Shivani Kshirsagar

Vanilla

adjective

— Merriam Webster

Y'ever think about what absolute mad decadence we live in that "vanilla" means "plain"
— Tumblr user teal-deer

I am horny enough to think of him and his dry hands, his razor-like stubble, lips that disappear each time he smiles. He is beautiful the way a good shit is beautiful; I miss him on the days I am constipated.

We met on Twitter. I was lonely. He was a sob story. Every bad thing in the world had happened to him. Parents who should have divorced but fucked loud enough to rock the house. Belts and fists that shifted the shape of his nose. A stutter that rose anytime voices were raised. A once chain smoker, now an alcoholic in denial. A perceived eloquence to formulate a formless self. A hatred for the body punished with gluttony. 

He liked those sappy posts particular to Twitter, once the staple of Tumblr that romanticized sadness, aped by angsty teenagers on Pinterest and 8tracks. The “your grief is blood red, Richard Siken” type shit. Benign quotes on the broken soul by Unknown, indie film screen grabs, e-citizenry’s pontification on love, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

He had manufactured, maybe even perfected, a kind of darkness that begged to be someone’s musing or muse. How beguiling. Add performative feminism to the mix and he was the perfect Soft Boy.

The first time we texted, our conversation about Encanto (he had replied with a Bruno gif under one of my tweets), his seeming genderlessness (I mistook him for a woman), and our shared love for alt-J (we were thinking of our exes), suddenly turned to farts. He asked me what sort of a farter I was. A stinker? A thunderclapper? A noiseless releaser?

What’s there to feel but pity?

I loved him.

Then I didn’t.

Then I hungered for him.
We should have stayed that way. Met every now and then. Fuck and forget and fuck again.

He was the first to see me masturbate. We were on a video call. I came seven times that day, on a smooth, cushionless wooden chair, my pussy wet, sore, and thrumming with effort. I watched him watching me, agonizing at my ecstasy. You don’t get to have this, this sweat and this body. You don’t get this boy. How hard are you? Shall I squeeze your balls? His writhing made me come the eighth time, his groans made my ninth, and another I pushed out just because 10 is a perfect place to end.

When I opened my eyes, I saw him licking his lips. I imagined his breath on my face. Moist. I stopped myself from touching myself again.

💋💋💋

Desire is boundless once divested of shame. I wish I was shameless.

The sixth time we met, I coated my nipples with chocolate crumbs and watched him eagerly clean me. That’s what I wanted, more than anything. I wanted to be his meal, for him to neatly skin me, chain me, whip me, torture me, abuse me, break me. That takes a degree of deviance, no?

I couldn’t handle his pinches even as I begged for them. Nor the scratches, bites, or hair pulls. Our mutual threshold for pain was laughable.

Still I fantasized. Maybe a dungeon would have done the trick? Handcuffs? Manacles? Whips for starters? A sexy backless top, easy skin and access, only body. Showing up outside his hotel room in a hoodie with no bra inside. Or purchase sexy, barely there lingerie and make wicks out of his chest hair, twisting it between my fingertips. His rough hands on the soft of my belly that glides down deep into me…

Whenever I did see him, I’d lose most of my drive. He was much steamier in my head, and it was that steam that drove my engine even in the absence of water.

On days when there were no hotel rooms, we tormented ourselves by making out in autos, alleys, shady corners of the park, desperate and hard, me pulling my pants lower and lower, asking if this was good enough for him. He moaned yes and yes and then, “Why must you wear anything in the first place?”

The other time, I flashed him over a work day lunch of cold egg fried rice and soppy manchurian balls in a Chinese restaurant, the crowd behind me, my clit shivering. What if anyone saw us? Good. Then I am free to fuck him on the table. I had him click pictures of me, brought his hand for a quick squeeze and a lingering fondle. Only he was allowed to see the beauty before him.

When we rose, it hurt to walk.

That day I wished I could ditch work, book a room, and ride the daylights out of him. Wish now, in the cold of the night, that I had the conviction to see it through.

Blind desire makes no room for thinking. Ride the high while it lasts.

💋💋💋

There’s only so much fingering I can take. His mouth burned me and I googled “UTIs signs”, “UTI what is”, “can we die from UTI”.

He agreed not to show his dick out of respect for my disgust towards penises. An ex was to blame. Yet I felt I owed him a blowjob for his patience and consideration.

No matter how many nudes I sent, no matter how many virtual strip teases I organized for him, I never felt satiated. I wanted something more, a sinner’s urge to be hollowed out. I wanted to be the food that fed his disgust. I wanted his loathing, to wear it and see how it looked on me. I hungered for a particular slant of humiliation. 

Once I twisted his nipples. Once he drove his half bitten nails into my back. Soon, the games got bland.

After nearly a year of dating, when the break up call finally knocked on our doors, I was relieved. I was getting tired of being Strong. The expectation of it. And I was getting tired of his all consummate love for his own victimhood. By the time I tolerated our first kiss in a dingy bar, I discovered that a man can either love a woman or his own wound. Or make a new wound out of his woman. But he can’t woo both at once.

Perhaps my begging to be wounded had something to do with that. Or am I giving him too much credit? Something about controlling people wanting release in abjection. Something like that. I wouldn’t know.

Lately, I have taken to stalking his blocked Twitter accounts and feel my insides twist in cruel contempt. I see him subtly, sometimes overtly, blame me for our end. I see him hurl himself into the arms of other e-weepers. It’s a massive pity party, except he refuses to mention the ways he harmed me which weren’t sexy or consensual. The reasoning behind “hurt people hurt” gives me brain rot.

When boredom stretches long and hard, I catch myself wishing he had tied me up with that stupid tie he wore to weddings and funerals that he had brought for just the purpose the last time we saw each other. Grab my throat, feel my pulse under his fingers. Call him “daddy” and be his silly little girl. Sit on his prickly face and have him eat me out. Bruise my arms.  Something to show for it instead of a private grief. 

💋💋💋

I think of that fart question today. He didn’t let go of it for months. Every now and then he’d spring it on me, as if waiting to take me by surprise, as if I’d answer that question when smacked with it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, he’d say. It just farts. What’s the big deal?
“Why do you wanna know?”
“its rlly not that deep i ask evryne i meet jus want to knw yk.”
“But why?”
“jst bcuz… i like the dirt of it.  ppl hate armpit sweat tht isnt theirs i like it tho.”
“Ew, why?”
“ppl are disgusting and i  like disgusting”

To one such as him, I could not confess the disgusting desires that ran deep in me each time we kissed and undressed in cramped, cockroach infested hotel rooms or borrowed flats. How maddening it was to be a body wanting.

My hand rests on my chest. I feel the curve of my breath, the way it quickens, its lasciviousness.

I touch myself to the sounds of gushing summer water straight from scalding metallic taps, fingers lithe in their exactness, disappearing into my twisted, heaving body, moaning, gasping, releasing…

That day when he saw me masturbate, I wasn’t even thinking about him.
I pictured my nakedness and came.

🍦🕯️