Assignment Three

Assignment Three: "I'd like you to write about not being permitted to cum, and about the way you turned your rising tension into a different kind of release."

(I almost don't write about this. But then, I think about why I don't want to write about this, and that makes me think more. Then I had to decide how on earth to write about it, and still feel like I've kept some of my real life privacy. It's a tangle. One image did come strongly to my mind, and I decided to write about that. It may not make sense, and this isn't an erotic story by a long stretch, but it is an answer. It is my answer. )

A house painted red, with a broken window.

The day wasn't going exactly as planned, which is often the way projects go. The twilight was coming and she hadn't finished pulling nails. The weight of the hammer hanging from her back pocket whispered about that, talking to her about the hour each time it thumped her bottom as she walked. The paint buckets lined up on the porch, pleased her in their rhythm and symmetry. They had been cheap, an off color red that someone had had mixed and then abandoned. "Too much like cherries." "Too much like blood." The house would be leaving tomorrow, but tonight it was still hers to play in, even if it wasn't her house. The glaring yellow hulks of demolition equipment were already in the yard. The porch roof was slumped, and had seen better days, but the floors were solid and the doors swung freely on their hinges. She wanted everything inside before it was dark. The buckets weren't that heavy, and she could mix the paint in the hall. There were already candles and several lamps inside.

She was careful, running her hands over the wall. There was still a scar on her right palm from where she had made the mistake of not checking every surface. The nail had torn deeply into her hand. Not that that had stopped her from painting, but it had added in a pain so bright that it took her breath each time she had slapped color to the wall. The paint had burned like fire, and she had been afraid at the time that the scar would end up a bad one. Not that that had stopped her from painting. This was the last room, but daylight was rapidly leaving. Shadows lengthened across the floor, tangled and flickering from the candlelight. Her eyes could deceive her, but she trusted her touch. Fingertips, palm, wrist, even the smallest painted nail head was easy to find.

She used the hammer to pull free a tiny deceptive nail that had been driven into the wall above the wall socket. She had learned long ago not to be surprised by these odd nails. Their random placements seemed to her just part of the mystery of what made people human. Nonsensical nails in walls. Little mines, waiting for her tender palm. The crumpled paper bag by her knee was partially full of these nails. All sizes, some new, some old, all abandoned and left behind. She felt no sorrow for them. Tying the bag with a bit of string she found on the floor, she threw it out the open back door. The little pack skidded across the wooden porch and then fell into the high overgrown grass. Heavy seed heads bobbed, laden, quivering from the blow.

The smell of the paint was always a pleasure to her. The rich bitter stinging taint of it. The screwdriver made metallic thunking clicks as she worked it around the rim. The portable cd player, mummified in plastic behind her, shifted to the next cd and the loud abrupt thunder of sound made her smile. Some things were meant to be done in silence, others weren't. She didn't reach for a stick to stir with, she just plunged her hand into the cold thick paint. Her hair was pulled back into a tight braid to keep it out of the way. She closed her eyes and shivered, mixing the thick color. Blank naked wall in front of her, vulnerable, empty, and waiting. She stood, palm cupping a handful of the slick cold paint. Thick drops falling onto the cream carpeting, staring at the wall, breathing. The music moved in her back, softening her bones, shifting through her blood. She closed her eyes and turned her hand, pressing to the wall, paint running cold and thick down her arm, dripping to the floor. The greasy slick slide of the latex paint, heady lubricant as she slid her hand across the wall. The color like a violent act upon the surface. She dipped her other hand into the paint, and began to change the wall, making it into something new.

Carrying the almost empty bucket, she paused just long enough to take a full one as she moved down the hall. Paint drying on the back of her hands and arms, twisting the look of her skin, making her seem strange even to herself. The next room whispered to her, trying to tell its secrets. Offering it's past, but she wasn't there for it's past. She was there to shape it's future. The steady clink of the lid and the screwdriver were as regular and even as a heart beat. No pauses, no hesitation. She lifted the almost empty bucket and poured its contents along the length of one wall. Ragged red paint ran down in heavy rivulets. Rapid, her fingers moved across the lines, laying in patterns and rhythms, changing the landscape. The empty bucket lay abandoned on the floor like a used condom.

Slick with paint, she slid her worn tennis shoes and socks off, leaving them at the base of the stairs. The wood cool on her bare feet, the cans heavy in her hands she climbed the stairs. Just three little bedrooms were upstairs. The first one went easy, walls marking out as time sucked through small spaces. It was late and she knew it, but she wasn't done and would paint until she felt complete.

The second room was small, tight with a mean little closet. The lid of the new can lifted easily in her fingers, exposing a shockingly blue black purple. Bruises. She looked up at the yellow walls. It would do. She stepped into the hall abandoning the room to pull free her worn t-shirt. Roughly rubbing the red from her hands and arms. The paint rolling free of her skin, leaving her raw and pink. She would let this room have its bruises. When her first handful of paint hit the wall, it did so with a stinging slap. Long slides and ringing strikes, her hands throbbing, she painted, fast and hard.

Panting, she kneeled on the floor, empty bucket next to her. She smiled as she looked at the room and made herself stand on her shaking legs. The bucket, she lifted and sent through the window, shattering glass everywhere. She walked out without looking back.

In the landing, she peeled off her speckled faded jeans, using them to wipe the paint from her skin, scrubbing it free so that it wouldn't taint the next room. A bucket on either side of the door, the last room called to her with its legs parted. She closed her eyes, and took off her bra as well. The black paint would never come out, so she abandoned it. She paused at the opening to the last room, and un bound her braid, letting her hair fall across her damp back, clinging to her skin. Taking a deep breath, she bent and lifted the cans, the screwdriver gripped with two fingers. She entered private spaces, and she painted. She painted until it was done.

Her feet were slick on the stairs, and she had to hold the banister and step carefully down. Red was marked across her belly, down her arms, speckled on her legs, tipping her breasts. Her hair darkened with sweat, clung to her cheeks and back. She placed the CD player by the porch to be picked up later by the photographer.

Standing naked in the cold of the morning, the hose sheeting frigid water onto her skin, her teeth chattered. She rubbed her hands, her belly, paint rolling off in thick chunks, falling to the ground. He would come soon, to shoot photographs, but she would be gone. That was their deal anyway. She'd do the work; he'd take the shots and not analyze the crap out of it. With a sweep of her arm, she bent over, and drew her hair into the stream of the water. It was cold enough that it burned against the skin on her hands and forearms.

The water off, she squeezed out her hair and started walking toward the woods. The sky was just starting to lighten, and it wasn't far to home. Naked and raw skinned she left the house painted red, with a broken window behind her.