Tags
By Gregor Stronach
What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously… I need to know.
“Adult to the city today, thanks mate… Yep… $3.40? It’s gone up again? Wow…”
I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, if you like. Maybe it’ll help you open up. Maybe my telling you what’s bothering me will assist you in getting in touch with your inner gripe. Awaken the Muppet within – quit being such a Kermit. Fire Miss Piggy for sexual harassment. Let Rolf know that you can tell he’s not really playing the piano when he sings.
“Is anyone sitting here? No? Do you mind? You do? Oh… okay… I’ll stand then.”
So… what’s wrong with me? I’ll tell you. I’ll need to move closer to you… my voice is husky. I have been shouting. Lying face down on the bed and screaming into my pillow until all hours of the night, muffling my tortured sobs and hiding the rictus of pain from the world at large. I’m trying to think. Be quiet – I’m trying to think here. Cease your wriggling, quiet your moaning. I’ll loosen your bonds when you understand. You’ll be free to go, the instant you agree. Nod once. Let me know…. And hush. You’re here to learn. Relax and let me in.
“No, sorry – I don’t have any spare change. However, I do have the employment section from today’s paper. You can have that instead. I don’t care what you do with it… I know you can’t eat it. But you can use it to find a job, can’t you?”
I didn’t mean to cut you, you know. I didn’t mean to let my blade slip as I used it to caress your face – your alabaster face, glistening with sweat. I can smell the fear coming off you in waves. I can hear your ragged breathing around the gag I placed in your mouth.
“Morning Julie! How are you today?… Good! Me? I feel fine… No really… I’m okay. I didn’t get much sleep last night. But I’m okay…”
Stop crying. I don’t want to see tears. I want you to know. That’s all… I just want you to know. You hurt me once, you know… I don’t think you remember. It was 30 years ago, now. I was so small. So innocent. Defenceless. And you took advantage of that. You took something of mine that I can never have back.
“Hello?… Yes… Yes… well, I’d be delighted to attend, thank you, Simon. When’s it on?… let me check my diary and get back to you, but I think we’re off deadline then. Sure… I’ll email you and let you know. Thanks mate! Bye. Yep, Bye.”
So you could probably fathom that I’m a bit angry about that. I know, I know… it was a long time ago. And you probably felt some guilt after you raped me. Who knows… did you? Nod if you did. You did? Really? So how about now? Do you remember who I am now? You do? Excellent… I expect that what I’m about to do will hurt quite a bit… you may want to prepare yourself…
“I’m off to lunch now – anybody want anything while I’m downstairs? No?… I dunno what I’m having. Probably a salad or something. I’ll see what’s there. Back soon!”
There it is! Please – stop shouting. I can’t understand you when you scream. By golly, that does look painful, doesn’t it? And I certainly didn’t expect it to bleed that much. Do you want to hold it? Cradle your manhood in your hands and mourn its loss? Here… press it against your torn flesh, staunch the bleeding a bit. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll wake up soon. See that this is all a dream. But dreams aren’t supposed to hurt, are they? Dreams aren’t supposed to bleed. But my dreams do… my dreams bleed, red like the setting sun. Awash with shades of crimson.
“Yeah, mate… that’s nearly done. I’ll put it on the server once it’s finished and you can have a read. Let me know what you think.”
So what do you think now? Do you think what you did is okay? Did you ever expect that I’d find you one day? Because I’ve been looking for you, you know. Every day, I look for you – and I find you – and I truss you up like a prisoner of war, and every day I think of new and darkly exciting things to do to you. But you don’t remember: so let me remind you. Yesterday, I raped you the way you raped me, but I used a knife. Today, I took your manhood. Tomorrow, I’ll feed you your own kidneys. The day after that, I’ll take a soldering iron to your eyes. After that, I’ll snap your bones, one by one, until you’re a helpless bag of worthless meat.
“I’m off home, now… I don’t think, so mate – if I have one beer now, I won’t stop until bed time, and I’ve got some work to do when I get home. But thanks – I’ll come to the pub with you another time. Sure thing… see you in the morning.”
Oh look at you… cowering there, all blood and shit and tears. How does that feel? Do you feel good? I do. I feel power. I feel the power you took from me 30 years ago. I feel it like you felt it when you had me. When you dragged me kicking and screaming from my childhood. I can see it in your eyes – you understand it now. So, I’ll keep my promise. I’ll let you go – just like I did yesterday, and tomorrow I will hunt you down again. You cannot hide from me. You have no power over me. I will kill you. One day. But not today. Not yet.
“Dear God. Please look over me while I sleep. I pray, dear Lord, that one day you let me find the man I am looking for. And I pray that you grant me the wisdom to forgive. But to never forget. Just once, God… just once I want to look into his eyes and ask him “why?”. I promise I won’t hurt him. I promise you that. I couldn’t hurt anyone. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
First Published by http://rumandmonkey.com/ before most of their contributors were toliet trained
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Glad you got that off your chest?
Not your usual fare Gregor, but entirely fascinating. Felling a little Brett Easton Ellis that day?
LikeLike
I saw a Japanese movie long time ago where the ‘lady’ cut off some of her lover’s dangling bits…
Can’t even remember much else about the film other than it was very sensual…
Can any of the older film buffs remember if it was called “In the Realm of the Senses”, or am I completely off the track here?
LikeLike
I saw “In the Realm of the Senses” at a Sydney Film Festy a million years ago. It was very controversial and there was much talk of police and banning
The woman in the film used to strangle her man during sex to enhance his orgasm – it is alleged. She overdid it and he did a Billy Snedden. I think THEN she removed his wedding tackle and took it with her on a wander in grief in the rain type of outing.
Quite a lot of the men in the audience were crossing their legs at this stage of the movie and looking rather distracted..
I think the movie should have had a warning like “Don’t try this at home”. “Or anywhere else” 🙂
LikeLike
“After the war, released from prison, she got herself a job in Inari-cho, in downtown Tokyo: at the Hoshi-Kiku-Sui – The Star Chrysanthemum Water – a pub.
There, every night, workers of the neighbourhood – for it was a taishu sakaba, a workingman’s pub – would gather to drink sake and shochu and nibble grilled squid and pickled radish. And every night around ten, Sada Abe would make her entrance.
It was grand. She descended the staircase – itself a large affair which ended right in the middle of the customers. Always in bright kimono, one redolent of the time of her crime, early Showa, 1936, Sada Abe would appear at the head of the stairs, stop, survey the crowd below, and then slowly descend.
From where, one never knew. Some said her lair was up there on the second floor, full of old photographs and overstuffed furniture. Others said the staircase went nowhere at all, that she had to clamber up it from the back before she could arrive in public. In any event, the descent was dramatic, with many pauses as she stared at her guests below, turning a brief gaze on this one and that. And as she did so, progressing slowly, indignition was expressed.
It always appeared. It was part of the show, the entrance. Ostensibly it was provoked by the actions of the men below. They invariably placed their hands over their privates. Fingers squeezed tight, they would then turn and snicker. Above, the descending Sada Abe would mime fury, casting burning glances at those below who squeezed and giggled the more. She slapped the banister in her wrath.
This pantomime was occasioned by the nature of Sada Abe’s crime. Twenty years before, she had cut off her dead lover’s penis. This was after he was dead, of course. And he was dead becasue the two had discovered that if she squeezed his neck hard enough his weary member achieved new life, but one day she squeezed to hard and killed him. ”
Donald Richie, Public People, Private People, 1987.
LikeLike
Thanks Emm and Lehan, I’m remembering more of the movie now…
Colour red was very prominant, it closed you in and almost ‘suffocated’ you..
I was glad to have Trotters Ale afterwards.
LikeLike
I think that while the men watching the movie would have been most attentive to the actual amputation, I know that I and many women were bemused by what they did with eggs….
LikeLike
A good one Gregor.
It reminded me about a book”Manrape,” by Marta Tikkanen which tells a similar story.
It was published 1977 by Virago which is a feminist publishing company. Helvi remembers buying the book at Balmain Markets and retrieved it just now from the bookshelf.
It was made into a film and has been tranlated from Finnish in many languages.
Of course, written from a woman’s perspective might be more common but from your male side even more remarkable. How did your story go?
LikeLike
Gez, Marta was a Finn Swede, so the original book was written in Swedish. …it’s a good book and I’m going to read it again…
LikeLike
Memoirs of an axe-murderer.
LikeLike
I’ve never murdered an axe in my life.
LikeLike
Touche!
LikeLike
P.S. How’s the family?
LikeLike
Powerful. I feel the immediacy of the hatred, the length of time the hatred has brewed, the seering delight of the avenger in his machinations of exacting pain by the first cut and the scope of the intention…to seek to prolong the act of killing the rapist so nothing of the opportunity of revenge is wasted. I feel the power relationship and the grotesque pain of the disparity.
One heck of a sentence: “I can hear your ragged breathing around the gag I placed in your mouth.”
LikeLike
Cheers Sandshoe.
yeah – I was having a bit of an angry day the day I wrote this.
I’m better now.
Honest.
LikeLike
I have read others of our essays Gregor and I have every faith in you. Thank you for your response. I wondered if we would hear from you soon. That is nice in itself.
LikeLike