Underneath my skin

I'm not Her 

I got Him

In His room

 Underneath my skin

I always left him. There were countless times where I was sick of the game. So I left. Sometimes, I piled work onto myself. Locking myself in my room and doing nothing but pouring myself into my manuscripts. But mostly, I travelled. It wasn’t enough to merely be mentally or emotionally distanced. I needed to physically escape him.

Sometimes, I grabbed a mere backpack and rode the train away into another state. Melbourne was my favourite city to escape to. It was beautiful. It was a city that held the combination of the old and the new. Usually, I spent my days in Melbourne enjoying the music scene by visiting my beloved Acoustic cafe or the Arthouse. Those were my favourite venues for live performances. Acoustic cafe was perfect for a relaxing coffee and closing your eyes to a stranger’s strumming. But Arthouse is where you go to feel alive.

Sometimes, I packed my suitcase and hopped onto the next flight out of the country. I couldn’t get far away enough. Whether it was Paris, New York, Bangkok or Tokyo, it didn’t matter. As long as I was not in Australia. As long as I was not in the same country as he. In the day, I freelanced for local magazines or newspapers and shopped for souvenirs. In the night, I was usually found in a bar, a pub or a night club. I hated nights the most. Nights were lonely so I rarely slept in my own bed. If I did, I was not alone. Those one-night-stands disgusted me but they kept my empty body whole. Temporarily.

But one night changed everything.
It started out like any of my other New York City nights: bar hopping, dancing, mindless mashing of bodies and drowning in alcohol. I teleported myself throughout the lower east side; first starting off with venues that concerted live music and doubled up as bars such as the Living Room. I often went there to see a particular guitarist, whose name I always forget. In a way, he was my New York lover. But it never got anywhere. By late ten, I would have always left in a taxi for a nightclub. Without a goodbye. It never got anywhere because I never allowed it to. If I had gone home to his apartment that night, things would have been different.

It was around 2 in the morning when I stumbled out of Mehanata, also known as the Bulgarian bar. I had made the mistake of going downstairs into the “Ice cage” where I was forced to down six shots of vodka in one minute. Walking back to my hotel meant crossing through a park. It wasn’t until I was halfway through that I realised that I’ve been hearing steady footsteps for some time now. I quickened my pace. And my heart. I allowed myself to flick a glance behind my shoulder. No one. Good. I was merely imagining things. Wrong. He was now in front of me.

I turned heels and ran back the other way. But all the alcohol made me groggy and slow. I could hear his breathing quickly becoming closer to the back of my neck. Closer and closer. When the exit was so far away. Someone help me. Then it was the cliché inevitable: I fell. And he was on top of me in an instant. I clawed and spat at him but he just whispered into my ear, ‘I know that you’re lonely. Let me love you.’

Tired.
I watched as he ripped me into parts. He cut open my organs and stretched me inside out and flipped me outside in. He fingered every inch of my bloodied skin and sewed his tobacco stench lips all over my grubby clamped breasts. His beard pricked my jaw but I didn’t cry. I refused to let him have my tears. He didn’t deserve it. I closed my eyes and imagined that I was hearing the harmonics of a guitar and not his heavy grunting. When he stood up, still not wearing any pants, with my remaining energy, I kicked him in the groin, ‘Bastard, I hope you die of AIDS.’ Leaving him there to groan, I gathered what’s left of my clothing and half crawled home.

I didn’t tell anyone about the incident. Not even Him. I’m sure that if he found out, he would have flown to NYC just to slaughter the man. But it didn’t matter. Everything was okay. I pushed the memory to the furthest corner of my mind and returned to Sydney for work. No one needed to know such a trivial matter. Everything was okay. I'm okay.

Sometimes though, I found myself standing naked in front of the mirror and I could see my body being blown up like a balloon. That man was filling my insides with no room for me. Sometimes, I didn’t eat because I felt my body was too heavy. Every night, I would wake up from sleep and run into the bathroom. Where I proceeded to vomit everything out. Until I was empty.

Let me love you. If that was Love, I didn’t need it.