Dreaming Up Medusa
by Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo
Art by Ira Joel Haber
I’ve always had a thing about you. That confusing line between I-want-to-be-you and I-want-to-be-with-you. You make it so easy, not even the bat of an eye, and you petrify. An ability like that could come in handy for me. I’m tired of being so fuckable to men. Trying to find a pleasure separate from them, one that they can’t infiltrate. Petulant like how a child grasps for a candy bar they can’t reach. You can help me out, right Medusa? I keep having wet dreams about you going down on me, the fangs of your snakes retracted only for me. That hasty and defensive hiss softened to a light hum. Only I can look upon the face of such terror, see all that sex appeal, all that power in your hair. You slither around my body, surrounding me, a thousand miniscule licks up the spine. All that skin and scale smoother than caress. With your eyes closed, what’s the difference between a wet tongue and a snake? Who needs a rope to tie you down when I have you? Who needs tentacle porn? You see, men have a pesky way of mingling into lesbian relationships, that inescapable male gaze. But you’d take care of that. What a sight that would be, a fright! A man with his lecherous tongue sagging out, caught in the act. Oh, we’d really get a kick out of that. It’s not that they desire us. It’s just not enough. Desire like a limited resource. They get off, and they’re done. We’re different, endless. They don’t love that monstrous in us, that dark which burrows itself in the scars they give us—how could they? But you, my Medusa, my musa, we mirror one another. There is a myth, an uttering rejected from western canon that praises Ariadne as a Minoan fertility goddess. Her breasts unclad and hands outstretched in the shape of a full moon, two angry snakes in her grasp. I had another dream about you, Medusa. You laid your head on my belly, your snakes trailing up my navel and between my breasts until they reached down into my throat. When you finished, I kept choking up black tar. I thought it a nightmare but realized it a blessing. You cleansed me. Reached deeper and exposed the grotesque in me. I dream you waking into me until I am as bold as you. You’re blurring into me. I wear your face now. You’ve brought me to your sculpture garden. We’re making love atop the rubble of all the men you’ve demolished over the years, your most valuable collectibles. All those Apollos and Poseidons turned to dust. I’m not even into this sort of thing. Simply lost in you, languid in you. You completely envelop me. Oh, is that a bone-cracking beneath us? A rib or a spine, perhaps? What better to do with a false icon than shatter it to bits?
Ira Joel Haber, Untitled
