ASPASIOLOGY
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Tristan Silverman in Response to Daphne Gottlieb

Getting Fucked Really Deep[1]
 
When I think about sexual liberty, I don’t think about the oppressed
feminists cursed by Victorian times, [2]  undressed, writhing goddesses,
 
those, who the sharp tongued daughters nightly called whore,
but my ex-lover, who was the progeny of a French-lipped Spanish
 
mom and a Palestinian-American mysterious professor[3]. I forgot my Jewish
father’s warnings about meeting liberal women in college (though he never
 
went) when I met her[4] straddling a motorcycle in mid-November
because I only just learned how much I craved a woman in tight
 
jeans and boots and hair so fuck-you-wild because she barely said a word,
but when she did, she asked me to go for a ride. I wrote my address on her
 
arm in red pen three times and said, “anytime.” If you have ever been so
blessed to have a date begin with a woman shaped like an animal’s prayer[5]
 
outside your window, then you know what happens next: the engine
sizzling your thighs stretched tight below her stiff leather jacket[6],
 
the shape of your bodies pressed together like a stich on the back of her
bike[7] and later wearing nothing but earrings.[8] When I think of queer sex
 
I do not think of the careless minded or the disease-prone.[9] I do not think
of boring or mundane intimacies[10] (though I do know a number of folks
 
who would fall into this category), rather I think of that ex-lover and me
in my bed reducing ourselves to flesh, fantasy and silicon--[11]surrounded
 
in empty beer bottles, ashtrays, pile mixtures of library books and laundry
left over from my lingering adolescence amplified by the badly spun tribal
 
beats[12] a roommate blasted from the speakers down the hall—because
it was the closest I had come at that point to anything resembling authenticity,
 
anything lacking codes[13] or because for the first time, I felt neither woman
nor man when she slipped a harness around my waist and her wet pelvis fell
 
into place above mine.[14] I have been beaten, tricked, fool-hearted, terrified,
brainwashed and dumbfounded[15] but when I think of feminine queer women
 
I refuse to think of that instant-membership to the sleaze party[16] where anyone
who is too old and under-bathed/welcome/dressed can drip their ick into her
 
personal space.[17] I think of the girl’s hips coaching mine when I think
of radically queer sex. I think of her coffee-colored back and sumach
 
shaded nipples. I think of an accident encounter connecting separate worlds
into galaxies[18] and us two, too, there in my bed joined by movement[19]
 
and a purple limb[20] we later named Frida or Artemis or Fred;
joined by a movement we inherited from the dead.[21]
 
 
 
 
 
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] Daphne Gottlieb, Adult books.com

[2] “Why is it we can remember the bad things so well, but not the good things?” Ibid

[3] “I have….the tiniest, shiny particles of moments, freezeframes: In the one I visit the most, I was 20.” Ibid

[4] “That week I did not hear from him.” Ibid

[5] “Here’s a piece of perfect ruination” Ibid

[6]  “The smell of cut grass.” Ibid

[7] “The white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces.” James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

[8] “and my whole body almost a seize.” Daphne Gottlieb, Adult books.com

[9] “Isn’t it funny that perfection is a state and ruination is a story?” Ibid

[10] “What would it be like to let him feel desired, adored.” Ibid

[11] “There was also the small, disturbing fact that thinking about getting used by a pathetic, unattractive guy in a porno booth made me wet. Fuck. Really wet.” Ibid

[12] “Tell me about the music you listened to” Daphne Gottlieb, Adult books.com

[13] “They pressed upon his brain as upon his lips as though they were the vehicle of a vague speech.” James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

[14] “The gasp and twist of skin and bone” Daphne Gottlieb, Adult books.com

[15] “Apparently, I have lived long enough.” Ibid

[16] “His frustration and history better than the present.” Ibid

[17] “His breath was something fetid under insistent wintergreen.” Ibid

[18] “The earth continued to spin.” Ibid

[19] “open windows that left everything in nuclear glare.” Ibid

[20] “I hadn’t ever seen a 101/2 inch cock” Ibid

[21] “There are few moments like that, and you get to keep them” Ibid



​Tristan Silverman began writing poetry in Chicago’s poetry community and has been living in San Francisco for the last three years. Tristan is a recent Alum of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley (2016), and is published in numerous journals including Boxcar Poetry, decomP, Pedestal Magazine, Up The Staircase Quarterly, and November 3rd Club..

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