Day one.

Wake from a sex dream. In a computer game with Ari, we must pass through a demonic realm; descending the spiral stairs, we encounter a horned beast who hisses the things we most fear. In seconds, we are separated – I know I’m lost – we don’t share the same fears. The demon climbs the stairs on all fours, grabbing at my legs, licking with a blunt red tongue at my thighs, and finally rimming me and giving me head. I’m close to coming, holding on to the stone steps that are grinding into my hips and back, when Ari returns, and with him my sense. I scramble out of that filthy stairwell and hold on to him, trying to explain what was happening; we leave the darkness. We’re on the wide main street of a lovely grey blue city, we’re holding close, I’m delighted at his physical reality - his long arms, his neck, the feeling of his stubble, and his smell. He’s always so present in dreams. He turns to the laptop, and I watch him as he works to find whatever function it was that left me alone on the stairs. His face is serious as he presses the delete button. I’m crying – he’s losing something I know he needs. But the grief turns to pleasure as I realise I’m being reprogrammed too; I’m becoming encoded in him. I wake, again close to coming, lines of code running down the screen, tears running down my face.

Twice denied an orgasm, and feeling guilty and freaked out, I start fucking myself with my face in the pillows. I’m fantasising the demon with its tongue in my ass, but it gets too scary as I gradually wake up. So when I finally come, I’m the guy that tried to fuck me back in Spain, when I was a slutty, virginal 14. Buried balls-deep in my own bloodied cunt, shoes slipping on the knickers I yanked off myself, I’m soaking wet. The orgasm’s broad and warm, but not as abandoned as usual: I’m still too focused on the demon’s bright stub of a tongue. I try not to open my mouth when I come. My teeth chatter with the pressure. I’m briefly a monkey, then relax into blood. I’ve bitten my tongue.

Straight into the shower for some reassurance. I’m kind of spooked still, so I stand dreaming in the steam for a long time before I start fucking myself with the water from the showerhead. This time it’s hard to settle on anything satisfying. Scenarios, images, flicker and drop. I feel too much like only myself, too much like a girl, and not in a hot way. I’m not a conduit. I can’t feel anyone else. I finally abandon all hope of coming, and sit on the floor of the shower, dreaming with my face in the water, spitting bloody mouthfuls down the drain.

An open letter to Julie Burchill....

in response to this article:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/localgovernment/story/0,,2034685,00.html

Dear Julie,

Your usual heady brew of misinformation and hyperbole is fine for your day job, cultural criticism being, after all, the backbone of any class war. My day job, however, involves spending public money providing housing for people in often severe housing need, and if you're going to talk about how I do it, I suggest you do your research.

You and I met at a party about 18 months ago, and quickly got into a scrap over the Decent Homes standard. Through great mouthfuls of cheesecake which you distributed generously over your listeners, you berated me in your trademark squeak about the privatisation of Council housing, gentrification, and the uselessness of attempts at social inclusion. My attempts to argue that good insulation, heating, and one's own bathroom should not be beyond the reach of people in social housing met with more desserty tirades about digital TV and landscaped gardens. Reading those same lines now would amuse me if they didn't reveal that you have read nothing, learned nothing, and listened to no one from that day to this. I guess I should just smile and ask for a cut of your book profits, but your allegations about the cost of the Decent Homes agenda are nothing short of fantastical, and I've had enough of reading you whining about my work in the newspaper I've read since I was a child.

It's been years, Julie, of paranoia and rampant hypocrisy and accusations of public malfeasance. I have a suggestion as to how you can return 'your town' to its glory days: take the profits from the sale of your house, a home which you sold to developers who built luxury flats there, on a site where we fought to provide affordable housing instead. Take all that dirty, dirty cash, hire a lawyer, and seek a judicial review of our services. I double fucking dare you.

Love, from the vipers' nest,

Petra