Will the Real Stephanie Ragusa Please Stand Up? (Part 2)

5:15pm

And I am thoroughly exhausted, but since I don't plan on studying for my Anatomy exam I know I have to pay a visit to my teacher, Mrs. Grey, because it is the only type of studying I will attempt to do.

I rush to Mrs. Grey's apartment, which is located on the corner of Greenwich and Horatio, because I need to get in a quick session before her husband gets home. My penis is throbbing and possibly chaffing from all the walking and fucking I have been doing today. I no longer find sex pleasurable; this is possibly the first time that I am fornicating solely to please my female counterparts.

She buzzes me in and I take the elevator to the third floor. The whole time I am praying to an iniquitous God to stop this unnecessary practical joke; I just want to have normal sex for a change.

The door is open so I enter her apartment, which is wrought with model body parts, stethoscopes, Fitness Made Simple DVDs and an obnoxious Bowflex machine that enjoys an orgy in the corner of the room—her husband is a pediatrician and a poster boy for sappy, life changing weight loss stories. See: Jared Fogel. See also: Oprah Winfrey 88', 95', 02', 05'.
Steadman, I'd sympathize with you if you weren't such a bitch.

And I walk into her apartment bedroom and see her with both her legs tied to the bedposts and her right arm handcuffed to the respective post. She nonchalantly asks me to help her with the last handcuff.
And I'm thinking to myself—this can't be that bad.

But of course my curious mind is wandering like the children on the back of milk cartons as I ask, "What's this?"

"Oh, don't laugh," she says as looks down and realizes she forgot to take her thong off, "I saw the movie The Sea Inside the other day and I was so moved that I wanted to see what it would be like for a quadriplegic to have sex."
And I'm thinking, God, are you fucking serious?

So I follow her instructions; I handcuff her left hand to the post, place the neck brace around her upper cervix and tie her to the bed using four ropes: one around her shoulders, abdomen, hips and knees. And bruises—I am sure her hothead husband gave her—mar her entire body.
When the elevator works there are only so many times a functional woman can fall down the stairs.

I shake my head in disappointment as she asks me to grab the scissors out of the kitchen drawer so I can cut off her panties.
And as I grab the scissors I'm thinking, this is stupid; quadriplegics don't have sex because they can't feel anything.

But since she is an anatomy teacher, she has already taken this into consideration. "Now grab the bottle of lidocaine and epinephrine that are sitting on the counter and the needle on the dresser so you can inject me with it."

"I don't think I can do this," I say, knowing damn-well that I am potentially hurting my chances at passing this class, "I don't want to fuck up."

"Don't worry I'll tell you exactly what to do," she says reassuringly, "Now this is called an epidural." She smiles because that is basically all she can do and continues, "Place the needle in the bottle of lidocaine and fill it up to the 15 mg mark. Then add a little bit of epinephrine to the mix...Fuck."
"What?" I say, thinking I botched the procedure.
"I forgot that you're going to have to put this into my lower back. Fuck," she repeats, "It's okay. Just untie my legs and uncuff my hands and I'll turn onto my stomach. You'll just have to turn me back over and tie me up again."
"I dunno..."
"Come on, Hayden. We've gotten this far. Don't worry. It'll be fine." She smiles again and then changes her facial expression as she says, "Just hurry, because my husband comes home from work in an hour."

And I'm sick of Apprehension fucking me over, so I shake him off and proceed to do everything she asks.

Now on her stomach she says, "Okay so you are going to place the needle about 2 cm into the space on the small of my back near the spine. I have placed a piece of tape at the 2 cm mark; so don't go in any farther than that. Don't worry, Hayden, I trust you. But remember don't inject it too close to my spine. Now you're going to inject about 3 mg every thirty seconds. Once you are done, flip me over—carefully—and tie me back up. I'll perform fellatio on you until the anesthesia kicks in."
I laugh inside because, despite the circumstances, she still feels the need to use words like fellatio.

And things go exactly as planned except for the fact that I put too much lidocaine in the needle, but I will just pump enough into her to knock her Bermuda Triangle out. And there I am, face-fucking her because she can't move her head. She starts to gurgle in order to inform me that the anesthesia is working properly.

My sex visits hers, constantly checking to see if she is breathing and swallowing properly, making sure she is okay and that her every need is met. And my hips and back are inflamed because I am doing all the work. I guess this is what the necrophilic undertaker feels like as he fucks his patients back to life. See: David Johnson. See also: Benigno Martin.

"Are you okay?" I say as adolescence drips off the tip of my nose.
"I...I dunno. I can't feel anything," she laughs in an attempt to mask her palpable fear, "I can see you there having sex with me; but I can't feel a thing."

My penis grows numb and I can no longer feel anything as well. But I am not worried because this is basically a précis for my novel apropos of all my sexual experiences—two dejected, forsaken beings desperately trying to establish some sort of connection while struggling to fill the void of the world the only way they know how to fill holes. But at least we are feeling nothing together.
And we all prefer when the word "together" means not "a million," but just two.

Consciousness materializes, but this anthropomorphized awareness is merely transitory because her bower of bliss regains sentience. I know this because she begins to grouse about how she is in pain. It is at this moment, I hear the tintinnabulation of her husband's keys from outside of the apartment door.

"Quick. Go," she shouts, "My husband's here. You have to go. Now."
"Where are my clothes?" I say as I look around with utter consternation.
"Don't worry about it, just go out the window," she says, fear slowly perspiring from her forehead. "Help! Help! Rape! Rape!"

And I don't understand what the hell she is doing, but I don't want to stay around to see.
Dying was not a part of my schedule today.

"Help! Help! Rape!" she shouts at the top of her constrained lungs. "Rape!"
But I can't seem to get the window open. Her husband opens the door; his heavy footsteps create tremors that ripple across the hardwood floor. I realize I won't have enough time to get out of the apartment so I act on the only feasible plan I can devise. I hide underneath the bed.

"Rape! Rape!"
"Oh my God, honey," Jared says, "Who did this to you?"

"I dunno. He just left out the window," she says. She's a good actress. "Get this shit off me."
And from underneath the bed I can hear him struggling to untie her legs. "Where are the keys?" he says, anger and shock raping his vocal chords. "On the table. Quick," she barks. And I am praying to Buddha he cannot hear my heart beating or smell the Brobdingnagian fear that emits from my every pore. "No, just cut off the rope." And as she says this, I see my underwear soundly sleeping right next to his feet. As I attempt to grab them, I see a hand; I begin to panic as the hand reaches down to grab my boxers. "Are these his boxers?" And there I am lying naked underneath the bed of a tetraplegic as her husband, wrought with a choleric disposition, paces around the room with an aluminum bat in his hand. Why couldn't he just be a tennis player? Then I see my boxers migrate to the other side of the room and colonize the space between the bed and the window. "So you're telling me this guy is running around naked in New York City? Well that shouldn't be too hard to find. Son of a bitch," he shouts as he taps the bat against the hardwood floor. Then I see her soft, rope-bruised legs dangling off the right side of the bed. "Hunny, relax," she says in an all-too-unperturbed voice, "he didn't really do that much." And I have to sneeze. "Didn't do that much?" he shouts as the bat disappears from my peripherals, then reappears but only to caress the floor with its unyielding design, "your bleeding all over the new fuckin' sheets." And I have to sneeze. "Honey, relax," she says again, "why don't you just call the cops while I go take a shower." And I'm thinking about every type of method I know that will prevent me from sneezing—I'm holding my nose and I'm applying pressure with my index finger to the area between my upper lip and the underbelly of my snoot. When this does not work I try pressing my tongue behind my two front teeth, where the roof of my mouth meets my alveolar ridge. But I have to sneeze. "Okay, I'm going to call the police. Are you sure you're okay?" he asks. Despite his machismo he seems genuinely concerned. This is not just a dick-measuring contest. But as I see his feet heading for the door, the tingling sensation that plagues my sinuses quickly matures until I discharge a nuclear, brain-tickling sneeze that rips through the very fabric of time. And while I am lying naked underneath this married woman's bed I'm thinking—this is a suitable way for me to die. But my thoughts are interrupted by the caustic intensity that quickly envelops the room. "That mother fucker," he shouts. He soon bends over and I am looking at him straight in the eyes. Yet as he attempts to reach out to me I bite his middle finger with every nanometer of strength I can muster. "Fuckin' little bitch." And he bleeds.

I slide myself from under the left side of the bed, grab my underwear and reattempt to open that recalcitrant window.

"I'm going to kill the fuck out of you," he shouts as he points the bat at my frame and power walks to my side of the room.

"I'm going to take that bat and stick it where the sun don't shine, gramps" I shout in an attempt to sound threatening. But he's the one with the weapon so my truculence only angers him more. And I'm thinking about waterfalls, oceans and rivers.
And when someone has a weapon, we all resort to desperate measures.

As he lifts up the bat, I attempt to pee on him so that I may buy myself some time, but I am broke; consequently, I try to run to the other side of the room, but the skull of the bat swipes my left arm. I fall on top of the bed and try to hide underneath the covers. He pulls off the covers and points the bat at me again.

"Your dead fucker."
Funny choice of words.
I quickly grab Mrs. Grey and use her as a shield.
She whispers to me, "Hayden, do you know what you're doing?"
"Yeah," I reply, "how's your coral reef?"
"Not now, Hayden."
"What...what'd you just whisper to him?" her husband vociferates.
"She told me I fuck so much better than you, old man," I deride as I try to devise a new plan. "Sorry, teach," I whisper to her as I pet her hair back behind her shoulders. I grab the needle that's lying on the counter and clamor insistently, "There's enough drugs in this needle to kill her. All I have to do is stick it in her spine."

"Okay," he says, his countenance morphing from pure pique to genuine apprehensiveness. "Let's not be rash her. Look. I'll drop the bat." He drops the bat on the floor and backs away. "See. Now, what do you want me to do?"

And I'm sifting through the part of my mind where my sadistic tendencies reside. I want him to feel ineffable pain because no man should beat his wife unless she is into that sort of thing.

"Take off your pants and boxers."
"What?"
"I swear I will jab this fuckin' needle right in her spine. I'll fuckin' do it, man."
"Okay. Fine. Okay."
And he does exactly everything I said to do.
"Now. On all fours facing the window."
"Is this really necessary, man?" he cries.
"Yes it's fuckin' necessary. Now do what I say you little fuckin' prick or I swear to fuckin' God I will kill her where she stands."
And he does exactly everything I said to do.

"You think you're a big fuckin' man," I yell as I release Mrs. Grey, grab his bat and stick it where the sun don't shine."
I warned him.

And the sheets are now wracked with tears as the tempo of his breathing waxes, until he is panting feverishly in a melodramatic manner.
It is easy for a grown man to act gallant, but it's even easier to make that son of a whore cry.

I leave the butt of the bat lodged inside for him to take out himself. He'll be shitting cookies for the next couple of weeks.
As he tries to push out the bat, I grab my underwear, mouth to Mrs. Grey 'I'm sorry' and finally open that headstrong window.
As I exit the apartment I yell, "And if you ever, ever fuckin' lay so much as a hand on her again, you'll be shitting out shoelaces for weeks."
I hope Chris Brown has fun removing the bat from his brown eye.


And it is Cinco de Mayo so all of the cities Mexicans are out on the streets playing Frisbee with tortillas and piñata with real woman. I am in my boxers running past licentious chicas who whistle, shout '¡Arriba!' and flash me their breasts. I steal this one illegal immigrants' sombrero, which serves as a proper way to put me in a festive mood. A true Youtube Moment. The man does not say a word because either he is too afraid to start a quarrel with a guy in his underwear or he has a spare sombrero underneath his poncho. As I run through the crowd of people I accidentally spill a woman's forty all over this man's back. Wetback. I was expecting him to pull out a machete but when he looks behind him and sees it is a woman, he grabs her and they begin to hat dance. At the moment I start to laugh, I hear the sky crack and before I know it, the clouds are puling. The liquid moonlight assaults my design with such deep-rooted intentions.
God, you are a son of a bitch.
8:09pm

Bewildered, drenched and exhausted, I desperately want to get back to my apartment; it is a thirty-block walk. I soon realize that I am only two blocks from my Theology teacher's apartment. I take a sharp left and run until I reach the mouth of her pad. She buzzes me in and I enter. And I take the elevator to the fifth floor. Her door is open.
"Ms. McMartin," I shout at the apartment, "It's Hayden."

She enters the hallway and says, "Hayden, it's so good to see you." She looks up and down my body, reaches into the closet, grabs a towel and says, "You look cold. Here. Dry yourself off. Would you like some tea?"

I nod as I survey her physique. She is a gaunt, middle-aged brunette whose scalp is scourged with streaks of thin grey hairs that huddle between brown ones. Wrinkles greet her sheet-white skin sparingly. She is wearing a strapless, patterned gypsy dress that drags along the floor in an intimate fashion.

"Where are you coming from?" she asks as she hands me a large mug of tea.
"It's a long story," I say ambiguously, "Let's just say I've had a very stressful day."
"Well, I'm glad you're here. Drink up," she says as she lifts up her cup and cheers me.

And we talk about religion; she tells me about the beauties of ritualistic sex.
"It is an act blessed by and in celebration of Gods and Goddesses..."

Then our conversations get a little more intimate.
"What is it that you want out of life?" she solemnly says, still sipping her sweetened tea.
"I want life to give me what I deserve."
"And what is that, Hayden?"
"A blowjob," I shout. She laughs. "No. Honestly? I just want people...I just want people to love me."
"Anyone in particular?" she says as she fans her moistened and somewhat glistening skin.
"No."
"No one?"
"No. I want everyone to love me. Not like in a narcissistic way. I just want everyone to love me because I—because I love them. I love everyone and I try to show them that whenever I meet them. But I can't help but put this guard up whenever I get too close. I don't—I don't want to get hurt," I say, ineffectually fighting back tears.

"So your objectivity is just a defense mechanism?"
"Yeah. I guess it's cause I love everyone so goddamn much. Everyone I meet. I just want to hug them and let them know they are loved. They don't need God or their abusive father or Oprah. But I dunno what I'd do if they loved me the same way I love them. We always hurt the ones we love and I can't deal with dejection; I've had enough of that in my life. "
And she gives me a sympathetic look then smiles as she says, "Well, I love you Hayden."

And she finishes her tea as I wipe bitter tears from the side of my face.
"I feel funny," I say as I massage my forehead, "what type of tea is this?"
"Earl Grey. But I put some Damiana and Yohimbe in it."
"I feel...I feel slightly titillated."
"Yeah, that's the Damiana. And I look down and behold the bulge in my boxers. I quickly cover up, but she notices and laughs, "Don't worry, honey, that's just the Yohimbe."

And she guides me to her bedroom. My world is shrouded in a thick vapor that swallows my environment as I tug restlessly at my masculinity. And I see a chalk-inscribed pentagram resting, unscathed in the right corner of the room. The flames from her candles dance in the midst of their dissolution, emitting aphrodisiacal aromas as they drool. As she grabs a book, my world begins to have a seizure, its convulsions creating constant chaos that corrupts the constancy that had carved a characteristic complacency in the crevices of my cranium.

"Please, sit down."
"On the floor?" I say as I look down, "I don't know if I can."
"I know your world must be spinning right now, but it's just a side effect of the Yohimbe."

I sit on the floor and watch as she recites lines from inside the pentagram. The lightning from outside frightens the room, turning it a ghostly white. Then, the thunder cuts the air in an anarchic manner; it causes me to jump back in fear.

"Oh, Great Goddess, Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, hear me. Descend now into Michelle, your loyal attendant and follower. Bless our Rite with your power," she says as she pets the knife she had grabbed from her bookshelf." She pinches her wrist with the knife and allows for the blood to drip onto the center of the pentagram. Then she motions for me to come to her and for some reason I do. "Oh, Great God, Ares, God of All Things Wild and Free, hear me. Descend now into Hayden, your loyal attendant and follower. Bless our Rite with your power," she says as she grabs my naked wrist and strokes it with the knife. And the sound of me bleeding is a beautifully chaotic tune that assails my eardrums with its lawless resonance. I begin to hear whispers that compliment the sound of her reading some spell from her book. But I can't understand anything because everyone seems to be speaking in gibberish. The lightning attacks the room again illuminating every single object, and her design metamorphoses into something that resembles a Tawaret. The crocodile resting on her spine looks at me with censure as I slowly inch my way back. She beckons me using the same finger motion I use to make women feel immortal. "Come, Hayden."

And whatever drugs she had given me have nullified my inhibitions. I find myself on top of her in the center of the pentagram, the blood rushing down my intravenous pipeline; my wrist salivates, which instigates this intense rush of whatever that runs rampant throughout. I plant soft kisses on her exposed neck as her mien reveals the ensuing events. She wraps her legs and arms around my back, lifts herself into the air and places my sex inside hers. Suspended she whispers for me to thrust. Her moans echo across the room and compete with the thunder for my attention. She climaxes and slowly drops to the ground. Sprawled across the flooring, she allows me to continue. And I persist. Through my peripherals I can see her grab the voyeuristic knife and lift it into the air. I quickly switch positions and notice as she swipes the air. "What are you doing?"
"It's time for the sacrifice."

And shock attacks the very hub of my existence, but for some reason I keep plowing through her rose field until she lifts the knife up again. "Am I the sacrifice?" But before she can answer I hear a knock on the bedroom door. Three couples enter the room.
"Michelle, we're here," a voice shouts from behind me.
"You haven't done it yet?" a woman's voice asks.
"Done what?" Then I feel the sharp object suddenly permeate my pelt. I scream and attack the woman by pinning her arms against the floor. I begin to feel lightheaded as I rip the knife out of my back. The coven closes in on me, so I raise the knife with any sort of strength I can muster and yell, "Don't come—" I wipe the sweat from my brow, fight back this precipitous feeling of nausea and continue, "Don't come any closer." I wave the knife in the air chaotically and shout again, "Don't come any closer or I'll—or I'll do it."

"Okay calm down, guy," one of the men says, bouncing his hands in the air.
"Relax, Hayden," Ms. McMartin says calmly, "there's no need for this."
"Geez, Michelle, how much did you give him?" the lady says, using her mate as a shield.
"I dunno," she says as she revolves her head so that she is looking at the ceiling, "a thousand, maybe two thousand milligrams—I'm not sure."
"Relax, kid, we're not here to hurt you," another man says.
"Bullshit," I reply, "she just stabbed me in the back."

And everyone pauses for a moment; they are all looking at her with the same sense of shock. The men are all wearing red cassocks and black rimmed glasses and the women are adorned in matching red gypsy dresses; I can't find one distinguishing characteristic among them.
"Because you asked me to, Hayden," Ms. McMartin says, "I only broke the skin."

And my world of illusions crumbles around me until I can see everything as it is. There is Arabian music playing in the background and the six people amalgamate to form twain. "But what about the pentagram?" I ask now utterly confused.
"It's a pentacle, Hayden, with a pentagram in the middle. It symbolizes the goddess Venus."
"I think I should go," I say, hanging my head in complete chagrin. "Do you have anything I can wear?"

She helps me clean the Lilliputian cut and places a bandage over it. She hands me one of her dresses and apologizes for the whole situation. I leave her apartment dressed like a gypsy, still feeling nauseous.
Talk about a walk of shame.

10:00 pm

Walking down the wet, crowded yet desolate streets of New York, I critically assess my life. Is this what I have been reduced to? My life consists of sex and nothing else. It's all I write about because it is all I know. There has to be more to life than just the friction between two sentient souls. And I'm tired of writing about getting off. I desire something more. I want to find out who I will be rather than who I am.

I decide to make a quick stop at my Drama teacher's apartment to get the notes from the class I missed this evening. His name is Mr. Newmar and I am certain he is as straight as an arrow. When I get to his place, someone holds the door open for me as they leave. I take the elevator to the top floor and knock on the door of his apartment. As I wait I ruminate on finding a logical excuse for the dress. Before I can produce a condonable explanation, my teacher opens the door decorated with a classic 60s A-line shift dress.

He looks me up and down and says, "So I guess you want to be the woman, tonight," he looks at my body again and says, "Well, ugh, I already did my makeup."
It puts the lotion on its skin.

I have a sense of humor but this joke just isn't funny anymore. I take off the dress, throw it at him, and solemnly walk down the narrow corridor. At the end of the beaten hall, I pass the elevator and decide to take the stairs; I'm tired of taking the easy way.