I’ve always been a fast pee-er. One day a friend of mine told me that sometimes when she pees, it takes her so long that she has time to forget that she’s peeing. That was about 8 years ago. Until recently, every time I was pissing I would wonder whether I was thinking about it or whether I could manage to think of something else. These days what I think about when I need to piss and I walk that corridor of the public is “O gendered toilet, we meet again.” So I’m pissing and instead of being able to forget that I’m pissing I’m pissing and I think about genitals and my mind goes through the urethra and up my bladder and through my liver and now I’m pushing at the esophagus. Boohoo. Instead of being able to forget that I’m pissing I think about genitals and I think what a pervert I must be. Sometimes when I’m sick and full oh phlegm I sit on the toilet and aim for the space between my thighs. I’m not trying to be gross on purpose! When I was around 13 I pissed myself every day for about a year. I refused to go to the bathroom. It seemed like a waste of time, like an unbearable inconvenience. Then someone would make me laugh and I would piss myself. Not just a little bit. The whole bladder. So I stopped drinking water. Note to self: remember the time I said I was thirsty and you spat in my mouth. Or does it hover always at the edge of my brain. Like when I used-to-still-do bite the skin around my thumb raw, when I bled that time and you put it in your mouth. Licking my wounds is very on the nose and I love it. Unfortunate. You didn’t want me to pee in the shower with you I remember. It’s become such a habit, I forget some people find it distasteful. I like to aim for the syphon with my shoulders back in that slouch that makes me feel tall in the boy way. Tall in the boy way.
Butter on hot rice
The first time I realized I was letting myself rot was almost two years ago. April 2024. I always round up the numbers. I kissed my grandma goodbye, when she couldn’t speak anymore. I didn’t know whether she could see me. But I have the distinct memory of her holding my arm very firmly. I have the feeling that’s not so possible, my mother and her sister had to lift her whenever she needed to move. I kissed her goodbye. I think I was crying. And I smelled her open mouth; at the corners, she had bled, it added to the texture of her sun skin. Her mouth smelled like decay, a smell like a sting. And I remember pulling away and feeling that smell follow me, enter my mouth and stay there. The next day I discovered that my lower front gums were being stripped from the teeth. I smelled the same.
She had to wipe the blood off my face