The Bloodthirsty Plant Deserves Her Own Story
Photo credit: Rineshkumar Ghirao | Unsplash
The bloodthirsty plant rests on the round ceramic table on the patio where she was set down. Every so often a finger is run down her bony spine, activating the follicles and stirring the chlorophyll that pools at the center of her core. The bloodthirsty plant bides her time. She is thirsty, but she is not greedy. She knows how to choose her moment.
The bloodthirsty plant deserves her own story.
But this is not that story.
I try not to tell men about my past on the first date, but it’s hard to fully pass when I am getting naked with someone. And when those two elements converge, well, things can go downhill fast.
The pilot was a case in point. I liked him because he was not too gentle. He left me with a web of dark purple marks all across my neck and chest, and an open puncture on my back that took a fortnight to scab over and wash away.
I still think about your teeth on my skin, I might have texted him the next day, if we’d had that kind of relationship. But we didn’t, and so I didn’t. And that’s the thing about the intersection of human vulnerability and checkered pasts. How can you ever know what might have been different if only?
The vegan rock star with the pillowy lips could not, I don’t think, have hurt me in the way my damaged soul requires. He would not leave puncture marks. The vegan rock star did not make it off my paisley couch. Also, he had a girlfriend. For extra credit, reflect on why one thing was a dealbreaker and the other wasn’t.
Yesterday I personified my loneliness and I named her Chuck. It’s a thing I do sometimes: Give form to function. Manifesting? You could monetize that shit, my ex used to say. Not admiringly. Well. Look where he ended up.
All I have ever wanted in my life, I wrote in an essay I didn’t know would be read aloud to our table at the Galentines’ Day workshop, all I’ve ever wanted in my life was to be loved. But what if, I thought yesterday, I didn’t need to be? What if I could be some kind of femme fatale, a sex maven that men fell all over themselves for and wanted but could never possess? I have the look but could never pull off, I suspect, the nature. I am too raw, too transparent. Possibly too needy. I like to think I am too real. I can’t play games to save my life.
So where does this leave me? Manifesting it up in my studio apartment, tossing out texts and dreaming of someone who will desire me but not cling too tight, who will hurt me a little but hold me a lot, someone who will ask questions and understand what I am really trying to say and who will take in all that I actually am and will say: Yes. Tell me more. You are not too much. You are loved.
Maudlin, the lot of it. Might as well give over the floor to Chuck.
Oh wait.
She listens, sometimes. The specialized proteins in her cells stir, jostle, transmit. The bloodthirsty plant does not judge. But she does listen.
Was she manifested, or has she always been? There is something timeless about the hunger in her chlorophyll tips. It is all one, isn’t it? The dark grit of earth and the pale blade of the sun and oh. Oh, the green ache of her. She is primal.
She wants.
The problem with real life is that it does not follow a storyline. When I decide to take my life and write it as fiction, it feels like a stroke of eye-watering genius. Here! my hubris trumpets. Here is the antidote to your overly plot-driven, impossible-to-take-seriously storylines! Here is the raw. Here is the real.
And so, I pour a glass of wine and I sit down at my rolltop desk and I think about the pilot. About what drew me to him. What drew you to me? he asked, before it all came down to the bedroom. Or more specifically: What drew you to my profile? Because it’s all about the dating apps these days. I know it’s not just me.
I prevaricated. I mumbled something or other, because who says what they really feel when put on the spot like that? On the spot, stumbling over roasted carrots and whipped feta, with only one glass of slow-sipping wine on the table, because the pilot doesn’t drink. Of course the pilot doesn’t drink.
Here is the truth: the things that drew me to him were the same things to guarantee that in the end he would walk away.
There is a bald confidence in some men that I am hopeless to resist. A cock-surety that says, I will judge you. But if you measure up, I will choose you.
Yes, I know how that sounds. Honestly, I’m making it sound better than it is.
The pilot’s bio had a whole list of requirements. He was looking for someone: successful, athletic, fit, and feminine. I pondered this laundry list. Asshole? Possibly. But also: Don’t I measure similar things in my head? Don’t I rule out guys who clearly don’t hit the gym, who can’t banter, who don’t hold some measure of personal excellence? Don’t I screen for hotness? Sure I do. I just wouldn’t say so aloud.
I will choose to admire this trait, I decided. I will call it boldness. I will call it speaking your mind.
The pilot paid the check. The pilot was flirty. He asked many questions and was impressed with my answers. I felt the glow of passing a tough exam. Not everyone, it was clear, made the pilot’s pass list. He screened for much more than hotness.
I was the one who invited him back to my apartment. It’s tough to casually proposition someone back to your place when they don’t drink. How about a drink? just doesn’t have the same ring when you are referencing water. Still, the invitation worked, and there we were making out and there we were in bed and there was the pilot chewing on my various body parts and somehow it all felt very right.
I am not a person who comes easily, certainly not on the first date. The third time was when things began to unravel. You squirted! he crowed. I had been kneeling upright and I mumbled and rolled off to the side. You’re embarrassed? he asked. You haven’t done that before?
He was genuinely confused, but also a bit annoyed. Like, squirting was a badge of honor. Why would that bother me?
Well, I did not manage to tell the pilot, I have birthed two nine-pound humans. That was not squirting. That was leaking. Did I say this aloud? I did not. I said other things, though. Eventually. Too big a flash of that questionable past. Too much answering honestly to questions as prompted. Why is it so much easier to be naked physically than emotionally? And why is there always a price to pay, afterward?
Here is the truth: The pilot was the first man in months who made me perk up and take notice. Can you screen for that hard-edge of danger? Can you screen for violence? Just-enough violence, you understand. I’m not looking to be seriously hurt. Only roughed up a bit. Only made to feel—something. Anything. Someone close to me was a cutter and I never understood how they could do that to themselves. Maybe I understand it a bit now.
Run your fingers down my skin. Touch me soft and make me come. But then clench your jaw and make a fist and squeeze me as hard as you can. Push me to the edge of myself. Remind me of what I can take. Remind me that I am infinitely strong.
When I got back from the bathroom, the pilot was putting his shoes on. He had a hesitancy about him, a wariness that told me I had gone too far. Showed too much inner skin. Would withholding the deeper parts of myself have made me more desirable? Less of a quick discard? Or would it just have delayed the inevitable, whenever my true self did eventually show, however far I’d come along the way?
There’s no way to know.
What would Chuck do?
Hey look, I said. Look, hey. I get it. He started to protest but I waved it away. Before you go, I said. You up for something you’ve never seen before?
He wavered. He wanted to go. He followed me onto the patio.
Come closer, I said. Lean in.
Oh, he said. Oh. Is that a plant?
Editor’s Note
Jo Paquette’s “The Bloodthirsty Plant Deserves Her Own Story” reads like prose poetry. The paragraphs could be grouped into stanzas. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. Imagine parsing the paragraphs, placing each sentence on its own line, and then read the story like a poem. Even down to the non-rhyming couplets that punctuate sections like: “The bloodthirsty plant deserves her own story / But this is not that story” and “Maudlin, the lot of it. Might as well give over the floor to Chuck / Oh wait.”
Paquette’s language is one reason I was drawn to the piece. Of course, there is also the story itself. The plant acts as a metaphor for the narrator’s sexuality while simultaneously serving as a symbol of her vengeance. The story hyperbolically explores that fine line we’ve all walked in romance between the desire to be authentic and the fear of coming on too strong.
Josh Boldt, Editor
Story Track
The Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” was inspired by the Austrian novel of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Like the novel, the song explores themes of sadomasochism and female dominance. “Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.” These themes pair well with Jo Paquette’s “The Bloodthirsty Plant Deserves Her Own Story,” a story that also hints at the narrator’s sadomasochistic sexuality and pursuit of feminine control. And I couldn’t ignore the reference to Venus in the song’s title–both as a nod to romantic desire and to the same-named fly trap featured on this story’s header image.