untitled

a man and a woman mutually in love

happens once in a lifetime

and he was it for me.

Charles Stone. Charlie.

He died in ecstasy

so I don’t think what I did was wrong.

He never got angry, even when I bit him

and beat him

but he said “Don’t kill me.”

Charles never wanted to die

but he wanted to die

no, he wanted to die

but he never wanted to die.

We’d been apart from May 7^th til the 10^th

and we were so happy to be

together again

we couldn’t sleep all night.

We loved so hard we cried.

I pulled out a butcher knife

the way I’d seen in a movie or

a play or I’d read it in a book —

anyway, I pulled out a butcher knife

and I pretended to cut him.

He really loved it.

“I’ll chop off your thing

so you can’t use it on other women,”

I said, and he just laughed.

The next day I hid the butcher knife

behind the picture frame.

I’d grown more and more bitter

about what was happening between us.

That night as we were talking

and later as I stared at his sleeping face,

I began to imagine his wife straddling him at home

in exactly the same way as me…

I tried to force myself to be generous

but I just couldn’t share him with her.

I asked him to commit suicide with me

or at least run away together

but all he offered

was to set me up in an apartment

where he could drop in when he pleased.

From dusk on the 15^th till eleven

I went out to see Doctor X

who I’ve known for a long time

and I saw him again on the evening of the 16^th

while Charlie was out at the barber’s.

I didn’t feel a thing

but I got fifty dollars for it.

Charlie had been sleeping, but I

woke him and he said

“Now it’s my tum to use the knife.”

He pinched me and tugged my hair

then, when I was in the bath, he asked

if I was trying to wash my conscience.

I liked the way he teased me —

I didn’t hide the fifty dollars

and he knew it had to be from some man

He enjoyed pretending to be jealous…

All the rest of the time until the dawn of the 18^th

we never left our burning bed

and hardly slept at all.

We never even stopped to bathe.

It was around the 12^th or 13^th

when I happened to wrap my sash cord

around his neck.

I pulled it tight and then a little tighter.

Later he told me what pleasure he felt

when I choked him and

I got quite excited when Charles

took me in his arms —

I lost control.

I wanted to do it

and choke him as hard as I could

so I mounted him

and loosened and tightened

the cord around his neck, rhythmically.

He looked close to ecstasy.

When I pulled tight, his tongue stuck way out

and when I let go, it went back in again.

I choked him and he drank scotch:

“When I pull tight you shake down there.

It feels very nice.”

He said “It hurts a lot, but I’ll try to bear it

for your pleasure.”

He got tired and began to blink

so I asked him if he wanted me to stop.

“No! Do anything you want with my body.”

I kept tightening and loosening for about two hours

and then, early in the morning on the 17^th

while I was playing with his body

I pulled the cord really tight.

He groaned

and suddenly lost his strength

and I let go in surprise,

but soon he was up again and

hugged me hard —

tears were running from his eyes.

I stroked his chest, and finally he spoke

“What happened? My neck’s on fire.”

There was a bright red ring around his neck

so I washed it in the bath.

He was exaggerating the pain

to liven things up;

I touched his thing

and his strength came back in no time —

I even had to slap it.

Later that morning when we woke up

I brought some water and bathed his

neck gently

and he ordered eggs and pickles —

I had to drink the scotch by myself.

Around eleven we felt it coming

and we slipped back under the covers and lost

our minds — we didn’t get up until one.

His neck was better but it still looked bad

and he refused to go out looking like that.

I massaged it but it didn’t improve

so I went out to a drugstore and

bought one box of eye medicine

for his bloodshot eyes.

I already had some tranquilizers

to help him relax.

On the way back I picked up a watermelon.

I felt so bad about his trouble

that I completely forgot about the butcher knife

and borrowed a carving knife from the kitchen.

I sliced the watermelon

and gave it to Charles,

then I had some soup warmed up

and put in three tranquilizers.

“Three tablets won’t do anything to me,”

he said, so I put in five more.

We talked as we ate, with me half holding him up

so it was natural that my hand wandered

down to his thing.

When my hand touched it… that happened

but he didn’t have enough strength to make love.

It was late at night

and I gave him five more pills.

He began to blink his eyes

but he didn’t go to sleep:

“I’ve got to go home,” he said,

“I can’t afford this, I’ve got to go home.”

“Don’t go, please, for my sake!

Stay here with me!”

“You knew from the start I had children —

we can’t be together all the time.”

The more gently he spoke the more upset I got.

I had to think of some way to keep him.

My ears wouldn’t listen to what he was saying

“… my wife is just a household decoration…

you don’t need to be so jealous…

I’ve got to think about my business too, you know.”

Around midnight we went to bed.

He wasn’t feeling strong

but he managed to get hard.

He put me on top and did his best to comfort me.

He finally managed to sleep afterward

while I rubbed his neck.

Once in a while Charles would open his eyes

and stare at me, reassured.

Once, before dropping off again, he said

“You will choke me again

while I’m sleeping, won’t you?

But don’t let go too soon

or it’ll hurt a lot afterwards.”

I wondered if he was asking me to kill him —

but he couldn’t have meant it —

it must have been a joke.

I reached with my right hand

for my pink pajama cord and

with my left hand I pulled one end

twice around his neck,

then I started to pull with both hands.

His eyes popped open

and he tried to embrace me and

I rubbed my face against his cheek

and asked him to forgive me.

I pulled as tight as I could

and his hands trembled as he groaned.

Soon his whole body was twitching

and I was also shaking.

I gulped down the rest of the scotch,

then I knotted the cord tight

around the middle of his throat

to make sure he wouldn’t wake up.

I wrapped the rest of the cord

around and around his neck then

hid the two ends of the cord

under his pillow and went downstairs.

The clock in the office

showed just after two in the morning.

It was a great relief to have done it,

something heavy had been lifted off me.

I went back to bed with Charlie and

drank a bottle of beer.

His mouth looked very dry,

so I licked his tongue and wet it.

I wiped off his face

and lay beside him till dawn

feeling closer to him

than when he had been alive.

I played with his thing

and held it against mine

“Charles is really dead!

I guess I’ll have to die too.”

As I played with his thing

I felt the desire to cut it off

and take it away with me.

I pulled out the butcher knife

from behind the picture frame

and applied it at the base,

but it wouldn’t come off easily.

I had to cut and cut a long time

and it got pretty bloody

so I stuffed the wound with tissue paper.

I got blood on my fingers

and on the sleeves and collar of my jacket.

I wrote “Charlie and Emma, two alone” in blood

on his left thigh

and on the sheet too,

then I carved my name “Emma”

on his left arm with the butcher knife

and I washed my hands

in the basin by the window sill.

I wrapped his penis and testicles

in my scarf and put them in my purse.

I had already put his underwear and shirt

on under my dress and then

I cleaned the room completely —

a farewell kiss, then I left.

I went as far as the train station

then I called the hotel and told them I’d

soon be back and not to bother him.

They agreed and I felt much better —

they couldn’t have discovered him yet.

I called up the doctor.

“From now on, no matter what happens,

please remember that you only

bought me with money, nothing more,”

I said. I was crying.

I knew I had to kill Charles

but until I actually did it

I never thought about what would happen to me.

Afterwards I realized I couldn’t go on living

I’d have to die too.

I really didn’t mind dying

but I worried about Doctor X.

The police would take him in

just because he was there with me.

I felt very sorry

and wanted to apologize to him right there.

If only I hadn’t gone there with him

I would have been free to hang myself

with clothesline in the room but

the thought of poor Doctor X

kept holding me back.

I decided to go out instead

and got very lonely for Charlie.

I put on his shirt

and pressed his thing against mine

but it really annoys me, you know

when people say I’m abnormal.

I made up my mind to die, no matter what

but first I wanted to feel Charles a little longer,

to carry his treasure with me

around town for a while

and then to go and jump off

a tall building but I

don’t think they let you onto the roof.

Around four I had some sushi.

I couldn’t finish much.

At ten I went to a hotel

where I’d stayed before and

took my prize out of my scarf.

I sucked on it a little

and tried to put it in me.

I kept thinking about so many things

I hardly slept the whole night.

Early the next morning

a newspaper at the front desk

with a picture of me when I was young

— I couldn’t let them see it

so I hid the paper.

Rain was falling

when I paid my bill at ten.

There would be no style

in running away so fast

so I decided to take the night train.

Then I went to see a movie

about two lovers who commit suicide together.

The papers were saying things

I don’t even like to remember:

they said every station was crawling with detectives,

I’d never make it out of town.

I got a room and

stayed up till one, waiting to be arrested.

The police didn’t come that night.

The next morning I wrote out my will

and went back to sleep.

I had two bottles of beer at midnight.

I wanted to make another try at dying.

Then I was made public.

I don’t know why everyone got so excited, though,

it’s not unusual

for a woman to love a man’s thing

even if a woman doesn’t like sushi at first

if her husband likes it she learns to.

A woman will often sleep

holding a pillow while her man is gone.

Does a women ever get sick of smelling

the dirty clothes of the man she loves?

And she likes to drink

the hot water he leaves in his cup

eat chewed food

from her man’s mouth.

there are a lot of women who dream about

doing the thing I did — love is love —

the only difference is that they don’t do it,

that’s why the result of my love

is still unconcluded

it’s only just begun.

The incident was accidental

but now I’m caught between a sliding door

and the door of a concrete box apartment

no, I’ m jammed.