Melissa P.: 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

The barman went into the next room to find the black cloth that had covered my eyes. They blindfolded me again, and a hand forced me to kneel down.

"Now, Melissa, we shall pass the joint." I heard Roberto's voice. "Whoever is holding it will snap his fingers and touch your head, so you will know that it has arrived. You must draw near, when we tell you, and take it in your mouth until it comes. Five times, Melissa, five. Henceforth we shall no longer speak. Perform your task well."

Five different tastes clashed on my palate, the five flavors of five men. Every flavor told its story, every potion bespoke my shame. During those moments I had the illusory sensation that pleasure was not only physical, that it might be beauty, joy, freedom. And kneeling naked in their midst I sensed that I belonged to another, unknown world. But then, after I exited that room, my heart was in shreds, and I experienced an unspeakable shame.

They then abandoned me on the bed, and my body felt numb. On the desk in the narrow room my phone started flashing, and I knew the call was coming from home. It was already two-thirty in the morning. But then someone entered, stretched out on top of me, and screwed me. Another followed him and pointed his penis toward my mouth. As soon as one had finished, another would unload his whitish liquid on me. One after another. Sighs, moans, grunts. And quiet tears.

I returned home full of sperm, my makeup smeared. My mother was waiting for me, asleep on the couch.

She was too sleepy to upbraid me about the hour, so she just nodded and headed toward her bedroom.

I entered the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and no longer saw the image of that girl who took such delight in examining herself a few years ago. I saw sad eyes, rendered even more pitiful by the black liner that streamed down my cheeks. I saw a mouth that had been violated so many times tonight and had lost its freshness. I felt invaded, fouled by foreign bodies.

Then I brushed my hair a hundred times, as princesses do, my mother always says, with my vagina even now, as I write in the dead of night, still smelling of sex.

4 December 2001 12:45 P.M.

"Did you have fun last night?" my mother asked me this morning, drowning out the gurgle of the coffeepot with a yawn.

I shrugged and responded that I'd spent the night just like so many others.

"Your clothes had a strange smell," she said with her usual look of wanting to know everything, especially when it concerns me.

Frightened, I abruptly turned my back to her and bit my lip. I thought she might have picked up the scent of sperm.

"What kind of smell?" I asked, feigning composure, mindlessly observing the sun through the kitchen window.

"Smoke. It smelled like marijuana," she said with an expression of disgust.

Relieved, I turned around, smiled slightly, and said, "Well, people were smoking in the club last night. I couldn't possibly ask them to put it out."

She gave me a surly look and said, "If you come home stoned, you won't even be allowed to go to school."

"That's fine with me," I joked. "I'll see if I can find a reliable dealer. Thanks, you've given me a great excuse to cut those shitty classes."

As if the only thing that might be harmful is hashish. I'd smoke gram after gram if it could help me shake off this strange sensation of emptiness, of nothingness. It's as if I were suspended in the air, looking down in shock at what I did yesterday. No, that wasn't me. That was the girl who doesn't love herself, who allowed herself to be touched by greedy, unfamiliar hands, who became a receptacle for the sperm of five different guys, who so defiled her soul that she can't feel pain.

I am the one who does love herself, who last night made her hair shine again with a hundred careful strokes of the brush, who rediscovered the childlike softness of her lips, and who kissed herself, sharing the love that yesterday had been denied her.

20 December 2001

A time of gifts and false smiles, of coins tossed-with a fleeting burst of good conscience-into the hands of gypsies holding babies on street corners. I don't like to buy gifts for other people; I always buy them for myself alone, perhaps because I have nobody to whom to give them. This afternoon I went out with Ernesto, a guy I met in a chat room. He immediately seemed like a kindred spirit. We exchanged phone numbers and began seeing each other like dear friends. Even if he is slightly distant, absorbed by the university and his mysterious friendships.

We often go shopping together, and I'm not embarrassed when I enter a lingerie shop with him. On the contrary, he frequently buys something too.

"For my new girl," he always says. But he has never introduced me to any of them.

He seems to be on very good terms with the salesgirls. Their talk avoids the social niceties and they giggle away. I rummage through the racks, searching for things I might wear for the person who managed to fall in love with me. I keep them carefully folded in the first drawer of the dresser, intact.

In the second drawer I keep the lingerie I wear during my encounters with Roberto and his friends. Thigh-highs shredded by their fingernails, lace panties slightly frayed from being stripped off too many times by lustful hands. They attach no importance to these things; to them what matters is that I'm a slut.

In the beginning I would buy only lingerie in white lace, carefully coordinating each piece.

"Black would suit you better," Ernesto once told me. "It goes better with your coloring, the shade of your face, your skin."

I followed his advice, and from then on I bought only black lace.

I watch him take a fancy to the colored thongs, worthy of a Brazilian dancer: shocking pink, green, electric blue. When he shops in earnest, he chooses red.

"Your girlfriends must be really weird," I tell him.

With a giggle he says, "Not as weird as you," and my ego is boosted again.

The bras are almost all padded. He never coordinates them with the panties, preferring to juxtapose colors that seem unlikely together.

Then the stockings: mine are almost always thigh-highs, crowned with a band of lace, strictly black, so they form a sharp contrast with the wintry pallor of my skin. He buys fishnets, which don't match my taste.

When Ernesto is particularly fond of a girl, he dives into the throng at a department store and buys her glittering dresses adorned with multicolored sequins, cut with dizzying necklines and daring slits.

"How much does this girl make an hour?" I joke.

He turns serious and, without responding, goes to pay. Then I feel guilty and stop acting like a stupid idiot.

Today, as we strolled through the shops, past the acid young salesgirls, the rain caught us by surprise, soaking the packages we were toting.

"Let's go under the portico!" he shouted as he seized my hand.

"Ernesto!" I said, midway between irritation and amusement. "There are no porticoes on Via Etnea!"

He looked at me, bug-eyed, shrugged, and exclaimed, "Then let's go to my place!" I didn't want to go there: I learned that one of his roommates is Maurizio, a friend of Roberto's. I didn't feel like seeing him; much less did I want Ernesto to discover my secret activities.

From the place where we stood, his apartment was only a few hundred yards away. We covered them at a fast clip, hand in hand. It felt great to break into a mad dash with someone who doesn't make me feel like I have to get into bed with him and let myself go, no holds barred. For once I'd like to be the one who decides: when and where to do it, how long, with how much desire.

"Is anyone home?" I whispered as I climbed the stairs with a booming echo.

"No," he replied, breathless. "They've all left for the holidays. Only Gianmaria stayed home, but he's out right now." Content, I followed him, hastily sprucing myself up in the mirror on the wall.