orange and yellow in waves, great tidal waves o f heat, and if it
comes toward you you run because the heat is in waves that
can stop you from breathing, yo u ’ll suffocate, and you can see
the waves because they come after you and they eat up the air
behind you and it gets heavy and hard and tight and mean and
you can feel the waves coming and they reach out and grab
you and they take the air out o f the air and it’s tides o f pain
from heat, you melt, and the heat is a Frankenstein monster
made by the fire, the fire’s own heartbeat and dream, it’s the
monster the fire makes and sends out after you spreading
bigger than the fire to overcom e you and then burn you up.
But I don’t get burned up no matter how I burn. I’m
indestructible, a new kind o f flesh. Every night, hours before
dawn, we make love until dawn or sunrise or late in the
morning when there’s a bright yellow glaze over everything,
and I drift o ff into a coma o f sleep, a perfect blackness, no fear,
no m em ory, no dream, and when I open m y eyes again he is in
me and it is brute daylight, the naked sun, and I am on fire and
there is nothing else, just this, burning, smashed up against
him, outside time or anything anyone know s or thinks or
wants and it’s never enough. With Michalis before he left the
island, before M , overlapping at the beginning, it was
standing near the bed bent over it, waiting for when he would
begin, barely breathing, living clay waiting for the first touch
o f this new Rodin, Rodin the lover o f wom en. The hotel was
behind stone walls, almost like a convent, the walls covered
with vines and red and purple flowers. There was a double bed
and a basin and a pitcher o f water and tw o wom en sitting
outside the stone wall watching when I walked in with
Michalis and when I left with him a few hours later. The stone
walls hid a courtyard thick with bushes and wild flowers and
illuminated by scarlet lamps and across the courtyard was the
room with the bed and I undressed and waited, a little afraid
because I couldn’t see him, waited the w ay he liked, and then
his hands were under my skin, inside it, inside the skin on my
back and under the muscles o f my shoulders, his hands were
buried in my body, not the orifices but the fleshy parts, the
muscled parts, thighs and buttocks, until he came into me and
I felt the pain. With Michel, before M , half Greek, half French,
I screamed because he pressed me flat on my stomach and kept
m y legs together and came in hard and fast from the back and I
thought he was killing me, murdering me, and he put his hand
over my mouth and said not to scream and I bit into his hand
and tore the skin and there was blood in m y mouth and he bit
into my back so blood ran down my back and he pulled my
hair and gagged me with his fist until the pain itself stopped me
from screaming. With G, a teenage boy, Greek, maybe
fifteen, it was in the ruins under an ancient, cave-like arch, a
tunnel you couldn’t stand up in; it was outside at night on the
old stone, on rubble, on garbage, fast, exuberant, defiant,
thrilled, rough, skirt pulled up and torn on the rocks, skin
ripped on the rocks, semen dripping down m y legs. Y ou
could hear the sea against the old stone walls and the rats
running in the rubble and then we kissed like teenagers and I
walked away. With the Israeli sailor it was on a small bed in a
tiny room with the full moon shining, a moon almost as huge
as the whole sky, and I was mad about him. He was inept and
sincere and I was mad about him, insane for his ignorance and
fumbling and he sat on top o f me, inside me, absolutely still,
touching m y face in long, gentle strokes, and there was a steely
light from the moon, and I was mad for him. I wanted the
moon to stay pinned in the sky forever, full, and the silly boy
never to move. Once M and I went to the Venetian walls high
above the sea. There was no moon and the only light was from
the water underneath, the foam skipping on the waves. There
was a ledge a few feet wide and then a sheer drop down to the
sea. There was wind, fierce wind, lashing wind, angry wind, a
cold wind, foreign, with freezing, cutting water in it from
some other continent, wrathful, wanting to purge the ledge
and own the sea. A ll night we fucked with the wind trying to
push us down to death and I tore m y fingers against the stone
trying to hold on, the skin got stripped o ff m y hands, and
sometimes he was against the wall and m y head fell backwards
going down toward the sea and on the Roman walls we fucked
for who was braver and who was stronger and w ho w asn’t
afraid to die. He wanted to find fear in me so he could leave
me, so he could think I was less than him. He wanted to leave
me. He was desperate for freedom from love. On the Roman
wall we fucked so far past fear that I knew there was only me,
it didn’t matter where he went or what he did, it didn’t matter
who with or how many or how hard he tried. There was just
me, the one they kept telling him was a whore, all his great
friends, all the men who sat around scratching themselves, and
no matter how long he lived there would be me and if he was
dead and buried there would still be me, ju st me. I couldn’t
breathe without him but they expect that from a woman. I’d
have so much pain without him I w ouldn’t live for a minute.
But he w asn’t supposed to need me so bad you could see him
ripped up inside from a mile away. The pain w asn’t supposed
to rip through him; from wanting me; every second; now. He
was supposed to come and go, where he wanted, when he
wanted, get laid when he wanted, do this or that to me, what
he wanted, sex acts, nice and neat, ju icy and dirty but nice and
neat picked from a catalogue o f what men like or what men
pay for, one sex act followed by another sex act and then he
goes aw ay to someone else or to somewhere else, a kiss i f he
condescends, I blow him, a fuck, twice if he has the time and
likes it and feels so inclined; and I’m supposed to wait in
between and when he shows up I’m supposed to suck and I’m
supposed to rub, faster now, harder now, or he can rub, taster
now, harder now, inside me if he wants; and there’s some
chat, or some money, or a cigarette, or maybe sometimes a
fast dinner in a place where no one will see. But he’s burning so
bright it’s no secret he’s on fire; and it’s me. Anyone near him
is blinded, the heat hurts them, their skin melts, more than
they ever feel when they fuck rubbing themselves in and out o f
a woman. H e’s burning but he’s not indestructible. H e’s the
sun; I’m smashed up against him; but the sun burns itself up;