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The Sound Of Zippers In Context


by Lynn Beighley


I slip on an old pair of jeans, and to pull them up, get them on, I lie down on the bed and pull. They're up, and I remain on the bed, redistributing my flabby bits, so I can pull the zipper up and up as I inhale. I button the fly, gasping.

In a bathroom, the sound appropriate and usually ignored. Sometimes unwelcome. I want a little privacy, and your intrusion is undesirable. The first time I hear your zipper, I want you to not be there, the second time, I'm grateful that you'll soon be gone.

We're liplocked, and bodylocked, and passionlocked, and the sound of your zipper is a result of my hand near your crotch pulling it down.

There is, between us,  a flickering lantern. We're not tired yet but the bugs are converging and hitting the side of the tent. The little ones, the mosquitoes, the gnats, the noseeums, they're finding their way in in spite of the zipped up mosquito netting. We zip up the outer tent and suffer the bug free warm stale air as we play gin rummy.

There's this movie, and a guy kills some other people, and there's this scene with the dead people being put in body bags and the long zipper being zipped up and the sound goes on and on.

I'm three years old and it's cold outside and you're bundling me up and you're zipping on the inner hood and now you're zipping on my outer coat and I'm whiny and impatient and I love you.
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