⋅˚₊‧ 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅🏰 this piece is part of PRINCESS, our second digital collection of works. PRINCESS responds to the problematic of modern princessdom through pieces by theorists, writers, and artists. 🏰⋅˚₊‧ 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅
｡ ₊°༺❤︎༻°₊ ｡
Made up with fresh white sheets and six large pillows, bed resembles the clouds one might see from a high flying plane, or the view from the top of a castle. Its plushness protects, enclosing one's body like a corpse in a coffin. Void of time and outside demands, bed invites a stillness that allows you to just be. In mine, I need not do, only exist in placid thought. My imagination roams free, finding streams of fantasy that we are told may only live in stories and tales.
In this way, bed is the holder of my secrets and creator of my desires. Existing between the real and myth, it encourages a kind of self preservation that makes me feel neither dead nor alive. In bed, I am sedated in the most whimsical way, only to be disturbed by an entity that matches the freak of my mind's capabilities.
Some beds have seen more tales, facilitated more fantasies than others. This particular bed was placed beside a large window - sliding doors, to be precise - that opened out onto a balcony overlooking the car park of an estate in East London. It had been months since we could touch. The streets were empty, the national lockdown had us bound to our bedrooms. Confined to my council flat, I spent the days between horizontal daydreams and gazes out of the window, looking out onto the concrete, not far below. This flat became my castle and me, the trapped princess, longing with lust in skin deep dismay.
Beside the sirens, it was mostly silent, with occasional roars of the dragon next door. She had lived there long before me, playing heavy bashment between screaming at her goblins. On the other side of me lived the estate emperor. He was strong and kind, with a charming temper. Guarded by a pack of security dogs that obeyed his every gesture, he ruled the concrete land, and would ridicule the misdemeanours of his worshiper youths. The emperor had a friend: a dark knight standing 6’5”. They’d stand together in the fort below my castle, smoking spliff after spliff into the night. Clouds of smoke would drift up through my window; a visual and smell that tormented in paradox to the dragon screams I’d hear from behind the walls.
My second watchtower, I spent afternoons looking out in longing, waiting for something to happen. Anything to distract from the bare castle walls that forbode escape. I had seen him a few times, roaming the concrete fort below with confident, wide strides. He looked polished, hair shaved to a 1, clad in fresh tracksuits. His poised presence was noticeable even from afar; face strong, with beautifully deepset, dark brown eyes.
I’d been locked away for months by now, only past romances to entertain my hunger. Seeing him around gave me a new fixation, a potential prospect to sweep me up and rescue me from the mundanity of lockdown law.
There was no plan to make the myth real, but my body craved a lover and this night he was there, standing broad and gorgeous, right below my kitchen window. Nightfall, he stood with his mandem and my neighbour the emperor - hooded - forming a circle with pours of Hennessy in plastic cups. This was my chance, I had to get his attention. With a warm tungsten glow, the kitchen lights made me visible to them outside. My hair was plaited, skin bare. I arranged my body, casual yet feminine on the window-level counter.
Watching and waiting, our eyes eventually met. I let our gaze sit, static, evoking the kind of magic we know from romantic prose. After sometime, when the staring reached its peak, I edged open the kitchen window, calling out from my castle: “O mandem, mandem, who art thou mandem?” [read as: “Oi! I always see you around. What’s your name?”]. That was all it took. He left his fort, throwing down his Hennessy and pacing fast up the stairs toward my front door. We said hello, taking in each other's physique, silently agreeing to become lockdown lovers.
It wasn’t long before we found our ritual. A curious affair contained in my bedroom. Whenever I wished to see him, I would simply leave my balcony door ajar. I’d be horizontal in my cloud exploring my mind's stream, or unconscious in a deep beauty sleep at 1 or 4 am, even, when I’d hear his quest from the concrete to my castle. A trainer of the knights at Hackney’s Pure Gym, his shoulders were strong as boulders, climbing from the car park onto the neighbours shed below, he’d pull himself up onto my balcony.
Sometimes I’d only wake once he’d already entered my bedroom, adjusting my eyes in a semi-conscious state to the tall, dark hooded-knight standing at the bottom of my bed. In the darkness, I’d speculate that this was actually my sleep-paralysis demon, the one that had visited since I was a child. Other nights, I just knew it was him, keeping my eyes closed for effect. He’d undress in my unlit bedroom, throwing his grey tracksuit onto my floor before crawling into bed with me. I’d run my fingers over his torso, so chiselled it resembled medieval armour: hard, glossy. This confirmed to me that it was him. On these nights we’d keep the lights off, choosing not to speak - just to touch. Bodies danced before cumming. Before he jumped from the balcony back into the night.
There were also the nights where we’d play for hours. Swooned by the strength he so effortlessly carried, I’d climb onto his shoulders, my head touching the ceiling, forcing him to walk around my bedroom til I got dizzy from the height. His stoic demeanour allowed physical passivity in me, and unlike other suitors, his alliance with the street meant he found my verbal dominance humorous.
Sometimes, I’d lie my whole self down on top of him, melting into his body as I challenged him to do push ups beneath me, counting each time his arms pressed against the ground. I liked the way this felt, as if I now floated above the rigidity of living. We contradicted and complemented each other's power, as if it were our game. He’d flaunt his physical superiority under my spell and for my desire; his innately masculine strength engineered through mental stamina and humble disposition, creating an erotically warming warrior of whom I wanted to consume me.
Then we’d fuck. I’d whisper sweet nasties into his ear until he’d throw my body with violent impetus. I wanted to feel as weightless as the pictures in my head, for the cloud of my bed to absorb us both; a pillow princess with a plan, a bossy bottom with a narrative. By entering my bedroom, my castle, my cloud, he was entering an extension of my mind, and its abilities to weave stories into reality. I brought fantasy into the everyday and in this he was complicit, agreeing to play the part I found for him.
We developed a sacred friendship, a secretive romance pertaining to my cloud. Our affection for one another was almost make-believe, our ‘real’ lives so far apart that our desire was only possible with distance intact. We chose to keep it this way: our own tale of seduction cast from my castle, with a knight who enchanted by climbing up to me each night. He entered the space where I usually plot alone, participating in the silly tropes that normally lived in my imagination. He was my mandem knight in shining muscular armour.
｡ ₊°༺❤︎༻°₊ ｡
Ozziline Mercedes is an interdisciplinary artist working with words, performance and digital image.
She sees Her body as the primary investigative tool: transforming her own desire and first hand experiences from within the sex industry into a research database that informs Her practice.
Particularly interested in the intersection of [erotic] labour, fetish and pop culture, Her writing style combines fantasy narrative with social myth and gender theory, through a psychoanalytical & philosophical lens.
@mercedes666_2 / website | A guest post by
|