hilarywhittle-blog

[hilarywhittle-blog]

Duality

12:30 AM I find myself drifting between the plot of the show on the TV and the thought of your lips against my skin. I just hung up a call with you that lasted three hours, where we spoke so passionately about our musings that it caused me discomfort in the best way. I paced from room to room, encapsulated in your decorous nature, my fingers twisted in the cord of my headphones -- finding anything to keep my idle body busy.

I went about the rest of my evening after that call, letting the conversation marinate before impulsively slicing it open with hyperbole. By the time I reached my bed, I couldn’t shake you. I found myself reaching for my inner thighs, past the point of controlled lust and into a rush of turbulent endorphins. A landscape where my fantasies run rampant.

There was nothing but silence between each soft breath, imagining you against me, grazing my hips, pressing the heat of your body into mine. My mind tangled in reality and fantasy, lust disguised as love -- an abandonment wound parading around in sheep’s clothing. I know I’m not the best pussy he’s ever had, but god, it felt good to make him say it. I know the only capacity in which he can receive me is physical… but the desire to romanticize makes the orgasm feel superior.

As I bring my body down from the climax of imagination and yearning, I start thinking about a woman’s ability to live in the duality of emotion, and how I don’t believe a man could ever truly understand that. To let yourself drift into a sea of what-ifs without letting it distort the non-fiction of what’s actually happening -- that in itself is powerful.

But we rarely speak of it. We keep it tucked away to avoid being labeled delusional, obsessed, hysterical. Because to men, a woman in lust must also be a woman in love. And a woman who speaks openly about the primal desire of playing inside her own fantasies? she becomes a woman men fear; because they cannot comprehend the very real truth, as my girl Ray BLK puts it: "I only want you when I’m lonely, on a late night, on a Friday, with some high-grade.”

[hilarywhittle-blog]

Her.

I bend at the hips and fall to my knees, reaching out my arms, eagerly awaiting your approach.

Light tears fall down the gently aging skin that creases around my eyes—aging so subtly, like the tide that slowly creeps up the sands before engulfing the shore.

The sight of you in your juvenescence brings me to smile, and just as quickly that smile fades,

for I have known the extent of the emotional labor you will eventually employ.

As my gaze softens, my heart grows weary, remembering the pain you felt of never feeling a belonging in a space that was touted as inclusive.

The photos of you tucked back, dependent on your own company in response to being excluded from community—

and even then, you were so incredibly content.

What I would have given to have retained such security within myself,

never having to sit on the variously curated upholstered couches placed in my therapist’s office.

Rooms would fill with your unguarded laughter.

Your clarified joy echoing down the halls would draw attention to even the most closed-off of ears—

still so sightless to the fact that, in time, that same vibrancy would attract the most vile of exploiters.

I say (as I am still on bended knees),

“Here I am. It’s ok, I won’t hurt—”

I stop.

My voice embraces the impact of an untruth I have been holding onto for a lifetime.

I feel instant compunction,

for I have scarred the very skin that drapes across your fragile bones.

I have beaten down continuously the admiration you once had for yourself.

I have placed you in harm’s way with the purpose of absolute impairment.

I have handed your body over numerous times to those who never—and would never—respect you or see you as worthy of love.

I stopped nurturing you and began condemning you.

I retract my extended arms, pull my elbows in toward my chest, and bury my face into my hands.

“How could I?.. There was never a world in which you deserved any of what happened to you,”

I mutter, as I begin to wallow in my own sorrow.

I hear you shuffle your feet out from behind the shadowy corner where you were hiding…

Cautious but empathetic, you move closer to me.

Actively absorbed by my own guilt, I feel your hand rest softly on the crown of my head—so spiritually nourishing, maternal in nature.

“Here I am. It’s ok. I don’t want you to hurt anymore,”

you say, as your fragile hand gently caresses toward the back of my head,

and you reach your other hand across my body, enclasping me.

“I forgive you.”

A phrase so profound it moves me to reach for you… and I embrace us.

For you are me, and I am you.

You are the child I have continued to mistreat—

the younger version of myself that held so much shame on her shoulders,

of unbearable weight,

suffering consequences of actions that were not of your doing…

“Sweet child, you no longer need to live in fear,” I proclaim.

“While learning to love myself,

I can now provide the love for you that we never received from those around us.”

[hilarywhittle-blog]

Home

Dear Tacoma,

The faint smell of urine on the autumn-themed rug, crookedly lying in front of the coffee stand, radiates from the littered ground up to my nose. The clinically poor pacing outside, watching people walk in and out of the automated doors of Thriftway, hoping to procure whatever change can be spared. Sirens blare in the background from ambulances, alongside the sharp rattle of a car’s trunk, struggling to withstand the bass of a song whose words are drowned out by the relentless percussion.

Across the street, Wright Park acts as its own ecosystem, almost separate from the city itself. Lined with trees, manicured concrete pathways, and fallen pine needles, it also holds the occasional used syringe and small piles of garbage. Man-made ponds, full of milfoil, harbor the occasional plastic cup or bag, floating alongside the waterfowl that call this place their home. A runner crosses paths with a mother pushing her child in a stroller; a dog walks alongside its owner, taking an alternative path to avoid slowing their pace. A city of grit, Tacoma has dubbed itself, graffitied on buildings and printed on stickers placed on stop signs and electrical boxes. Grit, a word that carries multiple definitions—whether small, loose particles of dirt or sand, or courage and resolve—perfectly captures this city in different contexts.

Come nightfall, the breeze whips through the neighboring old-growth trees. The unattended domesticated dog barks throughout the night, while random wind chimes play their unpredictable, yet familiar, song, providing a softness to the gunshots and car alarms in the distance. The smell of burnt rubber from tires performing donuts in intersections of unoccupied streets fills the air in neighborhoods abandoned by law enforcement.

This is the place I call home: amidst the homeless, the morally corrupt, families cautiously playing alongside dangerous, unstructured roads; small businesses targeted by the unassuming passerby; opossums slinking through inner-city chicken coops; the bustling bars with their obnoxious regulars, making their way back home on foot, sharing outspoken internal monologues shaped by consumption.

Tacoma, my dear, you are a mess deserving nothing less than love and respect, protection and validity. The gritty symphony of my Grit City.

[hilarywhittle-blog]

A lot like love

It’s the days when the letters on my keyboard start to blur, the weight of the world resting on my shoulders, compressing my spine into my heels. It’s days like these that make the ground hard and my feet weak.

It’s days like these when breathing feels like a burden and every time I swallow, my heart climbs further up, into my throat. When every thought results in tears, and every memory, glimpse into the future, even the present moment, feels hollow, weary, and faded.

I don’t speak of sadness or depression, I speak on behalf of the exhaustion of the heart. Like anvils attached to your legs, anchoring you to the couch—a fatigue so deep that even the most tender of skin seems unable to rise above your pupils.

There is no possible way I could open her again. Just imagining trying to take the key and having to force it into that lock… feeling the drag of the steel catching on each ridge of scar tissue. She beats, but at the speed of what I would imagine ‘hopelessness’ would look like. Weathered by lies, misguided attachment, the deaths of futures, unrequited love, broken promises, and the sharp pain of reality with each removal of rose-colored glasses.

“We can do this,” I message to my heart.

She then continues my statement with:

“… one last time.”

With exhalation, I close my eyes and whisper back in agreement:

“…one last time.”

She winces, knowing that we are inviting pain and releasing control to outcomes. Idiocy, lunacy, pathological—all in the name of hope for connection, connection that will, no matter the context, isolate us and lacerate every cell in our body. Leaving us lifeless, even if only for a short amount of time.

So, I push the key through. It still hurts as I bear the soreness of unhealed wounds.

“Fuck you,” she says. “I will forgive you less, each time.”

“I know,” I reply.

“I can’t give up on love, because it has never given up on me.”

[hilarywhittle-blog]

I mean, I guess.

It wasn’t every day that I’d usually approach a man so forwardly about sex, but today I was feeling more confident than usual. It felt almost sophomoric to type out such a simple sentence: “Hey, would you like to grab dinner sometime and then fuck me?”. I felt it covered everything I wanted to say without the underlying emotions.

He responded right away with an enthusiastic “yeah ofc”.. like something right out of a Danielle Steele novel. We set a time that day and I spent the remainder of my day feeling powerful and sexy, anticipating the moment we see each other naked.

5 hours and 2 hits of cannabis later, I walked over to the venue where we met. Nothing says romance more than the dive bar down the street on the east side. We laughed, bantered, laughed some more. I got up to pee and he checked out my ass, he rolled up his sleeves and I checked out his vascular forearms. Needless to say, I was ready to have sex right on that table.

I invited him back to my apartment for a night cap even though I didn’t keep alcohol in the house, but he knew we wouldn’t be doing much drinking. There was a moment there when we walked through my door and my unflattering foyer light accentuated his flaws. He had more hair on his body than I remember, his lips chapped and unapproachable, his eyes densely brown with little light behind them.. the toothpick he had been chewing on since we left the bar.

I could’ve changed my mind at this point, asked him to leave and thank him for an engaging evening full of edging, then touched myself later to release the tension.. but I was curious. We kissed. I couldn’t tell who initiated it, but it felt good, great even. He lifted me off the ground and carried me into my bedroom, set me down and then climbed into my bed.. “undress for me”, he gently asked. So, I did just that. Shirt first, then my bra. I looked and felt hot. My hair tousled, my cheeks flush.

As I’m waiting for his response to what he was witnessing, the compliance of his request, things went quiet. His eyes dilated and his hairy body profusely sweat all over my brand new sheets. I asked him if he was ok, and he replied “yeah, I’m just intimidated”, as his penis sat there, flaccid and unexcited to see me. I sauntered over to the bed and started kissing him again. I eventually lied down next to him and he immediately started touching his dick to try to get some blood flow going to the correct areas of interest. No luck.

He then looked at me and proceeded to place his Robin Williams hand across my throat and choked me without permission. I was fine, It kind of turned me on until.. he started growling. Yes, growling. This deep guttural noise accompanied with direct, uninterrupted eye contact. My labia gathered her lips and tucked them up inside herself I was so turned off. This modern day Shakespeare then asked if he could spit in my mouth.. at this point if choking me and growling isn’t doing the trick, I didn’t think him directly spitting into my mouth would matter much.. also, gross.

I declined, he removed his hand from my throat, and we just lied there in utter disappointment. I could feel the energy was very off, and said that he was welcome to leave anytime and there was no need to hang around. He said “sweet”, got dressed, kissed me and exited with a “thanks cutie, let’s hang out soon”.

We in fact, did not hang out soon. We did not speak at all after that evening and I was stuck stripping my bed of the soaked sheets and flecks of body hair he so graciously left behind. It was whatever though. I still felt hot.