Sugar, Baby

I can admit it. It feels good to be wanted, to be delectable, delicious. But if I've learned anything it's that I don't want to be consumed. I have teeth of my own.

It's so deeply entrenched in me, the Fear of God, so much more strongly than the belief.

There's some satisfaction in performing, reading the script, wearing the costume, after all. And on the other side of the satisfaction there is rage. The deep and exhausting rage of having fallen for a scam. Because when all is said and done, being beautiful only offers you a temporary haven. A pedestal to fall from.

A woman is praying beside me. I would really like to be able to believe like that, I would like to be able to feel something when I pray but I don't. Maybe looking for God is just looking for something to be in awe of, something to tremble before, a standard to uphold. Perhaps religion is a way of punishing oneself, a manifestation of the shame built into the human experience.

I think of Constance's hushed voice whenever we were cleaning together. Once some things get dirty they can never be clean again and once some things are broken they can never be fixed.

I have never been one of those girls who's always dreamed of Paris. Of being proposed to at Disneyland, getting trussed up like a Christmas cake on their wedding day, of a nice white kitchen with a French bulldog. It must be nice to want everything you're supposed to want.

The thought of having a relationship with my kids like the one I have with my mum, a scam on both sides, makes me want to vomit.

You're young and that counts for a lot,' she says. 'And you're pretty. It's like currency, like...a bunch of casino chips in the game of life. You can keep them locked up in the back of a drawer and waste your time with guys like that or you can use them.' 'I want to use them,' I say without thinking, like a reflex.

You think God’s okay with it?’ ‘I think God’s a realist.

It is all beginning to make sense; the gifts he gives like offerings, the golden temple of a Miami house. Oracles, orgies, lusty Greek and Roman gods, apples and pomegranates. Ceremonial robes as designed be Versace. The candles, the incense.