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Authors: Daphne Gottlieb

Fucking Daphne

BOOK: Fucking Daphne
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Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ENOUGH ABOUT ME, WHAT DO
YOU
THINK ABOUT ME?
(FOREPLAY AS INTRODUCTION)
Daphne Gottlieb
 
 
W
hen the phone rings and I'm told I'm going to be in
Best American Erotica,
I'm delighted—I don't write erotica, but this is exciting nonetheless. The thrill is gone when I'm told my writing's not in the book. I'm a character in someone else's story.
I've been moneyshot with my own gun. I've poached other people's personal lives for years for big game, and now someone's got
me
over the barrel. And under it. In some story, some girl with my name is doing nasty things to some boy and the whole world can read it. With one hand, if they want. This story is very similar to something that I did, something that happened to me, a secret. It's in print. It must be true.
Another phone call comes a month or two later, when I'm eating unheated Kung Pao chicken out of the carton. It's a writer I used to date, asking if I want to vet a story before it gets published—there's
something about me in there. There certainly is. Everything about me, it seems, except my underwear and my modesty.
My stomach goes cold. When reading it, someone might think the girl in the story is me. They can't see that she can't be me—I am not that kind of girl. And I want everyone to
know
it's me, that the character was inspired by me, that someone sees me like that. She's nothing like me. Is that how you see me? There I am.
There I am, checking my email, and a writer I know is asking if I remember a smartass remark I made about going to the Love Parade dressed as a bondage bunny. I do. He's written a story about my being that bunny. It's in print.
I start reading differently. I start picking up sexy magazines, surfing the more literate of the erotic websites. That girl in that piece—is that me? Was she meant to be? I'm being remade in bits and pieces of other people's words.
I don't kiss and tell. I don't need to. Now other people are doing it for me.
Suddenly, I am a character in a dirty story. And you'd never believe what happens to me . . .
As a writer, I'm discreet. I slip intimate references into love poems, and no one's the wiser. I change names, I change places, I distort, I lie—that's why I write, really: because it's the one arena in which people expect you to lie about yourself to reveal something true about all of us.
So these stories, they never happened. Some woman made this story up and now, for a second, the writer and I could touch. I could have her. She wrote that story because she was pissed at me and wanted revenge. She wrote the story about someone else and just
changed the name and the haircut. It's all true and that's just how it happened. I'm a heartbreaker/a whore/a prude/a minx/a mess/a shrew/a whatever-you-want-me-to-be when you put your fingers on the keyboard, provided you've got a little control. The stories tell all, just how it happened, except when it never did.
These stories I saw about “me”—or someone with my hair and style who is a poet in a small, gorgeous city—they weren't love stories. Or most of them weren't. And they weren't about me at all. Again and again, they were about the story's writer. I felt like a photo of a naked girl. And the girl looked like me.
I emailed a few writers I knew. Hey, I said. I've Got a Project for You.
The girl in the photo looks a lot like me. In fact, it
is
me—under professionally done makeup with the right lighting. It's the promotional photo for my last book, and it looks a little like me. It only looks a little like me. I am the same girl and I am every story about me and still I am more. And less. I cannot be conjured just by these words.
There is another writer with the same name as mine. She lives in another country. She's an academic, and if you search for my books online, you will also find hers, in another field altogether. Her books are about labor relations. I hope she will not get in trouble for all the things I have done, haven't done; I hope she will not get in trouble for being Daphne Gottlieb, whoever she is, that girl in the book who isn't the other Daphne Gottlieb; the girl who isn't even me. Except when she is. Reading between the lines, eating cold Kung Pao chicken in the kitchen, writing to you in pajamas, cat on my lap, knowing exactly what I'm doing and wondering what people might say about it.
I don't kiss and tell. I let others do that for me now.
CHASING DEAD DOGS
Eric Spitznagel
 
 
“Y
ou still don't recognize me, do you?”
It probably wasn't the best time to start asking questions. My hands were cradling both of Daphne's breasts, and until I'd decided to get all talkative, my mouth had been wrapped around one of her nipples. Now, I'm not usually one to brag, but my tongue was doing things that surprised even me. It wasn't the same “housepainting” technique (brush to the left, brush to the right, up and down and down and up) that'd served me so well over the years. No, this was something altogether different. My tongue was darting and flicking at a dizzying pace, as if trying to work out a complicated calculus problem. My mouth moved from breast to breast, latching on with enough ferocity to form an airtight seal. I must've looked like an asthmatic, frantically sucking out every last drop of oxygen from an inhaler that just so happened to resemble a pair of supple, perfectly formed tits.
Trust me, it was a lot sexier than it sounds. You kinda had to be there.
I guess I had something to prove. I wanted Daphne to remember this. Or rather, to remember
me.
From the moment our casual flirtation evolved into full-on carnal gymnastics, I'd made a point of maintaining eye contact with her. Usually, the sight of a naked woman's body is enough to distract me. But this wasn't the first time I'd seen her naked, and I hoped it wouldn't be the last. As we tore off each other's clothes and our hands began roaming, exploring every inch of exposed flesh, I kept my gaze squarely on her face.
Look at me!
My eyes were practically screaming.
Just stop what you're doing for one goddamn minute and look at me! You'll figure it out. It'll all come back to you. But you have to
look
at me!
No luck. Daphne wasn't paying attention, at least not to what I wanted her to notice. Her head was rolled back, her long dreadlocks almost touching the brown grass below us. She held the back of my head with one hand, and used the other to steady herself on the tombstone. I could feel her slipping, her ass cheeks nudging ever closer to the edge, and it seemed that at any moment we might both go tumbling to the ground.
BOOK: Fucking Daphne
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