Sunday, September 30, 2007
This weeks featured KY Author, Lucretia X aka Tye
Steak N’ Egg
By Lucretia X aka Tye
Steak N’ Egg
They were on the front porch. I saw him take her in a swoop she pretended not to like. He carried her down the hill in his arms. I was the passenger in his friend’s car. “Are they married?” “Yeah.” “Was he always married?” “Yeah.”
She was thin, and blonde, and little. She had the kind of white skin that looked dirty, or see-through. Her feet were bare. I could see the bottoms. They were pink, with a little bit of dirt. Like pink berries, or the backs of flowers. She looked raw.
No girlfriends ever surprised me. They all looked the same. None of them ever looked like me.
She had on cut-off blue jean shorts, the dark denim kind, frayed at the edges. Pale slender legs that looked too white in the sun, and seemed to glow. Her hair was flat, and feathered. Shoulder-length. She had black roots. A tank top that looked like it had been washed a lot, or bought from Valu- City.
She looked grateful. She looked tough. She looked like she worked at Steak N’ Egg. He picked her up in a gleeful sweep when he saw us coming. His friend drove me. I don’t
know why we were driving by. Money, or pot, or to say hi. We slowed to a stop as he carried her down their sloping hill. I kept myself folded in the front seat. To look thinner.
They lived in a house he owned by my middle school. They were married. “Ticky- tack,” my mother’s voice in my head as I watched him - them - approach. I guess it was tacky: Big and empty. Peeling wallpaper. Rotting porch. Furniture bought from the poor people’s store. A kitchen table with collapsible legs, maybe a plastic table-top cover, the kind with big fruit pictured on it. Now the house is worth a fortune. My mother still rents. So do I.
I had a woman’s body. I could not go to the mall with other girls, smaller girls, in this body. I could not buy regular girl clothes, in this body. Only one thing to do with it. The sloping breasts, stretch-marked and dark-nippled. The round belly. The dark bush between my legs.
I wore tight faded bell-bottom jeans I borrowed from my mother. I wore a pink tank top with skinny straps that criss-crossed in the back that I stole from my best friend Star’s mother. I never wore a bra or underwear. I didn’t like the extra layers.
I was never surprised when they did not ask for my phone number.
I was rarely hurt. I never wanted more. Or less.
His hands on my hips felt grown-up. I was riding his buckle in the dark. He may have been ugly but his hands knew what they were doing. His hands made him handsome.
Crazy laughter in another room. I was happy right where I was. Nothing finer than this.
None of the boys or men I knew then ever forced or pressured. Was I too ugly to rape? Something in my eager chubbiness that turned them off, made them polite.
Fat girls are grateful. That’s what is said. Even read it in some porn. Almost ruined my masturbating. The problem with new fiction, or new films, or new people – you never know what’s coming next. Things get ruined.
Him in the dark, better than porn. I rode him like I read, hungrily, leisurely, thoroughly, and he liked it. This was my point of view. I was on top. In porn, it was always from the man’s point of view. So I thought I knew how he felt, how I might look. But in the dark, points of view can melt. I made him melt. I saw through my own eyes. In the dark.
“Crazy laughter in another room”
from 1972, “Witchy Woman”
The Eagles
To contact Lucretia email lsmith@calarts.edu; myspace.com/lucretiatyejasmine; and under Sattchi Online
Lucretia’s Biography
I am a painter, writer, and filmmaker. I was born in Boston, but I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. I received a BFA in filmmaking with honors from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1988. I received an MFA in creative writing from California Institute of the Arts in 2006. Steady income has come from my work as a scenic painter, and as a library clerk. I am the Co-Founder of Revolution Rising, a collective whose purpose was to provide access to and a space for the tools and creation of artmaking through grassroots fundraising (concerts and benefits, t-shirts, stickers, zines). My work with them financed one of my short films, and several art exhibitions in Los Angeles. My short films (16mm, video, and PXL) have been screened at local coffeehouses, art spaces, and universities. My paintings have been purchased by private collectors. I have been awarded grants to take art classes at UCLA. I utilize most mediums. My writing is often nonfiction, but sometimes fiction and poetry. Publication credits include The Los Angeles Review, RE/Search!, and Flyway Literary Review. My work has been accepted for publication by Poetry Motel and The Sun. I am the recipient of the Sweet Corn Literary Award, and an award from the National League of American Pen Women. I make zines, and was interviewed by RE/Search! about my zine The Meat Hook. Currently I am working on my first novel which began as my thesis in the form of a zine, and am preparing for my first solo art exhibition.
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