Heather Holmes
TERMS AND CONDITIONS

one month I am in philadelphia reading the Andrew Durbin book that describes this club The Spectrum, and the next month I am at The Spectrum watching women flog one another in an affectless way. that’s sort of how it is in new york, I guess, I say to someone later, ha ha, to read something is to conjure it. this is no safeguard against emptiness

I wonder at length whether writing always has to stake out a new and special way of seeing. I just wanted to talk about how bored they looked even as the leather began to break skin

.

I plant the hyssop. I wait it out.
I think about how far we are into this century and still I know three women named Geraldine, which G. #2 described to me as a man’s name suffixed diminutively.

all three are gay and one of them would like to fuck me. it doesn’t work that way,

.

even the best smartest scholar most critical of SM’s whiteness still refers to spanking as producing “a reddening”

…………….“Silvia Federici?” yes!
…………….“squeeze of lime?” Yes!
…………….“Forget This Network?” yes, Yes!

this isn’t abundance. Maybe I missed orientation day
I fretted. I undressed. I heeded all best citational practices!
I tried to avoid balkanization but the architecture of The Couple was of course very enticing
it is difficult to be a lesbian when you fuck men, but it’s not impossible. ask me anything.

.

if you’ve never heard of orange wine, it’s what happens when they just do all the stuff they normally do for white wine but instead of separating out the grape skins from the rest, they leave the skins in and let the skins stay and the skins and the juice all together, it ferments, it funks, one is left with skin-contact alcohol.

…………….“ok!” I shout. “Yes!” this is exactly what i’ve been looking for.

Heather Holmes is a writer and editor. Her work about art and embodiment has been published by or is forthcoming in The New Inquiry, Art21, The New Museum, Art Papers, and OnCurating. She writes about exhibitions digitally here.

Image credit: César Couto on Unsplash

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #24.