19.8.08
Chapter 1- Adam & Naive
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 became another accomplished endeavor. I could feel the itinerant weight backpacking from my legs to my stomach, gallivanting past each vital organ with such joie de vivre. There was a burning that presented her arrogance upon each one of my limbs; she was screaming for God and atonement and, in vain, trying to put herself out. There was a memory that presented his diffidence upon each one of my synapses; he was crying for Satan and redemption and, in vain, trying to erase his own name. This was a battle that would continue within me for the rest of my short life. And our paralyzed world always revolves around a feeling. I was a sad smile. 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 a walking grand larcenist; but I was just petty. 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 cannot 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 insipid breathing was suddenly spiced with a dash of urgency. My static 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 goddamn 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 the grooves of her tongue felt against the roof of my mouth was ineffably 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 indistinct room. My arms were the bed, resting intimately against her crescentic back. My taut torso was the cover, providing warmth to her raw body. Atoms clashed and ions shifted. I was aroused. She was vapor, seeping into my panting pores and permeating my vivacious veins. I was exceedingly 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 active frame. I began 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 that exists between two carnivores. I seeped my canines 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.
And I drift into reverie, falling into my thoughts without reason to catch me. And I am thrown into a dream, this recurring nightmare—because a dream never really has a prologue. It doesn’t begin with you waking up, after a nice rest, to the morning sun gazing at you through the cracks in your blinds. It doesn’t begin with you exiting your mother’s womb, seeing that glaring, obnoxious light for the first time. It can, but it doesn’t. It is more like a Tarantino movie, an opening scene—where you are just heaved into a setting, and you have no idea why you are there or where it is going.
So, I am thrown into my dream. And while confined to the four walls of this reverie, I accept the facts as they are consigned to me, never questioning their legitimacy, never really establishing the distinction between my heart and my head. I am in some sort of chamber, and it is dark, and there is a single light fixture in the top right corner of the room. And I can hear the trickling of water clashing against the cement, thunderous and abrupt.
The room is an unsettling cold, and I am wearing nothing more than a pair of briefs and an undershirt. And I am five. And there are no doors, no windows. There is just a single light fixture, a plate of food, some rats, and that vexatious sound of water raping the cracks in the cement floor.
I am hopelessly looking for a way out.
But, at that exact moment, there is a thunderous clash and a sudden flash of glaring light that elegantly rapes my pupils. It shines onto my boyish frame in a heavenly manner; the cellar ceiling serves as my artificial sky.
I am exhaling heavily and I can see my breath invading the caustic air in front of me. It escapes my mouth with that same sense of urgency, then swirls up into the air and disappears into the darkness.
A transitory existence.
And a hand reaches down from above, an intimate God. His arm is a ghostly white, thick and barbaric. The thin hairs that line his forearm stretch out in fear of touching one another. He is flexing his finger muscles, waiting for my boyish hand to grab them. This looks like salvation. He is going to save me from this frigid hell, this barless jail.
And I scurry towards his hand; I just want to get out of there. I touch his cold fingers and I immediately lose that emotional comfort that had once overwhelmed my spirit. And at this moment, I realize—this intimate God just imitates God.
And I am pulled into that overbearing white light. And I am blind. There is no background music, no setting, just an eerie voice that plays chaotically on my eardrums.
And the intimate God roars a whisper—
“Hayden, it’s time to play.”
And I brushed these thoughts from my mind as if they were snow on my peacoat. I came back to reality as if it were the hometown I never loved.
The peculiar thing was I did not fear the theft of my virginity; I just wanted an Oscar-worthy performance. I was not 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. And boys, we all envy the porn star.
I was always taught not to talk to strangers, but what about fornicate with them?
Despite the compulsion to be a man and attack the hole, there was a slice of hesitation in my moans. This just was not 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 did not 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 forelimb just casually basking in her flower’s spores. I felt her warmth slowly inch its way into my flexed abdomen. I felt her soft, velvety walls trying 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 pontifical satisfaction, my smug conceit pervading the sultry air.
The stranger, somewhat 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 lascivious 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.
“My name is Hayden Santiago—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, bones, 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 anthropomorphized. I am total, unabridged control. I am a gemstone that is about to break. 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 what I need. I am what I want. I am what I was. I am salvation without hope. I am death without life. I am pain without purpose. I am here. I am now. I am you. Everything you have experienced before this has meant nothing. Consider this dying.”
