Bitterclean
by Oleg Olizev
Soapy bodies glide pleasantly against each other and the sliding is soft, without resistance. Skin becomes fluid, and it feels like the boundaries dissolve.
But the soap... the soap is bitter, like wormwood. It is a reminder that even purity can leave a taste of bitterness behind.
Isn’t that why my finger slipped into you? Isn’t that why that moment echoed through us as an aching erection?
Water flows, but it has memory. Did you know that? It wraps around and seeps in every hollow. It can wash away the excess, but not the essence.
Now you’re like soap, slippery and… fluid. I ask myself in this molten air: water, will you dissolve our sweet sins or will you leave them in us just as they are?
Maybe we should chew and swallow them; let them in like food, so they become part of us. Maybe if sin dissolves inside us, it stops being sin. Can you really be judged for what has become your blood? Maybe we should tear them apart with our teeth and taste them with our tongues. What do they taste like? Sharp? Bitter, astringent, soapy, sweet, or salty... Or soft and crumbly, like a confession without repentance?
Maybe if we eat our sins, they’ll become our truth.
You’re looking at me, and I don’t know what you want – an answer or an action. But my lips are already parting. Come on, get inside me. I have a deep throat. It’ll be yours. Use it like an object. Stretch it with the head of your cock like a rubber toy…. make me salivate.... I’m waiting for the next enchanted tale.
What is it – this fleeting desire... this sliding... this dissolving… in motion. In this trembling and unstable space where everything is happening and everything has already happened, and yet–
There’s no soap inside me! It’s between our bodies… it’s in the water. It settles on the skin like a film and it makes it slick, makes us boundless, makes us indistinct, and inseparable as if our bodies weren’t bodies at all, but… a single sex organ. Which one of us is the cock, and which the scrotum? Where do I end and where do you begin?
My head is spinning. Not from the water and not from the heat but from mental overload… from a thought unraveling in spirals. It fills the space, scrapes against my skull, pulses like a yearning cock. I don’t know if I’m moving or just falling… But what if it’s the same thing?
You ask if you’re moving in the right direction, but… what is “right”? If there’s motion, then it’s already right. If it’s happening, then it can’t be undone. It exists and… that’s its truth.
Is sliding enough? Isn’t sliding the very essence of the process? You flow… you dissolve. You wash away and… you stay behind at the same time. Your semen has already spilled into my mouth and it’s bitter, like wormwood… like a lion’s growl. There’s no explaining it… only feeling it. It is slippery… and inconsistent.
Can you really say something is over if it’s only changed shape? You ask, but maybe you already know the answer.
I writhe in orgasm from the taste alone. How do I grasp what slips away, catch it, hold it?.. open my mouth and trap it on my fingers?..
I’m in wild confusion, like back then, when I was a schoolboy. When the pen trembled in my hand and when I had to hurry because there was only one minute left before the bell. One minute to solve an equation that wouldn’t come together, where “x” felt like a mirage... Just like now.
Like this moment: stretched, compressed, elusive, but inevitable. The body knows the answer and the mind is still trying to catch up. Will this chase of thought ruin me? Will this chase tear me apart like an overheated mechanism that couldn’t handle its own speed? Or… will I just keep running faster and more desperate? Will I catch up with myself?..
The force of your sperm in my saliva. Did you poison me? Did you leave a mark in me that can’t be erased? A trace that will circulate in me and flowing into my blood and even my consciousness?
You passed your lust to me. You shoved your desire into me. It’s no longer in you. It emptied you out. It left you. It hollowed you for twenty minutes… a pathetic twenty minutes… while the body restores itself… while the organs try to reclaim lost energy… while you lie still, disconnected and spent.
I live in this toxin and it’s sweeter than honey! What’s honey compared to this? It’s nothing. This is life.
Slippery soapy bodies press into each other softly, without barriers, without resistance, until skin becomes fluid, like water, and the boundaries vanish, dissolve, as if they never existed.
But the soap... the soap is bitter like wormwood and like the cost of pleasure.
What a fucking thing this is – bitter and beautiful. Inevitable.
Oleg Olizev is a Manhattan-based writer, poet, and artist. His writing is intimate and cinematic. His recent and forthcoming publications include Fjords Review, Panorama, BULL: Men’s Fiction, Beyond Queer Words, Cathexis Northwest Press, OFIC magazine, Night Picnic, The Ana, Audience Askew, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Untenured, Neon Origami, and Half and One.