{"id":20707,"date":"2021-02-01T09:32:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T04:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=20707"},"modified":"2022-05-04T14:41:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T09:11:45","slug":"a-debauchees-ode-to-self-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/a-debauchees-ode-to-self-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: ‘A debauchee’s ode to self-love’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A debauchee\u2019s ode to self-love<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All I have known of loving men is emotional labour<\/span><\/p>\n

And by that, I mean back-breaking, soul-sucking toil<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, the relief of carrying nothing but yourself<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, the relief of taking nothing but pleasure from their sex<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I put on my scarlet negligee under my \u2018third-date\u2019 dress\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That hugs my ass and rides up my thighs, and slide on\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A miniscule thong and my reddest, wettest lipstick for him<\/span><\/p>\n

To eat off my face like dessert when I meet him at midnight<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve only just been shooting words so far, and yet<\/span><\/p>\n

You can hear the pistons firing from a mile away<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shame; even a brief, sweaty glow of coital elation<\/span><\/p>\n

What he lacks in girth, he makes up for in hunger and\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With his fingers and tongue and all that phenomenal foreplay<\/span><\/p>\n

Even after all this is over, there is no sense of either longing or loss<\/span><\/p>\n

(Bonus: I’ve always wanted to fuck to David Gilmour\u2019s solo\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You know, the transcendental one at the end of High Hopes?)<\/span><\/p>\n

All the while, I keep myself safe; there is no danger of love\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(No, don\u2019t correct me; it\u2019s a veritable fucking danger)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But humans are creatures of habit; so, if we are doing this<\/span><\/p>\n

It must be punctuated \u2013 by time or space or both\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Or the new old(er) guy who needs to tell me I\u2019m a goddess\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I’m already wrapped around his hip and wondering\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How not to roll my eyes; instead, I roll away after I\u2019ve had my fill<\/span><\/p>\n

Leave the bed tousled and unmade and strut back the way I came\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The night air, cold and crisp, embraces me once again<\/span><\/p>\n

(Just as he did behind the surreptitiously-held-open door)<\/span><\/p>\n

Alone again, a giggle escapes from my lips, waking the watchman<\/span><\/p>\n

The jubilation of knowing that I\u2019m my own and no one else\u2019s<\/span><\/p>\n

Deliberately marching only to the sounds of my mind\u2019s voice\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Heck\u2026everything else is noise, everything else is noise\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cover Photo: Pixabay<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All I have known of loving men is emotional labour, And by that, I mean back-breaking, soul-sucking toil, Oh, the relief of carrying nothing but yourself, Oh, the relief of taking nothing but pleasure from their sex<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":374,"featured_media":20709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3401,2596,8],"tags":[1953,2638,2618,2639,2640,48,99,68,2597,2310],"class_list":{"0":"post-20707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-categories","8":"category-fiction-poetry","9":"category-singlehood-and-sexuality","10":"category-voices","11":"tag-date","12":"tag-emotional-labour","13":"tag-erotic","14":"tag-foreplay","15":"tag-hunger","16":"tag-pleasure","17":"tag-relationships","18":"tag-sex","19":"tag-singlehood-and-sexuality","20":"tag-sisa-spaces"},"menu_order":213,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20707"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23368,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20707\/revisions\/23368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}