from Emilia Prebeck: Aftercare

 Aftercare 

Ten or twelve hours later (about 24 hours after I boarded the plane), the place is called Schwutz: we're at Lana Del Rave. You, my Princess, are the first face I see again, the first arms to enclose me. And here we are. I finished a cocktail, smoked a joint, and time and space still don't make sense to me. But the lyrics though... 

We can slow dance to rock music, 

kiss while we do it,  

talk till we both turn blue... 

... but kiss we do not. We only draw our faces 

together ever closer, our lips resting next to each other, feeling each other's breath while I grab your ass and pull you closer to me in this sensuous dance we're entangled in, surrounded by red and blue lights and people who know that this is a sermon. And I feel like praying to you and to HER, and the three of us start to become ONE.  

Fuck yeah, give it to me,  

this is Heaven, what I truly want!  

But will we? I don't know. I feel like we've never came that close before. I do not feel your touch as something unknown, but... Is this, our friendly... Innocence lost?  

Anyway, you're art to me and yeah, if I truly want something, than this is it.  Purely. Stoned. Immaculate. 

... and then, after my way to O'Hare and my 10 hours flight and 

our first day in Berlin and the party and dance, we fall asleep next to each other and I'm gone, gone, gone within seconds.  

And it was good.  

Who are you and whom do you love? 

I wake up. There's coffee next to me and your hands running through my hair. Princess. Queen. Goddess. Your soft touch and your smile framed by the burning red of your wild hair. I've fallen already, I guess. But with you - haven't I stood in front of this sweet dreamy abyss anyway? Forever? Forever-ever? Forever-ever?! 

And you made breakfast for us. And we continue talking. 

And what is our talking but an endless dialogue staying ONE all the time but ONE giant hall filled with a thousand doors we step into and out of, a weave of thought saying things like "And I know that I'm healing because, just imagine, I walked past a group of older men and absolutely nothing happened within me, I just didn't care!", is what you mention - or musings about your ex girlfriend and your thoughts around that, built around an archaeology of your own poetry and some pondering over past mistakes, or your Loverboy with whom you're completely infatuated, but we both now how hard it is for you to stare into the eyes your own vulnerabilities - 'cause haven't we known each other for ten years now? Or then you listen to my writing and my thoughts about the new friends that I've left behind now, and a sentence like: "Seriously, all I wanna do is listen to Marvin Gaye unironically while coming closer and closer with someone in some warm, cuddly bed" - and you cry out: "Yes, a hundred percent, that's what I'm talking about!" Or we talk about Kanye and how to deal with the problematic personalities of the artists we maybe don't love but can't stop to appreciate in some sense? So I mention Teju Cole's Essay on Carvaggio1 and my theories on art consumption. Or we chat about pole dance and you wanting to take classes, so I say "Sure, babes, you're the born stripper and then you don't even have to let them touch you" - and you're hesitant and charmed. Then we walk to the Neue Nationalgallerie to see the Nan Goldin exhibition, which is wonderful, beautiful, horrific and opens up wounds we both carry within. It is especially Sisters, Saints, Sibyls that deeply touches me. So we talk about this pain and how we're dealing with it right now. Addiction, shame, parents - and I'm glad that I've met yours at least once (it must be at least six years ago, I believe), and I'm glad to know that they're for sure not less of a catastrophe than my own. And all the while I feel your touch on my thighs, my neck, my hand wrapped around yours... What about this absolute tension, girl?  

What are the consequences of silence?  

1 Teju Cole: "After Carvaggio", in: Black Paper, p. 3-29 (2021).

And we talk about us. You tell me how even when we got to know each other, you always felt like you so desperately wanted to be seen by me. Not just as a child but an equal. Ten years ago when I was 18 and you were what, 15? And how weirdly competitive you felt about my girlfriend back then. And how I had always thought: "I could fall in love with you any minute", but also you were my friends girlfriend and this was seriously nothing to consider. How you embodied so much of what I wanted to be - and the other way round, since you've always wanted that bibliographical brilliance and the name-dropping and the quotes and all that shit. And I guess it still is like that - we mirror each other things that we feel we lack. And again and again we're coming so close, it's insufferable. So I decide to ask you if "you wanna go somewhere with this tension? Like, we both feel that, right?" And you're glad that I ask and say "yeah, I don't know honestly. It's exciting, like... maybe we could venture into some kinky stuff or something if it feels right?" Word.  

And we talk about Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), a book I was absolutely obsessed with for a while, when I was around 20 or something. You talk about how you read it back then and what you got from it was, that life is nothing but a game in which we unlock new things, aspects, skills, achievements, intensities for ourselves. And I laugh and say: "That's funny 'cause I think I held quite a grudge against the book for a while, since I feel like I used his notions upon suicide as a means to whitewash my own suicidal ideation as something completely normal and healthy for a while... But I think you're interpretation of it is way healthier and way closer to what I feel right now as well."  

And you talk about Sartre and de Beauvoir and some of your thoughts about how their relationship might have been. In a fairy, dreamy way... 

And we talk about how friends with emotionally immature parents sometimes will have to co mother each other, 'cause what else are we gonna do?  

So we talk about trust and the ways that we care for each other.  

And again we fall asleep, next to each other, giving us warmth.  

And it was good. 

What is the shape of your body? 

We're made to believe that our bodies are strictly our own, right? Even though we all know that this is not the case. Claiming ownership of one's body might be an act of linguistic resistance against the fact that, indeed, we all are owned in some ways. And many might seem obvious; like capitalism's stranglehold over our labor power, the patriarchal way of claiming that our bodies are their choice, and its way of holding reproductive labor and metamorphosis hostage to a controlling symbolic father... One might add neo-colonial forms of slavery or disabled people's bodies being put into workshops etc. But then there are other dimensions where the lines become more blurry. Like all our bodies are finally owned by the earth, death and bacterial composition Or else, the highly philosophical adventure of this idea: that "we all owe an infinite debt to humanity, society, nature, or the cosmos (however one prefers to frame it), but no one else could possibly tell us how we are to pay it2.  

But what threw me off in this particular moment is the way we aren't co-owned, but co inhabitated by the people we share our space and time with. I'm with APHRODITE and while I'm around her, falling asleep and waking up together etc., I feel like my body functions differently from when I'm with itself. This is true for many moments and contexts, and the shifts are very subtle. I'm intrigued by them though, intrigued by this extension of the "platonic" (meaning intellectual, symbolic and emotional, or strictly 'soul-bound') co-existence that we have, intrigued by the fact that for the time spent with you my body is less of 'my own'. You're presence in it is palpable and it has nothing to do with traditional ownership or hierarchy, but more with frequencies and micrological movements. 

The pleasures I experience while running my fingers through your fiery hair, when I see you undress over and over again - it never gets tiring - to feel your breath and watch you dance in trance and prayer, feel your fingers running through my hair now, cause we're both cats... These pleasures of BEAUTY running through me while reading poetry and clinging to each other, while seeing art and explaining our thoughts to each other, these sacred pleasures I'm talking about which are unknown to MAN. 

2 David Graeber: Debt - The First 5000 Years (2011). Graber also adds to this notions that "all systems of established authority - religion, morality, politics, economics, and the criminal-justice system" are nothing but "different fraudulent ways to presume to calculate what cannot be calculated, to claim the authority to tell us how some aspect of that unlimited debt ought to be repaid. Human freedom would then be our ability to decide for ourselves how we want to do so." (68 - 69). 

Even when you stroll forever through second hand stores feeling like getting touched by all the garments and I'm tired or jet lagged and just try to hold myself on my feet because you are. This pleasure. This is. Endless. Pleasure. Beauty. Radiating. Eternal. 

We also talk about your fear of threesomes "because three people can just be so awkward, am I wrong? I feel like four people is fine again because you can check out a bit more without all this responsibility resting on you." And I say that I think they're ought to be fun. And we mention your Loverboy and you say "Oh hell yeah I'd love to have a threesome with him and you." - And yeah, aren't we just two chill guys right now, caught up in a wave of motion we unlock for each other, free to hop on whatever might come? 

We met him the day before and he gave us a bunch of weed. Also: He is actually pretty fucking hot. And the fact that I know all the stuff you keep on telling me about him makes it even better... Lucky you.  

You then ask me how to give a good lap dance, because I talk about the strip club and Royal, so I tell you what I think makes it good. And you're a bit shy about it but also step over your shadow, I see that, and you want to try it out a bit. So I give you some slight directions and say "Just relax, don't stress yourself. Go with the music and hold space for the intimacy to unfold." And I feel you through your pants and this must be the hottest thing ever.  

And it was good.  

What do you remember about the Earth? 

You're at your rehearsal now and I clean up your 

room and build a little ritualistic altar of worship. 

Gosh, your neighbor is such a psychopath and 

your roommate such a spineless worm. I hate 

these two men talking with each other like two 

absolute dipshits, but I'm not willing to give any 

more worthy pages to them.  

Yesterday evening we cuddled to Marvin Gaye, 

then I made us pizza and we drank dry red wine. With a buzz from some joints and glasses we lie

down again and I decide to make a move on you. So you become my altar and I do a bodily prayer on this map of a body. 

Arcadia. 

There's no rush. But there's Marvin. Then Lana. And you, holding a small rest of joint between your long, graceful fingers, but you're somewhere else. My delighted gaze rests upon you while I'm playing your body like an instrument, your spirit fades away and re-emerges, re-centers somewhere else. Before that: My lips moving up and down your waste, your neck, but we haven't kissed yet since worship between us means suspended, slowed acceleration of heat. Then I slap your ass twice, you moan and make a joyful little jump. Then there are two seconds missing and our lips are suddenly glued together. I believe it was the GODDESS herself who pushed our faces towards each other after watching us exhausting this tension for so long. Your kisses are diamonds, your eyes hold joyous strength and tenderness... This is so soft; in touch, gesture, care; vulnerability pays off if you build yourself up for it, mindfully. I see your little Sub crawl out of her palace all shy and precious, and I caress her. Your arms around me reward with their healing spells and all I want is to hold you closer and closer. Also, to feel how wet you are on my thigh and knee, to feel you through the texture of your tiny pajama panties, is everything for me right now. 

You're electrical. 

And the touches you give me send shock waves through me.  

We've known each other for tens years  

And I feel like I waited - or longed - or prepared? - for this, 

All the while. 

I've been ready to fall in love with you from the first time we've met, I feel. Which felt ridiculous and was forbidden. I guess I've actually been loving you for a long time. I just felt lonely, scared and embarrassed in that feeling.