Body Work

March 1, 2023 / Gracie Warhurst

“Here, she lets the self-loathing wash over her in one large wave, unable to shut off the free flow of internal thoughts telling her how unworthy she is of pleasure.”

Part I: Tom

She likes sleeping with Tom because he doesn’t pay attention to her. While he hovers above, looking at a spot on the pillow to the right of her, she hates herself more than ever before. There might exist a world in which she receives pleasure from a man like Tom, who is older and apparently wiser, clean in a weird way but clean nonetheless, but that world feels so far from this one. Here, she lets the self-loathing wash over her in one large wave, unable to shut off the free flow of internal thoughts telling her how unworthy she is of pleasure.

The stark whiteness of his sheets, the meticulously tucked corners, the closed bathroom door that she knows hides shining tile and fluffy towels all work together to remind her that she is the opposite of what someone like Tom should want. Being in his room feels like being in another country, one that she hasn’t learned the language or customs of yet, and makes her ashamed of where she comes from. Regardless of if she truly wants him, there’s a small voice in her head that wants more than anything to be desirable. She arrived only 30 minutes ago, in torn tights and an oversized sweater, darkness under her eyes that she didn’t try to cover. Taking up almost no space at all and yet still obvious to her surroundings. It’s the look of someone broken down and chewed up. But in her defense, today is one of the worst days.

She hates the way she comes to him each time, thinking it might fix something. And it’s the same routine, as if the script was written for her and delivered by hand to the doorstep of her apartment. She’ll sit on his bed and he’ll order her to lay down. She’s long given up pretense, and so has he. Her clothes will come off, then his later on. She won’t be able to focus at all, but he will continue to touch and prod her. She might squeeze her eyes shut tightly, but he’ll be staring at the back of her head. She’ll find herself in the exact position she is now, cursing herself more each time.

She wonders if Tom would be able to see the thoughts as they enter her head, if he only looked at her. There is little eye contact in the whole process. If she were less consumed with her own shame, she might wonder what he was thinking, too. His shallow groans and exhales of just a little more aren’t any more revealing than her silence. This time, she imagines the perfect world that would exist if she enjoyed sex and could participate in it fully without preoccupations. As Tom’s movements become more painful, and her desire to stop him grows, she is faced, always, with the fact that she may never revel in this type of physical intimacy. He may actually like that she seems, at times, to be in slight pain. Maybe he needs that from her, to be a passive piece in his lust. He finishes with a sigh through clenched teeth.

Tom is one of the first people she sleeps with after realizing that sex is different for her than it is for most people. She recalls conversations with friends, the details that women trade for closeness rather than voyeurism. Her female coworkers especially overshare their exploits, yet somehow it doesn’t feel like crossing a boundary. Regardless, these conversations make pleasure seem to sit on the precipice of her ownership. She can imagine breathy exhales and sharp inhales, the frenzy of excitement and the anticipation of warmth, of closeness. If she wiggles her fingers, she can almost feel the gentle caresses or tight grips. Their stories make it seem so easy, as if sex is something you fall into after a glance across a crowded bar, or, if she’s to believe the stories, years of friendly acquaintance.

It’s never been like that for her. She wonders if there is a pill she can take, or a doctor she can visit. She wonders if she might one day get so good at trying to enjoy sex that it would actually happen. She wonders if she will ever stop doing it, just to discover what it should feel like. She wonders if she will ever be lovable as she currently is, if a man like Tom would ever want to experience her in a way that benefits them both. Perhaps, worst of all, she wonders if she even deserves to be loved, in any state.

And that is how it goes with Tom. She won’t finish, he will. She will lay there, he will roll over. She will lay there, he will go to the bathroom, grab a fluffy towel and step from the shiny tile into the steaming shower. She will lay there, he will grunt a goodbye. This time, just as she hears the click of his bedroom door closing behind her, she thinks she should stop sleeping with Tom.

Part II: Jane

The next time she has sex, it’s with Jane. Jane isn’t the first girl she has slept with. There was a time years ago when it was obvious that she would not enjoy sex with a man. As a newly sexually liberated college student, she thought the solution was to experiment a little more. Of course she had never tried it before, growing up in various Catholic schools that were the top choices of the nearby gated communities. She had completely blocked out the part of herself that would acknowledge an attraction to anything except the norm. When she stared a little too long at plaid skirts or tight white button-ups, she tried to divert her attention. It worked for a while, especially in her teen years when sex was something that happened later. But in college, sex was something that was happening now. She didn’t know yet that the problem wasn’t men, or women — the problem was her.

Jane is very attentive. So attentive that it takes much effort to fake it. She is so sweet, a smiling beam of loveliness, really. She doesn’t want to disappoint Jane by not enjoying it. But she can’t enjoy it — not even with Jane’s mouth breathing kisses on her skin. Not even when she whispers, you’re so beautiful. Jane’s voice is gentle against her, but she still feels her mind drifting away, unable to hold onto the present moment, unable to enter the physical world.

Being with Jane sends her back to crowded church pews full of incense and whispers. Her skirt always two inches longer and her shirt buttoned to the very top, she tried her best to not be perceived at all. She would attempt listening to their daily sermons, legs crossed at the ankle and eyes fixed on her chipping manicure. But God was an abstract in those times. Lost somewhere between belief and doubt. His presence loomed over her daily life like an omen, like a commandment, like Big Brother intending to scare the shit out of her.

Despite now viewing Catholic school through a rearview mirror, she just can’t shake the shame of being attracted to women. Of having sex with women. Even if she can’t manage to pay attention, she’s sure it must still be a sin. (A sin in a religion she doesn’t even believe in.) In some ways, she wishes she had that blind optimism of the girls from her school years. It’s something she strongly associates with faith, the belief that everything will work out, no matter what things seem to be now. She thinks she could really use some of that in her current predicament. Jane is still somewhere south of her hip bone, and she’s thankful for the thin cover sheet blocking the look of torment on her face. If she were a more religious person, she might believe in Jane’s goodness. Maybe she would trust that relying on her kindness would heal something inside of her. As it currently stands, Jane’s ministrations, soft as a prayer, don’t stir anything within her.

Jane would be the perfect girlfriend. She would plan dates and buy flowers; she would give and give and give and not complain about not receiving. But she can’t do that to Jane, who deserves a partner that can give her their full focus. If they were dating, she might express this out loud: her insecurity about not being good enough, about not being able to love her in the way she deserves, or please her in the way she should. She might stop her actions under the sheet, and say that it just isn’t working — it isn’t you, it’s me. She might explain the various sexual partners she had to cycle through to realize that, and promise that she would try to get the help or support or prescription or exorcism she needs, all for Jane.

But they aren’t dating, and she doesn’t think she could tell anyone that. Not even perfect, perfect Jane.

Part III: Jordan

Jordan is a year younger than her, but he might as well still be in college. He has the look and feel of someone who’s spent a lot of time in a fraternity, even though he now has a Respectable Job in Finance. Jordan takes her exclusively to hotel rooms. He smiles too wide and fumbles too much, and is too eager to show off his new six-figure salary. But it’s refreshing that someone is trying to impress her, that they aren’t wholly disappointed and disinterested quite yet.

Jordan always takes his clothes off first, as if he’s signaling for her to do the same. He hasn’t yet realized how to use his words. He takes off his chinos and underwear in one pull, and she can see the Nike logo peeking out from where he carelessly tosses them on the floor. Sighing, she removes her own camisole, feeling burdened by having to do it herself. But Jordan is already eager and she sees him realize she wasn’t wearing a bra. He’s all hands and no decorum as he stumbles towards her, slack-jawed.

As they fall into a mattress that should be much better quality for the price of the room, she wonders if Jordan’s charisma has always been his fuel for success, or if there is something more that she hasn’t encountered. He reminds her of almost all the boys she interacted with in college. He could be bred from the same litter — adjusting to a world that belongs to him while his prefrontal cortex is still forming. College was the first time she had met anyone like Jordan, or spent significant time with the opposite gender. It was the first time that anyone had convinced her to get into bed with them.

She knows the sex will be one-sided and rushed, but she can’t help but be pulled out of it even for the few minutes it will last. It’s almost exactly like her first time, sans fancy hotel room, and she drifts back into the memory. He wasn’t a villain, but definitely not a saint, either. He had taken her to his room at the party they were at, just up the stairs and off to the right. It was a single room without a connecting bathroom, but she remembers pretending to be awed because he seemed so proud of the flags tacked to the walls and the monitor on his desk. It happened quickly, before she knew it was going to. He didn’t ask very many questions or give any assurances, but she hadn’t the thought nor experience to demand anything otherwise.

Immediately after, she could blame the guy or the atmosphere or the inexperience to explain why it wasn’t good. The few girls that befriended her in their dorm wanted her to embellish and give them something to clutch onto with their tiny red fists, but she had next to nothing to say. It happened, it’s over, it happened. She could’ve lied, made it out to be earth-shattering, leg-shaking, pandemonium — but she felt a little empty afterwards. There was nothing left in her to craft a story out of, and she never really tried to find one.

Jordan is finishing up now, and she’s pulled out of the memory. She’s relieved to see the blank walls and mahogany dresser. She’s even relieved to see Jordan over her shoulder, oscillating between looking at her and tightly squeezing his eyes shut. His compliments tumble out of him, as if he can’t control them: you feel so good, you look so good, so good. When it’s all over, he wears an expression more earnest than ever. Apparently, a month of sleeping together is what it takes for him to want to commit. Or maybe it’s the fact she hasn’t tried to lock him down that makes him more inclined. She just shakes her head like it’s a joke, even though the fallen look on his face is telling her very clearly that it isn’t.

Part IV: Self-Awareness

She never leaves her exploits with any lesson learned. It’s more like an experiment in failing, over and over again, differently each time. Instead of gaining something, it chips away at her a little bit more. She walks away from Jordan and towards the trees, wondering when she’ll have nothing left to leave behind. She thinks she might feel better in places like this park bench, watching other people feed the ducks and walk their dogs and kiss their children’s chunky faces and unpack their lunches and fly their kites and live their lives. These things feel so unreachable, like they are intended for someone else’s life. Definitely not the life of the woman still covered in a layer of Jordan’s sweat. She’s at the park on the way home from the hotel, 10 miles from Jane but only two from Tom. She could probably draw a map from where she sits to all the homes and bars and cars and hotels she’s ended up in. She might use a red string to connect herself to these places and the people she met in them. She might collect the memories in a jar, sitting unlidded in the back of her mind. She might write a label: Things that I tried that I can never undo, Things that I tried that never helped, Things I tried… ■

By: Gracie Warhurst

Graphics: Vy Truong

Words From Web

February 23, 2023 / SPARK Web No. 20

An ongoing journal from the Web department.

February 23, 2023
REM

TIME RUNS OUT

My eyes can’t rest even when I'm asleep. they shift back and forth without my permission — conjuring up images projected on my eyelids. Each shift of my eyes is like the ticking of a clock — tick, tock. Left, right. As if each dream which crawls its way into my mind, each thought which sets up residence in my brain, is yet another reminder of limited time.

Time is everywhere. Time doesn’t exist, sillies. We’re in nirvana and samsara. It's not linear, at least — we’re everywhere experiencing everything at once and it’s just an illusion that your eyes are the lens and this is the moment. An oculus rift that only I can perceive. My eyes are the roots of all illusionment and like a man stranded in the desert, I dream up a mirage out of desperation and lay there until I fade in hunger and exhaustion.

—

Our bodies are so funny for jolting us awake right when we are about to sleep. “Hello! Hey you! Don’t fade away on me, I’m here!” I’m gasping for something that isn’t real. I’m a puppet to my subconscious. How do I tell you that I can't ever forget you? Why do you need to keep haunting me in the safety of my solitude?

THE FALL

Sometimes when I sleep too deep and fall too hard I think about what could’ve been, or maybe what we could’ve done differently? I remember the air knocked out of my chest when I wake, the Sahara that is my throat. A glass of water relieves only the burning on the surface, soothes only the pain when I swallow, not the glass shards which dissolved deeper into my bloodstream with each beat of my trembling, terrified heart.

—

I miss you with each beat, each systole and diastole. I miss you with each breath, stabbing in my chest as air fills the space you left. I feel like a fish outside of the water. I am becoming extinct.
Your eyes racing back and forth, immobile arms somewhere far away pumping
perhaps chasing, perhaps being chased.
A scream trapped in an unconscious throat which can not be released in reality,
sweat beading at a brow furrowed, then un-furrowed.
Running through sand at the bottom of the ocean,
futile fighting to keep from drowning –
tossing, turning.
The tide sweeps over the levee. Only those of us with the most reptilian brains survive.

—

I’m awake (I think?) in the back of an Uber. I think? Holy fuck. Who’s driving me? Where am I? My eyelids are heavy. I’m tempted to go back under, to be saved by the pure depths of the water. Maybe I will adapt and learn to breathe in the water that threatens to drown me. I have no choice but to adapt, quickly! Am I home already? My head is nauseated and I might throw up. I really don’t want that $200 charge on my card. I stumble out into the street in a place that looks foreign to me. Was this where I intended to go? My feet pull in one direction then another, eternally undecided on where home is. Where is home? What is home? Is it close to them or to you? Time slows down.

I started floating — up up up. And fall flat on my face on the concrete below me. I’m alone, I thought. Until I’m yanked out of my misery which is the apartment lobby toilet.

ALTERED REALITY

The dream world is just as real as the waking world; we just can’t remember it consciously. I think our bodies do, though. Subconsciously, I think we process our deepest fears and wants through our dreams. Nietzche wrote a whole thing about it. Or was it Freud? It doesn’t really matter now. The only thing that’s important to me is seeing you when I close my eyes. You are my biggest fear and my deepest desire all wrapped up in one. It is in these moments when I feel I can walk on water, without a fear of sinking, the darkness swallowing me whole. But I must let it engulf me, for that it is the only way I can learn to fight. I must give in to the darkness for once.

—

I'm stumbling through the pulsating walls of my apartment. they twist and fade into darkness.
The floor trembles, lurches, rolls beneath my unsteady feet. Where is up and where is down?
The corners of my vision narrow,
“tunnel vision”
the vocabulary word suddenly emerges from the depths of my memory,
and yet I can only rock on unsteady feet, arms reaching out senselessly for an unreachable balance, lost.
I collapse onto the cold tile.
I see a million helpless legs twitching out my body. I am a centipede and Kafka doesn't even know me. I'm no longer human; I'm something else. I'm fading. I’m fading. I’m… not gone yet. Was it just a dream or an intuition? I can't decipher the code before I fade into oblivion — become the air around me. I found myself falling down a black hole of despair. Yet, unlike Alice, I don't find myself in wonderland. The paradise I desired was nothing but a cold yet fiery hell.

When I land, I find myself in the Galapagos Islands. I'm sipping tea with Vonnegut and sharing a slice of pie with the largest tortoises that ever existed. I'm completely alone, but I am not lost. I blink again and I'm 73 on a balcony in the city smoking.

—

I feel worms crawling out of the arteries in my eyes, reaching the black holes of my dilating pupils. They sense the rot. They smell it. I can never escape him. Some theorists say that death is an angel. I have seen him, in my dreams, and I can say for sure that he is not. He’s not a devil either. He just exists on my plane of consciousness. He is an extension of my own thoughts. My reflection and my foil character. He is an extension of my own reality. Is this who I am?

—

My mind is what I can’t escape. It is the creator of my reality both the good and the ugly. It is the instrument of my demise as much as it is my biggest pride. I thought I could do anything until I remembered the limits of my mind. I thought I could do nothing until I remembered the capabilities of my mind. I can do anything until I wake up. I confront the creature, and it looks like me. Well, not exactly. I want to say it has glowing red eyes or snakes for hair, but she looks normal. Almost too normal. Hair unwashed, eyes circled in purple, three-day-old hoodie wrinkled. She looks at me, no, through me, and I'm struck with the feeling to turn and run, to reject this being who is wholly me, yet can’t be, I don't want her to be. Who am I? Who is she? Which of us is real, and which one is from a dream?

— Katlynn Fox, Ellen Daly, Sonali Menon, Safiyya Haider, Hafsa Haider, Jane Krauss, Gracie Warhurst, Annie Kim, Anagha Rao, Pebbles Moomau, & Candice Chepda

February 17, 2023
LABYRINTH

For some reason I have a very vivid memory of going through a garden maze when I was younger. Did this stem from a dream? Was it real? Is this a false memory? All I remember is that it was dark and the turns were sharp and the vines on the floor were threatening to wrap themselves around my ankle and keep me trapped until i’m one with the soil. I guess that was my first exposure to the labyrinth.

Now that I'm older, now that the memories return daily, the only thing I have left is fear. When will it come back?

I still remember the moment the lines first began to form, left and right and up and down. They’ve been growing longer ever since. I don’t know when they will end or where they are going. There are so many now that I can hardly see. I can hardly tell them apart from each other. The space I occupy gets smaller and smaller and all I can do is watch. Will they one day consume me? The walls are closing in and my throat tightens. I can’t breathe. My senses are stripped bare like my skin. Naked exposed to the ground.

I can't find my way out. I look both ways and yet I'm still struck by a feeling of despair. Directions are meaningless. It’s a liminal space to its truest extent. I should know the way… why don’t I know the way? Like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs, they thought they knew but they didn’t. They thought there was a way out but there wasn’t. It was just an illusion, they had entered someplace even more sinister. Will I face a similar fate?

Living life in the labyrinth I created has killed almost every part of me. There’s nothing that escapes the confines of my brain after I ingest the thought. My mind is a maze and I channel the inner workings of Icarus. I have struck the sun and now my body is aflame. The Minotaur comes after me now. Heavy stomps making its way through the maze without a regard for the true path. Unlike me, who has no choice but to find the prescribed path. Is that what we all think? That we’re stuck in this labyrinth, this predetermined maze? Is the feeling of being trapped the trap itself? Maybe we’re simply meant to explore right where we are. Maybe there is nothing else, nowhere to run to, nothing to run from.

— Katlynn Fox, Sonali Menon, Ellen Daly, Gracie Warhurst, Hafsa Haider, & Sonia Siddiqui

February 9, 2023

AETHER

When I’m with you, I transcend to the aether. Self-annihilation has a special kind of spiritual beauty. I no longer have to think, to feel, to be a person of my own. I don't have to know what I like or what I want. I am whoever you want me to be. I love what you love and I hate what you hate. My soul is a mirror yet I am like a vampiric figure haunting your reflective soul but never seeing myself in your eyes. I want to see. I want to see myself in them to know I'm real. To know that I exist. I look and look and look and there's nothing. Maybe your eyes are the aether. Blue or brown, it doesn't matter. All I see is white light drawing me in like a siren with the most beautiful song. Let me take you along. For parting is such sweet sorrow, oh tomorrow, tomorrow what will you bring? Nothing I know, so let me sing! Sing with vampires. and then we will feast like we need to. The desire is too strong and I can't protect you from this place that I've brought you to.

In every pair of eyes we see an aether. Our minds are aether, our souls are aether. We as humans are motionless, timeless, purposeless. We are the temporal experience. Condemned to being ephemeral, the only constant is change.

When we live online, do we live in the aether? My dreams are made of pixels and I feel immortal. My heart is my digital footprint and it beats for likes on a post and comments about my life. I love to be perceived. I love to live eternally in my home online.

The Internet is my aether. It was where the aether originated because that’s where I googled it. My persona online is that of my ideal identity, a polished, perfect version of a self I barely recognize. Google me and you will see the aether I have constructed for myself. You will see the world, my world, but you will never reach it. For it is the kingdom I have built, and no one else will ever be welcome in it.

Maybe the aether is within me,
Jumping around and doing
Somersaults in my stomach.
It’s unsettling and exciting.
She’s waiting around the corner for me.
Or maybe it’s jumping rope in the alley,
Spinning round and round
With sickening dissonance.
Tying itself around my neck.
Death is so sweet.

Aether, a force from the sky.
An abstract science from a different time.
I wonder if life was easier back then… they seemed to have answers to everything. They seemed a little less in this chaos of the cosmos.
Perhaps, this divinity guided them like a compass guides the lonely sailor lost at sea. Perhaps, they are this divinity.
For isn’t life itself an act of divine intervention?
What miracles possess the mechanical beating of our hearts to love?

Maybe the heavens are not for us.
What is heaven? Will it be there when our time has come?
What would it look like what would it smell like what would it taste like?
It can't be heaven if I can't feel.
I need to see I need to hear I need to touch.
I can't live in the unknown and the uncertain.
I crave concrete answers.
Will it live up to my expectations?

— Katlynn Fox, Nysa Dharan, Anagha Rao, Annie Kim, Safiyya Haider, Sonali Menon, Gracie Warhurst, Sophia Lowe, Candice Chepda, & Ellen Daly

February 2, 2023

BLISS

bliss is to kiss! to miss! to… it’s to….

it’s when you tan in the sun, and check for tan lines. it’s eating peanut butter from the jar. and it’s the feeling of warmth after running into someone you know on the street.

bliss to me is a kiwi and smoothie and bliss to me is hot pink and orange.

bliss to me is glitter in my eyes and around my eyes and spilling it my throat. and it’s when i beam and burst and butterfly and.
bliss is to hold them and to be held. and bliss is like a wail of pleasure.

bliss is the summertime and bliss is like a warm coat. bliss is bathing suits and bliss is a vodka sour.

— Pebbles Moomau

Jingle bells tinkle over me as I enter O-Mart. I let out my last shiver. Around me, my peers chatter excitedly about plans to karoake and play hide-and-seek in the dark. Wine bottles and Smirnoff Pink Lemonades clink and fill the checkout line. It’s a Wednesday night, but school getting cancelled has filled students with a newfound bliss, a release from the pressures of class and exams and God-knows-what else we put ourselves through. For these next few days, time stops, and I smile.

— Anagha Rao

we join hands in cruel harmony,
we, the divinities who worship
the midnight sky.
shunning our sister who turned her back
to the moon, the celestial cynthia,
who protected her from the light.

i allow the salt of my tears
to sear my skin,
in quiet defiance to our mother,
our enchantress.
and when they let go of my hand,
i reach into the fireand join the girl.

let our fury unfurl
onto a world
who refused to worship the sun,
instead of her.

— Candice Chepda, “finding bliss”

Graphic: Elain Yao

I Think It's Deja-Vu

Hour 1

Hour 2

Hour...5?

Hour ???

Hour 1

Body Work

Part I: Tom

Part II: Jane

Part III: Jordan

Part IV: Self-Awareness

Words From Web

February 23, 2023
REM

February 17, 2023
LABYRINTH

February 9, 2023

AETHER

February 2, 2023

BLISS

Mock Trial

Nostalgia for Breakfast

I Think It's Deja-Vu

Hour 1

Hour 2

Hour...5?

Hour ???

Hour 1

Body Work

Part I: Tom

Part II: Jane

Part III: Jordan

Part IV: Self-Awareness

Words From Web

February 23, 2023REM

February 17, 2023LABYRINTH

February 9, 2023

AETHER

February 2, 2023

BLISS

Mock Trial

Nostalgia for Breakfast

February 23, 2023
REM

February 17, 2023
LABYRINTH