Almost, But Not Quite

I like it rough, I told him.

How rough?

Sweaty, no-holds-barred rough.

You sure? he said as he nibbled on the straps of my nightgown. We might wake the baby up.

It's pitch-black. She won't see a thing even if we wake her up.

He starts kissing, kneading, exhaling. I feel goosebumps form everywhere. He starts cupping my breasts. I strain against the sheer material of the nightgown. I want to tear it off. Leave it on, he said. I like doing you with that material bunched around your waist.

Pervert, I panted. I arch my back as he buried his face in my breasts. Skip the foreplay, I breathed. But he wouldn't listen. He sucked, he licked, he touched. I start combusting. As if he could feel the heat oozing from my pores, he blew butterfly kisses on the mound that he had selfishly ravaged only seconds ago. I quiver like a rope stretched too tautly.

Oh my god. Oh my God. Oh my god.

Stop calling me god, he said insolently. His tongue continues the onslaught. The sheet underneath me is now soaked through.

I want you to bite me, I quavered. He bites. I scream. Quick as lightning, he shushes the sleeping child beside us back to sleep.

He admonishes me, You can't scream or you'll wake her. Your brother, too.

I nod, too dazed to speak. He thrusts his penis at my face. It feels hot, thick, and furious. I take him into my mouth. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. My mouth starts to ache. He slaps my hand on his balls. I massage his semen sac. His penis undulates to the rhythm of my mouth.

Then, mid-thrust, I stop him. No more, I tell him. My mouth hurts.

Without another word, he grabs my right leg and thrusts. The world swirls as he starts thrusting.

Deeper, faster, harder. I could feel his kisses spitting fire.

Rougher, please, I beg him. Rougher.

His thrusts become punishing, merciless.

I ooze with lascivious fluids until inside, I become so wet I could no longer feel him slipping in and out, as intensely as before. Squeeze my buttocks, I rasped. I can't feel you. Grab the cheeks and stretch so I can feel you.

He does what I ask him. His eyes glaze. He barrels into me so hard that I feel torn between pleasure and pain.

Don't turn away, he commands. Look at me. I like looking at your face. I want to take pictures of your face, like that.

He starts touching me as he hammers away. Would my finger fit with me still inside?

There's only one way to find out.

Oh god. Oh god. Yank on my hair. Make me open up wider. Rougher, please. Rougher.

But he never goes rougher. Somehow, the longer we make love, the gentler he becomes. His touch loses its urgency, as do his thrusts.

I love you, he whispers. I'm afraid I'll break you.

I won't break, I whisper back. Just ride me roughly. Hurt me a little, please.

His face starts contorting as if he were in pain. He grunts loudly and then collapses.

I feel cheated. I was almost there. Frustration rams into me like a searing pain. While he tries to catch his breath, I lie face-down to finish the job.

Was it good? he rasps a few seconds later.

Yes, I lie. It was good. It's always good.

Sexist?

I came across an interesting post from Temperamental Artist. She presented a list that is supposed to gauge how sexist her reading has been. The list piqued my interest so I'm making my own, too.

Just present in bold font the books you've read; italicize the ones you've been meaning to read, and underline those you've never even heard of.

Allcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
Rocha, Sharon–For Laci
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That?
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own

I wish I could present more texts in bold print. But I don't think the fact I couldn't means I'm sexist. It could simply mean my literary horizon is in dire need of expansion. After all, I have never heard of a lot of books and authors in the list.

Made for Walking

What is it with men?

My husband likes ogling bad girls. You know the type; black-clad females who sport rainbowesque hair, multiple piercings, and tattoos. I don't mind him doing that. I like ogling girls, too.

But when I mentioned getting a tattoo, he vehemently vetoed the idea. "It makes you look dirty and cheap," he pronounced.

Then, last week, I got hooker boots. I call them hooker boots because they're footwear worn by showgirls on television. They're black as sin and sexy as hell. They're two inches short of reaching the kneecaps. But, they make the eyes want to stray higher. The boots were freaking expensive. They came at half the price of a brand new 21-inch television. I don't mind the price so much since the boots seduced me the moment I laid eyes on them.

What I do mind, however, is not being able to wear them. The husband thinks that I'm inviting trouble simply by putting the boots on. "They make you look slutty," he said. "They make your skirt look even skimpier."

If the goal were to appear respectable, then the skirt should have been the one replaced. But no. He wanted the boots off. So, I went to work with a skimpy skirt on, and a more sedate pair of high heels.

Then, a while ago, he sent me a kinky text message, asking me to wear the boots later. Only the boots. Nothing else.

Men!

I have half a mind to fling Jessica Simpson's song (originally Nancy Sinatra's) at him: These boots were made for walking and that's just what they'll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

CSI

I like watching CSI. They always find inventive ways to kill people off. They have charred bodies dropping out of chimneys and rape victims being made part of the architecture. One episode was particularly reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-tale Heart. A man rapes a girl, stabs her, and seals her inside a chimney wall. Then, he hangs erotic black and white photos of her in his living room.

No wonder CSI keeps me hooked. The show helps me understand crime and how the police operate. I now know, for example, that it's not enough for me to just wear gloves while I slit a person's throat. I'd have to make sure that

1. no one sees me enter the victim's house

2. the knife I'm using can't be traced to me

3. I don't leave behind any epithelials, in the form of hair, sweat, or blood

4. I don't leave shoe impressions

5. I don't run into any sharp objects of furniture that might rip off any part of my clothing

6. I don't sneeze or touch anything while I'm inside the victim's house

Above all, I must never say "I don't know the victim," especially if said victim is someone I work with, lunched with, or dated sometime in the past. Lying about knowing the victim would automatically make the police suspicious and alert them that I have something to hide.

It's entirely possible that the show, CSI, is making criminals smarter about crime. After all, if a bored corporate slave like me could know so much about throwing the police off a killer's trail, simply by watching CSI, think of the inspiration these episodes provide to killers and would-be killers.

I wonder. Since CSIs sniff after criminals so tenaciously, how do you kill someone and make sure that the crime is never traced back to you?

Guilt

(Part 1 of an indeterminate-number-of-parts recollection)

I was baptized a Roman Catholic. And, for the longest time in the world, I felt guilt like one. I carried a lot of guilt as a child. There was the guilt that came from knowing I was born with the taint of the original sin. Then, there was the guilt that gnaws at me whenever I looked at Jesus nailed to the cross. If you are born to Catholic parents, like I was, and if you go to an all-girls Catholic school, like I did, you'd know that this image of the suffering Christ is inescapable. It's part of the architecture. You see it in church, in school, in your school's chapel, inside your classroom, inside the school clinic, library, even the comfort room. You see it at home, too, staring down at you from your bedroom wall and gazing at you from the living room and the kitchen.

Guilt is a heavy burden for an eight-year-old to carry. There was the glaring inconsistency, too. I was too young to go to the malls on my own, stay up past nine, wear lipstick, or flirt. But, I was, apparently, old enough to be held responsible for the death of the Messiah and the intransigence of the first man and woman. To my then eight-year-old heart, I was doomed. I had not yet made mistakes of my own yet, there I was, forced to do penance for sins committed thousands of years before my birth.

If you live in the Philippines, and in a remote little town at that, you'd keenly feel this penance I'm talking about. Our annual observance of the Holy Week includes fasting, attending service every day, saying the rosary and listening to radio plays about Jesus' life and death from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon. One should not laugh, talk loudly, play, watch television, eat meat or a full meal in order to show sympathy for Jesus' suffering.

Some devotees, however, carry Holy Week observance to a whole new level. They have themselves flogged while some have themselves flogged and nailed to a makeshift cross. While these take place, hordes of devotees look on in fascination.

I won't even pretend to understand the logic behind the flogging and the crucifixion. I have always seen it as a malicious display of masochism. How like a Catholic to equate contrition with physical abuse! How like a Catholic to believe that blood dripping from a flagellated back would rinse the slate free of all sins!

It defies explanation, this voluntary flogging and crucifixion. Really. If Christ were the forgiving Messiah that we've been taught he is, then he wouldn't enjoy seeing his children bloodied and bruised. He would forgive our sins because we sincerely ask him to, not because we're dangling from a rackety cross. Exacting physical torture in exchange for forgiveness is not the act of a forgiving God; it is what you'd expect from a vengeful deity.

Of course, my grandmother (who, for all intent, might as well be married to the parish priest since she spends two-thirds of her waking moments in church) extols the bravery of these men who thrash themselves to within an inch of unconsciousness. It takes a really determined love for and of Christ, she says, to willingly inflict pain on one's self. But eight-year-old kids like me don't have to follow their footsteps. Grandma explains that Christ does not expect such a brave sacrifice from little children.

I found Grandma's explanation just as confusing as the whole concept of sin. She tells me that I need not have myself flogged or crucified because Jesus does not expect this from children. But she also tells me that having one's self flogged or crucified is a brave thing to do. So, does this mean that while Jesus does not expect such a brave sacrifice from little children, he requires it of everyone else? Does this mean, too, that having myself flogged or crucified is a goal I should dedicate myself to, these two acts being the paramount declaration of love?

I mulled over these questions, as a child. I contemplated many questions of a similar nature, too. Why shouldn't I laugh during Holy Week? Why should I have to whisper whenever I talk to my brother? Surely, Jesus would not be offended if I feel happy. I am not laughing at his suffering. I am laughing at something I find hilarious. Besides, wasn't that the point of Jesus' sacrifice? He died that we might live. He died that we might find redemption. He suffered because he loves us. And, if you love someone, you don't want them to be miserable. You don't want them to go hungry. You don't want them to torture themselves, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

*** To be continued because the author has to pack, so she can drag her husband and her two-year-old daughter to the remote little town that taught her guilt so well.

Toilet Talk

Why do we wash our hands after going to the bathroom?

The most logical answer would be that hygiene demands it.

I do it; you do it; our friends do it; everyone does it. But really, how is modern toileting dirtier than any other activity? When we go inside the toilet, we don't touch anything other than our zipper, the toilet paper, and the flush handle. These objects don't exactly hold a plethora of germs. In fact, holding on to a jeepney rail and handling bills and coins may even be dirtier activities, the number of sweaty hands that have latched on to it considered.

I know it's a good idea to wash one's hands several times during the day. And understand that I don't plan on ever stopping from washing my hands after a trip to the toilet.

But let's step back and mentally challenge the after-a-visit-to-the-toilet handwashing paradigm, shall we? The toilet is not the dirtiest place on earth. In fact, the streets of Colon and the gutters of Carbon are hands-down dirtier. And unless we routinely splash about in the bowl, pee with our fingers, or sort through the toilet papers already lying rumpled and crumpled in the trash can, there is no reason why a visit to the loo would encrust our hands with germs.

I'm talking about how girls pee; I don't presume to be an expert on the male pee procedure. But really, is the male schlong that clogged with microbes and viruses?

Again, this does not mean that I would stop washing my hands. Or, that I would want my husband to stop washing his hands. Or, that I would want to shake hands with a guy who does not wash his hands after handling his genitals in the sacrosanct confines of the Male CR. I just want to know why we, (yes, me, included!) somehow hold this belief that unless we wash our hands post-toileting, we could possibly end up seeing the choirs of heaven eating technicolor sushi.

When Did You First Learn to Masturbate?

I’m not sure, although God knows I started early enough.

I was seven when I discovered a secret. My uncles’ books are dirty books. Some lines go “He cupped her breast with one hand and felt for her wetness with the other.”

I became an instant bookworm.

Had my parents only taken the time to peruse some of the books that my sea-faring uncles sent to us for storage, they’d have understood why their daughter, formerly of the tree-climbing, gun-toting ilk, suddenly became hell-bent on devouring books, with pages thicker than her ankle.

The books I was so enthralled with before would be too pat and soporific for me now. But to my then seven-year-old mind, each story was more lewd and infinitely more colorful than the last. I found myself learning words like “shaft” and “vulva;” words I instinctively knew I shouldn’t repeat to friends and playmates but words which I found so darkly enticing that at some point, they came to represent everything that’s mysterious and exciting about the world.

So, when did I learn to masturbate? At seven, of course. You can’t put books like those in a precocious seven-year-old’s hands and expect her to continue believing that babies are made in the same way that bees pollinate flowers.

Eventually, my hands learned to stray from the pages to my own genitals.

It was Mama who first caught on. She wondered why I always slept face-down. See, my brother and I were considered, at that point, to be too young to sleep in our bedrooms, by ourselves. So, we slept on a mattress that we plopped to one side of the parental bed.

I masturbate in a strange way. I call it strange because I’ve never seen any other female masturbate that way. The many females I see on porn movies and my cousin, Claire, all masturbate the same way. They lie on their backs while they stimulate themselves. I don’t. I lie on my chest, with my right hand fisted and trapped between the bed and my vagina. Then, I gyrate; my whole body bearing down on one focal point: that fisted right hand which I must continually rub against.

Naturally, the movements aren’t the type you could produce in total silence. But I didn’t know that so I did it, night after night after night. Oblivious to anything else, I gyrated while beside me, my brother slept. The shaking woke Mama up. Hell, it would have waken anyone up. I was thrashing so wildly I occasionally bumped into the wall.

Mama was furious. She grabbed tufts of my hair and hauled me to my feet. “What were you doing?” she demanded. “How did you learn to do it? Who taught you?”

I’ve always had a healthy sense of self-preservation, even as a young girl. I looked at Mama working herself into a frenzy and decided it would be best to clamp my mouth shut. As angry as my silence made her, I knew she’d be angrier still if I answered her.

But she was relentless. “Why don’t you say something? What we’re you doing? Who taught you? How did you learn?”

Still, I said nothing.

So, she decided to wake my father. “Tan-awa na imong anak (Look at your daughter)!” she choked out. “Do you know what I just saw her do? Do you? Do you?” She looked at me, with something akin to madness swimming in her eyes. “Show your Papa what you just did. Show him! Show him now! No, that’s not what you did! No! That’s not what I saw you do. Show him what I caught you doing!”

So, overwhelmed by my mother’s vehement anger, quaking at the thought of what my father would do to me, confused, and still more than a little sleepy, I did what Mama asked me to do.

I showed him.

Ah. Jehovah.

There are Jehovah's Witness members loose in our neighborhood. They are going from door to door selling their Jehovah's Witness-ness in their shiny, smiling faces and flowery skirts. I don't understand why they thought we needed converting. I should have hightailed it out of the balcony the moment I saw a drove of women in long, long skirts. But they seemed so friendly and normal that I smiled back when they smiled at me.

Before my brain could thrust me back to my usual, suspicious self, I found myself inviting them to my sofa. They smiled a lot, talked a little to and about my daughter. And then, they shoved twin pamphlets into my hands and started explaining why the world today is "lost in sin."

By the time they came to the "Where is the Kingdom of God?" part, I regained enough of my wits to show them the door with a muttered, "Oh no! My husband will be here in a moment and I haven't made dinner."

I don't cook dinner. I never cook. But it seemed as good an excuse as any to unglue them from my sofa.

If they knew my daughter thought Jesus is a boy who lives next door, would they have been as willing to leave?

Liberation

What if, for one day each year, we could all say whatever it is we want to say and not think of the consequences?

I'd be overjoyed to blurt these out:

To the neighbor: Why do you force your children to practice singing? They're tone-deaf. They bray like donkeys and they're ugly. They'll never ever make the cut for Little Big Star.

To my father: Whatever did you see in my stepmom? She's dumb as a rock, ugly as sin, and as charming as a rattlesnake.

To a co-worker: Slow down. You're going at a speed of 10 mistakes per minute. When you learn to write better, you could write over the regulated speed limit.

To another co-worker: I wonder how it would feel to touch your chest.

To still another co-worker: Buy an inflatable doll, preferably one with boobs the size of China, so you won't ever have to indiscriminately stop women on the street just so you'd find out if they'd let you into their pants.

By the way, if you think this list is awfully short, it's only because I just started.

Why Blog?

Why blog? Why not?

Spam has forced me out of my Friendster blog. Over-familiarity made me give up my Multiply spot. It made my skin crawl to see relatives, officemates, and even neighbors visit my site and read what I write. I know that most people keep blogs out of loneliness. They write because they want someone to know how they feel. They write because they want others to know what they think. To some, writing is a form of reaffirming community-hood. They write so they would feel less alone. To others, writing is a way of marking time. It helps them keep a solid grasp on the days that pass.

 But I don't write for any of those reasons. Or, at least I'd like to think that I don't. I write because I don't know how to do anything else. There are thoughts I can't tell anyone; not my husband, not my sister, not my friends, not even the silken sheets that I rest my cheeks upon every night.

 My writing is, for the most part, a sinful pleasure. All day, I look at words that others write. I clip them; chop them; gloss over them; rope and browbeat them into shapes that my bosses find acceptable.

It's a thankless job, especially when I get to the works I've long ago nicknamed 'nosebleeds.' Let me tell you about these nosebleeds. They're not paragraphs that need editing; they're paragraphs that require rewrites. It's easier to just change all of them instead of trying to beat them into recognizable forms. At sentence 1 of a nosebleed, I feel my left ventricle pumping blood through my aorta so furiously and so profusely that most of it end up gushing out of my nose. It's mostly imaginary blood, of course.

Nevertheless, I feel myself bleed. Every time I replace someone's idea with my own, I cringe. These nosebleeds shouldn't have been allowed to stay here this long. But, I'm too much of a soft touch. I hate letting people go. I hate clipping people's "artistry."

 So, I get nosebleeds. Every day. 

Blogging won't stop my nose from figuratively bleeding. But, it will, at least, help keep me sane. Writing, after all, is supposed to be cathartic. So, I'll blog. And I'll bleed.