Catharsis

Within an hour and three quarters, I was surrounded by these writhing mounds of flesh pulsing with the energy of deep bass music and varying degrees of intoxication from strong kitchen-mixed drinks, weed, and—atypically, as I understand it—heaver drugs. I only went to one, and when I first got there, it seemed like a seminar. There were finger-foods, plastic cups everywhere, and discussions led in front of neatly arranged dining room chairs, easy seats, and sofas of a living room. It was quaint, almost. There were textbooks and manuals and topics such as self-exploration (masturbation), self-expression (promiscuity), and you know, most of what you can catch on a show on HBO trying to take itself seriously at 2 in the morning.
I must have caught, on a very uncommon stroke of luck, one of the better ones. Before I knew it, I was blowing coke out of where some pubeless chick’s labia met her inner thigh. I sucked it through a scissored-off three-striped McDonalds straw, out of the little pocket her tendon made. It was a line at first, but it all kind of accumulated there in a little mound of snow when she wouldn’t sit still, and thank god, because past that there’s just ass and we would have wasted it.
So there I was with my face in some broad’s thing, pungent with the essence of fuck-me, when this guy, Carey, his eyes gigantic behind his square wire-rimmed glasses and even bigger because he was tripping balls on E, looked at me and said “That broad Brandi, she knows enlightenment.”
We were at Brandi Washington’s. She’s an interesting type with dreadlocks and a big ass, amazing poetry, and a life you couldn’t make up. I met her at an interview once—we go way back. She’s a good girl, won’t judge you or what you like to do. It’s all business to her, and her brand of business wouldn’t work out if she weren’t that way.
So I say to Carey, “You don’t say.”
He said, “I do.”
I said, “This is enlightening?”
To which he replied, “I think so. But have I lived enough to know for sure, ya know?” He excuses himself as he adjusts his boner, bouncing on the couch to reposition himself, undulating the girl next to him a little bit, and fixes his exaggerated eyes on her pussy right next to my face. She basks in the attention. I lick my fingers and probe it about her inner thigh crease as the broad squirms, gently gyrating her hips in the air as if there was a breeze they were swaying in. As I rub my gums, she steps one foot back, then the other, and slides her body a few inches more onto the couch, her tank top bunched up right under her breasts, the rest of her body exposed. Between her legs and on the floor, I scoot myself a few inches towards the couch to get face closer to her pussy like before. Her scent was simply obdurate.
My nose stings and I sniff hard and rub it and I say, “But coke and pussy leads you to breakthroughs?”
Carey said: “Well, yeah. This here’s my Sunday mass.”


Later, amidst the darkness and solace and everything that makes me, I became strangely retrospective. Have I lived?—oh, I’ve lived. I’ve seen the oceans rise and I’ve seen them dry; birth and destruction are the only two circumstances I know and the cycle gets shorter every time.

The last petals on the poppies were about to fall; you can feel their impending descent in the air in silences between conversation pregnant with anticipation. To me, the fields looked their most beautiful right around harvest time, the ground white with papery confetti. It’s always gorgeous, though. Many of our pretty little desert lilies already had black bases, and I was itching to poke one or two to let them bleed so they’ll be ready by tomorrow instead of a couple of weeks. I only smoked opium at this point, to taste the fruits of our labor, and already my eyelids began to possess their now-characteristic heavy hang. Iran was fucking hell in the summer, but each drop of sweat reminded me of the little white pearls that escaped our children, primed by the hot air to a deliciously sticky black paste. Each shade my skin darkened reminded me of the little bands that announced their readiness. It was August and the guys and I have lived like kings since February. In three weeks, I’ll be another piece of shit in the recesses of urban America.
I met Avia in a tea-house in Bam. She was sipping mineral water in jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals. She was sweaty, aloof, gorgeous. I approached her, feeling great, in my dusty khakis and rolled up sleeves.
“You look great with that water,” I said.
“You luke nice in that dirt,” she replied in an exotic accent that suggested she usually rolled her r’s.
Avia was from Barcelona. Needless to say, she knew how to party. The plain-Jane getup was due to a watchful father, Father Avidaro, who wore the pretentious robes and superciliousness of priests from Europe. That notwithstanding, she brought me to the bottom of bazaars and the back of tea-houses that I never knew existed, complete with everything R rated and lots, and lots, and fucking lots of opium. And heroin.
She couldn’t accept that I didn’t need her. I wanted her, sure, everyone with eyes and a dick wanted her. Fags wanted her: Persian lisps are hilarious and distinct and still couldn’t save her from the watchful eyes and coy advances of their owners. But I didn’t need her. A long time ago, back when I realized that no one owes me a thing, how things should be notwithstanding, I adapted by not needing a thing. So when she stole my shit, including my passport, and tried to get me deported, I shrugged. I shrugged so hard, my hand kind of hit her in the face, open-palmed. Her father tried to get me deported, but Philly Khan, someone who just so happened to be important, kind of liked me so he intervened. So amidst the Father’s curses and spittle inevitable though a language full of so many fricatives and sibilants, I shrugged again, but more gently this time so my arms didn’t move. What can I say? At least I know my limitations. But the point is that necessities, they’re owner-specific. And my life has no room for emotional trivialities. And the very stuff little Avia exposed me to is what helped me make sure I didn’t feel a thing.


I needed a drink. “I’m gonna go get a drink,” I said. Carey said, “yeah, me too.”
So there we were, and I was preparing a Vodka Sour for myself on the ledge of the opening in the partial wall between the kitchen and the living room when Brandi, walking past on the other side, stopped, perfectly framed.
“Oh, I didn’t think you were coming!”
“Heyyyy, what’s up, Brandi?” I duly reply.
“Same ol’, boy, doin’ my thang. Who’s that back there? Carey?”
Carey: “Yo.” He was hanging back, waiting his turn.
“Hey. So, Larry, what gives? What took you so long?”
“I don’t know. My life doesn’t allow much room for recreation.”
“What? I heard you were making the real money over there in Iraq.”
“Iran.”
“Whateva, they’re all terrorists.”
“Actually, we’re more terrorist than they are.”
“Anyway.”
“That money only exists over there. Here, I live the hard life.”
“Then why come back?”
“Because Iran is for Iranians. Iran is only good for me while I’m working.”
“It’s a long time until next summer.”
“Actually, I’ll be leaving in March.”
“Anyway.”
“Yeah. Three more months of just getting by.”
“What do you do out here?”
“Shit, whatever I can. Right now, I do clean-up after stunt shows.”
“That sounds cool.”
“Some guy cracked his head open last Tuesday. I guess that’s some kind of cool.”
“Wow.” She laughs. “Much like this is some kind of cool, huh?”
“Ha, yeah,” I say. I look at Carey. He smirks at me and glances at my drink.
“Well, see me before you leave.”
“Yeah, sure.” I stepped aside as Brandi dissipated into the indulgent ether. Carey took my place and promptly began by filling something like sixty percent of his plastic red cup with Vodka.
“So… what about this inspires you?” I delicately ask in an attempt to draw the conversation back to where it was.
“Shit, I dunno… the honesty of it all,” Carey replied, “the rare outright distinctness. Everything is connected. Snugly inserted. And here, I’m a round peg in a round hole.”
“What, this panders to what you are?”
“Right.”
“What distinguishes what you are,” I take a sip from my new drink, “from what you do?”
Carey pauses, takes a sip and replies: “Well, it’s more complicated than that, ya know? What you do only matters if it fuels your… your, uh…” he lowers his head and rapidly snaps his fingers, “what’s the word?”
“Your essence? Your means? Your mind? Your imperfections?”
“Faculties!” I’m reminded that Carey is a middle-school math teacher.
“Huh. What about prudence?” I sip.
“What’s your deal anyway, all these questions?” He sips. “You feel bad or something? Got yourself a case of post-pleasure guilt?”
“Well, no… but don’t you ever need a purpose? Even if it’s a small one—something that distinguishes us from animals or machines. I just feel like there’s more dignity in choosing how you are.”
“Than just being fucked up for the sake?” He sips.
“Or than being fucked up at all. What are we getting at Carey, with all this shit?” I sip.

I daintily rose the miniature cup filled three-fourths with coffee the color of piqued pupils to brown eyes and the consistency of recently rained-on mud. I felt the bitter taste from my tongue’s hips to the back of my throat. The belly dancers on the stage three or so tables from mine swung their wooden canes forward, hitting the wooden slats with them, and gyrated ever so provocatively. I swallowed long and indulgently, savoring even the marginal sting of the drink’s heat, and rested the cup back in its saucer, my pinky still extended. The subsequent warmth that I felt through my body reminds me of her, but she’s not here right now. I looked up, into Avia’s green irises and laugh lines.
“Pretty night, this.”
“Yes. Es not the extreme hot or colt it usually es.”
“And why is that? You tired or something? Little too much hash?”
“Mmm, yes, speakink off which.” The way she moved her lips when she spoke. I still shudder when the occasional especially rich warm breeze reminds me of it. Anyway, she only partially revealed a small round tin from her clutch resting on the table. “After dinner, perhaps?”
“Sounds good, baby.”
“What else soundce good, hombrethito?” I hated that nickname, ‘little man’. What was that shit supposed to mean?!
“Tell me, angel, what do you mean by calling me that?”
“You’re my little mahn, you know that. I holt you in my pocket when I’m lonely and your not arount. If you were my BEEG man, you wouldn’t fit.” She swiveled her head on her neck just so when she said this.
“You scream, so apparently I don’t fit.”
“Mm, you are right. Perhaps you only barely fit, then? That is how it is best, anyway.”
“So it appears.”
“So tell me what happent.”
“What? When?”
“To your arm.” ‘Arm’ is only pretty when you roll the r. Try it.
“Oh. Yeah, see, there’s this little outhouse we use.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Yeah, and the door wouldn’t open today. I mean, and it’s hot, and me and all this shit were cooking together in this wooden crock pot, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I’m like ‘fuck this’, so I just kind of punched through the door.”
“But your hant seemce okay.”
“Yeah, because it wasn’t hard, it just broke straight through. But the wood was splintered, so when I tried to push through the broken wood to freedom, the whole damn thing fell on top of me and one of the shards went right through my arm.”
“Porbrethito.”
“Yeah.”
“So. What now, hombrethito?”
“We ordered a hookah, didn’t we?”
“Yes, it should be comink.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you do, after the summer?”
“I don’t know. Whatever.”
“Here?”
“In the States.”
“Bwahahahaha, ahhh, imshe, shufi, shufi hed eh, bwahahahahaha!” A fat Arabic man in a loose suit guffawed from two tables over, motioning to the dancers, a cigar dancing up and down in his mouth, his thinning head glistening with sweat.
“What do you do?” I asked her, rolling a cigarette in my lap.
“I go back to Espania with my padre. I teach.”
“Then why do you come here?”
“Why do you?”
“To make money.”
“And then what? You brink it to America? You spent it on groceries?”
“No.”
“Then why do you come back? To pretent your doink somethink? To pretent your makink money that you can’t use?”
“Heh. Actually, I think you’re exactly right.”
“And me? A woman that you pretent you can have?”
“Because Lord knows I don’t really.”
“Ahh, a man's foolishness. A man owns nothink. He pretents, and if he has money, the people play alonk.”
“But doesn’t he own the money he has?”
“I suppoce. But, money, it is nothink. It is like Got. Everyone beliefs, so He comes. No one beliefs, and He’s nowhere.”
“You’re such a cleric’s kid. So you’re agnostic?”
“No. But if I were, would that change anythink?”
I contemplatively lit my cig. It sizzled and tasted good and the hookah arrived just in time.

“You act like there’s any real such thing as morals and shit. It’s all made up. We do what people at the top tell us to because it’s what keeps them at the top.” We were just outside the front door now, next to the steps, smoking cigarettes.
I turn to Carey: “Well, we have to check ourselves somehow.”
Carey says, “For what? Unless we’re killing people or whatever, then give me a break. Shit, more people get away with murder than anything else anyway.”
“What?! How do you figure?” I take a contemplative drag.
“I mean, the government’s just more people. People in power. And they commit genocide, have wars… why can’t we have a vice or two? What does the Universe care that I suck a titty or drop a hit or show the whole fucking world my hairy fucking ass? As long as it’s not to the kids.”
“God forbid.”
“But see, that’s the thing. I’m professional. I go to work so I can eat. I teach these kids what they need to know so they can eat. Child molesters and shit, they’re full of garbage when they say they like kids. They like kids like I like broads. Girls make me hard. They make me sweat. But I don’t want to make their lives better or some shit. So we’re not like them. We’re not really doing anything wrong. We don’t need to check shit.” Carey spits.
A woman walks outside.
“Hey, can I bum one?” She was shorter than Carey and I, heels notwithstanding, with a sweaty brow and chest and immaculate skin. Her lipstick was faded. Her eyes were exaggeratedly contrasted black and white bulls-eyes. She was marginally decorated in just earrings and a necklace. Her hair was a shiny black and shoulder-length, and her body was youthfully firm and supple.
“Sure.” Carey extends a Camel. She takes it and lights it and takes a long drag, standing lazily and letting her sweat dry in the cool Florida breeze two or three feet away.
Everyone was silent for a couple of minutes. An eternity.
“I’m Carey.”
“I’m Bluejay.”
I ash.
“Oh, you dance?”
“No.”
“You should.”
She looked at him.
“To thine own self be true,” he said, barely moving his jaw, keeping his lips and the cigarette hanging from them almost motionless, “I would.”
“Yeah? What do you do?” she asks, engaged now.
“I pretend that I’m a regular guy for money.”

It isn’t a love affair, she simply fills the gap. She reaches inside of me and affects me in ways nothing else does. She numbs me and comforts me and makes me forget that I even exist. I need that because sometimes, it feels as though I’m about to prematurely burn out with so much left to destroy, leaving a mess of ashes and unfinished business. I don’t like that—I don’t like it when my life interferes with how its forced me to live. If this is what I am, let me be it, and to the very end, don’t give me this push-and-pull bullshit like some neurotic bitch. It leaves me feeling as if there’s something missing, some disparity that results in my life contradicting its own design.
She won’t let that happen. She won’t confuse me or, worse, pass judgment. For example, I was just in the bathroom looking for something when I made the mistake of glancing in the mirror. God. I wonder what I look like to other people.
If you can imagine, it wasn’t bright in there. See, people like me don’t have luxuries like “adequate lighting.” My bathroom follows suit with its mold and cracked tiles and peeling linoleum that dubiously looks like bloodstains in some places, or the blood that looks like rust in others, and finally, the mirror, a short summation of the rest with its stains and rust and barely legible reflections.
But nothing in the arrangement hindered the reflection of my sunken eyes; nestle so far into my face, they looked separate of my other features. My eyelids were dark as if sleep is but a distant memory, and the hammocks of skin under them were filled with purple blood and shiny with oil. The reflection reminded me that I don’t shave often—what the fuck for?—and it announced, despite the lighting, a certain moist pallor that you’d usually find on, what? Of course—a drug addict.
The mirror was painfully honest, candid, even brazen, detailing to me what I am in disgust. It warped and stained just enough to be ugly, but not enough to distort the reality of my face. No, it made it clear that I fit right into my surroundings. It confirmed that, one way or another, I deserve this.
But with her, there’s none of this hopelessness, self-loathing, petty pity bullshit. She is my savior, my means to an end, my end to a means, my everything.

“So, what’s the norm?”
Carey pulled his face from between Bluejay’s ass cheeks, pressing his head into the back of the lawn chair next to mine on the balcony, and looked at me. She took a couple of tiny steps, adjusting her stance. Muffled bass thumped through the sliding glass doors behind us. “Secrets.”
“Secrets? What if there’s someone who doesn’t have any?” I ash my Parliament.
“Then they’re not normal. Probably empty.” He stuck his tongue out and dove for Bluejay’s anus.
We were quiet for a while, save for the occasional sucking or slurping sound. Then: “Happiness may come from having secrets… but I think that happiness is just a comparison,” I said distantly.
“I guess that could be, too,” Carey said into Bluejay’s puckered starfish like a microphone. She giggled and wiggled her ass with her hands rested on her bent knees as her panties slid down her flexing and rippling calves a few more inches and she moaned and grinned into the night.
More quiet. Then: “Okay, I think I got it. I think that these kind of things, the kinds of things that make us, they are the way they are because they aren’t what we actually want or need, but are meant to replace them. And that’s how you know you’re not happy.” I looked at Carey, anticipating his response to my little stroke of ingenuity. He moved his face as if to say something, then a firework of off-color liquid exploded between Bluejay and Carey.
“You son of a bitch!!” Bluejay shrieked.
“HEY, you farted a little!”
“Shut the fuck up, you stupid little faggot freak, you fucking vomited in my ass!!”
I got up and left.

Later, amidst the darkness and solace and everything that makes me, I became strangely contemplative.

A room like this, it never seems inviting without her.
It’s a cage, a matchbox of an antiglorious eight square feet with eight feet to the ceiling. The enclosure inspires claustrophobia and existential crisis. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far, but indeed, the blissful contrast against a sobriety like this would get anyone by.
You should see the monsters on the wall; six legs and shiny backs and looking their most grotesque when they know you’re looking at them, sick bastards. I mean, there isn’t any food here, so why do they haunt me? Of course—to signify pestilence. To make sure that, on the off-chance I’ll ever forget that I’m a piece of shit, there’s something hanging right there on the wall or ceiling to remind me.
Every night, I argue with those bitch-ass roaches and their friends, the rats, over the bed. Almost every night, they win. Sometimes, I’ll flip the mattress on its side out of spite, but most of the time, I’ll just try to ignore the whole thing until I pass out on the floor somewhere.
Or until I can afford her. I used to know the exact figure of her dimensions, 12 or 15-hundred milligrams or so, but these days, I just eyeball it. An inch and a half, give or take, and then you just squeeze out the bubbles. This is, of course, after I get her nice and warmed up with some spooning and a little fire under her ass. Then it’s an elastic strap or a rubber band or a belt or something squeezing my arm just above my left bicep. This time, it’s a rope, a string from one of my hoodies. Whatever works. Then it’s the penetration, and in my favorite spot, just above the elbow and a little toward the outside of my arm, dead in the center of the aquamarine vein that’s pressing itself against the skin over it. The choicest selection, the easiest route, the blessed release; I’m living the dream here.
The initial feeling is warmth. Literally, it’s the intravenous coursing of a fantasy, and such energy always exudes warmth. I feel it creeping through my arm, and into my chest, and throughout my entire body, enveloping me in a security blanket of catharsis. I feel my worries drain from me, maybe with the rough air I’m exhaling, and dissipate into the ether. My face is numbing with my emotions now, and I’m losing all sense of self. See, this is living. This calls for a cigarette.
I need nicotine to hold my hand and walk me through all this so that I don’t get lost or freak out. I need something there so that I know that everything will be all right. You know, like Jesus.
I light my Parl and feel the glorious self-destruction slide down my throat slowly and thickly. My mind eases, my lungs ache, and I breathe yet more laboriously. Time rushes at me and pulls away again like a tide, and I get what I came for. This is what’s worth more than eating; it’s Monday, I’m broke, and I don’t get paid until Thursday—this better be the shit. And it is.
That was the first throb. It comes in swells like an emergent headache. I feel the delicious intoxication enveloping me again and I drop the cig. It rolls, tossing curly loops of smoke as my head slowly tilts forward into vivid oblivion. I start seeing pictures, then full-on episodes in vibrant color, dreamily playing before my eyes whether they’re opened or closed, blurring my vision and consuming me, reducing me to a spectator to my own existence.
With the third throb comes a cacophony of fluttering light like butterflies amidst a landscape of Dali visuals and Dr. Seuss coloring. I can barely feel my heart in my chest, but my pulse is screaming like a doomsday alarm all over my body. My head rises.
The digital clock on my nightstand (the singly flat surface in the room) transitions from a luminous smudge on the dark stained and cracked plaster wall to a fuzzy 3:32 a.m. I inhale to my lungs’ capacity and slowly exhale as I rise. I’m almost surprised that I didn’t leave an imprint on the concrete floor as I drag myself to the bed, the roaches dancing and singing as they open a space for me to lie in their wake. They begin to hum, in unison, a relaxing but catchy tune as sedation begins to overwhelm me again. My eyes are closed, but I know I won’t fall asleep—that’s the beauty of it. I won’t ever even feel sleepy, just very relaxed. Until I come down.
I can feel the fourth wave approaching, cresting miles above my head. This is it—the Big Wave. It’s the one that consumes you, the point of no return. There will be no more lucidity; I’m down the rabbit hole until I crash. I’m in my element, a drifting plank in a sea of nothingness where anything is possible, devoid of the human condition like pain or loneliness…
…and in those final moments as it overwhelmed me, and my pupils grew and my eyelids lowered and my pores opened and leaked, epiphany somehow detonated and a thought exploded in my waning coherence:
“How can we know what moves us if we don’t know what’s real…?”

And it meant everything. And it meant nothing.

"So that's good?"
"Yeah, thanks a billion. You're always so generous." I pocket the heavy virgin balloon.
"It's what I do." And it is exactly what Brandi does.
"So when do you think 0you're gonna do this again?" Her place was mostly empty now. I could feel that the air was thick with lust, but I couldn't smell it anymore. Carey left a couple of minutes ago.
"Oh, I don't know. Next week, maybe. It doesn't matter when, everyone's always eager."
"For more? It's never enough?"
"Enough? Never that."