This is the final bit of text from Kiss&Cry, delivered as a monologue/rant after I’ve read a series of fanfictions made specifically for the people attending based on their preferences. Those parts aren’t included here due to the intimate nature of the work. The parts that are in capslock are instructions for interacting with their “coach”, a dummy the audience was asked to make in advance.
Content notes: fantasies about consensual violence, sexual imagery and references to illness.
i want to share a body with you. Let's share a body. not in an i’ve absorbed you into my body kind of way, but kind of in an i've absorbed you into my body kind of way. we are inside of one body which is a lot of bodies and everything is happening a lot. i have eyes that change colour based on my mood, and a body that changes shape depending on certain energies. when i am like this the lights of my body come on, and it feels good
the kiss and cry is somewhere to go to have feelings a physical space where people go to watch you have feelings and its safe and warm there's an oak tree and a small dog that looks like your friend’s dog and your coach who is also your therapist or whoever you most desperately want approval from and they hold a cuddly toy which has a box of tissues inside its guts or maybe the tissues are its guts but they’re there for you in case you cry or are super sweaty or are ill and your coach gives you your water and tissues and says babe its ok you did so good i’m so proud of you you’re the best i don’t care what anyone else says sometimes the body is a thing that carries around the 79 tabs you’ve currently got open in your head, three of which are playing music, and i just want to watch figure skating and read fanfiction about fictional anime figure skaters eating ass
i love physicality that has nothing to do with my body i love deciding that we were doing it right all along actually. i love being right or performing a very simple choreography, who doesn’t?? i love being in the kiss&cry where we have one job which is to cry or kiss or be kissed it’s easy. i never liked pairs skating or ice dancing as much as singles skating because having two people in it together left me on the outside i want a lone figure in sequins weeping and to be like do i want to fuck you or be you i am a lone figure in sequins weeping
it is very important to sometimes do nothing. this is not about a passivity that is in contrast to caring or anger or action, i am not having a gentle nap i’m passing out furiously it is an escapism that says “i do not want to see or be seen by cishet neurotypical people” not because they aren’t cute or whatever i just do not want to think about things that they have imagined
i might do something terrible i want to fight a Transformer in the street with my bare hands just sock it in its metal guts I want to wrestle and then fuck Lightning McQueen i want a Vauxhall Astra to drive slowly over my foot again i want to be pushed to the ground by a combine harvester i want to be squeezed by that thing that squeezes cows to relax them before slaughter i want to be slapped in the face as hard as you can i want to be punched in the thigh until i can’t feel my leg do it do it do it do it i want to reverse my irreversible tubal ligation so that my unborn child can kick me in the bladder really hard i want to be dug up and then dropped by a digger i want the digger to bury me in a tonne of dirt and stones i like my body when it’s under another body or a body of water like when i’m in the sea and it’s windy and the sea throws me back into the shallows with pebbles in my teeth and between my inner and outer labia and like tops the shit out of me essentially until i’m beached like a whale vomiting saltwater and pissing with joy i want the digger to come back, pick me up again and drop me harder, bury me in more gravel, the weight of it pressing down on my whole body like a hug like being covered by another body and it pushes down on me until my organs, safe and neat inside the bulk of me, burst, and i become one big organ just heartliverkidneyallinone and then heartliverkidneylungsgravel and then i seep into the earth so that every molecule of me is touching rock.
i have stuffed three suits and shirts with bed linens and winter coats, placed heads at the openings of the shirts, tucked their floppy arms into their pockets and positioned them on chairs around my table so i don’t have to eat alone. one’s head is a very small teddy bear head, perhaps 20% of the size of a proportional head. one’s head is my head. one’s head is realistic, a silicone model of a human head made for practicing facial tattooing. its mouth and eyes are removable and replaceable. i remove the silicone mouth and lick into the cavity, remove the silicone eye and lick into the cavity, it tastes like nothing. the coach with the silicone head has a rose gold dildo tucked into its trousers. i don’t touch it but i like that there is always someone in my house with an erection. i love really turning myself on and then not do anything about it, like foreplay for nothing. It’s like, we could fuck. We’re not fucking, but we could fuck. i could come. i won’t, but I could. i like to feel brimful of potential. brimful of theoretical cum. i drag the coach that sits on the sofa on top of me and i imagine it being filled with dirt, being held down under heavy dirt and it spilling out where the buttons gape at the chest and the dirt clinging to my sweat making mud. i forget about the coaches because they are so quiet and scream when i notice them out of the corner of my eye. they watch me eat. i reach across the table with my fork and tuck some pasta down the shirt opening of the one with the silicone head. i hide a prawn in the inside pocket of the one with the teddy bear head, as a treat for later. we sit and wait for the neighbours to complain about the smell. we do not fuck.
TURN THE COACH’S HEAD SO THAT THEY ARE FACING YOU
(PAUSE AS WE TURN THE COACH’S HEAD TO FACE US)
i make myself comfortable in the kiss&cry and my coach holds me (i can’t cry without being held) and let feelings pour out in the designated feelings zone and it pours out like slime like when i was so ill that i filled a whole sprite can with phlegm but clear and bright from my eyes and nose and mouth and it settles on the floor around our feet and freezes like our own special ice rink that’s not for performing on or doing anything with just for crying on and my organs are warm and safe inside my tissue case body but my feet are in the ice and the ice is on my legs and tugs at my leg hairs through the nylon and oh god finally i can’t do anything now look my legs are stuck in the ice literally nothing can happen now because i am stuck in this salty ice it was the ice that did it it was the slimy ice that did it not me i did nothing i am not participating my ultimate sexual fantasy is to have my teeth brushed for me and to be shook apart by sound waves and to not have be responsible for anything not even my own body like a full time adult baby but angrier and more caring, it’s not that i want to be excused because my legs are in the slimy ice i just do not think we should participate in what is going on the terms that already exist i would like for us all to do something else
i’m not on strike i’m ill but i’m not refusing to work because i’m ill i’m refusing to work because i don’t think working is good and if none of us show up then what are they going to do if literally all of us stay in the kiss&cry forever what are they gonna do, fire us? i can’t be fired, i’m unemployed. i can’t be fired they’ve already fired us and now there is no one left. we can’t be fired, we’re made of silicone and duvet, we’re just clothes inside of clothes we’ve uploaded ourselves to the internet, we have so many bodies and we are throwing toys onto the ice and flowers onto the ice and we have so many eyes now the lights of our body have come on and they are so so bright
DO YOU WANT MORE NOISE, OR DO YOU WANT IT TO STAY THE SAME? IF YOU WANT THERE TO BE MORE NOISE, PRESS YOUR FACE INTO THE COACH’S SOFT BODY AND SCREAM
(PAUSE AS WE PRESS OUR FACES INTO THE COACH’S BODY AND SCREAM)