NOTE for online readers to make some quick sense of Chapter 12:
Snorting coke with strippers has led to shooting coke and going in another direction. After cocaine binging and getting married, Marty is about to be a father and tries in vain to stop using (See "The Speaker Meeting"). He is taking it 'five-minutes-at-a-time' in 12-step programs. While waiting for a 2 am meeting, he reflects on some behavior that has at last brought him here.
I’m walking wounded. It’s almost one in the morning and I’m leaving early for the 2 a.m. AA meeting. AA, NA GA – I’m a 3-ring loser for alcohol, narcotics and gambling and it doesn’t matter tonight what acronym is pasted on the door. It’s after midnight and I know I have to go.
I drive on streets that beckon now only sparingly. The glamour and lights have been ordered off and the night around Ventura Boulevard offers only sparse temptation: a loitering couple on the corner, a long and curious look from the vagrant/hustler/drug-addict/killer silently seeking communication from the bus stop bench.
A self-destructive urge nags me to stop, roll down the window and invite him to the meeting. I know I’m not strong enough. Relief rushes over me as I realize my escape in the decision to keep driving. I am now past him and beyond his reach. A glance at the speedometer tells me I’m doing twenty and accelerating. He can’t possibly catch me and reverse my decision. My doors are locked. I’ve escaped. I feel safe. I’m 6 years old and have staggered onto the shore away from the murderous undertow. I didn’t give in to my nauseating vulnerability. I feel better.
These decisions are what pass for life nowadays. I decided not to get killed again. What a good boy I am. And now a father to boot. Well, the wife’s leaving me, and I’m impaled a little more on this realization that I now have a new role I’ve failed in.
I park – a hint of pride flashes through my beleaguered mind as I note the very best parking spots are mine for the taking. The reward for the true seeker of sobriety so determined in his path that he leaves home in the middle of the night to further his commitment. Spiritual pride tries to find soil in which to grow. It seeks a nourishing endorsement from deeper consciousness but fails to find feedback to give it life, instead falling victim to a host of derisive taunts.
Self-hatred, anger and resentment respond energetically and criticize with blistering enthusiasm. Self-pity steps forward, offering it’s splayed back and it too is eagerly assaulted as the boo-hoo weenie-man who coulda,’ shoulda,’ woulda’ but ain’t, and is eaten alive as the booby-prize; providing nourishment for the monster of self-loathing. I sway under its fiery reverie comparing - via quick hallucination – (or is that simply colorful imagination?) my pathetic existence to the healthy and successful. The mental disarray of fifteen psychotic years of chemical riot weigh heavily as I climb stooped up the tedious stairs for the 2 a.m. meeting.
My shoes creak alone, but the strength that the group provides starts to take hold. They are not here yet, but their consistent success brings their annoying spirit to life. Here among the stale smells and worthless fixtures hope chooses to live. Here amongst these G-d-awful lame and stupid people. How can it be that my journey is so derailed that I need these offensive mechanics? Why must I travel careening into this off-ramp with these droning knuckle-draggers doing the driving? A shooting star amongst these boring, simple and common lights.
But success lives here. Hope lives here. If only I could get hold of some ethereal ear and make it listen! Make it understand! Have it my way! I am escapist fantasy or I am the shit under my shoe. I bounce from one to the other and twist in the wind, grit my teeth and take it “one day at a time.”
Surprise… another person is sitting here. There he sits not twenty feet away. What do you say to another person at 1:30 in the morning on a Friday night in North Hollywood in a shithole like this? The two of us waiting for a 12-step meeting to begin in the middle of the night.
A pathetic energy begins its old patterns, my mother’s eager directive reminding me to smile with my eyes while immediately readying manipulative thought-troopers into the readying corridors of social intercourse. I must prepare to proudly inject my “self” into the imminent discourse. Like a disassembled machine project whose parts do not quite fit, disparate elements of my inchoate esteem raise their hands in hope to compulsively blurt something out. My brain short-circuits and the robot autopilots:
“Y’come to this meeting before?
“No,” he says, pausing.. “I usually go to the gay meetings on the other side of the hill, but there’s none tonight… not at this time anyway.”
“Are the gay meetings different? I ask, feeling comfortably sophisticated in handling this subject in such a straightforward and adult manner. We are, after all, all children of the Big Book, or Mr. Bob… or something like that.
He thinks a while before answering. “All I know about gay is sometimes I get an
overwhelming desire to suck cock. (long silence) You?”
I froze. Me? Me what? Familiar with the meeting? Gay? Compulsively desiring to suck cock? My frazzled brain scans data banks freely associating at withdrawal speed hooked into a fifteen-year psychosis. I’m back at the Adult bookstore I passed driving over here, and back to a time not too long before this, when I drove over to a different place this time of night to visit a different person: a woman from South America.
* * *
Big Eva was a Colombian woman in her mid forties; with an unaffected impression of Marlene Dietricht constantly going on. A cocaine wholesaler, she allowed herself to be called Big Eva to make sure everyone knew the difference between herself and her daughter Little Eva. Big Eva would like to occasionally make the point known that she was a badass, and that people trying to beat her got “beat” in a very final way. She would say that and stare at you with cold black eyes, with a look that said “y’think I’m kidding with you?”
She was on such a track this evening, speaking in vague coding to see if I would react to something that had apparently gone wrong in her business life. Looking at me with unsmiling black eyes, I responded that if she found me trying to do her wrong, I only ask one thing: that she promise to torture me a little bit in some kind of kinky way before doing me in.
“Promise me you’ll wear those high heels I saw you in the other night, and maybe… a little whip maybe? At least a spanking…” I allowed the words to trail off.
I looked her in the eye and made an effort to keep my face serious, adding “don’t make me beg.” I took her hand and bent before her on one knee. I started to kiss her hand – which, to my pleasant surprise - she did nothing to prevent. I found this tolerance on her part and the on-my-knee-submission to this dominating woman immediately stimulating, and, wondering out loud how much more of this I could get, I started to slide my tongue in between her fingers. She yelped and laughed, brushing me off. I knew then I was off her list of possible enemies. Well, at least for tonight.
So let’s get the gun back and see what she’s got in the way of the very best gram.
“$150,” she says. Just that, now there’s silence. Out of respect I say nothing. I know Eva and the respect game. I also know she’s not gonna’ change her mind.
“Rock,” she adds finally, letting me off the hook. Everybody knows coke is all over the street at $110 a gram.
“Come,” she says. We walk to her bedroom and she opens a large jewelry box with a smaller box within it. A small shiny metal case is opened and 4 or 5 good size rocks are there amidst some smaller ones and flake. She wets the tip of a matchstick with her tongue and lets the moist part of the matchstick touch the flake. She offers it to my mouth and I taste the white powder. It is so fierce in its bitterness that I wretch backwards. It is so pure in its offense that I must have it.
I stand and take out the money. $150 for the blow and $175 to buy my gun back. My heart starts revving up a few more rpms. It feels so responsible and adult – even manly - paying out the $325, thereby making good on the commitment I made when she took my gun as collateral for coke weeks before.
“I want to load up here,” I tell her.
“No,” she says at first. “I don’t want you shooting coke here.”
“I won’t shoot up. I’m just going to fill up the syringes. Then I put the caps back on and put them away.”
“What do you mean put them away? Where do you go with them?”
“Sometimes a park, I shoot up and then lay out in the sun. At the ocean, sometimes the strip joint.”
“The strip joint?”
“With my big vein I can shoot anywhere. I can be there and drop a dollar bill under the table and get off while it looks like I’m picking something up off the floor. When I bend down to find it - if the place is half empty - I can usually get off right there in just a few seconds.”
“Marty, you are too much.”
“Yeah,” hesitating the necessary beat to slowly bring my eyes up to meet hers, riding our sister-plane-tractor-beam while I hold her eye. “So are you, Eva,” I add with a kindness I know takes her completely by surprise. Shit, the sincere, pillow-talk quality of it even took me by surprise. I bring the moment to good completion with a smile and just-enough awkwardness to make it real. She smiles back, and a warm fuzzy is upon us. My credit line just rose in ways impossible to describe. Tough bitch or not, Eva was still a woman feeling some heat. This always comes easy to me. “I just need some cotton and water. I have a cap to put the stuff in.”
I get up and go into Eva’s bathroom and open the cabinet. I had traded her a jar of 1000 10mg Valiums for blow some time back, so I’m at home here with a backstage pass of sorts.
I look for cotton from inside a tablet container, but I have to settle for Q-tip cotton. I take out my bottle cap. I rinse it and then put some water in it, and draw up 1 cc of water from one of my U-100 syringes. It is a one-piece disposable insulin syringe, a thin unit with a very sharp needle affixed. I spill the remaining water out of the cap and I gently shake the entire cocaine rock and the remaining flake into the cap. I drip the water from the U-100 into it, surrounding the rock at its base, but it’s not melting right away - only very slowly - and my excitement is stirred even more. There is so little cut.
The odor is so strong it’s kicking my head into that strange re-living of the last time I smelled that smell and the cocaine high is suddenly so real I can see what true placebo cures are all about. The mind can recreate it all for you, and does - briefly. My genitals are contracting and my heart is beating faster as my mind anticipates this potency raging through my blood and nervous system. The dissolved cocaine is completely clear save the tiniest of cut at the bottom, and I drop in the cotton, stick the needle into it and draw up 3 even syringes. I point each of the syringes up in turn, flicking the tube with my middle finger to get any bubbles to surface and push the air out. As I do, I a tiny amount of liquid coke is pushed out from the needle’s tip. I lick off the liquid and gag at the bitterness. This is gonna’ be great, and I fight the urge to jam it into my fat vein right there and then. I replace the orange cap. I am locked and loaded with three to shoot tucked in my athletic sock high above the ankle.
The fact that I control this change in my world, that I can induce this revolution of sensate consciousness within my being, makes the loaded syringe akin to controlling a lightning bolt. To transform myself with this simple act holds me captive with its magic. I want to swim in it, dive in it, and expand myself in it, and wanting to see who’ll come to the party tonight allows me to allay the fact that I’ve been to this chemical mountaintop before and realized its limits, not to mention the hideous withdrawal payment, when there’s hell to pay. I’m no longer content to simply shoot up alone, taking the supercharged pleasure-excitement coke-rush to the summit and then come back down.
The cocaine high had a certain sterility to it that I was beginning to identify as lack, and like a sky borne firework floating back to anxious-earth, I am now seeking to fill that sterile mountaintop by introducing a sexual key and see who’ll come out the unlocked door. I am determined to lose control and step out of the way. I’m going to bring out this masturbation confidant I’ve been submerging into since puberty. I ready myself for her appearance. There was no turning back; nor did I really care to.
“Are you going to the strip show?” Eva asks as I came out of the bathroom.
“Yeah,” I lie. “Well, probably,” I lie again, in case she wants me to give someone a lift or a ride. There are always a few faces I don’t want to know hanging around her front room. We say g’night. Only she can open the door for me to leave. I walk out with that extra sense of paranoia I always have when leaving a dealer’s house. If I can just make it to the car, if I can just get to the car, then it’s OK. If I can unlock the car, lock the doors, start and drive away without any headlights following me, I can breath again.
I think about the strip joint. Last time I did go there first but it’s not really enough to shoot and hear the coke-whine and the voices if you can’t feel some flesh. Lately the rules have changed in the strip joints and you’re not allowed to feel the girls up any more, as the owners now get fined. I just get too horny and frustrated shooting up without any fleshly contact, even though my apparatus contracts into a useless turtle’s head anyway. So when I was there last time, I had taken my last filled syringe, left the strip joint and gone instead to the bookstore and while shooting there took a little walk on the wild side. Whatever hunger it had seemed to satisfy had returned tonight with a larger apatite.
This time I would skip the strip joint and go straight to the bookstore. I stop and buy a pint of Tequila and a tall can of beer, placing them in the back seat of my car, parking it in the darkest part of the lot behind the bookstore. I try to be cool and light a cigarette with the engine off and the window rolled down. I’m going to contemplate what will take place and draw out the anticipation. This lasts about three puffs.
The California night sky slams behind me as I enter the bookstore and recognize the clerk. This seems important to me somehow because I know I’m going to be very paranoid later, and it just seems better if I know the people who work there. I buy $10 worth of tokens. Most people are very uptight in the adult bookstore. I have a solution for uptight.
I get buzzed into the back room. The new policy is only people who buy tokens are allowed into the backroom where the video booths are. This keeps out the bad element. At the near and far end of the large room are glass cases containing sets of small posters, maybe a dozen graphic boxes advertising the videos. There are about ten small rooms lining each side of the room, and an additional corridor stretches to the back wall. Each video is represented by a graphic, a small description of the plot and the corresponding number of that choice. Should you want to view that particular video once you were in the booth, you simply pressed the corresponding channel in the coin-operated controller.
The booth was large enough for two people if both were slim; especially if one was on his knees or bent over. It consisted of a bench, a stench – from the sticky tissues dotting the floor and sometimes from their need to be dotting the floor - and a video lens from the back wall above the bench projecting onto the back of the lockable door. When someone was watching a movie, a green light showed ‘Movie in Progress’ above the outside door. When the green light was on, and the door left ajar, it could only mean one thing: ‘man available.’ There were tops and bottoms leaving doors ajar twenty-four-seven all over Los Angeles.
The booth was doubly useful for another reason: the syringe, when spent, could be tossed under the bench, thereby freeing me from having to hide it while my brain was exploding in cocaine trajectory.
As in all bookstore sex, just about anyone will do. I entered the main video room and approached a guy who had his back to me looking at the selections. He was the only person outside a booth at the time, so this moment spelled o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y. While low, old, fat, ethnic, stupid-looking or ugly would have been just fine – if not preferable - he is tall, young, white, slim, with reasonable good looks. Well, nobody’s perfect.
My heart is hammering loudly in my ears while pumping adrenalin in quantities that made thinking impossible, and I was still totally straight. I auto-pilot up next to him, standing closer than normal. I notice he does not step away. I stand and look at the selections, my eyes falling on one quickly. I’m not sure who or what is in charge of motoring my mouth but it opens and I start hearing my words come out. Lowly and slowly I say,
“Look at that lucky bitch in number four.” His eyes move to that graphic to view a picture of an attractive young woman putting her mouth around an enormous penis.
“If you wanna watch it together, I’ve got some tokens,” I add in a low voice.
He nods, stunned.
“Stay here for a few moments till after I get in,” I tell him, and he nods dumbly. I turn quickly to walk down a corridor lined with additional rooms but somewhat separate from the main room. I worry that he might come in right after me as I get into the last booth and close the door.
I immediately jam in a bunch of tokens for movie light against the door, grab a syringe from my sock, bite the orange cap off while at the same time pumping my left fist and holding it against my side. My vein is exceptionally fat and I don’t need a belt to tie off. My features in silhouette, my blood billows up through the pornographic light to register in the clear plastic tube of the syringe, and I plunge it all home immediately.
Incredible rush. My heart explodes with exhilaration, and I cannot breathe as indescribable jet-engine whines send lightning strokes of euphoric excitement exploding through my head. My body buckles, crumpling to my knees almost out of control onto the sperm streaked floor. Tossing the syringe into the dark shadow under the bench and pushing down my left sleeve is as much as I can physically accomplish. My own breathing is like a deep, feathery moan. The rush is still driving my consciousness out as I lay collapsed, shocked, paralyzed and unmoving in the ecstatic buzz that is flooding throughout my brain.
Footsteps outside the door are too much for my nerves and consciousness to deal with, but I need not deal with anything, an inner sense calmly assures, as this girl comes alive to take over and is easily here. Languid and impossibly calm, she is doubly satin and eager to please; eager to prove how willing she really is to please. Excitement makes her calm, and her mouth is not dry, even with this mammoth shot of cocaine, it is not dry at all. My legs are being pushed by the door swinging in. My date has arrived.
With my heart beating out of my ears I propel myself between his seated legs with my head still in a roar. I move slowly, hoping my nearly passed out state passes for languid. I rest my lips on the bulge of his denim. He obliges me by unzipping, pulling down and producing a nicely proportioned, cut and clean object of worship. I slowly lower my mouth to enclose it, angling it gently up into the roof till I get used to the general length and breadth of the situation; making sure my teeth are set well behind my lips.
He says something. He is apologizing for not being hard.
Oh, this is love! This was a reason to give without restraint, for I could leave all concern behind that he’s a hostile nut-job and allow my euphoria to govern. She rules well here, and I am floating free from fear.
I respond without thinking:
“I like it like this” and my voice is timbered and echoes pleasantly in my own ears. After all, few behaviors are as positively reinforcing as the hardening of a limp penis through one’s oral efforts. The moment when it enters the mouth is like going into a quiet tunnel of escape, a spiritual home in a dark vacation where nothing else exists. A rubbery item is being ministered to, and the reward for your efforts fills you with a mysterious satisfaction unlike the orgasm you’re not having, and yet you become mysteriously satisfied somehow not to have. A special moment when this real flesh and blood apparatus – and all that it signifies - comes into your most personal and slavish care. It’s the same with an anonymous partner as one whose name you actually know. The scenario has a ritual that smacks of religion and worship, hearkening back to a time before history, in a dimension never described.
It fills the world; this strange flesh that is deep in your mouth, eagerly awaiting your ministrations, a silent communication begins between one who offers “servicing,” and the one he needs to “service.” An energy aside from the fleshly pleasure builds and communicates in between the submissive humiliation of the degraded and the unseen power alive in the flesh of the one who degrades him while needing him. It is way beyond the physical.
A small voice, however, even within this raging chemical stimulation makes itself known to your consciousness: “what are you doing this for?” It is overlooked as I submerge into the wave-like rush of sensual carnality. It is a moment for worshipping energies dark and deep which come alive enriching themselves within my behavior. I am compulsively driven by the belief that true satisfaction will arrive for me when I get to swallow the reward of these submissive efforts.
A special time in its growth, his length can still be manipulated and pleasured in ways too difficult after the stiffness enlarges it. It slides easily down my throat, my tunnel’s own slow and gentle gulping now nurturing, slurping and swallowing his size. Hearing him gasp and moan, she chooses this time to enliven, this time to emerge. I take my date’s hand and place it on the back of my head, moaning deep in my throat as he tentatively commands with a little pressure.
I see, feel and am quickly her in my silver-gowned lingerie in my penthouse. My fiancé out-of-town, I protest weakly to the black porter. He comes within inches to place his hand on my perfect soft behind. Bringing me against his hardening body, his thick lips are only inches from my own. I whimper as he pulls me close, his hands taking fuller possession.
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have worn this. I’m sorry… we shouldn’t… my fiancé, you know, I don’t really want...”
‘I know you want me to fuck you... but you’ll have to earn that... learn how to suck my cock first, and swallow every drop.’ She moans as I moan, slipping to our knees in the satin garments, taking in this very real, growing, and living one-eyed monster. She enters the task of getting my breathing through my nose in sync with her one-hand pumping, and he immediately enlarges, his thickness reaching emergent proportions. The spirit within the one speaks to the spirit within the other, and thus the dance is done.
His moans rise in volume and so does the hardness of his unit, it now growing to a prodigious size. My slave girl will take-no-prisoners, and doesn’t allow for the voice of conscience that even now starts to insist it be heard. Her energy is too high and spirit fueled, reinforced by years of nightly training sessions full of yearning masturbation fantasy. She has trained and strained for this charge since puberty. A wide-eyed supplicant, ‘Is this what you like?’ breaks into consciousness, proceeding to hold her breath and take him down to new lengths, the depth of her wet throat holding him completely. A silent call for his essence, my mind reeling, heart beating out of control, I acknowledge the desire. His hardness is very full now, a true life of its own starting to take over this hard tool, expanding to ever-more-impressive dimensions.
“I’m coming,” he gasps, and how perfect. To actually alert me! Something within the concern and regret in his voice tells me he has never had a complete blowjob. The fact that he would tell me he’s on arrival rather than simply take advantage of an anonymous stranger… Well, this is either caring or fear that I’ll freak out if he comes in my mouth. I am eagerly amused to hear his naive conviction that no one would ever want to swallow. In either case I am doubly motivated now to receive his delivery, and this commitment allows my breathing to go deeper, holding air longer, taking him completely down my throat; I’ll show him what a blowjob is all about. He is becoming louder in his uncontrolled gasps and moans, and we bond in the dark tableau.
He gasps out again the emerging condition of his explosive state. His tool hardens out of control, a separate life with a purpose all its own, beyond wood, the head expanding even greater than what it was. Gasping and moaning loudly, his body shakes and starts to erupt.
I breathe deeply and hold my breath just before I start to taste the hot thick achievement. I take him deep but my throat is awash in its salty fullness immediately and I gag before swallowing the eager fluid, thickly filling my mouth while I hear him snigger-with-scorn at the gagging sound. I see in the mysterious nanosecond database of the moment an image of my own cruel smirk – a Trojan horse somehow – from years before when I sneered in similar fashion to a man gagging on my release.
There’s too much and I’m gonna choke now! But not if I worship deeper… not if I want to give enough by swallowing enough, desiring to be used and receive enough. I assure myself that this also is true realization.
The disposition of the soul alters the very reality I’m in. I realize the heretofore offensive odor of the sperm on the floor around me is now changed into the fragrance for my ongoing program. No longer an oppressive stench to flee from, my atmospheric bouquet is accepted soulfully as the heady aroma for this scene of adoration and submission. It is no longer assailing but complimenting and reinforcing my senses as well as my deed. So I wallow in this reward, taking this swickly quickly, and this receiving fills my altered identity with presence and strength. It’s part and parcel of this enormous moment. This unique moment of total gasping in giving and taking, this joining of excitement and pleasure in the one being manipulated by the one controlling through submission. I give myself up to mastery in surrender, made all the more exciting by his prodigious size.
By now I am conquered, have conquered, received my reward and am mysteriously fulfilled. My conscience whines objections to the bitch goddess no more. Gentle and slow, soft and wet, I take the half-sized semi down deep, a final effort steeped in obvious request, a sweet treat of obedience, seeking the last drop of his essence. Having swallowed any reward from the last slow pump, I am into the gentle offering of good afterglow.
The cocaine buzz is still felt and I am mildly surprised how easily I remain in this other world. The producer retires into a smaller state still surrounded by my now unmoving wet mouth, and I wait until the owner pulls it out with a plop and a pop, shrunk and disappearing behind his zippered pants amidst a silent goodbye.
Zipped up, tucked in and standing, my date is on his way out, but gives pause to deal with his own post-orgasmic mindset. His demeanor changed, his new attitude is seeking an outlet. As he is about to leave, he hesitates. I knew he had never come in anyone’s mouth before, and either in spite of this - or because of this - says “thanks” with a strange sneering intonation that says he has gotten over on me, as if I had been given something that I hadn’t wanted, but he alone benefited from. His attitude was as if I had given him change for a hundred-dollar bill when he had only given me a ten.
At that moment I was incapable of guile and proved it easily with a voice full of penetrating sincerity. Honestly and enthusiastically I responded with a “thank you” with such straightforward emphasis on the “you” that it spoke volumes in its sincerity.
The communication was real enough. His face amazed and crumpled. Wilting in his own resentment, he himself was now becoming penetrated by the very source of my own pleasure.
When he realized that the entire act was what I had wanted and planned for – as my total satisfaction was so very much in evidence – he reacted with a transparent astonishment. I was too lost in the female sensuality to feel guilty. If anything, I was the relaxed and fulfilled city-slut, and he the farm boy who had just satisfied me.
But his total satisfaction from getting physical satisfaction was no longer in evidence. He looked used and confused, reflecting an uncomfortable “I feel dirty” look. He now understands that I’d be happy to do him again (well, I’d have to shoot up again), and he is conflicted unhappily with this realization. He is somehow confused and conflicted by my being pleased and satisfied. His platform of sexual satisfaction rested upon some kind of hostile sexual logic now crumbling on reality’s feet of clay.
He was using another man for his own pleasure, but never considered he was being used to give pleasure and satisfaction by feeding the other man’s craving. Realizing the other man took pleasure in using him has not only betrayed whatever assumptions he had taken into our act, but has now submerged him into some kind of new and dark emotion, birthed and strengthened by the complicit nature of his behavior.
The spirit that was in me is now in him as well, holding fast in its new home, feeding within him a new sense of himself through his upset, and gaining spiritual nutrition on and in his confused state.
From this moment forward he may find himself at odds with his fantasy, or capitulating to new desires he now hears from a new voice in his head. That voice is now living in him as a spiritual sex-child born from our act. Within this mystery he may find himself twisting to avoid the unwelcome identification with a barely conscious counterpart he seeks to deny. His resulting guilt over this new sense of himself sexually will create a need for greater acts of excitement, as only these greater excitements can totally relieve the guilt of his new conflict.
Caverns strange and dark just below the surface of his consciousness are churning with metamorphic activity. This real-world behavior he has just engaged in - fuels and sparks a growing life – a birth, if you will – in what was before only subconscious impulse. The persona the young man found unacceptable, unimaginable and unthinkable yesterday has been given new life from his activity in the world of real behavior, and will demand feeding for its new identity. Feeding itself through his soulish worship, it will grow in the young man when he submerges into this new spirit in his own sexual fantasy, whether in masturbation or with another.
A journey has begun for him which may bring him back full circle to these same booths in a different position next time. Next time it could be him on his knees saying ‘thank you’ to some stranger for a mouthful of hot goo. Or, holding onto the road of denial, he could become a hostile homophobic, lashing out at anyone making him aware of these repressed energies.
There is an energy present for the master’s role within the slave, and part of the slave’s role must exist within the very need of the master, for if the master must have something, then he is in some sense a slave to that need. My young man has now come to find that out. Consequently, he feels dirty and used. The master has become the commodity providing a service. The master – as user – has been had within the mysterious logic of the dark homosexual libido. He stumbles as he leaves.
I sit and think to relax; have a cigarette, maybe go out and have a drink at the bar down the street. But who am I kidding? I still have another 2 filled syringes. I have never had such a dramatic bookstore experience before, and am steeped in a kind of dreamy satisfaction; albeit for only a few moments.
Soon all my coke is gone. Hell demands payment. Shaky, anxious, paranoid, used up, depressed and strung out, I limply jerk off and feel worse. I walk out quickly with my head down, every breath and step carries with it overwhelming fear and anxiety. Back in the car, I drink from my pint of Tequila, hoping to take the edge off the comedown. Chasing the liquor with beer, I’m hopeful the 30mg of Valium will kick in soon and offer some respite.
But now life’s problems rail in my head: I owed money all over, had no more cash and had blown this money which was sorely needed at home. We were a month behind on rent.
God, what’s my wife gonna say? My wife, Oh my God! Real life! What am I doing giving strangers blowjobs in the middle of the night while using up my family’s money on drugs? This is beneath contempt. This is inhuman. This is like the guy eating bugs in the early Dracula movies. I have to cut this shit out. I have to stop this. My wife is pregnant! What kind of sick man am I? Maybe I better kill myself now. End it, end it, end it! Where? Where should I do it? Where should I shoot myself? In the car? I do have the gun.
I smoke a cigarette, chase more Tequila with a mouthful of beer. I rationalize:
‘You can always kill yourself. You don’t have to do it right now. Just stop. Stop using drugs. Then you won’t have to kill yourself. Clean up. Work. Save. Own a house. A car. A boat. A dog. Don’t kill yourself, get rid of the gun before you do.’
‘OK, that’s responsible’ I think. Yes, here’s some hope. The best, most productive and positive thing to do would be to get rid of the gun.
Can’t just throw $175 away though, responsibility insists. I could sell it to Eva! But Eva and I have already agreed it’s a crappy weapon. A small, poorly made revolver, I could sell it to someone else. Complicated, that.
A few more swigs of tequila with the beer chaser and this fresh cigarette is actually starting to taste good. I take my first deep breath in over an hour.
Maybe I should trade it back to Big Eva for some more coke. Then never buy it back! HA! She’ll be pissed at me, and I wouldn’t be able to buy any more coke from her. Then I could be straight!
What genius! Yes, the truly responsible thing to do is to end my relationship with Big Eva and cocaine. I’ll get rid of the gun and screw up my coke connection at the same time. This act will now put an end to this whole cocaine, perverted sex and suicide track.
Yes, it’s time to get hold of my life and be responsible. It’s a courageous thing to do, a responsible thing to do, and it’s the right thing to do.
I congratulate myself on taking this giant step to give up cocaine and perversion. I gratuitously start to compare myself to everybody I know who’s using drugs but who has not yet taken this courageous step.
Those losers… I’m stopping. It’s a done deal. But I reason that there is still a little rain left to fall. Some work left to be done to complete this new sacrifice, for in order to screw up the coke connection I have to trade the gun for some more. It’s a dirty job, even a dangerous one, given the current climate over there, but somebody’s gotta’ do it.
I can’t just throw all that coke away. That would be just stupid. So the good life; puppies, lawns with flowers and children laughing, yes. It’s starting now – officially – but I’ll have to use up this last score first.
‘At least a gram,’ an eager bad-cop voice says in my head.
‘I don’t really care,’ good cop says. ‘I’m above such considerations. I may just throw the shit away anyway.’
‘Yeah, right, responds bad cop. I could shoot half a gram maybe. That would be in-fucking-credible. Hmm… get fucked in the ass while I’m rushing on half-a-gram? After all, it will be my last time…
This dedication to my new clean life has me looking urgently at my watch in that early morning hour wondering… wondering if it’s not too late… not too late to call Eva.
* * *
Sounds are now entering consciousness. We both hear the multiple footsteps as the walking wounded come up the AA stairs; seeking, clawing, scratching, and fighting to stay alive – all a step above the pit – all one step ahead of disaster.
“So how long y’been sober? he asks.
“Almost ninety days now, I fell off twice in the last 3 months before this stretch. I can’t go back to it again,” I answer with wretched honesty.
I suddenly find my mouth opening, sending more sound through the tedious ether.
“Y’know that definition of gay you mentioned…? He immediately looks a little baleful, readying himself to get a verbal kick-in-the-ass. “The compulsive desire you talked about?” I continue.
“Yeah,” he deadpans.
“I get a little compulsive myself sometimes.”
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For more info on the novel, "Back From the Other Side"
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