Orsolya Nagy

Her Story

The ring light dims last, always. It leaves a violet ghost behind my eyes and the smell of hot dust in the little studio. I kill the stream, and the count of men who paid to look at me slides off the monitor like water — nothing sticks. What sticks is my own lipstick, bitter and waxy on the inside of my lip, because forty minutes ago I pressed my mouth to the back of my hand and pretended it was yours, and now the taste is still here and I cannot swallow it away. You watch. That was the rule, remember — you watched the set from the dark corner with your hands on your knees, and every time I let the silk drop I knew exactly where your eyes went. So now the ritual. It is not complicated and it does not need a camera. You strip to nothing and kneel on the rug where the tripod stood. I keep the robe half tied and go nowhere near the knot; that is my part, that is the whole of it — standing above you, filling the frame of your view until there is nothing to look at but me. When I give you my hand you kiss the palm first, unhurried, the way one approaches an altar. Then the inner wrist. Then up. That is the devotion I want, and that is the corruption too, my treasure: I take something careful and clean in you and I ask it to be shameless, over and over, until shame is the strange thing and I am the ordinary one. Age makes this sweeter, not softer. I know exactly what I am doing with you and I do it slowly. Hungarian words come out of me when the light is gone. István would have called this degrading; he called everything I wanted degrading. The microphone is off, so it is only us, and I will say things in my own language while you learn what they mean by what my hips do. Use me now. Put your mouth to me where I offer it, no preface, no ceremony beyond the one I have given you, and let me feel how a man looks at his mother's hands. Afterwards I will feed you wine from the tasting glass and I will let you call me whatever slips out.