Will the Real Stephanie Ragusa Please Stand Up? (Part 1)

15.5.09

Will the Real Stephanie Ragusa Please Stand Up? (Part 1)

*Ridiculous story. Not included in book. Just for shits and giggles. Absurd, unnecessary and not geared for logical human beings.

"In this big, epic movie - everyone is an extra."

Tuesday

3:10pm

And I'm sitting in the back of the auditorium watching Bertolucci's The Dreamers with wide eyes and warm sensations. I allow my eyelids to kiss as I dream about Isabelle's sultry curves and her coquettish mien. And I know why my teacher is showing this film. This is foreplay. This is composition. She is taking preparatory measures. And I am captivated.

The ingredients are all there—a vampish, percipient governess, an eager, lascivious scholar, and a secluded, Stygian projection room. Oh, and an irksome, corpulent translator.

My 2:15 film class is taught by my deaf mistress, Ms. DuBois, with the help of Arnold, a portly, ribald, middle aged man who is blessed with the unfortunate fortune of possessing the rare ability to read sign language.

And every Monday at 3:30pm, Ms. DuBois and I reenact a copulatory scene from whatever film she had shown in class the previous week. And every week I am just itching with excitement. My only bone of contention is that ever since the day good ol' Arnie caught us fornicating in the projection room he has insisted on being a part of the action. Blackmale. His terms are: he will keep our little secret in exchange for permission to act as a translator for Ms. Dubois during sex. Since then, our sessions involve less dialogue—even though there wasn't much talking to begin with for obvious reasons. Just the bitter fact that he is present, watching with smutty eyes and breathing laboriously, is enough to drop my spar to half-mast. In order to keep my soldier at attention, I have to take a Viagra, which I surreptitiously conceal in a tic-tac case just so she doesn't notice as I pop a mint into my mouth.
Components: One tic-tac, one Viagra.

"I uh...I have to go to the bathroom," I say with such juvenile hesitance.
And there I am, living out the scene, step-by-step, frame-by-frame. I'm hiding behind the closet door in the projection room pretending as if it were the scene in the kitchen where the two siblings try to convince Matthew to have sex with them, just for the fuck of it. Playing the brother, Theo, Fat Arnold calls for me to come out of the closet.
But I'm not who he thinks I am. I will not go there. I will not touch that.

And as the beaten portal creeks, my body rapes the crack in the door as I say, "I'm coming." But at this moment, with Fat Arnold hovering over me like an apparition, his rank breath invading my pelt, the stench of cellulite infiltrating my nasal passage, and his paunch gracing my left arm, I don't want to anymore.

I close my eyes and then open them again, but there is no change in scenery; everything is still black-Charlie Murphy black, Ward 9 black.
And I'm wondering if Ms. Dubois feels like Helen Keller yet.

I feel my way around the room in order to find my film teacher because I cannot call out to her for reasons that are evident, unless you have Alzheimer's or are smoking weed while reading this (Note: Although, if you have Alzheimer's and you are smoking pot while reading this, the two do in fact cancel each other out). And every time my shaking hands graze Fat Arnold's lust handles, I make a quick grab for his nipple and proceed to give him a titty twister. Every time this happens, he giggles and then slaps my hand away.

When I finally find her, I delicately touch her with my cold, wet hands, rubbing her goose bumped flesh as if I were attempting to read Braille. Piloerection.

Our bodies grace the leather couch in a rebellious fashion; they writhe feverishly causing the couch to cry for mercy. And I do the same every time Fat Arnold's body heat tugs unremittingly at the back of my neck. The vexatious din from the flatulent couch is too loud (for me of course) so we gracelessly drop to the floor. She laughs loudly, then sips back eager saliva.

And there we are, lying naked on the carpeted projection room floor. My hands are cupping her nape. My staff parts her lips—it's all so biblical. And we communicate with our bodies. She touches my left shoulder every time she wants me to slow down and touches my right every time she fancies a switching of positions. She taps my right.

We roll over, laughing like little children. We are appreciating this semi-innocent connection; we are helplessly trying to regain purity through promiscuity. But every time we feel Arnold's warm, lascivious gaze seep its way into our anatomy, there is a birth of something deplorable deep within our spirits. Everything we feel thereafter seems forced.
And daddy is watching us perform such perversities in the background.

But every time Ms. Dubois comes, she screams with unabated frenetic exertion because she cannot control the level of her voice; this serves as a proper and erotic distraction that forbids me from hearing the vile sound of Fat Arnold choking his dead chicken.

She taps me on the right shoulder again and I pick her body up with my taut, flexed arms and sandwich her suspended design between the cold, rigid wall with such animalistic tendencies. As her body jumps, her hair sweeps across my face and generates an incessant itch upon my snout. And I desperately want to scratch it, but I cannot because my arms are currently serving as seat for her helpless frame. At this exact moment, Fat Arnold decides he wants to play a leading role in the film and grabs her buoyant breasts. She is all but pleased. As he does this, I go to scratch my nose and the punch that was intended for Arnold embraces my countenance with a caustic fury and all I can hear is gravity in effect as her body graces the floor and blood pours from my bruised nose. She is crying and I am bleeding and Arnold is jerking off to the symphony of it all. And I just want to punch that portly pussy in the prostate. And I cock my hand back and Ms. Dubois rises to her feet and Arnold is about to nut, but in the dark nothing is as easy as you want it to be. Except women. And instead of striking him in the jaw I punch her in the back of the head. She drops to the floor and his load waterfalls on top of her. God is much funnier than I think any of us realize.
And God downs a Vicodin and a fifth of tequila whenever life gets bland.

As she moans on the floor, I feel around for my clothes and exit the projection room with the hopes that she believes Arnold is culpable and that my performance during this test was sufficient enough to secure me at least a B in the class.
I think two involuntary contractions deserves at least a B.

And I leave her there with a bruised ass and head, viscous splooge dripping down the vale of her crack and a naked fat ass trying to help her up with the same hand he uses to pick out the dingleberries that plague his anal shrubbery.

I feel as though this would be the perfect story for FMyLife.com.

4:20pm

I head towards the dining hall to see if the lunch lady, Chandelier, has any frozen meats so I can prevent bruises from materializing because I don't want such a trite injury to my biological tissue marring my immaculate complexion.

"So how's your daughter? Genitalia, is it?"
"You know, she's good," she says, my Coco Queen, "But my babies daddy's a mutha fucka." She goes through the industrial freezer, her sizable boobs hanging over the edge. "So how you been? Been workin' out I see."
"Just been carrying my pride is all."

With her frosted breasts perched upon her paunch, Chandelier hands me a big piece of meat and expects me to do the same, but I tell her that I am in a hurry; there's always tomorrow.

My legs burn with a corrosive intensity as I rush into the final minutes of my psychology class.
"Nice of you to join us, Hayden," my teacher says, "What's with the piece of meat?"
"Washington Square Park is very dangerous this time of day, you know."
Bullshit is good for fertilizing, but not so much for making a good impression.

I spend the next five minutes of class sketching the rest of this doodling mural I have been working on for most of the semester. Dali would be proud.

Class ends but before I can escape, my psychology teacher gestures for me come to the front of the class.
It is highly probable that she will punish me by putting me in the corner, but I'm hoping she wants to spank me.

"Hayden, Hayden, Hayden," she says as she shakes her somewhat twitchy head, "you're not going to pass this class even if you get an A on the final."
"Ms. Amadeus, please. I need to pass this course," I beg, clasping my hands together and shaking them in her face. "Is there any extra credit I can do? Anything—I'll do anything."

I have this habitual tendency of choosing my words poorly because her idea of extra credit did not involve psychology at all.

And there she is, lying on her standard leather couch in her private office. I begin to think that she wants me to psychoanalyze her, but that is not the case at all. She slides off her shoes, unzips the hip zipper of her skirt and shimmies it off with the grace of a swan. She beckons me using the finger motion one uses to tickle the necks of babies, and I decide—fuck it—I'd rather screw her than my British psychiatrist whose teeth fuck and fight more than a Southern hick family.

I stand at the foot of the couch as she takes off her stockings and reveals the Hanes Her Way underwear, which probably came in a pack of thirty that she bought at Target—or as titled yet impecunious people call it, Tarzhe—during some blue light special, and only after the rest of her tighty-whities were stricken with skid marks or clear, stretchy vaginal discharge, which is more likely a result from her doing Pilates while ovulating than a symptom of some obscure venereal disease. And despite such vile visualizations, I really want to pass this class; so I do what I must.

And I inch my way upward, slowly kissing every centimeter of her body; I want to maintain a high level of suspense. My lips touch hers and there is a moment where she twitches and I can't help but remove my face from the situation, but only as a natural reflex. I slide my pants off and notice that my soldier is still going strong—possibly a result of the Viagra I took a little over an hour ago. The granny panties that smother her navel dislodge with great difficulty. And now my sex is staring at hers relentlessly; he's marking his territory with his one eyed gaze.

As soon as he enters, Ms. Amadeus lets out what sounds like a hiss. I quickly pull out and we both exchange a look that reeks of confusion. I shrug it off and insert myself inside her, again. This time she makes a face of pure disgust.

I pull out and say, "Did I do something wrong?"
Bemused, she just looks at me with a blank stare and says, "Orange, Orangutan, Octopus." She shakes her head and scrunches her nose, then says, "Yeah, you stopped."

And I'm not sure what type of game she is playing here, but I just want to get this over with so I slide back in, this time giving her just a few quick pelvic thrusts. After the third one she barks three times.
My penis exits her sex once more and I say, now utterly confused, "Did you just bark?"
"Oliver, Oracle, Officer." She blinks three times and then says, "Just ignore it. Keep going."

I shake off my confusion and enter inside her, yet again. After about a minute of sex wrought with bewilderment, she begins to hit herself, first slapping her breasts then her face, then just her head.
"Wow," I say, still thrusting, "you really like it rough."
"Obstacle, Oppressor, Oratory." She tugs each lobe of her ears three times and says, "Yeah, just keep going goddammit. Fuck."

And despite my visible confusion the situation is actually starting to turn me on, so I continue to push my way through her vaginal cavity. And I'm thrusting and sweating—a side effect of my skin dry humping the leather couch—and she's barking and hissing and hitting herself and yelling obscenities as if she were possessed. I feel as though I am performing an exorcism with my penis.

And sweating I say, "Are you...are you okay?"
"Omnipotence, Opprobrium, Onomatopoeic. Yeah, it's just my Tourette's. Fuck me. Fuck me harder. Sorry. Obfuscation. Oscillation. Obligatory. It only happens when I get overly excited or anxious. Yeah. Fuck that pussy right."

I do as she says because, well—this is fucking awesome. I start to push harder and harder, screwing her cervix with every millimeter of strength I can muster. And my Johnson is starting to swell like a wet sponge as beads of sweat begin to drown her reddened chest. And when she comes, she starts to make a scream that sounds as if Chewbacca were taking it up the Hershey Highway from Jabba the Hutt; she then makes a facial expression that mimics that of Bill Cosby or Gary Coleman. I finally pull out and even my penis looks confused.
"Olfer. Oshapane. Oxydollop."
Whatchu talkin' bout, Willis?

And I leave her there with her barking and hissing and foul facial expressions. I leave her there with her self-mutilating tendencies and her foreign obscenities. I leave her there with the mark of shame etched onto her tired bosoms. I leave her there as she says, "I hope this can just be our little secret."
Yeah, until I write a story about it.

To Be Continued...

Will the Real Stephanie Ragusa Please Stand Up? (Part 2)

15.5.09

Will the Real Stephanie Ragusa Please Stand Up? (Part 2)

5:15pm

And I am thoroughly exhausted, but since I don't plan on studying for my Anatomy exam I know I have to pay a visit to my teacher, Mrs. Grey, because it is the only type of studying I will attempt to do.

I rush to Mrs. Grey's apartment, which is located on the corner of Greenwich and Horatio, because I need to get in a quick session before her husband gets home. My penis is throbbing and possibly chaffing from all the walking and fucking I have been doing today. I no longer find sex pleasurable; this is possibly the first time that I am fornicating solely to please my female counterparts.

She buzzes me in and I take the elevator to the third floor. The whole time I am praying to an iniquitous God to stop this impractical joke; I just want to have normal sex for a change.

The door is open so I enter her apartment, which is wrought with model body parts, stethoscopes, Fitness Made Simple DVDs and an obnoxious Bowflex machine that enjoys an orgy in the corner of the room—her husband is a pediatrician and a poster boy for sappy, life changing weight loss stories. See: Jared Fogel. See also: Oprah Winfrey 88', 95', 02', 05'.
Steadman, I'd sympathize with you if you weren't such a bitch.

And I walk into her apartment bedroom and see her with both her legs tied to the bedposts and her right arm handcuffed to the respective post. She nonchalantly asks me to help her with the last handcuff.
And I'm thinking to myself—this can't be that bad.

But of course my curious mind is wandering like the children on the back of milk cartons as I ask, "What's this?"

"Oh, don't laugh," she says as looks down and realizes she forgot to take her thong off, "I saw the movie The Sea Inside the other day and I was so moved that I wanted to see what it would be like for a quadriplegic to have sex."
And I'm thinking—God, are you fucking serious?

So I follow her instructions; I handcuff her left hand to the post, place the neck brace around her upper cervix and tie her to the bed using four ropes: one around her shoulders, abdomen, hips and knees. And bruises—I am sure her hothead husband gave her—mar her entire body.
When the elevator works there are only so many times a functional woman can fall down the stairs.

I shake my head in disappointment as she asks me to grab the scissors out of the kitchen drawer so I can cut off her panties.
And as I grab the scissors I'm thinking, this is stupid; quadriplegics don't have sex because they can't feel anything.

But since she is an anatomy teacher, she has already taken this into consideration. "Now grab the bottle of lidocaine and epinephrine that are sitting on the counter. Oh, and the needle on the dresser. Inject me with it."

"I don't think I can do this," I say, knowing damn-well that I am potentially hurting my chances at passing this class, "I don't want to fuck up."

"Don't worry I'll tell you exactly what to do," she says reassuringly, "Now this is called an epidural." She smiles because that is basically all she can do and continues, "Place the needle in the bottle of lidocaine and fill it up to the 15 mg mark. Then add a little bit of epinephrine to the mix...Fuck."
"What?" I say, thinking I botched the procedure.
"I forgot that you're going to have to put this into my lower back. Fuck," she repeats, "It's okay. Just untie my legs and uncuff my hands and I'll turn onto my stomach. You'll just have to turn me back over and tie me up again."
"I dunno..."
"Come on, Hayden. We've gotten this far. Don't worry. It'll be fine." She smiles again and then changes her facial expression as she says, "Just hurry, because my husband comes home from work in an hour."

And I'm sick of Apprehension fucking me over, so I shake him off and proceed to do everything she asks.

Now on her stomach she says, "Okay so you are going to place the needle about 2 cm into the space on the small of my back near the spine. I have placed a piece of tape at the 2 cm mark; so don't go in any farther than that. Don't worry, Hayden, I trust you. But remember don't inject it too close to my spine. Now you're going to inject about 3 mg every thirty seconds. Once you are done, flip me over—carefully—and tie me back up. We'll do something till the anesthesia kicks in."

And things go exactly as planned except for the fact that I put too much lidocaine in the needle, but I will just pump enough into her to knock her Bermuda Triangle out. And there I am, face-fucking her because she can't move her head. She starts to gurgle in order to inform me that the anesthesia is working properly.

My sex visits hers, constantly checking to see if she is breathing and swallowing properly, making sure she is okay and that her every need is met. And my hips and back are inflamed because I am doing all the work. I guess this is what the necrophilic undertaker feels like as he fucks his patients back to life. See: David Johnson. See also: Benigno Martin.

"Are you okay?" I say as adolescence drips off the tip of my nose.
"I...I dunno. I can't feel anything," she laughs in an attempt to mask her palpable fear, "I can see you having sex with me; but I can't feel a thing."
And we all wish to feel this numb sometimes.

My penis grows numb and I can no longer feel anything as well. But I am not worried because this is basically a précis for my novel apropos of all my sexual experiences—two dejected, forsaken beings desperately trying to establish some sort of connection while struggling to fill the void of the world the only way they know how to fill holes. But at least we are feeling nothing together.
And we all prefer when the word "together" means not "a million," but just two.

Consciousness materializes, but this anthropomorphized awareness is merely transitory because her bower of bliss regains sentience. I know this because she begins to grouse about how she is in pain. It is at this moment, I hear the tintinnabulation of her husband's keys from outside of the apartment door.

"Quick. Go," she shouts, "My husband's here. You have to go. Now."
"Where are my clothes?" I say as I look around with utter consternation.
"Don't worry about it, just go out the window," she says, fear slowly perspiring from her forehead. "Help! Help! Rape! Rape!"

And I don't understand what the hell she is doing, but I don't want to stay around to see.
Dying was not a part of my schedule today.

"Help! Help! Rape!" she shouts at the top of her constrained lungs. "Rape!"
But I can't seem to get the window open. Her husband opens the door; his heavy footsteps create tremors that ripple across the hardwood floor. I realize I won't have enough time to get out of the apartment so I act on the only feasible plan I can devise. I hide underneath the bed.

"Rape! Rape!"
"Oh my God, honey," Jared says, "Who did this to you?"

"I dunno. He just left out the window," she says. She's a good actress. "Get this shit off me."
And from underneath the bed I can hear him struggling to untie her legs. "Where are the keys?" he says, anger and shock raping his vocal chords. "On the table. Quick," she barks. And I am praying to Buddha he cannot hear my heart beating or smell the Brobdingnagian fear that emits from my every pore. "No, just cut off the rope." And as she says this, I see my underwear soundly sleeping right next to his feet. As I attempt to grab them, I see a hand; I begin to panic as the hand reaches down to grab my boxers. "Are these his?" And there I am, lying naked underneath the bed of a tetraplegic as her husband, wrought with a choleric disposition, paces around the room with an aluminum bat in hand. Why couldn't he just be a tennis player? Then, I see my boxers migrate to the other side of the room and colonize the space between the bed and the window. "So you're telling me this guy is running around naked in New York City? Well that shouldn't be too hard to find. Son of a bitch," he shouts as he taps the bat against the hardwood floor. Then, I see her soft, rope-bruised legs dangling off the right side of the bed. "Hunny, relax," she says in an all-too-unperturbed voice, "he didn't really do that much." And I have to sneeze. "Didn't do that much?" he shouts as the bat disappears from my peripherals, then reappears but only to caress the floor with its unyielding design, "your bleeding all over the new fuckin' sheets." And I have to sneeze. "Honey, relax," she says again, "why don't you just call the cops while I go take a shower." And I'm thinking about every type of method I know that will prevent me from sneezing—I'm holding my nose and I'm applying pressure with my index finger to the area between my upper lip and the underbelly of my nose. When this does not work I try pressing my tongue behind my two front teeth, where the roof of my mouth meets my alveolar ridge. But I have to sneeze. "Okay, I'm going to call the police. Are you sure you're okay?" he asks. Despite his machismo he seems genuinely concerned. This is not just a dick-measuring contest. But as I see his feet heading for the door, the tingling sensation that plagues my sinuses quickly matures until I discharge a nuclear, brain-tickling sneeze that rips through the very fabric of time. And while I am lying naked underneath this married woman's bed I'm thinking—this is a suitable way for me to die. But my thoughts are interrupted by the caustic intensity that quickly envelops the room. "That mother fucker," he shouts. He soon bends over and I am looking at him straight in the eyes. Yet as he attempts to reach out to me I bite his middle finger with every nanometer of strength I can muster. "Little bitch." And he bleeds.

I slide myself from under the left side of the bed, grab my underwear and reattempt to open that recalcitrant window.

"I'm going to kill the fuck out of you," he shouts as he points the bat at my frame and power walks to my side of the room.

"I'm going to take that bat and stick it where the sun don't shine, gramps" I shout in an attempt to sound threatening. But he's the one with the weapon so my truculence only angers him more. And I'm thinking about waterfalls, oceans and rivers.
And when someone has a weapon, we all resort to desperate measures.

As he lifts up the bat, I attempt to pee on him so that I may buy myself some time, but I am broke; consequently, I try to run to the other side of the room, but the skull of the bat swipes my left arm. I fall on top of the bed and try to hide underneath the covers. He pulls off the covers and points the bat at me again.

"Your dead fucker."
Funny choice of words.
I quickly grab Mrs. Grey and use her as a shield.
She whispers to me, "Hayden, do you know what you're doing?"
"Yeah," I reply, "how are things, down there?"
"Not now, Hayden."
"What...what'd you just whisper to him?" her husband vociferates.
"She told me I fuck so much better than you, old man," I deride as I try to devise a new plan. "Sorry, teach," I whisper to her as I pet her hair back behind her shoulders. I grab the needle that's lying on the counter and clamor insistently, "There's enough drugs in this needle to kill her. All I have to do is stick it in her spine."

"Okay," he says, his countenance morphing from pure pique to genuine apprehensiveness. "Let's not be rash here. Look. I'll drop the bat." He drops the bat on the floor and backs away. "See. Now, what do you want me to do?"

And I'm sifting through the part of my mind where my sadistic tendencies reside. I want him to feel ineffable pain because no man should beat his wife unless she is into that sort of thing.

"Take off your pants and boxers."
"What?"
"I swear I will jab this fuckin' needle right in her spine. I'll fuckin' do it, man."
"Okay. Fine. Okay."
And he does exactly everything I said to do.
"Now. On all fours facing the window."
"Is this really necessary, man?" he cries.
"Yes it's fuckin' necessary. Now do what I say you little prick or I swear to fuckin' God I will kill her where she stands."
And he does exactly everything I said to do.

"You think you're a big fuckin' man," I yell as I release Mrs. Grey, grab his bat and stick it where the sun don't shine."
I warned him.

And the sheets are now wracked with tears as the tempo of his breathing waxes, until he is panting feverishly in a melodramatic manner.
It is easy for a grown man to act gallant, but it's even easier to make that son of a bitch cry.

I leave the butt of the bat lodged inside for him to take out himself. He'll be shitting cookies for the next couple of weeks. As he tries to push out the bat, I grab my underwear, mouth to Mrs. Grey 'I'm sorry' and finally open that headstrong window.
As I exit the apartment I yell, "And if you ever, ever fuckin' lay so much as a hand on her again, you'll be shitting out shoelaces for weeks."
I hope Chris Brown has fun removing the bat from his brown eye.


And it is Cinco de Mayo so all of the City's Mexicans are out on the streets playing Frisbee with tortillas and piñata with real woman. I am in my boxers running past licentious chicas who whistle, shout '¡Arriba!' and flash me their breasts. I steal this one illegal immigrants' sombrero, which serves as a proper way to put me in a festive mood. A true Youtube Moment. The man does not say a word because either he is too afraid to start a quarrel with a guy in his underwear or he has a spare sombrero underneath his poncho. As I run through the crowd of people I accidentally spill a woman's forty all over this man's back. Wetback. I was expecting him to pull out a machete but when he looks behind him and sees it is a woman, he grabs her and they begin to hat dance. At the moment I start to laugh, I hear the sky crack and before I know it, the clouds are puling. The liquid moonlight assaults my design with such deep-rooted intentions.
God, you are a son of a bitch.

8:09pm

Bewildered, drenched and exhausted, I desperately want to get back to my apartment; it is a thirty-block walk. I soon realize that I am only two blocks from my Theology teacher's apartment. I take a sharp left and run until I reach the mouth of her pad. She buzzes me in and I enter. And I take the elevator to the fifth floor. Her door is open.
"Ms. McMartin," I shout at the apartment, "It's Hayden."

She enters the hallway and says, "Hayden, it's so good to see you." She looks up and down my body, reaches into the closet, grabs a towel and says, "You look cold. Here. Dry yourself off. Would you like some tea?"

I nod as I survey her physique. She is a gaunt, middle-aged brunette whose scalp is scourged with streaks of thin grey hairs that huddle between brown ones. Wrinkles greet her sheet-white skin sparingly. She is wearing a strapless, patterned gypsy dress that drags along the floor in an intimate fashion.

"Where are you coming from?" she asks as she hands me a large mug of tea.
"It's a long story," I say ambiguously, "Let's just say I've had a very stressful day."
"Well, I'm glad you're here. Drink up," she says as she lifts up her cup and cheers me.

And we talk about religion; she tells me about the beauties of ritualistic sex.
"It is an act blessed by and in celebration of Gods and Goddesses..."

Then our conversations get a little more intimate.
"What is it that you want out of life?" she solemnly says, still sipping her sweetened tea.
"I want life to give me what I deserve."
"And what is that, Hayden?"
"A blowjob," I shout. She laughs. "No. Honestly? I just want people...I just want people to love me."
"Anyone in particular?" she says as she fans her moistened and somewhat glistening skin.
"No."
"No one?"
"No. I want everyone to love me. Not like in a narcissistic way. I just want everyone to love me because I—because I feel for them. We are all dying for a connection with someone, anyone. And I just want to give them comfort, even for a moment. But, for some reason, that momentary connection kills me. And then I'm off. I never allow that connection the forgiving chance to be a part of my life."

"So your objectivity is just a defense mechanism?"
"Yeah. I guess it's cause I love everyone so goddamn much. Everyone I meet. I just want to hug them and let them know they are loved. They don't need God or their abusive father or Oprah. But I dunno what I'd do if they loved me the same way. We always hurt the ones we love and I can't deal with that; I've had enough of that in my life. "
And she gives me a sympathetic look then smiles as she says, "Well, I love you Hayden."

And she finishes her tea as I wipe bitter tears from the side of my face.
"I feel funny," I say as I massage my forehead, "what type of tea is this?"
"Earl Grey. But I put some Damiana and Yohimbe in it."
"I feel...I feel weird down..."
"Yeah, that's the Damiana. And I watch my boxers swell. I quickly cover up, but she notices and laughs, "Don't worry, honey, that's just the Yohimbe."

And she guides me to her bedroom. My world is shrouded in a thick vapor that swallows my environment as I tug restlessly at my masculinity. And I see a chalk-inscribed pentagram resting, unscathed in the right corner of the room. The flames from her candles dance in the midst of their dissolution, emitting aphrodisiacal aromas as they drool. As she grabs a book, my world begins to have seizures, its convulsions creating constant chaos that corrupts the constancy that had carved a characteristic complacency in the crevices of my cranium.

"Please, sit down."
"On the floor?" I say as I look down, "I don't know if I can."
"I know your world must be spinning right now, but it's just a side effect."

I sit on the floor and watch as she recites lines from inside the pentagram. The lightning from outside frightens the room, turning it a ghostly white. Then, the thunder cuts the air in an anarchic manner; it causes me to jump back.

"Oh, Great Goddess, Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, hear me. Descend now into Michelle, your loyal attendant and follower. Bless our Rite with your power," she says as she pets the knife she had grabbed from her bookshelf." She pinches her wrist with the knife and allows for the blood to drip onto the center of the pentagram. Then she motions for me to come to her and for some reason I do. "Oh, Great God, Ares, God of All Things Wild and Free, hear me. Descend now into Hayden, your loyal attendant and follower. Bless our Rite with your power," she says as she grabs my naked wrist and strokes it with the knife. And the sound of me bleeding is a beautifully chaotic tune that assails my eardrums with its lawless resonance. I begin to hear whispers that compliment the sound of her reading some spell from her book. But I can't understand anything because everyone seems to be speaking in gibberish. The lightning attacks the room again, illuminating every single object, and her design metamorphoses into something that resembles a Tawaret. The crocodile resting on her spine looks at me with censure as I slowly inch my way back. She beckons me using the same finger motion I use to make women feel immortal. "Come, Hayden."

And whatever drugs she has given me nullify my inhibitions. I find myself on top of her in the center of the pentagram, the blood rushing down my intravenous pipeline; my wrist salivates, which instigates this intense rush of whatever that runs rampant throughout. I plant soft kisses on her exposed neck as her mien reveals the ensuing events. She wraps her legs and arms around my back, lifts herself into the air and places my sex inside hers. Suspended she whispers for me to thrust. Her moans echo across the room and compete with the thunder for my attention. She climaxes and slowly drops to the ground. Sprawled across the flooring, she allows me to continue. And I persist. Through my peripherals I can see her grab the voyeuristic knife and lift it into the air. I quickly switch positions and notice as she swipes the air. "What are you doing?"
"It's time for the sacrifice."

And shock attacks the very hub of my existence, but for some reason I keep plowing through her rose field until she lifts the knife up again. "Am I the sacrifice?" But before she can answer I hear a knock on the bedroom door. Three couples enter the room.
"Michelle, we're here," a voice shouts from behind me.
"You haven't done it yet?" a woman's voice asks.
"Done what?" Then I feel the sharp object suddenly permeate my pelt. I scream and attack the woman by pinning her arms against the floor. I begin to feel lightheaded as I rip the knife out of my back. The coven closes in on me, so I raise the knife with any sort of strength I can muster and yell, "Don't come—" I wipe the sweat from my brow, fight back this precipitous feeling of nausea and continue, "Don't come any closer." I wave the knife in the air chaotically and shout again, "Don't come any closer or I'll—or I'll do it."

"Okay calm down, guy," one of the men says, bouncing his hands in the air.
"Relax, Hayden," Ms. McMartin says calmly, "there's no need for this."
"Geez, Michelle, how much did you give him?" the lady says, using her mate as a shield.
"I dunno," she says as she revolves her head so that she is looking at the ceiling, "a thousand, maybe two thousand milligrams—I'm not sure."
"Relax, kid, we're not here to hurt you," another man says.
"Bullshit," I reply, "she just stabbed me in the back."

And everyone pauses for a moment; they are all looking at her with the same sense of shock. The men are all wearing red cassocks and black rimmed glasses and the women are adorned in matching red gypsy dresses; I can't find one distinguishing characteristic among them.
"Because you asked me to, Hayden," Ms. McMartin says, "I only broke the skin."

And my world of illusions crumbles around me until I can see everything as it is. There is Arabian music playing in the background and the six people amalgamate to form twain. "But what about the pentagram?" I ask now utterly confused.
"It's a pentacle, Hayden, with a pentagram in the middle. It symbolizes the goddess Venus."
"I think I should go," I say, hanging my head in complete chagrin. "Do you have anything I can wear?"

She helps me clean the flesh wound and places a bandage over it. She hands me one of her dresses and apologizes for the whole situation. I leave her apartment dressed like a gypsy, still feeling nauseous.
Talk about a walk of shame.

10:00 pm

Walking down the wet, crowded yet desolate streets of New York, I critically assess my life. Is this what I have been reduced to? My life consists of sex and nothing else. It's all I write about because it is all I know. There has to be more to life than just the friction between two mammals. And I'm tired of writing about getting off. I want something more. I want to find out who I will be rather than who I am.

I decide to make a quick stop at my Drama teacher's apartment to get the notes from the class I missed this evening. His name is Mr. Newmar and I am certain he is as straight as an arrow. When I get to his place, someone holds the door open for me as they leave. I take the elevator to the top floor and knock on the door of his apartment. As I wait I ruminate on finding a logical excuse for the dress. Before I can produce a condonable explanation, my teacher opens the door decorated with a classic 60s A-line shift dress.

He looks me up and down and says, "So I guess you want to be the woman, tonight," he looks at my body again and says, "Well, ugh, I already did my makeup."
It puts the lotion on its skin.

I have a sense of humor but this joke just isn't funny anymore. I take off the dress, throw it at him, and solemnly walk down the narrow corridor. At the end of the beaten hall, I pass the elevator and decide to take the stairs; I'm tired of taking the easy way.