Hooker In Vitro (Part 2)

06/27/07

And I’m at a Sexaholics Anonymous Meeting, sitting next to this fat fuck in heels, just observing my surroundings. They’re all here: the nymphomaniacs, the necrophiliacs, dandrophiles, sadomasochists and pedophiles.

I’m listening to stories about dogs and peanut butter, fruits and vegetables stuffed in unorthodox places. We’re all sitting in a large circle inside some dilapidated church and I can see Casey and Allison and Sara and Alex, the usual suspects. And Mike, that prick. I’m looking at faces and forgetting names.

Then, in a moment of pure poetic ecstasy, a woman rises from her seated grave, a sexual goddess, a modern day Daryl Hannah. She’s wearing a translucent blouse and nothing else. Her blonde locks sway as a subtle breeze passes through the cold, uninviting room. She’s elegant, refined, poised. She’s a heavenly shade of pale.

And when she speaks, it’s in a solemn, labored tone that plagues the room with such swiftness that its prey is left to wallow in its vague intensity. The words seem to bleed from her mouth as the knot in her throat twists and turns until she begins to choke on her words. Her voice, gasping for air. Her words, drowning in their own solemnity, swimming in bile and angst. Yet she sounds divine, angelic even. And she talks of despair.

“…And I can’t seem to figure out why I’m there, again, dressed to get fucked. And I keep drinking because guys keep buying, and, before I can even grasp the gravity of the situation, I’m reaching under my skirt—my eyes closed, my hands rubbing the thin fabric of my panties. And I’m wet.” And as she illustrates, she rubs her barely visible, fuzzless peach, which—I can only imagine—is fairly moist by now. She continues, “I head over to the bathroom and open the middle stall—a nightly routine. And I begin to rub my pussy, getting myself ready for what's about to happen. I hear a knock on the stall, five knocks, and I know it’s time. I open the door and a guy one comes in, takes his pants off, turns me around, and enters me from behind. He knows the routine.” I witness as Shame swathes her face when she quickly realizes she’s getting off. And she takes her hand away from her coral pink rose and cautiously persists, “And this continues until I’m clutching the toilet, ass up, sweating and bleeding from everywhere, just vomiting, while the last guy ploughs through my field with such musical repetition. And in between my liquid spews, I’m yelling ‘oh yea, that’s the spot. Fuck me harder. Harder.’ But last night was different. It’s in between my screams that my mind goes numb. I plunge into a world of blank sincerity. I’m drowning in a perpetual nothingness that seems to engulf my entire body. I’m reaching for salvation; I’m gasping for air, but no one’s there to help me. No one seems to care.”

As she finishes this last line, someone hands her a tissue. She dries her dilated eyes. She then looks up at me and the pain just flutters about, without intention, yet finds its way into my eyes. And I catch myself, an emotional mess.

And she continues, “And I’m stumbling towards a colorless light and I see myself. I see…me, a beautiful wreck. It’s more like a—like a warped interpretation of me. It’s as if I’m looking inside myself. I’m journeying deep beneath the surface, beneath the Gucci dress and eight inch incentives, beneath the peach foundation, beneath all this meaningless cover-up—the lies, the happiness, the certainty. It’s more of a not-so-fun house mirror image of myself.” And she dries her eyes again, takes off her heels, and brushes her disheveled, blond hair somewhat flirtatiously, then mutters, “And there’s this unsettling pain that castes itself into the destructive fire I call a heart. And all is illuminated. It’s a curious light that tries so desperately to find the truth that’s underneath. I’ve been flipped inside out and put on display for all to see. And it hurts, and I’ve come to this distinct realization—I am a lie, a fabrication of the truth that I, myself, have created.” Then she puts her heels back on her petite, pale feet, fidgets around with her hair some more, and cries, “And it feels as though I’m crying floods. I’m crying rivers and oceans, just drowning in my own superficiality. And then, in the two blinks of an eye, I’m pulled out of this image, back into the real world. Well—well it doesn’t seem that real anymore. And a man is standing over me and he’s shouting in the distance ‘Are you okay? Miss, are you okay?’ And I can’t seem to find the words, because I know that I’m not. And it was this night I realized that I’ve been fucking and fornicating with every man I meet, trying to create some sort of…connection, something to make me whole, but I’ve merely given birth to mendacity, to deception. My womb has created a generation of empty beings, callous and cold, fucking themselves to an early grave. And that’s a lot to have on my conscience. I just need something to live for, something more than just a few quick pelvic movements in some shithole bar bathroom. I need some truth.”

And she looks at me, gives me a wink, and sits down.
That son of a cunt.
She’s good. She’s…a worthy objective.

The counselor says a few words and begins to look around for another victim, another tortured soul. He looks at me and tells me to stand up.
Fuck.

I realize, at this point in time, I’m going to have to come up with some sort of story, some ingenuous reason as to why I’m here.
And I’m searching this endless labyrinth of a mind and it’s coming to me. I find that the truth is the best lie.

He says, legs crossed, biting on the end of an I Love Jesus pen, “Tell us your name and the reason why you are here.”
And…Action.

“Hi, my name is Alex Sanchez and I’m an alcoholic.”
Everyone laughs.

“That’s very funny Alex,” he says, clearly not amused. “Please, continue.”
“Honestly, sir, I don’t belong here,” I say trying to rationalize. “I’m not a sexaholic.”
“I can tell; I think it was the furry cuffs that gave it away,” he retorts smugly.
Dammit, I can’t seem to get these things off.

“Okay, okay. Whoo…here goes nothing,” I say as I shake my hands exaggeratedly. “My name is Alexander Sanchez, I’m twenty years old and I’ve been getting off since I was fifteen. Let me see, I don’t want to forget anything. Hmm…I’ve fucked one hundred and twenty-three girls since my first lay. I’ve taken a girl’s virginity, I’ve fucked my housekeeper, her daughter, I’ve committed adultery—on a number of occasions—I’ve gotten someone pregnant, I’ve fucked a beggar, a lesbian, a transvestite, a girl in surgery, and some old ass delusional granny. Oh, she died while I was inside her by the way. I pretty much just wait in my room until some girl knocks on the door, fuck her, and then send her off. I masturbate probably five times a day and I think about sex constantly. I must say: I live quite a fulfilling life. I’m a walking orgasm.”

“Do you think this is a joke, Alex?”

“No, I think it’s pathetic,” I snap back. “Everyone here is trying to find some sort of sexual salvation. Everyone thinks that they just want a normal life: one point five kids, a house in the suburbs and a life of monogamy. That’s so far from the truth you’ll need a telescope to see what’s outside that bullshit world.” I look at the rest of the room, at the casualties of this war on sex, and say, “Everyone here does it for the thrill, the rush and the uncertainty that comes with it. Because, you see, when you finally find that stability you’ve been so desperately searching for, you also find pain. You get a chance to sit back and look at how insignificant your life is. You realized that you’ve allowed society, this American Nightmare, to control you. You see this as an addiction, but no, it’s a way of life. It’s something that makes you feel alive, averts you from this compelling truth that you are going to die. Everyone here is just going about it the wrong way. You’re all allowing your desires to control who you are. No, it is you that must have the control. You must define your own destiny. You can live until it hurts, or fuck until you feel eternal.” And now I’m on a roll; whatever insecurity I had subsides and I feel like Jesus preaching his sermon on the mount as I say, “You are infinite, you are your own creator, and until you realize this, you’ll be nothing more than a stack of matter, a tree just swaying in the breeze, never really going anywhere, allowing this gust of ethics and morals to control which direction you sway. You are living according to someone else’s rules. Uproot yourself, journey through the jungles of uncertainty, and find a place where the wind doesn’t blow. Find your own Garden of Eden, and there you shall find immortality. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got deeper things to fuck. Thank you. And oh, by the way, my number is 780-1720, if any of you girls want to feel truth,” I say with a wink and a smile.

I leave that dilapidated shithole. As I’m walking down the street I notice about twelve people are following me. They’re all looking around as if the world they are seeing is something foreign to them. And I know they have never seen it in this light before. Oh, that moonshade brings upon us such elegant perspective.

As I’m heading over to catch the 1-train back to my room, I get a call; it reads, ‘Unavailable.’ And I’m hoping it’s her.
“Hello,” I say anxiously.
“Hello Alex, meet me on the corner of Christopher and Bleeker,” a deep, seductive voice bellows.
“Should I bring anything?”
And there’s a long, pregnant pause. I can only hear her urgent breaths and the vexatious sounds of the city—cars and streets and people. And we’re all screaming for, “Perspective.”
And the phone clicks.

As I arrive, I see my sexual goddess basking in the night’s cool, relaxed ambiance. The streets are a midnight black, an intimate party, but deception and pain are the only one’s invited. A single lamppost shines upon her frame. She’s standing there wearing an obnoxious fur coat, smoking a cigarette, waiting to be devoured. My objective—

Name: Savonne James
Age: 28
Height: 5’8
Weight: 125
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Brunette
Perfume of Choice: Chanel Number 5
Book of Choice: Valley of the Shadow

And together, we are going to find perspective. She looks at me, her eyes wandering up and down. She’s sizing me up. She’s analyzing.
“Care for a cigarette?” she asks, seducing me.
“Sure,” I say casually as she hands me a Virginia Slims. “So where’s our destination?”
“Right up there, sweetheart,” she says, never breaking character.
“Sweetheart?” I ask, unhappy with her choice of cigarettes. “You don’t know me very well.”
She titters.
“I was going to say the same to you. Come.”
“Oh, I plan to,” I whisper.

And she ashes out the cigarette with her eight-inch incentives and I flick mine onto the street to let it slowly burn out—die.
And I’d kill to wash my hands right now.

We walk into this elegant apartment complex and pass by a set of elevators. “I love taking the stairs,” she says. “I find I do some of my best thinking there.”
We walk up a few flights and I say, “So, what are you thinking now?”
She pauses, stares at the region below my waste and says, “I’m thinking about how big your cock is.”
And I laugh.
“Well, don’t worry; I’ve never left a girl unsatisfied.”
She stops, takes another gander at my physique and says, “I don’t doubt that at all, Alex.”

She smiles and opens the door to her apartment—an elegantly designed suite, inundated with paintings, murals, statues and books. Often, in New York, I find myself amongst the intellectually elite, the yuppie intelligentsia.

She sets her keys on top of the counter and takes off her obnoxious fur coat.
“Would you like something to drink?”
And I’m already drunk; I didn’t think I’d be able to make it through the SA meeting sober, so I downed about a fifth of Jack beforehand. But fuck it; my liver will be worthless soon enough.
“Scotch, please.” I pause for a moment, thinking about the way I want mine prepared. “Straight.”

She sits down next to me on her Parisian leather sofa and hands me my drink.
“So, Alex.” She looks at me with unspeakable intrigue. “What is it that you do?”
“I’m a healer,” I say ambiguously.
“A healer? Don’t you say?” The curiosity bites fervently into her salacious mind as she asks, “What sort of healing do you do?”
“I heal the forlorn; I heal the empty, the lonely, the social pariahs.”
“Now, is that what you think I am? You think I’m lonely?” she asks defensively. “As you so politely put it.”
“I think anyone who invites someone up to her apartment without formally meeting them is lonely. We’re all searching for some sort of connection, to anyone, anything. So it’s safe to say you’ve invited me here to provide you with some sort of comfort.”
“Stability?”
“No, no” I say in between sips of the smooth—definitely expensive—Scotch. “I’m not here to show you how insignificant you are. I’m the exact opposite. I’m a change in pace. I’m a new experience. I’m…circumstantial.”

“So what type of circumstance do you think I’m in?”
I take out a vile filled with two gram bags of cocaine and ask, “May I?”
“Of course.”
“You?” I say as I card several lines on her chic coffee table. “Well, you’re at some sort of crossroads. You’re waiting on a corner, hoping some wandering soul can point you in the right direction. Now, I’m not here to point you in what I think is the right path; I’m just here to give you the map. It’s up to you to choose.”

“And what makes you think I’m ready to change?”
“Now change—”I take a swig of my scotch, snort a line of powdered heaven and continue, “Change is a funny thing. It can be compared to its material, tangible counterpart. We all hate change; we try to avoid it. We put it aside, imprison it in the confinement of our choosing. The truth is—we all need it in order to survive. When we acquire the right amount of change we can finally get what we truly want.” I snort two more lines and hand her the hundred-dollar bill. “We’re all just vagabonds out on the streets begging for change. But we really need to just get off our fat, lazy, pathetic asses and instigate. We control our own destinies.”

“Sounds a bit cliché don’t you think?”
“Actually, to me, it sounds quite revolutionary. It’s just so easy to say it, but to actually indulge in it, now that’s something truly radical.”

She takes my glass and places it on her marble table. She grabs the neck of my shirt and pulls me closer to her. Our lips, strangers, merely hovering over each other—they’re just dying to meet.
She whispers to me, “I think you might find that you are the one who’s going to experience change after tonight.”

And our lips meet with such force, such brutal, nocuous force that somehow compels me to back away.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, her nipples desperately trying to rip a hole through her translucent dress.
“I think you’re underestimating how fucked up I really am.”
“Well those handcuffs hardly leave room for ambiguity,” she titters.

And she guides me to her bedroom and throws me onto the bed, her nipples peering at me through her thin blouse. Her frame—skeletal, model-like. Her eyes—sapphire diamonds that illuminate the obscurity of the room. She’s a fallen angel, a rogue being waiting to devour my infinite soul. Horns replace the halo that hung low above her head.

She slowly, but elegantly, crawls over my body, her pacing reminiscent of the hands of a clock. She uses those hands to draw lines across my frame. She’s calling my penis to attention. She’s hitting the right notes in this musical coition. And soon she’ll be playing my flute, a classical rendition of Lucifer’s Tragedy.

A symphony rings across New York drowning out the sounds of the cars and people and streets. They are no longer screaming for perspective because they have found it here, in her.
And that’s where I am.

And she rides me with such elegance, such stylish sophistication, that I start to feel as though I’m not dressed for the occasion. We osculate with an urbanity that can only be accompanied by a wave of violins and lyres. The whole time, she is staring into my eyes and whispering—
“Do you feel it? Do you feel that, Alex? That’s change; it’s entering into you and burying itself deep inside your soul. It’s infiltrating your bloodstream and it’s swimming through your veins. Remember this moment. This is your turning point. There’s no going back now.”
And I know exactly what she’s talking about.

And I wake up to that ostentatious star, that peeping tom, just ogling me from a distance. I look over and Savonne is sitting up, smoking a cigarette. I don’t remember getting off. I don’t remember much. I don’t even feel any different.
I sit up and wipe the sleepies from my eyes.

Savonne looks at me with those devilish, angelic eyes and says, “Care for a cocktail?”
“Isn’t it a little early to start drinking?” I ask, still not fully awake.

She looks at me and laughs. She pops a couple of pills into her mouth, washes them down with a neat martini and says, “Don’t worry, once the change settles in, you’ll want one.”
And I know exactly what she’s talking about.

She drifts off the bed, naked, perfect, and hovers towards the bathroom. The shower turns on and steam escapes from the crack in the door. She sticks her head out and, with her index finger, she beckons me—using the same finger motion that one uses to tickle the necks of babies. But not the same finger motion I would use in a couple minutes to make her feel immortal.

“I’ll be there in a minute, beautiful,” I say while trying to collect my thoughts.
You see, my mind is wandering, much like the water vapors that swim through the modish room. I quickly pick up one of her medicine bottles and read the description.

Drug Name: Atripla
Active Ingredients: 600 mg of efavirenz, 200 mg of emtricitabine, and 300 mg of tenofovir DF)
Dosage: Take 1 Tablet, orally, once a day. Do not take with food.

The name sounds vaguely familiar, so I grab the next bottle.

Drug Name: Combivir
Active Ingredients: Lamivudine and Zidovudine
Dosage: Take 2 300mg Tablets, orally, twice a day. Do not take with food.

Zidovudine, also known as AZT, is a common drug used by HIV and AIDS patients, just one ingredient in her cocktail.

Shock begins to attack the very hub of my existence. It infiltrates my bloodstream, swirls around with such pretentious splendor, and finally camps out in the very depths of my being.

I throw the medicine bottle onto the floor, turn on the radio, and, in a drunken manner, sway to the bathroom where I find Savonne, naked and vulnerable.

I enter the shower and began to rub her shoulders. And as The Fugees are playing ‘Killing me Softly’ I’m filled with a brief sense of satisfaction because I find this edition more appropriate than Roberta Flack’s version.

I steadily move to the small of her back and wrap my hands around, bringing them up, past her soft, wet breasts and closer to her neck.
I caress her nape and say, “Do you feel it? Do you feel that, Savonne?
I turn her around and I begin to press my hands heavily against her neck. She starts to gasp for air.
Between gulps she screeches, like an old transistor radio, “What are you doing, Alex?”
“Do you feel that, Savonne? That’s change.” My grip matures as I persist, “It’s entering into you and burying itself deep inside your soul. It’s infiltrating your bloodstream and it’s swimming through your veins. Remember this moment. This is your turning point. There’s no going back now.”

And I can feel the life just escaping from her palpitating body. I can feel her pain, her dejection, her sorrow. Killing someone is just like kissing them—you can see right into their soul. And the control is almost intoxicating. After a few screeches and palpitations, she falls to the floor, lifeless, immortalized.

I quickly begin to wash her body. I rinse her vagina so that there are no signs of my DNA trapped inside her. I clean the tub so that it is spotless. I wash my prints from the medicine bottles, the glass of scotch I drank last night, the couch, and anything else I had touched the night before. I grab the sheets, glass, and medicine bottles and place them in a large black duffle bag. I grab her lifeless body and throw it into an oversized garbage bag. I put my clothes back on and take the bags with me.

The bags in hand, I catch a cab to the only place I knew no one would find it. A place where things are brought to die. The place where it all began.
This place in the ways.

I had the cab drop me off in the heart of the Meadowlands and then I burn the bags and all their contents. The flames dance in the daylight. The sun just watches me from afar, witnessing all that I had done.

And I walk away from the fire and ashes, like a phoenix; I am reborn, my soul, anew.
My writing is mass murder. Basically all I do is dash down the street, pen in had, and fire blindly, as fast as I can pull the trigger, into the crowd. And these are my subjects; to me they are all just walking bull's-eyes.

My name is Hayden Santiago. I am a murderer, an artist—my specialty—not creation, but destruction. And in the same respect, I am a healer. I heal the forlorn; I heal the empty, the lonely, the unaccepted—and Savonne, I know, will never hurt again.