I’m already drifting through my 4th dream. I have no idea what I was dreaming about, it could’ve been anything, a nightmare possibly since my night hadn’t gone so swiftly. After a drink, a smoke and an inevitable argument I was drained, my bones ached for the comfort of another human being, my night had been lonely. I entered the 5th dream, which didn’t really last long, if it had ever started. I woke to the vibrant sounds of a rough object against my entry door. “Go back to sleep, it’s not this one.” I thought. I tried to close my eyes but the sound was now alarming. It was 6:00 a.m. The living room was under my bedroom floor, I tried looking out the window but saw nothing, no unusual cars or gangsters to be afraid of, this was not that kind of neighborhood, yet the noise kept on rushing through the house. Mauricio ran down the stairs to the patio where he took a gravel bunk and our BB gun to insult the drunken bastard at our door. Yes, he opened the door abruptly hitting him with it, the man stepped a few feet away, shoulder hurt. He made questioning signs with his hands towards the gravel bunk, as if to say “what’s that man, what’s going through your head?” I would’ve come outside to give him a piece of my mind, but instead I stayed in my room thinking of the million scenarios that could play off. I saw us shot and raped, or in the news the morning after. I took a breath. Instead I thought of ways to keep Eric safe, tracing in my head the blue prints of the house, trying to find a place where I could keep him hidden and protected. Fortunately, Mauricio came back inside, the drunk outside still mingling by our cars, vomiting, talking to himself, then he started hitting the door once again, trying to knock it down, then trying to open it with his keys. I had no choice but to call the police.
And the water begun to run but the mist had yet to overtake the room as Lucy admired her reflection in the mirror. Thin, voluptuous where was needed, that was her body. Lucy raised one short flexible leg over the bathroom’s counter; she looked at the bruise on her right thigh. Yesterday the bicycle had left its greeting, and now she wondered whether human contact could leave the same trails on such close edges to her sex. Perhaps a carnivore’s teeth could do the task, or an unshaved chin who can’t keep itself from kissing that area of untouched flesh. Lucy presses her finger against the purple mark, enjoying its brief pains. She takes her leg off the counter and walks to the shower. The water had been running for a while, her reflection is now undefined. Lucy lays down on the tub, as the shower washes over her, the head gripped tight in her hand. She places each leg to opposite ends of the tub, directing the blessing pressure of water to her thigh then closer to her yearning pleasure, where she replaces her fingers with inconsistent flows from the shower head’s mouth.
He read her writing. She stood by the window watching over the city, following the loose trace of passing cars. She sat on his lap, she kissed him. She had nothing but a towel on, hair wet, feet naked against a rough carpet. She lied in bed. They discussed her writing. They edited the story. She stayed in bed. He came towards her, kissed her and made history.
The four of us belonged to an underground cult made up by love and sex addicts, looking in hidden corners for something meaningful to hold unto. Fucking –yes, blunt and unabashed- was the highest peak of the mountain, and once we had reached the top we only adjusted to make the experience more…challenging. Some preferred to be choked, others spanked, others liked their hair pulled or their hands and bodies tied. I thought I belonged here with each other’s madness and bohemian lifestyle, but that was the problem. We were never really bohemians. Once our souls met with that other rotten individual we refused to let go, you especially. Because there’s something bloody amazing about being decomposed together, because somehow we both share the same feelings of abandonment and remorse, and in the same substandard darkness we understand each other’s motives to be so perpetually complicated.
