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The Tame Ones
-After Terrance Hayes
It is 1987 for only a few minutes. This is the part in the movie where the daughter brings home her first real boyfriend. This is the part where her mother dips the boy’s name up and down her throat at the door like a bird dangling from its string by its feet, Santiago, Santiago.
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I had a dream that I slept in a field by a highway and was woken by a splinter of light tucked in my eye, and there were egrets staring down at me as if I needed to tell them something.
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Somewhere humid and cramped there is the unmistakable groan of a woman who mastered the raspy music of herself as she strummed the pleats of skin inside her with the grooves of her finger. There is the sound of a man beating off so hard that his eyes yellowed into a pair of poached eggs and rolled away somewhere inside him as if to look for where the music in his head was coming from. What they have in common is how close they come to prayer towards the end. With one tired breath. Jesus.
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There was the girl in the corner of a paltry strip club who was a small knot dipped in pink. I thought to myself I want to help you out of here, but she looked right at me and without speaking, her pendulous eyes said, Honey, you can't afford that.
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There was her full body tattoo of a koi fish wrapping itself around me like a boa as I closed my eyes and thought of other things. The koi pressed itself against my chest and bobbed up to my mouth for air every now and then with its wide wet mouth.
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Saying her name felt like rolling a flesh colored candy in my mouth.
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She squeezed out the sounds of her name like a wine press, and mine slipped out from all sides as if she had pulled it out of me, as if I was hearing it for the first time. I buried my head where her thighs met trying to peel off her tattoo with my tongue.
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And this is the final scene: where the girl hooks a finger down her throat and the lights go out on stage and it’s completely dark in the theatre and the audience begins clapping but they can still hear her weeping into the mic, and they don't know whether to run up and help or keep clapping.
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Somewhere else at the same time a scarf undresses a coat, then undresses itself. A little black dress gets naked and kisses the floor like a dirty pile of lips.
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