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SCUM
DANIELLE CHELOSKY


PornHub asks if I'm tired of jerking off alone but it doesn't know that I'm a beautiful 24-year-old girl who has sex quite often. For Valentine's Day, my boyfriend gives me hickeys. I find the affectionate bruises to be the best gift of all. Money means nothing when it comes to love. Every day I drive past red heart balloons deflated and entangled in a dead tree. It's almost March. I can't stop wondering how they got there.

My boyfriend gets mad when I use only my pointer finger on the wheel to make a turn. Use your hand, he says. But I don't want to. When he tells me to, I want to use even less than a finger, but what's less than a finger? Maybe my mind, I will move the vehicle with my mind, see how he likes it. If I'm being really stubborn I'll say, You can tell me how to drive when you finally get your license. And then I feel good that he didn't buy me anything for Valentine's Day because I'd feel guilty for being mean.

When I jerk off to porn my boyfriend gets upset. He says I'm cheating on him. But I'm only looking at the girls. Girls with big tits and long hair. Girls with acrylic nails and wide eyes. Girls with loud moans and expressive faces. I've never fucked a girl and I don't think I want to. While I watch them I pretend I am them. I'm every desirable girl in the universe. And the person fucking me is anonymous, unknown. Sometimes I make the mystery man as ugly as possible, a disgusting creature I'd never even look in the direction of. That's not cheating, I don't think. That's just finding pleasure in degradation. Can't a girl be allowed to feel like scum?

I kiss my boyfriend on the cheek as I drop him off at work. If he's scheduled too early, like five in the morning, he walks and I feel bad. I imagine his black-clad figure bobbing down the suburban streets like an apparition. He can look so evil but when I'm beside him he's redeemed by my kind smile and childlike eyes. I make him human. We make each other human.