Little Cat. Tamara Faith Berger

idea, because I’d been drinking a bit, and there I was, ringing his buzzer over and over. When he let me in, I remember I was hopping around in the elevator because I was so excited to see him. I felt a line of sweat around my hairline. My hips were still shaking and my throat was all hot.

      The guy’s door was open for me when I got up to his place. I went rushing down the hallway toward the bedroom because I heard some banging there. He was looking in one of his drawers. His back was toward me and I started dancing for him. I was just happy, you know, still reeling. I must’ve been dancing for at least a minute when I stopped. I stopped because I saw how his eyes were. He wasn’t moving. He had the worst look on his face. I didn’t know what to say. I was going to say it, I wanted to say it: I love you I love you I love only you! But I couldn’t say a thing. The guy was pursing his lips like he was going to spit in my face. I heard saliva collecting in his mouth and all I could do was stand there. He was coming toward me like that, bull’s-eye. I felt my lips opening up. I thought for a second it would turn into sex. I knew that I would’ve done anything for him right then. But the guy crooked his arm round the back of my neck. He widened my lips with his fingers and stuck his thumb down. I started gagging. He pushed in another finger and hooked it hard at the roof of my mouth. I tried to bite down but my teeth had lost their ridges.

      ‘Is this what you want?’ the guy finally said.

      My neck got all knotted. My stomach started bubbling. I had no idea what he meant. I wanted to love him! I didn’t want this. Then his knee hit my groin. I fell to the floor. The bones of my legs thudded like wood. I slumped over my breasts and coughed up his fingers.

      Then the man’s palms started flashing in front of my eyes. I heard myself scream but all I was doing was choking. He pushed me down more. He smacked both my cheeks. My back bones were rubbing against the floor. He pinned my wrists and he spread me. I felt his knuckles at my thighs.

      I tried to lift my head up but the guy was slapping my cunt. I could barely see, I was squinting and I was trying so hard to squeeze my thighs shut. I wanted to make myself go toward the smacking because I thought it wouldn’t hurt as much if I could go closer and closer. I felt my lips move. It was wet underneath me. The man didn’t stop coming over me, coming closer. I didn’t know if he was hitting me or fucking me or what.

      But the next thing I knew the man’s face was hovering over my head. He had his palms on both sides of my skull. It felt like he was scraping my forehead with a rock, digging hot pits in the bones of my face. I felt my body falling through the floor …

      ‘Open your eyes!’ he yelled.

      I tried and I tried but my sockets were filled. ‘I can’t, I can’t … ’

      Are you still there? Can you see me? Look! Please look. My legs, were they spreading? I didn’t know how to move. I thought that the man was still on top of me pounding. I didn’t know, I couldn’t look but I thought he was still there above me, still coming … I kept fixing on to that hook that he gave me: his finger down my throat, the hook that we were fucking, I kept fixing on it, fixing on it. I wanted to get out so bad …

      ‘Come on, girl! Come on, open your eyes!’

      I heard my own voice in my head. It was speaking too loud: You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t wanted more. You’re lying flat like a corpse on the ground. Your throat’s running open from sucking the cocks of all men. Your body is ripped into so many pieces. All you can do is scavenge yourself like a crow.

      Listen to yourself, still talking! You haven’t stopped saying bad words and thinking bad things ever since your first time. If you can ever suck someone without looking for his love, you’ll stop running like a slut all lost for your cunt. Look at you. Look. Your temples are burning! Stuff is pouring out of you. Look, it’s coming …

      Rolling around in the darkness, my face was scraping something flat. My cheekbones were poking like knives into the floor. I was calling for my lover. I was calling, I was calling, but my flesh had no sound.

      ‘I can’t do this, I don’t want to do this.’ I heard the guy talking from way up above me.

      ‘Why?’ I was crying now.

      ‘I just can’t. I don’t want this. I don’t want to do this to you.’

      What don’t you want? What can’t you do? I was screaming in my head. But my fucking mouth was glued shut. I was never coming up for air. I dragged myself away from him on my stomach. My face pressed against the floor. Water poured from my eyes.

      ‘Stop.’ He was still over me. ‘Stop. Stop crying. I just can’t do this.’

      ‘Why, why, why?’

      ‘I can’t. I don’t know. Stop crying, please stop crying.’

      ‘You don’t love me. You don’t … ’

      I broke open. I was gasping from the back of my throat. I couldn’t stop. I heard him walking down the hallway. He was leaving me like that! He slammed a door. Fuck you! Don’t leave me! I was crying, I kept pulling down the hall and toward the couch. Fuck it. Fuck it. I finally pushed my weight up. I rolled onto my back on the couch and sunk in. Pain kept coming and going in waves through my chest. Pain throbbed down the backs of my thighs, it burned my knees, it prickled all through my ribs. I’ll never be with you again. That was pain. My body was tight and packed into a tube. Over and over in my head it was playing: I don’t want this. You don’t love me. God I wanted it to stop. I wanted to fuck. I wanted to get rid of myself, alone like a fool at his chest.

      TWO

      Jupiter laughed aloud: ‘We have the answer.

       There is a fellow called Tiresias.

       Strolling to watch the birds and hear the bees

       We came across two serpents capitulating.

       He took the opportunity to kill

       Both with a single blow, but merely hurt them –

       And found himself transformed into a woman.

      ‘After the seventh year of womanhood,

       Strolling to ponder on what women ponder

       She saw in that same place the same two serpents

       Knotted as before in copulation.

       ‘If your pain can still change your attacker

       Just as you once changed me, then change me back.’

       She hit the couple with a handy stick,

      ‘And there he stood as male as any man.‚Äô

       ‘He’ll explain,’ cried Juno, ‘why you are

       Slave to your irresistible addiction

       While the poor nymphs you force to share it with you

       Do all they can to shun it.’

      – Ovid, The Metamorphoses

      MAN NO. 1

      It was just turning light in the room. I saw her lying there, dead to the world. Her head was hanging off the dirty beige couch. I walked up. I stood over her. I touched her breast, it was heaving up and down. My finger sunk in and I gripped my cock.

      Her cheeks looked puffy. Her eyelids were dark. I pulled up her skirt. I was breathing so hard that I thought I might wake her. I started peeling down her underwear. My finger got stuck around the elastic. She was shifting around. I knew I had to go faster. I pulled her underwear down to her knees. I felt like I was running without moving. I thought she was going to wake up. I held the head of my cock, put it right where she was splitting. I spread her lips with two fingers.

      Then I climbed onto the couch and grabbed her thighs with my knees. I pushed my cock up her. Fuck, I couldn’t help it. She started making these grunts. My heart was pounding.

      I dropped so my palms ended flat on the couch