swallow

excerpt from sexing the cherry by jeanette winterson

escape from what? the present? yes, from this foreground that blinds me to whatever may be happening in the distance. if i have a spirit, a soul, any name will do, then it won't be single, it will be multiple. its dimension will not be one of confinement but one of space. it may inhabit numerous changing decaying bodies in the future and in the past.
i can't know this. i am only looking for a theory to fit the facts. that's what scientists do, though you may feel i am too far-fetched.
perhaps i am.
poisoned or not, the mercury has made me think like this. drop it and it shivers in clones of itself all over the floor, but you can scoop it up again and there won't be any seams or shatter marks. it's one life or countless lives depending on what you want.
what do i want?
when i'm dreaming i want a home and a lover and some children, but it won't work. who'd want to live with a monster? i may not look like a monster any more but i couldn't hide it for long. i'd break out, splitting my dress, throwing the dishes at the milkman if he leered at me and said, 'hello, darling.' the truth is i've lost patience with this hypocritical stinking world. i can't take it any more. i can't flatter, lie, cajole or even smile very much. what is there to smile about?
'you don't try,' my mother said. 'it's not so bad.'
it is so bad.
'you're pretty,' said my father, 'any man would want to marry you.'
not if he pulled back my eyelids, not if he peeped into my ears, not if he looked down my throat with a torch, not if he listened to my heartbeat with a stethoscope. he'd run out of the room holding his head. he'd see her, the other one, lurking inside. she fits, even though she's so big.
i had sex with a man once: in out in out. a soundtrack of grunts and a big sigh at the end.
he said, 'did you come?'
of course i didn't come, haven't you read master's and johnson?
and then he fell asleep and his breathing was in out in out.
later i said, 'i'd like to swallow you.'
'adventurous, eh?' he said.
whole, i meant, every single bit, straight down the throat like an oyster, your feet last, your feet waving in my mouth like a diver's flippers. jonah and the whale.
i don't hate men, i just wish they'd try harder. they all want to be heroes and all we want is for them to stay at home and help with the housework and the kids. that's not the kind of heroism they enjoy.

boundaries. desire.

all quotes by jeanette winterson from the powerbook

"i looked down. there it was, making a bridge from my body to hers.
i was still wearing my tunic and the princess could not see the leather belt that carried everything with it. all she could see, all she could feel, was the eagerness of my bulbs and stem.
i kneeled down, the tulip waving at me as it had done on the hillside that afternoon i cut it down.
very gently the princess lowered herself across my knees and i felt the firm red head and pale shaft plant itself in her body. a delicate green-tinted sap dribbled down her brown thighs.
all afternoon i fucked her."

"(she suddenly took my hand.) 'this is where i feel things.'
(she guided my hand over the low waistband of her jeans.) 'excitement, danger. . .'
(she flattened my hand on her abdomen and held it there.)
'sex. and to go on feeling i have to keep some empty space.'
(suddenly she let my hand drop. i looked at it sadly.)
she said, 'what about you? what brings you to paris?'
'a story i'm writing.'
'is it about paris?'
'no, but paris is in it.'
'what is it about?'
'boundaries. desire.'
'what are your other books about?'
'boundaries. desire.'
'can't you write about something else?'
'no.'
 'so why come to paris?'
'another city. another disguise.'"

"then she made a speech. i suppose you can guess the lines.
inside her marriage there were too many clocks and not enough time. too much furniture and too little space. outside her marriage, there would be nothing to hold her, nothing to shape her. the space she found would be outer space. space without gravity or weight, where bit by bit the self disintegrates."

"'i like you.'
'why?'
'you want to fight.'
'the world is my boxing ring.'
'do you have to fight everyone?'
'only the enemy.'
'is it that simple?'
'you can be so subtle you just tie yourself up in knots.'
'you can be so simple you just go nine rounds with yourself.'
'well yes, i do, often.'
'what for?'
'to stay on my toes.'
'you should relax.'
'i look silly in an armchair.'
'what do you look like in bed?'"

 "what to say? that the end of love is a haunting. a haunting of dream. a haunting of silence. haunted by ghosts it is easy to become a ghost. life ebbs. the pulse is too faint. nothing stirs you. some people approve of this and call it healing. it is not healing. a dead body feels no pain. . .
she thinks i'm holding on to pain. she thinks the pain is a souvenir. perhaps she thinks that pain is the only way i can feel. as it is, the pain reminds me that my feelings are damaged. the pain doesn't stop me from loving - only a false healing could do that - the pain tells me that neither my receptors nor my transmitters are in perfect working order. the pain is not feeling, but it has become an instrument of feeling."

"the danger of writing yourself towards an ending that need never be told. at a certain point the story gathers momentum. it convinces itself, and does its best to convince you, that the end in sight is the only possible outcome. there is a fatefulness and a loss of control that are somehow comforting. this was your script, but now it writes itself.
stop.
break the narrative. refuse all the stories that have been told so far (because that is what the momentum really is), and try to tell the story differently - in a different style, with different weights - and allow some air to those elements choked with centuries of use, and give some substance to the floating world.
in quantum reality there are millions of possible worlds, unactualised, potential, perhaps, bearing in on us, but only reachable by wormholes we can never find. if we do find one, we don't come back.
in those other worlds event may track our own, but the ending will be different. sometimes we need a different ending."

"'oh, i know what you think of me.'
'what i think of you and what i feel for you are different things.'
'do you usually sleep with people you despise?'
'that's not what i meant.'
'i want you to be my lover not my judge.'
she's right. i'm the one who's muddling things up. how she lives is her decision. if i don't like it i should stay out of the way. if i don't like it i should say so and close the door.
her arms were warms and tight.
'what is it you want?' she said.
i want to be able to call you. i want to be able to knock on your door. i want to be able to keep your key and to give you mine. i want to be seen with you in public. i want there to be no gossip. i want to make supper with you. i want to go shopping with you. i want to know that nothing can come between us except each other.
. . . how do you seem to write me to myself?
i am a message. you change the meaning.
i am a map that you redraw.
. . . reach in to lift it out and your hand misses. the water is deeper than you had gauged. you reach further, your whole body straining, and then there is nothing for it but to slide in - deeper, much deeper than you had gauged - and still the thing eludes you."

"if i want to say no, i will, but for the right reasons. if i want to say yes, i will, but for the right reasons. leave the consequences. leave the finale. leave the grand statements. the simplicity of feeling should not be taxed. i can't work out what this will cost or what either of us owe. . . she was silent. we were both exposed. the truth is that you can divide your heart in all sorts of interesting ways - a little here, a little there, most banked at home, some of it coined out for a flutter. but love cleaves through the mind's mathematics. love's lengthways splits the heart in two - the heart where you are, the heart where you want to be."

"i've been here before and it's not a room with a view. the only power i have is the negative power of withdrawal. if i don't withdraw i have no power at all. a relationship where one person has no power or negative power isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave."

mistakes

"when i look at my life i realize that the mistakes i have made, the things i really regret, were not errors of judgment but failures of feeling." -jeanette winterson