Room Magazine

On Acid My Childhood Best Friend Suggests We Take Turns Dripping Hot Wax onto Each Other

MONICA JOY CLAESSON

- MONICA JOY CLAESSON

The pain, you tell me, will take me to a place where I can’t think anymore, and I’ve spent all afternoon trapped

inside my own brain, so I peel off my shirt and lie down, carpet soft against my stomach. You kneel beside me,

and the wick gasps to life in your grip. Seconds of silence melt long between us, your hand clutched in my hair, wax liquid

beneath the flame. When at last you tip the candle, it feels like pain until it feels like heat until it feels like light until it merely

feels, and I pant beneath the slow hot drip, thrashing through the agony as if undergoing transforma­tion into some fire

breathing thing: low roar building in my chest. Sparks prickling my tongue. Smoke leaking through clenched teeth. Afterward,

my surroundin­gs come rushing torrential­ly back to me.

From your Bluetooth speaker, Florence booms wild in my ears.

On the walls, the maps are windows of lava; desert topography red and orange and undulating. You hand me the slim cylinder

of polished violet and I weigh it in my hands like a magic artifact, some relic with power enough to cast you likewise into the fire

of the present moment. When it’s over, we crane our necks to stare at the droplets scattered down our backs, skin slowly

cooling pale again. During sex, you tell me, that kind of pain would be enough to make me orgasm. When we laugh,

we cough ash. Spend all night itching scales from our spines.

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