TEMPTATION - A Bad Boy Romance (109 page)

The other way to look at it involved shame, and near perpetual fear.

My thought processes went on and on, in circular loops. They looked roughly like this:

“
What if the next time I see those people, they mark me for what I am, tie me up on the side of the street, and rape me in a team?”

“What if I can’t shit right for days afterward, and I walk around bleeding from the ass?”

“Holy shit… I don’t think he used protection. Oh my God! … shit, shit shit… what if I have AIDS?”

“That’s what happens to people right? They get fucked up the ass, while they’re on drugs, and then they get AIDS.”

“Holy fuckin’ shit. I should get tested. What the hell was I thinking…”

“Well I guess I wasn’t really thinking -- more feeling…”

“Feeling great…”

Right at about that point, I would start to fantasize about whether or not Stoker truly loved me, in his heart of hearts. Then I would fart or something, and my sphincter would be all loose, which would remind me of how hard he had fucked me up the ass. After the reminder, I would get off on that paranoid fear / shame kick again; it was fuckin’ miserable.

Knowing that I couldn’t just continue to kick myself in the ass for the rest of my days, I decided that I needed to do at least two things in order to continue to be alright with myself.

“First off,” I told myself, “I need to go to fuckin’ church, and pray.”

There was no telling what sort of hell realm was reserved for dirty, drug-addicted, homosexually experimental sodomites like myself. Regardless, I was pretty sure if I went to some kind of church, I might be able to atone for my sins.

Maybe they’ll just throw me in purgatory, or something like that.

Just as an aside:

Interesting thing to note about my thoughts -- they were all spoken out loud. There was something distinctly fucked up about my brain in that it was no longer operating like a regular human brain
should
operate. There were absolutely no filters on my mind anymore, and to be honest, it actually made me laugh.

In regular society, people tended to have all sorts of fucked up, or weird thoughts, but they hardly expended the energy necessary to share those thoughts with the world. In fact, most of the time, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the thoughts that were restricted to the confines of one’s own mind were confined there for a reason. Likely the reason was that the thoughts were not socially appropriate, or it might not
gel
with whatever pre-conceived notion of self that the speaker was promoting on a given day.

People usually are very busy constructing their self-image in the way that they present themselves to others. I had discovered, in those moments of sharing my thoughts with myself, that there was an awful lot about my thoughts and inner processes that were no longer unavailable to my conscious mind. Everything was laid out on the table.

And number two is to see if they give unrepentant, homosexually experimental sodomites free STD testing at the local clinic. But if I’m damned, I don’t think it will matter if I’ve contracted anything. I need to pray...

Whatever plans I may have had for the day prior to this moment were long gone from my current itinerary. I didn’t even bother to gather my things or change. My apartment was an absolute wreck. I couldn’t even bear to look at myself in the mirror. For sure, I looked like hell, but the image kept shifting in my attention. I couldn’t connect with the image of my own reflection. I was a foreigner in my own body.

God Damn,
I thought, feeling my head swim with anxiety.
This has to end.

I closed my eyes with my left hand, and walked out the door. I was feeling disoriented about my identity, but at least I had a direction. Sunday Morning -- I’d go to that nice little church down the street. The one with the cute messages that were written on the billboards every week. I hoped to hear everything I needed to hear, and say whatever I needed to say. I hoped I could make sense of all of this dis-orientation. My body meandered down the sidewalk in its disheveled state. In all reality, I was probably not as bad off as I felt. The problem with feeling poorly is that your perceptions tend to be skewed.

Everything gets filtered through the muck.

The morning was still early, and I had not slept thoroughly the night before. Usually, I like to indulge in my sleep, but this morning, my brain was fried, and I had no desire to stay in my bed longer than usual. I was alone, walking down the street, though there were occasional cars that would pass me on the street. The church was not far, and I arrived there in no time at all.

“The Righteous are Right, but are they Us?” was the statement listed on the front marquis.

“Not exactly super creative, but what was I expecting. Of course, the question is relevant.

I walked in and sat down in the back pew. The service was already in motion, and the crowd was singing a hymnal about the glorious resurrection of Jesus, and how He helped the sins of the fallen by taking them into His arms. The entire song was very moving, and in spite of myself, I found my body moving to the sway of the guitar. The people around me were really giving the song their whole attention. I felt like they were truly caught up in the rapture of the moment. I wanted to sing, but I didn’t know the words.

A few more songs went by, and then the Reverend, who looked like a black man from a Seventies Religious Infomercial stood up behind the podium. He started talking, and I did my best to be silent and listen. I felt like God was going to tell me something specific here, and if I didn’t pay absolute attention, I might actually miss out on the experience.

“My brothers and sisters,
In this day -- This holy day. This day of joy, and unrequited loss. We look to ourselves, and our nation, and ask ourselves simply one thing!”

The crowd murmured their assent.

“‘What is that one thing?’ you might ask. We’ll I’ll tell you. Let me break it to you like Moses broke the rock in the desert -- flooding the people with the holy water of Jesus Christ!”

I thought of the ‘holy waters’ that had come out from Stoker’s hard cock, and then shook my head to attempt a renewed focus.

“That one thing! Is the Love, and the Law!”

“‘Now wait a minute Reverend,’ you might say. I can count, and that’s two things…”

The Reverend chuckled appreciatively at his own joke.

“But I assure you, my dearest flock. They are ONE AND THE SAME. Much like the Father, and The Son, and The Holy Ghost are a sacred Trinity, reflexive in nature -- yet distinct. I offer you yet another paradox on this beautiful morning in the words of Jesus.”

“For the entire law is fulfilled, in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“That right there is straight out of Galatians 5:14. It doesn’t get any more real than this… As a matter of fact, you can go home now… I think we’re done here.”

Nobody got up, except me. When I stood up and looked around, I suddenly felt a sense of shame creeping over me. I had taken the man literally, but everyone else in the room was still seated, staring at him. Many of the people nearest to me were staring at me as well. The Reverend did not miss his opportunity.

“We have a man here who knows the righteousness of his own heart is determined by the Love which he shares for his brethren. Tell me Son, what brings you here today. Lay it out for the community how an upstanding young man like yourself will get out of bed in the morning to come here and Pray -- while the rest of your generation lays vacant in the Sloth of Excess and Partying?”

I spoke without a thought for the consequences.

“Got fucked up the ass last night pretty good,” I said, “and drank the sperm of this guy named Stoker. All of that was after I was going to go suck this guy’s dick for some Moli, but that didn’t pan out. Anyway, I basically burnt my brain cells out on some fucking research chemical, and I thought, ‘Today might be a good day to go to church.’”

A lot of the congregation reacted with abhorrence. I watched them as parents clasped their hands around the ears of their children. Older women looked at me with their hands over their mouths. I felt, in that moment, what it must feel like to be a leper, or some kind of deviant social outcast. I turned to leave, but the Reverend didn’t miss a beat.

“And you now know that Love is the whole of the Law?”

I turned to him, and made eye contact with the man behind the pulpit. I felt disgusted, only this time, it wasn’t at my own behavior. I felt disgusted by these people, and sad. I didn’t care that they were too busy judging me in order to find peace and clarity in their own lives; that was their problem to deal with. I was going to have to continue forward in my life regardless of what they were all going through.

“I think we both know where this is going,” I replied. “Excuse me.”

I left then, feeling the eyes of the entire congregation on my back. If that service taught me one thing, it was that my definition of love, and the definition of love of those who surrounded me weren’t necessarily the same thing -- but they also didn’t need to be the same thing either.

The Reverend had been very specific and very biblical.

“Galatians 5:14,” I said to myself, stepping down the modest stairwell which had led up to the chapel. “Everything I need is right there. The Reverend was right.”

As I strolled down the street, I felt differently than I had only an hour before. It was amazing to me just how much could change over the course of very little time. All that had essentially happened was that I realized that I was rejected by the church for doing the very thing that they preached. In my heart, I knew it was a more complex issue than simple cultural rejection. I knew when I spoke up in the church that I was alienating myself. Unfortunately, all I was doing was telling the truth. Any alienation that had taken place had happened the night before, and had been completely within the realm of my own consent.

In spite of everything, I still wasn’t feeling one hundred percent. There was too much going on in my brain to focus on just one aspect of my existence. I no longer had control over where my mind moved, or what emotions waited for me when I got there. I knew that I had to continue to navigate reality regardless. There would be no rest for the weary -- not until death, and I felt like I had a ways to go before that kind of respite was offered.

I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket, and let out a long sigh. My left hand closed in on a small rectangular object. The feeling of cool metal across my index finger was what originally tipped me off. Pulling the object out, I found a small billfold in my pocket. A hundred dollars, in twenties, and an ID with the name Michael Genier was presented.

“What the fuck…” I said, “Where did you come from?”
I took a closer look at the photo, and saw a charmingly defiant headshot of the man himself.

“Stoker…” I said, laughing to myself. “You didn’t strike me as a Michael.”

As fate would have it, the address on the card wasn’t far away. I didn’t exactly live in the best part of town. I figured he would have lived in some fancy studio flat downtown -- something garish with way too many amenities that nobody ever used. He just seemed like the kind of guy who would be fucking around in the lap of luxury, more than some run down place on the other side of Alphabet Town.

Maybe it’s a sign,
I thought to myself, then I laughed again.

My own mystical predilections had gotten myself into this mess, and here they were once more. I figured my intuition would either lead me toward ruin or some kind of tolerable natural conclusion to this whole debacle. One thing was for certain -- I wasn’t going to get anything done without clearing this whole deal out of my head.

“Time to pay you a visit, Mr. Genier,” I said out loud.

When I should have turned left to head back toward my house, I made a right turn, and began the walk toward Alphabet Town. The fourteen-hundred block was about 12 blocks east from my current position, and about four blocks north. I was used to walking, and I figured that I needed the time to clear out a space in my head before initiating conversation. I didn’t even know how I was going to start the interaction -- but I had his billfold, and that was good enough for now.

Might even stop on the way for coffee,
I thought, while thumbing the edge of his cash.
Mabye.

Chapter 8: Stoker

Getting out of the club had been a stroke of pure luck -- no other way to explain it. I had actually been detained, and was on the floor with my hands around my back when someone toppled the cop who had me pinned to the ground. I know how to throw my weight around, but you don’t fuck with the establishment like that and expect to get away with your actions. Not that I had any deep respect for authority -- that sure as hell wasn’t true. When it comes right down to it, pragmatism is required when making evaluations of force. The fuckers have literally thousands of years of weaponized training and millions of dollars at their disposal. I’ve got a cock, a few muscles, and apparently enough social pull to get out of a quick bind once and awhile.

I got lucky -- that’s what happened.

Getting out of the club was really a matter of pushing myself to the limit. My clothes were gone in the crowd, and the cops had made a pincer at the exits. Unfortunately, for the guards at the doors, the people on the inside of the building wanted to be out more than they wanted to be imprisoned. The bulk of the anti-police sentiment was from a biker group that was spending a bit of time partying at
‘Lectricland
that evening. Naturally, they lead the charge out the door, and all of the little beta fagots and druggie ravers got in line after them. I don’t personally identify myself as a beta male or a druggie raver -- but I known how to meld when it serves me best.