Free Bird.

I light a cigarette and stare at the dead grass beyond the window. Morning pours into the kitchen, pale and grey. I hold the smoke with my breath for far too long and cough, eyes watering. When he sits down across from me, I barely glance up.

“Can I?”

“Get your own.”

He gives a placid shrug. His hair is matted, his skin is hypoxia-blue with eyes black and unfaltering.

I sigh fine, pull tobacco and rolling papers from my pocket, place them on the mahogany table. The room is brightening with fiery summer sunrise as I smoke and I roll and he says nothing, doesn’t make a single sound. I wait a moment before raising my eyes, hoping he would had evaporated.

He gives me a knowing, dry-lipped smile. I hand the cigarette over, give him a light. His fingernails are long, chipped, filthy, I note.

Quiet, whispery. “Was I worth anything at all?”

My eyes skitter away. I stub my own cigarette out in the ash tray. My stomach is loaded with stones. I am eleven years old, I’ve been brought up in front of the class to recite my times tables. My cheeks burn.

“Of course,” I try, but my tongue feels swollen. I bow my head, mutter, “No. not at all.”

“I wonder why that is.” Sarcasm. It’s like catching scent of a memory. His voice in the mornings before work, sure Juan, take your time, it’s not as though we’ve anywhere to be.

Now he’s spitting the smoke back at me like a weapon.

“What are you even doing here?” I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand.
“Don’t change the subject.” He slouches in the chair, tips his head back and makes a lazy o with his lips. I breathe in his smoke, hypnotized for a moment before I look down, begin rolling another cigarette.

He clucks with his tongue, digs in the pocket of his white shirt, and pulls one out.

I frown. “What the fuck? Why did you ask for one if you already had a pack?”

He holds it out insistently so I take it, shaking my head as I place it between my lips. The smile around his mouth grows and grows as he watches me, sitting very still.

I stop, demand: “What?”

No reply. He takes another drag from his cigarette as I light my own. The sky is blooming blue. The clock on the wall reads eight o’clock. I breathe in the silence and the smell of smoke. It’s the old days, back at his parents’ house when he’d have nightmares and we’d sit, watch each other as hours crawled by, sip bitter black coffee.

“Maybe you do get it,” he says to me now.

I blink. It takes a few seconds to pull myself from my lethargic smoke-haze and decipher his meaning.

“Maybe you do understand what I was worth. You just don’t know it.”

I open and close my mouth, drop my eyes to the carpet, run a hand through my hair, trying to translate the ache in my chest into English words, into syllables.

“No,” I say. “I wish I did, but I meant more to you. I will always mean more to you.”

When I look up, he’s gone. The cigarette, fallen on the tabletop, keeps burning.

I pick it up; drop it in the overflowing tray, so as not to leave a mark.

The Darkest Night.

There was something sexy about his desperation as he stood beneath that cold, hard street light with his thick lips drawn down in a clownish smile which he obviously didn’t feel; something intriguing in the way he threw himself at complete strangers, not for money as he claimed, but for the hope that one day one of them might actually fill that void in the pit of his stomach which was slowly eating him alive.

Most of all, though, there was something wise, tough, and ferocious about him. He was a survivor in the darkest jungle of them all, staving off those predatory fears and eluding the evils which dogged his every move.

I watched him for a long time, like an anthropologist studying apes, taking in all that I could about him. In the end one thing puzzled me most; how did he have the strength to keep going on? Where did he find that persistence?

I knew I wasn’t going to get the answer any other way than asking him, so I walked over to where he was posted up, a cigarette hanging limp in his lips.

“What can I do for ya, homie?” He asked as I drew closer. “You wanna have some fun tonight?” I could taste the booze on his breath from six feet away but he hid his slur well. I wasn’t surprised; I would have wanted to be drunk, too.

“Well what’s the going rate?”

“For a cutie like you, daddy, I’ll do it for 40 bucks. Do you have somewhere for us to go?”

“Um, no, actually. But how about this, I’ll give you 40 bucks if you answer one question for me.” I pulled two 20 dollar bills from my pocket so he knew I wasn’t joking.

“What kind of question?” He asked with a voice laced with suspicion and eyes glued to the bill in my right hand.

“What keeps you going? How can you keep doing this to yourself?”

He thought about it for a minute, letting the question marinade, then he looked me square in the eye, his face glistened in alcohol induced flop sweat, and said, “Baby, even in the darkest night, hope is shining down on us sure as this street lamp above our heads. You just have to look for it and it’ll guide you through the hardest of times.” Then he snatched the bills from my hand and walked off into the dark; leaving me to stand alone beneath that cold, hard street light.

Bi-Sexual Conundrum.

When he put his hand to my cheek and whispered, breathless and urgent, “I’m not sure if we’re doing the right thing,” what was I to do? I was a good person but I was also a human being. As I lay there with the warmth of his arms, his chest and his legs breathing into mine, the dreams of restless nights rolling off the wetness of his tongue, what was I to do? I put my clothes back on and walked away from all of it. How was I to know that in guilt no one ever wants to be alone? No one asks questions like these with the expectation of foresight or objectivity furnished with the sensibility of reason. In the wavering smile that cast its light towards me by the fading sunset, the only hope that dared to hope was that I too would be equally uncertain, equally aware of the questionable circumstances in which we had both found ourselves. Instead, I saw only a turbulent future stretching out into the horizon - the pain and the mess that emotions and declarations of carpe diem eventually abandon us to. No, the truth is that I allowed myself to think that for once I could break all the laws that govern this absurd universe, and I let my heart go. What then, really happened? I was drunk, but not drunk enough to believe that in the morning we would not be plagued by worries of another empty one night stand. It wasn’t just that either. Where were we supposed to go from there? When all was said and done and clothed once more in the colors of the real world, were we going to think that the world we had created with crumpled sheets and the voices of each begging the other not to stop had now ceased to exist? 

Relics

This morning, I remembered I had a MySpace Account.

It came on me in an unwelcome flash. I was sitting at the table, nursing a coffee between both hands. Maybe it was my reflection in the liquid sheen of the dark mug, distorted. Maybe, like a pilgrim receiving the call to a holy place, it was divinely inspired. Whatever the cause, I remembered.

I did not login because I had forgotten how. My profile had not been deleted when I grew bored with that first online sandbox, left it for the tarnished mecca of Zuckerberg. It had simply been abandoned. I had moved on, expecting MySpace - like an old lover - to do the same.

I knew, however, that it had not - and that the ruins of that once-glorious social networking ziggurat still remained down the long and winding html that first took me there. I decided to descend into this ancient monument to public narcissism only after lying in bed for hours, sleep eluding me. Curiosity is the third most powerful force for driving a man quickly out of bed, next to having to use the bathroom and getting a wicked charlie horse.

I stared at the landing page, unable to remember my password. It was as if I was repressing something more than the cutesy nonsense statement I gave to all non-essential websites. More and more I felt like I was approaching the fallow ruins of a lost city, and it loomed before me as I pecked my fingers across the keyboard. It was my past - locked away on silently blinking servers somewhere in the universe - untouched for years. Until today.

The page came up. My homepage. It looked wildly different, like coming upon a pregnant ex, the blue hair and nipple piercings you never enjoyed, her happy husband. My “wall” - which seemed to be a hollow doppelganger of a news feed - nattered endlessly at me about Eli Roth, my friend’s sisters band, that porn star I’d friended while drunk in 2007. They were an ivy of my college interests, updates clawing unchecked at my wall, obscuring it beyond comprehension. It was unsettling, but I pressed on.

My pictures were me, but thinner. Hotter. There were even comments - from guys! - agreeing. When you’re at the wrong end of letting yourself go, pictures of how good you used to look are common relics, and largely uninteresting. I continued through the antechamber.

The blog was like opening a king’s mausoleum. Writing that was too “low” to be saved by a young, aspiring writer with delusions of The Great American Novel riddled the blog entries. These were raw short stories, ideas long forgotten, documents of college exploits and transcriptions of fever dreams. If I was Indiana Jones, this was the Ark of the Covenant.

But like those incorrigible Nazis, I just couldn’t help myself. It was not enough to find the Ark; I had to open it. I clicked on my message history.

It was all there, years of my life. Arguing about classes, planning parties, bemoaning middle-class problems. There were messages to then acquaintances who had grown into dear friends. There was a first tentative message to a guy I fell in love with, awkward and forcing a charm I’ve never really possessed. There were long, drawn out message chains with other guys, who I easily could have loved as well, but for cruel circumstance.

The emotion flooded over me, four years of memory meticulously documented. I opened the Ark, and it was turning me into a melting wax skeleton of overwhelming sentiment. I was not ready for such an intimate glimpse into my past - things once beautiful, now dried and turned to scars on my psyche, reminders of my advancing age and entrenched adulthood.

Like an looter in an ancient tomb, I turned and ran at the first sight of the skeletons buried there. I logged out, snapped my laptop shut, and crawled under the warmth of my covers.

There is no moral to this story. Only my story, and a dire warning to fellow travelers: If you were careless enough not to burn your profile down when you evacuated, do not be so foolish as to seek it out again. You will be accosted by the howling demons of your Top Ten friends, blinking Hunger Games banner ads tearing at your flesh and eyes. You will remember you once listed OAR as a band you enjoyed! Beware, travelers! MySpace is the path to ruin!

oh shit!

Private Transit

I took the boy back to my hotel with me because I liked his shoes.

I’d never seen them in real life before, only in pictures. They were ’50s boots, oddly feminine and heeled and an oily black color, boots the Beatles would wear when they liked alcohol more than marijuana.

I told him I liked his shoes and to sit on the bed if he wanted. He said thanks and okay. I was chewing gum, and it was making the air smell like watermelon. Not real watermelon—the synthetic watermelon-flavor smell.

What’s your favorite book, he asked me. He was watching my bookshelf intently, as if waiting for one of my paperbacks to leap off and land on my bed beside him. I pointed to it, told him it was a beautiful mess of a novel, and that I liked it because it made me feel what was lacking even if I could never see it or anything. I asked him what he liked, he said books of myths and things, because they didn’t try to be smart or sneaky, they just told you how to live and the consequences the gods would inflict if you didn’t.

I smiled. I bet I was doing that weird thing with my lip that I always do when I’m mostly smiling inside—quiet smiles, not funny but impressed or—not happy—content, I suppose.

He smiled back. I like this, he said. I like this a lot. I asked what. He said not knowing things. I like you not knowing me and me not knowing you. You like my shoes and my myths and I like your soft bed and that you like big books. It’s simple. I’m not strange and repellent to you.

Why would you be like that, I wondered.

He told me he was a narcissist. He was depressed, and that meant he had a brain cell excuse for being obsessed with himself. But, he still obsessed over what people thought about him obsessing over himself, and he would apologize too much and that was annoying and nobody really wanted to talk to him but since it wasn’t his fault that he was annoying that kind of had to but he knew this and it made him feel awful and disgusting for talking to them. He sapped life out of people, he said.

I don’t know why he told me all that. Then he made a face which suggested that he thought that I found him repulsive and this was what made him repulsive, you know? That he thought this, that he anticipated my reaction to be a certain way when it wasn’t. But I did like his shoes, and I knew I would never see him again. So I turned off the light.

Si Sabes.

Sat in the bar scoping out the few hotties who congregated around the old, wooden counter. Some sullen and alone as only faggots could be, others in animated conversations with friends or tricks. Each of us had the all mighty caguama in front of us. I was feeling it - being my third one. I swear I am becoming an alcoholic.

The bar-maid slash waitress, Rosie - only cunt I ever cared about - pointed out that Joshua, my flavor of the week, was standing just outside the rotted swinging double doors - waiting. Waiting to talk with me. I uttered that it was a public bar and he could come inside if he wanted to talk. You see, we had an argument a couple of days ago and I supposed he thought I would be a simpering faggot squirming back to him for forgiveness with beating of chest and great, gasping sobs. How little he knows this cold, imperious homo, right?

So, he's standing out in the dust and the smog with the honking night traffic, when finally Rosie beckons him to come inside. Meekly Joshua sits next to me - we shake hands. The wonderful thing about alcohol is that it has a tendency of making things better. We talked and drank and shot a few rounds of pool - all was okay again. As a fact, after I left the bar and stood in the lurking shadows of the dark street - Joshua followed me. I had the intention of going back to my hotel room alone. But, looking into those beautiful, brown eyes with the thick lashes - What the fuck?, I thought.

Back at my rented room, Joshua was garrulous - going on about his wife and kid, family, general life of his.

"You gonna stay the night here or you wanna go home?" I asked. "I'm tired and want to sleep."

He optioned to stay and I commanded that he sleep in his boxers. At that moment, I was tired and in no mood for his horny-ass shenanigans. Peeling off each other’s clothes, we lay on the coverlet entwined like hibernating pythons. Kisses in the deep night turned into a massage. Rolled onto my stomach, Joshua smoothed away much needed tension - have to admit, the boy can give a mean massage. I reach up and brush against the erection in his boxers.

"Que es eso?" (What is this?) I say jokingly.

"Si sabes." (You know.) He smiles in the dark.

My boxers are pulled so slowly halfway down my legs and with saliva applied, Joshua slides in. He grunts and puffs, lunging and thrusting into me before he yanks himself out and shoots his semen onto my ass. He plops down onto the bed next to me - still drunk out of his mind. My buzz still buzzing. Light laughter. Pecks on the forehead and cheeks. Arms wrap around smooth brown frame.

We shower and dry and lay quiet in the warm darkness under the noise of the omnipresent ceiling fan. Suddenly, Joshua bolts up, dashes to the restroom, and vomits loudly and abundantly into the toilet. Poor, drunk kid.

He mentions it would be better if he went home and - after borrowing taxi fare - we dress and I walk him to a taxi stand, making a date to see him Sunday afternoon for a movie. In the musty warmth of the night, I stroll back to my room, realizing I really am begining to care about that guy... 

1:45am in a Dive Bar Booth

"I’m looking for a machine which understands pleasure."

That was the total of Roger’s personal ad. He had a serious fetish for humans who believed themselves to be robots. It didn’t matter the shape, size, or sex. Just as long as they wholly believed themselves to be androids. That’s all that mattered.
We sat facing each other in a green, leather booth. A nearly depleted pitcher of beer and two glasses on the littered table. The bar was quiet - most of the clients had stumbled home. The jukebox sat silent - humming to itself. The waft of stale urine and Fabuloso emitted from the ancient restroom which had catered to a million fairies since 1956.
Roger was a handsome man in his late thirties. Tall, thin, angular. His black hair coiffed high above his asymmetrical head. He wore a charcoal gray, button-down shirt, black slacks. He had a handsome face and appealing smile. But, his eyes - his eyes were cold, impersonal. No life in them like the eyes of a dead fish.
Fucking robots.

I asked him once, “Do you have sex with them?”

“Yes I do,” he nodded.

“Do they... I mean, can they achieve orgasm,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he nodded faster.

“So then, is the turn on seeing something so rigid in its ideology come undone, overcome by sexual pleasure? Is that moment addictive because you see someone compromise their complete identity as they’re spontaneously overwhelmed by the organic sexual pleasure response? And in that moment they truly become authentic beings who’ve opened themselves to a..."

“No, dude,” Roger interrupted. “Robots...they just like to fuck. I ain’t met one yet where we didn’t fuck like animals all goddamn night.”

The Black Meat.

I walk down the garish arabesque neon of Juarez Avenue. Not a soul. Drunken corpse lies in someone else's overcoat, shiny over the dirt. Cowboy a foot away talks to Durango via cellular. Taxi drivers don't even bother me. The wind blows harder. Trash and dirt swirls in eddies across the street up into the blank dark. Dirt in my eyes. Fucking desert! I cross a street in front of Tequila Derby - weekend be-bop joint for teenage revilers and high school hipsters - look down the alley. Taxi? Asked meekly. He knows I need nothing. I stop to buy a pack of Lucky Strikes from an indigenous Mexican Indian huddled in a cove of crumbling masonry, small television emitting black and white images of The Simpsons in Espanola. We chat on the weather. Nasty. Muy feo.

Two queens walk by and give me the eye as I pass The Cafe. I stride up to the corner and cut down a street, hands in jacket pocket, cigarette hanging from mouth in a real James Dean fashion, you dig, giving the fags their B-movie production. Down a silent street. Lampposts emit yellow glows...some areas dark and foreboding with shadow like phantoms moving in them. Black dog drags something grisly and wet in its maw. It whines and stops. Scratch. Scratch. Picks the black wet thing up again and trots off down the dark street lined with brick and adobe houses. Is it meat?

I light another cigarette and walk to the corner, the wind is howling fierce. I stand under the lamp and listen to the buzzing of the condenser. I think of Oscar. I think of William. I think of Tony. I think of Hector. I think of all the things I have done the previous two years.

I wish I never left Tijuana. 

Charred Flesh

Juarez City Dream:

They brought the steaks out with sweet corn and Bulleit bourbon on the rocks. We sat, we ate, we drank, and the fags of the restaurant sent us their winks and smiles. When we cut into our slabs of charred flesh the blood pooled in our plates and we sopped it up with honey rolls and potatoes. We disregarded any green vegetable and kept it strictly carbs, animals, and clanking bottles that seemed to be leaking at the bottom. We ordered again and cut into the new pieces just as hungry as the first, the fat bursting flavor like male ejaculate. I wanted to fuck and I started looking around the room. I saw two Mexican guys in the corner, opaque and thick eyelashed. I sent them a bottle and when they looked up, I smiled and waved them over. Tony blushed and kept his Loc sunglasses on while I put my hands on their thighs and whispered sweet nothings about my hard-on. One took it upon himself to get under the table and put me in his mouth while the other cut my steak for me. I used my free hands to drink and smoke a thick raspberry blunt. When I wanted to come I did and I shot it into his mouth, gagging him. He came up with thick white on his chin and glistening on his lips and I smiled, told him to kiss the other fag. They did and I blew out smoke and smiled some more. Tony ordered another round of steaks and bourbon and I sent the boys on their way.

Reversed Illumination.

I sleep in the nude so when I wake up I am naked. I pull the comforter off of me and sit up, both feet on the floor. My toes crack and my ankles crack and I squat down to stretch my waking body. I stand straight and keep my shoulders back, my chin tucked. My body walks to the restroom and I turn the shower on, get the steam built up. While that happens I do pull-ups in the doorway - 20 times, 3 different ways. I step into the shower and let the water pound the back of my neck numb and then I clean myself. I scrape the old skin off and the grease from my scalp. I lather my genitals and pick the loose hair. I scrub my face. The water turns my skin red and I trail off into thought. I create worlds and people with lives and choices and I usually find a way to kill them off. They are born in me and they are killed in me and I find it all so amusing. I step out and dry off, wrap myself up in the towel. I clean out my nose and ears. In the steam on the mirror I make trees - simple trees that look like pine trees. I brush my teeth and rinse, spit. I put my underwear on. I put my jeans on. I put my holey white t-shirt on, the one from years back. I roll a joint and write the lives and deaths of the people I birthed. When they are killed off I smoke some more and forget them, ready for a new day.

A Real Loo-Loo.

Wind outside is fierce. The sky is that ruddy shit brown only an El Paso dirt storm can create. I sit quietly - no radio, no tv, no internet, the only sound was low whistling from the gales - like I was saying, I sit in my darkened apartment on this shitty afternoon - the smell of dusty ozone and stale cigarettes - and ponder an event which happened yesterday.

I was waiting in a McDonald's downtown to meet an old friend and give him a signed copy of my new book. While sitting in the crowded restaurant - all the downtown nacos staring at my oddly-dressed gringo ass like I was la migra - I was overcome with an extremely sever anxiety attack. A real loo-loo. The whole enchilada. Shakes. Nausea. Flop sweat. Stomach pains. Dizziness. I stumbled up to the counter under the fey stare of the late-teen cutey who was at the register and I barked out an order for a large Dr. Pepper. I had to get something in me. He grinned and rapidly retrieved my drink solely to get this deranged looking mother fucker from his view.

I returned to my table, sat, thought. Quivering like a terminal junkie, wiping the oh so attractive cascade of sweat beads from my ravaged, pink face with a sole, flimsy napkin. It dawned on me, it surfaced at last. Months of debate and analyzing and cross-doubting surfaced into this one revelation. Every cell in my body now screaming for me to leave - the very thought burning in my over-active brain. I know I have to escape, get out, flee this hell I have put myself in. As the waves of paranoid nausea ebbed away, I came to the final conclusion - if I stay here, I will die.

Seriously. Why?

Dive Bar Knock Out.

The bar gets quiet and my nose starts to bleed. I look back at him and he sends another, crushing in on my eye. The guys behind me move away from the bar and I get some blood on their shirts and their pants. He grabs the back of my collar and throws me to the floor. The air gets knocked out of me and my vision starts wobbling. He kicks and my ribs get a burn. Someone yells to let me up and he laughs and steps back. I get to my knees and someone helps me to my feet, pushes me in. I put my hands up and try to wrap my head ‘round things. I throw a punch and he dodges, follows with a body shot and I cringe. He steps back and laughs some more, takes a hit off a joint making the rounds. The fags start screaming and the men start hollering and I catch my composure and put my hands back up. He comes back, fakes a left and comes with an overhand right and I duck out of it and go for his legs. I get his front knee and start pulling him down, but he’s a good forty pounds heavier and probably works out. He starts pushing on my head and pounding my temple. Some black covers me and I back away and move, dancing with some ghosts. Throbbing and fog and everything cloaking and I’m punching at nothing. I see him get close again and I go for another takedown. He stuffs it and puts my face in the floor, crushing my nose. He kicks my ribs again and steps back. The bar is filling with smoke and blood and some haggish girls start taking their tops off and dancing. Black leather and sagging biker tits start clogging the room and it’s getting hard to care. I get back up and someone behind me pushes me again. He catches me and I smile and let him hold me by my bloodied button-down. That close, I catch a glimpse of his tucked in nose ring, the kind my punk-rock sister had. Then he drives his forehead into mine and drops me.

I fall on my ass and I’m outside, sitting next to him and a pond and we’re having some sort of picnic. It’s sunny out and the air is clear, and his raven hair flows about in the breeze. He’s blue eyes and bumble-bees and he looks good in my denim jacket. I try to smile but there’s blood and broken teeth. He puts his hand out towards my face, says something, but it gets lost in the mirage.

And then everything goes white as I hit the floor down for the count.

Death Don't Matter No More.

Under the freeway overpass and behind the first few feet of brush, at the top where the slanted concrete meets with the underside of the above street, sits a torn man, dirty and ragged and watching the red, blue, and white lights flashing in circles around a dead girl in the dirt some yards away, making scattered shadows out of the caution tape and the detectives, the ambulance and fire truck, the few bystanders awake this late or this early, all of them moving their own slow limbs in the night trying to find trajectories and motives in each other with little urgency as the girl was a known whore with a heroin habit: nothing more than in the gutter, putrid, like a soggy sheet of newspaper blown under a freeway overpass and behind the first few feet of brush.

Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!

How dare you consider yourself a cult movie fan if you've never seen this film!

It's The Only Thing I Noticed.

The Fuck Files No. 257

When I slide most of my cock out I can feel the breeze of the ceiling fan blowing on it, cool from the drip you coat me with. Then back in, deep, and finally warm again. You cling to my neck and I keep one hand on your hip and one under your ass, spreading you open. I push up and into you while you press down and into me and this is us - fucking, sweating, kissing, all tensing muscle and slight corner-smiles. You take my earlobe between your lips when you squirm with orgasm, and when it’s my turn you roll to your back and pull my cock to your mouth. With me on my knees over you, you jerk me off until the thick white bursts out my head and flops onto your face and waiting tongue. You swallow my come and my cock and I fuck your face for a moment while the rest seeps out. I fall back spent and we lay there looking at the ceiling fan, trying to make it spin backwards with our minds.

New Novel is Now Published.

From the back cover: "Like nearly all of Blasini's writing, the novel OF MEN AND MAGGOTS is a thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of the author's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. Narrated by John Poston, one of Blasini's alter-egos, OF MEN AND MAGGOTS is a cross-country odyssey that brings out the junkies, hoodlums, prostitutes, sexual perverts, and thieves crawling in the back alleys of the world. OF MEN AND MAGGOTS composes a very tough, yet very funny narrative of two friend's adventures with drugs, homelessness, and lifeless romance.

OF MEN AND MAGGOTS is hard, derisive, inventive, comical, serious, poetic, and ineradicably American - a fast paced, quirky work in which you are not permitted to laugh and yet, at times, will find yourself doing so."

People have inquired what is it like. Like? I answer, if Gus Van Sant raped David Lynch in the ass while reading Kerouac's On The Road, this novel would be the result.

Enjoy!

Another Sleepless Night.

The kind where my heart aches so terribly for something that may not even exist. Sometimes it seems as if it longs for one night of pure passion, insane lust. It screams for a lover’s warm tongue tracing over my skin, the sting of his nails digging into my back, and the bite of his hot open mouth all across my body. It begs me for one night of insane, mind-blowing sex with a nameless guy who will have me down on my knees swearing I’ll love him forever, but only for tonight.

But then again, as if contradicting itself, it pleads for a love story, for a budding romance, for a partner in life. It cries for the nervousness that accompanies a first kiss with a handsome man, the comfort of falling asleep with a warm and gentle body wrapped up in my arms, and the indescribable happiness of being able to say “I’m in love with you, forever” and knowing that I’ll hear it back just as sincerely.

My heart aches so mercilessly, so relentlessly, that it brings me to my knees. I pray to every god known to man that I’ll discover the cure before this ache takes over my entire being. But, I fear that I never will. I fear that this ache will break me down to the core and leave me as nothing but a pile of brittle leaves on the ground.

So, please, lover, find me. Find me for that one night of absolute bliss that I’ll never forget with a lover I’ll never remember.

So, please, lover, find me. Find me for that love story that trumps every other love story I’ll ever experience.

Please, lover. I’m fighting this terrible ache, I’m fighting it for you.

Who Am I?

His head was a maze. He could no longer separate his fantasies from reality. He tried, in vain, to find an anchor, yet none stood fast. He withdrew. His faults maximized, and his skills began to minimize. His observant, determined, independent behavior began to diminish, as a sad, cold, foreign sense of emptiness overtook him. His sense of being was no more. He felt empty, cold, lost. Gone.

Lady Blue Shanghai

A nameless woman (Marion Cotillard) enters her Shanghai hotel room to find a vintage record playing and a blue Dior purse that seems to come from nowhere. The security guards that search her room find nothing and ask if the bag belongs to an acquaintance. The question reveals to the woman a vision of her traveling to the Pearl Tower and old Shanghai in search of a lost lover who can’t stay with her.