Lyric flash by Samuel J Fox
After Getting Half-way Through Pulp Fiction, Cixous Whispers
My lover gets up to change into her sweatpants and the movie pauses with Fabienne staring up from the bed in her lingerie, inevitably to speak on the pertinence of pot bellies.
My lover does not have a pot belly. No belly. I am the one with the extra love handles. I am the one with more cushion for pushing. My lover does not need a man to tell her what to do to keep the body she was born with and how to be alive in it. Inevitably, men will always have something to say about what women do with their bodies. They shouldn’t. I know this.
A few minutes later, I hear a laugh from the bathroom and haul myself up from the couch: a leather nap-trap that sucks in coins, wallets, small dogs, and dreams. I limp down the hallway, my leg where my lover had rested her head, now near asleep while the tiny ants of unrestricted blood circulation are making it difficult to walk normally. I knock and she opens the door.
She shows me the freckles she’s acquired. She’s topless. I almost avert my eyes, she is so beautiful. Her areolas pink as rose hips, and her laugh like a wine glass toast, she asks for my appraisal. I kiss her and recall what Fabienne is about to say in the movie, right before Butch loses his shit over his father’s watch soon to be missing. I don't give a damn what men find attractive.
We return to the couch and, before unpausing Fabienne’s round, European pout to continue with her lines, my lover grabs me between the legs. Says, Wait until I have a colony of them. You’ll have to kiss a civilization of angel spots.
Somewhere between what men want and what women want, there must be a common expectation. I know it is not my place to tell her what is attractive about herself. She should already know. But, I tell her anyway.
We strip and do what Fabienne and Butch never do in the movie. Somewhere between our romp – perhaps when she throws back her hair and the light catches her mouth mid-moan – the movie unpauses. As I quickly reach under my back to stop the movie, the flickering of the TV strobe-lighting my lover’s giggle, Fabienne says what I knew she would say.
It's unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.
My lover gets up to change into her sweatpants and the movie pauses with Fabienne staring up from the bed in her lingerie, inevitably to speak on the pertinence of pot bellies.
My lover does not have a pot belly. No belly. I am the one with the extra love handles. I am the one with more cushion for pushing. My lover does not need a man to tell her what to do to keep the body she was born with and how to be alive in it. Inevitably, men will always have something to say about what women do with their bodies. They shouldn’t. I know this.
A few minutes later, I hear a laugh from the bathroom and haul myself up from the couch: a leather nap-trap that sucks in coins, wallets, small dogs, and dreams. I limp down the hallway, my leg where my lover had rested her head, now near asleep while the tiny ants of unrestricted blood circulation are making it difficult to walk normally. I knock and she opens the door.
She shows me the freckles she’s acquired. She’s topless. I almost avert my eyes, she is so beautiful. Her areolas pink as rose hips, and her laugh like a wine glass toast, she asks for my appraisal. I kiss her and recall what Fabienne is about to say in the movie, right before Butch loses his shit over his father’s watch soon to be missing. I don't give a damn what men find attractive.
We return to the couch and, before unpausing Fabienne’s round, European pout to continue with her lines, my lover grabs me between the legs. Says, Wait until I have a colony of them. You’ll have to kiss a civilization of angel spots.
Somewhere between what men want and what women want, there must be a common expectation. I know it is not my place to tell her what is attractive about herself. She should already know. But, I tell her anyway.
We strip and do what Fabienne and Butch never do in the movie. Somewhere between our romp – perhaps when she throws back her hair and the light catches her mouth mid-moan – the movie unpauses. As I quickly reach under my back to stop the movie, the flickering of the TV strobe-lighting my lover’s giggle, Fabienne says what I knew she would say.
It's unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.
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Samuel J Fox is a bisexual poet and essayist ghosting through suburbia in North Carolina. He is poetry editor at (b)OINK and has been published in Maudlin House, Five 2 One, and Muse/A Journal; he is forthcoming in Grimoire Magazine and The Occulum. Find him on Twitter (@samueljfox).
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