On The Part That Hurts So Good After Being Fucked By A Stranger

I’ve walked around all day with the taste of tequila still lingering on my tongue. A headache that’s threatening to split my body further in half. I briefly wonder if the ancient Egyptians were right. Drilling a hole in the skull to remedy the migraine. My hair still smells like the bar from last night. Stale alcohol, beer, liquor, cigarettes, and all the sweat.

Sweat from all the men and women chasing thrills on a humid night out after some rain threatened to ruin their hollow plans for their repetitious evening. Sweat that is my own. Sweat that is his.

I close my eyes and I can only see flashes. Some blurry. Some bright, like the neon sign inside the place I conceived this hangover, radiantly buzzing only two words: PLAY ME. I remember staring at the red letters and thinking just how desperately I wanted to be played with. Mid-beer I tuned out the whole scene – all the people, the music, the sounds of glasses clinking, bottles being set down on the bar top, the voices, my friend telling me she was stepping outside for a smoke – and I wondered, is this the only way I know how to get off?

Being used.

I shook my head. Maybe I just wasn’t willing to accept such a complicated, but simple truth. Or maybe it’s just that when there’s only one thing you’ve ever been fed, it’s impossible to acquire any other kind of taste.

Feeling the warmth of the chemicals in my veins, I danced, and came to.

The god I don’t believe in, or maybe some other god, maybe Dionysus, maybe just that neon sign I telepathically expressed my desires to, maybe just the forces of the universe, heard the prayers my flesh and loneliness had been making in the desert. Or maybe it was just him. Some kind of god in his own way. Some kind of metaphorical cliché. It doesn’t really matter who was the moth and who was the flame. Because there he was, all green eyes focused on the red Smashbox Matte Lipstick in Bing on my lips. All dripping in everything I shouldn’t want but need.

I’ve walked around all day feeling like I could die. Nothing new. Just a little bit greater. The remnants of the shots he bought me still sitting in my stomach threatening to come up. More weight to add to the ambulatory and breathing dead today.

Yes, I’ve walked around all day feeling like I could die. But last night, even if just a few hours I ceased to just be a mechanical mass of cells and organs working together, I didn’t just exist, last night I was alive.

Today I feel the pain in my body from the last few tequilas and limes I shouldn’t have had. Today I feel his presence lingering between my thighs and somewhere inside my mouth.

I don’t take a bath or shower when I know I should. Something oddly comforting following the first several hours after a one night stand. The traces of his scent on my hands. Knowing just hours ago my hands weren’t empty of anything. I can still smell another person on me. I can almost feel his heavy breath on my chest. His nose on the curve of my neck. I get home and don’t immediately put my body under water. I want to be reminded that somebody was here, even if just for a little a while.

There’s something about feeling dirty that feels so right. There’s something about feeling dirty that’s comforting. There’s something about feeling dirty that comes close to feeling holy.

Whispers in my ear, moans, eyes worshipping every curve, hands hungry for something only I can serve, lust-filled desire for wishes that can only be granted by me. Warm skin blanketing warm skin. Feeling like for once my body is doing something it should. Putting my flesh to some kind of use. Silencing the loud emptiness that on the worst days threatens to kill whatever is left. The towing of Loneliness’s car from the curb.

Being wanted. Even if it’s fleeting.

Today I’m back to the monotonous tone of my world. I’m back to feeling the world spinning. Back to seeing gray splatter around me and all the colors that should be so vivid disappearing. Last night I could see them. Last night I wasn’t alone. Wasn’t I? Or was it all just a mirage in a desert I’ve yet to make my way out of?

Because once I step into that hot water, once I wash every trace of saliva, juices, kisses, caresses and semen, I am so fucking clichéd it burns.

I am so fucking forgettable it hurts.

His hands will always be foreign. My name will never roll off his tongue again.

I knew this last night. But call it illusion, call it fantasy, call it mirage, I hang on to it from the moment my nails dig into him, holding on tighter in clitoral joy, waiting for his release, until the next day in that moment I finally put my head underneath the shower.

He’s left me with little marks that could be tiny hickeys or little bruises on my skin, and with questions that will never be answered. He comes only for one of us to leave. It may say more about me that I am way too comfortable with it. So I slip out the door, with all the insignificant wondering, knowing there is no room here for what if’s. He asked for a number I’m well aware of he’ll never call.

I let the hot water run over me and drown all the little shadows of afterthoughts a fleeting night with a beautiful stranger left tingling on my skin.

Will I ever be held, really held, not in mirage, in prelude to sex, but in something more like love, if for the longest time I’ve been too content with only being touched?

I let the water cleanse me, I step out of the shower, wrap a towel around me, and somehow feel less holier and even dirtier.

Emptier.

I feel like I could die.

It hurts so good.

It hurts so good, until it hurts like hell, walking back into the desert wondering if this landscape is all I’ll ever know.