interaction with other human beings sooner or later; that, while it was going to take time, I would have to relearn feeling at ease with the outside world, cast off those sensations that I was being stalked by the unknown; that I was free to venture out, show my face in the yard, without dread of apprsion, without consternation of incarceration and villainy. In the light of the sun or glow of the moon, I often felt I was in the lios maw, the dragon’s asylum – I was a spy in a foreign nation and any second the secret police of this countrs sovereign hand would capture me, torture me for information and protocols. Indeed, I had gone to this party at the last moment, telling myself it was time to move on. Why did other people seem so horrible to me? What did this have to do with Beth? Was this time of solitudeI liked to call it my healing process to make me feel better – necessary? It did not matter now, for here I was, and there was she: Beth; and there was no doubt about this: Beth; just a much different-looking Beth. And I considered this night, this geether: for the moon was out amp;full, the night sky clear as refined plasma in an IV tube, a California night so close to Wintes breast. I did not run away from her, as I divined I might should this chance rendezvous ever occur. I could have, and by all means I should have; maybe I should have run, that first time, in the dark smoky club where we met. I hardly make the right moves, doing what I know I should not do, straying from the mantel of righteousness and God – like taking Beth into my arms that night at this party; it was a capricious move. She almost pushed me away. I saw she had a cigarette in hand. She should have burned me with it; scorching of the flesh is what I needed. Yes, she almost pushed me away but in that single moment where all truth resides, she embraced me as well, she took me like a perplexed foundling, she was the mother I had always hoped for, a mriarch that didt allow me to go hungry when the inimical times came; for a passing moment, I thought she was going to cry – and I was certain I would break down and reveal to her what a liar I was, a coward. I thought of the intangible likeness of ecstasy when we fucked, our groveling way of fucking, and wondered if we were meant for each other, the antithesis of the first man amp;woman. It was a Jacques Monad sort of scenario: the chance and necessity of it all. She said my name over amp;over and people around us gave us inexplicable looks. Wondered if she knew anyone here, had friends here. I didn’t really know anyone, maybe one or two people. I was an interloper, and I liked it as such: I was invisible, free to move untouched in the realm, through pedestrians, space amp;time. Beth held me, said my name over amp;over again; it was nice amp;good amp;clean. People kept glancing at us, frowns on faces, as if we were vagabonds; malefactors. Perhaps our crime was the scene of affection. I took her aside, took her to a far corner where we could be alone. We had to talk over the music and the laughs and the words of others. This party was not like the kind of parties she amp;I were used to, the bacchanalia no, this party had too much order amp;uniformity. We touched each other like the classical lovers of Greece, antiquity in our gaze, having been separated for what seemed like decades, those spaces filled with discourse amp;adventures suitable to be sung by blind men with bare amp;bleeding feet. I said Beth and she looked up at me and from behind her new look, behind the average magine-type make-up, I saw the Beth I once coveted amp;cherished. She said she had some coke but I stopped her, told her she should not. I said we had to change our lives from now on, we had to be reborn in this earth. She told me she had, citing me as a relevant cause. I told her I was not an evil person, that I had, in fact, once been angel (not unlike those Kathy is dreaming of now); she laughed and said well where are your wings, Michael? I was curious, now, about her life: wanting to know what she had been doing these past months. She told me her life was like the temple Samson had destroyed when he regained his strength. She said but instead of potency she felt as if she had grown irresolute. It was then that I acceded to the overwhelming inclination to protect her, to shield her from the imps of mortality. We decided to leave this party. She said she was renting a room in a house not too far away, which was a mile from the local university, which she said she had applied to for higher educational purposes. We started to walk there. It was one of those nights; I was ready for anything. I looked up, commented on the moon. She grabbed me, pulled me down on someons front lawn. It was quiet out; the house of the lawn had no lights. She said take me take me here amp;now and I tried to fight her away and she dug her fingeails into my face amp;neck and I felt the blood, the very warm blood, run down, run out of me. Sex amp;violence, thas all I’ve ever had in my life; this castigating I accepted fully, with all the consequences amp;corruption. One moment, Beth amp;I were locked in such a callous clasp that there were no misgivings that it would be the final grasp for both of us, that we would rise to Heaven together; that, untied, united, we would cast aside our mutual cloaks of pain and go on to some premium glory. I woke up in a bed, in a cold room, and the moon was at the window, the full moon, bright. I smiled at this moon and looked at the body next to me. Bets body. She was breathing slowly, her chest rose with each intake of life. I felt good. Here we were, in this bed, alone amp;safe. Nothing in this city or world could touch us here, nothing could extend its bitter arm and caress us with enmity. I moved against her. She was warm. I grabbed at her. She stirred. She called out to her father, in sleep. I closed my eyes and imagined myself cleansed of the dirty life we once shared. I was back on the grass, the wet grass – or was that my blood? I was caught up in a grapple for both life amp;fuck. Beth was tearing at my clothes; she squeezed my balls and I screamed. She relished this wretchedness. She kept telling me that I would never leave her again, we would be bound forever, we would marry and the only way the union could end would be murder, or worse. She hissed like some snake of old, going murder murder murder. I tore her skimpy slut’s dress down the middle, pried it off her like reptilian flesh. She was naked, pale under the moon, and I said you like this bitch, yes yes, how much you so very like it, and pushed her down, her face into the wet blood grass, mounting her rear, a coyote’s cry from her – and that wonderful full moon. I lost my edge and she bucked me off, was on top of me now, her hands around my neck. In her eyes, I could read that she apprehended we could never amount to anything, we would never have anything, and she was going to end all anguish now, terminate the memory amp;image she had of me like grease on a slate, wipe wipe wipe. I clawed at her bare breasts until they bled but this did not stop her intent. I hit her in the face; her nose broke; she fell to the ground. I kept hitting her face until her visage was raw meat, my hands bloody stumps. I prolonged this vehemence because there was no turning back now. I was driven. I was going to take this perdition to its pinnacle. I woke up on the bed and looked at my hands. My hands were all right, my body was all right. I was back in Beth’s bed. I sighed; it was a dream, that grass scene a whole dream, and there was undeniable comfort in this knowledge. But Beth was not beside me. I called her name. I could still smell her; the imprint of her body remained on the mattress. I saw that the bathroom light was on. I got up, knocked on the bathroom door. Beth, are you there? No answer. I went in. She was lying in a full tub. The water was pinkish-red. There was a sharp knife next to the tub, on the floor, blood on that tiled floor, blood smooth amp;clean, blood dripping from the arm that hung outside the water: the opened gash on small wrist. She had also, I noticed with interest, opened up her neck. The artery was languid as it pumped out the final quart of essence out of the temple of Beth. Her eyes were rolled up, toward the window and the full moon: uninhabited amp;aloof. I thought I’d never see a finale as exquisite as this. This was her swan song and no one could take it from her. She was – emancipated. I went to her, I went to her, I went to her, she stood up, she got up from the grass, her face a dominion of mess. She said so this is what you wanted all along? I charged, throwing her down again, my hands at her neck this time, using more force than she had on me. Die die die I screamed as I woke up in the bed and the moon was peeking through and Beth was not there. I could still smell her and the imprint on the mattress was evident: new, so very new, so very Beth. I had been having this dream that I was following Beth’s car in my car and it was late and we were going somewhere and as she went across an intersection a fast big car ran a red and hit hers, dragging it, smashing into the wall of a building, a loud sound, and I jumped out of my car and saw that she had been crushed in her car, almost chopped in two, her eyes popped from the sockets, blood everywhere, a baby growing in her womb, a reverie of two deaths, but I was glad now it was all just a dream, but she still wasn’t there, so I called her name, I called her name, I called her name. I saw the bathroom light was on, the door partially opened. I was not going to get out of that bed; there was no way I was going to get up and go in there. Its interior would be a mystery. I would not look upon her body again. I only wanted to sleep. A simple desire. I didn’t know what was real anymore. I grabbed Beth’s pillow and hugged it to me, cried into it, cried, thinking that this will always be my prison.
I seize Kathy, hard, waking her with strident resonance, howling into her hair like a primate in Cimmerian periodicity, thinking the moon the moon the moon.
