adi dvir
sluttony
Sluttony - A practice of promiscuity indicative of saturated sexual value; a crime of sleaziness committed against one's own self-respect. (Urban Dictionary, User 90069)
It happens one day that I see a ledge, just outside my window. As far as I can tell it wasn’t there before, but maybe I just never noticed it. I step out, the wind whipping my hair, toes gripping the edge. I don’t look down. Above me floats an extraterrestrial dollop of glittery purple and ultramarine, colours like the bruises on my inner thighs.
Slut, the universe says, grabbing me by the hair. Now you’re mine.
I do not resist; so tired of resisting. I am tipped over and spilled onto the bed. A mess of men (if crows are a murder, men are a mess) populate the puddle that is me, skating on its surface like Jesus bugs. The fear of drowning in their eyes reflected in the puddle reflected in their eyes is beauty - brief and ephemeral, as beauty must be - and then they are sucked back into the algorithm that produced them, leaving behind a bruise or a thumbnail-shaped depression; perhaps an aggressive cloud of cologne. And I am left to wonder if a puddle can behold its own reflection.
Come here. (The universe has delivered me to a cold room with a strange man in it. He sticks his icy fingers way up in me like a puppeteer.) You’re so beautiful. Beeeeeaaaaauuuuuttttiiiiiifffffuuuuuulllll… No matter how I try to stretch the echo out, it’s over in three syllables, and then what? More and more desire, like hair being pulled from a drain.
The universe just crosses its legs and twiddles its thumbs. Repeat after me: He is just a man and the future doesn’t exist.
Yes, yes. Thank you, universe. He is just a man, and the future doesn’t exist.
Good, good girl.
But what am I, now? Just an extension of you?
You are an object of beauty, the universe answers. The perfect weapon.
Thank you, universe. I will be your knuckle-duster, if you will grant me respite. I will belong to no one, not even myself. I will be the broken thing calling out from the floor to be fixed, then cutting anyone who dares to try.
…
I smile to myself and start the water, rifle through half-empty bottles of shampoo. I select a luxury brand, courtesy of your wife. You built this shower for her: lacquered aged oak, built-in shelves. Incredible pressure on the rain-head. I find a razor behind a bar of designer soap; shave my legs and armpits with it.
I just want to be adored and made much of; is that wrong? To forge the binary rod of the superficial/profound into a circle; an act not unlike the splitting of flesh at birth, when we are ordained equal parts moribund and divine.
You come up from behind - constantly drooling down there, huh? - marveling at how easily my orgasms come. I make fun of you for never coming.
It’s the anti-depressants.
Then why are you still so depressed?
Because your blow jobs suck.
Oops.
There is blood on the sheets, and we can’t change them because your wife will ask why you’ve gone and changed the bedding in the middle of a workday.
You should have told me you were getting your period.
I shrug, smile at my nakedness in your huge bathroom mirror. Guilt is a garment I choose not to wear.
Sorry, I didn’t know.
Didn’t know you could squirt, didn’t know you were bleeding; what else don’t you know about your own body?
This gives me pause, although I quickly retort: About as much as you know about your wife.
But it is not your wife you fear most.
If he finds out, I’m toast.
Yeah?
Yeah. Don’t you know the bro code?
Bro code? Sounds sexist.
The Bro Code clearly states that it is never permissible to sleep with a Bro’s ex. It’s worse than killing said Bro.
I see. (I am still brushing my hair in the mirror, pulling it all to one side and then the other, fluttering my lashes as fat drops glide down the postured slope of my neck.)
So, you’re saying you’re scared.
Of him? Yeah.
god you’re not even that pretty
#lasttime
My parents are divorced. Or, as my mom puts it, ‘your father divorced me.’ She asks me to come over to look through some old boxes before she finally moves out of the house they used to share. When I arrive she gives me that look; the one that encapsulates all the horror of not knowing one’s own offspring. A premonitory look. A look that cuts me back.
I descend the stairs to our storage unit, where I find the boxes in the corner, piled one on top of the other. I start with the top. Old journals and photo albums from my travels. South America was Dylan. Thailand and Laos was Gabe. The journals are full of their names, pages upon pages of anxious attachment, overtaken only by my burgeoning love affair with weed. There is also a framed picture of me bungee-jumping off a dilapidated wooden bridge near Buenos, taken by my friend from one hundred meters below. I remember I was trembling like a leaf, but I had already sworn I would go through with it. So I surrendered to the sound of the man’s voice counting down and with every number my mind hovered a little further above my body until, finally, the number one was left dangling in the air behind me as my foot slid from the ledge.
Not exactly a jump; more like a spilling over.
The box beneath this one is full of old Calvin and Hobbes comics. I open one at random, follow Calvin’s philosophical musings as the two companions hurtle down a snowy hill and inevitably crash into a tree. “Why does the universe always give you a sign AFTER you do it?” the boy asks, stars and planets spinning round his head.
The next box contains my sixth-grade yearbook. I already know what I will find here, but I flip the pages anyway, looking for the ruptured confines of my little square. The photo has been vandalised with blue office pen: devil horns and a pointed tale, eyeholes burned into the paper by an impassioned hand.
Under the yearbook is a trove of old magazines: Seventeen and Bop! Teen Vogue and Tiger Beat. “TWO J.T.T. centerfolds, plus pinup!” (Ripped out long ago, of course, and hung, as I recall, between Leo and Brad). Tween me has also circled a few coveted objects, festooning them with hearts and stars: Sparkly Doc Martens, ‘miraculous’ Nivea skin cream, a pair of Levi’s hip-hugger jeans. The covers have lost their gloss, or at least, I remember them being glossier. “Go back to school in style!” “Your ‘how to get him’ guy guide”, “Quiz: Do you talk too much?” “Natalie Portman on boyfriends, fame, and playing Anne Frank.” Claire Danes in Juliet garb, head adorned with a wreath. The soundtrack, I recall, featured a Radiohead song I used to listen to on repeat: “I want to… I want to be someone else or I’ll explode…”
There are also a few Mad Magazines: Alfred E. Neumann, always the same gap-toothed goofy smile, as if he and only he understands the cosmic joke. “You’re a winner and a loser…” You can say that again, Alfred.
The bottom box has nearly collapsed from the weight of the others. Inside are a bunch of worn binders containing my various childhood collections - scratch-and-sniff stickers, napkins, stamps - as well as an old autograph book from fifth grade, in which ten-year-old me has listed ‘ME!’ as one of her best friends. My motto, it says, is “I’m the best and you’re not!” Amused, I flip through gushing messages from friends I long ago forgot existed. On the last page is a scribbled autograph from myself, which factually states how awesome I am. No reasons are given for my awesomeness, it is assumed to be as plain as the nose on my face.
Fifth grade. Huh. If that child had any misgivings at all there is no proof here; no evidence that she ever doubted her worth or her beauty. Am I that ship on whose lengthy journey all the parts have been replaced? Is there no barnacled board remaining on prow or stern; not a single survivor of the salty spray?
I take all the boxes, pack them into the car. Sit down for lunch with my mother, avoiding her eyes. You were… With words, she asks me if he’s found a place yet. He comes home late and sleeps on the couch, I answer. He’s supposed to be looking, but I don’t know if he actually is. My mother knows better than to ask whether I am having second thoughts. That much, at least, has never changed.
Before I start the car I send you our anthem, WAP by the great bard Cardi B. It takes you too long to answer; you have archived our chat and turned on disappearing messages.
#lasttime
The bodily discomfort of waiting, hanging all hope on a ping or a knock. I find myself staring at a frying pan on the wall, mind a blank.
Get out of my head, dybbuk.
Who is this and how did you get my number?
You send a picture of a big Mack truck.
Who IS this?
You give the camera the finger, eyebrows up. The navy fabric of your suit blazes in the white, fluorescent light.
I have some vague recollection... Anyway whoever you are you should bathe, you look dirty.
Wouldn’t help… I’m dirty on the inside…
And so on.
You still can’t come, even when I beg to see it. Then you send me a video: a close-up of your dick as you squeeze a few fat, translucent drops into the kids’ bathroom sink, little toothbrushes lined up like an enraptured audience. I watch all the way to the end. You are nothing if not entertaining.
Come here, I’m all alone :(
You send a selfie, tongue protruding.
Why would a man eating ice cream look so particularly sad? Such a waste of calories…
You call me ‘lover’ in the same tone Taylor Swift uses. I roll my eyes and blow you in the laundry room while my kids watch T.V. You walk in at midday and slam me against the wall, your motorbike ticking anxiously behind a building two blocks away. A lacy number from the back of my drawer, bought ages ago by mistake, leads to no end of debauchery. You never shower afterwards; you want my smell to keep you company while you make angry calls to other lawyers, pick up the kids and take them to the park. You wish we could go away together somewhere with a beach, where we could fuck unfettered for hours on end. You wish I would make friends with your wife, so you could buy us all a bigger house and live like a biblical patriarch.
Sister wives? I giggle. I don’t think so. (Still I cannot help but be charmed by your awkward puppeteering from behind the emerald curtain.) After this you are banned from speaking her name in my presence. You just start calling her She Who Shall Not Be Named.
See? This is how reality gets erased.
You is smart, you is good, you is kind.
You is corny!
I roll my eyes at all your silly plans, but you persist. Perhaps you are an even bigger fool than I am. I’m not like other men, you say, then tell me stories about the hundreds of women you’ve fucked while married to her. How long-term lovers would come to your house regularly, with your wife’s approval.
She’ll surprise you, you say. She’s chill.
Chilly, to me. Hundreds of gorgeous women is fine, but me is where she draws the line. Even the one who tried to leave everything for you was not as much of a threat.
What is it about me?
She knows I don’t want to fuck you, I want to fuck with you.
Is that a double entendre?
You’re the first woman in a while I’ve wanted to do that with.
Send me a picture to jerk off to.
No.
Please?
Fine.
You keep banging your head against the dam that stops love from leaking into sex. You want me to surrender, you want me to keep my eyes on yours when I come, you want me to wear thongs and tight dresses, you want me to grow a huge ass and let you fuck it. You want me: your desire a form of currency I am supposed to accept in exchange.
But you have told her you are playing ultimate frisbee, or meeting a colleague for coffee, or working late on a case; and the kids really do have to be picked up already. The door closes behind you - a coffin clicking shut - plunging me into darkness.
(I drunkenly uncross my legs as you bang on the bar - credit card in hand - whistling impatiently at the carefree young bartender whose conversation is costing you far more than a few shots of whiskey; costing you, in fact, precious time in which I could change my mind. As though it were not already a done deal when you placed both your hands on both my thighs, our locked eyes summoning up a demon out of hell: My repressed sex drive.)
Give me a prediction, a year from today.
Mmmm… pretty clear I’ll hate you (lol)
I am the sledgehammer you have taken to your marriage; to prove your worth to her once and for all. She has kicked you out and is waiting to see if you can erase me, mistaken calculation that I am. But apparently I mind-fuck you every night, rising phantasmagorically from a deadly car accident or running away from your mother, who brandishes a huge rolling pin like a cartoon Italian matriarch. Recrimination and phallic iconography: these are the ripples of my plunge into your life. But I don’t feel sorry for you, I can’t; perhaps my favourite thing about you is this abnegation of pity.
Block me please. I still want you and I can’t want you.
Your weapon, his dowry, their cumbucket… What am I but these things? And when, oh when will I ever stop being so stupid?
You is good, you is kind, you is special.
No, I is intensely unfit for this life, with its moral imperatives and IOUs. I is a dreamer who forgot to dream reality into existence; an oversized teenager with the backbone of a rag doll. I is a foolish cliche; I is a cliche of a fool.
A month goes by; she takes you back. You send me a picture of your naked feet atop the deck you built - your pride and joy - its hard-lacquered planks stretching far into the distance. The picture underscores a certain finality. We have done it; it is done, and no one else the wiser.
I draw a bath. He is just a man, and the future doesn’t exist, I repeat as I dissipate into the water.
He is just a man, and the future doesn’t exist.
Then my ex-husband finds out.
Adi Dvir has been writing since she first picked up a children’s book. Since then she has been a girl scout, a soldier, a waitress, and a wife, all of which have taught her you must fight to be free. A fervent believer that pain can be spun into beauty, she hopes this is what shines through in her art. More of her work can be found on her substack: https://adidvir.substack.com/