For the better part of July, I felt scattered and antsy. Off my game and highly suggestible.
I forgot about self care. The bills and dishes piled up. I became addicted to crack, smack, bennies, hooch, Mary Jane and One Life To Live. My cat took to staring at me, all haunted like Bibi Andersson in Persona. Something had to give.
Then in August, strange and meaningful things began to happen. On the Queen streetcar, I had the following exchange with a well dressed, middle aged woman:
Woman: (Turning around in seat.) Excuse me. Do you smell whore?
Me: Umm, what does whore smell like?
Woman: Stop harassing me, you whore! I used to be a nurse!
I went out on two dates. One was with a twitchy, depressive grade school teacher, who refused to sit out on the mini-patio at the Cameron for fear that he’d look like a “Victoria era prostitute.”
The other date was with a gorgeous, strapping Portuguese boy, bigger than me and thrillingly prone to spontaneous shadow boxing, who nonetheless whispered in a girlie voice pre-coitus, “I’m not one of those gay sluts. I think I love you. Am I your princess?”
No, Joe. You are not my princess. I’m not one of those gay monarchists, and if I was, I would be my own princess, please and thank you.
Anyway. The meaning of it all – of July’s hazy desperation and the sexual non-sequiturs of August – became clear to me one night last week. I was semi-nude in the garden maze at the Toolbox. It was a balmy night. The stars were twinkling as one friendly gentleman serviced my front dirty part and another gentleman serviced my back dirty part. I shivered with pleasure until, coming to “crisis,” I found myself dancing, bumping into hedges and assorted bare bums. Dancing and screaming with religious conviction, “I enjoy being a brain dead slut!”
This was very profound. Normally during orgasm, I silently weep and scrunch up my face like Chris Evert about to serve for the match. Here was a breakthrough: Looking back, I can now trace every depressive episode, every empty season of my life back to me ignoring my instincts.
My instincts are to mewl and to simper, to not wear underwear. That is how I locate my innocence. When I spend whole summers moussing my hair, dating frigid nerds, trying to think, “Fast track! Walk in closet! Life mate!,” that is when I truly feel debased. The name of my inner child is Lolita and I am very, very proud of her taste in outerwear.
From this moment, I will walk and talk as a slut, work and play in slutty ways. Sluthood is the greatest engine propelling me always. I will consort only with sluts, trust only sluts with my secrets and various five digit pass codes.
“Slut” is the prettiest synonym for “candor.” I will enlist the services of only slut doctors, slut dentists and slut clergymen. You’re in good hands with Allslut. When and if I do fall in love again, it will be with a seasoned slut who knows that sluttishness and intimacy are not opposing forces, just different kinds of legal tenderness with the exact same rate of exchange. I will attempt monogamy only with another slut.
And at night, I will no longer be haunted by feverish dreams of the tepid school teacher who gasped at the number of times I’ve had sex. I will dream instead of all the sluts in the world, in their infinite grace and variety.
The giggly slut with frosted hair, giddy at the very thought of a glancing touch.
The blue collar slut with sore muscles and simple appetites.
The old slut, still guided by the constant novelty of boinka-boinka.
The pensive slut, holding an ice cream cone, lost in reverie for the human tongue.
And the newly anointed slut, coming off a bad month, who can sometimes barely pay his rent and still worries about security and non-specific urethritis but probably wouldn’t have it any other way, given the chance to backtrack.
Why you can trust Xtra
