Minus The Queen
I want to cut off my lips and rip holes through my cheeks. Maybe then I wouldn’t be a definition. Yes, I’ll cut off my lips and rip holes in my cheeks because no one wants to look at a girl who looks like that. No one wants to photograph a girl who looks like that.
I wish I had a dick, and surrounded by my friends, I would hold up a magazine containing a picture of myself and say “I don’t see what’s so great about that chick.” And I would fall in love with that man, myself with a dick. I would get on my knees and suck out the emptiness of the man that gave me the best compliment I had ever received.
When I was six years old and attended private school, a girl named Susie invited me to her birthday party. She stood with her hands behind her back and she tipped back and forth on her heels and addressed me with rosy cheeks. I smiled and said yes. Later on when I told my father he said I could not go. He said I was far better than that; I was the jewel of the family after all. His little angel would not be seen at a party so small and unimportant. He gave me a father’s smile and said, “In a few years you won’t even know that girl, she won’t be important to you.”
Daddy with his millions, daddy with his world wide hotels, daddy with his princess of gold, she never smiles.
I cried and told Susie I couldn’t go. When she asked why I walked away without answering. I see Susie sometimes, an apparition in a white house with the white picket fence, her husband carries kisses home from his long day at work and she is in the yard with the kids. She had told me once; back when we were six, as we swung back and forth on the wooden swing set and our dresses parachuted in the wind like careless ghosts, that she was going to name her son Michael and her daughter Sophie.
I want to puncture my eyes just enough, not to blind me but to make them bleed. And when the blood dries I will walk down Rodeo Drive with crucified eyes and people will see me then look the other way and say, “That girl’s mascara is running, that ugly girl.” And the men with cameras will flash away because they care that I am walking down this street. Then he will walk up behind me with his muscular arms and say jokingly, “I didn’t know Jesus was inCalifornia.”
And me, I’ll say back, “I don’t mind, Jesus was an ugly man.”
Afterwards the magazines will be on the stands and the people will mourn, the people will cry. The front cover is their only window, their only light that has just burnt out.
I lay naked beside him, his dick erect and standing as proud as a child admiring their art on the fridge. He moves the hair covering my ears and whispers, “How about this time Diamond?”
“No,” I say. I speak in blood clotted words and the syllables leak through the holes in my cheeks. I cannot pass this burden of beauty onto another, “No, not this time.”
Me with a dick, he begins to masturbate and looks over at me, my breasts rising with each breath and the silence blankets us both. He reaches his left hand over and strokes my chest, his finger rolls down past my belly button and ends at my pubic hair then starts over.
“That feels good,” I say.
He smiles into the darkness, “I’m glad.” He’s done pleasuring himself and turns to rest his chin on my shoulder.
I cup my breasts and I say, “I hate these.”
“Why is that?”
“Look at how stupid they are,” I hit them and they bounce, “men love them.”
“I love your cheeks,” he says and sticks his finger into the hole and feels around the edge. My tongue darts up and licks his finger, a playful gesture.
“Did I ever tell you about that girl that drank the bleach?” I ask him.
“No,” he says and touches my breasts to feel their pointlessness.
“Her father had always told her boys were the devil; sex a one way ticket to hell. She went down on her boyfriend and felt so dirty afterwards. She drank bleach to wash out her mouth, the stupid girl.”
His dick shrinks and rests on my thigh and he’s still cuddling me and listening.
“The girl drank bleach because she felt like she failed her father. I want to fail my father.”
He takes his hands and covers my cheeks then bends down and kisses my scabbed mouth. I close my male eyes and my female eyes remain fixated on the dark ceiling. I can’t count the bumps.
There was a beach I used to visit with a boy, free from flashing cameras and the eye of the world. The waves reached out for only me, tickling my toes and I let the boy bathe in my ocean. We scaled the rocks in search for snails and crabs, hands locked and smiling. I felt as though I was six years old again, in my summer dress and when I talked to him I would sway like Susie did. The sun went down and still we did not leave, we spoke better under the moon. We danced and our pattern was mapped out in the sand. I came home early that morning and felt like a mermaid. Sand stained my hair and my body smelled of fresh ocean air. My father was furious and destroyed the beach, he revealed my secret. Like machines hidden under the shore, the cameras plagued my solitude and I never returned.
One day I wake up and there I am naked, spread eagle for everyone to see. My head has been super imposed onto another women’s body, her breasts as dumb as mine. All the men and boys will be staring, wondering what my pussy tastes like. And me in male form, I know what it smells like and I have tasted it with my tongue. The smells and tastes men imagine are not mine and I laugh because they do not know.
I’m looking at myself in the mirror and this is real and I’m beautiful. There are no holes in my cheeks and my lips are puffy and red. My father is downstairs waiting for me; another shoot for another magazine cover. Click, click, flash, flash, ooh, the endless parade of me, me, me.
“Give me some advice,” I say.
Me with a dick, he says “I left something for you in the dresser drawer.”
Last year on my birthday there were thousands of people I didn’t know, but they all knew me. They were so sincere and polite, all of them. Balloons covered the ceiling and colorful streamers hung down and touched my shoulders like the boy from the beach. The cake was the biggest cake I had ever seen, and the knife to cut it was the biggest knife I had ever seen. After I had blown out the candles and they began to dissect it, I expected the cake to bleed.
When I open the drawer there is a knife, the same knife that cut my cake last year. I reach inside and pull it out. I examine it and it gleams in the light as if to say “Hey there! Remember me?”
I unbutton my shirt and bra. I’m looking at myself in the mirror and this is real and my breasts are meaningless. When I punch the one covering my heart, I can feel a jingle of satisfaction pump through my blood. Daddy’s little angelic baby doll, she smiles.
I seal my princess-lips tight and hold in the screams as the knife cuts into my stupid fucking mountains of skin. I wonder what pain sounds like when it pours out of a cheek-less face.
The large wooden door to my room opens and my father walks in. “What the hell is taking you so long?”
I whirl around, and splatter the walls and carpet.
“Diamond!” he cries, as one my breasts hits the floor, just flat skin. “What have you done? You’re killing yourself! You’re killing me!”
I turn and look at myself standing beside the mirror, myself with a dick. The boy from the beach is there too, smiling, and his teeth sound like the waves crashing on the shore. And so is the girl. She is standing softly with a cup of bleach held out towards me. I take it and swish it down fast, my insides happily burning. Today I killed my father. Today I killed the world.
(contributed by Alexaro)