SLOSH: Part 2

CHAPTER SIX
The Smell of wood lacquer and the taste of Grey Goose Vodka

         First Rich Girl: “Do me from behind.”
    First Smart Girl: “I don’t care if you’re done, keep going!”
         First Older Girl: “You should probably leave.”
         First Girl: Where we lie, confused and chuckling.

         A pink glow flowing by my eyes. A mass, they all wear the same shirts. Perfect.
         Tenor voices commingle with sopranos and the sounds come flowing from the band room.
         Glasses perched and darty eyes discuss health points in a computer game.
         Lesbians discuss feminism and the innocent and undeveloped discuss their parents.
         These people buy drugs from me. All of them. The desire to escape reality is not exclusive, human beings want it from the start, spinning in little circles as babies, trying to make the world shift, trying to fuck themselves up.
The pink girls move over to their muscles. “Hey man, you wanna go to a party?” they say as their bitches pet them lightly.

         I learned to pick locks when I should have been doing my math homework. It’s very simple, all you have to do is stick a flat screwdriver in there, twist it and then use a paper clip to push the pins up. It works on most basic locks.
         My grades started slipping severely and my drunk mother, who believed that God was the solution to all problems, took me to see the reverend. “Why are you not doing well in school, my child?” asked the reverend.
“I spend all the time I should be doing homework practicing at picking locks” I replied.
“Why do you want to learn how to pick locks? Trespassing and thievery are both sins. They’re also against the law.”
I looked at the reverend and answered truthfully.
“I think about a lot of bad things sir, and in Christianity to think about doing something and to actually do it are one and the same, so I’m fucked. I’m not counting on St. Peter letting me in the pearly gates, but I am counting on picking the lock and getting in myself.”
I was nine. I had just met the society. I was full of confidence.
         The smell of wood lacquer and the taste of Grey goose vodka meet me in the morning. All around me are passed out rich girls in pink, some of them topless, a coke smear over the tits on one of them, one with pigtails and a belly button ring.
         The host is sweeping broken glass. He looks ready to take on the world. He’s showered, he’s well dressed, he’s smiling and full of energy. Where’d his hangover go? Maybe it boomeranged and smacked me explaining this double dose of pain.
         I shoot the twenty-two back home, loosing a quarter due to the inability of the bus company to supply change, and the buss rattles and the cheap plastic lights flicker from stop to stop as fragments of last night come back to me.
         
I am in the master bedroom. She is still dressed but her panties are around her heels and she’s bent over so I can see right up her skirt. “Do me from behind” she says.

         Two girls drop ecstasy and then kiss under a strobe light. 

A keg stand.

Something horrible is mixed for me. I drink it with vigor.

A joint glides under my nose and I feel it flow down into my lungs. Five minutes later I’m positive that it was dusted.

         Someone gets thrown out for sticking his hand up the wrong girls shirt. Someone throws a punch and someone screams. The cops show up. They don’t get past the front door as smooth talking Joe, the host, says the right words on the patio. They know his father.

My nose starts to bleed as the bus takes a sharp right. I shove my right shirtsleeve up in there and keep both hands around my face.
I’ve got to get my energy back. I’ve got to get some shit done. 

It’s dark and I feel closed down. There are three men they are smoking cigarettes under a bridge and they are laughing at me, because I am lying in the gutter and I look dead.

“What a loser” the blonde one says.
“Yeah” agrees the red head.
“Fucking dug his own grave” says the one with the brown hair, and flicks his cigarette at my face.
“What’s next” says the red head.
“More trouble” says the one with the brown hair.
“Boil, boil, toil and trouble” says the blonde one.
And they cackle and smoke some more over my corpse.

         I wake up sweating and alone. The room is dark. My breathing steadies itself and slowly I am calm.

“Sleeping alright.” The voice comes at me from the darkness, so calm and yet I almost die of fright.
To my right, hands folded over his cane, sits Ray Gin, staring at nothing.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house!?” I scream, more scared than angry.
“I know they told you that you have to kill me. If you knew the truth you wouldn’t dare touch me without my consent.”
I am tired. Rubbing my eyes I say “and what’s the truth? What’s all of this? I don’t even know who you are.”
Ray Gin stands and I see a fury in him that I have never seen before in any man and with this fury he slams his cane down and shouts “I am the part of you that sees the way things really are! I’m the one that’s trying to get us out of here without a fight! If you kill me then you really are lost!” He breathes, quickly, catching up with himself.
We both stare at each other for a couple seconds. Then he looks angry again and screams “you’re useless” and with that he raises his cane above his shoulder and smashes me across the skull.

And I’m in the gutter again.














CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SOBER BUTTERFLY



Particular retrospective insanity. Haven’t heard from the society for a couple days. My mind goes putting back to a time when I lay down, head thumping on the floor when…

From my recumbence I bend back my arms and sit up from my two outer jacket layers, blazer and bitter button up like a cocoon snapping open to reveal the sober butterfly..And I am angry that my head yells at me with the tom tom eternally beating up from the red mess in my chest. And it is light morning as I fit the smells in the air, the cum and blood and sweat, and what is this? Tears? A girl, skin, female blood spilled over the white mattress from the virginity we murdered together, so brutally and mercilessly. There are compliments that waver through the scents as well, complements of latex and pussy, stingingly sweet and bitter, like white wine or black licorice. Some prep fuck tried to steal my perfection in the moonlight, I remember, through fullness of light that shined down with werewolf summoning grace and tidal control he tried to fill her up by force, or something like it and I killed him, or at least beat him soundly with a screwdriver wedged between my knuckles like a crucifixion nail, pounding away our sins, my sins, her sins, she stirs and groans, and I wonder what her name is. Loretta, or Dolores, or Christine, or Lucy, some female name, or maybe not, maybe she is of trends that tend to hold on to the androgynous, Adrian, Jean, Patty, grossness rises in my throat and like a truck the name Jackie hits me and I see pink fur and the president as his head explodes. And I realize that this sad morning is Easter Sunday and that I should make my way to the church yard to say my thanks and so I cuddle up naked and cold next to Jackie who is naked and warm and I hold her close and I drift away for half an hour, a sustenance plagued with nightmares of loved ones with demonic faces, brought on by the echoes of the psilocybin in my system. As I wash and dress myself and Jackie’s eyelids open she says “you have something that I can never give away again” and I say “so do you” and then I leave with the promise of return hanging in the air to lull sweet Jackie back to sleep.
         I arrive at the holy house to find that the moans of the faithful are already drifting through the chill like strange orgasms. I find that I am nothing in this place, that I am but a weak memory as I enter the warm room full of small candles and small people who scamper about as the big people try to calm them down for Heaven’s sake. The biggest man he stands with arms outstretched as if there stands firm wood met to his figure that awaits a driving nail to hold him fast to the same sacrifice made by our late lord, who rises on this day of rabbits and chicks and chocolate, go figure. I pop a creamed egg from the basket in the front into my mouth and I walk further into the room and take my seat. I eye the priest’s daughter and for a second she is on her knees unzipping me, and then I am back in worship. We have a new kind of love these days, not a love for family or for God, whom we are supposed to fear with trembling lust, but a love for ourselves, each of us caring first and foremost for the ultimate I, the me, whom deserves more than all the yous and hes and shes and thems put carelessly together. That is why the “I” tense is referred to as the first person. Even Jesus cared about himself more than he cared for us, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone off and died, the fuck.
Icarus made wings of wax and feathers and he flew too close to the sun just to be melted to the sea did Jesus help then?


WHY ICARUS?  a poem by the first person
“Why Icarus?” begs Jesus as he stares down from the clouds
astounded at the loud
and pounding heart beat of the dead man drowning

Ands Icarus says “please, I’m on my knees, my prayer, my favors” I wanted to see the light, thinks Icarus,
But now he’s drowning

Love thy neighbor spouts the son, at the right hand of the father, and the bother of the understanding leaves us all demanding.

Jesus says “the light was put up in the sky, but don’t ask why, just know it’s there,
And everywhere, and only goes away sometimes”

And Icarus, who cannot speak, for water salty wavy fish land filling up his inner
Speak, with
Water so expansive
So grand
Sputters “fuck you Jesus, if you’re here and there, and there and back,
Then why the fuck am I below the wavy tide, not coming back”

And Jesus does that look we all know, that he did upon the cross the tossing waves that toss depraved and crying waxy failed and feathers floating up to mock the dead man as he sees the wings that failed him.

Man was never meant to fly, a prisoner, he stayed that way, man was always meant to die, he’ll never fly away from that
He tries
He ends up crying
Falling
Drowning
Pounding at his hope that kept him so afloat, but now is gone
And now he’s drowning

And so the anger fades with pulse and so the skin goes white to blue and Icarus is wondering what the son’s about to do.

But Jesus watches, he clocks the time it takes the man to drown, and then the soul floats up for judgment and Jesus goes out on the town.

He gets a cold one and a hooker and he takes her took his room. Then he strips her then he tells her that it’s wrong what they’re about to do, and then he leaves her standing there, confused and nude and rudely ditched
And Jesus sips his cold one and says “it’s not cool, unless we’re hitched”.

         When tedium rules rooms and hours I write verse in my head and usually forget to write it down as it pounds out with my blood. Too fast went the pounds last night and caused me quite a fright as I ate the mushrooms started with a sweet hallucination followed shortly by a scary dance of heartbeats that went pound, pound, pound, until I screamed for respite.
         God of course did not answer me, he was busy with himself, the first person, as is everyone, myself no exception.
         The cantor steps up to the podium and spouts out from his mouth the words “a reading from Ecclesiastes” which is my favorite book of verses tersely crammed together to make sense better than any other cacophony of faith inside the good book. The reading goes “the lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity.” I ponder this, and I agree with it as drolls of readings continue and my mind flutters away briefly to think of the warmth I felt inside dear Jackie last night until my mind loops back and I am hearing words again as the cantor reads on saying “all human toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage have the wise over fools? And what do the poor have who know how to conduct themselves before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire; this also is vanity and a chasing after wind” and I desire to chase the wind now so I trudge out of the church, rudely, exiting the double doors as fade the words “Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what human beings are, and that they are not able to dispute with those who are stronger. The more words, the more vanity so how is one the better.”

         Such little words for such a profound and influential book.

         It is of sunlight that I run, of sunlight that I move myself to the night before…

…the prep fuck trying to steal my perfection saying with a braying phrase sacked out like rabid dogs toward my balls, “fuck you, she’s mine!” and Jackie is too drunk to say otherwise, so I take out my knife, Swiss made and take a slash at prep fucks face and blood drips down and I take out the screwdriver that comes inside the package as well and as the prep fuck regains rage and tries to take my place I drive my fist through air and wind and all resistance until it stops at face and skin and bone and blood and slams the prep fuck back and to the ground whereas I leapt upon him and continued beating till the prep fuck moved no more, his eyes closed, and the breathing stopped, and then I left, with haste, as prep fucks prep fuck friends surrounded him.
I went back to my room where Jackie lay still, sleeping, naked and beautiful, on the mattress and I wanted to kneel down and feast on her. So I did licking from neck to ankle, stopping everywhere along the way, and she stirred and shook and said “it feels good but I have to take a shower, take one with me” and I say “Jackie, I already showered” and she says “then today be extra clean” and so in moments I am naked with her under warm water in this cleansing joy and I think about the hours that lie ahead of me. I ask Jackie if she wants to come with me, come with me to the city for my plan is to buy a train ticket and to go to San Francisco just to find something for me, and she says yes and after orgasms occur we dress and dry our hair and make our slow way, pacing to the station where we buy our tickets and we board the train. The train flows like the Tao and I think of the verse from Lao Tzu’s words that flow “Tao never makes any ado, and yet it does everything”.
         As we, being me and Jackie dearest search for seats we find that all the assholes who arrived before we did took all the seats that face each other just to find a place to place their feet. They deal, of course, with the first person first, the second second and the third third, as fits with disgusting logic.
         And so bitterly buscamos pero there is not even one person who is kind enough to care about two lovers more than they care for their own two feet.
         We sit, next to each other and we lean in sweetness into one another’s flesh hold each other as the train stops swiftly in San something up this sea blown coast.
         And then our eyes fall shut and I am just so comfortable that I feel that people were always meant to lay upon each other otherwise why were we made so soft.
         A dream takes hold it manifests in strange figures and crimson dresses, it is sexual and terrifying and yet calming nonetheless. A figure, something like nine feet tall wanders down the street clothed in an overly flowy white dress that represents my innocence and this creature has my innocence on his back because I gave my innocence away something like six hours ago, and so he walks with it and flaunts with a vanity that makes me so damn angry that I rush at him to get it back. This figure, he has demon eyes and demon horns and demon claws and as I run at him, a sword inside my hand, he paws the air and breathes his flames down at me and I swing swing like the insect that I am, and soon the creature screams in pain and falls onto the ground. Out from his bubbling carcass rise two twin girls, fair as morning dew, both of them in crimson dresses that I can see right through they come to me and hold me and they say that I am their fair prince and soon we lie upon the street, which of course, transforms into soft down and a pillow and we rock with ease against the ground against the pounding feelings of our heart as the girls both scream their eyes turn red and they are nothing more than heads that float and bodies that were yet upon me now are gone and I…

         Awake to find sweet Jackie’s sleepy head upon my shoulder and the train still rambling towards the final stop of city sweet and I think “how did I end up asleep last night in nothing but my blazer and my bitter button up, did I fuck with them on?”
         A junkie boards the train, he shakes and spits out blood as he walks by, the blood lands on the seat adjacent to my Jackie and I look at it and it looks tainted with teeth. The junkie makes his way much farther down the train into a seat next to a sleeping black man in a windbreaker and a wool cap. I look out of the window and I see the passing faces of the people of this world like me who look at me with the same stance of first person rule as I am nothing more to them than they are to me, just another passing occupant of a spinning sphere that none of us really understand but all of us pretend to. The train lurches it’s happy way on down the line until the people are behind me and I ahead of them, and I think that the passing I just made was but a fraction of my life and just a fraction of theirs and yet as I leave their life forever they will continue about theirs without concern or compassion for what I am going off to do and myself apathetic likewise to the future actions of the people whom I just finished staring at. Therefore I, like those people, shall forget about the others and think about the first person once more, and the third person who lies on my shoulder shall think about her beautiful self in a way that I cannot do since I am nothing more than a selfish animal, like all the other selfish animals that sit around us in a strangely decent manner. I wish the days of courtesy would leave and then we all might see how much we need a new politeness, one more personal and less plagued by small talk and careless quips about football teams and classes.
         I wonder yet again if I killed the prep fuck last night in the full moon, and I am horrified at how much I don’t care. To kill is as human as to die or to fuck or to sleep or to eat or to dream. Killing has happened since the dawn of man, murder and war, suicide and fights, everyone kills, everything kills us, life is so fragile and so fleeting and I could die in moments and be fine with it since there really is no guarantee that my day shall come now or later.
         Plans for the future are so stupid, how do you know the future even exists you ugly hoper.
         I am sober on this ratatat train as it cuts through the air towards finality. I want to find the beauty that I had so long ago.
         There was a day, it was a day a while back, a day of influential freedom, and a day of crying shames, where I was washing away dirty thoughts as well as dirt itself in presence on the skin that lay across the front of my skull, also known as the face, and so I washed my face and mind with the quick finding cold that came with the cleansing in the sink of a public bathroom at the top of a great hotel. A memory had flung itself into my mind and it had come from a girl who lay among the partygoers such as I, she was blonde and her name I barely recall what I recall however was that she was beautiful and small and had a mind like mine and her name was something that started with an A, B, C, or D something that had it’s home inside the first part of the alphabet.
         I wondered where she went off to. With Jackie by my side I felt that I did not need this girl, but I clung to the memory.
         I feel that beauty on a physical level is a fucking cruel trick that God plays on all human eyes. It changes love to being something of the senses more than of the chemical’s that boil up inside that say “you love! You love! You love!” but love, the chemicals that make it, they tell us that “love” is but the culmination of our sights, our smells, our sounds, the things we “love” to sense, and so, the lucky ones whose genes mutate in ways that beautify they need not be a person with a good soul or a strong resolve they need only maintain the beauty handed down to them from nature, from the luck that they have been given, from odds, from happy thoughts, from science, and they come forth to manipulate our chemicals to copulate with those who match or yet surpass their beauty just the same so all that we can rely on is time, time changes beauty, and the beauty that time changes is the story of our lives, the story of our pretty wives and husbands, of our deep attractions, oh God! Strike all beauty blind to nothing more than sweet emotions and devotions of a loving kind!
         We rumble on, and stop, as train makes lurch and Jackie’s head goes slam against the seat that lies in front of us and she awakes with grogginess, whatever dreams had manifested her make haste and run away to somewhere else to maybe manifest themselves another day, so I sit there and stare around at all the people in the seats above, in front, behind me all around us two, Jackie and me, I kiss her, and she kisses me and it is good and I feel good about this kiss, as her black hair falls slightly forth onto my face…
         And I am a carnivore. I feed on females.
The train moves on into a tunnel and into memories.
         The train arrives at 4th and King and we hop off to the crying of a little boy who has just fallen during a wobbly run. His mother rushes after him with terror in her face, terror that will in a months time be replaced by annoyance. We move past sexy young execs that flex their muscles in their business suits and homeless men that rant to no one with voice box hallucinations about the glory days, and we pass the junky and the black man in the windbreaker and the wool cap. The two have clearly made something of a friendship I realize as their chortles fill the air around us. Jackie is cold, she is huddled against me for warmth. She needs a fix, and so we go to the junky and ask him where we can find someone with coke. He knows a guy who sells horse and probably other stuff, but he has to take us there and we have to front him a dime note and we have to bring his new acquaintance (windbreaker, wool cap) along with us, and we have to pay cab fair. It’ll be a tight squeeze but Jackie’s shaky body tells me that we have no choice. She is so beautiful when she is craving for a fix, so weak and exposed and dependant. I’m a sucker for addicts.
         It’s like a love nest and a furnace in the cab, as the junky refuses to leave the side of his friend and I refuse to leave the side of the shaking Jackie leaving no man in shotgun and nothing but the racist cabbie up front as he stammers about “chinks” as we drive through Chinatown. The cabbie stinks of hate and loneliness and I want him to die. A chill runs through Jackie diving into the top of her head and swimming with vehemence through her spine and through her veins and through her skin until it drops out in a siezuring finish at her feet. The junky yawns a stuttery breath and then spits blood out the window. Windbreaker Woolcap laughs a hearty laugh and says “you give out your insides like a cop gives out beatings to the black man” and these words are too true.
         Unlike Jackie, I was born with an addiction, an addiction to whatever happened to pop itself into the role. First it was to my mother, then to God, then to females, then drugs, and then back to females, and then to life, and now some sort of mix of all of them.

SLOSH

         A vagabond who sits by traffic lights runs up to the car as the red dominates and he says “want to buy a strap-on, two bucks, and then your girlfriend their can fuck you up the ass if she wants to” and I clock him a hard one in the eye as the green kills the red and we stride forward.
         Move on to the street pigeons with their cluck cluck heads and their bread crumb brawls, and as we roll through union square I watch one pigeon quickly snap it’s head right into another pigeon’s eye leaving a pulpy orifice of blood and uselessness where sight used to be. The pigeon shrieks quickly and flaps its wings, but soon regains it’s composure and goes about it’s scavenging as though it never had that eye.
         I never had my eye set for the next event, when Jackie went insane.

The whole time I wished that we were back where we had been before, in my bed, where we lie, confused and chuckling.


         
 




          





         
         





















CHAPTER EIGHT
The Kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers have gathered together.

         “Hi my name is Jonathon, and I am a sex addict,” he says and slowly sits back down.
“Hi my name is Joanne, and I am a sex addict” she says and swiftly sits back down.
“Hi my name is Homes, and I think that I might be a sex addict. But I’m not quite sure. What signs should I be looking out for?”

Turns out I’m not a sex addict. I walked out of that meeting realizing that what I had was an addiction, but not one to sex.

“When you’re a sex addict it’s a cold dirty act that you feel guilty about”.

No.

“When you’re a sex addict it’s not about enjoying it anymore it’s just about being normal, it doesn’t even feel good”.

No.

I guess I just have a strong appreciation for the female form. A black car was waiting for me outside the building. The door opened and I stepped in. The man in the blue suit, my mentor, sat in front of me. “Hello Homes” he said. “How are we?”
“Fine” I said.

“Hello. Excuse me” says my sister. “I need to talk to you about my brother. He’s very sick”. People shuffle papers and write things on clip boards.

On the African veldt, the Gazelles graze peacefully,  unaware of the lions that sneak up on them. When the lions strike, the young ones go forth for the kill, driving the prey away, towards the other side of the veldt. On this side of things wait the old lions, the ones too past their prime to hunt successfully anymore. All they can do, is roar, and roar they do, loud like thunder, paralyzing the Gazelles with fear, causing them to turn back and run right into the jaws of the young lions who pursue them.

After their jugulars have been ripped and their bodies fall limp, all of the lions come forth and enjoy the meal.

Moral of the story, if all you can do is roar, roar like you mean it.

In first grade, I heard this parable for the first time. My mentor at the time, Edward Leeky, my English teacher, had a thing for allegories. Soon however, my daily story’s with Mr. Leeky came to a halt as he fled the country to avoid drug trafficking charges.

I’ve never held a mentor for too long. I choose them as they come and as they go, one for every year of my life. Sadly, I guess you could say, my mother was my mentor for a very brief period of time. After I learned how to walk and talk sufficiently I stopped listening to her. I mean, of course I obeyed her reasonable requests, but I took none of her advice to heart.

Mr. Leeky’s little fable hit me though. I use to meet him in his room everyday after school and he would tell me stories with lessons inherent in them. They always ended with a line that stayed with me for the rest of the day.

One day two boys walked up to a pond and saw many frogs sitting on lily pads. The boys picked up some stones and began to throw them at the frogs. Many of the frogs were being hit and killed and one frog finally spoke up. “Please stop boys” said the frog “for what is sport to you is death to us!”

This classic fable of Aesop made me think, but the story that struck deepest and has stayed with me longest is still the story of the old lions who roared.

Because of this story I have always roared like I meant it.

But it was not until I thought about the story again recently that I realized that it’s ultimate message is not so much roar like you mean it.

We are not supposed to be the lions. We do not shed blood.

We are the Gazelles, and we must always remember to run towards the roar because it poses no real danger.

Throughout my life, as I’ve already stated, I had many mentors, I made it a point to keep those who could teach me teaching me.

Although he was not my best, Mr. Leeky was a profound mentor and he will always retain significance.

So now the question at hand is, who was my best mentor?

Certainly a reasonable candidate would be my College Humanities Professor Mr. Sleitzweitz who could get me higher than any dealer on campus just by explaining existentialism to me.

Also Mr. O’Leary, a man who I visited everyday during a period of time when his leg was broken. I went to the hospital to hear his war stories, which always bore some grizzly revelation at their tear jerking ends.

And I’m sure that my Grandfather is applicable to the title. Few men have taught me so much about myself as my Grandfather did. His message of self-exploration helped me more than any lessons on extroverted education could.

But no, none of these men are who I count as the greatest mentor I have ever had. Her story is much more obscure, and much more important, yet much more quick and fleeting, her presence practically negligible in my life, the way most enlightening experiences are. I had one meeting with her, one encounter, one day, one year.

Sophomore year to be exact.

Tripping through the dim lights of an alcohol buzzed gathering of high school kids like me. Marijuana smoke blew past me and left a gentle and nostalgic scent hanging in the air.

Her name was Seneca, and that’s all I got, no last name, no background, no information at all on her life except for her destination the next morning. Her first words to me were “Hello stranger, my name is Seneca and I would like to share a moment with you”.

I was drunk but not in a slurred speech kind of way, just in one of those lovely buzzed sort of tones.

And we left, into a little corner, where I got to say my first words. “Hello” I said “my name is…” but her hand brought two fingers down silencing my lips. “Names, names, if you tell me your name then I’ll have to remember that and I’ll never remember the moment we are about to share”.
It was strange, I was a bit intoxicated myself so I was of course open to whatever happened, but the fact that she had chosen me out of the crowd was stunning. “Why’d you want to share a moment with me?” I asked. I wasn’t too much of a looker at the time. She just smiled.

She was and is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. To this day no one has surpassed or even matched her allure. It wasn’t classic, big boobs, nice ass, thin build, it was different. Like Morgan, like my angel, she glowed. Every time she smiled my heart beat faster and I felt a warm sensation shiver through my bones.

She said that she was moving the next day, her house was all packed up in boxes and on a truck to some other places where she would depart the next morning. It was her last night in this little town, and she had never seen me before. It seemed fitting to her to share at least a piece of it with me, the stranger. She intimidated me.

Go towards the roar, said my brain, for this girl posed no danger.

I clicked with her, and as I sat in that corner of the party, it seemed like everyone around us was moving in slow motion or fast forward, it didn’t really matter, everything around us was forgettable, I felt bitter apathy towards everything in existence that was not her.

When any person makes me feel any form of apathy, that person is powerful.

She talked with precision, each word thrown out for a calculated reason.

And then she said “let’s get out of here”.

And we did.

And we walked out into the cold, sharp air. We walked down the sidewalk, towards a nameless destination somewhere in the maze of Suburbia. And this is where she became my mentor, and this is the part I will never forget.

We walked around all night, talking and flirting as normal kids do. We went to the grocery store and somewhere around the canned foods aisle I kissed her and she kissed me back and we bought some frozen cream puffs and chewed them outside. We kissed and drank grape soda and cruised through the movie store talking about our favorites. We smoked a joint she had rolled earlier and then we got Slurpies. We kissed again, exchanging flavors and then the sun rose and she said that she had to go. And she said one thing. One.
         It is the only reason I am still alive.

“Never look for me” she said. “Never try to find me, ever. Never try to find out who I am, or rather, who I was, because tonight is yours, and no one else’s. So keep it close and keep it just this night. That way nothing about tonight can be ruined. At least you’ll have this, to the grave”.
         She smiled and walked away, and I screamed to the clouds and let my body roar.

My sister is still in the waiting room. She is nervous and needs to find someone to talk to. “Please?” she says, shyly, a voice amongst a sea of busy voices. “Please, someone, I need to talk about my brother, please, I think he’s in trouble.”

         My current mentor eyes me closely. “You a Christian man Homes?” he asks me.
“Very much so” I say back. He shifts in his seat and smiles.
“Book of Acts” he says. “Chapter four.” His voice trails out with a tone that seems to resonate from back behind my ears, to in my ears, to all around me, loud and echoing.
“Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers have gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah.”
         He chuckles.
         “We need you to stop fucking around Homes and kill Ray Gin stat. Otherwise we’ll have to fucking kill you.”

My sister finally gets someone’s attention.




CHAPTER NINE
SISTER

         The nurse eyes my sister up and down in a very speculative way. “Can I help you?” she asks, rather impolitely. My sister takes no note of this. She says “I need to speak to you about my brother. His name is Homes Jinn and I believe he may be dying.”
         My sister is ushered into a white room. I am sitting in this white room already. “Hello Jill” I say to her. She doesn’t hear me. She doesn’t even know I’m there.
         The doctor walks in and I see that the doctor doesn’t notice me either.
         “Hello Miss Jinn, what can I do for you?” asks the doctor. He is a man with wifts of hair and liver spots. He is old but happy looking and he warms my soul. The tag on his shirt labels him Doctor Lars.
         “My brother is a drug addict” she says. “He lives alone in a one room shack in the outskirts of the suburbs. His cash flow probably comes from drug related activities, because he’s always very well off and never works a day in his life. He sits there hour after hour, week after week, and gets fucked up on this new stuff that’s been going around.”
“What new stuff?” asks Doctor Lars.
“I don’t know exactly what it’s called. One street term for it is Slosh, I know that much.”
“Oh yes, Slosh” says Doctors Lars. “Proper name, Psilosergic Acid Phenethylamine. A highly intoxicating substance, a psychedelic, a dissociative, and a severe downer.”
My sister looks worried. “What can I do? I have to get him off the stuff.”
The doctor lets out a breath of air. He leans back in his chair and he looks at the ceiling. His eyes dart back and forth, back and forth, and then they stop and he says “bring him to see me. That’s the only way.”

         My sister, as I have said, was brutally raped and has since been insane. This is why I am horribly confused as I watch her, saner than a sunny day, speaking to this doctor Lars about me being the messed up one.
         
         I remember a day from my youth. My sister and I, mere toddlers, running through the sprinklers in our backyard. We are in the dog days of summer and it is blistering hot, but the droplets of cool land on our skin and soothe us.
         My sister smiles and says to me “too bad I won’t see you much anymore” and I stop running.
“Why won’t you see me much anymore?” I say to her, concerned and with little puppy eyes.
“Because I’m going away. To school. I start in a couple weeks. You’re too young to go yet, but don’t worry, we’ll enjoy these last few days real nice.”
Those days were real nice but after they ended I didn’t see her much. In fact, there were long periods of time where I wouldn’t see her at all.
         And then there was no shindig, and I haven’t spoken to or seen her since.

         Until now, sitting in this office, a ghost in the presence of my sister and this Doctor Lars. They are both nervous for my health and well being. They both think that I am addicted to Slosh, and they both think that I need immediate help.
         I am confused, yet again, because I don’t use Slosh anymore.