Demon Stories

Josephine: Those Dreary Things, 1983, New York City

Josephine

Those Dreary Things

1983, New York City

I didn't mean to.

All of those things I made you do, I didn't mean to.

You told me you didn't mind, that you loved me and you wanted to make me happy, but you didn't know. Those things didn't make me happy. They made me more upset. 

It should have been different with you and I. I had never dated someone like you before. It was odd to me, how you admired me in actual. What is there to admire in someone like me? I was just a whore. I told you this, and you admired me more. "To bring yourself out of it. To come here. You have overcome such a many things." But no, you don't see. I didn't overcome anything. Everything I had done, seen, is still here, right in my heart, for no one to see. And I can't get away from it anymore than you could get away from your own feelings.

Those things we did. I can not even bear to say. You were but a babe in my eyes when we met, and I made you do all of those things. Whore's things. I could see it changed you, but I made you do more of it. Because I couldn't get away from it. I thought I deserved it, that it was the only life I should lead because who was I? And you were caught in the middle. You poor human being. You poor, natural, human being.

Crystal My Dear. My dear. You deserved better than me, and that is why in part I left. But I destroyed you, didn't I? You went mad. I could tell from your letters you went mad. Without me, you couldn't live because I had thrust upon you the whore's life and you wanted more of it. But no one would do it with you. 

You said it wasn't being perverted. That it was just love-making. But being tied up is not love-making. Wearing a mask, wearing a silk scarf in your mouth, is not love-making. I'm not sure I even know what love-making is, and you certainly couldn't have if I didn't. 

But you said that you loved me, and anything we did then was love-making. 

But I am not so sure. 

Because I'm not sure I loved you when we did it. I'm not sure I felt anything and I'm not sure about any of it now. You'd think that my living these nearly two hundred years would make me more certain, but it hasn't, its just made things more unclear for I've had time to dwell on it. 

I felt like I was just going through the motions. You wanted to make me more comfortable, so you offered for your hands to be tied to the bed posts, but in that pose, your legs spread apart, you just reminded me of a corpse spread out in a pool. With my black lace opera glove tied over your eyes, you couldn't see me either, or maybe you could see the ghost of me. And if you couldn't see me, that's not love-making. It could have been anyone if you couldn't see me, so that's not love. 

Most of the time, and now all of the time for what I can remember, I was always the one who loved on you. You never touched me like you claim you did. There were no gentle caresses, no little whispered kisses. But there was a whip, and there was a stick. And there was pain and hurt and everything I didn't want. But I told you about these things, and you thought I wanted them so who was I to refuse? You wanted them, because you wanted to be just like everybody else who came before you. The same, but different. Misguided, but so beautiful.

As I think late at night, unable to sleep as it is most nights now, I think about you. How just a few miles away we had lived in your tiny apartment which didn't even have a bathroom. Listening to people speaking in Spanish beyond the walls, with me having no idea what they were saying but you knowing every word. Sometimes, we'd watch "I Love Lucy" together and while you were laughing at the TV I'd be there with my head on your shoulder, so close to you but so far away. Sometimes you'd be in a compromised position, sometimes with a clamp or pins on you, in the same situation. All I remember is I didn't want you to be uncomfortable, that if you wanted to do something for me it would be to be comfortable and to look at me. But once you had the idea in your head of what I wanted, that is what you did.

To be quite honest, I had tired of it. This sort of life of fetish and pain for pleasure. I just wanted something normal, but with my sort of lifestyle, normal is not something easily obtained. I had the opportunity to have something normal with you, and I messed it up. Just like I always do. I told you stories of my past, and you took it running because you were too young to understand how those things upset me. You didn't see it in my eyes when I was telling you. 

These nights, I think about you tied up and I cry. I can't think about reasons or whys. But later on I realize again and again how I wished you had been able to use your hands to touch me. How I missed out on such moments because of these foolish things. How I should have said no and been more demanding instead of rolling over and taking it and being secretly unhappy. 

We could have been so happy. I could have been so happy.