Lip Strict

I read the book, I saw the movie, I heard about the nominations.

I posted some things about it.

But I had to say: I never once saw a district in the movie District.

And that’s when the shit hit the fan. “Um, excuse me,” a dear friend said. “There were actually three districts in District.

   “More than three,” my boss said. “At least eighteen.”

  I never saw one. I just pretended that I’d meant I’d seen at least one, because I wanted that promotion.

   But he knew I was lying, that I was just kissing his ass.

   He fired me.

   Right around that time, I met a girl, in a coffee shop. I fell in love with her. She never drank coffee but she loved coffee cake.  She saw me ordering it at the time (it was for my boss, before firing me) and she told me it was her favorite dessert.  I fell in love with her immediately.  

    Soon after she told me to take my clothes off. She said that she was going to take her lipstick and right something across my back. She didn’t ask. She just told me.

    It wasn’t an easy process. You see, my back is hairy, and I loved her so much that she made me sweat.  The lipstick was warm, like a very stiff narrow bloody tongue along my back. When she was finished I was shaking all over. And her writing was completely illegible.

     She told me she’d tried writing the word W-h-o-r-e. And she’d failed.

       She’d succeeded as far as I was concerned.

      But that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to put lipstick on my mouth. That, I didn’t want. I tried to distract her by talking about the movie District.

     I shouldn’t have brought it up. Because with her lipstick, blunted and curled with my hair at the end of it, she asked me how many districts I’d seen in District.

     I had no chance in hell of getting the right answer.

     So she put her lipstick on my mouth. I wanted to call it punishment, for not knowing the right answer, the right number. I wanted to call it What I Didn’t Want.  But what I wanted was No Ending.

    I don’t want to guess the right number of districts. Because then this will all end. And I don’t want to finish. I’ll never finish.

    There is no end to this. Endless lipstick. Endless avenues to apply it to–

    “Shut up,” she says, interrupting me.

    My mouth ceased. A red, glossy pucker of fruit.  I’m ripe. And I’ll rot. So I guess it will finish, I will finish…

     …at some time.