The Little Death.

10/99

It was fairly late by the time we got back to her sister’s place, and though I wanted to go home, Anne convinced me to stay. I had no car to drive home with, as she had driven me, and she told me it was too late for driving, anyway. She promised she’d take me back in the morning, and pushed me to call my parents to tell them where I was. I really didn’t want to do so, but I did, just to satisfy her. I ended up waking them up only to tell them what they would’ve assumed anyway: that I wouldn’t be home until probably noon tomorrow.

Anne and I pulled out mattresses from the kid’s room and put them on the floor of the living room for us to sleep on. Her sister, Janice, took the couch by the window, and Shelley went into her room with the creepy green light, along with her friend.

Anne and I lay on the mattress, with her head at my feet, and I looked down at her closed eyes and sighed. There was no way I would be able to get to sleep, thanks to my chronic insomnia. It would be hours if I got so much as a wink at all. My mind couldn’t help but fixate on Shelley and the story her sister had told Anne and I regarding her having dreams about being abducted by aliens, or being freaked out by the face of the standard Gray, or the story Shelly had told me her self about seeing those lights dancing in the night sky outside the balcony where she once lived.

And then there was Anne’s strange, little friend, Ella, who believed she was an alien. Then there was me. Why did Anne tend to attract weirdos like the three of us?

In any case, maybe Anne was right, and there was no way to know for certain whether any of this was real, if the government was covering it up. There seemed to be no sure road to truth, and even if I knew that truth for certain, I couldn’t ignore the fact that she was also correct in declaring that there wasn’t a damn thing I could hope to do about it. The answer, she said, echoing the Dizzy character I’d heard so much about but never met, was to stop thinking and start living, to live in the Here and Now.

”What are you thinking about?” Annie said from the other end of the mattress.

“Nothing,” I told her.

Nothing, nothing. How many times had I myself asked questions like that only to receive the response of “nothing,” knowing full well that it was a blatant fucking lie? How many times had I, myself, given that response, as I had just then, when it was the farthest distance from the truth? How much love, happiness, misery, hate, fantasy and memory, truth and lie, thought and emotion, confusion and enlightenment throughout the course of human history had safely hidden behind the guise of that bloody contradiction of a word, “nothing”?

That’s what she’d been preaching about, though: nothing. No thought. Stop thinking, stop conceptualizing, just sink into feeling, into sensation. And here I was, thinking about thinking about nothing.

I looked back down at her. All the time I’d known her, all that we’d been through, and she was still here with me: just one more relationship that was hard to explain, pin down, or define. One more relationship that, if logic dictates, shouldn’t have lasted. Yet I’d learned long ago that logic isn’t the guiding force in the universe, and if there was any doubt the evidence lay right there at my feet.

“You can come down here and talk,” she said, and so I swung my head to where my feet had been seconds earlier. We both had a cigarette and talked for a long time about things.

As I looked in her eyes, I thought I sensed something — but I told the animalistic fool in me to shut the hell up and to maintain some self control. We put out cigarettes and lay down beside each other, our conversation working it’s way into reminiscing. In the process, we rolled our heads closer to one another, and I was wondering how close I was permitted to get to her. I tried to read her, to ascertain what it was she wanted. In the end I just up and asked if I could kiss her.

“You don’t have to ask,” she said, and I tried to justify my asking, but she cut me off and kissed me instead.

I pulled back after a while and just looked at her and smiled. “Been waiting awhile for this…”

She put her finger to my lips. “Do you always have to talk?”

She didn’t say it in a sweet, sexy voice, either. At least to my ears, it seemed as if she was honestly annoyed. I was a bit confused, because that was one of the things I’d always liked about her: we could hold deep conversations while we were otherwise engaged in doing things to one another. I took the message, though, and I tried to shut my trap.

It was a long time that we played, too, and I got to do the things I hadn’t done in a long time. Then it got more heated. It got more heated than it had ever gotten between her and I, more heated than it had ever gotten between me and anybody. On reflex, I went to say something, but no sooner had I opened my mouth than her finger again went to my lips.

“Just feel. Try to stop thinking and sink into the moment.”

She unzipped my fly and her hand went down. I tried to do as she had instructed, to shut up and stop thinking, and just enjoy it all. I felt a warmth, a comfort, a trust sweep over me that I hadn’t felt since… when had I felt that?

And then I felt something different. Something unprecedented. Something strange, beautiful, wonderful, and ultimately foreign.

“Is this okay?”

The feelings sweeping through me put me in a state of indescribable awe. I shook my head almost violently.

“Yeah,” I said, and took off my clothes.

Any fear regarding what I had just agreed to was annihilated upon my guided entry. I lay back, and she moved atop me like an angel of the god I don’t believe in. It was smooth, warm, and rhythmic.

She was fucking beautiful: adjective. I was fucking beautiful: verb.

It wasn’t long, though, until I knew what I needed. I spoke up and asked her if I might try the top, and when she said okay I apologized like I’d just robbed her of her rightful throne. She insisted it was okay, and seemed to have no aversions. It seemed to be a courageous move on my part, for this was absolutely foreign territory. I tried to go with the flow; grow with the flow. I did the best an amateur can do.

As I was atop her, I closed my eyes. I truly put all my effort into not thinking, just focusing on the feeling. What happened somewhere in the rhythm, somewhere in the electric sweat between her and I, is a kind of thing that had often happened to me: I saw things.

I was soaring above a dark, desert plane at a steady speed, looking down from a bird’s-eye view at the desolate landscape, occasionally spotted with what I assumed might be people far, far below. The vision felt so real, the sense of motion felt so real. It felt as if I was bi-locating, as if I was in two places at once. Looking down upon that dead, desert landscape, I wondered if I had finally lifted from the pessimistic, futile, narcissistic wasteland I’d been stuck in the previous four years. Perhaps what I was seeing was a metaphorical hallucination regarding that.

Had this been all I had really needed — ironically, something I had feared?

“Who are you looking at behind those eyes?”

“No one.”

If I tried to explain what I was seeing in my inner eye, it would just come out total gibberish. Even if I had enough focus to talk in a comprehensible manner, I’d just sound crazy again, and she probably would’ve told me to shut up and sink back into the feeling anyway. Besides, how could I explain how she was obliterating all my preconceived notions regarding sex? That this wasn’t just some primitive, animalistic act? Sure, I knew damned well that it was a primitive ritual carried out by an organism’s most basic impulse — to survive, at least genetically — but I had never believed it when my punk rock friend told me it could also serve as a conduit to a spiritual experience. I never understood Annie when she said that it was her favorite recreational exercise. Yet here I was: I felt the snake rising at the base of my spine and biting my brain, intoxicating me with it’s magickal venom. Every pore of my being was irradiating in this sensual fire.

I had been so wrong. This was nothing like jacking off.

“Focus on me,” she said. I had closed my eyes again, but I opened them now to look down on her beautiful body. I escaped that picture-show behind my eyelids, and gazed upon my amazing companion.

After we went on a while, she grabbed the sides of my body tightly and told me to stop moving in a very sudden, urgent voice. At first, I wasn’t sure what to think. Had I done something wrong? Had I hurt her? Was I such a fuck-up that I’d even fucked up fucking? Fuck.

“You’re about to feel a female orgasm.” I will never forget how she said it. I will always admire how blunt she was. “Don’t move.”

It was the most bizarre thing — the way it felt like waves, like ripples, like I had stuck my soul in an ocean. She had hers and then told me to “finish up.” As I did as she had asked, I closed my eyes again and I saw Picasso-like still-lives in my mind’s eye, of lamps and couches and other such things. The images were wonderful, colorful and vivid. If only I could save these pictures in my head to file, I thought. If only I had paints and brushes and a canvas beside me.

“No thought,” she said, as if she could tell that I was glimpsing something in my inner eye. “Just feel.”

Indeed, I had nearly forgotten to practice the art of no thought, so I ceased to speak. I ceased to think in words, even in pictures. As I sped up my rhythm atop and between her, everything within me rushed to a point of silence, into static, to a blissful blur. It was nothing but pure sensation; pure emotion. When I reached climax, she grabbed my sides.

“Stop.”

As I swelled in her, I felt the most awesome thing in all my life. I had thought my nocturnal habits of taking matters into my own hands had brought me to orgasm, but it was nothing. It was truly a foreign experience until that night. I dispersed into everything. I was pure energy. I permeated the universe; the universe permeated me. I was at peace with everything. I was the universe.

I made noises beyond my control. She made the noises of a pleased, intrigued girl.

She got up and went to the bathroom.

I think I had this look of amazement, of shock, of total confusion stuck on my face. What the hell had just happened? I could, like, have that every day? Is this what normal people experienced on a routine basis — was sex supposed to be like this? Is it this cool because this is the first time I’ve ever experienced it? That I waited two decades? Is it because I’m a quadruple-Scorpio?

She came back, then I went, and upon my return she asked me if I‘d like to smoke. I was out of cigarettes, so she offered me one of her Marlboro lights. I still can’t smoke one of those without reflecting on that evening. We smoked, we talked, and I was numb and wonderful. We drank water amidst the fumes and utterances and pleasant emotions that enveloped us.

She asked me if I’d liked it, and I shook my head in a most certain affirmative. I wasn’t sure if I was sure about anything else as much as I was sure how fucking beautiful that had been and how great I now felt. I’d glimpsed beyond the horizon of the morbid state I’d been stuck in the last four years and had seen what could be. I felt entirely cleansed and energized. I felt as if I had gone into the depths of the dreariest sleep, and had suddenly been awakened — as if I had gone into the deepest pits of hell, and then been given transcendence -‘ as if I’d gone through the bridge of death, crossed it, and came out reborn as something new.

They call sex the little death, and I finally knew why.

“You know,” she said as she exhaled a stream of smoke, with a sly little smile dominating her face, “for a guy who doesn’t believe in god, you sure call out his name a lot.”

Violations.

8/31/20

I hate training people.

Given my position as detail maintenance man, it doesn’t happen too often, thankfully, but it happens far more often than it should. Glen, the morning maintenance guy, has been here for some time, as have I, the night shift guy. For some reason we can’t seem to find someone reliable to cover the weekends, however.

I got along with the last two guys, both of whom were from Kentucky, although when I caught word that both were Trump supporters I made an effort to avoid political discussions with them. This was easy enough, at least for the second guy, as his accent was so heavy that it was, often enough, all I heard. I’m not trying to be a dick, but often what he said seemed like alphabet-soup-of-the-mouth to me. I’d often give neutral or ambiguous responses and focus on working off of what little I could understand. I didn’t want to tell him his communications were garbled to my ears — again, he was always polite, and I only wished to return the favor.

Both had a tendency to not do their fucking jobs, however, which got on my nerves — and which is ultimately why they don’t work here in our fast food grease palace anymore. This is also why they hired the new guy, who I’m tasked with training for the next two days, and who will then be trained in the mornings by Glen.

So far, based on direct, personal experience, he seems like a cool guy, and on top of that, a hard worker. He’s also not a white guy from Kentucky, but a black guy from here in Ohio — Cleveland specifically — and that’s a nice change of pace.

They went for something different in hiring this guy, and its infinitely better, at least in terms of his work ethic and general personality.

I was just beginning to like the guy roundabout mid-shift when Marjie, one of two assistant managers now, pulled me aside and gave me the news. Evidently, when store manager Kelly’s boyfriend came into the dining room and saw him, he claimed the guy was a child molester.

Fuck, I thought to myself: please don’t make this be true. Particularly because

As soon as she told me that, my mind flashed back to earlier in the day, when we were alone out by the dumpster corral. Feeling nervous in the awkward silence and feeling the need to fill the verbal vacuum with something, anything, I asked him why he left his last fast food job to come here.

“To be closer to my son,” he said, and, at the time — which, again, was before I heard Marjie’s news — I felt he said it suspiciously awkwardly, like he was hiding something.

I will not rush to judgement until all the facts are in. I will not rush to judgement until all the facts are in. I will not rush to judgement until all the facts are in…

Earlier, I caught Marjie in the office, behind a closed door, screaming into her phone. More than once, in a barking, threatening voice, she bellowed: “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE. GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE.”

Me and the trainee were nearby, and he turns his head to look at me. “Is she mean?”

“No,” I said with a bit of a laugh. “She’s actually pretty cool. She usually only gets like that with her boyfriend.”

The boyfriend she has had issues with forever, and finally kicked out of the house — only to let him move back in again. And she’s back to square one in that respect, as she’s been complaining about him again lately, saying how she wants him to move out.

And I personally like the guy, I should say — its just that she doesn’t seem to like him once they’re together again, but seems to forget that fact once they’re separated again. It just frustrates me. And that frustration wouldn’t be so intense, perhaps, if this wasn’t a recurring theme in countless people I’ve known throughout my life. This is such a tired, common, frustrating story to hear. And yes, not to sound sexist, but in my personal experience in most cases they have been women. I’m not saying my very limited sample represents the whole, but that has been my experience.

None of this I told trainee, of course, and all of it was true, though it turns out that this was not who Marjie was screaming at through her phone behind the closed office door.

No, it was her brother. Her brother by marriage, she later emphasized, and after she told me what she told me, her placement of that emphasis made a lot of sense.

Her and Kara had hung out. The girl has gone through a rough patch — I’m beginning to suspect her circa two and a half decades of life has been composed of nothing but a series of relentlessly rough patches, as a matter of fact — and she really needed it. A night out with friends. Some fun. Marjie brought her out drinking with aforementioned boyfriend and the aforementioned brother and she seemed to be having a great time. Marjie even complimented her boyfriend for helping her out to make Kara seem comfortable. They drank, they taught her how to play pool, and she was joking around with Marjie the whole time, smiling, laughing, and thanking her for bringing her out.

So then they go home and Kara elects to sleep over at Marjie’s house, which is evidently not something she typically does. A suggestion of trust building in her toward Marjie. And Marjie went to sleep, and enter: her brother.

Apparently he’s always joking around, getting handsy with Marjie, grabbing her boobs, which Marjie told me without shame and with a shrug. He’s not blood, she tells me. Still. Given that they were all getting drunk that night, Marjie told him specifically: do not touch Kara.

And so he touched Kara.

And she won’t talk to Marjie about it. Or to Kelly. She’s afraid they won’t believe her, that they’ll get mad at her. I feel a sinking in my chest. A knot in my gut. My blood begins to boil.

“It sounds like there’s history there,” I say to her, and then Marjie mentions Kara’s stepfather. Molestation. She told her mother, and she didn’t believe her.

This was the history I suspected. Traumatic, repeating history, where the past is always present and shows her no mercy.

I felt sick.

Later, I’m at the sink in the stock room, detail cleaning the filter boxes for the fryer vats — an activity that I know will take some time — when Ronald comes back to do dishes. This necessitates us being close in proximity, of course, and I don’t know if I had ever stood that close to him before, at least for that length of time.

That’s when I realize it. I can literally feel it. He’s one of them. I can feel the energy around and within his body drawing off the energy around and within my body, particularly on my left side. After a few minutes, it feels like energetic chunks are missing from that side, if that makes any sense (it probably doesn’t) and my energy feels uncomfortable, weakened, and lopsided. I feel violated, and I’m not exaggerating. I try to talk nice to him, but I don’t have to say much, as he just won’t shut the fuck up. I eventually have to escape the situation. I run back to the break room to check my phone, which is charging, and then go out the back door for a cigarette. All hoping this horrid feeling in my energy corrects itself given the distance, which was not happening, and to kill some time so maybe he’ll be done with dishes by the time I get back.

He isn’t. So I tell him I’m going to get out of his way and clean dining room and he should just tell me whenever he’s done.

As I’m cleaning tables, I see Paula outside, who is here off the clock, and is stoned, waiting for her curbside order. I ask her for a hug, which probably seemed weird, but my energy felt slightly better afterward. I only hoped I wasn’t leeching off of her as he was leeching off of me.

It struck me how violated I felt, as intolerable as it seemed, must be nothing next to what Kara has experienced. Continues to experience. For one thing, the energy violation may have been unintentional. Clearly that’s not been the case with the violators in her own life. Not merely has her energy been violated, either, but her body, and apparently again and again.

It constantly astounds me what us humans are capable of doing to one another. Kids being raped by caretakers or neighbors is a disturbingly common story I hear, and while it reminds me how lucky I’ve been in my own life, it doesn’t improve my outlook on our fucked up species. I constantly feel bad that I can’t grow close enough to Kara for her to trust me, but I’m not certain she can bear to trust anyone anymore given how often that trust has been violated, and I sure as fuck can’t blame her.

And what would I say to her? What could I do for her to make things better? What could anyone?