Something Human
art by Luciano Thomas
I like to touch myself with my sharp fingers. I like to touch myself inside. When my sharp fingers go inside, I can almost not quite feel myself. I get them done every month. Mani-pedi-Korean-acryllic-squoval-on-top-square-on-bottom. I ask her to let me keep the old set. I keep them in a jar on my bedside table and I like to shake, shake, shake them like a snow globe, like Christmas in Rockefeller Square. The jar has a lid that can be popped off if I press the pads of my fingers to the lip just right. It took me a long time to learn how to do that. To learn how to do that, and type, and use my phone, and eat and pull the zipper of my pants up after I’m done touching myself gently so I won’t accidentally gouge my inner walls. I’m not afraid to bleed but when my sharp fingers are in me, they could be someone else I haven’t even met. They could be someone violent that I don’t even know.
***
Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York are at The Cafe for brunch on Saturday morning. Carrie is wearing gold point-toe Casadei boots, pink Roberto Cavalli pants with gold zebra stripes that she's folded at the knee (for the boots), a thrifted no-name green gauze button up that you can see her purple mesh Cosabella bra through, and a gold necklace with her name on it. On her chair back is an Eléqante fur coat and her purple sequin Fendi baguette. Miranda wears an aquamarine men’s cotton cable knit sweater from L.L. Bean with a white long-sleeve layer from the Gap underneath that is exposed at the collar, along with black slacks. Her nylon black Prada shoulder bag sits in her lap. Her shoes are hideous balloon suede Merrell clogs but her feet are warm, even in this cold. Samantha slings her acrylic and chain Chanel shoulder bag into her seat, unbuttoning her Fendi high-neck fur coat; her panty hose are sheer and immaculate. Charlotte looks dowdy; her headband matches her sweater.
“In a city like New York, where the day is spent shopping and the night is spent fucking, why is the diner on Saturday morning the only place to find real love?” Carrie poses to the table. She is vulnerable today, Mr. Big ignored her calls last night.
“Real love means nothing. Marriage is a contractual arrangement and without a prenup, you’re better off keeping your money and your heart in a shoe-box,” says the ever practical Miranda.
“Honey, who needs real love when you have real Dolce and real dick-é,” winks Samantha.
“She isn’t just talking about some guy she’s dating, Samantha!” Charlotte scolds. “She’s talking about connection. Real connection. Like if society all but collapsed and you were naked in the woods and you came upon this other naked person, they would recognize in you something human, anyway.”
Carrie passes a hand over her hair in a self-soothing gesture, moving it back with the side of her little finger so as not to get her nails caught in her curls. Her hands are beautiful: the long fingered, narrow palmed hand of a writer. Her nails are clean and unpainted as Eve’s.
“And just like that, I wanted shoes.” She says. The women heartily agree. Carrie needs to think (shop).
****
I have this game called ‘Touch my Stuff’ that I like to play when I feel overwhelmed. Here are the rules: I open the closet, I open the drawers, and I pass my pretty hands over the folds of my belongings. The feel of the material over my hands and in my eyes makes me calm. I live in a museum, I live in a mausoleum. I never wear the same lingerie twice. But I work online. I barely leave the house. So when I do, it's important to me and everyone else that I wear something beautiful. And I wear it hard. I’ll go out all night and dance my lovely away. Drinks spill on me, I accidentally ash in my bag, sequins get pulled from my collar by my hair. I am sticky and drunk and my clothes are ruined. The shoes I wear are high. Blisters are always perfect circles, but I have never known bunion, nor callus, corn nor struggle.
***
Mr. Big works at a firm downtown but his dad owns the company, so really he just shows up and stays there until they let him go home to do it all again. His real passion is killing and dissecting girls, but he is trying to be less goal-oriented. That’s when he met Carrie. She is eccentric, but with a recognizable consumerist pattern that is palatable to his socially liberal, yet fiscally conservative politics. When they first met, he wondered if it was love. But now, he likes to bat her around emotionally. Mr. Big, whose christian name is Patrick Bateman, has found that while not as immediately relieving, inducing the slow, suffocating shivling of Carrie’s spirit is far more enjoyable than her physical death.
They meet up in the shoe department of Barney’s to celebrate Carrie’s successful article on whether dating a circumcised man is fashionable or not. Carrie asks the attendant if she can smoke in here. She can’t. Big is satisfied that when they first started dating, Carrie was an occasional smoker. Now, she’s up to a pack a day.
Big likes the way she walks. It’s a happy little girlish flounce that must hurt in her heels. She doesn’t let it show and he respects her for this. It turns him on to know that she is hurting a little bit, all the time. She looks good in pain.
He holds out a five inch strappy sandal that would cut off her circulation at the ankle and make indents in the skin of her calf after she took them off. Big sweats a little. She takes the shoe from him and lets her hand fall.
“They don’t have my size.” Carrie says, returning the shoe to its plinth.
“Try them on,” Big commands. Carrie obeys, bending over and balancing on one leg to wedge her feet into the sole of the shoe.
“Do they fit?” He asks, though he can clearly see her toes falling off the side of the platform and her heel already turning red against the ankle strap.
“I’m in, like, a stepsister.” Carrie jokes as she begins taking off the too-tight shoes.
“Let’s get them anyway. My treat.” He takes the shoe into his arms, swaddling it like a child.
“You’re insane. I won’t be able to wear them. They are three sizes too small.” But Carrie’s already letting Big guide her by the elbow over to the cash register.
“I have an idea.”
Carrie squeals in the way she does that has rated well with audiences.
****
No one fucks me like I can fuck myself. No one cares about the details of me like I do. I have a swirl birth mark on my back that no lover has ever remarked upon even though I love doggy and throwing my hair back. Even though my dermatologist said it was the most beautiful galaxy of freckles and pigmentation that he had ever seen. I should fuck my dermatologist. He, at least, might have the human decency to turn me into a lampshade. No, I tire of these men that want nothing and take nothing and give nothing. Life feels so much like an advertisement.
At my next salon appointment, I ask for stiletto nails. They are red like Lana Del Rey’s. When I take them home I show them to my stuff; my stuff agrees that they are nice. I get excited and rove them over all the silky tops and dresses organized by color. I do not own synthetic fabrics because they feel all wrong, like putting a condom on someone you love. My clothes are soft and of the earth. My hands caress them and myself. I move my hand down the waist of my skirt to feel me deeper. I sit on the floor and hold the jam of the closet door. My fingers are pointy and they hurt. My other hand slips and lands on a shoe box on the floor. These shoes are unworn. These shoes are stilettos. I open the box and take off my underwear.
***
Big prepares a foot bath of herbs and animal blood to soften the skin. He made her ask him to do it. He promised himself he wouldn’t go through with it otherwise. But the shoes are beautiful, it's undeniable. Carrie wants them to fit as badly as he does, maybe more, because maybe to enjoy the performance and embrace the fetish is to actually fit in; and they both want that so very badly. So she asked and like a genie, Big said yes.
Carrie puts her feet into the bath and makes strips of fabric out of last season’s Gucci. The strips are long and thin and strong as silk. Mr. Big is erect through his suit pants.
First, he peels back her toenails, pulling them off at the root so as not to ingrow and cause infection later. Then he presses her toes into the ball of her foot, breaking each one by one, no harder to crack than baby carrots. After, he bends her heel to touch the ball and snap the arch. At this point, Carrie is mostly unconscious. Screamed herself faint.
He unfolds the broken foot, allows it to soak and proceeds with the other. Big takes the bandages from her lap and begins the bind. They will see each other every day now. He must kneed the broken bones in her feet to make sure they stay malleable. He must change her bandages to avoid gangrene. In other words, Big will take care of her. Traditionally, mothers were not allowed to help their daughters bind because their baby’s suffering would make the mother falter.
***
I go to visit my mother. She has plantar fasciitis from wearing heels to work back when that was a place outside of the internet.
“But what really did me in was walking on the beach without my shoes on.” She says from the couch. Her doctor told her that she shouldn’t walk during flare ups but those are most of the time now, so she mostly can’t move around unless she’s on the crutches.
“You should ask dad to rub your feet, a massage might be good for the pain.” I say.
She shrugs and says, “Oh, I don’t know.” Like it would be some great big favor.
He comes home later and sits on the couch with us. She coaxes him into rubbing her feet, but when he does it, he is mean with her and hurts her where she is already gentle. At this moment, I know that they are not having sex anymore and that if they had been at some point, it was not good for her and I really do hate him.
The next day, I buy her an electric heated foot massager with Kohl's cash. It’s as close to a vibrator as I can get. She puts her feet in them for a whole movie’s worth of time. She grabs my hand and says, “thank you, my girl” with a feeling in her eyes that I can’t look at in the face.
“I like your hair long mom, why did you grow it out?” I say, looking away. My mom is a lawyer so she wore her hair for a long time like Miranda’s. Miranda is our favorite character, probably because she is secretly gay.
My mom turns off her massager and keeps her hand in mine. “When I get out of bed in the morning and I have on my sleeveless nightgown, I feel my hair on my back. It’s a sensual feeling and I like it, just for me.”
***
Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York are at The Cafe for brunch on Saturday morning. Carrie is wearing gold point-toe Casadei boots, pink Roberto Cavalli pants with gold zebra stripes that she's folded at the knee (for the boots), a thrifted no-name green gauze button up that you can see her purple mesh Cosabella bra through, and a gold necklace with her name on it. On her chair back is an Eléqante fur coat and her purple sequin Fendi baguette. Miranda wears an aquamarine men’s cotton cable knit sweater from L.L. Bean with a white long-sleeve layer from the Gap underneath that is exposed at the collar, along with black slacks. Her nylon black Prada shoulder bag sits in her lap. Her shoes are hideous balloon suede Merrell clogs but her feet are warm, even in this cold. Samantha slings her acrylic and chain Chanel shoulder bag into her seat, unbuttoning her Fendi high-neck fur coat; her panty hose are sheer and immaculate. Charlotte looks dowdy; her headband matches her sweater.
“In a city like New York, where the day is spent shopping and the night is spent fucking, why is the diner on Saturday morning the only place to find real love?” Carrie poses to the table. She is vulnerable today, Mr. Big ignored her calls last night.
“Real love means nothing. Marriage is a contractual arrangement and without a prenup, you’re better off keeping your money and your heart in a shoe-box,” says the ever practical Miranda.
“Honey, who needs real love when you have real Dolce and real dick-é,” winks Samantha.
“She isn’t just talking about some guy she’s dating, Samantha!” Charlotte scolds. “She’s talking about connection. Real connection. Like if society all but collapsed and you were naked in the woods and you came upon this other naked person, they would recognize in you something human, anyway.”
Carrie passes a hand over her hair in a self-soothing gesture, moving it back with the side of her little finger so as not to get her nails caught in her curls. Her hands are beautiful: the long fingered, narrow palmed hand of a writer. Her nails are clean and unpainted as Eve’s.
“And just like that, I wanted shoes.” She says. The women heartily agree. Carrie needs to think (shop).
****
I have this game called ‘Touch my Stuff’ that I like to play when I feel overwhelmed. Here are the rules: I open the closet, I open the drawers, and I pass my pretty hands over the folds of my belongings. The feel of the material over my hands and in my eyes makes me calm. I live in a museum, I live in a mausoleum. I never wear the same lingerie twice. But I work online. I barely leave the house. So when I do, it's important to me and everyone else that I wear something beautiful. And I wear it hard. I’ll go out all night and dance my lovely away. Drinks spill on me, I accidentally ash in my bag, sequins get pulled from my collar by my hair. I am sticky and drunk and my clothes are ruined. The shoes I wear are high. Blisters are always perfect circles, but I have never known bunion, nor callus, corn nor struggle.
***
Mr. Big works at a firm downtown but his dad owns the company, so really he just shows up and stays there until they let him go home to do it all again. His real passion is killing and dissecting girls, but he is trying to be less goal-oriented. That’s when he met Carrie. She is eccentric, but with a recognizable consumerist pattern that is palatable to his socially liberal, yet fiscally conservative politics. When they first met, he wondered if it was love. But now, he likes to bat her around emotionally. Mr. Big, whose christian name is Patrick Bateman, has found that while not as immediately relieving, inducing the slow, suffocating shivling of Carrie’s spirit is far more enjoyable than her physical death.
They meet up in the shoe department of Barney’s to celebrate Carrie’s successful article on whether dating a circumcised man is fashionable or not. Carrie asks the attendant if she can smoke in here. She can’t. Big is satisfied that when they first started dating, Carrie was an occasional smoker. Now, she’s up to a pack a day.
Big likes the way she walks. It’s a happy little girlish flounce that must hurt in her heels. She doesn’t let it show and he respects her for this. It turns him on to know that she is hurting a little bit, all the time. She looks good in pain.
He holds out a five inch strappy sandal that would cut off her circulation at the ankle and make indents in the skin of her calf after she took them off. Big sweats a little. She takes the shoe from him and lets her hand fall.
“They don’t have my size.” Carrie says, returning the shoe to its plinth.
“Try them on,” Big commands. Carrie obeys, bending over and balancing on one leg to wedge her feet into the sole of the shoe.
“Do they fit?” He asks, though he can clearly see her toes falling off the side of the platform and her heel already turning red against the ankle strap.
“I’m in, like, a stepsister.” Carrie jokes as she begins taking off the too-tight shoes.
“Let’s get them anyway. My treat.” He takes the shoe into his arms, swaddling it like a child.
“You’re insane. I won’t be able to wear them. They are three sizes too small.” But Carrie’s already letting Big guide her by the elbow over to the cash register.
“I have an idea.”
Carrie squeals in the way she does that has rated well with audiences.
****
No one fucks me like I can fuck myself. No one cares about the details of me like I do. I have a swirl birth mark on my back that no lover has ever remarked upon even though I love doggy and throwing my hair back. Even though my dermatologist said it was the most beautiful galaxy of freckles and pigmentation that he had ever seen. I should fuck my dermatologist. He, at least, might have the human decency to turn me into a lampshade. No, I tire of these men that want nothing and take nothing and give nothing. Life feels so much like an advertisement.
At my next salon appointment, I ask for stiletto nails. They are red like Lana Del Rey’s. When I take them home I show them to my stuff; my stuff agrees that they are nice. I get excited and rove them over all the silky tops and dresses organized by color. I do not own synthetic fabrics because they feel all wrong, like putting a condom on someone you love. My clothes are soft and of the earth. My hands caress them and myself. I move my hand down the waist of my skirt to feel me deeper. I sit on the floor and hold the jam of the closet door. My fingers are pointy and they hurt. My other hand slips and lands on a shoe box on the floor. These shoes are unworn. These shoes are stilettos. I open the box and take off my underwear.
***
Big prepares a foot bath of herbs and animal blood to soften the skin. He made her ask him to do it. He promised himself he wouldn’t go through with it otherwise. But the shoes are beautiful, it's undeniable. Carrie wants them to fit as badly as he does, maybe more, because maybe to enjoy the performance and embrace the fetish is to actually fit in; and they both want that so very badly. So she asked and like a genie, Big said yes.
Carrie puts her feet into the bath and makes strips of fabric out of last season’s Gucci. The strips are long and thin and strong as silk. Mr. Big is erect through his suit pants.
First, he peels back her toenails, pulling them off at the root so as not to ingrow and cause infection later. Then he presses her toes into the ball of her foot, breaking each one by one, no harder to crack than baby carrots. After, he bends her heel to touch the ball and snap the arch. At this point, Carrie is mostly unconscious. Screamed herself faint.
He unfolds the broken foot, allows it to soak and proceeds with the other. Big takes the bandages from her lap and begins the bind. They will see each other every day now. He must kneed the broken bones in her feet to make sure they stay malleable. He must change her bandages to avoid gangrene. In other words, Big will take care of her. Traditionally, mothers were not allowed to help their daughters bind because their baby’s suffering would make the mother falter.
***
I go to visit my mother. She has plantar fasciitis from wearing heels to work back when that was a place outside of the internet.
“But what really did me in was walking on the beach without my shoes on.” She says from the couch. Her doctor told her that she shouldn’t walk during flare ups but those are most of the time now, so she mostly can’t move around unless she’s on the crutches.
“You should ask dad to rub your feet, a massage might be good for the pain.” I say.
She shrugs and says, “Oh, I don’t know.” Like it would be some great big favor.
He comes home later and sits on the couch with us. She coaxes him into rubbing her feet, but when he does it, he is mean with her and hurts her where she is already gentle. At this moment, I know that they are not having sex anymore and that if they had been at some point, it was not good for her and I really do hate him.
The next day, I buy her an electric heated foot massager with Kohl's cash. It’s as close to a vibrator as I can get. She puts her feet in them for a whole movie’s worth of time. She grabs my hand and says, “thank you, my girl” with a feeling in her eyes that I can’t look at in the face.
“I like your hair long mom, why did you grow it out?” I say, looking away. My mom is a lawyer so she wore her hair for a long time like Miranda’s. Miranda is our favorite character, probably because she is secretly gay.
My mom turns off her massager and keeps her hand in mine. “When I get out of bed in the morning and I have on my sleeveless nightgown, I feel my hair on my back. It’s a sensual feeling and I like it, just for me.”