Broadcast Lust

Chapter 3: Tessa Is In Hell

August 23, 5:58PM Emerald City Hot Yoga, Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA Meet "The Girl In Pink"

I think I'm in hell.

I mean, I don't even know if I believe in hell, exactly. I'm not sure. The whole idea of absolute evil and being forced to spend eternity in a really hot place burning and screaming and suffering and being punished because you masturbated too much or ate shellfish or were a serial killer or were gay just seems kind of hokey and kind of inhumane to me. (Just to go on record so there's no confusion I definitely don't think serial killers should get off the hook, but I think masturbators and fornicators kind of punish themselves enough already with all the soul-crushing guilt knowing they're sinning and what they are doing is dirty and wrong and they are ruining themselves, don't they?)

All I'm saying is while I know it's not my decision, if you just do the math on "eternal damnation" it's obvious the punishment is pretty much ALWAYS, like, totally outsize compared to the crime and that maybe some kind of compromise could be reached.

Even if you do something INSANELY AWFUL wouldn't BILLIONS of years being forcibly "made love to" (that's a euphemism just in case you couldn't tell) by demons and devils with massive engorged and spiked (for his pain) "members" (euphemism) eventually be enough?

And how does that work, anyway? Isn't the body just a vessel for the soul? Do you even have . . . orifices when you're in hell or . . .?

Like, even Hitler (Oh, dammit, Tessa, it never goes well when anybody brings up Hitler. You should stop.)

We can all agree Hitler is one of the absolute worst people in all of history. But he "only" did all those atrocities over the course of less than 10 years which is really NOTHING when you stretch it out over an ETERNAL time scale. And didn't God himself flood, like, the WHOLE world and kill WAY more people?

(Sorry. Sorry. Shouldn't have said that, sorry.)

I don't know. It's confusing. Whenever I think about hell I keep wondering how much it must cost to keep someone there for a year (Fast fact: It costs about $35,000 a year to incarcerate an adult male in the United States).

With so many sinners and such a wide variety of sins that can get you sent there, I figure HELL would have to be really crowded and have an insane infrastructure and must be really expensive to run and who's paying for it?

If you're a good person and go to heaven do you have to pay taxes from your eternal salvation to make sure all the "bad" people are properly punished for all eternity? Do you get to see what happens with your Hell Tax dollars? Do you get to choose who's punishment you fund? Do you get to watch?
 
 Babble. Babble. I'm a babbler. It's a stupid thing I do. When I'm nervous. And when I'm embarrassed. And when I'm angry at myself. And when I'm scared. And when I'm ashamed.

And right now I'm all of those things. Right now I wish I could just die. If I could will myself to just end right here right now I think I would. Except after what just happened. After what I just did, I know I'd go to hell. I know I'd burn. I know I'd be punished.

Because I know everyone can smell it. I know everyone can smell my shame. And I know I deserve this. I know it's all my fault.

My name is Tessa Gregg and I'm a good person. I mean, I try to be a good person.

It's very hard sometimes but I try.

I never masturbate, for instance.

I mean I want to a lot. Sometimes I just get these urges. But I don't do it. I'm too strong. I don't start because I think part of me knows that if I let myself start I won't be able to stop. I know if I give in even just once I'll become a slut and then I'll get what a slut deserves.

So when I get these urges I take a deep breathe and dig my fingernails hard into my palm. And when I'm back in control again I look at my hand and see deep smiling fissures looking up at me and know I did good. I know I survived. I know I'm not a slut.

I'm 23 now and I've been fighting for a long time. But when I was a teenager? When I was still weak? The urges got so bad I had to start wearing giant ski mittens to bed to keep my fingers from betraying me while I slept.

So many nights I'd lay awake staring at the ceiling smelling it, trying not to rub my thighs together, feeling my hungry fingers grasping and clenching in my mittens. Begging to be let out to ruin me. Begging to be let out to destroy me.

So I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I don't do anything wrong Because I know.

I know if I do even just once I'll give in forever. I know that awful hunger will take over. I know I'll lose control.

And I know if I lose control I'll burn forever and ever and ever.

Burn like I am right now. Burn with the anger and embarrassment and shame I deserve.

Because somehow I lost control. I fucked up and now I'm in hell.

I can feel my awful need throbbing between my legs and staining my tight little yoga pants. My new tight little yoga pants.

I'd just bought them this afternoon after I got off work. I made sure I had enough time before I came to class.

I went to the store. I took a deep breathe. I guess it was habit but I automatically grabbed the first pair I saw that looked big enough for FTG and kept my head down as I headed to the changing room. They were big. Huge. Baggy. Not like what the women at yoga wore at all.

"Honey, do you need help?" the sales girl asked. (Sales WOMAN. She's a WOMAN, Tessa and so are you.)

"Um. I guess I grabbed the wrong size by accident?" My voice was soft and high and hesitant.

I opened the door and the pretty blonde stared at me with a grin. I felt her eyes run down me, past my sweatshirt to the bunched and sagging yoga pants. She had a weird accent . . . Boston, maybe? Pale skin. Her smile was bright. Her face was kind. She talked like someone who chewed gum a lot. Like her jaw muscles were really strong and she could talk and talk forever and never worried about it because she had the confidence she was interesting enough you'd just keep listening.

"Elephant skin," she laughed and I felt mocked. I'd been called some names over the years but this was a totally new one.

"Hey, I'm just trying to—" (Don't do it, Tess. Don't blow up. Don't cry.)

"It looks like elephant skin, honey. The pants. They're supposed to hug your ass. Lift. Support. Drives the boys wild and makes other girls think you're a bitch," she said as she burst into the changing room with me, grabbed me by the shoulders turned me towards the mirror.

Her hands felt so strong. She was taller than me (most people are. I'm barely 5'3". It's hard to feel like an adult woman when you have to look up at everyone.

I took a deep breathe and all I could smell was her perfume. Or maybe that wasn't perfume at all? Maybe it was just her.

I could see her name tag in the mirror pinned to her tank top. It must be fun to wear yoga clothes to work all day. The name tag said Jane.

"Look how these are bunched up on you, honey," Jane said. "All wrinkled on your thighs. It looks like elephant skin. These are huge on you. You're tiny. Did you check the tag? Why would you grab a . . . "

I felt her fingers pull at the back of the pants. The waistband was so loose it took nothing at all for her long fingers to slip in.

"An EXTRA LARGE?" she scream-laughed. "Look how long the legs are. It's like you're walking around in your dad's pants. Why did you even grab these?"

Did she really not know? Could she really not tell?

"I was . . . bigger . . . I . . . shrank a bunch recently. I've always had to get the extra large and then hem the legs later."

"You can't really hem tights, honey. How much did you lose?"

"73 pounds," I said as matter of fact as I could. I didn't want to sound too boastful. I didn't want to sound too proud.

"Holy shit balls. That's amazing. Congratulations. You look fucking fantastic."

She high-fives me and I realize how small my hands are compared to hers.

"Well, you definitely aren't a EXTRA LARGE, honey. You're a . . ." I feel her hands on my waist suddenly. She lifts up my baggy sweatshirt, feel her warm hands on my skin.

Goosebumps. My eyes flutter closed. I dig my nails into the palm of my strong left hand.

"Ha. You're an extra small if you're anything at all now." Jane gives my stomach a congratulatory squeeze and I feel my left hand relax.

"How'd you do it?" she asks while dragging me by the hand through the store to a wall of spectacular and tight yoga pants.

"I ate better. I did a lot of yoga," I said. (And, I added in my mind, "I stopped hating myself quite so much and punishing myself and filling the pit of shame in my heart with cupcakes.")

"Well, you look fucking fantastic. Amazing. Hot. Let's see, I want to see you in . . . ahh!," she said as she pulled a pair of tights off the wall and dragged me behind her again like a child.

"What about the top?" she asked while careening through the store. I felt like the trailer of a Mac Truck that wouldn't be stopped for anything.

"Um . . ."

"The top, honey. You're not going to wear a sweatshirt to yoga are you?" and then there was that laugh again. That free and easy and confident laugh I tried to mimic when I was alone and playing "New Tessa" in the mirror at home.

"No, I . . ."

OK, yes. I was going to wear a sweatshirt to hot yoga. I'd done it before I'd done it for 9 months. 9 months ago "Fat Tessa Gregg" (FTG) walked into the hot yoga studio for the first time. FTG wore a baggy sweatshirt and baggy pants to her very first hot yoga class because that's what FTG always wore.

And it was awful but I . . . she . . . FTG endured it because FTG didn't need all the skinny "yoga people" mocking her in their minds while she bent and sweated and embarrassed herself.

"You need a cute top to go with your cute pants. How big are your tits?" Jane asked and I swear I saw a gleam in her eye.

"Um," I stalled.

"I'm sorry. 'What's your top size, ma'am?'" she corrected and I felt like I was being mocked again.

"32C I think?" I said. My breasts were the one thing that hadn't shrunk that much. I felt my nipples itch as a smile spread across her face.

"Big for such a small girl," she said as her strong hand reached out to grab a lemon- yellow sports bra with big, strong, supportive straps across the back.

"Let's try these on," Jane said with the excitement of a college cheerleader and dragged me back to the changing room.

"Stand up straight. Push your shoulders back, it's OK. You look amazing. Let yourself look amazing," Jane coached as we both looked at the girl (the woman) in the mirror.

I stood up straight. I pushed my shoulders back. I lifted my chin. I looked in the mirror and gasped.

The young woman in the mirror looked . . . I looked . . .

"You look fucking hot," Jane said as my eyes caressed Skinny Tessa Gregg in the mirror.

I'm a mutt. I just am. My mom is half Japanese, half Swedish-American (Grandpa and Grandma met during the war and he brought her back to the States when it was done.) Dad's side is more . . . confusing. Nobody seems to really know what he is though my best friend Kimmie in high school always said his deep voice, dark skin and green eyes were "Insanely fucking hot, Tess. Your dad is insanely fucking hot and I want to have his babies. I want to murder your mother and be your new step-mom, Tess, and then we will be a Disney movie." Which was pretty damned gross if you ask me (and she never did. I think.)

So then there's me.

When I was in 10th grade Allison Harrison started calling me "The Melting Pot" after we did a genealogy lesson in Biology class. She said it was partly because I'm a walking- talking United Nations right there in Albuquerque, New Mexico and partly because all the extra weight I'd put on since hitting puberty made me look like a melting candle.

Girls can be cruel.

But the young woman in the mirror didn't look like a melting candle or a melting anything at all. She looked . . . beautiful. Skin just dark enough to always look tanned. Strong arms. Tight belly. Shining green eyes.

"Really fucking hot," Jane said as she grabbed my bare shoulders and turned me so my butt was facing the mirror.

The deep pink yoga pants clung to my butt . . . to my ass. They supported. They lifted. Or at leas they tried to.

Honestly, I'm not sure the pants were doing much at all besides clinging like paint and showing off the thick new muscles in my calves and thighs and butt.

I shifted my hips and watched STG's . . . my butt flutter under the thin pink material. I heard Jane let out a half-laughing sigh.

"Incredible."

My eyes lingered on the mirror . . . on my back. The lemon-yellow straps crisscrossed from shoulder to shoulder. With my shoulders pushed back I could see the rippling muscles beneath the skin. I could see the lean strength in my arms. Strong but not bulky. "Athletic" but not "a body builder."

I let myself smile just a little. My cheek muscles ached a bit like they'd atrophied. Like they'd died from lack of use.

But I smiled anyway.

"The front's not bad either," Jane said with a little bit of devil in her voice. "I like your belly ring. Very sexy." I felt her fingernails glide across my belly and tease the simple hoop piercing I'd done last week. I'd gone alone. I'd taken a sick day to do it, even. Jane was the first person to see it.

I felt the tingle of absence on my flesh where hand had just been. I wondered when the last time I'd been touched was. I couldn't remember. My left hand convulsed reflexively, the sharp nails begging to embed themselves in my flesh. I nibbled my lip. I counted to 3. It passed.

I took a deep breathe and turned to face the mirror and felt like I was going to cry. "Heh. Are those hips or handles?" Jane asked.

"What? No, I don't . . . I'm not a . . . " I felt a rush of panic.

"It's OK, honey. I'm just joking. I'm just joking. You look great."

I looked at my hips and saw what she was talking about. My belly had gotten so flat. I saw the blueprint of a six pack sketched by some artist across my abdomen. I could see my hip bones poking like islands just above my flesh. The tight yoga pants bridged from hip to hip leaving a tiny gap between the waistband and my flat, smooth stomach. A tiny gap, I thought, just big enough for questing feminine fingers.

I grit my teeth. I tried not to think about Jane. I tried not to inhale the smell of her hair. I felt her fingers on my shoulders. I felt her nails tickle so briefly at the back of my neck. I tried not to think of her strong hands. I tried not to think of her long, feminine fingers.

"This top is industrial," she said. "You could run a marathon in it. Your beautiful tits won't shake too much and won't come loose no matter what you do. No matter what trouble you get yourself into."

I looked in the mirror. The tall, pale blonde with her hair to her shoulders. The short, dark, green-eyed brunette with her straight black hair in a pony tail. Jane had blue nails like a troubled, stormy sea. They were beautifully manicured but cut short like she was a woman who was used to using her fingers. Who needed her hands.

I watched the contrast of the women in the mirror. I felt the pads of Jane's fingers glide so softly up my arm.

"You look absolutely beautiful," she breathed in my ear. I watched the short brunette . . . I watched STG . . . I watched me as I tilted my head to the left. I felt warm. I felt like I was on a cloud. I felt lost.

Jane's hand climbed to the strong cords of muscle of my neck, her hand teased so lightly on my throat.

"So very, very beautiful. Such a beautiful, sexy girl."

I felt her fingers graze against my soft, soft lips. I felt that terrible heat beginning to build so deep inside of me. I felt my hips begin to shift all on their own. I felt my tongue questing forward to part my lips. To give Jane what she wanted. To taste her.

I fought back tears and felt sharp, sharp pain as my fingernails dug so hard into my palm. I closed my eyes. I felt a pounding in my head.

I smelled the beer and cigarettes on my father's breath. I heard my father's deep, commanding voice saying those words again and again: "You fucking listen to me, Tessa Olivia Gregg. You fucking listen and you do what you have to do because no daughter of mine is going to act like a fucking freak. No daughter of mine is going to act like a fucking slut. Fucking sluts get punished, Tessa. Fucking sluts go to hell. I ever find out you're acting like a slut and you will fucking regret it do you understand me?"

I stared at the floor. I clamped my legs tight together. I nodded my head. I cried. "Yes, Dad. I'm sorry Dad. I'm so sorry, Dad."

He towered over me by more than a foot. He was terrifying. I was 13. I hadn't gained the weight yet but it would all come in the next year. This was when it started. This is when I started to melt.

Jim Gregg - my dad - towered over me like he towered over almost everyone. He was almost a foot and a half taller than me and covered with thick, brutal muscle. His green eyes looked down at me with furious judgment.

He had my laptop. The laptop Mom had bought me with her own money when I got all A's on my report card.

"When I was growing up getting all A's just meant you wouldn't be punished she said in her weird accent. Miko Gregg - my mom - had moved around so much as a kid from Japan to the States to those years in South Africa when her Dad got a job there and mom and Grandma got to experience racism in a very special and terrible way.

Sometimes I think what attracted her the most to my father wasn't what he was but what he wasn't. He wasn't a cheater. He wasn't white.

"But it's a different time. A different time. Your generation needs rewards to build up your self esteem is what the books say. So here. I am proud of you, Tessa. You are a good daughter to me. You should have some self esteem."

And then I'd ripped open the wrapping paper to find a pristine white Apple iBook that opened up the whole world to me.

Until Dad checked my browser history (I was so stupid not to erase it. What was I thinking?) Until Dad found the stories his daughter was reading under the covers late at night with cocks and pussies and leather. Until Dad found out his daughter was becoming corrupted. Until Dad found out his daughter was becoming a slut.

He closed the laptop with so much force I thought he'd crack the lid. I held back a yelp.

"You know what's good for you, you'll come with me right now."
 I obeyed and followed him to the garage.

"Put these on," he said and handed me a pair of safety glasses. He put my laptop in the middle of the floor, right on the concrete right above the drain.

I felt panic rising in my chest. You can't put my laptop on the floor. You're going to scratch it!, I screamed in my head. kept my face impassive. I kept my fucking mouth shut.

And then my panic turned to quiet, resigned hysteria.

Dad walked to the corner of the garage. He hefted a 10 pound sledge hammer. He handed it to me. It felt so heavy in my small hands.

"This is for your own good, Tessa. Someday you're going to thank me for this. Now be a good girl. Make daddy proud, pumpkin. Show daddy you aren't a slut."

"Dad, I'm sorry. I . . .," I tried to protest but he just stared me down until I felt tears beginning to well at the bottom of my safety glasses.

I walked over to my laptop. I looked at my Queens Of The Stone Age sticker on the cover. I lifted the hammer. I let gravity do the work.

That night when I went to bed I wore mittens for the first time.

When I opened my eyes Jane was gone and the young woman . . . the girl in the mirror looked even smaller than before.

I almost left without buying anything at all, but no. I was proud. I should be proud and just because I was wearing clothes that actually fit didn't mean I was a slut no matter what my Dad would think.