The Men Who Hunger for Delicious Tacos

All things are beautiful in their prime

All I can do is apologize for this.

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“The world of plastic has won…” I tell her as she sucks down on her cigarette. I’m clutching onto my beer, hoping the powerful winds won’t knock me clean off the balcony. I look beneath me— all the cars pulsate like little fire ants, like the infestation they are. “Yeah,” she drawls, keeping the lighter flame ‘neath her cigarette, “trash-pile planet. Fuckin’ corporations… we’re burning up in our own tire fire” she trails off. “No, it’s not;” I try to gather my thoughts. “It’s more a spiritual pollution, you know.” Her brown-amber eyes glow like traffic lights. “The world of plastic in our souls,” I take a sip from my beer. “You ever hear ‘bout a band called Dynamic Hieroglyphic? They’re Russian. It’s on YouTube.” Her attention drifts away to the building across the street, where another party was raging. Their terrible music oozes out thru’ the open door— repetitive, unobtrusively bland, with words devoid of any real joy or meaning. The girl leads the guy out onto the balcony and they embrace, they kiss and pet like animals in heat. I try to imagine his banal thoughts; those tits are so fucking hot in that tight little dress. She puts her hand behind his head, he puts his hands on her ass. I really hope he comes home with me tonight. Every thought is another lashing in my own private torture chamber, where the air is thick with sweat. The buildings before me melt away in sun-like heat, and I see them together in bed, fucking into each other, and I tower over them, each stroke twisting my insides further and further and… I throw up over the side of the balcony, and watch the brown-yellow bile splatter all over the cars far beneath us. “Wah-wah-wah;” she giggles. “That Tesla-driving freak is gonna rage in the morning.”

Some days, all I think about are girls. I like to sit on the quad, and I watch them live out their banal lives— their ugly smiles above their MacBooks, sucking on straws eager for more sweet brown slurry, stupid conversations about majors and pre-reqs and study sessions, filling page-after-page with marker colors, in their sweaters and gym shorts and yoga pants and and… this is my defense, this is my only defense. Dynamic Hieroglyphic pounding in my earbuds. I don’t understand the words, but what we have transcends the mere vulgarities of words. “Daria,” I whisper to my picture of their lead singer on my phone, her face obscured by wet hair. I take out my sketch book, I look around me, and I flip through the pages. I dedicate to… no, I consecrate each page to another girl I’d seen out here in the quad, and I draw her performing every single little perversity I can muster. There’s anonymity in every unique body. Sometimes I daydream about one of them discovering my sketch book, or catching me studying her features, and she yanks the sketch book from my hands and I watch her face turn pale, her cheeks turn red, her breath turn shallow… “you drew me, with my…” oh yes. On the page, you can’t hide your agony, your ecstasy, the pleasure you deny yourself. I will make you feel everything. “Oh,” Daria sings. “Libidinal power… is violence in two expressions… subjugation, liberation.” The violent screech of a guitar punctuates her magnanimity.

But reckoning never comes; I remain as insignificant as a fly punching a light with its face. I sit at a table, ‘neath the shade. Oh yes, I see her, sitting on the grass, her pale thighs like beautiful tree branches growing from… “ah,” I groan to myself. This time I surprise myself; the girl keeps her clothes on. A beautiful pale blue dress, her fine breasts polite in their enclosure— I follow the gentle curves with my charcoal pencil, never burdening her with too much sauciness. She drips only with sophistication, her fantasies are delicate and intimate. I imagine her sitting on my lap, tense and poised— I whisper something terrible in her ears and she turns red with anger. My patience wanes. There’s danger in each stroke; make the wrong move and the fantasy dies in a pool of its own contrivances. I draw her holding the hem of the skirt up, her face plump with blood, and my face hanging below her panties— I foresee them as white, having a little red bow. I make her curves darker, deeper; I force her to admit this terrible need to herself. In the next drawing, she smothers me with all of her; her scent deep and ancient like an opened tomb. No, she’s not to be fucked… I keep her safe from the intensity of my other fantasies, which often frighten me. No, she will not be fucked. No, no no.

I had another dream last night. I often have them. I try not to believe in them. To believe that dreams give you insight into some kind of secret truth is to abandon yourself to your imagination completely. Nothing lies in my imagination, I worry. Every door I open in my mind merely hides another set of breasts. I keep the windows open; I wish for something that desires me so badly it bites me.

I had another dream last night. She’s from somewhere far, she tells me. I don’t know why it’s relevant. I know nothing of the world beyond these walls, of worlds where the air is thick with rain and the people wear nothing. I know about wars, and the great misery of other places, but I don’t know what they think about or say or talk about. They’re anonymous bodies too. Sometimes I imagine myself as a dismembered head, floating over a landscape of fire and blood. She’s from the East; “but we’re not the hateful kind,” she says. “Life is precious here. It’s slower. We enjoy the little things.” Here in this distant land, they believe in love, she says. I try to muster up something hateful, to stop my surrender; I accuse her pussy of being side-ways and I end up sounding impotent and weak.

We shared a bottle of something with a snake in it and I got very sick. I asked her if she wanted to harvest my organs or steal my money, but I had no money nor organs. I looked down and I was merely a nub— I looked like the rudimentary sex organ of some primitive creature. She said she wanted to sleep with me, to lie beside me and feel my skin. I told her I was a virgin. She invited me into the bathroom, full of pots and pans and hoses and plastic things, and said it was all quite typical of this culture. I know nothing about the world beyond these walls. A giant insect sat on the sink, its mandibles wet and greasy. She said the insect had stolen her pussy, but that we could do other stuff. I thought she was very sweet. She could be a mother to something. That would be my gift to her. Beyond our window, a thick and hairy jungle salivates.

At the party, I felt like a shadow slowly disappearing in the light. It seemed everyone knew what to talk about, as if a script had been passed around. I’d been invited because of my friend Cal; we share the same literature classes, and we sit together. I try to “red-pill” him on certain topics, but it seems like every fact of the world was merely a negligible coincidence to him. A grisly and detailed report of the actions of Japanese soldiers in Nanking solicited in Cal the same response as news of a rainy weekend. I told Cal that he has to read Céline and Mishima and Nietzsche, and that the mysteries of the world would forever be closed off to him if he didn’t. “I’ll check it out,” he said. Even though I knew he would, I still wanted to break his nose on the beer-pong table.

I was listening to one of them speaking. I call them them because I’m merely a him to them. In college, the worth of a man’s name is how much pussy he gets. Themselves deadly desperate for female approval, the voluntary surrender of pussy as a commodity is the only redemption they know. Some of them carry this affliction throughout their lives, and the entire world becomes one gigantic gaping pussy ready to swallow you up. I imagine a them, shedding a tear with his daughter beside him at his death bed— this one is thinking about how he’ll never get to fuck teen pussy again, how the taut beauty of young breasts lay forever beyond his grasp. His innocent daughter squeezes his hand; “I’ll miss you too, daddy.” I’m so repulsed I finish the rest of my beer.

“Yeah, my ex showed up, dude” They nod together in unison, each holding a beer the same horrible way as if there was some horrible laboratory cloning the same horrible man ad infinitum. I imagine their pale faces rigid with shock when I force them to watch me disembowel myself; I kill the fantasy, ritual suicide would be wasted on these imbeciles numb to ecstasy. “My ex showed up to give me back my copy of Heart of Darkness. We totally hooked-up but like, I’m not trying to catch feelings.” I imagined them afterwards, naked, both reeking of marijuana and sweat, sharing the same insipid criticism of Heart of Darkness that the foreword had downloaded into their firmware. So proud of their incuriousness that not reading was a badge of honor. “Isn’t it great how I cheated everything and got what I wanted in the end?” When I raise my hand in class, I notice their dead expressions, littered among open-mouthed ex-girlfriends— “that’s the incel,” they’re all thinking. “He gets no pussy,” spoken in their minds like a mantra and they’d retain nothing of what I’d said. “He gets no pussy.” They spoke about feelings like it were an STD, as if caring for another soul was a malady needing pharmakon. My disgust made me feel violently ill and gasping for fresh air, and I left Cal to his grazing at the bookshelf.

In the garden, two girls were speaking. I stood by the door and watched them, studied them. I wish I had my sketch book. I’d draw them with one on top and one on bottom, eating each other’s pussies. The sisterhood enjoyed in secret, denied to the likes of me. I imagined myself being bold; I imagined taking out my sketch book and showing it to them, and their faces turning red and their mouths turning all moist, the pace of their breathing growing quicker with each sexual depiction. One of the girl’s eyes turned to me, and her face opened up, and she beckoned me near like a siren. “Hey, I know you from Chaucer class. You say some clever stuff, sometimes.” She giggled. I imagined this very expression as she undid my pants. “What did you say about the Miller’s Tale? ‘The blueprint for the tension between low- and high-brow in English literature to come?’” Her short hair barely reached her ears. I felt leaden; perhaps they could kiss each other while I watched. “Are you a writer? Do you write?” I thought of telling the truth; yes, I write manifestos, I write violent seditious documents in which powerful men decapitate each other and women cower in fear. My ambition is be sucked off by you just once before an arrow pierces my heart and knocks me clean off my horse. Too forward, like marching one’s queen out early. “Yes,” I groaned. “I’m really into… uh, archetypes.” I heard my own voice, thin and flute-y like a catamite in a king’s bedchamber. “Archetypes,” the other girl uttered. Her glasses were too big for her face, and it made her eyes look like beacons. “I think we learn to act… act a certain… kinda pattern in society, but in our dreams… and like our fantasies, we all share the same ideas and concepts… and those determine who we are.” I thought of her naked, on her knees, pleasuring me as I gave a lecture at Cambridge.

“I write poetry,” she offered. I tried to hide my revulsion at her naked attempt towards bourgeoise respectability. To waste words on poetry in this age seemed tasteless, like the rich flaunting caviar at a shelter. I thought of crushing her hopes, of reducing her down to smoldering ruins. “Cool;” trying to sound interested. The girl with the big glasses looked at her friend. “We’re gonna go inside… uhm, nice talking to you!” I felt like a piece of meat deemed unsuitable for consumption, left out for the dogs and cats. They will go to them instead, roll their eyes, make their little scolds; at the end of the night, their pussy and assholes are theirs for the taking. I spat on some half-dead flowers, hoping my avarice might bring them back to life. Spite is the only potent life-force; a healthy dose of it is necessary to live. It’s my only defense against their cruel optimism. It’s my only defense.

Boredom started to sour my mood, and I went upstairs. There were unspoken rules at this dorm. The lower floor has all the half-hearted dancing and lazy conversation; trying too hard to score makes you eager, and hunger ended when the Depression did. I look at them from above and wish for a tidal wave to wash them all away. The upper floor has all the druggies, fuck-ups— they enjoyed the silence that served as my refuge. I went to the balcony, which was empty as most of them would smoke in the garden. I heard the booming of another party, of two or three parties, all identical in the same dull, muffled music to give the illusion that parties never die… they just find new haunts. I looked at the many tall dorm buildings, laying spread-eagle before me, some windows lit with orange-red. I try to make sense of the figments dancing in the light. I imagine naked bodies, writhing in the light, wet with shame. I imagine a million orgies exploding right beyond my sight. I imagine a million pussies, a million assholes, a million cocks twitching and convulsing with pleasure in the shadows. I imagined an incredible obelisk, erect and pointed to the sky, completing a 1,000,000 year voyage to fuck the massive cosmic pussy that hungrily oozed starlight. The obelisk quivers and every cell of my body shatters into a million pieces and ejaculates into space to form a new milky-white galaxy. I finished my drink with a single pained swallow.

I returned down to the lower floor, and I felt my gait loosen, my thoughts quicken. I thought about going to the bathroom and ejaculating onto the towels on the rack. I wanted to ask the poet if she would masturbate me but I could not find her. The crowd had thickened; a few of them had taken to playing beer pong in the living room. I passed by them, a part of me hoping I could provoke them with my disdain. The room was slick with beer and sticky with sugary soda. One of the balls flew past me. “Right here, bro;” their faces expectant and ruddy. I felt invincible; I pretended not to hear and staggered to the kitchen. I felt the muddy floor beneath me; the walls were caked with grease, the refrigerator dilapidated. I took a lukewarm bottle of beer and searched among the slimy bowls and plastic cups for an opener. Cal walked in, his face lookin’ limp and flushed. “There are a lot of women here,” he muttered as he took a bottle of beer and smashed it open like a lower ape. “Are you gay?” I asked Cal, hoping to incite him. Cal never spoke of women, or bitches, or girls, or pussy; he gave the infuriating impression that such things were beneath him. Cal smiled, said nothing, and left while sipping on his beer. I smashed open the bottle of beer on the counter, and it exploded into a stream of brown foam. I heard a haughty laughter from the door; the higher, feminine borders were harsh and jagged and suggested habitual smoking— I calmly ignored her and opened the fridge to look for a colder beer.

This one who laughed, she was waiting beside the fridge for her turn. She entered the stage, without direction. I’d seen her in my classes before. I thought of her as a type, as an imprint of a pattern. Jung spoke of archetypes as organs, and I know he meant sex organs. How we dress, how we speak, the memes we bore ourselves with— they’re sexual displays, to attract whom we desire. A bromide; just as useful. She wore combat boots, though not the usual ones with the yellow lacing that litter the front door at every kick-it. She had a small tattoo on her forearm of Kilroy was Here, of a nose and fingers drooping from a wall. It was warm before the party, and she wore a striped polo shirt, and her flat chest impressed me— like hard, chiseled marble that might outlast flabby flesh. In class, I sketched her as a passionate lesbian, drinking from six vulvae all surrounding her. Her glasses made her seem like a figment of another time, so I drew her wearing a communist uniform. Yes, I would capture her, take her weapons from her, make her watch as I executed her Sapphic harem… and hold her down as I took her for the fatherland. My passion would impress her, and she’d curse the proletariat, abandon her previous lusts for cunny… but it’s only a trick; her Mosin-Nagant liquifies my brain when I’m fast asleep.

“That was sick, dude;” she cackled as she followed my lead. She opened the beer with her keys, then gestured an offer to do the same for me. “Much cleaner, right?” Her eyes were heavy with sooty makeup, as if they were smoldering ruins. I said nothing, and drank the entire beer in three-four loud gulps. I felt as if I could face-fuck the moon. She laughed. “What’s your name, wildcat?” I burped, then spat. “I’m Agatha,” she said. Her neck suddenly seemed very inviting; I hid my fangs and took another beer from the fridge. “Can I show you something?” I spat. Agatha’s face was skeptical, like a nervous child hanging at the edge of a surfboard. She followed me to the upper floor.

“You drew these?” Agatha said with a slight drawl at the end. Her voice hung in her throat; she drew her lips round the bottle, a childish tic. My hard-on made me wince with pain as it stubbornly scoured my jeans. The balcony had little light so I held my phone up like a streetlight. Beneath us and across the street, a few drunken girls stumbled out of a car and disappeared into a dark building; an open jaw ready to suck on wasted youth. Agatha’s trance seemed sincere to me; she looked at the feminine figures rendered in charcoal, perhaps impressed with the earnest sensuality of chaste women reclining— I kept this sketchbook free of degradation, free of polluted pussies plump with pudding. “You really capture their beauty,” Agatha said before taking another gulp of her beer. I thought of grabbing her hair and fucking her face; under this moonlight, it seemed carved out of wood. Agatha turned a few more pages, then reached into her fanny pack for a few cigarettes. I took one myself and lit it; the alcohol had robbed so much of my sensitivity that I could smoke without hacking on the noxious fume. In my head, I rehearsed my proposition several times: “would you suck my cock in the bathroom? Pretty please?”

“I used to draw a little bit. Nothin’ crazy. No tits or ass;” Agatha stared at the moon. “I like writing a bit more.” I imagined dousing her vulgar mouth. “Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned that way.” I felt a well of bravery spring up within my stomach— “people are simple; everything will be better, bigger, faster, stronger, more-er. Progress,” I said plainly. Agatha’s thumb picked at the other subordinate fingers, two of which held a fiery cigarette. She watched a girl come out from a door and coat the slim and practical beach chairs with blue-green vomit. “But Progress brings resentment,” I muttered to the air. “You’re just waiting for the future to come,” she offered. Agatha looked at me with her wavering eyes, heaving with salt. “A girl gets tired of waiting, you know” she answered with a resolute voice ill-fitting to her feeble frame.

We returned to the lower floor. I felt as if the ground was quivering beneath me, suffering world-orgasmic spasms. A terrible pain sat in my throat. I went to the fridge and searched for canned beer; I was welcoming the peptic sensations in my stomach. I imagined vomiting all over everyone, coating every single guest in acid and bile. I handed a beer to Agatha, and watched her drink it down with dull gulps, enthusiastically… I found it exhilarating, a window into another world… Agatha, I whispered. Take my hand and we’ll fly together, beyond the petty fences of man… we will fuck on the clouds. She held the beer with both her hands, and hung her head; suddenly shy, her shoulders up like a frightened cat. She turned away, mute.

I stomped through the hallways, looking for some place to piss… I wished to preserve my hurl, keep it in its holster. I peeked through gaps ‘tween the doors, unsure of what I’d hoped to find. I wanted to see pussies splayed, cocks glistening, piles of bodily fluids… I wanted to descend, to feel the flames of Inferno excite my soul. I stumbled into the bathroom, where a woman sat in the bathtub weeping, her face a mash of dark make-up and vomit. I felt bold. I removed my cock from my trousers. Through the weeping, she looked into my eyes with shock, her lips slightly parting. I thought of peeing on her face, imagining her dancing in the yellow like a cartoon bird. The thought frightened me and I left the bathroom.

“Dude,” Cal groaned. He laid on the chair with his body forming a crux, his feet on one rest and his head on the other. It was as if he’d purposefully chosen the most unorthodox and irregular way of sitting on a chair; I found it so deeply irritating I thudded towards him. His eyes were sleepy; I braced myself for another stoned rant. “The guys who live here, have the most pseud book collection I’ve ever seen. Spine-check: failed.” His petty remark rekindled my fondness for his company. “Do you know a girl named Agatha?” I demanded. “I think I did a feedback for her, in a workshop,” Cal said. “Was it good?” I spat. Cal looked at me as if I’d cratered onto the ground. “Good? Was it good?” He replied. I fell onto the carpet beside him. “Fucking profligate,” I mumbled. We watched the guy on the other couch pick his nose as he looked at funny videos on his phone.

Agatha walked into the room, her face clammy and rubbery. She held a bottle of beer in her hand. She looked at Cal, looked at me and offered a repressed smile. “I can’t listen to these…” she lowered her voice, then mouthed a slur. “Can I join you?” I looked at Cal, who nodded without tearing away from his online chess game. Agatha sat at the table, across from me, and I hungrily looked at the sweat forming on her neck. She’d removed her shirt without bothering with its buttons; a small mole sat in an island of nude skin framed by her tank top. “Roll me a joint,” she drawled. I looked at the piles of green and brown before me, the torn papers, the ash. I forced a laugh out of myself; “I really can’t roll when I’m high, or drunk. One of those things;” the best impression of a human I could muster.

I watched Agatha roll the joint with her slender fingers, her slick tongue moistening the paper. My thoughts were a battleground ‘tween Falstaff and Ignatius J. Reilly. “Pull out your cock, all casual-like,” one offered. “Slam her face into the table,” said the other. I thought of any myriad of conversation topics that might sour the mood; what do you think of the failures of feminism? Should we repeal the right of women to vote? An eye-roll and a huff might deliver me. She looked up from her task and shot me a wink, then lit the joint and offered it to me. Cal intercepted, took a drag mid-Gambit, then passed it on. “Fuck it;” chastity and continence, but not yet! No, not yet. Please. The smoke burned in my whole body, the rapture bursting out of my chest. I imagine Mephistopheles stepping out of my fuming torso… “25% of ownership for your soul, and I’ll let you breed the young lady.” I thought of putting up her ankles beside her ears; I try to burn away the image, my face feeling hot like a furnace. The images become oppressive, joyless; I see no pleasure on her face or even my own, but merely extractive grimaces. I think about telling her: Agatha, in the depths of my mind you are put in a cage to be freely used and fucked by dozens of me. We watch your body turn into a sweaty, wretched mess; you are in pain and misery. I swallow my perversion, and try to pull away my focus from the soft skin of her chest, the delicacy of her body. I thought of masculine display. I thought of holding her down, ignoring her screams. I thought of killing Cal in valiant hand-to-hand combat. I watch Agatha as she takes a troubled drag; I wish I could step through the glass into her world, where minds are untroubled by the mundane brutalities of flesh.

“Societies live, and then they die,” Cal had struck up an argument with Agatha. “So… you don’t think that things get better. That things have gotten better?” She took a swig from her bottle. “Don’t things have potential? Like, why assume everything has a closed off, defined ending?” she offered. Cal smiled; he sent a few taunts to his online chess partner. “Energy is a motion, it goes towards something. It has to cohere into something. Look around you… what does it all cohere into? No-one believes in what they say. No-one wants to keep anything. Every institution cheats you. Potential is not infinite, but precious; it’s momentary. Now we’re just being used, we’re cock-sleeves. Everyone knows it. Left-tards are brave enough to admit it.” The epithet made Agatha spit out a sip in surprise. “But they still believe in the infinite potential of everything. And they resent when it doesn’t happen; they blame others for the failed promises. That’s why they get angry, they get violent. To be present is a crime because it rejects progress. They start blaming you.” Cal started to mumble, his eyes becoming even heavier. The weed was taking its toll: it had been his third loss of the night. “But the capital must circulate,” he wheezed. “It must circulate,” and we smoked a joint… and another… and, and…

Yes, I felt it, even though I violently resisted the cliché— the lowly stoner, degrading himself with drugs, disorientated thoughts, amused by anything and everything. They wrote such dreadful poetry. I stumbled from one side of the wall to the next. I felt the atavistic need to crawl, to babble. I felt the walls squirm, I felt the lights pulsate, I felt my body throb— I looked down at my body, tall and engorged. I wanted to impregnate this hallway with myself, to cover up the plaster and paint with my shade, my color. Agatha giggled as she held my hand, guiding me from one terrible display to another. I bounced from one gaggle of them to the next, too intoxicated to care about their lingering gazes, their dead expressions of disdain. I was too dizzy to resist as she pulled me into the living room, where the couches had been pushed away to form a dancefloor. “You’re all beneath me,” I yelled, barely audible over the percussive, repetitive drums coming from the television. Agatha looked in my eyes and giggled again. “What?” she yelped. I boldly put my mouth next to her ear, smelling her neck; deep, woody, a slight musk from cigarettes. “I said all these cretins are beneath me,” I shouted. Agatha laughed and pulled me closer by my hips, and I didn’t dance so much as shake off the dust from my bones, and a not-unpleasant seizure took me in its grasp. Agatha playfully mimicked my movements, amused by my earnest convulsions as they looked on with disgust. I fantasized about them, tied with ropes to a chair, forced to watch as Agatha and I undressed and performed on the dancefloor every single vile perversion forever denied to them. No; they become blurs to me, anonymous, meaningless biomass. Agatha turned her back to me, pressed her ass into me, heavy and warm; I felt like a tree split into parts by an electric strike, and I bit my tongue to stop myself from touching her in fear of what I might accomplish.

As she guides me up the stairs, to the balconies, past the rooms, over the passed out girls being fondled, no longer solid but merely essences I wade through like a placid pool… I feel lips, bodies; no, not my own and not hers but theirs, his and hers, the lips, bodies, tender napes of all through time + space… I try to reach for my soul, located somewhere beneath the cruel master that sits on my neck… yes, she reaches for it too, she places her hand up to my chest… she feels the subtle thump… thickening blood, racing to the extremities, my engorged cock… no, there is no more soul there to save, but merely an engine of tremendous possibilities, exploding before me like spread-eagle pussies… she encloses her arms around my neck… every insect beneath us on the balcony jitters with hot glee. She kisses me once, softly. She kisses me again. Again. Our tongues mingle. She tastes salty like primordial water.

“I am a sexual creature,” yes, I know this to be true. “You must find your sexual nature,” I feel them mutter, whispering it to me as if it were some forgotten secret. “Liberate yourself,” they groan in unison. “Learn how to enjoy your body,” screeched in polyphony. “You must spend your seed… spend spend spend!” It is my vitality, measured in liquidity, in flow… I must be circulated, I must let the cum drip into the soil. My body is not a mere fact of skin & bone, but a mind, a body, a sexual organ to be capitalized upon. It must be liquidated in my hands, accelerated in its circularity, pumped with precious value weighed in blood & cum. “Yes,” I whisper. “Make me worthy!” I scream into the void. I want, no, I need, my mind to turn the horizon black; to become the very night sky into which I stick with a pin my thousand fantasies. My body must fill the crevices, the gashes, the thousand orifices of the collective land & seas; I want to be the Adam of a million tribes, hurdling together beneath a tree for warmth as thunder strikes from above.

Agatha smiles, releases me; she drops onto a chair on the balcony and sighs. “It’s so fucking exhausting,” she sneers, “to be good all the time.” Her chest is covered in sweat, her belly humid and inviting. “People get cheated, blown up, abused constantly… but I have to be good.” She wipes her head, her cheeks are plump and hot like bruised apples. I look up at the moon, then look down to study myself, pulling up my shirt, undoing the buttons of my jeans; I see not flesh but a thousand mechanisms, locked into one rhythm, an ecstatic orgy of efficient production oiled with blood and fueled by sex hormone. My body itself is the greater sex organ, not only fucking the world but being fucked too… the source of every desire which compels me away from inert, un-fuckable nothingness. “Yes!” they scream. “Liberate those desires, and become who you are… your destiny!” I stroke myself and shudder, I liberate myself more and more with every rub… but I find nothing beneath the mechanisms besides the private loneliness of my own singular being. I look to the sky and its heavenly bodies, so vast and free, floating amongst celestial spunk in an orgy of matter— I’m a mere hostage on the private island of my solipsistic desires. “What are you thinking about,” she asks me. I look at her sitting on the chair; her tank top dark and damp, the fat of her thighs softly hugging the metal. I thought of delicately cutting her belly open to see if she too was merely mechanism and lubricant.

“Nothing good,” I coo. Agatha smiles again; she takes it to be an affirmation, shelter from the judgement of others. She looks at me; her breath heavy, her eyes weak. She pulls another cigarette from her pocket, lights it up, and takes a few delicate drags… “I’m bored here,” she said. “Let me grab my stuff and my coat and go out for a walk.” Her smile gave way to an expression I could not parse. I nodded, I turned, I stumbled down the chairs while holding onto the walls— I looked for Cal but I couldn’t find him. I looked in the kitchen, I looked through the living room, I looked in the yard and in the alleyways but I couldn’t find him.

Through the concrete hallways, through the never-ending parking lots spotted with bright lights, into the haze of night… what we discussed: literature, the artlessness of the masturbating simpleton, the wonderful colors and the less gentle hues, dead philosophies of the world dreamt in sickness and fever, film as an art form’s unbearable last gasps of breath— it’s lost in the haze. The faint impressions of lights are left on the black celluloid of my memories, and I hear Agatha’s voice echo & boom ‘tween my ears. I think of something impressive to say. “My favorite is Baudelaire,” I answered to a question I could not remember before taking another chug from a bottle of Chocolate Fudge-Birthday Cake Soju we’d stolen from them. “Oh,” her voice jumped. “You’re a bit twisted.”

The lights of the campus seemed like frightened fireflies. I tried to steady myself. Agatha laughed, then shook and spun me. I clattered to the floor, but she extended a hand to me in mercy. I thought of refusing this terrible deal; she lifted me back onto my feet and our faces met. The mole beneath her right eye seemed to me an encrusted jewel. Two instincts fought simultaneously in my stomach, and the worry that I’d strike her in the face with my fist paralyzed me. She breaks the stalemate; Agatha kisses me on the lips. I taste tobacco, beer, marijuana, the ancient dust of this earth. She kisses me again. I remain placid, unmoved. Agatha smiled; she seemed to enjoy my dread, to swim in it and drink. I was a rat on a piece of floating toast.

“I’m sorry,” she giggles. As the night went on, the pitch of her voice sank. “Should I not do that?” Her face more serious. “I—,” swallowing my words. I love you? I am a virgin? I want to hold you down and do something that you’ll hate me for? The malice brewing within me felt suddenly flat. “I really need to piss,” I spat. Agatha giggled again. “Show me,” she said in a hushed voice. “Show you,” I repeated. I undid my zipper and stumbled towards a corner, underneath a grey and lifeless hall of computers. I pulled it out, between my fingers; the cold wind felt good. Agatha’s eyes widened. I relaxed, I let it go; after I was done, I put it away, enjoying the warmth. Agatha looked me in the eyes, and bit her finger. “That was nice,” she whispered.

We stood before her dorm. An ugly, plain bunker. Through the windows, you could see their cluttered, vacuous lives. Walls polluted with calendars, post-its, rudimentary thoughts, standard-issue art. She nodded towards the door; her face was black ‘neath the trees. The need to say something burned in my throat. “My ex, she cheated on me.” I don’t know why I lied. There was no ex, no exes at all. I suppose I felt this moment needed more weight, need more significance in our respective arcs of personal growth. I felt revolted at my own mawkishness. I tried to imagine what an ex should look like; I imagined her with voluptuous breasts, and thought to make Agatha jealous. Agatha’s face contorted into a display of empathy that deeply revolted me. “Women are bitches,” she muttered. I felt a strange guilt, as if I’d gotten something I didn’t deserve. “You need to move,” she added. “From the trauma, and the guilt.” I resented myself for forcing such banalities out of her mouth. The sadness on her face, so genuine and without caution, made me feel like… hm; an imitation pearl among genuine ones.

Going up the stairs of the dorm was a stroll through a graveyard. The doors were dead and anonymous, the rooms lifeless. I tried to color in the darkness; I imagined orgies of ecstasy, college student pussy flowing like a waterfall, lurkin’ just beneath the muddy soil like writhing earthworms. It only reminds me of ruin; the hall was fat only with the hum of electrical heating. The warmth of the alcohol and the weed was receding and I was only left with increasing dizziness. I told myself of the great righteousness of what I was doing; I want to return to class and have them whisper about this night. “They say she had ten orgasms that night!” I want to see their brains whir in pain over the implications of this night. I want these visions to have a purpose; I want my obsessions to mean something. I stood by her door in the dark as she fumbled with the key. I thought of running. I thought of drugging her so she would not remember me. The impotence of my fantasies started to bother me, and I bit my tongue to punish myself.

The interior of the dorm became familiar once Agatha switched on the lights. The terrible colors; somewhere between LEGO and a mental institution. Some of the walls were encrusted. Food left on the stove, a mess of clothes and textbooks left on the tables. Garbage overfilling. On the coffee table before the aging television were letters and brochures. I peaked through the door; a girl laid on her bed with her face pressed into the mattress… even these red-cheeked ‘co-ed’ children, their taut necks and tummies stamped by lecherous old men with a curse Cain wouldn’t envy, feel the intolerable inertia of the present. We are stuck in the waiting room, flipping through a few boring magazines, ‘till we’re claimed. Mhm.

“What?” Agatha asked as she poured a shot or two of the Tiramisu Vodka into a red plastic cup, another red plastic cup. Her cheeks were flush, engorged like pale apples. I thought of biting into them, but the sight of blood would scare me. “I just thought,” I answered. I felt something stick in my throat. “Why do they do that stuff?” I answered more. Agatha’s face contorted after she drank from one of cups. She offered the other to me. “Do what stuff?” she replied with a hoarse voice. I took a few drinks, then felt myself sink down on the floor next to the refrigerator. Agatha tried to stifle her laughter. “You know… chase each other, fuck each other, say the same stupid thoughts over and over and over, and not read their books, not pay any attention, not give a shit about anything except themselves;” I felt out of breath. “Who? … you mean…” Agatha smiled as she looked at the pictures of some young women and some young men stuck to the fridge; she answers: “maybe it’s … capitalism.” Agatha deadened her laughter by taking another sip. I was irritated by her lack of sincerity so I opened the refrigerator door, and felt the cool air touch my face. She read the expression on my face; her womanly mercy softened the hard-on in my jeans. “I think you expect too much from people,” she said in a quieter, fluty voice. “Most people live poorly, they don’t know how to live. No parents, no guidance. They’re doing their best.” She came a bit closer, bending her knees. “It’s normal to be disappointed, I ‘spose.” Her folksy wisdom made me feel nauseous; the words didn’t fit into her mouth, like they’d been spoken by another voice. “I hate women,” I spat. I’m not sure why, but I felt the need to be honest. Agatha rose up and took another drink. She closed her eyes, her head swirled, her shoulders swayed to some secret tune. “You wanna make out?” she whispered. The cool of the refrigerator turned to morbid frost. I rose to my feet and quietly followed her to her room.

When she turned on the light, the room became washed in pink-orange light. It was only bright enough to see the impressions of the posters, the dying plants, the make-up junk strewn about the tables, and the books, the books stacked like towers. I’d never thought that others might have the interior life I did; I mourned this sudden death of my own identity. I went towards the window; there was no balcony, merely a waist-level fence to dissuade from suicide. I saw the fertile grounds of the university below me. I peaked into the windows. Tell me, is it dead and silent? I expected erectile cocks and dripping pussies; the deadness of night stared back at me.

“Can I tell you something, Agatha?” She shut the door behind her, with her arms behind her back. Her chest asserted itself proudly, and I again admired her small breasts as if they were historical artifacts made of clay, suggesting what sorts of secrets laid in the space between her tummy and her shirt. She lowered her head and smiled: “tell me.” I sat down at her desk, her chair felt unstable beneath me. “I don’t know who else to tell. It seems like something you can’t really tell. Except strangers on the internet.” Agatha’s expression deadened a little bit. She touched her desk, took off her glasses and placed them besides a few face creams, and dropped on her knees before me. The shadows of her hair made her face look like a crowded jungle. “What is it? Tell me, tell me. I want you to tell me everything.”

Since I’ve been a child, now I’m not sure how old I was no but I was a child because I didn’t see the world yet… I was a child and ever since I was a child I imagined that all of the world, yes all of the world was a massive orgy happening just beyond the reach of my fingertips. Yes, I thought that beyond my window, every single lit up window was a naked hole wet and needy and yielding, I thought every darkened car was a bomb waiting to explode in a wail of hot fiery cum. I thought every distant island was full of naked, tanned natives sucking and fucking and licking and filling and the whole beach was slick with dead creatures and foam. I thought every sewer was filled with 1,000 rats all connected cock-and-vagina forming great chains, and I thought every classroom had a teacher’s pet with a whip ‘neath her teeth and every locker room had bruised knees and tender kisses and every sleep-over had a flash-light and loose PJs and every study buddy had a plan and every PTA meeting mommy would open up daddy’s zipper and raise up teacher’s skirt and say “take it for mommy” and every fuzzy TV channel was a promise and every hyperlink a peek ‘neath her neat skirt and every night at the truck stop they’d stroke their hogs and the streets would turn white with cum and splooge and spunk and I’ve seen their pictures in the history books and I know kings and queens, emperors and maids, millers and seamstresses; each one of them strokes their cocks and licks asses, making babies every day for thousands and thousands of years— I thought that if I could poke my fingers through, I’d find through the gash, on the other side, a million wet pussies stretching far to the horizon, and they’re all waiting for me somehow. They’d whisper every degrading act endlessly rehearsed since the first mammal had crawled onto land to find something new to fuck with its red furry dick. But I grew up and I know nothing is there. If I reached out with my fingers, I’d find only thin air.

“I’ve been hurt,” I lied; I was repeating the performance. “I… I’m scared that women will hurt me. I don’t trust them. Women lie, cheat, steal; they take and take.” I burped a little into my hands. “I hate women.” Agatha smiled; she folded her arms on my legs and rested her chin. “No, you don’t really hate women.” She answered. “A man who hates women would pity women, he would charm women, he would lie to them, tell them everything they wanted to hear and when they look up at him with their glassy eyes, wondering if any of it was real, he would shrug his shoulders and laugh.”

Agatha’s gaze wandered. “A man who hates women would wonder why she, the collective She, was so stupid to fall for any of it in the first place.” Agatha looked back at me; her face uncanny and still like a doll. “You don’t hate women. You’re not even capable of anything like that. All your bullshit about women in their right place; the excesses of whatever-ism is just there to obscure your disappointment, your anger growing from your bitter realization that humans rarely rise to meet their potential. You think of brotherhood, of sisterhood, of any-hood— men and women in the woods building shelter from the storm, the tenderness of your head in a lap, the warmth, the rhythm; you open your eyes and see distant streets covered in blood, dollar signs stamped onto bruised flesh, where a woman seems to be worth little more than the surfaces their biology has forced onto them. I know, I know you want to shake them. you want to grab them by the shoulders and shout ‘you fucking idiot! don’t you know a better world is possible? why would you do this to yourself?’ but her answer is never good enough. No-one’s answer is good enough. How could one woman answer for the crimes of all man?”

I pulled her face to mine, and kissed her. I was surprised that I’d found no doubts in mind. I surrendered to the voice; a seagull’s screech. I sucked on her lower lip. I licked her lips. Her tongue tasted sour-sweet. I felt a few drops of spittle flow down my chin. She embraced my legs; she arched her body up, she put her hands on my face, she pulled my face away and I saw her smile… her sudden sincerity scared me. Her hands reached down to my jeans and undid the buttons and the zipper. She tugged. Kissed at the edges. I couldn’t maintain it. The more I tried to force it, the quicker the raging river currents turned to a placid pool. My first time, and it’s a damp and lukewarm void. I groaned as she spat and pulled. I imagined her face covered in white goo, and I felt disappointment.

I stopped her. I pushed her face away from it. She looked sad. “Doesn’t it feel good?” I muttered. I nodded my head. “I just, I want to see you. See your face.” Her eyes turned away from me. I brushed the hair away from her face with my fingers. I saw her only now for the first time. The craters in the skin of her nose. The redness of her eyes. The little wounds. The lines that rose from the corners of her mouth. The indentations left by her glasses. The few freckles, the mole under her cheek. Her expression was vacant, empty; her face seemed dead, I know it was overgrown with moss. Her eyes met mine.

And she seemed so vulnerable, so small. A frail bird with a broken neck, nakedly cawing in a grassy field. Her eyes surrendered; suddenly, they turn down. I fell onto my knees; we were equals again. I undid the buttons of her shirt. I pulled up the tank top; with her hands, she held it there ‘neath her chin. The skin between her breasts had a few solitary islands of brown skin. I pressed my face into her and felt her heart beat like a pup. I kissed her flesh. She embraced me. “Let’s go to bed,” she whispered. I felt the weight of the world wear on me. She pulled me up and led me to the bedroom behind a partition and laid me down onto the bed. “I need to have sex, right now,” she said with ever deeper throaty sincerity. I looked at the dirty ceiling, a few bottle caps had been stuck into the sandy drywall. I felt her mouth envelop me, and I could not muster the strength. I fondled her breasts, soft and yielding. I thought of everything I’d set to paper, tried to remember the sketches, tried to lower myself into the depths in the search of the blackest of fuel to ignite my fire— I thought of schoolgirls bound with rope, I thought of sodomized maids, I thought of holding down the beautiful girl in the pale blue dress and entering her, I thought of “being serviced, of “being used,” pistons and machinery, of bloodied-cum churning, of muscles erupting in powerful spasms, of a thousand pussies wet with excess, I thought of…

“I’m sorry,” I whined as I rose. She looked up at me with needy eyes; it slipped from her lips and collapsed in a pool of spittle and weakness. A few tears seem to crackle at the edges of her eyes. “It’s… the alcohol.” Agatha smiled, kissed my stomach, then rose onto the bed and kissed me. “Don’t feel bad,” she whispered. “It happens.” She touched my face. “Always tomorrow,” her voice deadened. “Wildcat.” I felt a terrible cringe set in my stomach. I dropped my leaden body back onto the bed. Agatha nuzzled my shoulder, set her head down, and quickly fell asleep. I closed my eyes, darkening the room to screen my projections. I thought of Roman senators enjoying the pleasures of their slave-girls bodies. I thought of colts racing through the forest. I thought of torture dungeons where pleasure and pain intermixed freely. I thought of swamps, hot and wet, loud with beasts fucking. I looked down at my penis, waiting for a change that would not come even as the day eats the night.

I awoke while the morning was still blue. Through the windows, a deep orange sizzled on the horizon, growing like a pupa in the soft cocooning darkness. I touched my own chest, searching for the soft thumping of my heart. I’d hoped for a rebirth, or a traumatic rupture. I was disappointed in how familiar my body felt, how my skin remained whole and mundane. The room was bare and cold, like a cell. For a while, I study the sharp ridges rising from her back; she faced away from me, murmuring in her sleep. Her skin looked like permafrost. I rose from the bed softly, deliberately, careful not to waste a single muscle movement. I dress myself in the dark, the clothes feel cloying and foreign on my skin. Before I reach for the door, I skulk towards the balcony. Past the dew-stained glass, frothing beneath me, a surge of morning traffic was scuttling down the beltway and disappearing into a strawberry halo. Everything to its own fate. Mine to my own. Nothing goes on forever. No; I committed myself to rejecting that narrative of progress, those false promises of the future. I spat over the railing of the stairs, and waited for the loud splattering beneath to comfort me. I close the door behind me and decide never to return… this is my defense.