I texted Will to offer to suck his cock, because I thought if I sent that I might want to, and wanting to might feel nice. He responded right away like a nervous camp counsellor, the fate of someone’s summer vacation in his hands: “Yes!”
There’s a safety to that energy that makes me enjoy fucking him more physically and less spiritually. Or maybe it’s the other way around. It’s the sexual appeal of a solar panel, a paper straw. As our relationship proceeds, my sexts get more elaborate. Less about fucking and more like a ritual dedication. And romantic, because Will can’t degrade me very convincingly.
I wasn’t sure I would ever fuck a man and when I did for the first time, it was the son of two Shakespearean actors. He used to whisper poems to my pussy, and I would politely wait for him to be done. But I wasn’t in love with him.
I had convinced myself I was after he stopped listening to anything contrary, feeling adequately convinced of his asserted ownership. And, because he had a cock, and I wanted to check that box -- knowing about cocks. Fucking them, sucking them, getting yourself off on them quite independently. I was an eagerly unhappy student.
Eventually, through laziness, I learned to love fucking men. The pleasure of watching anyone feel ownership over my body, a body that always seemed to be out of my control. It was aspirational. Academic.
I always loved fucking people who are not men, but that was much easier to love.
Fucking Will is not like fucking a man or a not-man. His hands on my genderless body, I feel like an invisible planet, filled up with friction and movement of atoms that is all perpetual and inevitable.
But with our clothes on, it feels different. Like people seeing us think we look mismatched, and it’s because I have done something wrong, become something wrong without noticing for so long that now it’s too late.
I was glad that Tyler responded to my message, even though I had told them to fuck off a bit. I just wanted to go to Pride and forget I had a body for a little while, and be with someone who might understand what it feels like to not want a body, or not want their body, and feel our bodies against each other, and feel like nothing but invisible planets, even embracing in the streets with our shirts off, various visions of hairy and taped up and scarred, because there were just too many other things to look at.
We laid in a field of plastic grass and watched people take off plastic clothing and screamed as loud as we could for them and it still wasn’t loud enough. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself. When I opened my mouth I heard everyone else and I took all their sounds in through my mouth. Feeling all my thoughts drip out through paper straws, becoming thoughtless, their shouts propelling me like an orbit, collecting the light, counting out dimes for the bus back to Will’s house, being spoken for but softly so, becoming a planet, becoming plastic.
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Katherine Walker-Jones is an artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba who is now based in Tkaronto. They make theatre, songs, and poems. Since graduating from Humber Theatre Performance in 2016, they have released two EPs and recorded a forthcoming LP with their band Feels Fine, as well as a single with Small Orbit. In collaboration with xLq Pop Art Performance, they’ve brought the interactive performance piece 4inXchange to SummerWorks Performance Festival in Tkaronto, rEvolver Fest in Vancouver, and Sarasvàti's FemFest in Winnipeg.