Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

She was very drunk by the time they returned to his apartment, and she barely remembered the at first playful exchange of shoves, slaps, and verbal abuse, the escalating bolts of aggression that flew between them.

“I’d like to tie your ankles up by your head, with your legs pushed straight back until I could see up your asshole.” His voice jerked as he fucked her. “I’d like to stick a lit candle all the way up your snatch and lick your pussy until it starts to singe.”

“An homage to Hegel?” she asked.

She felt the teeth of his ferocity cut open her body, and she felt her poisonous response spill into his mouth like blood. She lifted her pelvis off the bed and fucked him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Turn me over,” she whispered, “and stick your cock up my ass.”

“No. I’m going to fuck your pussy until I feel you start to come and then I’m going to cram it up your ass. Then I’ll stick it down your throat.”

“You stupid prick.” But she said it like a caress, slowing her pelvic movement, slowly gripping and releasing his cock with the rhythmic stroke she would use to pet an animal.

“You might hate me but your cunt’s begging for it, isn’t it?”

She sank beneath the dark current that bore them along, rose and sank again. She saw herself frozen in disbelief at what she was doing and then herself as a child, alone in the apartment after school, running through the rooms, smashing windows and destroying furniture like she had never been able to do, jumping up and down with delight to see big Justine doing the nasty with this dirty boy. The strange thing was that this excitement didn’t affect her cunt. She felt it there, but only dimly, as if there was a thin but firm barrier between her genitals and the rest of her body. Stranger still, it didn’t matter.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, rolled him onto his back and sat on him. The smell of her cunt floated up to her; she felt like she’d dipped her hand in her own guts. She whispered to him, “I want you to play with my cunt until I’m almost ready to come and then I want you to whip me.”

He poked his head up. “You want to be whipped?”

“Yes.”

“Then get up. I’ll whip you right now.”

Fright leapt in her stomach, and she jammed it down. He got a small whip from a drawer across the room. She had never seen a whip before and she was frightened again. Even the rampaging child paused, wondering. Then he grabbed a long candle from its holder and continued towards her.

“No,” she said sharply, raising a hand. “No fire.”

He stopped. “Okay,” he said almost tenderly. “Nothing you don’t want.” And he turned and hurled the candle against a wall, smashing it.

He pressed her face down on the edge of the bed and bound her hands behind her back. Her knees were bent up to her chest and splayed apart so that her vagina and asshole were pulled open. She thought of her exposed crotch, feeling that these hairy wet holes were her, just as her eyes and nose were her, and yet, seen isolated and up close, they were prehistoric, stupidly impersonal, beastly and irreducible — yet still gentle, merciful and sweet.

She felt him embrace her spread buttocks; he must’ve been kneeling. She felt him kiss her hips and behind over and over again. “Baby,” he murmured. “Baby girl.” He dipped his tongue into one hole and then the other. The barrier protecting her genitals fell away; her inner flesh opened to receive pleasure. He slowly fucked her with his tongue, and her mouth released a genuine sigh. Her body opened more deeply until she felt herself split and revealed all the way into the pit of her guts, a place of heat and light that shone with tenderness for the lover who had come at last.

He gently withdrew from her, licked her once more, and backed away. She was aware of him behind her, and although she didn’t make this association, she felt as she had when she was alone with her father in his car and he had made her say what Dr. Norris had done; pinned, helpless, exposed. Only now she felt her opened being contacted and stroked instead of coldly regarded. She thought: I love you.

He struck her with the whip. The pain cut her drunkenness and shocked her so badly she couldn’t scream. He struck her again, harder, and she did scream. Her panicked body jerked against its restraints and tried to close in defense; from her depths there burst a terrified creature, all elongated hands and wild distended mouth, its body twisting crazily as it flew into her throat, silently crying, No, no, don’t let him hurt me. But it was too late.

She let her attention wander to the welts pressed against the vinyl seat of her office chair as she sat, still struggling with Medicaid forms. “I hope you didn’t leave permanent marks,” she’d said as she lay in his arms.

“Not this time,” he assured her. “We’ll talk about that later.” He turned away from her, his back hard as a door shut in someone’s weeping face.

Sleep alternately took her under and released her, tossing her into his room with its staring furniture and scattered bundles of dirty socks, and then drawing her back into her loud and messy dreams.

She blinked and looked up from her Medicaid forms, suddenly recalling: the unhinged Granite enthusiast, Dorothy, had appeared in a dream. Probably, she thought, it was the discussion of Granite’s work the night before. A strange dream; they were walking in a garden of blighted flowers and trees that were twisted into aberrant forms, both rotted and beautiful. The gravel path beneath them shimmered with a light that seemed radioactive and frightening to Justine. It shifted as they walked, crawling like the colored sand of a kaleidoscope; Justine was afraid it would open and swallow them. The fat woman seemed to sense her fear and took her hand firmly, giving her to understand that even if the gravel did open under their feet, she would still bear them aloft.

“You shouldn’t be involved with this man,” said the fat woman. “He is dangerous.”

“I know,” answered Justine. “But it’s something I have to do.”

“No it isn’t.”

They looked at one another, and Justine noticed the clarity and beauty of the other woman’s eyes.

“Are you feeling better now?” asked Glenda. “Your face looks very relaxed.”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. Can I make a phone call?”

“Of course.”

The fat lady’s phone rang for a long time with no answer. Justine remembered that she worked on a graveyard shift and wondered if she were still asleep. It was four o’clock already; probably she had dialed the wrong number. She hung up, called again, and was answered immediately.

“Hi, it’s Justine Shade. Remember me?”

“Yes.”

Dorothy’s hollow voice made Justine pause; nothing happened in the pause so she continued.

“Well, I’m close to finishing my article, and I just have a few things I’d like to, er, tie up. I remembered you said you’d be happy to meet again if I needed any more information, and I thought I’d invite you to have coffee.” Dorothy was silent. “So we could talk,” added Justine.

“Um, yes, that would be — I’d like that.”

As she said the last phrase, Justine heard in her voice that familiar disconcerting momentum and was reassured. She hung up strangely gratified, feeling she’d accomplished something useful, related after all to her career.

“Glenda,” she said, pushing her chair back. “How about if I go out and get us some cookies?”

The place Justine Shade had chosen for our meeting was one of those fashionable cafés where people with expensive haircuts drink cappuccino and eat plates of fruit and cheese. I had walked by cafés of this sort on my infrequent trips to the Village; when I peered into their windows, I would feel my curiosity press forward with its little pink nose atwitch and then my contempt would stiffly pull itself proud and erect, shutting its ears to curiosity’s pleas to maybe go in and have some expensive pastry. When curiosity had the loudest voice, it seemed to me that the people in these cafés were not only attractive but fascinating, that they were probably talking about the issues that Anna Granite’s characters talked about at cocktail parties, each one representing a different philosophical view. Then contempt spoke, and I saw trivial self-satisfied swine obsessed with fashion and artificial emotion, probably on drugs, people like the awful characters in those short glib books by trendy young writers. Sometimes I would have the wistful thought that it might be fun and certainly novel to be, for just a little while, self-satisfied and obsessed with fashion. Then I would reflect that, fun or not, I couldn’t do it because of who I was.