That Thing You Do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha Matthews as Told to David Shields (2 page)

The further into man space he goes, the more I desire him.
Cuando te prohibe algo, despierta el deseo
. His what-I-feel-as-a-lack-of-desire for me makes me want to drown myself in a bottle of wine, smoke a pack of cigarettes, find a corner with a curtain where my libido can be naked, and do a jig. Definitely not a jig—that has to be the least sexy dance in the world. A pole dance would be better (which I secretly would love to try, but no one wants to see me pole dance now that I'm forty…). Aaaaand this is when I need to scream. I'm a petulant child. “You should talk to David about that,” he says. “Foot-stamping. You love a good foot-stamp, dontcha, darling?”

I got him to turn off the TV after six hours of sports today. I think that's enough. I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I'm sitting in his place on the sofa. I don't know how that happened, that this is his space on the sofa. I'm a sofa-spot enabler. I'm irritated now and want him out of the back of the house. He looks shocked and amused. As if the shit on the TV were close to silent, as if what was on there were gentle and fun. Hands in the
air, like,
Oh so sorry, your majesty
. I'm just annoyed 'cause I want to fuck him. What's wrong with me? Had he rolled me in the hay, he could have watched the tennis match, the darts match, footie, cricket, and Formula 1 at deafening volume all day long.

I think I've been horny all my life and finally I have someone I'm horny for. He says I should take up painting again. Why can't I be horny for painting?

Now that I finally have a partner I'm extremely attracted to, it feels almost like an addiction. I always want more. I'm never satisfied. I don't understand why he doesn't want it all the time. That's never happened to me before. If he were all over me, surely I wouldn't want it, as he's told me himself. Do you think in any couple both people desire each other equally? I'm constantly staring at him. When he comes into the room after showering, I'm waiting for him to drop his towel so I can get a peek at him. I find him so incredibly sexy. But just him. No one else. In a joking way, he says I love him for his cock, but he's not joking. His cock
is
him; it's imbued by his person.

In a tantrum the other day, I said to him maybe we should just be buddies, since that's pretty much all we are, anyway. Maybe we can sip hot chocolate together and play Sudoku. Let's make a date, go out to dinner, not
talk, and read our own newspapers. Let's be settled. Let's be normal. Bland. Beige. Let's die. Together.

I have man legs; William has lady legs. I hate it when both of us are wearing shorts and you can see our shadows on the pavement. I'm nearly a foot shorter than he is and my leg shadows are bigger. I always hope he isn't noticing that.

Were William's exes sexy? I find myself feeling it's somehow unfair I haven't screwed these girls as well. Do they have porn pussies, all perfect and neat and little, or the lettuce leaf hanging between the two lips? I used to get one of my exes to tell me what his other girlfriends' pussies looked like. I don't know if it made me feel better or worse. I think better. Yeah.

After we'd been together six months, William told me, “I still fancy you, but it's not like I want to jump you all the time.” Thanks. Why didn't you just say while yawning, “I can still see you, but just barely”?

I have such a positive attitude in relationships: he always tells me I can't help finding the tragedy. If there's
nothing wrong, which according to him there rarely is (unless I'm drinking), I'll find something wrong. I don't disagree. I need to foresee the possible disasters, be prepared for the worst so I won't be shocked when
it
happens, whatever
it
is.

(After the man turns on the stereo, they make love on the bed—the man on top of the woman, who's fighting images of the porn she filmed yesterday: “Fuck me!” “Oooooohhh yeah.” “Lick my pussy.” “Hello, I'm the preacher's wife.” “You like that, don't you?” Different actors say each line. Trying to concentrate on her partner, she's swept up in the porno images. After sex, they lie together in bed.)

How was it for you?

Good. You?

Good. I thought it was going to be more intense and then suddenly it wasn't. But good, good.

(Pause.)

Yeah, me, too.

(Pause.)

I felt like maybe you were thinking a little.

Yeah, I was. I was really in my head today.

Yeah, I thought so.

(Pause.)

Why?

I don't know.

What were you thinking about?

Nothing in particular—just, I don't know, maybe I was taking too long…

But you were like that from the beginning. I felt it right when we hit the bed.

I don't know. I guess I was just thinking about pleasing you too much.

You know you can't do that.

I know.

In answer to your question, I would say Yes, being the object of someone's desire feels dominant to me. The other person surrenders in their desire, and there's a softness and vulnerability when their desire is expressed. That gives me room to get in there and take over. It's like they're under a spell; they lose control. As long as they desire me, I can do what I want. If the other person has no desire for me, or if the desire isn't as strong, I lose my power, not just my sexual power. The two are intertwined. I'm sure subliminally I was taught that the other person was more malleable if they were weakened by desire.

I thrive on turning someone on, being the object of their desire. I once had a butch-femme relationship with Traci, a cop who looked like k.d. lang and who barely touched me. I was interested only in pleasing her, having that power. Having always been the dominant one, she flipped out (in a good way) over how opposite her role was with me. With people I'm in love with, I'm much more flexible.

Thanks for the copy of
A Mother in History
. I look forward to, even crave, the shockers—not for their content or Stafford's intent to shock, but for their element of surprise, that knife edge of intimacy.

I think my obsession with communication, desire for real intimacy, is directly related to never knowing from one moment to the next if my mom was going to be Carol or Kitty. Carol was the repressed post-1950s mother, scaring me out of having sex, leaving me newspaper clippings in my bathroom drawer about prim-and-proper young ladies dying from AIDS upon losing their virginity. Carol was the one who told me, “When you sleep with someone, you're giving yourself away,” and “Once they've had sex with you, there's no challenge anymore and they lose interest.” And
Kitty I would find passed out, face down on my bed when I came home with my boyfriend. Kitty would tell me every tragedy that had ever happened to her and talk about how sexy she really was, how she and my dad used to have sex constantly. Is that where I get all this from?

People I'm drawn to are strong, a bit masculine, a little mentally unstable (I can be the nurturer), self-confident, funny, and
aggressive
…

I've started seeing a new therapist, and that's been consuming me. With her I talk about my feelings as if they belonged to someone else—could be my handy ol' disassociation tool. Lately, I feel both connected and disconnected. Does that make sense?

Does that happen to you when you're writing about “naked” things? Do you ever feel vulnerable or worried how it may come across when you write your “secrets”?

I can hardly go more than a day or two without seeing some part of Gaudi's Sagrada Família out of the corner of my eye. Counting the ways I hate that thing…

I always sensed my dad had a secret life. He's eternally curious and passionate about the most minute details in life, sees beauty everywhere. I'd cuddle up in his lap and we'd play duets of “Heart and Soul” together, his strong, square, padded-cushion fingers interlaced with mine. “Hold on,” he'd say when we were listening to a song we loved, “it's coming, right now right now… and… here! Listen to this!” I sang in a high-pitched voice to the Bee Gees, laughing hysterically, and he'd tell me I had a great ear. Searching for gnomes in the fantasia forest in our backyard; staring at the formidable beauty of the Olympic Mountains in the skyline—there was magic and feeling in everything, something huge and heartfelt. He was moved and moved me. He has also acted on beauty everywhere.

I remember finding a
Playboy
in his bottom dresser drawer when I was fifteen, and that was the first confirmation of what I'd suspected. Not that
Playboy
represents anything, really. I just knew in my gut he'd had affairs, which were later confirmed when I was around nineteen. To be honest, that part doesn't really bother me at all. As I get older, I find myself following in some of his footsteps, or the ones I recognize—trying to find the adventure, the gems hidden under the rocks, and knowing I can't share that with everyone.

The first month William and I were together, I was explosively in love with him; I remember saying I was always looking for the celebration in life. I'd just come out of my marriage to Jaume. I didn't want boring, settled. I wanted a connection and I wanted to feel it as often as I could, since any day could be my last. I'm sure I sounded manic. I was showing him how excited I was to be with him and how much I loved him, how ready I was for an adventure together, and hoping to find an ease in that, a joy—again, just like my dad had taught me. William fell silent and shut down. My enthusiasm for life has always inspired others and led them to a tidal high; now it was as though I'd told him I'd had a sex change or something.

He said what I'd said had scared him: he wasn't capable of being exciting all the time and normal/settled is a good thing. To him, I represented instability rather than freedom. My whole body sank into the chair and something clicked in me. I knew from then on I wouldn't be able to share this ecstatic side I had. He'd never feel it that way; he'd just feel scared of it. In my love I'm not unpredictable, but in the way I live life, I like to be spontaneous, and if there's trust, shouldn't anything be possible? (Don't answer.)

I almost never talk passionately with William about anything in my life, really. And when I do, I have to
make sure I say it only once, because if I repeat it for the sake of weight, it immediately loses its value for him. It's also an American/British thing. We—Americans—are known for being overemphatic, exaggerated. That, mixed with me being what he calls a “thesp,” is something he doesn't fully understand, so now I let out my passionate side with my girlfriends, my friends, and with him I curb it. A friend said to me at the very beginning of my relationship with William, “You're too big for him. He's not going to be able to handle you.” Whatever that means. I don't think I'm too big. I just think we experience life very differently.

So what I'm trying to say is I feel a lot like my dad—living a separate, passionate life outside of my relationship. I don't want to be with anyone other than William; it's not even my choice. It's just the way it is. I'm passionately in love with him. Is there such a thing as being passionately in love and sharing all your passions with the same person? I haven't found it. Doesn't mean I have to, either, I guess.

My mother is threatened by the world. She's trapped in her past (I am, too, obviously), an eternal victim, and she lives her life believing she deserved better—which someone
should have given to her. The spiritual wisdom she studies is just an excuse to look away from herself, to bask in cliché poetry, to dream we're all one, we're energy; I can even get into that, just not with her. For her it's something separate, an escape, and for me all that energy is just a link to deeper honesty (or so I tell myself). She floats around in her head, ruminating about a more elevated life, a gentleness, a kindness, sending me quotes from self-help authors and ancient healers. Her favorite word is
grace
, which bugs the hell out of me.

When she's on her pain meds, her eyes are gray and cloudy; there's a wall behind them, a world going on in there that only she knows. (There's an openness, a clarity and sadness, in my dad's eyes. When I see him standing alone, playing with the change in his pocket, he seems lonely. He looks sad, and I feel sorry for him… I know I'm completely incapable of holding my father accountable for not protecting my mother and me. I needed him to represent some sort of tangible lifeline outside of the freak show/snuff movie that was happening at home. I liked that he traveled to Japan on long business trips, and often; that way, I could see that it was in fact possible to escape, even if just temporarily. Which gave me some sort of hope; ridiculously, it still does.)

My mom is never willing to let you know fully what she thinks, unless she's drunk and then you really don't want to know those thoughts, because the next day she'll pretend they were never spoken and you'll lose your mind trying to talk honestly about those “nonexistent things.” Her thoughts go round and round and get all mixed up, contradicting themselves.

Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving, she wants to sit around a perfect table set with the family china, crystal, and sterling silver cutlery, and have everyone sing Christmas carols and look at her adoringly, even though she's actually been “napping” all day. She's “civilized” and dreaming rather than experiencing. She lives an idea of how life should be, not how it actually is. I'm constantly throwing reality in her face and she can't bear it (not to say, of course, that I don't cling to my own set of illusions).