In This Body: She is Nobody


“My sexuality is there with me and she’s fine. I don’t second guess her.”

 Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED

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It’s easier for me to have sex with someone I just met than make small talk with them. Not always. It depends on the person. But, almost anyone, it’s easier to watch them have sex, at least. Than make small talk.

This comes to me in the middle of a party, this thought. I’m naked except for a vintage fur shawl, in some room full of people. Someone just tried to talk to me, and all I could do was giggle, make sounds. Don’t even know if or what I said. I’ve gone most of the night barely interacting, as in to another face. Speaking as in conversation.

There are a few people I can, here tonight. Not this room, though.

Being social has little to do with speaking. Has something to do with drugs. Some perfect mix of whiskey, weed, molly, and acid. I read aloud from books I bring. I’ve always got books. Reading aloud is different from speaking. No one else is involved.

Just me and words.

Some people, small group, listen to the words of others through my mouth. I don’t see them, or anything but the page. These words are better than mine. They skip the small talk.

I find the magnet poetry on the fridge, in the kitchen, the room that is full of people. Make a silly string of words that sound nice together. To leave the room for a moment. Watch the room for a moment. Being social is reading and words and watching.

And sex.

I find sex. And it’s always there to find. I find the people I want to have sex with. I kiss and touch. Disappear into other bodies. I find sex I can watch. The dark and the drugs and my sleepy eyelids, bodies morph in and out of each other. Become shapes and color. Every body is beautiful fucking.

Feels free. The easier way to get to know each other.

I’m moving through this version of me, a part of me, the sex of me, until I end curved into his human body like any version of me.

I’m completely different versions of myself. At these parties I am always mind-fucked on a mix of shit that makes me hyper-aware of everything but reality. Or, all reality outside my body, which is pushing against the walls of itself. It is wet between the legs and anywhere skin can sweat. Drooling out a slack jaw.

My sexuality is there with me and she’s fine. I don’t second guess her. I am comfortable, in my body. I’m showing off my pubic hair. Smile.

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The next day will change me. Or, change me back. I will wake up from his bed. Only a few will be left over from the party. Watch and listen to a small group. There will be some people who will want something I can’t give them. Who will want to talk to whoever it was they met last night.

And I won’t know what to do but smile and make sounds.

Smoke. Do something with silent lips.

Come back to the body of my reality. Settle into it. As far in as I was out of myself. Burrow.

These intimate morning-after people. I could fade into the background of them. The lazy Sunday way everyone talks. Moves. I am in his robe. He is almost out the door for work and I miss him now.

All of it mixing to this lazy melancholy inner self. This other version. Or, no version. Nobody.

When I get dressed, I’ll be a self. If I get dressed. Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow.

Who I am depends on the clothes I pack for the day. A long loose and knit dress. Or just work clothes, shorts or pants and t-shirts. Or the clothes I don’t pack. The short cut dress, tight dress, I wore for a bit the night before.

Maybe I’ll just go home in my pajamas. All my selves seem ready to face the world behind dark sunglasses, at least. I’m not. Whoever I am just now, can’t fit into any part of me. I don’t want to get dressed.

I want to fade into Sunday like a nobody in footie pajamas.

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I surprise myself in transforming. The different ways I look without feeling any different inside. When I get off work and get ready to go out, to a show, or a party, something. I change in the bathroom at work.

How it goes:

I start in something like a pair of high-waisted neon shorts and a bright red pool hall t-shirt. Dirt on my knees and under my nails. No makeup. Dirty motorcycle boots. My hair up in a half-assed bun off the sweat of my neck.

It takes thirty minutes:

Washing and shining my boots. Before I put them back on, a tight lace dress. My hips and waist and bra-less glory outlined. Clean nails and knees. Makeup, I hardly ever wear it. This is the part that feels like changing selves. Black eyeliner laid thick, set in place with finishing powder, another skin. Mascara, only a little. Shimmer pink lipstick.

My hair when I take it down is full from the bun I wore all day. Falls around the face of another girl.

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But the truth behind it is, she is the same. She won’t communicate through conversation. Full of one-liners and no responses. Of noises and facial expressions meant to mean something. There isn’t an outfit that can show what or who she is, she doesn’t even know. She knows it’s not in the difference between dresses and shorts. Or the difference of a comfortable dress or cocktail. It’s not the space between footie pajamas and buck-ass naked.

But all these things matter. They matter because she always changes clothes before she goes. Before she gets where she’s going and has her first drink.

The only real change is in chemicals, mind-altering intoxicants. A change in the brain. Whatever parts of her look or feel another persona, it is only that. A persona. Another look.

She only really feels different fucked up.

And even then, she doesn’t speak, not easily, not really. She makes more sounds. She will moan, she will read. Giggle, growl. Single lines. Means of communication. In the natural, the primal. A place only some mix of uppers and downers can put her. From drinks and cigarettes at the bar, to the gauntlet of intoxicants at house parties. And even then, she loves the party, her primal sexual being, only as much as she looks forward to the intimate quiet between two bodies sleeping. To a lazy melancholy Sunday. The brain fogged enough she could be nobody.

She is still the same girl.

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Header image courtesy of Matteo Nazzari. To view his photo essay "When No One's Looking," go here.


Fiona George

Fiona George was born and raised in Portland, OR, where she's been lucky to have the chance to work with authors like Tom Spanbauer and Lidia Yuknavitch. She writes a monthly column "In This Body" for NAILED Magazine, and has also been published on The Manifest-Station, and in Witchcraft Magazine.

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