BRUISES
You’re choking on
your candy flesh.
Britney breaks up with him while he’s painting her
toenails.
“Justin,” she says quietly, firmly. She’s laying on the bed
of some nameless hotel room, on her back with one leg straight, one bent. He’s
sitting Indian-style in the v of her legs, holding her sole gently in his hand,
as if he’s cupping something delicate.
“Hmm?” he inquires, seeming fixated on his task. When the
polish on her toenail smears, he wipes it with his thumb, a black streak edging
across his skin. Britney likes black polish; has ever since the Harper’s Bazaar
shoot.
“I think that we should see other people.” It feels so
clichéd on her tongue, but tastes good in her mouth.
When he looks back up at her, she’s staring blankly at the
ceiling, blond hair spread out on the pillow like a halo. He smiles at the sight
of it, then turns back to her foot, blowing softly on the wet varnish. It looks
like black tar.
“Mmm,” he replies neutrally, his voice a low, soothing
hum.
Britney sighs, a half-frustrated, half-affectionate sound,
and then closes her eyes, giving in, if only for the moment.
* * *
Help me, she says,
I am not free.
When she wakes up, her fingernails are painted too. Black,
shiny like oil. Tiny dots of silver glitter sparkle when she moves her hand.
She admires them quietly, then says, raising her voice so he
can hear, “They won’t let me keep them this way, you know.”
He comes out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel over the soft
fuzz covering his skull, and shrugs. “Maybe.” His nails are painted too, and she
knows they’ll let him keep them, just like they let him keep his hair the way it
is. She runs a hand through her own blond hair, feeling it brittle and dry
between her fingers.
They wouldn’t let her shave hers off.
She beckons him over to the bed, and he sits on the edge
without protest, letting the towel drop from his hands. He always does
everything she tells him to do, and its both annoying and
endearing.
She takes his hand and lays it on her thigh, letting him feel
the silky skin, covered with fine, soft stubble. (She doesn’t bother to shave
when she’s with him.) Then she picks up a cotton ball from the night table,
drenching it in remover and stripping his nails of color, one by
one.
He lets her, without protest.
* * *
I pay good money
not to be ignored.
Then why am I a
teenage whore?
Justin never lets her go, even when she sleeps with other
boys. Even when she sleeps with other girls. Even when she writes him long
letters, describing Peter’s hands and Abby’s tongue and Drew’s long, beautiful
thighs in perfect, detached detail. She surrounds herself with flesh for his
benefit, but it never seems to faze him.
She even gets another boyfriend once, a man who is nothing
like Justin. He doesn’t obey her, ever, and when he fucks her he leaves bruises
on her soft, vulnerable skin. When she visits Justin she wears sleeveless tanks
that show off the rows of purple fingerprints on her upper arms, and she tells
the press that they’re from rehearsing with her dancers. She tells Justin the
truth.
She breaks up with him, though, after Chris corners her in
the hallway, telling her warningly that “those aren’t the right kind of
bruises.” At the time she shrugs, annoyed with his interference, but she
secretly agrees with him, so she dumps him over the phone, the next
day.
He lets her.
* * *
Is she pretty on the
inside?
Is she pretty from
the back?
She hates her skin. Now that her makeup guy has disallowed
tanning, she has to use spray-on tanner, so she’s mostly orange.
She loved tanning, so much that she got a bed put on her bus.
She loved the bright white heat of the ultraviolet rays on her naked body, the
coffin-like box, but she also loved it when she had to stop, and her skin turned
milk-white and soft.
Now she looks faker than ever, and she hates it. She
remembers when she liked the way she looked, skin like golden butter and hair
blonded like the sun. Now she looks like a fucking Barbie doll with her white,
even grin, her orange plastic skin, her brittle yellow hair. She feels like she
should be shut up on display, like her dozens of Marie Alexander dolls, behind
the doors of a glass cabinet.
When Justin buys her one of his dolls, its funny. When he
buys her one of her own, its not.
* * *
All waste and
void, all waste and void.
Britney takes up smoking because she thinks he’ll hate it,
but secretly he loves it. He loves the sight of her smoking by the window,
golden in the early morning light, her tiny wrist bent and fragile, cigarette
clutched between her first two fingers. He even loves the taste of tobacco when
he licks the inside of her mouth.
Once she tasted like rainwater. He thinks he likes this
better.
He considers taking it up, too, but Brit laughs and tells
him, “Don’t even think about it, J. your voice is husky enough.”
When he asks about her voice, she laughs again, this time
humorlessly, and grinds her cigarette out on the table. It’s alarmingly close to
her other hand, and he flinches when he sees a spark leap onto her tanned flesh.
“How often do you think they let me sing live?” she asks.
He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just takes her
hand, wiping off the smudge of black ash.
* * *
East is
east,
West was
west,
And mine was you
and mine was best.
She likes to watch them together. When she turns on MTV,
they’re there, smiling at each other shyly, even though they’ve known each other
for years.
They’re pretty together.
* * *
She’s
sassy,
She’s walking
tall.
She thinks about basketball a lot. About how powerful she
always felt on the court, actually using her beautifully developed muscles
instead of just having them for show. She usually feels like a zoo tiger, long
and sleek and beautiful, but with no real purpose.
She knows that Justin made it the main event of Challenge for
the Children, just for her, because she almost never gets to play anymore.
Usually her nails are too long, and she loves that she gets to cut them short
for that one game a year, gets to put her hair back in a ponytail and act almost
like a normal girl.
When she bruises her leg on the court, she’s not allowed to
play anymore, even in the charity game. When they tell her that, she bumps into
everything she can for two solid weeks, until her legs are covered in new and
fading bruises. They give in.
The next time she sees Justin, he runs his finger over a
yellow-black bruise on her shin. “Its kind of pretty,” he says. She kind of
agrees with him.
She likes bruises better when they’re
self-inflicted.
* * *
Just like a pro
she takes off her dress
And she kicks you
down in her snow-white pumps.
Britney kisses JC because she wants to kiss JC, and because
he wants to kiss JC. At least, that’s what she tells him, after he curses her
for a solid five minutes. JC just looks at them both with wide, hurt eyes, and
leaves the room, letting them be alone.
“What the fuck do you mean?” he spits at her. He can’t ever
remember being this mad. She’s fucked around with other people before, but never
anyone close to him. Never anyone close to them. Never anyone who could
be so easily hurt when she discards them, as JC would be.
Britney rolls her eyes and goes back to packing. “I’m
breaking up with you,” she says, sneaking in one of his shirts. He knows that
she’ll sleep in it, missing him every night, so he lets her.
But still, he scowls at her. “Why did it have to be JC?” he
persists.
“That’s what I should ask you. You’re the one that wants
him.” She says this gently, like its something that he should already
know.
“I don’t want anyone but you,” he says, feeling
desperate.
She zips her bag, then walks up to him slowly. He closes his
eyes before she even touches her lips to his, and when he licks the inside of
her mouth, she tastes like tears, not cigarettes or rainwater.
He doesn’t know which one he likes best.
Britney pulls back, the runs her hand enviously over the soft
fuzz on his scalp. “I’m breaking up with you,” she says again.
He always gives her anything she wants. He lets
her.
She tears the hole
even wider.
THE END
Lyrics from the album ‘Pretty On The Inside’ by Hole.