It turned out to be a rather inane night.

The boy has a goodlooking face, but there is too much arrogance in his demeanor - arrogance that is really mustered up to cover up some sort of insecurity that has not yet been wiped out by accumulated experience, achievements and self-knowledge. He is not comfortable. To resolve the embarrassing dilemma that while he is dying to fuck me, he is intimidated by not only my complete lack of response to the, shall we say, rather common boyish charms, but also by the man at my side, his senior by 15 years, whose thigh my hand has been on for most of the night, the boy tells himself that I am distasteful, that I am a slut.

At the end of the night, we all sat scattered around someone else's living room. The boy perched stiffly on the couch while I wantonly poured myself another shot of vodka. I am not interested in him, and I have lost interest in the girl who has brought him here. I only want the night to end, and I had in me a childish desire to punish everyone who is dragging such a crap night on. I drank till the voices around me dimmed and my limbs became wood, and I passed out.

It was a pyrrhic victory. The boy left. The girl stayed back still wanting sex, even though I was clearly invalid - another display of her imbecile insensitivity which had repulsed me so much. Curled up in bed with nasea still nesting in my chest, I responded faintly to the man's worried gestures while reflecting on the bitter aftertaste of my own vomit in the darkened room. I ought to be ashamed, but I was ironically self-congratulatory at being such a handful. After all, I am still a child. Perhaps all I had really needed was a sound whipping from someone who loves me.

When it comes to intercourse, there is always a heart-piercing pain with the initial contact. So do it slowly, I want it to ache. Things go unfocused after that. Little skating silhouettes on the ice rink 3 storeys down going round and round fade away behind the veil of microscopic waterdroplets that my erratic breath conjures upon the cold glass.

I remember thinking of petty little things, like wishing you had put me on the other couch instead. My bag is sitting on this couch and it is pressed up against my thigh.

Maybe you should know that I am someone who likes her space. I like the feeling of being enveloped by the cosmos, swallowed up by stars, like you could stretch your arms out as far as you can but you will never be able to embrace the beautiful endless expanse of it all. You can't cage a wild thing.

Positioned behind the lenses, I feel myself distanced from the fact that you are fucking someone else, and the even more ridiculous fact that the one you are fucking is not even attractive. My personal aesthetic judgement, of course, and you are entitled to yours. I am only here to be a photographer, a voyeur, a tempting side dish you cannot get to because I disallow it.

You two were not comfortable under scrutiny. Funny, that. I would have loved the attention. I would have made a much better pornstar. But then, I enjoyed taking those pictures just as much. I felt empowered, prowling the scene for fetching angles. Both of you had been made nervous by my presence, the situation, the relentless blank stare of the unblinking dark lenses that goes snap. I enjoyed your discomfort. The girl might have felt endangered, even. I admit: I had intended for her to feel that way when I took off my shirt, when I stood there handling your big, beautiful camera in just my red satin lingerie and those rouge stilettos that you had paid for. Yes, she had felt the threat of my youth, of my brazen sexuality; she had felt the threat dissipating from every single pore of my body, like some sort of dangerous gas that might lead to an explosion with a single spark. Yes, her feline wariness was also something I enjoyed toying with.

In that clumsily excuted threesome that was not, I have zoomed in on your weakness, my darling. Your weakness has set me free from that of my own. We are now on fair grounds.

I like hearing you scream while being fucked. It's liberating, is it not? Like pouring out every single bad stupid soul-numbing moment that has been accumulated since the previous session, like emptying yourself out, obliterating language and defying all civility in a delirious frenzy before collapsing in an exhausted heap, eyelids delicately fluttering and limbs limp.

I love sex, I love its violence, its base animalistic nature, its immediacy, its urgency, its complexity, its density. I love its everything.

I feel feverish.

I want to become a solitary stranger alone in the city again. I want the liberty - to not sleep till dawn, to be fueled by alcohol and lust and swinging strobe lights, to whisper words of mindless seduction, to become devoid of the notion of time, to be leered at, to be undressed and reverred by strangers, to feel the friction of skin rubbing against skin and the frenzy of desire, to capture those surreal picture frames in my mind, to fall into oblivion from sheer exhaustion, to awake in rooms that are not my own. To catch a life that is bursting at the seams.

I want to be out there and be swallowed by the night of the City. It is as though the whole of my insides is screaming: Please. Save me. Fuck me.

I have your cologne in my hair and defeat in the pit of my stomach.

Last night we grasped onto each other in that momentary privacy afforded by the darkness, the thrill of a first contact, the taste of something new and illicit, the meagre blue light bouncing off the desire and the hunger in your eyes as you wrenched me from all sense of responsibility, shame or guilt.

"I can't believe you are doing this to me, you horrible bitch."
His parting words are so feeble. He didn't even let out a swear.
"You fucking bitch" might have roused me, but as it was his parting words fell off me the way water slides off a greased whore - I barely noticed. His jealousy was peevish and petty. As was most things about him. He was a little too grovelling for my taste - talks too much, offers too many stale little compliments I'd rather do without. I want some kind of challenge, I want to be taken and broken and torn apart as I struggle for dominance. I want a fight.


Pride prevented me from asking for your number when you didn't ask for mine. I turned my back on your black Jaguar and let you drive away from me while I walked in the opposite direction in unhesitating steps without so much as a backward glance.

But that wasn't being brave, more like cowardice. I forgot my spirit in that vital split moment. And it is the smell of your cologne, that etched itself onto my subconscious in those few blazing moments, which brings to the surface memories stamped with unmistakable signs of a deep, deep infactuation.

I hate myself.

Inhaling deeply, I step forth. The heavy, powerful scent of leather impermeates my senses and vibrates through me like shockwaves, carrying electrifying shots of pleasure through my consciousness. I am alive, but not really awake. I float through this dimly surreal collection of strangely attired people, submitting to and propelled by a tenebrous instinct that mutes the rational, the cerebral.

Graciously accepting the glasses of red wine, I brutally proceed to focus most of my attention on its subtle layers of flavours rather than the ingratiating chatters of its presenter.

Somewhere, a saxophone wails seductively, begging for some attention on top of the dull thudding of flying stripes of leather abruptly ecountering bare skin. A dusky cacophony that is music to my ears.


You are like fine wine. Mature, layered, generous, gently warming but never overwhelming. You'll do, I guess. Too bad about my sad, superficial penchant for colourful, needlessly flamboyant cocktails.

I've always had a fascination with empty spaces. Large, enclosed areas, potentials abound, nothing realised. Reality always seemed a tad too overwhelming for me. With emptiness, there is only imagination. No consequences. No immediate situation to be dealt with. No repercussions, no self-consciousness. The purity of just being there, alone, breathing in the sanctity of nothingness. Zero is always a good place to be - nothing won, nothing lost. Nothing to be gained, nothing to be guarded. Therein lies the ultimate balance of life in all its delicate completeness.

I walked home in the drizzle today. The raindrops were so thin and delicate they felt like strands of silk melting into my skin. It was wondrously romantic - perhaps sometimes, the most romantic thing you can do is being alone. Unthinkingly, I placed one feet before another, continuously. My world was liquid, water-coloured, vague and mystical. The streetlights glowed a comforting orange, its rays reflected by the wetness of the dark, tarred road. The dampness of the atmosphere felt like a shawl that has been slipped around me by the gentle, benign hands of an unknown Being. I wished I could vanish forever into the peace of the night.

Time, lost in moments. And moments lost in time.

Pure vodka runs its svelte tongue of liquid flames over me, reliably intoxicating, as always.

You used to say that we live in the flicker, but I rather think I had been living in a flame - a flame carefully kindled as a flicker delicately kissed the wick, a flame that glows protectively, giving light and bestowing colour, a flame whose warmth embraces and caresses. But a flame, held too near, also burns.

A flame can be just as ephemeral as a flicker. In the absence of its light, things adopt various shades of grey, and life again becomes clear and cold, like a glass of vodka on ice.

Some girls, after experimentations and trials, suddenly learn how to maximise their positive physical traits to their best advantage and turn out not very different from what they used to be, but prettier than you ever remembered. She has big wide-set eyes, lashes swiped with a generous dose of mascara, a pug nose, full lips, a head too large for the body, all of which served to reminds one of those infant dolls. She wears dark purple flats that actually look good on her. The dreamy effect was effaced somewhat later on when the candlelight that had created such wondeful romantic glow about her was replaced by the harsh fluorescent lights of the train station, which revealed her acne-plagued skin, much to my disappointment. Human, after all.

My being throbs with loneliness.

All that there was of last night, was the memory of that striking shock of blonde hair in the distance, just a tad too long on a guy, sculptured into sharp feather-like forms, dyed into psychdelic colours by the flashing lights. And the feeling of cool alcohol draining into my mouth from hers, and that smile on her face, her eyes that, like the moon, only gives the semblance of a glow under the neon lights because of reflection. "R-rrru-ah-ssian". And mysterious, confiding, emphathetic and neurotic way she tells her stories. A topless bartender, so comfortable in his beauty that he seems to radiate a primitive calling for sex.

Then the stranger who danced with me for a short while, gyrating and squirming before me as I danced back, looking into his blue eyes that are glazed...with what? liqueur, lust, music overload? He ran his fingers over me, exploring me, ran his right hand down my chest, gave an enigmatically indifferent glance, and left me. Desired becaue of my androgyne, then rejected because of my gender?

And the ugliness of having too much to drink, the acid that burns at the back of your throat after vomitting, the feeling that sleep no longer feels like what sleep used to feel like, when you were a baby.

Too often, women indulge in promiscuity and decadence not as a form of leisure, but as a revenge to a person who no longer cares.