Don’t Make Me Dance

Photography by Elli Garlin

The universe is full of unrequited, unexpressed love and joy.
Unaltered bed sheets.
Unkissed mouths.
Untangled legs.
Untasted pussy.
Unmoaned orgasms.
We, the great unfucked.

I am special.
I am different.
I will fix this.
I am the one.
Not a prophet; the prophet.

The world is not sexed enough!

Yes, there is pornographic, iconographic, clean and shaven, vapid Justin Bieber sex. Blink and you won’t miss anything in that over-sexed, overdosed congress of sex.

But when you go home, and you take off your crest white strips and synthetic pheromones, are you fucking? Are you sweating and confused and wet and coming? Are you fucking?

I repeat, the world is not sexed enough!

And I say enough!
I say baby.
I say honey.
I say doll.
I’m going to do what I can.

I’m going to unclench the thighs of the collective lesbian masses. I am on a pilgrimage to pussy.

Me, by myself. I’m going to play the haughty, smart-mouthed churlish one. Me and my fists of fury. Me and my pseudo-butch bravado are going to take control. I’m going to sashay my dandy pants your way. I’m going to point my gentlemanly toes toward you and not say a damned thing. I’m going to sidle up beside you and ignore you so you’ll notice me.

You have to understand the joke, people, this is all a lie. This little game, it’s a lie.

What you don’t want to see is that terrible, shuffling, elbows-tucked, fists half up the chest dancing… you know. The shrug dance. The deep lez shrug dance. It’s embarrassing. You don’t want me to dance. Don’t make me dance.

And after you preemptively reject me because you think I’m a dickhead for not making a move, the first move or the right move, I am going to pull up the collar on my jacket (because I have a jacket with a collar that does that), act as though I’m drunker than I am, hold my gin and tonic like it’s the ledge of a building, swivel around, grin at you and make a move to leave.

You will regret your premature rejection. That smile of mine is like thunder on a hot ass day. That slanted, jaw-tight smirk of mine is a one-way road to your regret and subsequently, to your bed.

And I want.
And I wait.
For the bend.
for the bait.

There is a feather bed just in the other room. Your room. It doesn’t bounce, it doesn’t spring. You just sink right in like a shallow, perfect nest. Like the deep sigh of a fat, orange cat. Like a slow, slumberous grave.

I have no disciplines. Nothing I specialize in, except this:

One curve where your ribs meet your hips.

I don’t know how to talk to you, so I do the silent, mysterious thing that is actually me masking an oncoming panic attack. To you I look lazy-eyed and self-assured. Inside I’m chanting mantras to keep myself from passing out. I do that standard vagina-bound slide-and-kiss method that we go-downers use. It’s pretty fail-safe. Rule of thumb: you cannot loseWeight Exercise if you put your mouth on the vagina.

I adorn myself with your skin, your hair, your body.

Between you, my cloak.
You, my wardrobe.
You, my teepee.

In truth this is what actually happens:

It’s another night without the draping over of your body. Another year you will deny me. You, the vastness of you.

You, the woman I stare at all night. You, the great and broad and anonymous hot babe that I’m going to obsess over to my friends.

I will leave that bar drunken, ashamed, berating myself for letting you slip through my hands. Another you.

Another chance at awesome, one-night-stand sex where you’d have been all like “o wow, you made me come so hard. That never happens.” And I’d have been all like, “well, you know. First time for everything, doll face” (inside I’d be singing hallelujah’s and raising fists like I’m a fucking hero). You’d have been so grateful and anxious to get back at it again and I’d have been so smooth, you wouldn’t have known that I was totally. Freaking. Out. I’d be so stoked that you were into me, it’s a god damned dance party in my chest, but I’d have looked so casual, save for the trembling upper arms. I’d have been holding myself up on my elbows for a long time by then. It’s hard work to keep a good mouth-to-clitoris level. Don’t want to be too high or too low. Just another day on the job, ladies. Brush the shoulders. Puff some air on my fingers that would smell so deliciously like you.

It would have been orgasms for everybody! All day long! 24-hour orgasm! Let’s do it!

But the truth is, I am walking with tears in my eyes for yet another night empty-handed and un-boned. And there is a biting cold wind whipping across my cheeks and my lips are chapped and I’m making that exasperated noise that you make when it’s so cold you can’t help it. And I’m cursing my amazing hair day and my ridiculous vanity because my ears are exposed and they are both stabbing and punching my brain with below zero wind.

And in between the gasps of biting wind I’m singing Kate Bush. I am whining it and blubbering it, I am all “she’s no good for you baby… she’s no good for you now…”

And someone is thinking, “holy shit, she knows that song?” Yeah, I know that song. I know it. I’m that guy!

The truth is, I don’t know how to talk to women.