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The way I pictured it, we were squared in some tactical position, facing each other, both barbed, both loaded. The way I pictured it, you began dribbling blood from your throat first, then your tongue, then the lungs filled, spilled over. In my house of knives, you have become hung, and I wait for the door to open and I run.

“the woman who saw her own death”

Exam question #1, word problem

Photographer X shows up to a hotel room for a content trade with a model he knows is an escort, high, forty five minutes late (although he had asked if he could come late and the model pushed back an appt to accommodate)* She has regrets about not asking him about his policies and this is the first time she has booked a photographer without asking him about how many pictures he usually gives, work ethic, etc. but she goes a long with it. He has a high following and his portraits look good. It’s good exposure. He has sent her a mood board of mostly nudes but she has picked out a few outfits. He is visibly high upon entering . When she asks where he was this morning, he said sleeping. He was late because he wanted to sleep. Model pushed back paid appt because Photographer X wanted to sleep.
They begin and she regrets it because he is overly flirty, touches her once without asking to reposition her (she quickly tells him to ask before touching her), he has zero input about shoot and checks his phone every time she goes to get something else to change into. He begins relatively quickly to tell her that he can tell she wants to fuck him. She refutes this quickly by saying

“I haven’t fucked anyone for free in a while.”

She continues to redirect but is feeling anxious by both his flirting, his distraction and it reminds her of all the times men used her for sex. She has set aside time for this shoot, time she could get paid and pushed back an appointment for this. She redirects him playfully, almost flirting, but still firm and makes it clear this is a shoot so she can get the shots she wants. She asks if she can have more fun poses but tells him to remain professional. She begins with the dildo.

He is clearly turned on and she is clearly a dominant woman. She enjoys fun pictures and is trying to make the best of what seems to be a triggering confrontation. He asks her if she is turned by playing with herself and she says no and scoffs at his constant encroachment. He says many flirty things and it is clear he is interested in having sex with her. She had mentioned her rate already so there is no confusion.
His camera has 4k so she shoots a masturbation video with him for her porn page. This is what she does for a living. She makes porn and sells content. She also charges for sexual liaisons. All of this has been made clear to Photographer X.  When they begin, he touches her leg several times to physically move her for the shot which she ignores until he rests his hand on her thigh and she swats him away because they are in the middle of shooting and she can’t say anything or else it will be on film. When they are done, she has to tell him to physically back up two feet and then wiggle her way around him as he doesn’t move much to get out of her way. This is the second time she has told him to back up two feet. He asks to fuck her. She says

“Let’s review consent. Ask if I want to fuck you.”
“Do you want to fuck me?”
“No. What else?”
“Do you want to suck my dick?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to go down on you?”
“No.”
“Can I masturbate in front of you?”
“Sure, if I can eat popcorn and watch.”
He laughed but continued to push.
“I mean, while you masturbate.”

The answer was no. Over and over no. He wouldn’t stop and the shoot had stopped. He hadn’t shot that much or seemed interested in shooting. He made it clear over and over he was turned on and they barely shot.

She asked him,
“How many models have you fucked?”
“That’s personal.”
“As a model and with all of this, I have a right to know.”
He submitted immediately, “About three or four but that’s not why I shoot.”
He is 28, attractive, claims to close on million dollar houses, and does this as a hobby.

 Before he left, she said
“Send the footage right away.”
He said he would and she said
“I will remind you.”
He said he didn’t need reminding.
She said “ The only thing you are scared of is God, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I am a witch of God.”
It has been three days and he has not sent her the footage. She followed up once after forty eight hours politely to remind him and he responded
“I will later on.”

On the third day, she told him it makes her super uncomfortable when men hold onto footage like that, reminded him she had made it clear before he left she wanted it fast and asked him to state when he will send it. She is trying to relax and not become angry and get mired in anxiety or tell him how uncomfortable he made her feel the entire time but she had made time to shoot but the question is:

          Who is to blame?

Bonus for extra credit:
Why did she mention she was a witch of God?

*This is a true story.

“the black book”

“Privilege is relative,”
“Obviously, but don’t you think you have privilege as a pretty woman?” he cut in.

To be frank, he cut in. I don’t need an ellipsis after my sentence to express that he cut in before I was finished speaking. Underneath my skin, I am repressing an oil that bubbles and pours out of me an viperous snake when I am angry, a bitten tongue and a swollen left throat.  I have an unshaved pussy and natural body odor. I have a goiter that causes choking when I am rushed during dinner. I have not shaved my legs in three days. I was fat on three different occasions and twice asked if I was pregant. A boy threw Slim Fast powder on me in the hallway in front of people. I had braces. I once was voted the “funniest girl” in class and the cutest boy in the class announced it. I am hungry and confused as I go before council: the cult of men and I, their frigid leader, rewarding them only if they become extremely bendable like rubber dolls or dispensable. I am being publicly hung and whipped for my defiance but men are also begging for my blades and clapping. I am nursing a cyst the size of Saturn somewhere in my fragile, calcium deficient body but I am also being paid large sums of money without health insurance.

“Privilege is relative and attractiveness is subjective. There are many things you are ignoring to maintain your position that life has been easy for me,” I put my thumb up and began to count so he knows I am serious. “You can see that I am white, American and attractive in your eyes.” I put my index finger up. “You cannot see my past, including looks, weight, or makeup, hair and clothing choices which would add or detract from appearance.” I tug on the bottom of my wig and then put my middle finger up to continue counting. “Just so we are clear, my hair is thin and thinning. You cannot see my addiction, trauma or mental health unless I am triggered or symptomatic. And you cannot see my money or my inheritance, i.e. financial inheritance and any other familial traits or problems.”

I sit back, reflecting knowing already I had left out something. I lean forward quickly before he can cut in again.

“I am still a woman,” my pinky shoots up, “and I still must defer to men.”

He is paying me to be here and I am acquiescing only enough to be painted as slightly agreeable and to live up to my title as a dominant.

“If you tell them you do porn, don’t you think that’s baiting them?”
You can not let them touch you.
“I mean,” he corrected as that wasn’t the story I told. “If you tell a photographer you do porn and ask if he will shoot you masturbating, don’t you think it’s naive to get upset when he touches your thigh and asks to fuck you?”
You can not let them touch you.

“the black book”

I decided the best course of action was to list things. It helped keep my mind focused. I began with my flaws; the irrefutable ones, the physical ones, the ones I couldn’t ignore that everyone could see. Self-flagellation is the only true precursor to change but there was also the causality I was seeking. Something like
Thin hair
Uneven saggy breasts
Poofy stomach
Brittle nails
Stains on teeth
Nasal drip that causes me to snot when I give head and a build up of mucus on tongue
Poor spatial reasoning
Unable to reorient myself quickly sometimes
Unable to accurately give directions at times
But I added after that one:
Did navigate my entire trip to Southern California for my boyfriend and I using a paper map so I can READ and DICTATE directions accurately
Then back to list:
Poor parents
Addict
PTSD
Rape victim
Dyslexia and minor unspecified learning disability
I might be autistic
Moody/raging mood disorder
The past

Then I decided to list the things I could change and some things were listed again.
Temper
Using intimidation as a tactic to seize opportunity
Using seduction as a way to control
Hearing loss (stop listening to music so loudly)
Memory loss? (change diet but accept brain injuries)
Appearance as far as sloppiness
Iron absorption (more greens, less iced tea)/anemia
Focus
Can I change my arthritis if i stop walking and playing with straws?
Romantic drama
OCD/anxiety (is a mood disorder curable?) I think so.
Preoccupation with lists
Preoccupation with organization
Preoccupation with things being
“right” so can’t finish anything
Superstitious
Preoccupation with injustice
Unable to hold tongue
Trauma, fixated on men because of trauma/rage at men/unable to silence my self
Getting up earlier
No longer watch news or know the state of current affairs

I don’t hate myself so I also made a list of my strengths.
Gregarious
Vivacious
Clever
Fun/funny
Deadpan; unable to be read (this can turn on you)
Loyal
Assertive
Intelligent
Able to synthesize rapidly
Good skin
Pretty smile
Nice legs and dainty feet
Relatively thin and attractive
Able to mask weakness
Able to sniff out motive (but can get confused via daydream)
Able to articulate
Writing ability
Large vocabulary
Psychic?
Can talk to dead?
Connection with nature and animals
Reiki
Able to manipulate every situation
Good guessing ability
Able to put people at ease right away
Warm
Soft skin
Able to get jobs easily (but cannot keep them)

The lists unravel, sort of tangle together first and then unravel. See, I am not just picking myself apart. I am looking for causality, connection, pattern. I made a lot of lists in mania. I have one index card that stayed on my altar for a while. It started–things I like:
Being right.

“Ms. Lancaster,” I began.
She looked up from her newspaper knowingly, withholding a sigh. It was worksheet time in English.
“I noticed you gave me a 96 on my most recent paper.”
“A 96 is a good score, dear.”
I nodded, also withholding, “Yes, but I re read it a few times and I am confused as to why you took four points off. I mean, I answered all of the questions correctly, typed my paper in the correct format, and I checked the answers against the key and…”
“You want a one hundred?” she interrupted.
“Well yes…”
She didn’t snatch the paper but gently took it from my hand and put a line through the 96 and changed it to 100 with a green pen, instead of her red pen.
“Are you happy now?”
“Well, yes.”
“You are very smart, Catarina. There is more to life than hundreds on papers.”
Nonsense. I walked back to talk to my friend Mariam, pleased with myself. Smarmy, my teacher would say.

Mania is fun but only I can say that because I lived through it. You can say, that sounds hard and that will suffice. I made more lists but they were less identifiable. I began to write down the names of everyone I trusted. I began to list the things I enjoyed doing. I began to list the traits of people I liked. Made a detailed outline for several career paths all involving quitting social work forever. Mania is a ball of fun but only I can say that having lived through it. Must be right. I walked daily for miles, about two to four hours with no end in sight stopping only for coffee and to make notes in my phone. Laughter poured out of me. I no longer took care of my appearance, smoked weed all day during the six weeks of my unemployment, would bask in the bits of sunshine I found in the park and plot a book that had about thirteen different endings and consisted of seven different novels some moving right in front of my eyes.  I would list them: blue book, red book, black book, white book, black book, red book, blue book. Some days I needed to recharge and rest so I spent all day counting hours and making playlists, one after the other. It was important the playlists were correct, in the correct order and executed or published at the correct time. If the order wasn’t correct, if the numbers didn’t match or if no one had witnessed the correct execution, we had to delete and start over. Mania is when I began my superfluous use of the collective we.

“I have an idea! I know what we can do,” I said to the little girl.
I sat back in the bath to let my thoughts gather and smiled. Mirthless.
“Let’s scare him.”
I splashed the tub to provoke the action.
“Just a little.”
I could tell she was nodding even though I could only feel her. Mania is a fuck ton of fun. At least I enjoyed it. Only I can say that because I lived through it. You can’t talk about mania until you do it. You can simply say that sounds so hard and confusing and then you can fall deep into a tangle of incomplete sentences like shopping lists, like silk strands, like the way lines can form a circle of circles, and then a bed.

One day, I wake up with $40,000 in the bank where I used to have none. Well, none is a bit hyperbolic but not a lot. Sometimes I’d be able to scrape together a grand that I inevitably needed all at once later, for a deposit or critical emergency or the beginning of luxury. The poor understood crisis differently; it existed in a constant loop and you can never leave so you adjust to seeing the statement say 200.00 every month and you try not to think about it.  Sometimes you have to take a trip to spain and forget about the medicine.

I don’t like to gloat unless it’s about being right and then I am loud. One time, a friend texted me after a tarot reading, maybe only a couple weeks later, and I had noticed she was put off by it at first but she wrote,
“And I met someone, I really like him, it’s super secret and you were right! I know you like being right so I wanted to tell you.”

I did enjoy it. I liked being right, rich, well fed, skinny, opulent, buoyant, busy and in love. I had been saving carefully to buy three medical procedures and two new houses: for myself, my mother and my father.  My father had a heart attack that almost killed him.
“How do you convince someone their house isn’t haunted?”

I was talking to my friend about the fine line art of “reality testing.”
“Or that they are not haunted?”
I was explaining how to hold two things at once without favor.
“Or that people aren’t watching them online?”
We were at the beach.
“Reality testing is a common practice for people experiencing psychosis in which they talk to another person about the delusion and most people do it with a psychiatrist. BUT,” I suddenly project my voice, eager to keep the attention, “You can also try to test with the person you are having the delusion about but it only works with the person if you get an affirmative answer.”
He was gazing at the waves but engrossed.
“You mean you only believe them if they say yes?”
“YES.”
I dig my toe into the sand.
“Imagine deliberately asking someone if they were stalking you or watching you. You would only believe them if they say yes because otherwise you would always think they are protecting themselves.”
He nodded, looking at me, “That makes sense.”
“So I had a ton of clients that believed their neighbors were spying on them. I could tell them they weren’t but only their neighbors could admit it. And no one would do that. And in our world, people are being stalked online. So people kind of spiral,” I make that perpetual motion with my hands, “And you don’t get any definitive answers because the truth is we are all being spied on.”
I watch a wave crash.
“It’s not just in our heads. Some people are just really sensitive.”
“Hmm,” he started. “So how would you ever reality test?”
“You don’t. I mean, you try. Bring statistics and probability into it.
The likelihood of the TV being directed at you is high because of the way advertising works now, but it’s also not sentient so to break the pattern of thinking electronics are talking to you, you first have to accept they were programmed to cater to your desires, and then to ignore them. But the likelihood of your neighbors watching you is less. Your crush, maybe. An abusive ex, probably. The mailman, unlikely. And the internet is father: always watching.”
“The algorithm,” he said.
I was always talking about the algorithm.
“So anyway, you can’t actually tell me that I don’t owe these ghosts a favor because you can’t tell me that my house isn’t haunted, that I didn’t invite them, that I didn’t communicate with them and ask them for help. Only the ghosts can tell me I don’t owe them anything. Only years can tell me. Only no one can tell me because I would only believe the affirmative. You can’t say no.
“I can’t.”
“No, you can’t.”
We both watched my feet in the sand.
“But I can teach you how to kayak down Alligator River.”
“Yeah.”
We both watched the waves crash.

I started guessing with a 98.3% accuracy rate.

“datura moon”

“And what happened when you saw the cricket near the spider’s web?”

“I swore allegiance and provided favor.”

The day all of the computers shut down in the office, only my third day in believe, and yet another blizzard, my new boss said to me
“I think you’re doing it.”

Which didn’t help anything. I would be sent home early for a computer malfunction or the weather or anything really. It didn’t matter. I was paid to walk to and from my house in the middle of a snowstorm. Mania gives you ideas; about thirty a second to be exact, and you can only execute a few at once.

I have a mirror and god in my pocket to find him.
I had a lot of notes like that. And like this:
Sylph storm song soul sign poultice moon poultice sky poultice air
And like this:
Picture book: main characters name is (redacted) book title my book is about my life and fantasy? The dreaming but tell it like it is, yes she fantasizes to survive and we see it play out, does she spiral?

I am sort of skipping home and sort of trudging, always stopping to write something down and now I have another idea for a business and
I write an entire business plan one day, the entire plot to a book the next, about seventeen impassioned letters to a man I don’t know, and then all the card readings. Sometimes I wink at the streetlight, start winking at the microwave. My oven timer is going off again. I go to my new job and the printer won’t start and the power goes out and I am blinking to send a bird to your window.

Dear God, another favor, I begin.
But first I have to take a bath. I take so many baths that winter.
Just drown yourself, Cat, the man with the crooked smile says.

I begin to will the wave. I stare at the drain, patiently. I will the ripple. I sit for forty minutes, shriveling in my skin, watching a candle flicker before I will the wave to move.

“I have another idea!”
I turn to the little girl sitting quietly on the edge of my bed and ask for favor.

“psychokinesis” or “the act of naming things”

I start with the wings: black, silver sparkles dot the lining, and the wig. I practice my eyeliner. I begin to try on masks. I am getting ready and nearer.
I set the candles on the floor carefully. There have been many accidents already but I feel assured that tonight nothing will catch on fire. Pull the lace over my face and coo.

Like rains that fill the oceans wide, I swallow lives with turns of tides. I break men but not my stride.

I begin to charm her.

“the woman who walked out of walls”