Chapter 18

Hooker In Vitro (part 1)

06/26/07

So here I am, dick-deep, in the middle of an orgy and I’m feeling it—that rush of whatever. I’m about to bust a semi-truck sized load into this beautiful bohemian when I look over and realize this guy is staring at me. He’s drilling this bitch that’s hooking up with the slut that I’m fucking from behind, and he’s staring right into my eyes. I quickly look away, but I can still feel his lurid eyes looming over my entire design. My finger movements and thrusts start to slow down until I’m just standing there with wet fingers and a droopy dick. One girl keeps shouting for me to thrust harder, and the other girl is slapping me because she’s about to climax and my fingers are politely suspended inside of her. And he’s still staring at me.

I stop everything entirely and I begin to look at him. He has this eerie smirk that swathes his face as he continues to drill that bitch. And I’m angry as fuck.

“Whatcha lookin’ at buddy?” I say as I look away from the chaos that is beneath me. And taunting him I continue, “You want some of this. You want my big cock in your fuckin’ ass?” Is that what you want, you fuckin’ fanook?” And I use that term only because the word fag just isn’t kosher to me. There are times when I can be PC.

“Whoa buddy—relax,” he says as if everything is copasetic.
“No you fuckin’ relax!” My anger manifests into something that I don’t understand, something I’ve never seen or felt before. “I don’t appreciate you oglin’ my goods while you’re dick-deep inside of some bitch. You’re makin’ me feel real uncomfortable right now. So I suggest you close your eyes or focus on that whore you’re fuckin’ or I’m going to come over there and beat the shit out of you till all the blood that’s in your dick is pouring from your fuckin’ nose.”

And the girl looks up, sweaty and winded, and says, “Who you calling a whore?”
And spent from the situation, I slip out of her gracefully. The sound of bodily juices escaping her vagina silences the room as I say, “You know what? Fuck this shit; I don’t need this queero peepin’ at my masculinity while I’m trying to get off. I’m leaving.”

The girl I was fucking looks up at me and says, “Fine, we don’t need you.”
I bend down, look her in the eyes and say, “Fine, but don’t forget who made you come. A fuckin’ dildo can’t hit the spots my dick can.” And I bend down even lower until my eyes are fixed on her sagging breasts—victims to gravity—and say, “I control your orgasms, so keep screaming, but it won’t drown out the daunting shriek of insecurity.”

Mike, Allison, Casey, Alexandra, and Sara, they’re all recovering sex addicts. Every Wednesday night after their meeting they all meet up at Casey’s and collectively fuck until they’re spent. Their second pole, Matt, moved to Phoenix so I’ve been filling in for the last two months, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t much of a commitment since Casey lives right down the hall from me. She’s the one who invited me in the first place.

Casey’s been going to SA meetings for the last year now and says she’s really making improvements. She’s been trying to get me to come for months…to the meeting that is. But, I know, I’m no sex addict. What I have is different than what anyone there has. They’re all just a bunch of sad, lonely saps looking for answers in pubic holes. They’re unable to control their desires, so they attend these senseless gatherings in an effort to acquire some sort of sexual salvation. No, what I have is different. It can’t be cured with prayers and a thirty second hug. I’m curing my illness; the process is what gets me off.

I walk into my room and trip over a suitcase; it’s Greta’s money. I pick it up and lay it on my bed. I open the suitcase full of cash, put on my gloves, and begin to lay it, vertically, on top of my satin sheets. Fives and tens, twenties and hundreds—dead presidents just staring me in the face. Thousands of eyes just looking into my soul.

I close my eyes and I can see her—Greta; she’s nailed to a cross. Her only garments are a crown of thorns and a light sheath that covers her frame. A beam of light stretches from behind the hills and shines directly upon her design. Her breasts, unable to hide, begin to perk up as a gust of wind swims smoothly through the air, and envelops her body. And I’m starting to get hard again. It all seems so symbolic. And I know what I have to do now.

All of a sudden, I hear a knock at the door. It’s Casey; she’s naked. So I let her in.
Still winded she says, “Sorry about what happened back there. Mike can get really into it sometimes.”

“No worries,” I say assuredly. “I’m just a tired as hell and I want to get some sleep.”
“Oh, oh definitely. Right. Sure. I completely understand; it’s just—” She pauses for a moment and waits for me to say something, but as I continue to look at her, she spastically persists, attempting to drown out the effects of our awkward silence, “Well it’s just I really needed someone to talk to and well—you know—the only talking that really goes on in there is a cacophony of moans and a few oh babies.”

And I’m staring at the cash on the bed, then I’m looking into her eyes—they’re blue. I give her a long t-shirt so she can cover up as she strips down.

“Whoa…what’s with all the cash? Did you just rob a bank or something?” she asks half-jokingly.
“You could say that.”
She pauses for a moment to determine whether I am just being facetious and says, “And the furry cuffs?”
“Long story,” I say, keeping my mask on for insecurity purposes.
“You’re quite a peculiar one, aren’t you Hayden?”
“I’m different than most people, if that’s what you mean. So…what’s on your mind?” I ask, alluding to the fact that I want to be left alone, but doing so in a civil manner.

And she pauses. She wants to articulate this the best way she can. She takes a deep breath and says, “Well…it’s just…I’m sick of lying to myself. I’m going to these SA meetings and I’m listening to all these people talk about how they fuck anything that moves. They have sex in airplane bathrooms and Cadillac Devilles and confession boxes. And it all just seems endless to me. A bit pointless,” she says slurring her words, talking like a Valley girl. “When does it stop? When do they get better? They never explain their motives for doing such things. It’s always because they’re horny. They can’t control their urges and they fuck and they fuck and they fuck. It just seems more like a drug than anything. And I’ve tried going cold turkey; I’ve tried fucking in moderation, but nothing seems to work. I can’t go to bed at night without a special friend to keep me company, whether that be some random guy I picked up at a bar or a six-speed vibrator. I keep a pocket rocket with me at all times. I mean, if I’m on a train, alone, I’ll take him out and get off,” she adds in an attempt to show me show her depth. But I know that everyone is just a prime number, having no common factor except one. And she pleads, “I need to know why people do this. I need to know why I do this. Then and only then can I be cured…I think.”

And I respond, “Find the reason and then kill it at the source.”
“Yes! Exactly!” she shouts, now unreservedly excited. “And I know you never go to the meetings. You seem to be handling things differently. And I dunno…maybe I need a change in perspective. Maybe I need to find another way of going about things.”

She’s a quirky girl, overwrought with anxiety. Her words tend to spit out at a cheetah’s pace.
And I solemnly respond, “That’s exactly what you need.”

“So indulge me for a minute,” she says eagerly. “Give me perspective.”
“Well…it’s not that simple. I can’t just pinpoint a specific reason for why I do what I do.”
“But you know why?”
“Yea.”
“So just tell me how you...I dunno, came to that discovery. Just tell me anything that’ll point me in the right direction.”

“Just have a seat right next to Benjamin Franklin and I’ll explain everything.”
I head over to my desk and pop in a few methamphetamines; it’s going to be a long night. Then, I grab a dutch and a few nugs of Jack Herer and start to roll a blunt.

“You see—” I take the plastic wrapper off the blunt and continue, “I’m writing a book.”
“What about?” she asks as she rests her head on her hands.
“I’ll get to that,” I say. “Now listen, before you can fully grasp my mental workings I’m going to have to tell you a little bit about my past. I’m going to explain to you every sexual experience I’ve indulged in that has given me perspective—that has had a significant impact on me as a being, as an individual.” I unravel the cancer paper from the blunt, lick the edge of the outer leaf, take it off, lay it on my desk, and continue, “I need you to understand that the things I’m about to tell you might be a bit shocking, a bit gruesome,” I say, trying to scare her as I unravel the second leaf, sprinkle in two grams of weed and a quarter gram of coke, rewrap the blunt, and lick it closed. “I need to know that you aren’t going to freak out and call the police or anything. You understand? You can’t tell anyone else about this.”
“I understand.”

And here we are, sitting amongst our founding fathers, smoking a fat woobanger, discussing perspective, discussing control. I’m telling her every single detail, every fucking occurrence; I’m paraphrasing my book. I’m testing the waters. And she doesn’t seem to be bothered. She’s unaffected. Fuck, she’s intrigued. And it is at this moment that I feel alive. I feel the same way I felt after telling my story to my late roommate; I feel eternal.
Infinite.

Now imagine this feeling on a massive scale. Imagine: the moment I publish this book, people all around the world are gaining perspective. Not a different one, not a new viewpoint—they’re gaining perspective. It is unique. It is absolute. After understanding this, people will know that it merely stands alone. There are no other ways of viewing life. There’s the wrong way and then there’s truth, not truths, but truth. And then all will feel eternal.
Infinite.

And we’re fucking and talking until that great burning ball of nothing swaggers across the sky and obnoxiously threatens our pupils, giving us nothing but a brief realization that the night is over. And we both know these sorts of deviances can’t be done in broad daylight.
Another sleepless night.

When you have no problems sleeping, you constantly witness the death of each day's life. But when you have insomnia, you are always present for its rebirth. Ay! There is nothing more galvanizing than a sunrise, even when you are too exhausted to move.

She scurries off wearing nothing but my Led Zeppelin t-shirt and a newfound perspective on life. I head over to my computer and begin to type—

And death seems, at this point, so innocent to me. It hides in the shadows as to not show its vulnerability. And yet, I have found such an innocent peace, which burrows its way 6ft in the ground to drown the sound of the deceased. Now, I control the very fucking soul of this irreparable beast. Death be not proud, at my presence, you bowed, for my vengeance is loud to say the least. Death, your effect is trite, for you do not fright even in the thickness of night. But I will live on, eternally, in the words that I write. Death, you cannot hide from that swaggering ball in the sky. Your creator’s a whore, you shall be no more; death thou shalt die.

Chapter 16

4/29/07

Mrs. Robinson


I wake up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily, naked. And I look to my left—it’s the monster, she’s fast asleep.

We all have monsters in our closets, but I have one in my bed.

It is at this moment, I realize that my arm is trapped beneath her silky frame. And I’m thinking about my therapist. I’m thinking about the endless list of crude sexual acts.
The coyote.

Not Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics— the sex worker activist organization, whose soul purpose is to decriminalize prostitution. I’m thinking about a different coyote. It’s what you do when you wake up next to a horrifically unattractive broad after a long night of drinking. You realize you’re arm is trapped underneath her, and the only way you can give her the slip is if you gnaw off your own arm. But I don’t want to get blood on my sheets; I just bought them.

Yet, I have been in this very situation countless times before, and I have a particular, foolproof method.
The Tuck and Roll.
I begin to hold her close, and then gently roll her away, while pushing my imprisoned arm against the bed. I move with her, rather than push her away, that way she stays asleep and I’m able to free my arm—the only thing that’s asleep at the moment. Yet, as I’m attempting this method, the phone rings something loud and obnoxious.

She wakes up and looks at me with those fiery eyes and her aptly scorched countenance. I’m too sober for this, for her.

I wipe down my phone with a sanitizing wipe and answer it. It’s my father; he’s crying hysterically. And in between pants and wails he tells me that my grandmother is deathly ill; she’s in the hospice and my father wants me to go and visit the Crypt Keeper.
I assure him that I will and hang up the phone.

“What’s wrong?” sleeping ugly asks, now wide-awake.
“It’s my grandmother, she’s going to die,” I respond nonchalantly.
“Well are you going to go see her?” she asks as if she believes I truly have any real human emotions, as if I care.
“No.”
“Well—well why not?” she asks, unable to fathom such candor.
“It’s part of life,” I say. “She should’ve died decades ago.”
“I think you should go. It’s the least you can do; she’s your grandmother,” she says unconvincingly.
But I just want her to leave.

“You’re right, I guess. I guess your right. Fine. Fine I’ll go visit the old hag.”
“Do you want me to come, you know, for comfort?”
She came last night—that was…sufficient.
“No that’s ok; this is something I need to do for myself,” I say admirably. “I’m going to head out now.”
“Ok, well do you want my number, to call me in case of anything? To talk about the book even?” she asks desperately, like so many others.

And…Action.
“No—no it’s better that I just remember you for who you were last night, not for who you really are. That…well that doesn’t concern me. Good luck though.”
“What about a quick one before you go?” she persists.
“No…I’m too sober for that right now,” I say without ever looking back at her, at my past.

And I leave her there naked, with her smooth, silky skin and her ugly insecurities. A beautiful swan—now an ugly duckling. And I leave her there with the pattern of pain meticulously stitched across her face. It wraps her soul, topped with a bow, left under a fucking Christmas tree. I think she understands the book now. And I leave her there to sulk in her own shame, so that she knows to never fuck with me again, to never make me feel helpless again. That car accident made me realize the control I have over my own life can be taken away. It’s fleeting; it was fleeting.
Never again.

As I enter the hospice, I am bombarded with the stench of disinfectant, piss, must, and the metallic smell of blood. It reeks of death.
What’s a four letter word for fecal matter?
But I’m drunk as hell and my dick burns from all the hand sanitizer I put on it during my drive here.
I pull out some more hand sanitizer and generously apply it to my hands and arms. Then, I put on my famed pair of gloves.

I’m walking through the main room and dodging old people dressed appropriately in hospital gowns and slippers. The slit in the back reveals their old, wrinkly butts, drowsy from the exhaustion of life. The sagging of their asses is much like the growth rings of a tree—the more they droop the older they are.

And I’m lost as shit, because my grandmother is delusional as fuck. She has changed her name about three times since I was born and I have no idea which celebrity she thinks she is now.
She was the one who had shown me the beauty of Ayn Rand, James Joyce, John Steinbeck and George Eliot.

I’m wandering from room to room, peering through door cracks, and seeing old men beating off to Baywatch, waving bottles of Viagra in the air, praising the magic blue pills. I see elderly women knitting quilts with Nazi signs surreptitiously lining the outer edges of a message—I love my grandchildren. Love dressed in the costume of a heart.
What’s a seven letter word for irony?

I’m stumbling from room to room, my breath reeking of Southern Comfort—such an appropriate name.

I get to room twenty-three, and I’m thinking about symbolism. And there, in the cold, uninviting room is a woman in her seventies, looking at a photo album—snapshots of her life. She doesn’t seem to notice me. I wait a few minutes; I observe her from afar. I’m searching for the right moment to enter into her life.
A trail of tears travels from the base of her eyes and meanders down her cheeks to the edges of her lips. She sniffs.

I enter slowly and stand directly in front of her hospital bed. She never looks up. Another trail forms.
I sit down at the foot of her bed, never saying a word.

She coughs and utters, “They don’t visit me anymore…my grandchildren.” She never looks up, and says, “My oldest, he and I used to go to the shore in the summer. He would run around, the sun shining over us, and he would collect shells and sticks and he would build these intricate sandcastles right along the edge of the beach. He would spend hours building and shaping and molding. And I would watch him from a distance, observing the progression of his masterpiece. You know, I find that to be the most beautiful part—the process. It’s where the artists are most vulnerable. They’re looking deep inside themselves, past the lies and the façade and they’re finding something unique, something worth sharing. They’re finding themselves.”

I take out a clove cigarette.
“Do you mind?” I ask politely.
“No dear…actually may I have one?” she asks in an attempt to seem youthful.
“Of course,” I say without hesitation, knowing damn-well that if she’s in this place, she’ll be dead any moment anyway.
But I’m praying to a heedless God the cigarette won’t kill her.

And she coughs something mighty and continues, “And when he finally finished his work of art—his sandcastle—he would look at it with great appreciation. He found a peace in himself that wasn’t there in the beginning, and he would smile—this big beautiful smile—and then do nothing. He realized his work was finished and he would just sit there and do nothing. And a few hours later, the tide would come inching in until it reached the gates of the castle. It would pillage his masterpiece, leaving behind nothing but a mound of sand, a few scattered shells, and some sticks poking through the dune. And that peace disappeared. I could see a bright, glimmering pain in the twinkle of his eye. Then, he would get up and start all over again.” And she ashes the cigarette into a cup of tapioca pudding and continues, “You see—you have to understand—an artists’ work is not immortal. Everything in life has an end; everything dies. A few strokes of paint on a canvas or sticks in the sand can’t change that.”

And I’ve found my new objective; I want her to be a part of my masterpiece. I want her to be a few strokes on my canvas. She’s nearing the gates of death and I want her to experience pain one last time. I want to give her my perspective before she dies. And her life will be but a few lines in my work of art, a few sticks in the sand, before the waves come and take her away.

Name: Greta Cubicula
Age: 76
Height: 5’1
Weight: 135
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Grey
Perfume of Choice: Formaldehyde
Book of Choice: A collection of photo albums.

And it’s all about perspective.
She hands me a picture of her grandson and says, “You know, you remind me a lot of him. You have that same look in your eyes.”
I’ve never seen this woman before.

She hands me a picture of her husband and says, “And this is my husband, William, recently deceased. Look at his eyes; he’s got that same twinkle.” She looks admirably at the photo, which is in black and white, and old, but—for some reason—survives in good condition, which is more than I can say for Greta. “I loved him…love him.”

I look at the picture and I see this youthful man, reminiscent of a young James Dean, with perfect teeth and a head full of hair.
A white smile in a dark room.

I put out my cigarette, take off my gloves, and wash my hands in her sink.
She puts out her cigarette in the uneaten tapioca pudding and continues, “He was the most beautiful man I’ve ever met. He was strong and audacious—much like you. He had a cock like a stallion. We would spend our nights just making love…fucking till the sun came, until we came.”
And I’m caught off guard. I quickly learn that this woman is nothing more than a perverted grandmother. A freak in between hospital sheets.

“Have you ever practiced tantric sex?” she says without thinking twice.
Now I’m beginning to feel comfortably uncomfortable.
“No ma’am, I can’t say that I have.”
“Please, call me Greta.”
And she talks like my grandmother.
“Okay Greta—”

“You see, the thing about tantric sex is, its very fundamental features revolve around the experience of subtle energies within our sensual incarnation, and the accessing of these energies both to enhance pleasure and challenge our egotism into its dissolution. You see, tantric sexuality often cultivates ecstatic consciousness as well as increased spiritual awareness of this erotic consciousness that pervades our human embodiment as well as everything that contextualizes this embodiment.”
She sounds like a sexual Britannica. A licentious Webster. And I think I love her.

“The key element you want to accomplish here is to have both partners climax at the exact same moment,” she says, illustrating her words using hand motions. “This does not necessarily involve coital communication so much as it requires a remarkable sexual understanding between two sensual beings. It transcends this concept of just getting off, this notion of external pleasure, into a realm where ecstasy becomes internal, ethereal.”

And I’m at half-mast. I realize that it’s time for me to step up my game, play the role.
And…Action.
“You know, you’re a very beautiful woman,” I say in a familiar voice.
“Oh, thank you young man, you are very flattering, but you don’t have to be so nice. I know that I look way beyond my years,” she says, her excitement now transforming into melancholy. “I’m nothing more than a lonely woman wrought with depression.”
And she breaks down.

“These damn wrinkles drape my face…they mask the beauty that’s underneath—my youth; they cover up my contentment. I’m in no place to acquire the gift or the grace of a face lift.” And she looks up at the ceiling, trying desperately to capture the tears at the base of her eyes so that they stream back to their source, but cries, “You see, the world’s a lonely place, my boy, dreadfully lonely when you’re old.”
And I’m thinking—we’re all connected, intertwined.

“You see, Greta, it’s not about outer beauty to me. Much like tantric sex, it’s about this—this inner magnificence that generates an understanding between two sensual beings. You see, when you close your eyes, your partner is flawless; your partner can be anyone,” I say, trying to sound like her. “But it is at that point of incision that everything on the outside is meaningless. It is at that moment of coitus, we transcend that notion of external beauty. I can see you for who you really are, and that’s all that matters.”

“Young man, you’re trying to seduce me.”
I laugh.
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I’m merely trying to have a suitable conversation, that’s all.”

She looks at me with those wise, kind eyes and says, “Do I know you? I don’t recall ever meeting you, but there’s a vague familiarity that presents itself when you’re in the room.”
“I get that all the time,” I say while winking with the same wise, kind eyes.

“Well, why are you here?” she asks with such impatient curiosity.
Unable to answer I respond, “Excuse me?”
“Why are you here? At this hospice, at this moment.”
“Well, I don’t really remember why. I guess—I guess it never really was that important,” I lie, sort of.
“Then, I’m glad it wasn’t. You know, no one ever visits me anyway. No one of importance. It’s nice to see somebody real for a change.”

“Real?” I ask, fearing for this woman’s sanity.
“Yes…real. For some strange reason I get visitors who seem, to me, to be nothing more than a figment of my imagination, as if the conversations we’ve had have all been dreamt up by me and my withering mind,” she says, closing her eyes, then opening them methodically, trying to convince herself I’m not just an hallucination.
“Well I can assure you I’m real. And it was a pleasure talking with you, Greta.”
“Do you have to leave so soon?”
“Don’t worry I’ll be back tonight,” I assure her. “I’ll bring you a nice meal and an exquisite bottle of champagne. But could you do something for me?”
“What is it dear?” she asks excitedly.
“Wear your hospital’s best for me. Slip into your best hospital gown and try and remember some of those tricks you were telling me about,” I say half-jokingly.
And I wink at her and she smiles, her tongue gazing at me through gaps in her teeth.
And…Cut.

Next thing I know, I’m driving down Boulevard East going sixty-five miles per hour, my head out the window, tears escaping my eyes, dancing in reverse.
What’s an eight letter word for boundless?
Next thing I know, I’m in my car on the Turnpike, sitting next to two bottles of Dom Perignon, one empty.
Transference.

Next thing I know, I’m swaggering down the hospice corridor, looking for a Greta Cubicula. No one has heard of her. And I’m starting to believe I really am going crazy. I am thinking that my lack of sleep has finally caught up to me. And for an instant, I feel like God, as if every event in my life up until now has been a tale of fiction—something I’ve created, as if I’m just writing a contemporary Bible. A neo-Old Testament. And I’m feeling infinite.

But at that exact moment of transcendence, I stumble into what looks like Greta’s room. Bottle in hand, I greet her with open arms and pants button.
And she looks at me cautiously and says, “You’re drunk.”
“So?” I ask, slurring my one syllable word. “I feel nothing.”
“It’s only temporary, my dear.”
“Everything is temporary remember Greta?” I laugh.
“Well then, sweetie, pour me a glass.”

I reach into my bag of goodies and hand her a Peking Duck in a doggie bag and two Percocets. She smiles. Then, I set out two champagne flutes and pop open the Dom. Her smile now engulfs her face.
“Let’s make a toast,” she shouts youthfully.
“To—to what?”
“To inner beauty,” she says, now screaming.
“To inner pleasure,” I shout at the same decibels.

And the flutes, they clash, as the champagnes splash, like waves, they pass until the last drops trickle down the side of the glass—remnants of our empty pasts.

And she handles herself now with a loose bluster that she once had when she was younger, more naïve. And I wonder, how old she is under that gown. But I want her now.
What’s a twelve letter word for destruction?

And the director yells, ‘Action!’
“So…Gret-t-t-ta…you going show me some of those moves?” I say like an old school, black pimp.
“Moves, my dear?” she asks, utterly confused.
“Hand me your glass,” I say in an attempt to regain my composure.

I fill her flute to the brim, realizing that I’m just not getting the part down. She kills the champagne in one swift sip. A sip that rivals a gulp. And she stares me down.

I’m staring up at the ceiling fixtures, then down at the waves of her eyes. I want them to splash down her sandy cheeks; I want to destroy whatever is left of the masterpiece, of her beauty. Right now she’s but a mere chalet in the sand, and I won’t stop till there’s nothing left of her. Not a mound, not a shell, not a stick. I’m going to give her but a taste of immortality; and at that moment of intransience, I’m going to drown her in her own ignorance. And she will finally feel the sharp grip of mortality.

And I grill her beautifully burning, aquatic eyes and say, “I want to make you feel young again…feel alive again.”
But just for a moment.

“Ah, now I know you’re just an illusion. A fabrication of the mind.”
And she thinks she’s playing God.
“I like the gloves; they’re very…fitting,” she says, attempting to give me a compliment.
“No glove, no love.” I shout in such a stupid, drunken voice.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t get it.

I set the glasses on the nightstand, lean in towards her and breathe in her loneliness. I lean in a little closer, my lips touching hers, and I taste her despair. My hands steadily move toward her mound and I feel her dejection. I know this feeling all too well. It’s the only thing real I’ve felt since my first love, my first true love.

Her head hangs back and she silently screams, the fictional words reverberating through the colorless room. And her breasts stare back at me, drooping like anemic flowers. And I enter her gracefully, slipping in with such ease, her rosebud moist like a virgin’s lips. Like an icicle on a grille. Verily, it’s the only thing that hasn’t really drooped with age. A gothic Vogel with cathedral shaped arches. A baroque pussy with elaborate drapery. Her hands clasp my arms; she’s holding on for dear life. And this could never be closer to the truth.

And my words echo, “What is it that keeps you from going, keeps you from quitting, just leaving this place behind?”
“I guess—I guess I’ve just been waiting for this moment…waiting for you to come back.”

And when you close your eyes, your partner can be anyone. But she doesn’t realize—the soul is still there, it still pervades this misty, calloused air.

Yet, she continues to scream, “Oh, William! I knew you’d be back. My stallion. My savior, my William.”

And she’s nearing the point of no return, and I’m whispering into her ears her requiem.
“I know what death is like; I feel it in my dreams—A rush of blood, a touch of love, a tearing at the seams. Bounded by the hands of death, just drowning in his voice.
I'm trying desperately to catch my breath, but my arms were lost at the deathly cost of a butcher knife's rejoice.”

And she moans.
And the eulogy continues, “So sell me what I've come to buy. How much does athanasia cost? A broken leg, a weepy eye, a heart that I, as a child, crossed?”
I’m digging deep; I’m razing her soul—mounds of dirt before an epitaph. Everyone just wants to be remembered. Remember?

And my macabre voice sings, “A word as simple as goodbye could suture this glowing heart of gold. And as riches pour from inside, I, decrepit, abhor the old.”
And the vultures they tap at her window. They salivate at the very sight of her elastic flesh. The vultures’ eyes grow wide, expanding like rubber balloons. The jet-black hue of the room, I think, soon became the same as a blink.

And the chilling choir chants, “I sip, in vain, from this fountain hoping to find my youth, but I couldn't find the helm of time, I only found the truth.”

And bubbles sway inside her IV. A medicated cauldron for the old hag. Lake Placid in a bag.
And the vultures croon, “So bade goodbye these hazel eyes, this age old lie is a grave demise. So pay the price and bathe in sighs, for tonight, the light hides from the skies.”

A Solar eclipse.

And for a moment, I shade the people who hate the sun’s disparaging rays.
And to the sun I scream—

You great ball of nothing in the sky, you’re just as shy as the clouds are high. No thank you, sun, I think you’re done, for I’m the one who knows who dies.

And I murmur to Greta, “And your last breath, it reeks of death. These bones are left, alone, bereft.”

And she collapses. And the electrocardiogram slows down till it’s nothing more than a few mounds on a screen.

And I whisper softly into her left ear, “Tell me Greta, is it God that chokes the hopeful throat to a celestial place, profound?”

And I whisper into her right ear—a whisper that rivals a scream, “Or does Mother Nature write the note to an apathetic ground?"

Here lies Greta Cubicula: A Pervert, A Loving Grandmother to No One, to Nothing, A Mortal.

And I’m remembering those sandcastles, and how much I hated the waves for ruining my masterpieces.

And her eyes roll back, while I continue to whisper, “I am the Sistine of all your dreams, my hands unclean, with what’s between. I am the codeine and you’re the fiend. I am the flat line on your machine. Your life—it is meaningless to me. Hayden Santiago, not darling, not sweetie, what you get is what you see, a figment of your reverie, a masterpiece.”
Satisfaction Guaranteed.

And I look over at the director, but he’s too speechless to speak.

The Invisible Woman

04/28/07

Just the thought of someone lying on an operating table, waiting with bated breath, counting backwards…
Ten…
And thinking about the pending events,
Nine…
And thinking—
“This is the last time I will ever look or feel this ugly.
Eight…
This is the last time I will ever hate myself.
Seven…
And when I wake up, I will start a whole new life. I will be reborn.
Six…
I will exit this womb of self-deprecation. I will no longer be the ugly ducking—this avian monster that people laugh at.
Five...
I will be a swan with long and elegant features, graceful in nature.
Four…
Cygnus Bellum.”
Three…
And I’m thinking about “the Desecration of Leda.”
And I’m shouting—
“Tuércele el cuello al cisne!”
Two…
And she’s thinking,
“I will no longer be ostracized!”
One…
“And people will want me.”
And…Dream.

And here I am, walking on the cold marble floor, observing the self-deprecators. I’m analyzing them with my peripherals—women with emaciated lips, drowsy breasts, corpulent arms, and weary cheeks—slight imperfections. These people, these monstrosities, give life to these deficiencies. They allow these flaws to control their lives. But I, Hayden Motherfucking Santiago, want to show them a life free of a scalpel’s fetters. I want to show them a life that they can truly have control over. They’re all just taxis, thinking that they are in control but really they are just taking the route that the driver chooses to betake them, never having power over their life, while I’m a bus, following a self-set route, controlling everyone else’s destinations, never allowing anyone to influence my expedition. I am my own compass.

And this country talks of freedom as if it's something profound and real, as if it is something we’ve obtained. Slavery has always existed and it still does today, even in America. We've traded in this practice of exhaustive labor perpetuated through slavery for a contemporary version that has been birthed through our lack of individualism, our need for constraints, our lust for morals. We are all slaves. We are slaves to trends, to advertisements (business propaganda), to morals and religion. We're slaves to our addictions. And freedom seems just as feasible, just as attainable, as salvation. We're all just using democracy as a 21st century Moses. And there we are, wandering through the dessert, building our own idols, contracting God-prescribed diseases, dying without ever knowing the true purpose of our journey. My slave name is Hayden Santiago, and I am a product of America.

As I look around the room I can see doctors—the Michelangelos of medicine—spend countless hours carving up their masterpieces. They take such unsightly things and transform them into something striking, something statuesque. A beautiful lie. These doctors allow people to externalize their self-hatred. I admire them for their control.

Everyone is just looking for a quick fix. Instant Gratification. We're all junkies with our respective addictions.
It’s perfectly normal to want to be perfect.

And I’m observing the women in the waiting room.
The overweight.
They’re depressed because they’re fat, and they’re fat because they’re depressed—a vicious exchange. They experience delectation through delectables. They spend their nights finding solace in their friends, Ben and Jerry, wrist-deep in a pint of Chunky Munky, waiting by the phone, wondering why he won’t call them back. And they eat, and they heal. And every night, they look in the mirror and cry—
“Why isn’t the diet working?”
And one day, having saved up enough money, they will come to this office and schedule a liposuction operation, because that will make them happy. They figure having a few tubes shoved into them beats hovering over a toilet for the rest of their lives. And I guess they’re right.

And I’m observing the women in the waiting room.
The models.
They’re upset because they didn’t get the cover of Maxim; it’s because their boobs aren’t big enough; they want a size C. They spend their nights finding solace in some random fuck, a dick deep inside of them, waiting for him to come, asking him what he thinks of their breasts, never wondering if he’ll call back. And they fuck, and they heal. And every night, they look in the mirror and cry—
“Why can’t my boobs be bigger?”
And one day, in between shoots, they will come to this office and schedule a breast augmentation, because that will make them happy. They figure having a tiny scar underneath their breasts beats living in a duplex in West New York for the rest of their lives. And I know they’re right.

And I’m observing the women in the waiting room.
The elderly.
They’re upset because their husbands left them for some twenty-one year old bimbo, probably one of the models sitting in this very waiting room. And they want to look young again. They spend their nights holding elegant galas, dressed in ’50s Chanel, finding solace in a bottle of 78’ Montrachet, wrist-deep in their husbands’ pockets, waiting in bed, watching Law & Order, wondering why their spouses are still at work at one in the morning. And they drink, and they heal. And every night, they look in the mirror and cry—
“Why can’t I be young again?”
And one day, while their husbands are away on business, they will come to this office and schedule a face-lift, and some Botox, because that will make them happy. They figure they’ve found a new definition of beauty in such meticulous destruction. The Puddle of Youth in a syringe. And it doesn’t matter if they’re right; they won’t live long enough to regret this mistake.

And I’m stumbling into the recovery room, observing the casualties of this war on identity. I see a room full of lies, full of self-loathing, full of desperation. It reeks of it—this yearning to be loved. The room is a heavenly white. The patients are divided by a single sheath—a cloud to shade the light, the truth, the epidemic.

As I’m swaggering down the isles like a fucking drunkard, I see this women lying there, reading Sylvia Plath, desperately searching for some kind of truth. And I’m hoping she only discovers pain. I hope she sees that everything she has experienced in her life is all that exists. There is nothing else.

Her face is shrouded in bandages, a conspicuous veil. Mummified, she sits there, nose-deep in this book, and I can’t tell whether or not she understands, but I’ll be happy to clear things up for her.
I approach her, in all my glorious splendor, and initiate a conversation, a sermon if you will.
“Any good?” I ask, pretending as if our acquaintance is completely unprompted.
“Excuse me?” she says in utter confusion and complete surprise.
“Is the book any good?” I clarify. “You’ve been reading it incessantly for the last few days, so I assume it must be faintly compelling.”
“Um, do I know you?” she hesitates, guarding the emotional fortress built around her heart.
“Hayden Santiago,” I say, pausing for a moment. “I’m just here to comfort a friend who has also just had some surgery done…I’m sorry; I just find this place to be a bit discomforting.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”

She looks down at her book again, attempting to sever the ties at their source.
She sees that I am still standing at the foot of her bed, then tries to get up for a drink of water unsuccessfully.
“Here, let me get that for you,” I say, displaying human characteristics—acting.

She looks at me with kind, limpid eyes—the only thing that still exists unscathed on her pillaged face—and thanks me. As she stands up, I examine her frame. She’s tall, about 5’11, blonde hair, blue eyes, roughly a 36 C, with long, sleek legs, and tiny feet. She vaguely reminds me of Diana. And that’s when I know—this is my new objective.

Name: Aviya Simone
Age: 20
Height: 5’11
Weight: 120
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Blonde
Perfume of Choice: D&G Light Blue
Book of Choice: The Bell Jar

I am absolutely certain this matters.
We start talking about Kafka and hopelessness, Hemmingway and suicide, Salinger and innocence. And we’re talking about the accident.
“—My face has never fully recovered from the incident, and neither has my self esteem.”
And I visit her everyday and we talk intimately about everything.
“—And I’m bound by this constant, this constant desire to love...to be loved, but this is a face even a mother can’t love.”

And she’s had facial reconstructive surgery, one of three. She knows she’s hideous, but from the neck down, she’s angelic. As she’s talking, I’m staring down at her perky breasts and her Barbie doll design. Right now she’s merely the blueprint to a masterpiece, an unfinished tour de force.
And she speaks (reeks) of regret.

“You know—”And she pauses briefly, fighting tears back, speaking in a labored tone, “I spent—I spent my whole life in size two evening gowns and bathing suits? I lived beauty pageant to beauty pageant, standing on a stage, awaiting judgment, lights reflecting my every flaw. It was as if I had died and finally reached the gates of heaven; I was waiting for God’s final fucking decision. Everything I had done until that time was to be evaluated objectively.”
And she takes a couple sips of water. She looks around for something to eat, grabs a cup of pudding and a spoon and stuffs her mouth through a small slit in her bandages.
And she says, her mouth full of pudding, “At that exact moment, nothing else mattered. Not the fact that, immediately right after the pageant, I would binge eat for weeks, stuffing this emptiness with partially hydrogenated oils. Not the fact that I spent so much time striving for affection I eventually lost sight of those who truly loved me—loved me for the person I really am, not this polished stack of bullshit with a tiara and an impractical longing for world peace.”
She puts the pudding down. She has light brown stains on her bandages that I find unremittingly distracting.

And she continues, “I didn’t realize how truly unattractive—how truly ugly I was on the inside until I became hideous on the outside. I wear a visible, tangible mask now, but the truth is—I’ve been wearing this mask all of my life. ”

And her eyes well up like grass in the morning, her tears like dew—beads of raindrops huddling politely upon her bandages.

And I’m looking for something comforting to say, but all I can come up with is, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will speak the truth."
“Joyce?” she asks, now curious and slightly comforted.
“No Wilde.”
“Shit,” she laughs. “I should probably catch up on my reading.”

And I ask affectionately, “So, now that you’ve experienced this life-changing epiphany, why did you decide to have the surgery?”
“Because it just became too painful to bear, to look in the mirror and see that I gave up a large part of my life and I have nothing to show for it.” And she looks up at the ceiling, trying desperately to capture the tears at the base of her eyes so that they stream back to their source, but cries, “You have to understand—the world is a lonely place, Hayden; it’s dreadfully lonely when you’re ugly.”
And we find truth in pain.

“I agree the world is a lonely place, but we’re all monsters in our own way,” I say in a reassuring voice, desperately wanting her to feed, like a ravenous jackal, upon my lies. “We constantly try to hide it from the people we love, in fear that we might scare them away.” And, using calculated mannerisms, insincerely sincere eyes, and tight voice, I pitch, “But the thing is—the people we should care for are those who see behind the mask, those who stare the demon straight in the face and show no fear, no trepidation—the people who embrace our repulsiveness. Find yourself, or you’ll find yourself lost in your own lies, forlorn, in a recovery room, searching for the truth in novels and scalpels.”

“I understand but—but sometimes the monster inside of us is too...too terrifying for anyone to handle.”
And I know exactly what she means.

But I still ask, playing the role, “How so?”
“You know, I’ve never told anyone this, but, I’m tired—” And she chokes on the tears that huddle in the back of her throat and continues, “I’m tired of the lies; I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night—in a cold sweat—reliving my past—” And she looks down now, at her body—the only thing left intact, but also the thing she hates the most and persists, “Feeling his warm, wet hands touching my body.” And shame fervently emits from her perforated bandages as she carries on, “You know…um…God—I can’t...I can't believe I’m telling you this, but I need to tell someone.”

I believe that life has a funny way of operating, of bringing people together. What she says next is the only thing I can truly identify with for some reason. But I’m not sure why.

“…When I was little, my father would...he would call me into his office. And I would come in and I would sit on his lap. I remember his breath reeked of alcohol—Jack Daniels, he was a slave to fucking Jack Daniels—and he would tell me how beautiful I was, and how much he loved me. He would tell me that when you love someone, you express it physically—uh, umm—sexually. He would tell me that this is the only true expression of love.”
As unorthodox as it may seem, agree with her father. I live my life by that reality.

“…And he would rub my hair and twiddle my blonde locks between his fingers. And his hand would steadily go down, rubbing my shoulders, touching my nipples. Then…fuck…then—” And she wipes the dry tears from her bandages out of habit and persists, “Then he would reach down into my bottoms and he would…he would…feel me. He would reach deep inside me, and I would cry. He would tell me to not make a sound, and I did. I did! I fucking did! I fucking did. I—”
And the lines on the electrocardiogram spike and fall, then spike and fall again. She begins to speak more fluidly, more maliciously, but eventually calms herself by gripping the paperback book using whatever strength her sylphlike hands could muster.

“And—and I would close my eyes and dream up something beautiful.” She looks favorably upon the ceiling, searching for salvation, and says, “Cause in the dark —you can imagine anything. You can create your own manufactured perceptions.” And she closes her eyes, as if to recreate that darkness and persists, “And I would dream I was in a field of daisies; I would pick them up and blow their pedals into the air, and the wind would take them away, up into the perfumed sky. I envied these pedals, their nomadic lifestyle, their transitory existence. I envied the very fact that they could just…expand into the air and leave the world they knew behind. And I would run into the bathroom and cry and take off my bloodied underwear. And this—” She pauses for a second, attempting to force the words past her lips. 'This was Love.”
And this is truth.

“And I spent my teenage years fucking any guy I found mildly attractive because I believed that that was love. That son of a bitch—my Hitler—he had such control over me. And I don’t know, I just want to get that control back. I want to have power over my own life; I want to be able to control my events. Do you ever feel that way, Hayden?”
“Everyday,” I say affectionately.
And I’m thinking about Lincoln and how he was such a naïve fool.

And I visit her on her last day of recovery.
“So, are you excited to leave this medicated heaven?”
“I guess,” she replies, looking at nothing but herself.
“Well…what’s wrong?” I ask, feigning curiosity, but not really.
“Nothing…it’s just…nothing.”
“Come on, you know you can tell me anything.”
“I’m still...ugly, Hayden. Nothing’s changed. I’m going to leave this place and everyone will look at me. They will look at me and laugh; they’ll whisper things—mean things, Hayden. Or worse, they’ll look away, as if staring at me is something punishable by God. I just want to be loved, in a real way, not in this pseudo-pornographic one.”

“Do you want to get dinner sometime?” I interrupt, making light of things.
“What?” She asks, looking genuinely confused.
“Do you want to maybe, I dunno, go out and eat, with me?”
“No,” she responds using an acquired tendency.
“What?” I ask, now genuinely confused.
“I mean, I just don’t think I’m ready to be put on display in such a public setting. I can’t just let everyone laugh at me as if I were some...some Dark Aged court jester. I’m just not ready for that yet.”

“We’ll, then, just come over my place and I’ll make you dinner.”
“Well—”
“Well…what?”
“Well, yea…I mean, yes I’ll come over,” she says with those kind, lonely eyes that aren’t accompanied by any visible facial expression. “By the way…I’ve been meaning to ask you, what’s with the gloves?”
“I’m making a fashion statement,” I smile.
“You think gauze will ever be in fashion?”
“If you want, I’ll help you start that one as well.”
She laughs.

And I leave her there, wrapped up like leftovers, waiting for someone to remember that she exists, that she wants to be devoured. I exit that hospital-white recovery room and head home so I can prepare for tonight.

And I'm at my dorm in NYU where I the only conversations I attempt to have are within the comfort of my comforters. The only agreeable and admirable thing about NYU is that almost everyone who goes there is as intelligent or as opulent as you are. You don't have to worry about dumbing yourself down, or pretending you have a scholarship, or that you can't go on the Spring Break Trip to Prague because you don't have the money. The only problem I have with NYU is that it's all about one-upping your peers; It's all about whose daddy has more money, or which season tickets you have, or who has the nicer BMW, or which part of the Hamptons you live in. Sometimes I wish I had gone to a liberal arts school like Vassar or Wesleyan. Then and only then could I dress like a fucking hippie bongo playing bum, talk analytically about how Dick and Bush are fucking up our country or whether Obama is the daigen we need right now, drive a fifty-thousand dollar car with the top down while listening to Hop Along, Queen Ansleis or Wilco, and fuck girls who are not interested in fucking again because they are probably manufactured lesbians who actually like dick, but as an act of non-conformity they pretend to munch rug because that's their way of sticking it to their bread givers, who are actually psychologists who don't really give a fuck and have actually did the same sort of shit when they were burning bras and protesting in the middle of Washington Square Park forty years ago. We all think we are unique but really everything that we are doing has been done before. So consider life just a grocery store of qualities and characters, if you want individuality all you have to do is walk down isle four and you will find it.
Yeah, I talk down to people...but it's only when I'm coppin' a beej.

My dorm room, redolent of a Parisian restaurant, emits a potent stench of paprika, cloves and oregano. A collegiate feast.

The doorbell rings and the girl enters my room—King Tut from the neck-up, and Yasmin Bleeth from the bandages-down.

And she’s aroused by the odor, the omnipresent scent of spices and sex. And she’s wet.
I place the food on my Ikea Sparkov table, and let the glasses of wine accompany them. I take her to my full size mattress and provide her with a place to rest her hips.

And I’m drunk as shit, I’m drunker than the time I had an in/out with the tranny. Before Aviya came over, I had a fifth of Southern Comfort. And I’m drunk. I’m to the point that—if I were in a bar, I would find that girl in the corner of the saloon—the one that no one’s talking to because there’s something wrong with her. And I would go up and begin to flirt. But there’s truly something epically wrong with her, you know, the type of girl who’s missing an arm or an eye, and she’s got an eye patch. And I’m just so inebriated that the eye patch is beginning to turn me on, to the point where I’m thinking—
‘Arrrrgh, shiver me timbers!’
To the point where that eye patch is causing me to pitch a tent in my trousers. And I’m digging it. I want her to find my buried treasure.

But I forget about the paper bag, I forget about the Pathmark procured mask that I had picked up for her. And the only thing I’m seeing is her beautiful, taut body. Her charismatic breasts and her fixed vagina. And I could give two fucks worth of jizz whether she’s a model or a soccer mom. But as I wrap myself around her casing, all I can see is her eyes. Her faultless blue eyes. Her model blue eyes. And I’m entranced. I gaze between the gauze, the Peruvian stitched sheets, and I’m captivated. They stare at me with such impenitent force, such burning intensity. And I feel it burrow down into my soul and it festers, and it manifests into a giant, glowing, vibrant fuck-of-a ball in the axis of my chest. And I’m spent.

Then, I’m lying on a grassy knoll, looking up at an ostentatious sun, breathing in this smug smog, and feeling this withering of precocious thought and subversive deliberation. And I watch the pedals drift into the caustic air. And they divide like vines, only to collide and intertwine at the very instance where time is no longer a moment, but a sign.

Yet, as I grab her breasts, her excited and agitated bosoms, I feel this instant connection, as if we have met before. It’s a connection that manifests itself deep within the spirits of two helpless souls, desperately trying to find control, but realizing they’re nothing more than a cog in this marketing machine: this endless apparatus that fucks itself into oblivion, this galvanized, eternal engine that processes shit into symbols and symptoms.
And we’re nothing more than nothing.
And we’re nothing more than a Nike sign glimmering in the sun.

My writing is in a constant, unwavering battle between realism and romanticism.

She's breathing hard, marathon hard, and awaiting the pending events. She wants to know whether or not I'm going to love her in that pseudo-pornographic way. And I am. But she’ll love it because that’s all she knows. She’s going to beg for my dick on a platter because of the way I’m going to indulge in her salaciousness. I’m going to over-fuck her with appetizers and let her chew on them with such rhythmic mastication.

Consider the foreplay, hors d'oeuvres, and sex, the main course—the fillet mignon. And she’s dying of starvation.

I’m forgetting the whole reason for the objective. I’m finding myself dick-deep inside of her, screaming for redemption, waiting to see whether or not she wants to know if her boobs are too small.
And we fuck, and we heal.
And I’m putting my heart and soul into it; I’m putting myself into it. But there’s only so much you can ease your way into. There’s only so much you can infiltrate.

And I graze her inner lining with my outer protrusion. I await her screams, her vocal beauty.
And mid-thrust it dawns on me; I want to see her face. I’m drunk as shit, I’m near oral ejection, and I’m about to spew my nights worth onto her frame—I’m smashed. But I want to see her face. I want her to know that I can witness what’s behind the iron mask; I can stare the demon straight in the eyes and I can smile.

I live the life of an undertaker; I spend my days banking on other people's misery.

And what’s behind her wraps is her monster, is my monster.
I unravel her gauze and realize—
Everyone is connected, unified.
In a world where MySpace and Facebook, emails and instant messaging, texting and BBMs plague the very sanctity of privacy, we can’t help but establish this connection. It can no longer be created through the very intimacies found through sexual incisions. No, it is now defined by a few words of text and tagged photos.
And “poke me” no longer holds any sexual relevance.

So I experience her repulsiveness; I know that feeling, that coveting of affection, of appreciation.
'I just want to be loved,' her soul cries.
Don’t we all darling?

I finally see who she is, and I see that we’re all connected, unified.
And I’m thinking of Diana, of the accident, of our accident. And at that moment I recognize that beautifully horrific face. That castrated, pillaged destruction she calls a face.
I say, “Three years ago, New Jersey Turnpike, 92’ Ford Pickup, do you remember that?”

And confusion interrupts her muffled screams.
“What?”
I reiterate sharply, “Three years ago, New Jersey Turnpike, 92’ Ford Pickup, there was an accident during a thunderstorm…a girl died. Do you remember that?”
And the pain wells up at the base of her eyes.

“I’ll never forget it. I will never forget that car or that highway or that girl,” she says, but never opens her eyes.

“And neither will I. You see—” And in between thrusts, I say, “I know exactly who you are, and I have known for the last week. And just now, I realized—”And I pause for a few brief moments—for dramatic effect. “I control you. I represent everything you’ve lost. I am your lack of beauty. I am your incessant shortage of confidence.” Still thrusting, still breathing heavily, I persist, “Right now, I am your scarcity of ambition. I am your continually diminishing self-esteem. I am everything you hate about yourself. I am your facial reconstructive surgery. I own you…I am you.”

But she just gapes at me with those smoldering blue eyes, those fiery sapphire pupils. And tears form—little phoenixes that flap their self-deprecating wings down her shell-torched cheeks and dissolve into the misty air, only to be reborn at the very flame of her eyes. And I devour her psyche.

“Love me…Want me…Consume me.”

And she keeps fighting, keeps fucking. But I don’t know who or what she is really screwing. Maybe she is raping her own dad. Maybe she is showing him what love really is. Maybe she is fucking me, never allowing me that testicle to penis satisfaction that I’m so desperately trying to acquire. She doesn’t want me to blast a hole into forever. It’s really a hole into nothingness, a fissure in the abyss. No matter how much I fill this hole, I can’t fill the void, that vacant mosque of a soul, an elegy to nihilism, her spirit’s requiem.
And our bodies clash, creating nothing—a Big Bang, annulled.

She screams silently—a scream that rivals a whisper, yet is loud enough to shatter glass.
And I collapse.
And she’s reborn, a beautiful swan. Cygnus Bellum.
And I find perspective.
“You know, I’m writing a book.”
And in between breaths, she utters, “About…”
“About perspective…about my sexual experiences…about this incessant desire to control everything.”
“Well…am I going to be included in it?”
“That depends…do you want to be in it? Do you want people to know your story, to know what you’ve had to go through, what you want out of life?”
And she whispers, “I want them to know everything.”
A whisper that rivals a scream.

And I sleep.

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The Ugliest Flower

Dated: 8/12/07

And tonight is just like any other night. I’m at another upscale club in the heart of the meat packing district, drunk as fuck, dancing with some girl—no older than seventeen—dressed in a bulky maternity smock that makes her look more corpulent than she actually is. Truth is, I have a feeling that her frequents to the bathroom involve self-inflicted acts of regurgitation followed by a shot of Listerine.

She is bent over in a chaotic fashion; her ass thrashes violently against my masculinity while I hopelessly try to sip on my watered-down Vodka and Redbull. My efforts are futile and end disastrously as I spill half my drink onto her vile yellow dress. But she doesn’t even care; she’s too drunk from the apple martinis and too hot from her hankering for techno to give a fuck.

And I’m looking at my friend, Chester, who’s sucking on some unconscious girl’s areolas. I’m looking at the promoter who joyously dances over to our table with another complimentary bottle of Grey Goose, wearing a black V-neck t-shirt and dog tags that he bought from Ed Hardy over a year ago. I’m looking at the custodian—possibly a distant relative—who’s mopping up my accident. I’m watching the DJ—a friend of mine—spin a mix that sounds exactly like a Girl Talk song I was listening to on my iPod this afternoon while picking up a new pair of Prada loafers.

There is no better way for me to describe the pretentiousness of the city. And it all means nothing. We’re all so full of shit that everyone in this place is in dire need of a colonic.

As the beat grows faster, so do my bumps and grinds. And the girl, unable to keep the pace, stumbles to the floor, knocking over the chasers on my table. That stupid, graceless bitch. But I still want to fuck her, so I grab her by the arm and help her to her feet. There is no such thing as a selfless act. Once she regains her balance, she continues to dance as if nothing ever happened. My friends at the booth are laughing hysterically and I realize there will be no gratification if I fuck her.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I shout over the somewhat infectious house music.

She doesn’t respond. As I am walking to the restroom, I look back to see if the girl is still waiting for me. I watch as she wipes beads of sweat off her forehead, fixes her soiled smock, grabs another drink, and dances with some guy in a flamboyant Etro collared shirt. Slut.

When I enter the bathroom, I head straight for the stall. My mind is itching to know whether the yip I bought from one of the promoters is even worth entering my nasal passage. I break up the llello in the gram bag and wonder if there are any other feasible uses for manufacturing these pouches. Yip-lock bags.

I lick my finger, pick out a small amount and gum it. My mouth grows numb and the blood from my body starts to pump with a caustic intensity as I realize the cocaine is legit. I dip the butt of a Parliament cigarette into the bag, scoop out the bouncing powder, and proceed to bump it. I place the bag back into my Dolce & Gabbana jeans and exit the stall. I give the bathroom attendant two dollars and tell him his bathroom is great for snorting yak. The foreigner shakes his head and smiles; he has no idea what the fuck I’m talking about.

As I exit the bathroom, I notice a change. The world is slightly more blithe, more euphoric. Everything has a beat. And I’m dancing to the tune of the world using gyrations that seem to divulge my true, deep-rooted intentions.

I swagger over to this beautiful, slim figure—object if you will—wearing a multicolored bandeau dress that ends slightly an inch above its knees. In the midst of the chaotic environment, it sways like a water snake, creating its own balmy ambiance.

As I approach it, she materializes and I can feel the world silence around us. The bass booms and my heart bumps, yet she remains collected. Once our bodies touch, everything bursts back into action, exploding into a million little pixels and retracting to create a frenzied sketch that mimics a Kandinsky painting.

And I too can see sound as color.

I feel her tight grip on my forearms. I feel her sultry stare seep its way into my dilated eyes. I feel the warmth of her body tug fervently at mine. I feel it all. It feels like lust, pure unrefined lust.

And I’m closing my eyes and dreaming about all the dirty things I will do to her—whips, chains, and knives—anything my sick mind can envisage. I’m dreaming about busting a Peter North sized load all over her naturally unnatural breasts.

But before I can collect my thoughts, I notice my hands are steadily rising up her dress. I notice as my fingertips slowly inch their way past the band of her seamless thong. And there I am, fingerblasting the shit out of this girl in the middle of Tenjune. The sweet stench of desire permeates the sultry air as her moist rosebud respires to the rhythm of the music. Her head tilts back savagely, hanging low like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. As her head moves forward, a torrent of vomit spews from her mouth with such deep-rooted intentions, attacking my new white Ermenegildo Zegna button-up in an anarchic fashion.

Horror invades my countenance as I push the stupid bitch out of my way and shout, “Are you fucking serious?”

The look that’s on her face is one of childlike innocence and remorse.

But I’m a heartless dick so I persist, “You dumb fucking cunt. Learn how to hold your fucking liquor. What are you twelve?” I take off my shirt, throw it at her and continue, “This was a three hundred dollar shirt and now it’s worthless. I can’t even wipe my ass with it. You stupid, stupid bitch. Do you know how many dicks you’d have to suck to pay for this? I hope you die a slow, painful death. I’d do it myself, but you aren’t worth my time.” And she tries to mutter something that sounds like ‘I’m sorry’ but I interrupt, “No, please—don’t speak. You smell like dick cheese. Enjoy your night.”

And I leave her there to bask in the grisly stench of Mojitos, sushi and bile. I leave her there to sulk in her obtuse actions. I hope she goes home, downs a bottle of Xanax, and dies. I know I’m being melodramatic, but sometimes it’s hard for me to control my emotions.
I exit the club, knowing it’ll be almost impossible for me to find a girl to fuck when I reek of vomit. I know I’m a catch, but there’s a limit to how much a girl will tolerate. And considering my narcissism, malcontent and guile, I don’t believe there is any room for the miasma of some girl’s insides.

It’s two thirty at night (or morning depending on whether you are out clubbing or inside watching Fresh Prince reruns) and I desperately need someone to deceive: an ingenuous woman eager to feel loved—even if it is only for the night. Despite my apparent misogynistic tendencies, I need women. I am hopeless without them. They complete me. My temperament is what prevents me from ever truly loving them. Contrary to what you may believe, remorse is something I feel constantly. I consider them objects, not because I think they are insubstantial articles undeserving of any mortal compassion and benevolence, but because I am incapable of providing such luxuries. I need to objectify them in order to quell the insecurities that plague my own existence. I look for girls that are even more subjugated by their emotions than I am. I feed off their dejection. I need them for sustenance. I love women because I hate myself.
That being said, I digress. And I’m walking aimlessly down the streets of New York supremely inebriated but still bumping from the coke. The brazen and deplorable summer breeze relentlessly howls, sending chills that travel from my toes to my fingertips. It births this incessant feeling of loneliness deep within my soul.

Can anybody find me somebody to lust?

Just as this feeling of perpetual isolation calcifies, I stumble upon some helpless soul begging for change on the street. She is a young woman—possibly too young—dressed in tattered garments that compliment her soul quite nicely. There is an overbearing stench of piss and must; it conquers the stench of vomit that emanates from my clothes with such ease. She looks like salvation.

I approach the vagabond as she keeps repeating, “Could you spare some change, kind sir?” I bend down and look her directly in the eyes (blue). She continues, “Please sir, please could you spare some change? I’m so hungry. Please—”

And I interrupt her foolish pleas, “You look hungry.” I smile at her with the hope of quelling her anxiety. “When’s the last time you had a nice piece of meat in you?” And as I say this I notice that she’s salivating. She really is hungry. And I do plan to feed her. “Come with me,” I say while giving her a wink. “I’ll give you a nice meal and a warm place to stay for the night.”
At first she seems hesitant, but necessity precedes everything, even pleasure.
For me, my necessity is pleasure.

And she agrees to get into a cab with me. During the drive, neither of us says a word. I’m thinking about all the things I’m going to do to her. I can only imagine what she’s thinking. Food. Shelter. Clothing.

We get to my apartment and the taxi driver tells me the ride costs $13.75. I look at the homeless woman and say, “Do you think you can get this one? I’ll get you back tomorrow.” She blankly stares at me; she doesn’t know what to say. I look at her and laugh, “I’m just fucking with you.” As I hand a twenty to the cab driver, I can see through my peripherals the young woman admiring the bill as if it were a papule on her labia. “Keep the change.”

I am such a gentleman: I open the door for her, help her out of the car, and slip a dollar into her jacket pocket. When we enter my apartment, she heads straight for the refrigerator. “Hey, what are you doing?” I ask in a noxious tone. “Relax, there’ll be plenty of time for you to eat.”

I survey her body—the way her long, unwashed hair travels down past her 32A-cupped breasts, the way the ash graces her elbows and knees like light snow on a windowsill, the way her emaciated frame compliments her bony, gaunt face, aged by the effects of affliction and turmoil. And I continue, “But first you’ll have to do something for me.” I look over at my bedroom, trying to be discreet; but I decide, fuck it, and I tell her to get on top of my bed. And due to her current circumstance, she complies. I am the God of plenty she has been praying to every night.

Since I’ve already had a bottle of Goose to the face, I am prepared to fuck anything and everything. This stack of negligible matter actually looks like a prepossessing Mona Lisa to me. And there she is, posing elegantly on my bed as if she is waiting for me to paint her. Her pain-plagued eyes follow me around the room, but she never moves. I am an artist and she is my canvas, something I shall paint my torment upon.

And in my drunken state, I’m as graceful as an elephant; my moves are not smooth: they are heavily, but poorly calculated. And in one swift motion, I jump on top of her, and then fly off my bed and onto the floor. She laughs. I don’t think it’s funny; but I’ll give her something to laugh about.

I hop back onto the bed, placing one leg between her coarse thighs, rubbing one knee against her stale mound. She moans. Her head tilts back feverishly as she spreads her legs wider. I glaze her pillars with my palms, tracing the grittiness with my fingertips. And she wants it so desperately, just like everyone who has been in this bed before her. Her breathing elevates, and as she exhales, the pernicious gas of affliction swims its way past her chapped lips.

I push up her skirt with my eager hands, blessing every moment with prodigious suspense. Her threadbare underwear is inundated with withering flowers and grey-haired bumblebees. Sparse hairs eject from her mound and pierce her panties in a chaotic fashion. I’m drunk with desire and everything spins in a frenetic manner, but whatever images my glazed eyes capture are reminiscent of a Picasso painting—ugly shapes that fuck each other in such obscure ways that the end result is pure pulchritude.

Yet, my other senses are not as pleased with my choice, not like sight and touch. I peel off her panties and begin to kiss around her peach. But the taste is not as sweet as I had remembered. My lips get closer to her flower, inching in like worms, without any regard for time. But the stench is not as sweet as I remembered. Disgusted and drunk, I act out of pure whim by grabbing the Febreze bottle on my nightstand. I begin to spray it generously into her pink sheath. The mist billows from her Amorphophallus paeoniifolius swelling outward into the caustic air. I cough.

The stench of corpses is too much for me to bear, so I throw a towel at her. She gets the hint and enters the bathroom. She seems unfazed, as if this has happened to her before. Maybe she really is that hungry.

The shower screams rape as she enters the tub. I can see her through a crack in the bathroom door rubbing down her sunburned body with a bar of soap. I can see the dirt and grime swim down her skeletal design, unveiling the beauty that was underneath her ghastly shell. She was a swan in duck’s clothing.

She leaves the bathroom in nothing but a towel, her hands at her sides, waiting for me to bark my next order.

I stand in front of her, looking straight into her eyes, marking my territory with my stare. I grab her shoulders and guide her to my bed. She sits down with her hands on her knees. The towel unravels.

And there she is, exposed, vulnerable. And there I am, my jeans around my ankles, fucking her with a fury that burgeons into a vehemence that explodes. She fucks with such desperation, such deep-rooted destitution. Once you fuck for food, every other sexual encounter you have just isn’t the same. And I thrust chaotically, trying desperately to fill the well. Her flower blooms, breathing heavily around my swollen stamen. She writhes. I’m spent.

Beauty really does come from within.

And she’s hungry, but I’m tired.

“I think you should go,” I say, thanking her for letting me borrow her body for the night.
I grab her clothes and put them in her hands. She barely has her torn, sullied dress on by the time she leaves my apartment. Regret graces her countenance and she hangs her head low like an anemic flower.

Now I know that some of you may think I’m a callous, insensitive fuck, but don’t worry; I throw a Nature’s Valley granola bar at her once she’s in the hallway. She seems grateful. She eats like she fucks. And I am content.

This is Manhattan. This is man.

1st Hayden Santiago Recording

Monologue:
“My name is Hayden Santiago—” I begin, but the stupid bitch sitting in the passenger seat interrupts me. “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” And I continue to shout into the recorder, “My name is Hayden Santiago—” And I’m interrupted yet again by her senseless screams. “I said shut the fuck up! If you don’t, I’ll stab a hole in your throat and fuck your voice box!” I’m not sure if that’s possible, but apparently she does because she doesn’t speak a word after that. And I persist, “That is who I am, but not what I am. My desire to burn and destroy, rape and pillage anything beautiful is rooted so deep that I no longer see the world as abject, ugly, but rather measure everything along a spectrum—a wavelength of beauty. I am not something tangible—flesh, blood, muscles, tissue, matter. Though I try, I cannot define myself using generic labels—father, son, brother, artist, prophet, martyr. I am not the protagonist. I am not the hero. So what am I? I am defective. I am pure, unfiltered emotion. I am total, unabridged control. I am a wicked, wicked orgasm. I am the germs of every human quality. I am the screams between satin sheets that pervade even the thickest of air. I am the desire that festers beneath your gossamer tissue. I am the fire that burns in that hollow mosque you call a soul. I am the cancer that invades the very hub of your existence. I am the very definition of Western decadence. I am the yoke that weighs down your shoulders, carrying buckets of life—life— pain and despair. I am the blood that artistically drips from your wanting, lonely wrists with such malicious intent. I am shade without color. I am salvation without hope. I am death without life. I am pain without purpose. I am here. I am now. I am you. Consider this…dying.”

Chapter 1- Adam & Naive

This is the very first story in his collection. I assume this is his first journal entry since each story is dated, and this is the earliest narrative recorded.

07/13/03

CHAPTER 1

Adam & Naive

The high was kicking in…that intense rush of whatever. My tongue was numb from the shots of rum and my mind from the White Widow. Each arduous step was another accomplished endeavor. I could feel the itinerant weight traveling from my legs to my stomach, gallivanting past each vital organ with such joie de vivre. I was gelatin, a shapeless orb morphing up countless stairs with great difficulty. For someone so empty inside I felt ineluctably laden with this brand of misguided, opaque apprehension. But she exuded brilliance. Her physicality seemed to muscle aside any anxiety that may have materialized as her long, sleek legs battled each step with ease. She was graceful, elegant, depraved. I was clumsy, gauche, carnal.

My naivety swooped in like a gust of wind as I reached the top of the staircase. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here,” I said with such juvenile hesitance.

She just looked at me with those beautiful green eyes…blue eyes…possibly hazel. I can’t remember, but the recollection of someone's eye color is merely a trite nicety. Now her name was truly vital information, but it had fleeted my mind along with inhibition.

We floated into one of the rooms, a small but tasteful setting. It emitted a disastrous stench of senile cigars and senescent potpourri, yet there was something calm and reassuring about it. It reminded me of my father’s office, that overwhelming aroma of mahogany, that subtle, yet thick fragrance of lingering sex. A light haze seemed to swim across the dimly lit room until it billowed out around us, enveloping our bodies with its crude delicacy.

And I began to notice a change. My breathing was suddenly spiced with a dash of urgency. My eyeballs did back flips and my spine tickled. She reeked of cloves and red wine—my favorite combination.

Sprawled across the bed, she beckoned me using the same finger motion that one uses to tickle the necks of babies; the same finger motion I would use in a couple minutes to make her feel immortal.
Infinite.

I sat down next to her, my body movements wrought with scant hints of adolescence.
I might as well have been sitting in a fucking Indian position.
She took charge. She grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me towards her. Our lips met with such force, such unwavering intent. It was a kiss that declared, ‘I am going to fuck your brains out!’

The way her taste buds felt against the roof of my mouth was divine. I was about two grams in and I could not help but discern this inexorable feeling of immortality. I felt as if I were a part of everything in the room. My arms were the bed, resting against her back. My torso was the covers, providing warmth to her body. Atoms clashed and ions shifted. I was aroused. She was vapor, seeping into my pores and permeating my veins. I was fucking high on affinity.

This drug called desire: it is a domineering force that drives you straight off a goddamn cliff. It takes away your control and leaves you naked and bleeding on the side of the fucking road. Yet it breathes life into your very essence. Inhale it; swallow it and then exhale. Feel it move to your fingertips. Feel its power overcome your inhibitions. It is life.

And for that brief moment you realize, ‘She is going to fuck my brains out!’
And you want it.
You need it.
You’re willing to do whatever it takes to get it—whatever it takes. If you have to give up your wife and family for it, you will. If you have to sacrifice your job for it, you will. You can lie to yourself all you want, but you will never be strong enough to evade its effects.

To deny our desires is to deny the very thing that makes us human.
At the very cornerstone of life it’s all about control. And I take what I want.

And as this desire plagued my dithering body, I placed her on her back and began to kiss her frame. I started with the neck: sucking and pecking and nibbling and biting. I licked my coarse lips and allowed them to grace her neck with a zoomorphic fervency that is reminiscent of the intimacy only seen on the Discovery Channel. I seeped my teeth into her nape and marked my territory. A light discoloration matured into a profound contusion that stretched across her scruff. Manifest Destiny. Once I was done raping her collar, I began to work my way down.

Every inch of her seemed to beg for attention. Her breasts were firm and gregarious. Her skin was soft and inviting. She was foreign, but none of that mattered. She was slightly older than me, but, again, I did not care. We both flew past these nets without looking back at those souls whose bodies clung to these seines in the sky like flies on spiderwebs. Nationality, language, religion—none of that ever mattered to me.
As long as she isn’t packing, I’ll be snacking.

I continued my descent; my fingertips steadily glazed the small of her back. The faint moisture from my breath percolated her smooth skin. My hands hovered over her quivering body, yet I did not touch her. I merely grazed her thin hairs, guiding my fingertips along her hills and valleys. Her hips beckoned me. Her back arched as her body, ravenous and insatiable, palpitated.

My finger motions and taste buds got her in the mood, but I was unaware of the cataclysm that awaited me.
“Do you have a condom?” she said.
My hands were no longer steady. I no longer felt—
Infinite.

The peculiar thing was I did not fear the theft of my virginity; I just wanted an Oscar-worthy performance. I wasn’t looking for a moment of bittersweet love, but rather a flash of pure ecstasy. I wanted to know that I could feel something with someone without the imposition or involvement of any emotions.
I was always taught not to talk to strangers, but what about fuck them?

Despite the compulsion to be a man and attack the hole, there was a slice of hesitation in my moans. This just wasn’t how I had imagined it would be. I didn’t write poetry about sharing fluids with some Delphic interloper. In my dreams there had been an exchange of love, temporary or not, that wrapped the gift of intercourse. I didn’t even know what name to scream if I experienced pleasure. I was utterly confused and drunk with apprehension.

My dilemma: Do I whisper no and continue my tongue twister? Or do I say yes and prepare my jimmy for battle?

I didn’t say anything. And before I could grasp the delicacy of the situation, I was in. I was at this sexual point of no return, my penis just casually basking in her flower’s spores. I felt the warmth slowly inch its way into my flexed abdomen. I felt the soft, velvety walls begin to strangle my masculinity.

Yet, I remained still.
I was too afraid to move. I didn’t know whether to push or pull, thrust or ram. I was the meat as my anxiety slowly consumed me. It carefully sliced me into several pieces, taking into consideration my most tender appendage. It chewed with such rhythmic mastication. It sucked at my bones and hawked them without compunction. My miniature-eyed beauty saw that I had been devoured by Apprehension and decided to take charge.

With her on top, I finally felt that rush—that intense rush of whatever. My pelvis was pulsating; it seemed to be in rhythm with my breathing. I couldn’t even focus on her; I was too overwhelmed with pleasure. I could feel the blood pumping feverishly through my veins. My body tensed and I quickly realized that this exchange of fluids only elevated my high. We were celestial beings. My brain was at its zenith, while I was at the nadir of her canal.

A few screams and contractions later, I was flat on my back, naked, and smoking a cigarette as if I were James fucking Bond. The anxiety that had nearly consumed me quickly dissipated and I was left with a feeling of pretentious satisfaction, my smug conceit pervading the sultry air.
The stranger, satisfied, quickly put on her clothes and vacated the room, and I was left to share this puissant moment with myself.
You always remember the first time you felt empty.

Eventually, I got dressed and returned to the party, leaving only my virginity and a sullied piece of evidence in the room.

I left the party that night feeling brand new, as if my previous coating had shed from my body leaving me with an intricate design that I can only describe as being on the bleeding edge of composition. I never saw that horny, brown/blue/hazel eyed girl again. Perhaps I see pieces of her in other partners. Perhaps my perception of her is skewed. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much about that night. But I have learned to espouse this sexual lie because it is all that is left. It succeeds deception and despair, murder and loss. It precedes every other tragedy in my life. I like to think that it all went downhill from that point. I like to think that my first sexual experience came straight from the pages of one of Shakespeare's enigmatic comedies. For all I know, it could have been no different then the lay I had two days ago.

After years of fucking my way through life I have come to realize that Sex changes everything.