I am tempted tempting sinful sinning simply in my thoughts. The knife is slippery between my sweating fingers. I glance thoughtless at the ArtDay fading photographs of ribcages drum skin stretched tight over hipbones. My mouth sticky I push a finger over the crayon lines in the mirror outlines a body pounds smaller than mine and at least 3 inches taller.
I drop the knife across the floor scattering skittering scarring the honey wood. I wonder if the purity of the wood can sweeten up the shame. I drag my hand across my buzzed head, the bristles of hair I wish was long catching at my hand, in-between the fingerprints and lines that define my identity.
Skin I trace softly on the top of my paper. It is embossed there, across the top of the office stationery. It is to remind us who we are working for.
The tube I take to work every day passes a White train route. The tube is dark lights swinging in the tunnels plastic orange seats and walls the color of baby shit. Someone had the bright idea to put on pink strips of wallpaper and make the interiors striped. Baby shit and Pepto-Bismol. The White trains are clear like glass surgically beautiful insides champagne fountains sheer curtains "private" booths.
Here, at the Offices of Image, we build the ideals. The Nots ideal. Muumuu clashing buttons brown on neon floral prints on shiny imitation satin. Or polyester. I have seen the pictures of the Skins, almost genderless, skinny insect acrylic clear nail polish beauty. The men have hair bleached long like the women, and the women are so beautiful skinny they have almost no breasts. The older Skins have scars running all across their bodies, like the backs of slaves so long ago. I have seen the young Skins touch those old scars with reverence, talk of the Sculptors who started it all, carving beautiful statues of flesh that are still walking and talking no longer bleeding stretching skinny. The old Sculptors who used steel metal scalpels. The Skins. They hold the world from their crystal palaces ready to shatter but no one has the courage to reach out and break something so beautiful.
Therapy is normal. Every Not is required to attend at least one therapy session once a week. They say it is to atone for our flesh. Confession. It is so much like Church, Mary and Jesus hold some horrid romanticism in my mind swirling like Italy and pasta linguini gelato strawberry chocolate coffee and tea bread breakfast eggs and Italian sodas with bagels and butter and jam sugar confections made from spun sugar and frosting cake torte which I can tell the different I'm ashamed to say.
I went to Italy once when I was younger, with a youth group. I remember a camera I brought four lenses to capture a mini movie on a single sheet of paper I printed later. I took pictures of Skins dancing in fountains I was sure were molten silver that did not burn them because they had laid under the lights and been touched by the Sculptors.
The instructors of the youth group argued late at night. They couldn't agree whether or not to let us eat. Because the system was not stable totally correct. We read outtakes of journals 50 100 200 years old.
I haven't eaten anything but an apple and a few crackers today one journal read, does god love me more if I have less flesh?
Baby, come home with me, we can bake the world peace cookies and honey, come home with me and pray for a high metabolismÉ
This flesh I must get rid of it cutting starving if I am skinny will I understand love?
They went on and on and onÉ When I turned 17 it changed and it didn't matter what I ate and if I was skinny skinny pencil or skinny skinny grass or like a piece of silk. My seventh year instructor put me in line and the numbers soared past 107 107 107 107É. and I was too cowish, my back too curved or my stomach too round or my hair not blonde enough or something something somethingÉ Italy changed me. The Italians are the same as us now, but then when I sneaked out off the roof on the dorms the boy on the scooter by the corner liked my neck scarf thought I did a great job of imitating the 1950s walk down to the taps on my shoes so he gave me his pack of cigarettes and his poster girl lighter and laughed when I didn't cough. He was taller than I was, dark eyes with circles underneath and curly black hair. He sparkled with delinquency; he couldn't have been more than 18. I think of him like I think of ivy on white trellises warm nights stars and scooters. He drove me to a hill and we laid in the star glow.
My lipstick, CoverGirl red, became delinquent at his gentle urging, all over his lips and neck. He returned me to the dorms just as the sun was rising. I had no helmet and the wind streamed through my hair. The sterile clean smell washed over me and I couldn't smell the warmth of the cigarettes unless I pressed my fingers against my nose.
Underneath the embossed Skin were the small letters raised against the paper Est. 2350. They are bumpy and the ink, applied after the paper was punched up, runs blobby each letter almost into the next. I think how long it takes a new government new multi-billion dollar business new Fidel Bush Hussein Putin Hitler Clinton to take power, 29 years for the Skins to build their crystal palaces, change our school systems, withdraw themselves, organize the NotsÉ
I orchestrate the images on the wall with the tips of my fingers, matching fabrics prints textures across a revolving computer figure. The model's feet are arched her breasts heavy looking her waist waspish her hips wide her smile too pink her eyes too wide her breasts lacking nipples her stomach has no belly button. She is the Nimage, the ideal Not, wide and curvy. There is one of her in every computer around this office, every floor on every building in the block. The computer molds her poses captures her image prints her on posters the Press puts up around the city telling every Not what to look like what to do. I call her Babs.
The alarm on my desk rings incessant, flashing Theraps Theraps Theraps TherapsTherapsTherapsÉ. I stand up and walk out off my cubicle across the hallway into the fresh blue air. The fountains in front of the building hush and swingle through their lives across their stones wearing down the future a little more each second. The water is the bottom of Pandora's box, faith hope continuance.
I smile at the sun, my bottom lip splitting my blood spilling for a stranger. I look down at my almost pale skin and wish for clear pale skin tad pole beautiful white clean skin. One of my hands buries itself inside my stomach a knot against the blood churning inside of me. Like maybe I can hold it back.
I feel like playing hooky, and sit at a fountain instead of walking forward right then left turns into the soft foam couch and spilling another lie from my bleeding lips.
They are so skinny they don't bleed with the moon, they are not tied to the tides and the water. They arch their backs and make crescent axes slicing dreams thinly veiled under thin white silk. They are non-fat milk poured from the carton the twisting cable you can never touch or you'll disrupt. Or a twirling whirlpool at the end of your bath the water dying and your fingers trying to stay inside the edges so you can keep it alive.
I spell words in the water, the motion bubbling and carrying them away. I am praying but I don't think a high metabolism is all I need is what I write.
Prey
A predator
Preying
Praying
A predator
Finding killing others who prey
A prayer
To send up
Tell me do you prey?
I am drowning in myself my soul the beauty and the strangeness of the sun, the way the light changes the Skins and leaves them more whole than I have ever been. There is a place you can go, I have heard, a Sculptor who kept his surgical clean steel and will give you a piece of art to live in forever. He can change your blood the way you are coded give you a future under molten silver with wings that the world cannot see cutting emotions with curves that are bones unveiled by pale white skin.
I fall asleep by the fountain, and my skin burns under the eyes of the greatest stranger. I am brown on the edges crispy done and ready to eat. Ready to starve off the hunger. If he makes a mistake I think of the Sculptor it doesn't really matter. I will tell him to let me bleed and I will be bloodless pale crystal beautiful. Or like a diamond. If you burn hot enough there is nothing left, harder than steel unless you hit the right corner and then a shattering. Shattering. Shattering shattering shatteringshatteringshatteringÉ
I will shatter or I will shine.