chinese frenzy 02

Both of us are struggling with blood a little. Your blood is currently perfusing overworked, bloated digestive organs. The muscles of your stomach walls are rich red as they knead together the mountain of food you ate. Your intestines’ inner lining is even moreso, eagerly accepting nutrients diffused or transported across that near-mystical, tissue-thin boundary that marks the place where your food starts being you. So not much blood is left over for cognition. Your are sleeeeepy, and in fact zone in and out of easy, restful sleep.

Some of that food you’re working on is actually my blood, which explains why I might be struggling. You didn’t drink more than a couple of pints but I lost more while struggling with the wounds. Thank Christ you didn’t hit an artery while under frenzy. So I’m also fading in and out.

Somehow, despite our borderline-disabled states, we managed to move to the living room. Most of the time you sprawl asleep on the couch, prodigious belly rising up over your middle. Most of the time I’m snuggled in from the side, sitting on the floor and my cheek resting against your doughy flanks. Should one of us rouse we will hear slow, deep breathing and the sounds of digestion: for you, irregular highlights; for me with my ear to your gut, an incessant machine working ceaselessly through kilos of partially-digested food.

I wonder if someone with two microphones could map out the layout of your groaning innards from the places that sounds emanate?

The night is long, warm, close. We give and take affection effortlessly.

One time you half-wake, roused by a pinching pain buried somewhere two feet deep beneath your surface. Slowly you become aware of waves of pressure rolling across your softening belly. My hands are skilled at pressing precisely hard enough to smooth through your many inches of fat and massage your protesting guts.

“Y’kay?” I murmur in a voice half-asleep. My eyes might even be still closed. I rub your belly by feel alone.

“Aches a bit.” You reposition my hands with a finger lightly guiding them to the correct place. When I start again you feel a spike of pain which is immediately quashed into relief. Whatever was causing trouble—rib bone? rabbit skull?—is immediately overcome by your winding intestinal tract. A low purr announces success and pleasure.

“Good,” I murmur.

You crack open an eye to look at me. In the dark your red eyes see more than mine. I’m sweating with exertion, the blood loss meaning each stroke costs far more effort than it should.

“Should be resting,” you murmur. Your hands remain curled beneath your chin, though, not stopping me.

“Will. Have. Just, you were in discomfort…” The deep circles of touch pause for a second, though the cement-mixer whirring of your guts continues unchanged. “And this is truly all I want to do right now.”

Perhaps your shifting position is a treat for me, perhaps you’re stretching and taking a more comfortable position. Either way, your stretch starts by your hips, squeezing together thighs as wide around as most women’s waists and rocking first one way then the other. Your belly follows, its motion like a heavy ocean wave over a shallow reef: we can see how soft flesh freely settles left or right, but over the hidden bulk of busy guts packed tight and full. Your breasts are the same without the reef: a person could drown in them.

There is so much of you. You fill the settee.

“Knock yourself out, then,” you breathe, as you relax back down. As sleep takes you you feel me halt (perhaps catching my breath) then begin again. I dig my fingers into your body, sometimes massaging specific places, sometimes just enjoying your fat beneath my hands. I draw circles around the orbit of your belly. I draw lines up and down to roll your gut back and forth. I do my best to remember your MRI and massage along the true path of your intestines, helping your body absorb its food. Neither of us trouble to worry if this forces up a burp, or out a fart.

Sometimes when you wake I’m massaging. Sometimes when you wake I’m only breathing in sleep. The night seems to stretch forever.