kill bill (c) quentin tarantino and company. ie, not me.
There's a bumper sticker out there that says, "Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks."
You were never jealous of her. You didn't want to fight like her (strong and sleek-muscled and raw-edged) or look like her (cornsilk and sunkissed and pureskyblue) or be her, never, not at all. You just wanted her.
Plain and simple.
How old were you? How many years had slid by since they died and everything changed? -- since you killed for the first time? You couldn't even remember. For some reason it seems crucial to know the numbers, the dates and exact times, to count every second when it comes to her, but you can't. When you try to recall whens with her, your mind goes water-clear and only three things manage to bubble to the surface: Lust and its attendants, guilt and rage.
You had been jealous before; you knew what it was. A great motivator, that creeping sickness of anger and deprivation and outraged entitlement -- it drove you now, every day. But that had not been jealousy.
He liked to know how you worked in combinations, all of you, paired off, in threes, all together, killing like one great hungry pack. It was after a Los Angeles nightclub hit, just you and her, and at a long stoplight you noticed a cut on her hand. You can't remember the date. But because you weren't jealous you took her hand -- she flinched, all tense, fighter's instincts -- and kissed the blood off.
She jerked away. The light turned green, and you stayed awake too far into the morning, staring at the hotel wall and listening to her not sleeping too, on the other side.
Things were strained, after that. He never left you alone with her again. Actually, if only you could keep the times from going fluid and switching around and around in your head, you might be able to say that that was when he started pushing your interests inside Tokyo in earnest.
You weren't even jealous of him. He was just another inevitability, a force of nature, something that could not be changed, only endured. The fact that she smiled for him, let him charm her, rolled over and opened her legs for him -- it distressed you to think about it, but you never managed to learn to hate him. It was her you hated, after awhile. She was the one that mocked you, that woke you that morning -- when had you gone to sleep? -- with cartoons, bright and sunny and cheerful and oh-so violent, and silence.
A cereal commercial. A fucking cereal commercial stole away your apologies, your excuses, your come-ons, whatever it was that you had planned to say. Words to use like delicate knives, silver-spun and conscice in your mouth, subtle to get your way, were rudely interrupted. Coincidence, of course, that at that moment:
Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!
And she stared at you, with that inscrutable face of hers. You were jealous of that, and only that, her ability to hide behind that face; no, to be so much nothing, so cold and fierce and calculated, that there was not even anything to hide. You wished you could do that, right then and there, anything to hide your shame at being that fucking stupid rabbit, grasping at straws.
It was a pleasure to beat her shitless that day, despoiled and fat as she was, swollen with the end result of why you were miserable and deprived and wanting something you could never have. You broke her elegant nose and ripped up her pretty blonde hair, kicked her in the belly and breathed harder when she screamed for mercy. Weak thing, she had ruined herself, ruined you.
Her turn to suffer. And you were jealous of him, at that moment, on that dateless day, if only because you'd been wanting to pull the trigger yourself. But, as you learned, there are some things in life that you just can't have.
There's a bumper sticker out there that says, "Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks."
You were never jealous of her. You didn't want to fight like her (strong and sleek-muscled and raw-edged) or look like her (cornsilk and sunkissed and pureskyblue) or be her, never, not at all. You just wanted her.
Plain and simple.
How old were you? How many years had slid by since they died and everything changed? -- since you killed for the first time? You couldn't even remember. For some reason it seems crucial to know the numbers, the dates and exact times, to count every second when it comes to her, but you can't. When you try to recall whens with her, your mind goes water-clear and only three things manage to bubble to the surface: Lust and its attendants, guilt and rage.
You had been jealous before; you knew what it was. A great motivator, that creeping sickness of anger and deprivation and outraged entitlement -- it drove you now, every day. But that had not been jealousy.
He liked to know how you worked in combinations, all of you, paired off, in threes, all together, killing like one great hungry pack. It was after a Los Angeles nightclub hit, just you and her, and at a long stoplight you noticed a cut on her hand. You can't remember the date. But because you weren't jealous you took her hand -- she flinched, all tense, fighter's instincts -- and kissed the blood off.
She jerked away. The light turned green, and you stayed awake too far into the morning, staring at the hotel wall and listening to her not sleeping too, on the other side.
Things were strained, after that. He never left you alone with her again. Actually, if only you could keep the times from going fluid and switching around and around in your head, you might be able to say that that was when he started pushing your interests inside Tokyo in earnest.
You weren't even jealous of him. He was just another inevitability, a force of nature, something that could not be changed, only endured. The fact that she smiled for him, let him charm her, rolled over and opened her legs for him -- it distressed you to think about it, but you never managed to learn to hate him. It was her you hated, after awhile. She was the one that mocked you, that woke you that morning -- when had you gone to sleep? -- with cartoons, bright and sunny and cheerful and oh-so violent, and silence.
A cereal commercial. A fucking cereal commercial stole away your apologies, your excuses, your come-ons, whatever it was that you had planned to say. Words to use like delicate knives, silver-spun and conscice in your mouth, subtle to get your way, were rudely interrupted. Coincidence, of course, that at that moment:
Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!
And she stared at you, with that inscrutable face of hers. You were jealous of that, and only that, her ability to hide behind that face; no, to be so much nothing, so cold and fierce and calculated, that there was not even anything to hide. You wished you could do that, right then and there, anything to hide your shame at being that fucking stupid rabbit, grasping at straws.
It was a pleasure to beat her shitless that day, despoiled and fat as she was, swollen with the end result of why you were miserable and deprived and wanting something you could never have. You broke her elegant nose and ripped up her pretty blonde hair, kicked her in the belly and breathed harder when she screamed for mercy. Weak thing, she had ruined herself, ruined you.
Her turn to suffer. And you were jealous of him, at that moment, on that dateless day, if only because you'd been wanting to pull the trigger yourself. But, as you learned, there are some things in life that you just can't have.