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no frills
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(CJ/Tabatha Fortis, CJ/Toby, Toby/Tabatha - R - for the Wing Swing 2006)
Redrafting
It's always been ink.
*
Fingers stained with newsprint; trails left on everything they touched. The illusion of meaning in the smudges on skin and the tales told on clothes was as lasting as the stains.
You ran off statements he wrote for you, fliers you'd dreamed up together, memos you'd fought over, and pressed your palms over the pages until the heat from the copier faded.
He pulled them from your hands and your fingers brushed, black from scouring the early editions before you'd even slept.
*
Your sexuality is written in memory's scrap papers, crumpled endearments and jagged edges where touches were torn apart.
They unfurl at odd moments. Some mornings all it takes is the smell of fresh newspapers to make you hot. Sometimes it's the way he brandishes a pen.
Sometimes she gives readings.
*
She was the first - not the first woman, but the first writer.
Tabatha was a ridiculous name with a great body. She didn't eat red meat and wrote everything longhand, from letters of complaint about school boards banning books to sonnets about the curve from your neck to your nipple. You both wore terrible clothes, but not for long enough to ruin the aesthetic.
Smug lit majors had tried their luck whispering poetry in your ear, but she really talked like that, like every day was something nobody had ever thought of before. And she did it as naturally as your legs turned to butter.
Five hours could melt while she described the colour of your hair, back when it was long enough to wrap around her fist and tug now and then, to keep you interested. The conversation might lull for minutes while she hunted the right word.
Her words were an extension of her fingers. You lay there, head rested on her chest, listening. She talked about your eyelashes when you sleepily blinked. When your eyes drifted to an object she'd described, it glittered with fresh perspective. You trapped her knee between your thighs and rubbed yourself against it.
*
Her office faxes your office. Her office consists of a grad student with a crush, but at least she can spell. It's a letter of complaint rather than a sonnet.
Tabatha used to scribble notes on your skin while you slept, so that she wouldn't forget.
A light goes on inside Toby when you mention her and, like dominoes, it knocks you over.
Toby would like a touch of the poet.
It's the first time you've thought just how fucking hot two of them could be, together. Envy, lust, greed – any sin would do.
"Be nice to him," you tell her over the phone. "You have a lot of the same talents."
"Some things are more important than words," she says.
*
You asked her once.
"How do you do that?"
If you could trap that enigmatic smile in words, you'd be able to keep it.
"You don't need to, Claudia."
She slid the strap off your shoulder, allowing for a hint of the slope of your breast. She always stripped you slowly, deliberately, presenting herself with precisely the image she wanted. She ran her fingers along your collarbone.
"You're fortunate enough to be art."
You came three times, and looked forward to her masterpiece.
*
You buy a new dress for the event and instead of changing in the office ten minutes after you're supposed to be there, you find time for a cool shower, water sprinkling a daydream's erratic pattern down on your skin. It's like lying in bed, unwilling to wake.
She's at the party. She reads a poem. She eats the steak.
You kiss her cheek in greeting, and her lips catch a spot on your jaw. It startles your memory, but is too brief to shock.
"What you do," she says, "sometimes it's not right."
You wonder if she'd be here if you'd asked her yourself.
"You like Toby?" you prod.
He's watching you both, so you keep your fingers wrapped around your glass instead of her arm.
"I like Toby," she agrees. "I like him very much. But he's-"
"He's?"
"He's so real. It's too much."
*
Fascination became a fetish, one that leant itself to the overblown fantasy of a potboiler rather than a work of literature.
One fanciful night on the campaign you were up through the small hours with Sam. You were both bright and new then.
He was vacillating between terror and adulation of Toby, and you loved to watch. Uncharacteristically tousled with sleeplessness, he was entirely oblivious to the fact that his pen was leaking.
You couldn't stop giggling at the moustache he'd accidentally given himself, or at his earnest remonstrations that your laugh was distracting.
He was straining everything at his disposal to hit just the right spot.
His hunger to please Toby pushed a button you didn't know you had, and you took the thought to bed with you while he stayed up and crumpled pages.
Somewhere out there you lost track of what got you off.
*
For you it's never just two people, getting along, finding they fit together.
It's always been ink, spelling out drama, forming tasteless art. It's not what you want to want.
Tabatha clutches a cocktail glass for support, although she doesn't drink, and says, "Thank God you're here," although you're awkward as hell.
She feels muzzled in your world, and she has no idea how good you are at pretending you don't.
She keeps nudging against you; pressing her fingertips lightly against your arm. It's nerves rather than lust, and they're catching.
Toby is trying to cut in.
"Just a second," she says, halting him with a raised finger.
"Maybe you'll think this is silly." She pulls you aside. "You'd have liked it once."
It's the first draft of the poem she unveiled tonight, partially submerged in deep, disavowing scores-through; spidery linking arrows; words that change shape halfway through.
"There's a new one on the back," she whispers, as if it's a dirty secret, and at once you realise that it is.
Any other time and place, you'd kiss her fit to knock her off her feet.
Instead, you hold it to your chest and there's just, "Thank you."
She smiles and turns to Toby, and you retire with your bedtime reading.
Once in a while you seek out something tangible - love without metaphor - but then you have to fake it four times out of five, like your smiles.
There's always someone watching, and he knows what you like.
*
Toby fell for her from your bed, though he'd never know it.
It was only a book you'd never returned, patterned with her underlines and exclamations.
You were shaken from a dreamy repose when he began to mutter in verse entwined with her notes.
"Read this part out," he said, pointing. "The way you hear it in your head."
At the time, you mistook it for communication.
*
For years you've been redrafting.
(April 2006)
love/hate to: lunatic.lover.poet at ntlworld.com --- AIM: havingthemdreams