Negotiable Beauty

That’s what she was, what she thought of herself. That: the title—negotiable beauty, looks for sale. She was a work of art, all right. And she was full-service, the whole act. She figured out what you needed and provided it, an engulfing fantasy, a gestalt of lies. What you never got, what no one ever got, was her, the real person, the core creation. After a while she never got that either. Maybe it didn’t exist. I only knew what she showed me: the candied apple, the Tunnel of Love, The Wild Mouse, thespunsugarcorndogdietcokediet, the whole nonnutritive unsustainable Emotional Carnival. Did I mention the House of Mirrors? She showed me mes I didn’t know I had. She showed me who I could be: A wreck of dependency, jealousy, and lust, spending whatever sacrifice it took for an hour… a look… a mouth. A month. A month to move from a preoccupation with sex to fantasies of violence; from screwing to striking, then confusing the two. Time only ends.