I’m reading Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker.
When the train comes to a stop in Elkhart, Indiana I’m on page 18. The child prostitute narrator is describing her vagina as beef. I’m tough, rotted, putrid beef. Kathy Acker’s writing is really gross and I check Twitter in between pages to read some more normal material, like about this rapper who is trending because he called his baby mama “Miss Amtrak.” Things could be worse, I think as I watch an Amish family with their toddler son board the packed train. I could be taking Amtrak to get fucked. That would be desperate and slutty.
I watch the Amish family putter up and down the aisle with their toddler son. When the train jostles as it picks up speed they lose their balance and fall into each other. They look like lost kittens, pathetic and helpless in their dour clothes. They look as dumb as their drooling toddler son.
Fuck, I think. The seat next to me is empty. The aisle seats in front of me are open. They’re gonna sit the kid next to me.
I turn my attention back to Blood and Guts in High School while the Amish toddler crawls clumsily into the seat next to me. I feel his blank, baby eyes staring at me while his parents stumble over themselves to put their bags away. Thank God this kid can’t read, I think, and turn to page 19.
Kathy Acker included illustrations in Blood and Guts in High School. The back cover describes the book as a “controversial, transgressive, work of philosophical, political, and sexual insight,” and that “the text is illustrated with intricate sketches.” Page 19 is a full-page drawing of a hairy vagina. The words MY CUNT RED UGH are printed where the asshole would be. I’m slow to register what I’m looking at until I realize that the Amish toddler is looking at it too.
Audrey Lee wrote the chapbooks Disjecta Membra (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and Probably, Angels (Maverick Duck Press, 2020). She lives in South Philadelphia and is so normal on Twitter @postpunkpoet and at www.audreymorganlee.com.
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