Muckraker

As one in dowte, thys ys my ssayyng: Have I dysplesed yow in any thyng? —Thomas Wyatt That greasy letter into which my legs entered, its tone conspiratorial as his wink, a linguistic wriggling of the eyebrows, a heh heh —it may as well have appeared before my door chafing the air with the stiff noise of its cheap leather jacket. Am I not chagrined by his proposition to put it all behind us and begin again as friends? How do I reply? And how shall I contend with the fact, Reader, that this matter cannot mean much to you, and that I, as author, am required to consider how to tell this tale in a manner that will entertain you, despite having never met you and having no way of knowing how to affect you, get you to let me touch you all over, kiss your lips then tongue your mouth open, move my mouth down your neck to the valley of your chest, pluck buttons off you with my teeth. I have thought of this for a great, long time. I have sat here hunched, feeling sick; I have paced rugs bare. Why should you care? His door opened, selves spilled out my heart's bucket, flopped their silvers across a floor. He was too poor to enter a store, too poor to pay postage for a letter, so poor he'd have stolen crumbs from a mouse, so poor he'd have sold his cadaver if he could. Yet, consider the man: his deep voice began to work away at my inhibitions like sandpaper. Before I knew it, I'd moved right into him, wiped the eyes of windows clear, mended the tears in his screens, made our bed with sheets so icy clean— but you do not want me to give too much away. What fun would that be? Here, as with any tale, the moral's like a molar, set far back in the mouth of the story. Open wider, let me stick my pliers in, wrench it out. Left unattended, anything's prone to spoil, go bad, turn rotten, sink into itself, stink up the whole house. And how shall I begin to make my account? Dig through the junk heap. Start small. He grew over me calmly as a vine climbs a trellis. Your nightgown is unbecoming. A few small terrorisms. Eyes wide at my wince, incredulous. You thought I'd hit you?