Slush, by Ella Dawson (Friday special #2!)

When introducing Ella Dawson, it’s extremely hard to avoid using the word ‘precocious’. Ella is disgustingly young; holds a degree in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies from one of the top US liberal arts colleges (where she also hosted a weekly radio show and edited the school’s arts and sexuality magazine); and has just completed an internship at Cleis Press. Next up is a kick-ass social media job with TED in New York City, and after that, presumably world domination.

Over on her WordPress site, Ella blogs about sexual health and education, media depictions of female sexuality and STIs, and sex-positive erotica. Since the start of the year, she’s also reviewed all manner of erotic novels, anthologies and e-books, but I’m pleased to say that this afternoon she turns from poacher to gamekeeper. When Ella approached me a few weeks ago and offered to contribute a guest post, I was very curious to see what she’d come up with: curious…and expectant. With ‘Slush’, it’s fair to say that she both met those expectations and confounded them.

‘Slush’ is not a nice story. It’s cold and it’s hard, and while the sex is intense, it doesn’t send you away afterwards with a case of the warm and fuzzies. Her two characters fuck like most of us have fucked at some point: desperately, angrily, and with a tight knot of emotional pain somewhere in our chest or stomach. I knew from her writing that Ella Dawson was a lot of things – talented, thoughtful, a bit spiky – but in Slush, she shows a side of herself that I hadn’t seen before. And that side is really fucking hot.

Ok Ella, over to you…

—

I doubt I will ever forget writing this story. It was one of those trance-like experiences writers sometimes gush about when the story writes itself and you’re left winded and startled afterward, not sure what just happened. I was staying with my parents for the summer between semesters of college and it was pouring in the middle of August, the storm almost frighteningly loud outside of my bedroom window. I was blasting house music to try to drown it out. My ex was texting me about wanting to be friends or some nonsense, a foray into the land of the platonic that I already knew was doomed. I didn’t want to get back together, didn’t even want him in my life, but I still got that old violent thrill along my spine when my phone rattled with a new message. Lightning lit up my bedroom, I opened a word document, and this little monster was born.

A few months later I took “Slush” to my faculty advisor, hoping to include it in my senior thesis, and I was surprised when he hated it. “This reads like Penthouse,” he wrote in the margins. He objected to some of the language an earlier draft contained, but he was also unsettled by the lack of tenderness between the characters. He thought I was adopting a masculine writing style rather than heeding my feminine side. I wound up taking the language out, but I accepted the fact that he just didn’t get it. Women like rough sex just as much as men do, and tenderness is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes fucking is the only honest way a couple can love each other.

Slush is one of my favorite short stories, and I’m excited to let it out of its cage in my documents folder. It’s the middle of August again, after all. It only seems appropriate.

Slush

The sex they have isn’t nice.

They used to love each other. The memory is a splinter driven too deep in her palm to dig out with tweezers: a dull and irritating hurt, worsened by the temptation to pick. He used to hold her messy and tight in the middle of the night when it got cold and she drifted away across the mattress. They do not sleep together now. They fuck in the small spaces, in bathrooms, against bookcases. They do not hold each other. Instead they tear in selfish, desperate scratches.

They do not talk much either.

She guides on liquid liner with a steady hand, one eye closed while the other gapes like the mouth of a fish stranded on land. She does not bother with lipstick, knows it would smear across his mouth and leave them both guilty red. There is something deliciously irresponsible about not wearing underwear under her dress.

He finds her dancing at the center of the party and his hands settle at her hips. She rocks her head back, rests it against his shoulder. His breath is hot at her ear. When she opens her eyes she finds him staring forward at nothing. His eyebrows are drawn together, emotion carving his face, and she recognizes that anger in her bones—it has been eating them both alive for months. They would hate each other if they did not need this so much. Anger keeps them tangled like the links of a snagged chain. She knows eventually something will give and let them swing free with stunning ease but that day has not come yet.

He tastes like vodka.

They do still kiss, that might surprise you. His mouth is dry and hot, winter chapped, and she runs her tongue over his upper lip as she draws it between her teeth. It is cold outside, January chill seeping into her bare legs, slush darkening the leather of her heels, but his hand singes between her thighs and finds her slick. His grunt is muffled into her throat. The brick is unforgiving against her shoulders and she wishes she had thought to grab her jacket before he dragged her outside, but when he hikes her up the wall to guide her legs around his waist she barely feels the scratch. She is far too distracted by his teeth at her collarbone and the sudden ache of him inside her.

No, it is not nice. The sex they have is brutal and she prefers it.

This is the only time they talk. “You like that, don’t you?” His voice is strained but she nods a useless yes. “You fucking like that.”

“Oh god, please,” she demands an octave too high and he moves his palm heavy to her mouth, pressing her head back against the wall. They must not be heard. He can hiss into her ear without losing control but she tends to get loud. She whimpers into his hand and he snaps his hips.

“That’s what I thought.” She yanks at his hair and he growls against her neck, head tucked to bury his forehead in her shoulder. “You fucking love this, some backyard where anyone could see you. You love it.”

I love you.

Her nails dig into his scalp. His other hand sneaks between their bodies to find her clit, pressing and circling. She keens into his palm and her eyes lose focus. Only the firm weight of him against her prevents her from tumbling to the ground is. It would be so easy to fall, bruised and dirty and exposed. He grinds down on her clit and a silent scream burns her throat.

It isn’t supposed to be like this, she knows it isn’t. But how is it supposed to be?

He grunts her name when he finishes and it almost gets lost in the slush and the bass from the party inside but she still hears it. The splinter digs again, reminds her of its presence. They (used to) love each other. He sets her down on unsteady legs and she can feel moisture dripping down her thighs. She swallows the inane babble always sparked by the afterward and he fixes her hair with shaking, gentle hands.

Her coat is in the kitchen where she left it and she shrugs it on, finds her keys in the front pocket. Halfway home she takes off her heels and walks the rest of the way barefoot. It is the right type of cold.