ULTRA-CONFESSIONAL

I'm a bit of a masochist, not much of a singer -- if I had a hammer, I'd only hurt
myself. My father did not think enough of me to molest me. For years, I lived
with the shame of it and did not have the energy to create multiple personalities
or develop an eating disorder which has always seemed to me a pleasant way to
while away the day regulating incoming and outgoing in terms of something
concrete as food or excrement.

I admit I used to like to smoke three packs a day wrapping myself in an
opalescent carapace of fog and being always as in Victorian novels on the verge
of swooning particularly when climbing stairs. Then for a brief spell, during most
of my teenage years, I was in love with shop lifting. It was the sex glue in my
adolescent girl on girl world. One of those never enough places where I allowed
myself excess -- hungry open pockets and purse gobbling perfume, candy, all
the imagined gifts an imaginary lover should give. Going out with boys,
surprisingly, proved to be an inexplicably simple solution.

But then it is so typical of me to have gone and become addicted not to heroin
or gambling, but humiliatingly, to aspirin, craving their cool, white gloved hands
at all hours -- a headache being just another word for reality. Looking back, I'd
like to say I wish I had done more evil than good, but it isn't true. Forgive me for
my sins are mediocre. My trances ordinary in every way.





POEM ARCHIVE