Second Section of ''Hypocorism'' (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: The Rose of Sandžak, by Ensar Oud
Insofar as it is designed as a cross between the metal-glinting purity of Sultan White Rose and the earthy-creamy muskiness of Sultan Red Rose, this definitely does come across as intended. Insofar as it is mainly based more so on Sultan Red Rose Isparta—well, of that I am less sure. I see it as a greener and more lascivious take on SWR (downright civety diesel here) rather then a more crystalline and abstract version of SRR. The difference might boil down to splitting hairs. But it has to do with how I frame SWR and how this fragrance relates to that. SWR is so luminous—that sort of white light you see at death—that it is angelic in my mind. Michael the archangel is the representative of SWR. Sandzak comes of as angelic as well. Tobacco and spice and all those sort fo earthly elements are there (the influence of SRR), but Sandzak still brings that blinding light of perfection that characterizes SWR. And that is why I see it more a spin on SWR rather than SRR.
This is only my first wear but the brilliance of the light is different in each case. SWR has clean sharp edges, luminous but defined (I think of the glint of sun of the blade that blinds Mersault in Camus’s Teh Stranger): directional and cutting. Sandzak, on the other hand, blinds you but in the way that thick clouds backlit into a daytime glow blinds you (especially if you have ben inside all day). It’s light is diffusive, like the irradiated atmosphere of Venus—blinding in a whitout creaminess (especially due to the vanillic borneo oud) rather than sharp glare of high-pitch lemonene. Look at it this way. The cream and the jam of the SRR element here serves as the weight (think thick cloud) through which the piercing bright light of the SWR element scatters (think thick cloud glowing because of intense light behind it).
When you take the fact that (even with the subtle chai spice and tobacco and roots and oud) Sandzak still comes off as bent toward the clean and impersonal and even sublime (beautiful and terrifying) side of the archangel, and when you add in that Lucifer (the angel of light) is identified with the morning star (Venus) and its diffusive form of light, you can see why I associate this fragrance with Lucifer. The connection gets even stronger when you also consider the following: (1) Sandzak, as perfectly encapsulated in its aventurine cap, brings a lush greenness (bitter rind green mandarin orange and pine-needle olibanum and snapped-stem neroli and grassy-wool costus and damp-mossy oud, all elements in SWR but here much thicker); (2) Sandzak, while not as overt as what we get in Private Blend or Iris Ghalia Trifecta, brings more than a hint of carnality (civet, musk). For taken together those two point to the untamed instinctive side of nature (the fuck-and-kill side), which is relevant for my association since (a) that side is represented by Satan and since (b) mainstream Christianity popularly sees Satan as the fallen form of Lucifer. One could say that, while Sandzak is still the aroma of an archangel, there are intrinsic signs forcasting a later fall.
The stars of Sandzak are of course the roses. Many varieties show themselves beyond the page. The cleaner-cooler varieties stand out more in my estimation, leading in fact to a bath-bomb-meets-iced-tea impression (that, especially with the glut of bright citruses, can give you an all-purpose cleaner undertone if you dive in)—another reason to see this as more a twist on SWR than on SRR: airy-crisp Caucasian Mountain rose; wine-lees Gallic rose; rosewater May rose; dewy-leaf Swiss White rose. But still, the spicier-denser roses are here too (albeit just not as intense and pasty as what I get in SRR or in one of my latest rose acquisitions Taifi Misk): jammy-red bulgarian rose; herbal-nectar Afgan rose; velvety-leather Taif rose. The combo of icy clarity and warm creaminess does bring the tealike element into a rose-honey chai direction, dusted with cinnamon and sprigged with vanilla.
*Let's workshop the second section of my story, novel-length now, that examines the intricate power dynamics and linguistic structures at play in a man's passionate relationship with a girl he deems too young.
*This story is where my heart belongs. And this wonderful young lady has my heart.
Second Section of “Hypocorism”
She had band practice the day after her return. He waited in the car. She would exit at an uncertain time from the supply entrance, the cigarette-butt underbelly of her school, where vehicles unloaded cafeteria supplies.
He sat down a ways, parked onto the grass curb of a narrow side street beyond the range of the No Parking sign (its u-channel post bent, right from the concrete, nearly 45 degrees). Birdsong brightened the pages of his taped and torn Cormac, which he read with ears pricked to catch the relieving click of breaker-bar metal. To the service door that would reveal her and to the logistical miscellany around it, industrial exotica that a Van Gogh of today would lift instead of peasant shoes into an elevation mirroring back our world of concerns and thereby showing us who we really are (blue bakery crates and black milk crates stacked for tomorrow’s dawn heralded by the blind-spot beep-beep beepage of trucks backing up; rot-eaten wood pallets leaning against windowless brick; graffitied dumpsters, clunkers of municipal red loaded with cardboard produce boxes and trash bags both black and see-through green, leaking enough juices to form a runoff rivulet right into the mouth of intrusive thought), his eyes rose from his book the normal number of times, at least for a human in an oxytocin halo: enough times, however, to seem insane—and this, he felt, held the secret to the cancel-culture violence his writing, too good a mirror, triggered in so many—were a running log of every lapse to crawl by on a look-at-your-damn-self ticker tape.
He did track every school girlwho passed by the car, hunched over their nightmare rectangles even when in a gaggle. Of course he did. Albeit lacking any explicit HUD overlay of glitchy informatics (“impregnability assessment,” “likelihood of anal,” “chance of tattling,” “risk of violating no-take-backs rule,” “probability of parental involvement”); albeit bereft of both 80s wireframe vector graphics outlining the “optimal path of approach” and a scrolling list of success percentages for each style of approach (“cool approach,” “intellectual approach,” “lost-puppy approach,” “hamburgler snatch-and-grab approach”)—his scans, squinted to offset astigmatism, were close as any human could get to that infrared of military cybernetics as envisioned in the films of his boyhood. But such intake was purely out of desiccated habit, the habit men even in hospice rarely break, rather than out of salivating sleaze. If he was a cyborg programmed for meat missions, he was retired. One could merely look at his own eyes to see that, whatever they followed (in this case ass and thighs, eager to spot—as if it really even mattered, a soul-crushing thread to pull—a thigh gap), he looked through them into some exclusive beyond.
Kinetic blue yawned into lazy pink as the Earth twirled toward night. He took a long inhale and held it like everything else seemed to, a paused feeling of synchronicity with squirrels and plants and even the busses of Baltimore Avenue—machine and organism alike, not so much enlightened as simply too tired to keep clenched any longer in the shallow-consciousness mode of shallow breath, stretching free from the choppy staccato of a neurotic noon. Checks on such a bold read could not help but whisper to a mind like his. Creatures scammed and ate one another even now. A pink sky stopped the stranglehold neither of husband nor of vine. There could be no help for it. But he did not let these whispers, nor his native unease with any association to the anthropomorphic lies of Hallmark and Disney, spoil the fleeting tranquility. Deep intuition said, in fact, that the clouds—even if not framed in the human way, as cotton candy—did exert a pull to something beyond the me-me-me, enough of a nonverbal plea that somewhere cat siblings stopped hissing and yowling in their endless rivalry and groomed one another in the windowsill light of longer wavelengths.
Cherry blossoms that same color, coupled with the bright white petals of pear trees, had sprung into hyper-saturated anime various parts of the city—the flesh city beyond the scrying mirrors perhaps even bushmen cannot seem to keep in their loincloths for long. He hoped to hit Fairmount Park with her before sunset to see them. Peak period had been over by the time she left for D.C. and now the petals litter the ground like dirty snow. He wanted her tasting what remained of that fleeting fire at his side. For the same reason he liked showing her the films of his youth (all orbiting around ’Mo Money), he wanted to see it afresh through her eyes—his concern less for the dazzle of colors than the imprint it made on her, a lost spark of discovery reawakened through someone he loves. A twenty minute drive out, that had been a stretch even before it became the far-gone conclusion of a clock as cold as HR. He accepted the crumbling of his design. A change from too many decades prior, it felt good to feel himself do so. They would just go to the cemetery, which harbored their graver kind of beauty anyway.
What he had right now sufficed for novel sparks of aesthetic wonder all his own. A child to prioritize did not negate that. The trees around the school had no blooms. That mattered not—and not just because the indolic funk of her, on the window-fogging towel left in the back all night and soaked into everything, opened the nostrils to an invisible world where the nastiest white florals, musky as the muggiest muff, mated in the mushroom air with the bacchanalian mayhem of Caligula himself: the man who, like the broken and bedridden Nietzsche centuries later, claimed the mantle of a deity, Dionysus, smashing through the clarity and rules, the solar logic, of his half-brother Apollo. Vision itself had reason to delight. Spring’s new foliage, in the last few minutes, became thicker and waxier to the eye. The oblique angle of light, highlighting peaks and sharpening veins, conjured cinematic shadows that plumped these lolita leaves into juicy life from the washout of a higher sun—hypertensive like glands with a chlorophyll goo he would wring out and huff if only they were in his hands. Even the powerlines, dusted with gold just like the bricks and signs, cut across the sky like an intentional part of the painting.
She exited at the close of that magic window. The ball spinning away from the last rays of side-lit warmth, the bombast of greenery had deflated more than halfway toward gray. Her shirt, against the growing coolness of ambient blue, glowed the same dirty orange of the “No Dumping” sign. Two janitors who came out a few minutes before her, the heads of their cigarettes coloring that orange significant with deep drags, ogled her motions down the steps. He touched the gun under the seat, just too fingers like a pulse check, and felt soothed like his thumb in his mouth too far into grade school. The men shook their heads in the direction of her ass, as if having been forced out of some baseline denial to face having dropped the ball on their dreams. Yet as if they had surrendered to the ghetto-endemic self-talk that it would be too late to change, they remained angled against the dock bumpers studding the loading ledge. She paid no mind to what he imagined, pulling back from the cold carbon of the slide, were vocalizations.
She looked both ways at the curb. He nodded in unmute approval. But her first step began with a sigh that locked his neck. Her baritone case looked bigger than usual. He had known her to scurry—even with a side carry of that awkward weight—across every street that separated them. He had known her to do so not in the manner of a child neurotic enough—like he had been—to worry that a car would appear speeding out of thin air (even after the overkill triple check) but rather in the manner of a child full of pure—almost uncoordinated—energy at the promise of seeing their favorite person. Tonight there was no smiley bounce, no disregard for dorky imbalance. She plodded at the glum rate of sagged shoulders, aging gestures that made her seem more childlike.
“Hey Sweetheart.”
“Hi.”
“Practice good?”
“I don’t know.”
“The mouthpiece not working?”
“No. It’s good. My teacher says it looks like it was fixed at a shop.”
“Nice. But so, what’s wrong?”
“I’m just stressed with everything.”
“Girl. None of this should stress you.”
“Not everything about you.”
“I know. I just—.”
“I’m just frustrated with people.”
“I feel that.”
“And its that time. My shit barkin. Dead.”
“We can take care of that.”
“And then—. Tch. Let me tell you bout this bitch.”
“Who? Your teacher?”
“Oh my God, yes. She like literally doesn’t listen. Bitch just go with what she think.”
“The Persona Project lady?”
“Yes. She acting like I’m doing this nigga old. ‘No bitch.’”
“We hate old Quincy.”
“I’m like ‘How many times?’ So I just let the bitch talk.”
“What’s she saying?”
“It’s aint even bout what the bitch say.”
“. . . .”
“It’s like bitch think just cuz everyone else dumb I’m dumb. Like ‘Open your eyes bitch! See me for me—me!’”
“I mean—.”
“And see here you go, bout to defend the bitch.”
“I’m just saying. That is how people navigate. It’s like profiling. It gets a bad rap but—.”
“I know. It’s natural and all that.”
“It’s literally healthy. You just—.”
“And I get that. We poor. No one cares. Fine. Profile me. Tch. I’d profile me.”
“Exactly.”
“But it’s when a bitch aint get a chance to break outta that box—. Now that shit—. Tch.”
“That’s what sucks. Yeah, you nailed it.”
“Cuz I’m good in school. I care about the shit. Like “Don’t judge me on them and think I’m dumb.’”
“I just pictured you as the girl in Lean on Me. She was smart but in this fucked up environment. Tch. We’ll watch it. Morgan Freeman. Sorry. Anyway continue. I’m sorry.”
“That’s it. I’m just sayin “Don’t put me in a box.”
“. . . .”
“Give a bitch a chance to get outta whatever damn box you feel the need to put her in. That better?”
“You’re highly intuitive. You’d make a good psychic.”
“I bout to make a good dropout.”
“One thing to keep in mind—and I’m not justifying it or anything—.”
“Oh my God. Read the room. Why even say what you bout to say?”
“It’s my nature.”
“This niggas nature. You don’t understand women.”
“Wait. What?”
“Tch. I know why, though.”
“You having a stroke girl?”
“You ain’t even want to know why, huh?”
“Why I don’t understand women?”
“Yeah.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Why? Tell me.”
“Cuz all the ones you date go ‘goo-goo ga-ga.’”
“Hardy har har.”
“I been waiting to drop that shit.”
“I can tell.”
“But you fucked up the flow.”
“Oh I fucked up the flow?”
“Yes.”
“We were in the damn middle—.”
“But if you just said ‘why?’ shit would’ve went smooth. And now look at us.”
“Damn. I lost what the fuck I was saying.”
“You were about to defend this bitch some more. Dead.”
“Stop. But for real—. Nah, damn. I don’t remember. Fuck.”
“You was like: ‘One thing to keep in mind.’”
“Oh, yes! Just keep in mind that—. I don’t know. See now I gotta be all careful with my words because you think I’m on the teacher’s side.”
“Say what you gotta say.”
“I’m just trying to say this’s good practice. Because that’s how the world works: the boxing, the rigidity, the not-listening.”
“Yes. I know. It’s just frustrating.”
“So your teacher, though—. What exactly—? I mean—.”
“Bitch stay on the Amistad shit. Like telling me where to look up this nigga’s court argument. I’m like ‘Listen . . . to . . . my . . . words. I’m doing him when he was young. But here she go: ‘The full closing argument is long. But there are abridged versions online.’ I’m like ‘The fuck? You even hear me?’”
“That’s crazy. But—I don’t know. I mean, maybe she’s thinking—.”
“I swear with you!”
“All I was gonna say was if the assignment warrants that.”
“Tch. What you mean? See you really don’t get bitches.”
“I’ll get a bitch all right.”
“Tch. Lotta talk.”
“The class has a slavery bend, right? And—.”
“No nigga. It fit.”
“I’m on your side, girl.”
“Yeah. But what?”
“I’m just saying—. Girl, what was that group you made in third grade—the KKK one?”
“Dead. The Kool Krochet Krew.”
“You like to push buttons.”
“This not that though. The shit really about overcoming obstacles.”
“. . . .”
“Here the shit go. Look. Tell me what I’m missing.
“‘Students will select one historical figure and create a Persona Portfolio. You must step into the shoes of this individual and demonstrate how they achieved Triumph over Adversity. Triumph, remember, is not just about winning. It is about the internal and external process of overcoming obstacles.’”
“See? I’m good.”
“Maybe you’re expected—. I mean, I guess that slavery angle is like an unspoken rule.”
“And?”
“Well—.”
“Then say the shit then. The fuck? What if a bitch got autism?”
“I agree.”
“And the shit connect automatically cuz triumph is triumph.”
“I feel you.”
“That translates, feel me?”
“I just want you to be smart in how you go about it.”
“Nothing smart about this bitch.”
“Ahahaha.”
“I swear, you’d hate this bitch. She look just like them white bitches you hate.”
“She got the scarf?”
“Nigga yes!”
“Jesus.”
“And nah, it’s ‘They’ not ‘She.’ It’s called “inclusion.”
“. . . .”
“You would literally strangle this bitch.”
“Like on some sex shit? She into that?”
“Tch.”
“I mean, I’ll step in there if that’s what I gotta do. I can be inclusive too. I got a lot of fair accommodation to give.”
“Stop.”
“Just trying to help.”
“Bitch literally go: white kids can’t go into the voice if the person’s not white.”
“Huh?”
“Dead-ass.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“If the historical figure isn’t white the white kids can’t write like on some ‘I, Harriet Tubman,’ shit. Feel me? That’s what the shit say.”
“You fuckin with me. I can dish it out but—.”
“Nigga I aint lyin. Like instead of writing in the voice, you write as an observer.”
“An observer!? The whole—. Girl, don’t tell me this shit. You know I have a problem right?”
“It’s called stay in your lane nigga. Dead.”
“Okay stop with the games.”
“Tch. Look, give me the shit. Here it go. ‘Non-BIPOC students who plan to write about a BIPOC figure are discouraged from inhabiting that figure’s own voice. To respect lived experiences and traumas spoken over and misrepresented for too long, you are encouraged instead to adopt a more removed perspective: bystander, journalist, even analyst.”
“This some Candid Camera shit.”
“What?”
“You typed this out to fuck with me.”
“Dead. I swear on you.”
“She really gonna cut off kids—white kids, only white kids—from stepping into the shoes of lives not their own?”
“I told you.”
“That’s the fucking point of the assignment: to step into another person’s shoes!”
“She do say it’s optional, to be fair.”
“That’s the whole point of the humanities!”
“‘This is a guideline. It is not a formal rule.’”
“Okay but—.”
“‘That said, any student who decides to take a different approach must meet with me no later than two weeks in advance to discuss the risks.’”
“What?! That’s the damn darkest part! Kafka shit.”
“Here we go.”
“Do you not see how dark this is?”
“Dead.”
“What student wants the friction? This kills the spirit. This is some snake shit. The discouragement—. It’s sneaky. You see?”
“Shit so soft it hard.”
“It’s harder than if the fucking prohibition was said outright. It’s like if I go: ‘Technically you don’t have to kiss me, your dear sick mother. But it would be so sad if I were to die tonight and you never got another chance.’”
“Manipulative. This a guilt-trippin-ass white bitch. Told you. Nigga this that same privilege-walk bitch.”
“Any white kid who wants to go into Harriet Tubman’s head is violating her. Huh!? That’s the fucking—. And add to this all the friction: time, paperwork, even implied danger—this ‘risk’ shit.”
“I knew that would piss you off.”
“And how’s the damn meeting gonna go? Jesus. You know what, don’t—. If you tell me she has some video, some fucking ‘sensitivity module’—. I’ll fuckin—. Fuck!”
“. . . .”
“I’m about ready to march right in there and have some words.”
“I love that you care so much.”
“Care? I got PTSD! These are the same motherfuckers who came after me. You know how close I am to bucking mofos down—still?”
“You stupid.”
“Fuck it. I’ll be the stereotype. It’s like they want me to be the damn stereotype.”
“Nigga on that ‘they’ shit. Night’s a wrap.”
“Here I am fired, right?”
“Dead.”
“And I walk into the damn parent-teacher conference—because at least I have that aspect of my life away from all the fuckin nonsense. And the damn fucking teacher—.”
“White-ass bitch, let me guess. Savior bitch.”
“Bitch goes on and on—all this soothing-tone shit. How she’ll never assign a book where a white author writes a black character—like its a brag, like I’m supposed to tear up with gratitude that my son has a teacher like her.”
“. . . .”
“It’s like when I was buying my first car and the salesperson was like ‘We have a no-haggle guarantee.’ Huh? A no-fuckin-haggle guarantee? I’m not allowed to haggle? That’s a fuckin brag? Talk about gaslighting!”
“Crying.”
“The bitch has all the calming sounds in the background. “‘We just have so much to learn and unlearn about the terrible disease of whiteness.’”
“You need to do comedy.”
“I need to buy guns is what I need to do. I fucking hate these white SJW bitches. They protect black people to death. They’re sick hobblers of black agency.”
“Nigga wild.”
“You know how much I pray that this whitey-stay in your lane shit is just a phase? I try to hypnotize myself. ‘Maybe it is all just social-media trend.’ I’m dead-ass. ‘Maybe this is passing phenomenon and it’s not in the real world.’ I can’t even think straight with this fucking score to settle and you show me this shit?”
“Dead.”
“Just as I thought the fuckin gouge was gonna heal! And then here you go. Don’t tell me this shit!”
“I’m literally deceased. Thank you for cheering me up.”
“I’m good for that.”
“You are. I love that.”
“But yeah. Shit really bothers me.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that every time I think I’m pulling out of trauma, it’s like I get pulled right back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m not—. I’m sorry I made this shit about me.”
“Don’t say that. I want to hear you. You cheering me up. ”
“It’s always this fucking battle man. I try to let time heal but it stays in my face. And I know it warped me and—.”
“I gotta protect your peace better.”
“Nah, that’s my job baby.”
“I know but—. If I can offer advice. Like you say you have the two sides, male and female, right? Maybe you gotta be the man part more. Maybe it’s a balance thing. Feel me?”
“. . . .”
“Like—. I’m not being clear but—. Like you express everything. That keeps the shit alive, you know? Maybe you need a quieter phase. I’m not putting it right.”
“I understand. Be more stoic.”
“I don’t get that.”
“Stiff upper lip and all that.”
“You too smart for me.”
“It’s not smart it’s just cliches you don’t know. You mean like grit your teeth and bear it or—. You mean I have to be more—I have to suck it up and not complain.”
“Yes. Just don’t give the shit life.”
“Suffer in silence.”
“That makes it sound bad. Like keep it moving—that’s what I mean.”
“Wise.”
“You always tell me balance. And everyone saying ‘men need to express they feelings’ and all that. You got that on lock nigga. You need the opposite advice.”
“Dating me is like dating a lesbian.”
“I just mean less expression for you.”
“I get it.”
“Balance—that’s Aristotle right?”
“You’re great.”
“So I see it like man and woman. I guard your peace more and you—.”
“Shut the fuck up more.”
“Move in silence—that’s the move, though. We got to watch Berserk.”
“The anime, like your shirt right?”
“Yes. The main nigga been through all this shit but he ain’t going into monologues and shit. He just keeps it moving. That’s how I be—too much, though. I gotta learn more about expressing myself like you.”
“I find you really good at expressing yourself.”
“With you I am yes.”
“Aww.”
“I’m just sayin we teach each other. That’s the shit I’m saying about you know what.”
“I friggin love you, yo.”
“I love you more. It’s late, though.”
“I know.”
“So you gon put something else in your face.”
“Huh? What you mean?”
“Like this.”
“You nasty, huh?”
“Turnt a bitch out and now nigga can’t deal with the shit?”
“Girl.”
“Yes.”
“How you glistening like that?”
“Cuz you.”
“Can I whisper something in your ear?”
“Yes.”
“It’s dirty, though. That okay?”
“Yes.”
“All that fucking goo.”
“. . . .”
“Put it in my hand.”
“. . . .”
“Good girl. Mmm.”
“. . . .”
“Look how slick that shit is.”
“I love it. That’s where I belong.”
“Never put anything that slippery on my cock. You gonna be the best thing I ever fuck.”
“Can I play with myself too? Please?”
“Put a little in my mouth first.”
“. . . .”
“Mmm. Little in your mouth too Cutie Pie.”
“. . . .”
“Now should we go soft with ourselves or rough?”
“Mmm.”
“You can tell me.”
“I’m shy.”
“It’s okay.”
“Rough. Cuz we gotta be quick.”
“Let me see that shit better, then.”
“. . . .”
“You like it?”
“You know I do.”
“Mmmh.”
“You look here. I look there. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see that asshole too.”
“. . . .”
“Spread it. Spread it good for me.”
“I like when you look at me.”
“Mmm.”
“I like watchin you too.”
“Spit on it then.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Put your mouth on me.”
“I can’t baby girl.”
“I’ve been good.”
“I know.”
“Hnnn. Hmmmm.”
“. . . .”
“I’ve been so good.”
“I know, Sweeetheart.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Get that shit baby.”
“Okay. Hnnn. Okay.”
“Smack it up.”
“Ohhhh. Hnnn. Hnnn.”
“You the nastiest little girl I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah? Yeah?”
“That’s why I need to smell it.”
“Hnnn. Oooh.”
“Faster. Don’t be shy Sweetheart.”
“Oh fuck.”
“That shit smells like mine huh?”
“It’s all yours.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Make that fuckin mess then.”
“Okay.”
“You gonna make a mess?”
“Mhmm.”
“There you go.”
“Mhmm.”
“Good girl. You got me fuckin going now.”
“Hnn. Hnn. Hnn.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Smack that pussy up. Smack it up.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Oh I’m about to shoot all over that shit.”
“Oh my God. Oh God. Fuuuuuck.”
“Mmmmm. Mm.”
“I need you.”
“Nnngaaahh. Yeah bitch.”
“Fuck. Hnn. Hnn. Ha. Hn. Ha.”
“Yessss.”
“Hnnnnnn. Fuuuuck.”
“. . . .”
“Mmmmhm. Hm.”
“You’re such a bad girl.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“I love my bad girl.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Huhhhhhh. I love you so much.”
“. . . .”
“Oh my God. Haaah. You got a bitch crazy.”
“I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Haaah.”
“Whew.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“It’s late. It’s so late.”
“I know.”
“Niggas aint even fed. I just—. Tch.”
“Want me grab something for you guys?”
“Actually. . . .”
“Where you want to go?
“Don’t think I—. But it would be easier.”
“Baby, you ain’t gotta say anything.”
“My mom gotta get her stank as up.”
“. . . .”
“I just wanna run away.”
“. . . .”
“I feel like—. Tch. If I come live with you, it would be good for her. Cuz I do everything.”
“. . . .”
“Okaaay. I guess not.”
“What you mean?”
“Nigga, you got that just-bust-a-nut silence. You want me out now, huh?”
“And you say I overthink!”
“Tch.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Because you know I’ll never stop smooching my little stinkbug.”
“I guess.”
“Oh no. Oh no. Miss ’Tude’s gonna get it.”
“Boy what you doing?”
“Let me see that belly. Pssspt. Oh we have a struggler! Psssspt.”
“Gggi gi gffed—stop!”
“And I can tickle you to death too. Want that?”
“No. You play too much.”
“I love to see that smile.”
“I know.”
“Hey though.”
“Yes?”
“For real. I’m never pushing you away.”
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
