i live here. me, my name is france delapaux. i am twenty-seven. i live with my mother, three sisters, and my brother, alphonse. my father is a swine. i see him time to time in the gutter. that is fine by me. worthy of the streets. i, i work hard. i erase my past with every footstep i take, except for my mother. i will always carry my mother and for this she is not my past but rather always by my side. i love her. but she becomes smaller than me every day. i see her disappearing, although she always has a smile on her face. i smile back down distant hallways. i lay on my bed. i touch my breasts. i own me. no man will ever own me again. my mother lays in her bed alone. her lamp is out. i read late into the night. i go to work dreary eyed and am teased. they think it is a boy. it is! it is all sorts of boys and men, and even women, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Faulkner, McCarthy, Anais Nin, even Kingsolver. i don't discriminate. i lay with them all. i am a wild lover who has never left home, who has never once said yes to a man. this is my window. you've never, even in your mind, touched a woman like me, a woman who is made just like this. and you never will. i won't let you.
