Rachel Gontijo Araújo

[emesis] –from primary anatomy


07:11 a.m.
I wake up to a wind of blowing pee.

07:13 a.m.
A knock on the door retracts eyelid to open eyes. Vertigo makes me see objects doubled. Four hands and legs, twenty fingers and finally, two doors. I progress to the edge of the bed and look around for my clothes. Heart nears chest. In a 7-second fit of paranoia I consider not answering door. Truth is, Justine and I were never intimately related, our only point of association being that I had fucked her sister. Perhaps that was the latest pre-requisite for familiarity: fucking. She knocks again. I get up and with half-buttoned jeans walk towards the door.

Justine suffered from the most scientific of the humanities: narcissism. Her encounters were mostly performances in which she always preferred to take from behind, a position from which she could not see or be seen in. For her, to share was to be robbed. Her smell, peculiarly earthbound, moved between semi-virginity and pharmacy. Whenever Chloe and I were together I could feel her intrusive, accompanying motion of lips, my hands, her body. I knew she had some interest on the effects these motions had on her sister’s skin; not for love but for self-enjoyment. Most times, I felt Chloe aware of her appetite.


I unlock. As a well-dressed courtier she advances through the door wearing a hard, rounded pair of black pearls she most likely wore to bed the night before. Never too modest, Justine looks me straight in the eye and runs her hands over my torso kissing the rim of my mouth. I look at her as if I had just come across a great longitudinal fissure. She smiles. I try greeting her with neither indifference nor interest. She smiles again and sits on the undone bed placing her butt on the exact same spot my head was. I study a tear in the fabric of her dress.

“Here is the book you asked for. Chloe says hi.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s good to see you.”

I smile. It would be impolite not to acknowledge her presence.

“Are you ok? You’re sweating.”
“I’m still hungover.”
“What’s that smell?”
“I don’t know. Possibly aldehyde ”
“No, it’s drier.”
“Blood?”
“Yes, blood. Are you bleeding?”
“Now and then.”
“Where? Let me see it.”
“I can’t fuck you.”

She laughs and lets me know I’m abnormally sensitive, places her legs over mine. I glance at her feet and watch her body double. Her smell, color and shape change as if to incite procreation. I make an effort not to heat. Justine lays down, offering me physical distance from thought. She keeps smiling as she closes eyes. Genitals rip through denim.

Before I’m able to voice any objection she takes hold of my right hand and places it at the lowering of her costume, asking me to hold it. I hold it. First as an objective data; a canal that connects the superficial to the cervix of the deep uterus. Nonetheless, being a vagina rarely compatible with scientific objectivity, I start to participate in her motion, from inside. As I move hands, a hint of roasted Mayan scarlet peppers discharges information from skin, enabling me to identify direction, locate obstacles and simultaneously adjust to both. The background level of illumination changes drastically. Effectively blind, I feel no definite boundary between atmosphere and outer space. To reset sensitivity, I push hands as far as they can possibly go. Prehensile thumb is freed for walking requirements. An increase in blood flow reddens her skin. What usually remains hidden is now visible. Her clitoris, for no particular evolutionary function, erect. Accessing anterior wall I touch the behind of her pubic bone, palpating in clockwise fashion. Left hand draws around nerve endings bordering anus. As she continues to lengthen in response to pressure, I catch sight of Chloe, transferring all her vulgarity to a large group of young animals. The bulls differ from the oxen and the geldings from the stallions. She’s the only sexed mammal. Not fully formed she seizes the first ten, speaking seven hundred mutually incomprehensible languages that resemble prostitution. Expressing an urge for natural variation, I face her. Her vagina is not affected. There seems to be a delay between giving and receiving.

RACHEL GONTIJO ARAUJO speaks Portuguese, writes in English and is located at an unequal distance between. She earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School Art Institute of Chicago and is the co-founder of A Bolha Editora, an in translation press with headquarters in Brasilia.