Dirty

On most evenings, and days if I have the time, you will find me sat in my shower. I stand, until that gets too tiring that is, and then I sit on the cold wet floor letting the hot water lash down on to my body like a punishment with steam billowing all around from the heat. When I finally get out, and go to my alcohol supply, my skin is red and blotchy as if the cleanliness of the water that hit my body revealed all of my imperfect blemishes so that I could no longer hide from them but be forced to face them. I pour myself a drink. 1

So that is my routine... Why do I do this? 2

All of the mistakes I've made in my life, all of the guys I have allowed to touch me and lay with me leaving their traces all over me, their grubby fingerprints, their smells all over me making my body like a pillar of sin. 3

I see a tree, I call it the tree of desire. It is situated in a garden, not entirely unlike the garden of Eden, except in this one the air smells of sexual excitement as enticing as an immoral woman luring a taken man. In this garden no one wears clothes but the bodies writhe with impurity and lust rather than innocence and modesty.4

I have been to this garden many times with good intentions but, each time, the air entices me into something I shouldn't have and, like Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit, I bite. The pleasure is immense and it takes me to a happy place but it is bittersweet for the apple's name is Memory. She drags me down from my happy place and takes me back to the land where guilt rules over all.5

Once the juices of my apple named Memory had been consumed, all the men and all of the things that had seemed oh so sweet to my lusting eyes and open body truly revealed themselves as snakes, each one leaving their own unique poison... I drink and drink hoping to flush the poison out of me and then... I shower again.6

I'm so clean. 7

Too bad I can't get all the dirt off me.