EXTRA SENSORY DECEPTION

Priority #1: Write witty caption.




EPISODE VII: extra sensory deception

(If you're just plain fucking clueless at all of this...go down a bunch of posts, and hey--whule you're at it, would you make me a sandwich?)

Back amid familiar unknowns, alas, I had feared the bulk of my flesh-chasing fun likely peaked earlier in the day—when I first broke away, to travel unshackled from the ball and chains at loss for balls and brains. It was during these eventful hours—interrupted by the Bourbon Street Revival Team—that I obtained and maintained my most memorable sensations and damned revelations.

Earlier, as the last of seemingly endless parade floats circled the block, various crude metaphors and allegories began to emerge from that repressed lobe of my brain—the one that searched for depth and meaning, and hated everyone.

I watched as beautiful, conservative women and shy college girls giddily and gleefully degraded themselves for the slurred begging and tired come-ons of drunken frat-boys—scared virgins and once-reserved fiancées, discarding lifelong concepts of “chaste” or “sacred” with little fanfare, emotion, or quality. All for Some Big Party, I thought, something given to forever could be traded in the instant; and life-affecting decisions were changed like sex positions, all in the name of the Lonely Now...with only alcohol to hush the Inevitable Then.

And then I slapped myself really, really hard…because I just happened to be one of those drunken frat boys right now, and was hoping for just that sort of wicked luck tonight.

I also remembered, earlier on, making a few observations about the whole Bead Thing. I never fully understood the Bead Thing. What was it about worthless plastic trinkets that warranted the screaming passions and miniature mosh pits that encamped along the edge of the parade? I saw lots of old or unfortunate-looking people with heaps of beads—it didn’t help them a bit. One poor hunched and hatchet-faced sap had mountains of very “desirable” beads, stretching his neck out like a tribal giraffe-man. He pleaded “Show me your tits!” at no fewer than fifteen gals in my presence. All who did not ignore him obliged his presence only by a sneer or snicker. None of them followed the rules. If the rules do not extend to all, why bother? Spare giving time- and money-wasting hope to those who have no chance of winning. The rules of any game, despite what is written, will always follow the Golden Rules of the herd: that the screwed must remain the screwed; and no beads are desirable if the man beneath is not.

Then I had to smack myself really hard again…because I had blindly walked past many a lonely fat girl, flashing to the stomach churns of all. And last I turned my head—the weight and pinching of my neck informed me—I was at no loss for those petty, cheap and pretty things myself. And as I began to damn the winners, mass flashbacks of flashed fronts appeared; and I realized I had yet to lose today.

A pale, porcelain-skinned and voluptuous redhead commanded the only instance of ego-grinding and unrequited lust that day. She leaned against the side-door of some dancehall meat market far beneath the grade of her prime cuts and primal parts. Her icy blue eyes were alive with an undirected, universal spite that seemed aimed at anyone whose gaze she caught creeping barely near to her complex and complex-inducing presence. Her voice was silent, but her clothing loud. She said nothing at all quite often, yet every uncommon, queenly inch screamed “bitch” and “leave me be.”

She was eerie…intimidating. I walked past her twice, trying to peer through my shades. Each time, she stared coldly back. The second time was worse, as it had become too late and dark to convince her that the shades were used for any other purpose than to gawk. I would wager that she was used to this.

I was winding down, but unable to unwind. I had wasted too much time with false leads and naïve, chatty girls who teased for talk and amaretto sours. All the first-choices were chosen first by others, and settled. But it was too early in the evening to retreat without a fight. The last of Carl’s money would go to entertaining some young harlot, or entertaining merely the thought of paying some older, business-minded harlot to pretend she longed for every bead I wore.

But why resign to fate when it has yet to prove it ever employed you? I searched high and low, for girls who may be high, or those that may be low enough, to join me for the lowest high I know.

Some mousy, pierced brunette had just enough drawl and draw to fully beguile my guile-full being to her table. She rattled for an hour about music, with which I could impress. My rock-hack credentials, up North, read “Screwed,” but translated to “Screw Me” in the South. With her stoner friends in tow, I rode along to her room, to wasted time and roommates. Trading bands we knew, we swapped sounds when friends were present, and fluids at every bathroom break they weren’t. From her bathroom, I studied her as she walked back to the blackjack game we played with her slowing, smoking friends. I measured and imagined her potential naked form, and swished around the taste left in my mouth. Not perfectly shaped, not overly groomed…but acceptable game in such moments. “She’ll do,” I thought, drying my hands. Then—for one sole, harrowing moment—as I stared at myself in her mirror…I felt like something else was staring back.

I pulled her to the side, later, and showed her what years of typing could do to fingers. Better was what those fingers could do for her…eighty words a minute, and seven wide-eyed full-body shivers in half that time. She agreed to “drive the poor, tired guy home.” We hit my filthy room, and its filthy bed…and labored long moments to make it filthier than it had ever been. She thought to shower before she left, but upon seeing that shower, realized she’d need another shower just from that. Already feeling the nagging, post-coital drain that wearied of her company as quickly as it was consumed, I suggested her friends could be worried, and showed her out. Lingering at the door like a lonely Mormon, she lovingly unsettled me with an unwelcome need for unbroken eye contact. I had her name, her number, her address, her devotion, and several of her tastes and smells still lingering. And I hoped as one who hated hope, to leave all and every one of these behind. Scratching the weathered door, she said, “What’s your room number? ‘23’? ‘28’? It’s barely there. I’d love to see you later…it’s only eleven.”

“Oh…yes. It’s ‘28’.” I stripped to wash my filthy self in our filthy shower—rinse off the nookie-nectar, lest the flesh-jester fester. I paused to look in the mirror on the way. Something just unnerved me. Somehow, some way…someone else looked back. I studied my features for a moment. They seemed almost foreign to me. Everything felt distorted, somehow…my edges and symmetry exaggerated. Behind my irritated eyes, and void, tired expression, was a bad and worsening man—who hated and was hated by another soul on the other side of my psyche and that mirror. He wore the same face, but died broke, victimized, lonely, and confused quite some time ago. And the longer I showered thereafter, the more it sank in that neither of them would wash off.

Hips aching like a winner, I hugged my pillow in defeat. I drifted drearily in the way I often did—with fantasies I feared, and fears of fantasies that came to pass. I reflected on the heart I stirred, and how it failed to stir mine. That was the second conquest of the evening. Aside from the “around the world in 80 ways” package I presently rested from, there had also been south-of heaven CPR from the Goth Slut, who never offered her name. Maybe I had a bad case of post-religious congestion, but I was beginning to notice subtle ironies about both my consorts: I never knew the Goth-Gal’s name, but she exclaimed mine at least twice. Girl #2 swore to me that I had fulfilled one or two long-standing fantasies of hers—yet I couldn’t remember her face well enough to fantasize about her in return. I did remember the face of my dear unrequited, crimson-crowned Ice-Queen, though. I drifted to her succulent succubus image.

Perhaps due to the sexually prolific nature of the day, my dreams focused on one sexy scenario, and never wandered. It was lucid, no less. I was reliving an affair I had with a crimson-crowned acquaintance back home. It was as vivid as the first time. Most dreams of this nature found me waking shortly before climax; this dream saw me climax—with a lucid shiver, to boot—and had me resting beside her in the afterglow. As I caressed the pale undressed, all that came to mind was “This is wrong…”

The dream-lover I consorted with was a friend. Making her a lover in reality had complicated her life; and making her my lover in dreams only complicated mine. Even some of the best things in life are best left unremembered. And as I thought about all of this, something heavy and choking dragged me down with more than memories.

The nature of lucid dreaming involved knowing it was all a dream, and knowing which things were not of the dream. The sound of an alarm could come from any object in the dream, but you would know that it was really an alarm clock, and could even follow it to wakefulness. The cold settling air like quicksand, combined with an odd whir and hum—these things became the alarm. All things that were but were not froze, like a crashing computer screen. I felt paralyzed as well, and struggled against it as I woke.

(What the hell is happening to me?!)

I continued to wrestle against all that which bound me for long minutes after I returned to the room around me, and life’s little proofs that I no longer slept. The sounds were more pronounced now, describable as only a vacuum—devoid of any life or breath, but overflowing with many Nothings very conscious, and aware. They howled their rasping war cries, and I resolved within my being to free away from every being without. I relaxed, focused, and broke.

(What the hell is going on?!)

Their chatter died with their hold upon me. I sat up to catch a few short breaths, and then felt pulled toward my pillow—not for want of slumber, but forced captivity. Never touched, I was violated on a level of spirit and principle, by spirit and principality, and something never far…but not quite within. I was being held again, and this time unable to break. Then, as I searched my empty heart for prayers, I was released as easily as I was taken. This was a message. It was one that said, “You’re free when We allow you to be; you may break away when it pleases Us to leave.”

(Lucid dream? Hallucination? Flashback? Or something more...)

I fought the war against sleep. It was 3am now, and brave new forms of celebration awaited those who watched and earnestly sought. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to go out again, at this point. I felt like I had more than accomplished what I could for the evening. Just then, I heard knocking, then a clumsy fumbling of keys and twist of the knob. Jesse and Carl had returned. They were fuming—positively strung out and freaked. Rick was missing. I was being recruited to locate him. “Alright,” I said, pulling myself together, “there's no rest for the wicked. And my dreams are even more exhausting.”


TO BE CONTINUED...


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