Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Danielle Vettraino: reflections of a psychopath in the early stages of development: exhibit a

so i have this, um, it’s a cell phone. i make, you know, calls on it…and stuff…and it comes off as being this really great thing. you can call people all over the world. there’s also this feature, with the keys. the numbers, they have corresponding letters. and you can actually type messages to people. and it’s crazy. i mean people can be really good at these things. it’s like this whole unspoken universe going on. and it’s amazing to me, the things people can write.

“hey, whats up?”

“Wanna grab a coffee?”

“let’s meet for a drink”

also, you can receive these messages, any time of day. it doesn’t matter.

3am: “come over”

3:03am: “i can’t do that.”

3:04am: “i’ll pay your cab, just come”

and what you think is, no, i can’t come. i haven’t seen you in a while, and you broke my heart, and i haven’t really gotten over it. and i will probably start crying the second you touch me and i get close enough to remember how you never smelled like anything or i hear the same four leonard cohen songs you always play or i see your big round face and your little tiny penis, but that’s not what you write, you see, because the beauty of this message system is you aren’t actually talking to them in real time so you can hide the fact that you’re freaking the fuck out. so no, that’s not what you write. what you write, because your fucking stupid is,

“k, leaving in 5”

and you get there, and everything is fine, he’s being nice, you let him bang you, and then, of course, you start crying. and after a while he just sits there staring because some version of this happens every time we meet up, and i just hope my face will save me. he loved my face. he would always say i looked like a porcelain doll. and when he got in his condescending moods he always seemed to forget how pretty he said i was. and no, i can’t spell condescending and i don’t actually know what it means, i just feel that it applies to you. because we never really fight. it’s more you reminding me that you’re smarter better wiser and i am just some little girl who doesn’t know how to articulate herself so she just cries. and i shut down and hope you will look at my face. the face that you love, the only part of me that you love. hoping it would be beautiful enough for you to stop. and you’ll tell me you’re sorry, and beg me to stay because you couldn’t bear to be away from my face. please just say you love me, you want me to have your babies. but you don’t. my face doesn’t get me out of it. why do you get to make me feel ugly? so unwanted? just today! at the library, i was distracting boys from their studies left and right. i was just sitting, reading, and i could feel their horny eyes climbing all over me. searching, finding my face, my breasts, taking in as much now for use later when it’s just as quiet and twice as lonely. and no matter what position they could fantasize me in the would never dream of making me feel as small as you do. i’ve tried to move on. there are others. some with bigger cocks, some who think i’m smart, most more successful then you. yet, three whiskeys into an empty night, your punishment is what i seek. and i’m sitting on your bed and i’m crying not because it lasted two minutes, i was used to that but, i don’t know, you are everything i hate about myself. and just absolute nonsense is spilling out of my mouth and i can’t stop and there is this ghost of me floating above telling me i am out of control, pleading with me to shut the fuck up and i’m trying to explain why i’m crying, begging for you to love me two years too late and i want to leave and i want my phone so he doesn’t know about the others because fuck, how do you tell someone you just had anal with that you want to take it slow. and i run and i run and i run away from you


Danielle Vettraino is a founding member of LabRats Collective Ensemble, where she is a contributing writer and actor. She plays ukulele and dreams of one day marrying Bob Dylan, despite the age gap.

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