let go of the sheet. Like giving up.
It's as though I hit on the exact word, the key that unlocks him despite himself.

Yes, he sighs. On his back I rise and fall with his breath, the way I did under his rhythm when he was above me.
It's like that.

I said to Poetry:"I'm finished
with you."
Alice Walker , I said to poetry

Update: 11/20: Two other women are writing fabulously right now on very similar things. I just recently discovered their blogs and I am hooked. Each is also an inspiration to me, in her own separate way: please go visit:

Gracie, come with rage
Debra at her own blog, Mercy
and Debra at her joint blog, Sexy Tomatoes, Submit

posted by O @ 04:07


21 Comments:
At 16 November, 2006, Anonymous said… This is my first reading of your work and I find it very powerful. Your expression of the split emotional cutting between love and hate simultaneously just draws me in further to your words. Why is it the line between lust and repulsion becomes so blurred? Why is it the great gulf between love and hate can be so wide yet connected by an adhesion that cannot be separated? Outstanding work. Thank you. At 16 November, 2006, learn said… Dear, dear O, I am all welled up now. Though you’ve always been present on this blog, vividly, I think that, even in just remembering and writing about your rage and the aftermath, you have come alive here like never before. You’re brilliant. Thank you. Too much here again. I get angry like that too, cold and closed-off, my voice estranged from myself. And the re-examinations after attacks from ones you respect, and the rage when the accusations were unwarranted and you were forced to question yourself for nothing. And the understanding afterwards as to why they would do it. And choosing to hurt yourself before others, but wanting your own happiness. And the always present bittersweet that is a contradiction and sill true. It is even shadow-mirrored in reading this: I am pained to read of your struggle, but then, damn, (and I’m sorry…and not sorry…) at times it is so hot too. And it has me thinking again about wants and needs. You mentioned in ‘of possibility and necessity’ how he is already happy, and you are something that adds to the sum of his happiness. And I couldn’t figure out if this could be true. On one hand, it seemed a simple equation, but I wasn’t sure if anyone, much less him with you, could ever really define an origin or a baseline of need beyond which everything else is just a bonus. But then maybe whether you opened room, or filled a gap, or balanced on top is just a matter of scaling and perspective? Regardless, you have to take up space and I guess, like people have said, wanting to be noticed is inevitable too, and not being noticed is impossible too, especially when you are you and he is him, so you want to take yourself away, and he wants to do the same, but that is impossible, beyond just being too late, you were both always there, and all you can do is live it. I hope I am making sense, and have understood a bit… I don’t know, still don’t know what to say to you. Sorry, this is why this comment is so long. This phrase keeps running through my head, I think cause of the last line and the Alice Walker quote, so I will offer it. Sometimes it just be’s that way… Great big love and hugs, learn At 17 November, 2006, Debs - debslosingit.com said… O, I don't know what to say in response to reading this. I've been there, and I've felt it, but for me, it's been lucky that it's more one-sided. If he ran to me the way I am willing to run to him, the world would stop turning. But I'm torn between love and hate for him every time I see him, smell him, breathe in his very soul into my body. sigh At 17 November, 2006, Unknown said… goddamn O, i cannot even speak. i got tears in my eyes and dammit i know that torment. so hot, yet so painful to read. don't ever say you want to write as well as me. my dear you are far beyond my skills. parallel...well my darling almost, almost. i don't blame you for feeling the way you do as i have felt the same. we are only human. you are like therapy for me. xoxo G At 18 November, 2006, Anonymous said… You know I enjoy most of all the tension, the push/pull of this type of attachment. I s it at all addictive for you, or is it that you have to push past the boundary to get at the place where you can just surrender? -princess At 18 November, 2006, O said… Mr W, thank you so much for your words. I am reading your blog now as I've told you and I am looking forward to more of it; I am flattered you liked this. Best O At 18 November, 2006, O said… dearest learn, o my learn, On the contrary, I always feel you understand me very well, and one of the reasons I have always loved reading you (among many) is the shock of recognition: i find you expressing things which resonate deeply with me and which i have hardly articulated even to myself--as you do again here. this is also one reason why I treasure and value you as my friend also. What I have to write now is painful for a few reasons. I have to write about things I don't like in myself. But what is the point of recording anything, if I don't write the hard and painful things? Things have been, are changing between us....I need to write more about his wife, also, and I fully expect to start getting hate mail, when I do that. I'm present to him when absent...but she's present for us also. It isn't pretty. But i am happy, overall...and I am especially happy to have you reading me because it will help give me the courage to write it. Love O At 18 November, 2006, O said… V, thank you. ;) xo At 18 November, 2006, O said… debra, thank you--I don't know if it my case isn't one-sided. in many ways it is. I don't have loyalties and love for others pulling at me as he does. I am not wrong about this: whatever he feels for me, and I know it is a lot--he'll never run to me, or anything like that. It's not like that. I once said to him I knew i couldn't be his first priority--i said this as a statement of fact: I can't be. he became very upset and insisted it was a matter not of linear ranked priorities, but of competing ones, etc. Frankly, he'd be happier if he could be pragmatic and accept this--but he doesn't. Some of it is because he does love me; most of it is because he's an idealist and a romantic and won't take the necessary precautions an affair requires. thank you for getting it, and reading me, love O At 18 November, 2006, O said… Gracie, you know my heart. ;) the admiration adn the therapy are are completely mutual. Love O At 18 November, 2006, O said… princess, i've missed you!--wrote you earlier. i don;t know. Both, I think. It's addictive, yes, most definitely...there's also something about the boundaries and pushing past them in order to fall. Needing to do so, in a way...more on this soon. love O At 18 November, 2006, Anonymous said… This is a rubberbaand. Pull away, snap back. But the band only can stretch so far. Have a new one on hand. At 18 November, 2006, Orpheus said… I wish I could remember what I said originally, when I commented. But I can't. I think it was something to do with having read this open-mouthed, with nods of recognition, a storm going on in my head and my stomach flipping more times than I would really like it to. The intensity - as the intensity I currently feel - is palpable. Or something. I really do have a dreadfully short memory. Oh dear. At 18 November, 2006, O said… My Liras, It's always wise to do so, I think... ;) xoxo O At 18 November, 2006, O said… orpheus, and yet i never got your first comment! delighted to see you again, er, yes. Does this reappearance mean we can look forward to you writing again, more publicly? You know you've been missed... xoxo O At 18 November, 2006, alphagirl said… o, I don't even know what to say - I read this on the 16th and sobbed - I read it yesterday and felt empty - and today I just felt rage. For you, for me and my situation and for for all of us who put ourselves through the addiction. An addiction that leaves us with the inability to let go because of how fulfilling are the stolen moments; the inability to move on no matter how painful; and the inability to want anything other than the life we have made for ourselves. Thank you for your kind words that I should start my own blog - I don't have the courage nor the writing skills that you or Chelsea Girl have - you both intimidate me because of the beauty and skill of your writing. alphagirl At 19 November, 2006, Mu Ling said… The first time I read this, I stopped reading properly after several paragraphs, and then started skimming, despite myself. The second time I read this, I skimmed the whole post, and got to the first three comments, and read them carefully. The third time I read this, I read slowly and with care, and then I read the comments the same way. I found this post nearly intolerably honest. Reading it I felt your anger, longing and desperation. I hurt for you. I almost could not look; this is too private, you should keep this back, not spill it out for us. And I envied you. Oh, how I envied you. We know you through the lenses of our own experiences. Many of your commenters loved this post because they have loved and hated like this, and you said what they would say had they your skills. Some of your commenters found this post titillating. I did not, no matter. I read your post through my own loneliness. My heart breaks for you but I say it again: how I envy you. Two other things. 1) I am beginning to hate him, or more properly the "him" I read about here. 2) I find I identify with his wife. Please, be well, dear one. At 20 November, 2006, Debs - debslosingit.com said… O, I've added a post to my blog you might find of interest... Mercy. I'd explain what it's about but after this post, and our comments we shared, I'm sure it'll make sense. I can't be angry at him. I only hope he will be kind now. At 20 November, 2006, O said… Dear alphagirl, there's a lot I could say, i hardly know where to start. Thank you for reading and for finding something of yourself here, and for answering. It means a lot to me. i know what you mean about addiction; but I won't live this life forever. I just won't. it's like waiting for a fever to break or something. I know if I ride it out, it will. i'm embarrassed and also flattered by what you say. maybe it'll help you to know I feel exactly the same way about chelsea's writing? i'll never have her skill, and i wish i could have that courage. if i'd waited til i could write the way i'd want to, --that is, til I could write like cg--i'd never have written anything at all. She still serves for me as a reminder of how bravely I could and should write and live, and this is one of the reasons I love and admire her as writer and now as friend. I think you should think about it...I hope you do. It's clear you have a lot to say and i know I would read you and comment on you. very best wishes O ps you reminded me i needed to import my post about chelsea to this site, I did and it's here. thank you! At 20 November, 2006, O said… Mu ling, i am not sure how much or what there is to envy here; i think i know what you mean but I am not sure it is worth envying. I want to try and write some difficult things now; neither he nor I will come off particularly well, I don't think. I can't reread this post, actually. I know there are typos in it, as in most things I post here. They're all first drafts, really, and for many of them I cannot reread them for weeks after posting--i'd take them down, I'd have to turn away. I'd also begin to edit, I think, in a more profound way, trying to shape my life into something like narrative---and that's something I don't want to do. It's hard for me to get under the skin of what's painful anyway, without the overly analytical mind intruding, or the literary. This balance is so difficult for me anyway, revealing what's private and yet retaining some privacy... Two other things. 1) I am beginning to hate him, or more properly the "him" I read about here. 2) I find I identify with his wife. I'm glad for that distinction in (1). It shocks me that someone would begin to hate him from how i have written him. It makes me think I haven't written him properly. But then I think, maybe I have, and it's my own anger you'd respond to. and as for 2.... ...so do I. take care, O At 20 November, 2006, Anonymous said… wow. this is the first time reading your blog and i am breathless thank you
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