The Art of Restraint
18.Jan.2008, 06:09 pmKiki de Montparnasse restraining arts kit $595, Kiki DM.com
“Take that down immediately,” types The Boy.
“What?” I instant message back. I check the webcam built into my MacBook, a tiny black square full of potential for private publicity. No light blinks green to tell me I’m being filmed, but still, “Do you mean my sheer panties?”
“No, that story you wrote about me. Get rid of it now, please.” His typed messages appear in flashes of black and white on my computer screen, but his words are vibrating with reds. “You have no discretion. People who know me might see this. Do you understand?”
“All right,” I type back. “I apologize for invading your semi-privacy with a public semi-fabrication.” And I really am filled with regret—it was such a great story. I click a button in the back-end of my dot-com, and with an e-checkmark next to DELETE the tale is erased from everything but memories.
And Google’s cache. “I can still find it here,” says The Boy, sending me a link. “When is it coming down?”
“Getting my Google on,” I reply. “I’ll submit to have it removed from the search engine.” I wonder if I’ll be beaten like a Chinese blogger for this. If I had someone film it with an iPhone while I wore a short skirt and panties printed with my domain name, the attack could get me tons of traffic from YouTube. And just—
“Because of your poor judgment,” types The Boy, “I request that you never write about ‘The Boy’ again.”
“Not even pure fiction?”
“No, because the stories may be misconstrued as fact.”
My lips tighten into a flat line, as if invisible tape holds my mouth shut. Someone telling me to silence myself, when what my writing borrowed from real life was built into its own world independent of the original?
“Understood,” I type back. And I do understand a love for privacy, especially in a hyper-public, wide world webbing entertainment to reality without restraint. But with the literary end of “The Boy” in my half-fiction, I suddenly wouldn’t mind as much the figurative end of The Boy in my reality. I sigh, but then my lips bend into a smile:
At least this’ll make a good story.
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18.Jan.2008, 06:57 pm
Kristopher Dukes, I adore your brilliance. Really, I do! That’s girl power if I never heard of it. Or is the phrase “if I ever heard of it”?
18.Jan.2008, 07:17 pm
Oh my god… in the name of all that is holy and (un)pure, such as f**k-you shoes…
Are you seriously not going to write any more about your adventures with The Boy? That’s dreadful, that’s blasphemous, that’s heartbreaking.
Whatever will I read during my boring-as-hell Econ classes?
19.Jan.2008, 06:45 am
Oh Boy, please please? Kristopher will honor your desire for tasteful discretion (never thought that would come out of my mouth) but you leave the fine public without a rare, gentrified tease. We’ll have to have a new nickname. Stories can be completely made up rather than the 35/65 split we were working with but stories and negligees nonethless.
You can take the Boy off the Internet, but you can’t take irreverent sex off KristopherDukes.
19.Jan.2008, 07:22 am
This boy was boring me. Kiki on the other hand, it the most amazing store in NYC. Haven’t seen the LA one though… xoxo
19.Jan.2008, 06:03 pm
Oh well, his loss. I suggest u punish him. Literally, and not in a sexy way.
20.Jan.2008, 11:08 pm
i vote for punishment by posting the story!
21.Jan.2008, 09:14 am
so you broke up with the boy?
thats sad :O(
21.Jan.2008, 11:40 am
Whatever makes K n The Boy happy … You guys should be a bit less selfish
N K we know you have some more coming.. Waiting for that !
22.Jan.2008, 11:40 am
What is Mimi Mother Theresa?
22.Jan.2008, 07:00 pm
You are the ultimate Pretty Woman. Demonstrating the true POP.
Such a tease to the Boyz, making each of us that devour your 1’s and 0’s, your “Only One” at least in my Mind. Well do tell and tease. I am enraptured.
Kelly with a K. Not afraid of the bits, bytes, or bites in the ether.
22.Jan.2008, 09:08 pm
Screw punnishment. One word 4 letters, and it is not fuck, its NEXT!
23.Jan.2008, 11:41 am
SOUNDS LIKE K GOT DUMPED AND HER OVERSIZED EGO CAN’T HANG. WELL, ONTO THE NEXT ONE - GARBAGE MAN MAYBE?
23.Jan.2008, 12:14 pm
Eddie’s on the right track; let’s leave it at that.
23.Jan.2008, 03:14 pm
Ooh, pass a cup of Haterade!
23.Jan.2008, 04:37 pm
My call is the Boy wouldn’t tolerate this K’s ME ME ME ‘tude. Either that or she got fat.
26.Jan.2008, 11:17 pm
I guess Eddie has no CLUE as to who Kris is… Do your self a flavor, and STFU…Your lack of INTELYJENCE (LMAO) screams I am a man bitch
02.Feb.2008, 12:40 pm
Oh my! What’s going on here? Bad breakup? Sorry to hear that.
03.Feb.2008, 04:41 pm
To Eddie: had lunch today with K in NYC. How dare you!!! She’s gorgeous, definitely not fat . . . so tiny she was about to eat 3 small snails for brunch until I prompted her to eat more.
Excuse me . . . what are you guys doing reading K’s blog . . . talking about what the Boy would and wouldn’t tolerate. K’s brilliant!! A sensitive man’s woman who understands her own talents!! Who could ask for more??? Ahh . . the male species is never satisfied. We just can’t quite get it right.
According to AMX Black . . . our dear K’s priceless!!! Eddie . . . my dear, you’re commenting way way out of your league!!!!
05.Feb.2008, 07:26 pm
to K: what in the fcking world do you have against the Chinese? Not gona read your crap of a blog anymore, you try so hard to be classy and worthy of The Boy, but white trash will always be white trash even if you dress her/him up head to toe in Chanel you know.
05.Feb.2008, 09:35 pm
“oo” you are looneyyyyyy with 5 or 6 y’s. Do you have something on the boy? NEWS FLASH….Kris got in, GOT ON, GOT OFF, and GOT OUT of the boys life, figuratively and physically. maybe you are enjoying what is left of devoured seconds of a TRUE woman.
08.Feb.2008, 12:11 pm
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