SEX FOR POETS - 06 - SUGAR
SEX FOR POETS - 06 - SUGAR
a rough draft, released chapter by chapter
WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT
Reader discretion is advised for scenes of unique and creative sexuality, pervasive lewd imagery and language, and down the line, scenes of violence that may be offensive to some readers. If you have delicate sensibilities, best move along.
CHAPTER 6: SUGAR
3 weeks before the festival
DAHLIA
The Women’s Chaste Collective of Art is a cube of an old coach house, long ago renovated into four individual apartments.
After Clara’s grandfather helped her purchase the home, she promptly demolished all non-load bearing walls in one of the lower units to create The Common Area, a vast expanse of creative and communal relaxation. The other downstairs unit was rented to Johanna and Laurel due to their large scale work, since the first floor ceilings are vaulted. Upstairs, Dahlia’s apartment is beside Clara’s, and when Dahlia cannot sleep, she sometimes presses her ear to the wall, listening for Clara’s deep, resonant breaths. She tries to take them into her own lungs, as though Clara’s breaths were her own, lulling her into peaceful oblivion. But tonight, Dahlia heard nothing.
Tonight, like many that have come before, Dahlia cannot sleep, and she creeps downstairs, collapsing onto the couch in The Common Area, staring at the large window that overlooks the street.
The Common Area is refreshed monthly with magazines of all kinds. How-to books on business and marketing for creatives. Guides on purity standards. Instructional books for drawing flowers, or architecture, or family portraits lay strewn across a glass-top table. Dahlia has heard rumors that there were once books on drawing the human form. But that was during the Immoral Generations, and most rumors from that time lean closer to folklore than fact, like synthetic breasts or painted lips.
It always smells nice down here. Clara mixes the oils of spearmint and rosemary each morning, adding the blend to a mister by the window.
Just like its neighboring studio, the ceiling here is vaulted, and the wall that faces the street houses a giant pane of glass from floor to ceiling. It was Clara’s idea.
Let them see us, she said. Invite the people in.
In the middle of the night, slight haloes of street lamps filter through the condensation on the glass, a menagerie of liquid gemstones. Sometimes, Dahlia makes patterns from the light, spotting faces among the glitter. And sometimes this effect lulls her into that elusive oblivion that so frequently eludes her.
There’s usually an absence of sound in The Common Area at night. Footsteps dissipate, and errant sounds are absorbed as though the walls are made of foam. But this night, Johanna and Laurel are tinkering in their neighboring studio. Dahlia can hear footsteps clacking across the floor, and large canvases being moved or assembled.
“Again?”
Dahlia jumps. When she discovers Clara by the door, she relaxes. “You too?”
“I’ll brew us some tea.”
The soft scent of steeping chamomile flowers soon joins the spearmint and rosemary still lingering in the air. Clara brings a platter to the table, and Dahlia wraps her hands around a warm mug, plucking a sugar cube from the bowl on the table.
Tonight, Clara is wearing a pale blue cotton jumper and a faraway look in her eyes.
Clara blows on her tea and stares at the constellations sparkling on the window. “I saw my grandfather last week.”
“How is the old bastard?”
“There’s a man across the hall. Another resident. Mister Embry…”
Clara trails off as a lone car drives south on Magazine Street. The passing lights ignite the dew on the window, a galaxy exploding.
“He seems sad.”
“Aren’t they all sad?”
“This one’s different. He got to me.” Clara sips her tea. “He called me Greta.”
“Why?”
“Dementia, I suppose. In his eyes, every woman he sees is his wife.”
“What do you think it’s like?” Dahlia asks. “To be somebody’s wife?”
“Like you are owned, I imagine. Like you were put on this earth to be seeded, and everything else you wanted for yourself is immediately annihilated.”
Dahlia chuckles at the word, seeded.
“I’m serious, Dahl. Thank God we chose eternal chastity. I don’t even want to think about the alternative. Or what that’s like. Do you think it’s painful?”
“It’s only once a month,” Dahlia offers.
“By law, sure. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors. Once you’re married, you have obligations that are no longer your choice. It’s terrifying.”
Dahlia adds a second sugar cube to her tea, and swirls the cup until it dissolves. “Have you ever been curious?”
Clara pulls back, peering at Dahlia with large, doe eyes. “Curious about what, Dahl?”
Dahlia notes the lifting of Clara’s upper lip, the creases on her worried forehead, tension in her gaze. Another car illuminates the window, and though it hurts her eyes, Dahlia stares into the blinding light as it passes. She takes a deep breath.
“Sugar,” she says. “You never have any with your tea. Don’t you ever want to try it?”
Clara pulls the mug to her chest. “Our bodies must be pure,” she says, “in every way possible.”
“A little sugar won’t undo a lifetime of discipline,” Dahlia offers. “I think we owe ourselves a little indulgence every now and then. For all the good work we’re doing here. All the sacrifice. Don’t you agree?”
Clara bites her lip and glances to the door, and a smile unfurls across her cheeks. “Okay,” she says. “But just one.”
Dahlia leans closer and inhales through her mouth, taking in the scent of Clara’s hair, trying to taste it on her tongue, as she drops the sugar cube into her friend’s tea.
Dahlia pulls Clara’s feet onto the sofa and drapes an afghan over her bare legs. She walks their empty mugs to the kitchen sink, and glances one last time to the sprawling wall of glass before creeping up the stairs. When she enters her studio, she bolts the door behind her. Johanna and Laurel would never visit at this hour, and Clara is fast asleep in The Common Area, but Dahlia can never be too careful.
Sleep will not find her tonight, so while the others rest peacefully in their dreams of rolling hills or winged journeys through sunny skies, Dahlia will work on her secret sculpture.
In the back of her closet, she pushes aside hanging clothes, and removes a stack of sweaters from atop a box.
She pulls the box out gently, unfolding the cardboard flaps and peeling the thick plastic wrap away from the form.
This piece can never be fired in the kiln. It will never be glazed. Never finished. It can never truly exist, but rather it lives here, in her closet, condemned to a state of eternal submission. Perpetually wet, pliant, and ever-ready to be molded and remolded many times over.
The sculpture rests on a small square of wood atop a banding wheel, and Dahlia walks it across the studio to her work table. It is made of fine porcelain—the smoothest clay available in the city—and the surface takes on a slight creaminess as she mists it with water from a spray bottle.
From base to tip, the sculpture is no more than 16 inches tall, about 8 inches wide. Beginning withe a rib cage, the porcelain woman seems to arc forward, her breasts sloping from her clavicle, forced inward by the pressure of her arms. The form continues up, the slim beginning of a chin jutting forward, mouth slightly parted. The woman seeks something; this was clear to Dahlia from the first moment she began to block in the basic shape.
Clay does not always conform to the will of the maker. Dahlia imagines it’s a relationship much like that between a writer and a character. Sometimes the character grows larger than the writer, going rogue, taking on a life of her own.
And that is what happened here. Dahlia did not set out to sculpt a nude woman. She’d be a loon to do such a thing. Not only must she safeguard herself against immoral accusations, but she has the Collective to think of. She is a representation of the cause now. The greatest and most righteous cause. But this woman demanded to be birthed nonetheless.
Dahlia mists the her once more, watching a slippery condensation bead along her sharp collarbone and drip down a breast, pooling atop the wood plank.
She positions both hands on the busts’s shoulders, pressing her thumbs into the indents. She massages them, deepening the burrows. She slides her finger across the back, tracing the lines she made a week ago, those depressions between the ribs. But no matter how long she delays, Dahlia’s hands always find the creamy clay of the breasts. Dahlia can never seem to get the shape right. Perhaps if those rumored human body books did exist, she’d have better luck.
But she doesn’t mind the practice.
