ghosting

on sometimes being a body, and beyond; nsfw~

my mother wishes i talked to god more, but—outside of the general sense that there does exist something larger and more powerful than us humans warring on the face on the earth, a diffuse but harnessable mystery that moves within us, links us to each other, and susceptible to our errors—the only thing i truly have to say to capital-g god is that i want to wrestle him and win. paul preciado said that first.

there’s not much to say to god anyway. i joke that he nerfed me by putting me in a body like mine, and rightly so, because if i had adam’s original hardware i would’ve had three or four illegitimate kids by now.

i still speak beyond the veil though, talking not to god but ghosts. maybe you do the same? you fuck someone and in bed with you are all the people you’ve ever fucked, dispelled only with the intense focus that comes when you’re about to come. someone remarked that my eyes glaze over when i look down at them sucking at my flesh, but that’s a lenticular blur akin to the smudges on victorian spirit photographs, the open eye trying and failing to hold something fast to the page. what the fuck am i looking at transposed with ah it was there all along

trans guys sometimes experience phantom dick. my ex told me that, identifying a haunting i’ve had for some time now. ghosts aren’t like demons though, where knowing the name of a demon gives you power over it. ghosts come when they’re called, but grasp for them and your hand will pass right through.

i tip my head back, use my mind’s eye, and i come 

i watched t, my not-boyfriend, put his mouth to the lacy bow i had tied around my dick—the dick that lives in my drawer and is baptized-sanitized with uv light—just under the head. it tickled me, looking at my adorned self bobbing in the mirror, t already on his knees and grabbing at my thighs. the flesh-colored part of my body formed out of something both softer and harder than flesh, in his flesh mouth. he kissed halfway up my shaft, and then nipped gently at the dangling ends of the lace ribbon. i hissed, no teeth. 

after park chan-wook shot his vengeance trilogy he made a deranged little romcom called i am a cyborg but that’s ok, where a girl is seized with the delusion that she is a feelingless electronic object, much like the psych ward lightbulbs that she chooses to confide in. unlike her radio that broadcasts messages to her from the other side, unlike the vending machine she politely asks for a cup of tea (while she waits, the love interest sneaks up behind her and secretly drops in a coin) she has no purpose, and the question confounds her: what was i made for? the barbie movie asks the same question, i think, but i haven’t seen that one. we human beings all ask the same question at some point in our lives, if we are lucky.

there too is a lack in me. no instructions for this body, or how i might have wanted to augment it, or god if i even wanted to be in one in the first place. when i bought my first realistic (representational, they say) dildo like seven years ago, the hunger for it was acute but unlike anything i’d ever felt before. when it arrived, i lifted it out of its box and decided it would never go in me… but it had a purpose somehow, i just knew it. in the meantime, it would live in my drawer.

anyway, here was its newest iteration, trembling as the ribbon around it loosened and dropped. watching t flick his tongue across the tip of my dick, there was no question about what it was made for. in fact it was the only part of my being with a clear purpose: to destroy a hole. 

when i knelt between t’s thighs and pressed the tip of my dick to the pink rim of him, holding the base steady and the lube shining between us, i imagined how hot and tight he’d be around me. i imagined how absolutely looney tunes i’d go if i could actually feel him clench around my dick, which at that moment was feeling around blindly between us. i suddenly remembered that my longest-running livejournal name was ghostmeat. t looked up from where he was holding his legs up, all smooth long limbs, socks still on. “put it in me,” he demanded. i laughed, wrapped my hand around the base, and in one motion buried myself in his body.

and so i had t laid out under me and wiggling his hips desperately up and down as i was hilt-deep in his hole, my other hand jerking him hard. his dick throbbed in my fist every time i shoved up into him. “you have the biggest smile on your face right now,” he gasped, scrambling off me and getting on all fours to show me what i’d done. eyes glazed over, i learned the appeal of a gape: you look down at someone’s dark lack and think, i created that need and only i can fill it. may the image of that pretty boy bent over and spreading his cute pale cheeks for me be burned forever in my mind. i thought briefly of

you know, junji ito’s ghosts are never ephemeral beings. they’re haunted, deformed bodies. they’re hollowed-out cravings. i mean, aren’t we all? aren’t we all always thinking about what isn’t there? no? just me?

in i’m a cyborg, young-goon asks the kleptomaniac il-soon to steal something from her so she can fulfill her purpose. what do we give up to become more ourselves?

my therapist says my ex haunts me. in modern parlance, i’m traumatized by an abusive relationship. no shit. i gave up so much of myself i’m not sure what’s left over. someone else i had been seeing lately—lightly, i thought—straight-up asked me, “how do we build trust here?” we were naked in their bed and call me by your name was playing on their tv.

i was taken aback by the request and frustrated by the impossibility of an answer. i knew i had been refusing the care they lavished on me, preferring to float at a distance, to disappear from their bed once they closed their eyes. when they said they needed to “take space,” i understood that in that space floated the ghosts of all our past loves. onscreen, the squelch of the peach. when we have been hollowed out in a specific way by a specific pain, we fear that anything that fills us anew might take the same shape again. i could see that they were scared too.

i created that need and only i can fill it

i washed my dick in the sink, stashed it in my backpack, and got dressed as the movie wrapped up, oliver waving out the train window. outside the morning was bright and cold, spring flowers beginning. whatever was buried under the earth was now burgeoning into the light. i myself am growing. it’s all good though, we’ll stay in touch, we’ll check in. after all, i had promised not to ghost.