Anthology Complex VI by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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M.B. Julien
Volume 2 - Composition 3
(2:3 / 6 / VI)
Part 9
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 81
EEVEE
2:3:9:81
FOREWORD
“Eevee,” contrary to what has been established of it in the years following its controversial publication in the Grand Searle Tribune, is less a tale about perversion and more a tale about sexual recognition. It follows the testament of Sir Absalom and his final months before exile, where he explains to the readers of the newspaper his thoughts and feelings and what transpired in those months, but is left to judgement on whether he is remorseful or proud of his actions. What is clear, however, is his action of writing the testament to bring forward and make known the many forms of love and the recognition they deserve.
Sir Absalom officially entered exile in 1979, dying only nine years later in 1988 due to an undocumented virus. It was noted at his trial that he may have suffered from a brain condition which influenced his development in adolescence and continued to affect him late into his life. The symptoms of the theorized condition may be seen even in his writing style, as Sir Absalom had a propensity to arrange his words into interesting sentence structures. This uniqueness and strangeness is believed to have dictated his interests and his lovemap.
Deconstructed simply as a short story, “Eevee” will be remembered and regarded as no more than immoral entertainment. But studied as a psychological thesis into sexuality as a whole, it will be regarded as both an educative text and a literary classic. Readers will find within it their own trails to sexual satisfaction, and despite the polar differences they may have with Sir Absalom, they will learn that both their trails and his began in the same wilderness.
And so this leads into the subject of perverse sexuality in of itself, which we as a society have labeled “taboo.” The complexity of sexuality, as Sir Absalom puts it, is very confusing. It is more confusing than the morals of murder or the laws surrounding it. And yet we have structured laws for sexuality itself, something we humans know little about and what little we do know remains confusing. Sir Absalom, in one way or another, and in many ways in general, argues in his testament against man's need to confine and define sexual morality. But such is a way for great resistance, a resistance which ultimately put our author, Sir Absalom, into exile.
Raymond Johnson Sr, Ph.D.
January 5, 1989
1 | EEVEE
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1
OH, Vee. On that fateful night were you who? To me what did you say that I have forgotten after all these years? When light lit up the heavens were you where? And that the stray find comfort in the smiling is it why?
2
Grand Searle Tribune, let this serve as not a memoir or even an exhibition of evidence. With all the aesthetic value in my fiber it is instead a testament to my humanity and less a statement on my criminality.
When I suffered from a toothache in the isles of Paris, I pursued a dentist. When I suffered from depression in the cold of Moscow, I pursued a psychiatrist. But when I suffered from nihilism in the big towns of Grand Searle, I did not know who to pursue.
There was no readied remedy provided like that of the doctors mentioned before.
But in the dead, indeed, and not in the living, I found that my solution was.
Philosophers who told me about my condition did I turn to, and who were doctors of the soul. But the comfort I found in their dim studies was diminished by my final condition, which was not of the physical nor the mental nor the soulful; it was by law; criminal, and by morality; perverse.
3
I was working in public assistance, living at the time in Grand Searle at a residence not too unfamiliar from the peoples' I serviced. The home of the Gettes, who had recently applied for both unemployment and nutritions aid, I was to visit on this particular day. It was a rather unusual request by my employer as the Sun had already begun to set, but the humanities cannot wait diligently over night.
Upon the light of moons I traversed onto the Dyanran Highway, which, according to my esteemed employer, was “the simplest and quickest route to there and home.” He may have been correct if not had been there a traffic accident suffocating the road.
Aside from the traffic, of that fascinating evening the beautiful sight was not lost on me and I was grateful to have been given the time to witness it in all. There was that orange tint laced onto the horizon which was layered by a blue crystal. There was that cool wind which was not too cold yet not too warm and carried with itself the rare kind of equality, stability, balance, which you wished to one day see in other facets of the world.
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There were the six lanes of traffic, and the three that were moving slow. Sitting, waiting to see what was going on up ahead and why I could not advance, I was left alone with the captivating universe. And as well with my terrible incandescent thoughts.
Every better part of four minutes found a humming motorcycle pass between the skinny lanes created by our four-wheeled vehicles, and only two minutes later would you hear that motorcycle's audible levels increase as it sped off far beyond the tragedy into a place we others could not go.
Again there was that orange tint laced onto the horizon which now was gold. There was that cool comforting wind which now blew in the opposite direction. There were those six lanes of traffic, of which now three were gridlocked. And then a man there was who came walking in my direction.
“Insane accident, the police are redirecting traffic but that could take awhile, best to turn around and find another way,” the man insisted, and his advice I took quickly.
Of course, en route to another route I found myself lost until I decided to give the Gettes a call. They knew the area much better than I did, and their prompt and organized directions which later led me to their residence were an exact indication of their quality priorities and yet also of their unfortunate circumstances.
“Sir Absalom,” Mr. Gettes said, “it's so nice to finally meet you.” I shook his hand, and after inviting me inside I saw Mrs. Gettes in their kitchen preparing what I assumed was a strategic meal for myself.
The three of us talked over and under their current living situation but address never did we not what directly lead Mr. Gettes into unemployment. It was a matter I would not discover until my next visit. Though not entirely satisfied with our conversation, I assured them that I would do what best I could in the approval process. Then I went to leave.
Mrs. Gettes, a plump woman who would be dangerously attractive to lovers of compounded flesh, showed me to the door, and I sensed that she herself sensed of my unwholesome satisfaction as she made every attempt, from here to the door, to let me know of her hardship. She then waved goodbye to me and I exited for my car.
The moment occurring my departure, I heard Mrs. Gettes whistle, then a yell,
“Eevee!,” and in the darkness a small figure ran past me and into the light of the front door. I had only a glimpse of the animal, but I saw that it was a dog. And as Mrs. Gettes went to pick it up, in full its appearance was shown to me as elevation cast the utmost light onto him.
Eevee was a soul I had known before. First I knew him in the tangible nature of reality. Then in the longing of photographs. Then in the confusion of my dreams. Then, finally, he remained only as a specter in my memories.
3 | EEVEE
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4
Before I continue I would like to go back and tell more about my upbringing. I believe crucial some of these details are to understanding me and my claimed humanity, otherwise this remains only a tale of perversion. It remains only a tale of what wicked wishes the astray can bring into society.
When I was eight, my father and I had entered the wilderness of a Grand Searle hunting ground to hunt deer. I, on one hand, yesterday and today am a pacifist, but on the other, and only yesterday, was only a small boy and like all other small boys only wanted to impress his father.
That day no deer were shot, at least not for reasons that would irritate animal lovers.
But a deer was shot. Back to the truck while walking we came across a deer surrounded by a thick circle of red snow. It seemed to have been attacked by a predator and was left to suffer, to die.
My father, hard as he was, that day taught me how to put a suffering being out of its misery. It is an event, no, an experience that has frequented me monthly. And it is without doubt a time that has shaped my mindset on the care of animals.
5
Denizens of Grand Searle, there is something inherent about two kindred spirits meeting for the first time. At age nine, I was selected by an advertising agency to be one half of the face of a promotional campaign heralding the well-being of at-risk animals.
The other half of that face was a dog, of a name if I was ever told I do not remember.
Despite this, very fond of the dog I grew and my primitive, young mind gradually came to believe that this dog itself was indeed at risk, not knowing it was only an acting dog whose quality of life I'm sure surpassed many humans'.
Taking these photos and hearing of the dire stories of animals in need, animals in danger, animals abused, with each day passing of the project my tiny heart sank with grief of what this particular dog was suffering through in his life. Then one day the project ended, the dog gone, and I never saw him again.
An empty feeling came over me, as if I had failed him somehow. And out of those feelings, I mean the sorrow of dog tales mixed with the thought of failure, was born the conception of a lost soul; a soul I would search for but not encounter until thirty-two years later, where I found him in the care of devils.
4 | EEVEE
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6
The image of that dog I could not get out of my mind. The day following my appointment and interview of the Gettes, I laid in bed, stood on my balcony, cooked breakfast, all the while plotting a means to see that dog one more time. It was not until I began dressing for work that I found a viable plot.
First I called my employer with a story that the Gettes were not available in yesterday's evening, but that they had contacted me to schedule a meeting this morning.
And then after that was completed, I called the Gettes with a story that my employer had required another meeting, to which I insisted the meeting take place this morning. The Gettes were more than compliant and willing to work around the morning to accommodate me.
I took the identical route I took the evening before, but what a new world I felt I had entered. Because it was light outside, nothing appeared the way they appeared in fading sunlight. The route itself and whatever it held embraced a new identity, but it was not just the physical that transformed, there was an excitement within me to see Eevee once more which was obviously not present prior.
“Sir Absalom! It's great to see you again,” Mrs. Gettes remarked as she opened the door. Not could I find Eevee outside so all intimations were that he was inside, but even when I stepped inside there was no indication of him.
The Gettes and I spoke, irrelevantly, again about their current living conditions. This time a bit more I learned about them, and about a set of children who were currently living elsewhere. But in all that time, only Eevee was on my mind.
“Say,” I said, “where is that little rascal you had running around yesterday,” I joked.
“Oh you must mean Eevee,” Mr. Gettes answered, “he must be around here somewhere.”
I said nothing more of the dog so as not to cause slanted faces, and then told the Gettes that I would probably visit them again, the next time with paperwork, which I told them was a good sign of approval. They were delighted, so delighted that they joked to have Eevee present around on my next visit. I enjoyed the gesture.
I left the Gettes residence and walking toward my car I began. As I walked, of my surroundings I made note and observed the poverty all around me. It made me think of that spirit I knew so long ago who has never left me. It made me wonder where he is now, what he was doing. But in all my great wonder, as I approached my car, I saw that I no longer had to wonder, for sitting just beside the rear right tire was Eevee, who looked at me as if he had seen me before.
In clear day seeing him, I saw that he was almost a duplicate of that dog I had known all those years ago. No, he wasn't an exact duplicate per se, but the semblance was 5 | EEVEE
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uncanny. For all I knew time was soon going to rewind and a photographer momentarily was going to appear and ask to have our photo. And then later than a month no more we would see that photo hanging on a highway billboard, telling each driver in twenty-five words or less of the plight of animals, specifically dogs.
Only a foot away from Eevee, he suddenly sat up and was looking directly up at me.
“Is it really you?,” I asked. Not reply did he, but instead went to walk around my left leg.
“Oh!,” I ejaculated. “I have a treat inside my car for you!” I opened my door and found in my lunchbox a piece of meat from a nutritious sandwich I had made in the morning, but as I leaned inside to retrieve the meat, I suddenly felt something on the back of my right leg. Confused, I looked behind me, and heard the shouting at the same time of Mrs.
Gettes in the background.
Eevee, the seductive varmint, he had begun humping my leg! “Vee!,” I heard Mrs.
Gettes yelling in great anger, “Stop that!”
Rapidly and snatched him from off my leg she came as if he were a wild beast. After apologizing to me in full, “I'm so sorry! He hasn't done that in years!,” she walked away speaking lowly, but just enough that I could hear what she was saying, and what she said brought a sore to my heart. The punishment she had determined of his behavior was to put him inside his cage.
Driving back to work, I must say that though I was saddened for Eevee, I was ecstatic for myself. I entered into yet another world, a fresh crisp world of rejuvenation, and Eevee's gesture proved to me, or rather made me feel I should say, that I was not as repulsive as I thought, that I could indeed attract the unlikeliest of individuals, and that someone somewhere out there might still want me as a lover.
7
I am thinking of dark angels in Los Angeles. The platitudes of faith. Prayers in the rain. A foreboding sense of tragedy that is near. I am thinking of empty beaches at dawn.
Sadness in July. A forgotten birthday. Innocence that was detached early on. I am thinking of lonely Thanksgivings. Formal gestures of farewell. Pity from the temporary.
A glass of wine in small town Grand Searle.
I am thinking about what life will entail after they cast me out of this country. I am thinking about this piece of writing. Of what needs to be said and of what can be omitted.
I have been given one pen and one notepad, and I am thinking of whether I will run out of ink first, or paper. If I run out of ink, they have silenced me and shorted my words; if I run out of paper, they have shortened my platform to speak and I have said all I am permitted to say.
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Still I am thinking of the blossoms of black roses. The scorn of dangerous skies.
Somber holidays. The unwell who were marred by striations of convention. I am thinking of cold days in January. Nights without television. A bruised ego. The sudden impact of illness. I am thinking of my physique. Overweight. My hair. Balding. All these things and more I am thinking of, I had or felt only before Eevee.
8
Of ganders at summit twilight is the catalyst of creativity. The day had afforded me a string of satisfaction as I left work for home. To the approval of the Gettes' application I completed a number of actions in the workday itself.
The first thought, which led to a series of thoughts, was the corruption of my integrity. Not my moral integrity, that was lost long ago, but my professional integrity.
And by the time I was on the third or fourth thought, I possessed the guile of the deranged.
I found the original Gettes' application and then found a fresh application, where after I sought to recreate the document but provided false information.
The Gettes now had five children, one of whom who was adopted. Mr. Gettes was not relieved from work, but was dismissed, and because of the manner of dismissal a lawsuit was pending in favor of the employee. Mrs. Gettes is physically handicap. A year ago she was involved in a motor accident which left her left arm mangled. Before a year ago, and starting at the age of fourteen, Mrs. Gettes spent every day of her life working to help provide for her loved ones. And importantly most, never have the Gettes missed in paying their taxes.
All of these details have been verified by yours truly, Sir Absalom, the Grand Searle Eastern District claims investigator.
I must have spent a great deal mimicking exactly the handwriting of Mr. Gettes, and I must have also copied his signature to the “g,” the letter “g” being the most difficult letter in the English alphabet to forge. Denizens of Grand Searle, it did not help that his given name was George.
After I submitted the paperwork twice tweaked I gave the Gettes household a ring. I spoke to Mrs. Gettes, as Mr. Gettes was out, and I assured her of an approval as I had delivered my final assessment earlier in the day. Only a minute or two into the conversation, I heard aggressive yelling that verged on verbal abuse. It did not take me long to understand that Mr. Gettes had arrived home and found Eevee doing something he should not have been doing, and Mr. Gettes had begun to yell at him. A series of what sounded to be threats at Eevee's life prompted Mrs. Gettes to end the phone call, and it 7 | EEVEE
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was at that venom moment I decided I was going to abduct Eevee. He would be the price of the approval they required. And as I gandered twice at twilight from my office window, my imagination tweaked and spun twofold of all the things I was going to do with Eevee.
9
Brutally banal days and so many mundane will we live. Oh what a human would trade for one day of happiness and excitement.
With the perfect burglary in the foresight of my mind I woke up that day. It was my day off, but for Eevee, it was his day for freedom from all that imprisoned him.
I had breakfast, checked my mail on the way out, and then drove to a nearby department store to purchase a disguise. One, a hair piece, two, a pair of spectacles, and three, a bushy mustache. I also purchased dog food, a dog collar, some dog toys and a dog leash. Returned home, I placed a screwdriver in my vehicle.
That the dog is allowed to roam outside as he pleases I have observed, though come nightfall he is called inside. Neighbors walking about I have seen at various times of the day, but I believe my disguise will conceal my identity. And finally, most importantly, I have never ever heard Eevee bark.
As I drove to the Gettes's residence at dusk, I could not believe what I was about to do, but as the hour progressed I convinced myself it was “the right thing to do.”
Sure to park my vehicle a block away from the extraction point I made when I arrived. I put on the hair piece, then the spectacles, then the bushy mustache. Taking the screw driver, I took off both of my license plates. Then, finally, I went back inside the car once more to recover a couple of dog biscuits.
The sixty or so yards I walked to the actual residence of the Gettes to begin my search. At times softly whistling, I also noticed not a soul of a human in sight. At least six times alternatively I must have looked and doubted, but him I finally found before the seventh. He was way above on a fourth floor balcony looking down directly at me. I raised my hand into the air, and denizens of Grand Searle you know I had that biscuit in my hand. From his current location Eevee removed himself and towards me he began to make his way.
A game of cat and mouse ensued as I was in one place, then Eevee would find that place, and then suddenly I was in another. We played this game all the way to my car and it was finally declared over when Eevee retrieved his treat while sitting in my passenger's seat. As he nibbled on the pleasures of his pleased heart, we drove away into the arms of escape.
8 | EEVEE
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10
When I brought you home for the first time, I saw you in evening light, where yellow was the color of your energy. When you walked up the stairs to your new home, I saw you glee in excitement, where peach was the color of your past. When you got lost in the courtyard, I found your undeniable spirit, where white was the color of your ghost. When we drove down the highway in speed, I saw you in a motion that was slow, where black was the color of your escape. When I gave you your second treat in the kitchen, I watched your mysterious personality, where blue was the color of your desire. When you urinated on my carpet the next morning, I laughed at your silliness, where pink was the color of your confusion. When we went for our first walk, we kept the same pace, where orange was the color of your grace. When I threw you your first toy bone, I understood your playfulness, where green was the color of your soul. When we stayed up so late that night, I wanted you at dawn, where purple was the color of your clouds. When you laid across my chest, I felt your beating heart, where red was the color of your passion.
11
My prior actions despite, I kept my final meeting with the Gettes the following day.
When I arrived I was surprised that there were already posters plastered of a missing dog named “Eevee.”
Asking Mrs. Gettes when the dog went missing, she answered “Since last night,” and asking how she got the postings up so quickly, she answered “That dog goes missing all the time, but he'll be back.” I nearly snickered.
The Gettes reported to me that they had been approved and thankful were they that they were dealt me as their serviceman. Me. Sir Absalom. I'll say I was more fortunate to have them than they were to have me. But that was the end of it, my relation to the Gettes was over, and I never saw nor heard from them after that day in the same manner in which they never saw nor heard from Eevee again after that night.
On one of my first nights at home with Eevee he accidentally fiddled with my record player and began a song. The accident led to a night of dancing, and it may have perhaps been the first time I had danced in ten years.
When you bring someone home, it can change your house itself. At times being in the company of Vee was like wandering around in a garden of magic where time had been suspended. Perhaps within him that I did not know there was something; a power enchanted on the wings of solaire; or a vast universe of electric magnetic dreams.
9 | EEVEE
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Grand Searle in the middle sixties was a city of heathens and was plagued by the confusing complexity of sexuality. Even more-so today in the late seventies, it remains as the judgment capital of the world.
And before the judgement came the churches. Then came the council. Then came the socialization. Then came the laws. But then on the final governance came Eevee, and he changed everything about what I had known and who I was.
12
Often the strange arrangement of attraction I have wondered. The sweet power of the canine is something I have likened to for well over thirty years now. I have a particular palette for the smaller breeds, I must say. But of the dog why is it that I am so fond?
There have been other such prospects for companionship and copulation and in consideration I suppose the horse; but it is a large body capable of strenuous force; the cat; but none have ever liked me; the pig; but so forth has not a fiber of cleanliness to its name; the goat; but has led me to believe it would be quite audible during intercourse, perhaps quite audible even in simple daily matters.
There may have been one or two humans I fancied, but on the whole and more not less I am not attracted to the homo sapiens. To the female of that species I am not interested at all; what cruelty I have seen them permit. Women having children with men so the men cannot leave; and why is it that every mother's son is a bright, smart, wise angel?
Perhaps of the female variety, if I must concede, I have been lured by their form, in particular the breasts. I have a few times admired their appearance and prominence on large breasted women, and this attraction may have supplied my interest in the goat who as well feature the udder. I just as well may have enjoyed them on men but in order for a man to carry large breasts he must be grotesquely fat, and grotesque fatness is not a physical trait I have ever admired.
Of the one or two that I did find attractive were both of the male order; but among men there is a vile aggressive assertity that could also be found in the biology of dictators. So that makes them more or less useless.
Alas, the supple beauty of the canine. The formless magical void of eternal restlessness. Oh I have been trapped in its trance for a triple set of twin days. A Tuesday afternoon of the beauty in their eyes, a Thursday night made my body throb. A Saturday morning of the beauty in their fur, a Sunday evening made me the sinner of Grand Searle.
I understood that I was sexually attracted to dogs by the time I was ten, but a nagging persistent has had me question when attraction truly begins to develop within us. A 10 | EEVEE
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subset of this question has also had me question why attraction itself exists. Many are very particular in sexual matters, and many are unlikely to cross preferential boundaries that have a foundation setting back to adolescence.
In sexual matters, often is a person's mind made up and unlikely are they to experiment. Some people will not try new foods. New religions. A new brand of a product they have found trustworthy. And simply put, if you are not attracted to the same object as someone else, you can never understand their attraction.
At some point before my age occurring ten, something must have happened to me. It could have been something as tragic in magnitude as a death, or something as slight as a pat on the back. For me, attraction must have occurred one hundred percent in the mind and whatever was the physical focal point at the time became my symbol. If I was grieving and a large breasted woman comforted me, perhaps I was focused on her breasts and her breasts became a symbol of comfort to me. If I was grieving and a male athlete comforted me, perhaps I was focused on his build and his build became a symbol of comfort to me. But no. I cannot vividly remember the ghost of attraction in these two events. What I remember, faintly, was a dog coming to comfort me in a time of great misery and distress.
13
“Lewd. Disgusting. The aprophophous of immorality.” Denizens of Grand Searle who were not present at my trial, this was how the presiding judge described my acts, and though I do not feel the same way that is how I will describe this chapter.
I gave Eevee his walk around the complex just before dusk when the lights and shadows in the trees began to take on forms and shapes. Standing there as Eevee did his business, him I admired and took detail to his shadow. His shadow made me believe that in the canals of a mind, the first being a person truly falls in love with, they can go on for a lifetime searching for the ghost of that person and be none the wiser.
Immediately tired Eevee grew when we got home and on a piece of furniture went to lay where after I had something to drink I joined him. With the television on I layed there silently thinking about the rigidity of love, but when the thoughts ceased I became aware of Eevee's engorged member. The average size of a dog's penis is 5.5 inches, but Eevee was not the average dog; he was a creature of sexual animalism.
The urge of deconstruction that night was more powerful than the preservation of innocence, and shortly after I found myself caressing the base of his penis. I guided my hand mentally with every desire of the senses to reach the shaft where after with satisfaction I made my way back down to the base.
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There was no indication from Eevee that what I was doing was unpleasant, and this led to the manipulation of Eevee's penis with my tongue. Each movement of my mouth on his genital seemed to bolster the giant and it wasn't until I had trouble breathing that I removed myself from him.
What had transpired inspired me to masturbate, and revealing the excitedness of my own member, Eevee seemed to be confused that I too managed the same physical traits as he. In what still puzzles me to this day, Eevee jumped onto the ground, searched for a location with some kind of criteria or criticism in his mind, and then made his body figure as if he were awaiting penetration.
A man's love for the animal was here before me, and it will be here long after I am dead. On to my knees I crawled all the way to Eevee and took hold of his body, where after I made the gentle thrust into him. The poet nonexistent within me wanted to call that moment a reunion of souls, but the honesty within me can label it no more than sodomy.
14
Eevee was not my first physical lover. In humanity I am what you would call a
“virgin;” With another human being I have never had sex. In canine, however, I have been the acquaintance of several dogs.
In my teen-hood I established myself as a dog-sitter. When married men and women went on long vacations with their children they looked to me, Sir Absalom, rather I was just Absalom at the time, to look after a member of their family.
Up with the idea I came after I realized how difficult it was to be left alone in a room with a dog. Or how strange it looks when you keep asking for photographs with a particular dog and not another. House-sitting and taking care of a dog for sometimes up to a month provided me the benefits of a stupor splendor. The ecstasy acquired in those dog days accumulated in me the memories of a thousand attractions. The dogs of whom I mated with remained in the oceans of my mind like still waters until came a wave that reminded me of a past lover.
Between attraction and memory the relationship must be closely linked. Often a dog's physical features can induce memories without the memorier even knowing it. It is like a smell from your childhood that brings back pleasant memories or horroring ghosts. But never have I met a woman with green skin, therefore memory of her and attraction felt I have not. However, let us not forget this the opportunity for a new memory and attraction for experience.
Regarding the fine judgment that is cast upon, it is never so much that there is something wrong with a lover of sex dolls as much as there is nothing right about a 12 | EEVEE
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married man. To open your heart into the attraction of the atypical takes a certain amount of deceptively defiant deviance. You have to be of manner and a maniac.
15
Denizens of Grand Searle, I assume by now patiently you have awaited the introduction of Sir Blackwood; the liar, the hypocrite and the cheat. The first of two encounters with Sir Blackwood came after the passage of three and a half months following the abduction of Eevee. A daily occurrence by now was intercourse with Eevee but unaware was I of the physical impressions left on his body until I inspected them on another dog. Individuals who commit a particular crime are far more qualified than the layman to diagnose that same crime.
Sick and unenthusiastic for a week, I brought Eevee to Sir Blackwood's office, who was a veterinarian, for inspection, but instead of learning of his ailment, something far more interesting happened that afternoon.
As I sat in the waiting room, Sir Blackwood's dog came out of the office and began to walk around me. Larger a dog than Eevee but as every bit attractive. When he was near enough to me, I began to pet him and massaged him all over his abdomen, and denizens of Grand Searle, after enough horsing around I discovered that he too was a victim of sexual abuse.
It was at this exact moment that Sir Blackwood exited his office to speak with me, and with such great suspiciousness in the figure of his form I understood that he too had made the same revelation about me that I had made about him only moments ago. And the moment occurring after, suspecting the figure of my own form, and then again the figure of his form, it became almost obvious that we both knew of the other's suspicions.
The knowledge of suspicions were all more than confirmed when after Sir Blackwood asked me of whom was the primary caregiver of Eevee, of which I noted was my nonexistent sister who loved canines more than humans. Shortly after I asked him the same question, of whom was the primary caregiver of his dog, of which he noted was more of a community dog but I surmised his answer was as baloney as mine.
That day after I became suspicious of everyone knowing of my “immoral sexual deviancy.” When someone asked to interact with Eevee as I walked him I made sure to limit the encounter. Days at the park were limited to a maximum of five children. I took every precaution for privacy from prying human eyes, but in the end the eyes of a camera were my demise.
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16
To make known the truth now I would like about a story, or more rather rumor, that has attached and plagued itself to my name. In the week ahead was coming up a three-day weekend, and having a spare sick day I planned to make it four and use this time to with Eevee go on holiday.
Against my better judgement I decided we should attend the Georgetown Dogs & Families Music Festival, but something happened which not I could foresee.
So Eevee and I hopped into my automobile and we made our way out of Grand Searle. Afternoon on the road was hot and dry with a horizon of wavy heat. Eevee was a dog who liked to stick his head out of the window to feel the breeze of the wind, so I gave him some sunglasses and allowed him to do so, and for a long time I thought it would make for a humorous photograph.
Indeed was the drive longer than I had expected and soon fell into sundown where we drove through a town that seemed to be in persistent evening. And if the time of day was like a season then this place was eternally fall.
That we were in Greenville I later learned after I stopped at a hotdog restaurant for nourishment. Asking for directions to a nearby motel, Eevee and I found refuge at the Rucker Inn.
What followed the moments before sunrise was one of one hundred late nights that Eevee and I shared together. The rain had begun to fall quietly just before one in the morning as we watched together a film about romance.
After sunrise we began making forth our preparations for the festivities. I had the unique idea to dress up Eevee in the vein of the fabulous Marilyn Monroe. Indeed, there were moments when Eevee became Eve, and it is, I believe, at times what he wanted internally; to shed his masculinity on separate ends.
I have known irony to be either tragic or humorous, and as Eevee and I drove toward North Boulevard and to the festival I would find out that often it is both, of for and by definition.
When we arrived we could hear the ever booming of the musical melodies as we approached the scene that smelled of countless foods. And denizens of Grand Searle, so hungry was I that I could have eaten a horse. There must have been hundreds of people bordering on one thousand and there were so many activities to portain. Many, many interesting places, but one of the more interesting locations was, and denizens of Grand Searle if you can imagine my enthusiasm as I write this and reform that memory in my mind, was a dog kissing booth.
14 | EEVEE
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I myself did not engage in the activities of osculation, but this is most assuredly where the rumor began.
As I watched the many mostly women and children come to kiss at the dogs in booths, my fixation on the matter gave me less attention to Eevee himself, who in my trance went missing until I heard a woman yelling at him for his invasive attempts at intercourse with another canine.
This happened once, and then it happened several times throughout the course of the afternoon as we browsed through the festival.
Within me began to develop a familiar feeling. That primal primordial feeling of unease concerning another person's sex interests. That awful affectitious feeling of distaste at the sight of another person's affections to yet another who is not you. Yes, jealousy; it is what I felt for the remainder of the day.
The security that day warned me that if Eevee did not cease his attempts, to the nearest exit would we be routed. This, coupled with the anxiety from envy, caused me to only for a moment recede into the woods to tie up Eevee for and to prevent his actions.
As that primal primordial feeling rose, I left Eevee and wandered further into the forest ruminating on the last time I had felt his penis. I must have been so aggravated that I lost track of time, for when I returned to where I had left Eevee, he was gone.
Leaving as I did the woods that afternoon I returned to the festival to find that Eevee had been “rescued” by a man and woman attending the celebration of canines and music.
When I went to retrieve him, I was spoken to with disgust, and a vicious rumor began that evening of my abandoning Eevee to pursue intercourse with a still unidentified woman whom I had met at the festival.
The rumor was described as followed: I met a woman, we decided to recede into the forest where I tied up Eevee, we left that area, engaged in sexual activity in a remote area and while Eevee lay in the baking Sun.
Hold your horses. Sex with that woman I certainly did not have. In fact I emphatically deny any involvement with any woman that day concerning any sexual matter! I want my name cleared of this investigation into my sex life. It is a tribulation so dire it has left me without recourse. I would never engage in such vile and repulsive activity! Denizens of Grand Searle, I speak only with these honest and candor words; with that woman I did not have sexual relations.
17
I believe word of my alleged actions circled back to Sir Blackwood and I surmise that it must have been on a surrounding day that he hired a private investigator to follow and 15 | EEVEE
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investigate me. You see, denizens of Grand Searle, “sodomy” is an unclean act but it is not an unclean word. The president of any power can slip it into their speech and the crowd would barely batter an eye. “Bitch,” on the other hand, is a clean adjective but not a clean word and cannot be said in the same speech. And so it has it that while prostitution and pornography and basically the general sale of the seductive female image is legal in our state and rampant in every area of it, I cannot so much as look at a dog in an obscene manner. To do so is to be cast aside by the community of dog lovers as an abomination.
And yet, personally, less have I done to harm the animal community than the average animal owner. Never have I had a taste of meat past the age of eleven as I did not enjoy it as a child. I am a vegan, and probably was this foundation set on the same grounds as the ones set for my attraction to dogs. (I have put the preceding sentence of my history as a vegan in bold underlined italics but I don't know if they will format it in that manner for publication. They hate me.)
On a snowy day in late February, Eevee and I were on the verge of intimate orgasm when suddenly with my erect penis I accidentally injured him. To the extent of the injury I was unaware, but it left Eevee with an unenthusiastic impress.
The following day, he seemed to be on the proccessation of returning to his normal self, but when made I my sexual advances at him he pawed at me to leave him alone and go away. On the third or fourth advance, Eevee became visibly annoyed and for the first time in our relationship he barked at me. It had actually been the first time I'd ever heard him bark at all.
The first two days without intercourse felt like an eternity. On the third I resorted to using my photographs of Eevee, where I dressed him up as Eve, as a stimulant for masturbatory purposes. Oh, Vee, peace I have forgotten, quiet evenings I have forgotten.
I looked to you for memories of the night, but how does one make up for a decade of lost kisses.
The duration of sexless nights was so great that when Eevee was finally up for copulation again, I had long the idea to produce video recordings of our matings in case this would happen again, I would have moving visuals to remind me of my excitement.
By the end, I had at least thirty home videos for consumption.
Surely there must be millions of individuals out there who have inducted photography and videography of their own sexual immorality to set them in the gamuts of immortality.
All the priests and little boys have refuge from the synagogue, but safety harms a boy's bum and it's a clog by father's log. A party of ten naked men twenty naked women and for each male two females, four lips surround the excited one in a scene with cherry details. “I love my wife, I really do, but I want to see the two of you in intimate 16 | EEVEE
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commission,” said one man to another one while the wife lay on the bed in receiving position. Oh what gets me going is a woman in a diaper, and how I lay the claim to be the one who will wipe her. Culty culty culty men and their mass of one hundred wives, and each day two of these women will give birth to culty lives. When a partner is not available or simply non-existent, find a toy that pleasures thee and is not quite so resistant.
Denizens of Grand Searle, it is in all of us, for we are all animals of and in the animal kingdom, where taboo feeds on the last of our desires.
18
There is a nightmare I've had every few nights in this prison since the day they've taken Eevee from me. Do you know what happens? At first I will find myself walking on the edges of a tower in the night. I must press my body back against the wall as to not fall off into a fatal fall, and at the same time, must move myself toward a window in the wall.
There is a gust of wind that night that nearly takes me over the edge exactly three times. The fourth gust however does take me over as I reach for the window, and everytime I will fall over and land onto a roof down below.
One of two things tend to happen after I have landed on the roof; I will either, a, arise and the dream ends, or, b, blackout, and then wake up inside the dream on the same roof I had landed at which point the dream becomes a nightmare.
On the occasion of “b,” after I've picked myself up I become aware that my right arm is broken and the bone has splintered into an unhealthy angle. There is a window on the roof to which I walk to, and climbing through, there is an abundance of yellow light and a very noticeable row of paintings on the wall.
There are six paintings lined up, each one the face of a woman's, but the collection was to show the evolution of the woman's eyebrow from the decades of the 1920s through the 1970s.
I was born in 1931, the decade of eyebrows I found most attractive were the 1940s.
My mother would have been forty-two by then, who was my main introduction to the female variety. Denizen of Grand Searle, I promise you can trace your attraction back to a memory; the memory responsible for your carnal design.
Suddenly, in the nightmare, a door is opened and two people walk through it. The first was a woman, a rather small-breasted affair, and the second, a man of great proportions. He restrained me with a gentle curiosity, but he was nevertheless a brute.
They walked me through the household which eventually I gathered was a castle of some sort. All throughout the hallways there were paintings in the same vein as the ones 17 | EEVEE
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of eyebrows I had seen just earlier, but each of them detailed a different section of the female anatomy; the style of hair, the style of shaved genitals, the style of nails.
When we reached a certain floor I could hear the beginnings of a prehistoric thunderstorm, and once we reached the room they had intended, there was nothing to hear but the loud moans of women and denimic crashings of thunder.
The man sat me on a table and then forced restraints on my head, my arms, my torso and my legs. While doing this, the small-breasted woman began undressing, taking off her long skirt, then off her silky undergarments. She made her way to me and then on top of me and inserted my unexcited penis into her unexcited vagina and then began thrusting back and forth. When the man saw that I had remained unexcited, he administered a dose of something blue into my bloodstream which then made me feign excitement, and from this came an excited woman who thrusted back and forth more powerfully than before and moaned and convulsed as if possessed by an unknown but immortal desire.
This was done to me every twelve hours until it was only the body of a woman who could excite me. I was raped repeatedly, as were all the other impure men; the homosexuals, the pedophiles, et cetera; every twelve hours until I was corrected.
I cannot be certain how many months of this I endured, but I was released finally when they brought a dog into the room and my penis felt no excitement. When I leave the castle, and when I turn around to look at its name, I see that it has the same name as the prison I am currently held in, and then I wake up.
I have been reformed. I am no longer sinful. The demon within me has been cast out, and my depraved dreams have died with the old Grand Searle.
19
At my trial I learned from Sir Blackwood's testimony that I was being followed by a private investigator whom he had hired shortly after my visit to his office. The investigator, whose name is Harrison O'Conly and who works for O'Con Investigations, and whose evidence was confidently shown to the court and to the jury, also testified against me and spoke in clean language of my unclean acts.
The main evidence presented were unfortunately my own creations; my videography and my photography. The thirty or some home videos I had produced and the countless photos of Eevee I had used for inspiration. Only a small percentage of the evidence were actual photographs from the investigator, and I try my best to assume on which night he must have broken into my home to steal my creations.
One of the few witnesses in my defense was a psychologist, or perhaps a psychiatrist, who spoke of Absalom's history and his lovemap. In Raymond Johnson Sr.'s testimony he 18 | EEVEE
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suggested there was a section of my brain that was undeveloped or underdeveloped and its development may have been hindered early in my youth. He theorized that what may have hindered its development was a benign cancer growth which caused my brain to function uniquely in comparison to that of a standard healthy brain. Bullocks. The greatest of attractions, Mr. Psychoanalyst, are the ones you cannot explain.
Though the trial did not last too long, the great amount of technicalities and presentations gave me time to think. At one point I wondered if there was a country somewhere in the world which allowed marriage between man and animal.
I was surprised to see nothing of the Gettes, perhaps by now they had moved out of the big town of Grand Searle. Or perhaps they wanted nothing to do with the ordeal.
The one single compliment told about me came at the end of the trial, during my sentencing. The presiding judge noted, and denizens of Grand Searle this came straight from the horse's mouth, “He is a creature by design, but for all of his perversion, there is something intrinsically human about him.” He then commuted the sentence of death given by the jury to exile.
Then came the infamous “perp” walk. They steered me out of the court room in restraints as a charged mob unbecoming cheered boos directly at me. A headline on a news station named me “Sir Cananabanine” of Grand Searle and no other interpretation of my identity has ever approached that.
I did see a photograph of Eevee shortly after. He has been given to a new family. I hope they will love him as much as I do. But I have loved Eevee in ways the moderate will never be able to. A forbidden love not raised on promises but raised on the mysteries of taboo.
Oh, Eevee, where was the light of your smile and the gentle persuasion of your laugh when I walked through that storm alone, ruminating in that exhaustive darkness. My sexual lust for you came from the aching heart that witnessed the cruelty done to animals.
And when you mix love and hate, that love is more potent than just love alone, and regrettably, that is my lovemap.
20
I hope I have shocked and offended the denizens of Grand Searle. Particularly the animal lovers, more specifically the dog owners, and definitely every person who says all life is precious but will in the same breath swat a bothersome fly on their neck.
I hope I have confused and disgusted the very moral core of each resident. Why is it that a man who shoots another man in the back is less disgusting and less repulsive than a man who has sex with dogs? I ask, who would you rather have dinner with? A murder 19 | EEVEE
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can be pardoned but sodomy forever stains. Yet if you were forced to do one or the other you could never kill another person.
Be that as it may, I have been convicted of crime by perversion, and in such I have been thrown into isolation and will soon enter the island of the exiles. But I feel I have adequately spoken for the man who loves his dog. For the girl who loves her teddy bear.
For all who love their unfathomable.
A number of people have deemed “sexually deviant” people as unhealthy, unhappy, unfit for society. But I have seen Grand Searle and I see no one who is “fit” for society.
And you want to tell me something is wrong with me? No. You can bring me down, but please do not bring yourself up. I need not your pity nor your judgment. I must live with my actions for the rest of my life. A man my age, and the one great love of his life was a dog stolen by his vice.
In writing this testament I feel I have regained what little freedom one could find in capture. I feel I have learned to become my predicament. If one is thrown into the jungle, one must learn to become the jungle. If one is thrown to the dogs, one must become the dog. You want to throw me into exile? Fine. I am exile. And the only mortal pain I will ever feel in exile will come from thoughts of Eevee.
♦♦♦
Published 1981, property of Grand Searle Tribune – All Rights Reserved A Manisso Reprint (Unabridged)
G.S. Global Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Cotitu...
Copyright © 1981 by Grand Searle Tribune
EEVEE was originally published by G.S. Global Publications, Inc. This new Manisso edition is issued at 34 {through arrangement with the U.S. publisher, Octagon Reading International}.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof.
U.S. PRINTING HISTORY
20 | EEVEE
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Octagon Reading International edition published August 1981
First Printing, June 1981
Seventeenth Printing, July 1982
First MANISSO Printing, December 1982
Second MANISSO Printing, December 1982
All names, characters and events in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real persons which may seem to exist is purely coincidental.
MANISSO BOOKS are published by SKOKIE WORLD LIBRARY
5215 Oakton Street, Skokie, Illinois 60077
Printed in the United States of America
♦♦♦
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Chapter 82
“GIRLS IN THE POOL”
2:3:9:82
A dream and nostalgia probably find refuge in the same part of the brain, or at the very least take the same nerves home. Once, and not too long ago, I had a distant dream of Lynne and a nostalgic romantic tragedy.
In the dream, I had been standing in an aisle in a grocery store, reading a label of an item I planned to purchase. Suddenly a woman walked near to me and went to grab the same type of product I had grabbed a moment earlier, and as I moved away to make room for her our eyes met as she began to thank me.
They were eyes I had not seen for at least forty years. While I do not know what played the identifier in me for her, I do know that for myself, I was able to identify her because her eyes were always something that stood out to me; a ring of brown leaves in autumn where one yellow leaf was misplaced.
She immediately recognized me and it seemed as if she had seen a ghost. She was overwhelmed and dropped what she had been holding. Personally, the way she covered her mouth and backed away made me feel as if she herself would drop entirely, but she never did. Something held her upright.
And so the conversation we had after itself seemed to be held upright, and after we confirmed ourselves we talked a bit more, and finally she told me that she had only lived a few blocks away and wondered if I would like to talk more at her home.
When I walked into her apartment, I saw that she, like myself, had lived alone. We must have both been in our seventies living quiet lives. For some reason, I never asked her about David or Sarah, two people I would have known about.
I went and sat in her living room as she excused herself for a moment to go into the kitchen as she had something going on the stove. When she returned to sit across from me at the table, an alarm suddenly went off, and it must have been kismet because a certain song began to play. It was a song we both used to sing to eachother when we were much younger. We both looked at eachother and in between smiles and laughs was that old song we shared together. When it finally ended, I saw from those same autumn eyes that she had began to cry a few tears. I asked her what was wrong, and she simply sighed, then began speaking.
“The day I left. The last time I saw you. I was heartbroken because I felt like I had asked you one final time to let me in but you refused. I was a mess. I was broken. My husband had just beaten me. I had no where else to go. I came to you and asked if you would stay with me, I just needed a place to feel safe. But you said no and I couldn't handle it. So I left and went to my mother's hoping he wouldn't find me there. After a 24 | “GIRLS IN THE POOL”
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week I came back. I looked for you but you weren't there. I had no way of finding out where you went. After a year, I realized that you were out of my life for good and I guess I accepted it and tried to move on. There was a man I was engaged to. He was a real estate agent. But I never married him and it ended badly. After that I went and lived in Australia for many years where so much happened to me. I learned so much about myself but I also learned a lot of things in general. It's where I learned about visual arts which is what I do now. You know, things like graphic design and photography. I'm sure you noticed it all when you walked in here. After that, I think I pretty much spent my life alone. I mean I was around people, but you know how it goes. One of the scariest moments of my life came when I was around fifty. The doctors told me that my cancer had returned in my other foot and that I would lose it just like I lost my other. I did not want to go through that again, and the thought of not being able to move around on my own terrified me. But I don't know what happened, and I was spared that. They didn't have to amputate and they gave me medicine. After that I came home and moved around a lot in this state. My mother got sick so I moved back here specifically to be closer to her in her final years... So, yeah. That's been my life, not much and I know I left out a lot of things, but I'm still here,” she laughed.
“Well, Lynne, your life has been more interesting than mine. A couple days after you left, I left as well, which is why you didn't find me there. I never left the city but I moved around in it a lot. And actually, like you, I learned something new in my middle years.
I've spent a lot of my time writing in the second half of my life, and for a long time the only reason I ever had to leave home was to eat or do research.”
I saw in her face that she expected more, but I was done talking. “I see you still don't like to talk much about yourself,” she joked, “but I always loved that about you, that you don't talk a lot.”
She excused herself to check on the food she was cooking then promptly returned.
She then began speaking again.
“I wanted to be with you so badly. To this very day, there wasn't a month that went by since that day when I didn't have at least a fleeting thought of you, if not some deep thought that consumed me for hours. I wanted to find you, and I looked so hard, but there was nothing left of you. It was like you vanished and no one knew who you were.”
“I looked for you, too. I found a listing for your name, but every time I called the number there was never an answer.” “Do you remember it?” “I don't, it was many years ago. But I called it at least once a month for a couple years.” Lynne now seemed like she wanted to cry again, but she was able to hold back the emotion within autumn eyes. “I called it so often because I wanted to be with you too, Lynne. There have been so many late nights that I've stayed up just thinking about you. Thinking about what may have 25 | “GIRLS IN THE POOL”
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happened to you. Wondering if you were still alive.”
Again she expected more but I had nothing more to say. After a brief pause, she said before she got up again to go to the kitchen, “Well, I am still alive. And so are you.”
When she returned, she came with two plates of food and sat only one of them on the table, which was on her side. She then walked toward mine and asked, “Will you stay with me a little while longer?” After I said yes, she sat down my plate of food.
As music played, we discussed many things, and all throughout my nostalgic mind I dreamed of the few years we had left to be together.
I picked up my phone and called Lynne's number. She took so long to answer it that I was just about to hang up and go next door, but on the final ring she finally answered.
“I'm here, almost ready, I'll meet you downstairs,” she told me. I hung up and went downstairs where very soon after I saw her.
We walked in the cold to Chase Foods to buy groceries and soon I found myself in an aisle with several types of teas. I looked through some of them but Lynne suddenly came before me and reached out for a certain flavor. “We should try this one,” she said.
At some point I left her and went to grab a few things I needed, but when I went to look for her she was gone. I found her again, after a few minutes, on the other side of an aisle. She pushed the cart towards me and we began walking toward eachother with confused looks on our faces, and when she got to me she said she had been looking for me all over the store.
I threw what I needed into the cart and we went through what we were going to buy, and in doing so we noticed that we were standing right in front an assortment of candles.
They were flavored just like the teas and before I could say anything Lynne had already grabbed a few of them and placed them in the cart.
By the time we got back outside the Sun was setting and the night was coming early.
We took the groceries out of the cart and carried them back home and into her apartment.
Immediately she began preparations for cooking and immediately I went through the bags to find the items I had needed. I brought them to my apartment and then returned back to hers and spent a lot of time on the computer searching for something we could watch later. When I yelled and asked her if she would like to watch a drama concerning the rise and fall of a European empire, she agreed.
After night had completely settled and rolled in, the lights had been turned off, the candles lit, the food complete, and so we ate and drank tea while we watched the film.
About thirty minutes into the movie, however, Lynne had to take a phone call which lasted quite a long time.
When she returned, she found me sitting on the couch. Instead of coming toward me she went toward her bedroom and then came back out with a blanket. I laid out to the 26 | “GIRLS IN THE POOL”
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back of the couch and as she fell onto the couch herself she threw the blanket up into the air to land on the both of us. I placed my arm around her and soon she took it, held it, and brought it to her chest to make herself comfortable.
I do not use this word often, but at that moment we were both very cozy. The room was lit to a relaxing degree by the candles, the film spoke of wonderful things, and there was a warmness that our bodies shared underneath the soft blanket. Some of it came from how she would rub her foot with mine and then I would rub back, some of it came from how we would every once in a while squeeze the other's hand, but most of it came in just being together. If we were apart, there would be two worlds, but we were together and we had created a world of our own in a small space.
When the film was over, I felt Lynne's body slide along mine when she turned to give me a kiss. After the kiss, she simply looked into my eyes. And I saw it again. A ring of brown leaves in autumn where one yellow leaf was misplaced.
Lynne was a soul I had known before. First I knew her in the tangible nature of reality. Then in the longing of photographs. Then in the confusion of my dreams. Then, finally, she remained only as a specter in my memories.
Once she turned back around toward the television, it left me to wonder on all the immortal things there are left to discover in the world we've made together. And, indeed, I dreamed of the many years we would have to be together.
This diary belongs to Sierra Pryce.
May
23 rd , 1951
I can't catch a break on Warrick street. All the white girls think I'm a half-breed and all the black girls think that I think that I'm better than them. Why am I to blame that my mother wanted dark meat? I just want to be able to make my money the same way they do. I just don't know how to when whenever I stand on a corner with the black girls, they beat the shit out of me, and when I stand on a corner with the white girls, they run me off and spread rumors about me. I can't make money if I don't look pretty and I definitely can't make money if people think I'm diseased. Whatever. I guess I'll be working fulltime at the pool. The men there are weird and pay less, but I can actually make a dime there.
More than I can make on Warrick anyway. I don't mind being paid less. I guess the girls there are cheaper because they are basically the outcasts. Something is wrong with all of them. Too fat, too ugly, too diseased, missing body parts, too old, too young, too bruised, too angry, too whatever you can think of to not make an honest cut. And me? Well I guess I'm too black and too white.
27 | “GIRLS IN THE POOL”
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This diary belongs to Audrey Li.
A
ugust 8 th , 1968
I think I met my daddy today. I was walking on Pool street and a man came up to me and told me I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in two lifetimes. He gave me his business card and told me that if I called him up I would get everything I ever wanted. The way he was dressed, his car, the quality of his business card, I mean this may be a real opportunity for me to become something. His card says he deals in beauty competition, but I'm not sure what that actually means. I'll have to call him up and ask him. But what could beauty competition mean? The obvious thing would be a bunch of girls competing against each other to see who's the prettiest, but his card says “beauty competitions” and not “pretty competitions.” I've always thought I was pretty, more pretty than the average girl, but I know that I am not as smart as some of them. But I mean if he saw something in me then maybe I can get by without needing to be smart.
This diary belongs to Jackie Layke.
O
ctober 30 th , 1973
I am not a has-been. I have made more money and done more for this industry than anyone before me. I'm a fucking legend. A fucking living legend. No one else has lived the life I've lived. The parties, the drugs, the sex, I am the most exciting person walking this Earth RIGHT NOW. I don't care what the critics have to say or what they think they know about what they're saying about me. As far as I know, anyone who isn't from The Pool knows nothing. And whose pictures are plastered all over London? Mine. Whose name do people call when they need to sell their products? Mine. Whose number is the first called when someone wants to be seen and noticed? Mine. And you know what?
This world is boring without me!
This diary belongs to Kiana Davidson.
Mar
ch 14 th , 1985
I've officially been working at “The Pool” for one month today. The tips are good and I always liked dancing. I never had any problems being naked in front of people. I actually think a part of me likes the attention in some strange weird way. One of the other girls who used to work here schooled me a little bit on the history of this area and Pool street itself. Apparently there was a prostitute named Mixie who used to work Pool street in the early fifties, and her death sparked an outraged in the skin industry and called for 28 | “GIRLS IN THE POOL”
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changes within it. I can't speak for the fifties, or the sixties or seventies, but I know that right now, in the mid-eighties, working girls are still lower than dogs.
This diary belongs to Roxana Nights.
J une 2 nd
, 1992
I'm finally at a point in my career where I'm making decent films. Today I shot the final scene of “The Transvirgin II” at Pool Studios and I am completely satisfied with the end result. I think it will be instantly well-received and maybe one day be considered a classic. The gist of it is redemption through sex. The main female character had lost her virginity after being raped when she was young, and when you first meet her she is older and working as a maid at a motel. She meets a powerful man who stays there for one night, falls in love with him and fucks him. The poetic part about this film is that after she fucks him, she feels clean of her past. It's almost like a salvation fuck. She is literally wearing new clothes the next morning when she quits her job at the motel and walks into the city. This may sound like a fantasy for the girls, but porn is always a fantasy for the boys. Every man has a desire for the damaged damsel in distress.
This diary belongs to Valentina Flores.
Se
ptember 16 th , 2009
I think I've nailed down the process of camming. I'm really excited for what this could mean for me because if this works out it means I will finally be my own boss. This could literally cause a revolution in the skin industry if women are allowed the power to direct their own content and be be paid appropriately for their hard work. I tried working at the pool but there is some shady stuff going on there and they pay the girls like shit. It's only a matter of time before the police find out what's going on in that building anyway.
I'm glad I was able to get out. Here's to the future of floral_valentine.
This diary belongs to Ava Walsh.
A
pril 4 th
I just completed my first date as an escort. Men are so dumb and nobody knows that appearances are all deception better than women. I guess that's why they hire me to go with them to places. They have to look presentable, and a man without a woman on his arm is less presentable than one with. The money isn't bad, but it could be better. Suffice it to say that these men all have money, so maybe I can get some of them to buy me 29 | “GIRLS IN THE POOL”
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things. They wouldn't know what hit them. Shake a little ass and the world is yours. And I don't mean that in any figurative or metaphorical way, it literally is the way men and the world work. Once you realize that, neither are really that complicated. The only thing that's complicated in this world is money. If you follow the pimps, you get whores and johns, but if you follow the money, you don't know where you'll end up.
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Chapter 83
HORROTICA ROMANTICA
2:3:9:83
THE yearly payment for my storage unit was due and suddenly I found myself paying the man. At the front office I noticed a series of boxes sitting on chairs, and I joked with the man on who he had evicted. He looked at me with a question in his mind, and then he asked, “Do you know any women petite in size?” I said yes. He went over to the boxes and searched for one in particular, then brought it over to show me what was in side. It was a collection of women's erotic clothing.
He later explained to me that the collection belonged to a pornstar from the nineties.
He assured me that all the clothes were clean and offered them to me for free as I was a longtime customer and they were going to be thrown away anyway. I thought about it, then thought about Lynne, and then said that I would take them. So for a while I rode on a bus carrying a box that contained sensitive materials.
As I approached home, the gravity of what was a light box became heavier and heavier in my arms, and in front of the apartment building door I saw a kid standing. A chubby kid in glasses, and I figured he must have been the son of Charles F. Kane.
“Hey, can you give me a hand?,” I asked when I got to him. First he looked at me strangely, and second he looked at his hands even more strangely. I could have sworn that at one moment he literally tried to pull off one of his hands. In my confusion, I said
“I mean can you open the door for me,” and thirdly he promptly opened the door in my aid. What a strange kid...
I got inside my apartment and placed the box down near the door, and I just couldn't think of anything else other than the fact that the kid tried to pull off one of his hands.
Did he take what I said literally?
In my estimation I have learned that emotion disrupts logic. This gives weight to the idea that the brain is a “proportional” system, meaning emotion and logic cannot run at one hundred percent simultaneously, instead, for example, your brain might run sixty percent emotional and forty percent logical at any given moment. The amount of logicality is proportional to the amount of emotionality.
I've tried to think of systems which are not proportional, and I suppose the wild, where animals feed on eachother and must survive. Here, it is all emotion and all logic, and the combination of the two have created something called “instinct.” This leads me to believe that when two parts of a system can work at one hundred percent simultaneously, indicating an inproportionate system, the fusion creates a dynamic concept in the same way you would receive a mixed child if two races of people had sex. That is to say, 31 | HORROTICA ROMANTICA
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instinct is the love child of emotion and logic.
J une 11 th , 1992
Today is the first shoot of “La Mansina Photographia” (this is a working title, they may change the name to “The Photographia of Francoise”). I've read the entire screenplay twice and I love it. It's really a story about vulnerability and sympathy. A woman named Francoise wakes up in what appears to be something of a haunted mansion and must find her way out. Along the way, there are “puzzles” or rather tasks she must commit to reach her goal in escaping. In the haunted mansion, however, there is a sort of male character who is mysterious and a stalker, and each time he appears she is terrified. Every time she completes one of the tasks, he appears and takes a photo of her when she is sexually vulnerable. For example, one of the tasks she must complete to open a door is to provide breast milk into a container. As she squeezes her tits, the man suddenly appears and takes a photo of her. Other tasks she completes is providing saliva for a phallic item, moaning into a recorder to open a chest, urinating into a cup to receive a special item, and one of my favorites is when she must wear a particularly seductive outfit and be scanned wearing it to open one of the final doors. Whenever she does any of these things, the stalker appears and snaps a photograph of her in a vulnerable state. Each time he appears, he seems more evil than before, until finally toward the end she is able to trick and trap him into one of his own traps. When she finally sees his face and sees how vulnerable he himself is in his trap, she pities him and begins to develop a sense of sympathy for him.
She cannot free him from the trap without physically touching him, and after they touch there is a spark that evolves into romance and they have sex, which of course is the climax. In the end, even though she is free to leave the haunted mansion, she decides to stay with him. I've watched a lot of porn and I feel like the director of this film is trying to innovate the genre of porn. Of the way porn is filmed in general. Which is the same thing I want to do with my career. Just because I get naked and have sex in every one of my movies doesn't mean I am just a whore or a pornstar. I want to make films. Not movies. But still, everyday I battle with the demon of a question. Am I an artist or just a pornstar?
May
25 th , 1951
Word on the street is that one of those dark saints has been riding around the pool looking for some girls to make fetish porno movies. I wish I was pretty enough to be in a 32 | HORROTICA ROMANTICA
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movie. But to be honest I don't even know if being mixed counts as a fetish. Plus since I'm only 19 I'm probably too young to be in one. Oh well. I haven't seen Claudia around for a couple days so I bet she got picked up to do an amputee scene or something. Lucky her. Anyway, yesterday I had one of the weirdest Hamiltons. Literally, all he wanted to do was take pictures. At first I said no, but when he upped the price that loosened me a little. He must have taken at least 60 pictures and paid a dollar for each of them. Easiest money I've ever made in my life. I wouldn't mind if he came around again actually. The weird thing is that only a few of them were full nudes, the rest I basically had my clothes on. Different poses but none that were too invasive. I think what he liked most was the shape of my body. Like I reminded him of someone he used to know a long time ago.
Whenever I get inside my head and think about family or people I used to know, I always end up thinking about the gay half-brother I have somewhere out there. Anyway, yeah, not a single shot of my vagina, but there were shots of me fully naked. I wonder if he is going to make copies and start selling them. I hope not. I took those photos thinking they were for his entertainment only. The shot he took the most of were my boobs hanging on the top of my bra. He specifically wanted it from the side so you could see their fullness.
He asked me to touch myself to get my nipples hard, but we moved on to the next shot before I could show him what they looked like when they were fully hard. That experience was different. After the photo shoot I was back on Pool street and ten minutes later I entered a nice car and sucked off a man who was in a wheelchair. He asked me to wear his wife's headscarf as I did it. I understand the world's full of strange men who have strange fantasies, and trust me, London's got its share.
To Lynne's apartment I went after dusk. When I got in I called for her but got no answer. I then went and looked around in the apartment and couldn't find her. After a minute or two I saw her enter through the front door and into the kitchen to wash her hands. “I was throwing out the garbage,” she told me.
When she walked past me I noticed her legs and the sport leggings she was sporting.
And on the table I also noticed a bag of Gotz Hotz, which I assume must be Dave's because he loves them. “Y'all gots hots?,” I asked her. “Yeah, they're Dave's.” “You know those things are illegal in seven states right?” “I know, and I will never try them.” I looked at her and then said “I dare you to try just one.” She turned around and looked at me as if I had lost my damn mind. Then with each of her expressions she loosened until she decided to take on the dare. And I watched her as she took one of the pieces of candies out of the bag and into her mouth.
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and drinking milk straight from the gallon. It got so bad that she began choking and coughing, sometimes both at the same time. It was an unpleasant sight to say the least. I almost felt bad, so when she began to cool down I said “Okay, my turn.”
But she looked up, waved her finger at me, and then said “Uh-uh, no-no.” She collected her breath as she used the couch for support, “I want a truth from you,” she smiled as if she had planned it all along. “Truth?,” I asked. “Yes, you started a truth or dare game and I want a truth.” I was confused. “If we were playing truth or dare, wouldn't I decide if I want to give you a truth or if I wanted to do a dare?” “That's one way to play it, but you're in my apartment and the rules are different here,” she smiled once again as if she had planned it all along. “Okay, fine, ask your question?” She tapped her chin and looked ceilingward as if she had a million questions to choose from.
“If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?,” she asked delicately. Of course this was not a delicate question, and for a minute I walked through a mine-field.
“Okay,” I sighed, “don't kill me for saying this, but if I could change only one thing, I would change your last name to my last name.” She squinted at me from across the room and nodded her head subtly, “Good answer.” “I know,” I laughed.
“Alright, I want a truth.” “What truth is that?” “What made you so particular about me?” “Oh! This one is easy. Your butt.” Before I could reply she stopped me and said
“No no, I'm only just half joking,” she laughed, “what made me so particular about you is something that goes way back to when we first met, actually. Wait no, the second time we met. I was gardening in the front of the building and you walked out and we talked a little bit. And then sometime into the conversation you stared at me in the weirdest way and I don't even think you knew you were doing it. It was strange, but it wasn't unsettling.
In some way it made me feel noticed, like I exist. So to answer your question I am particular about you for many, many reasons, but the first reason is because you have a way of staring strangely into space and when I look at you when you're doing that it makes things feel deeper in a way.”
“I see,” I said, “your turn.” “Okay, I'm going to change things up and go with a dare.”
I gulped. “Every night the neighbor upstairs, specifically in the room above my bedroom, at like one a.m., I swear every night he starts rolling chairs or drawers up there. I don't know what it is but it's loud and it's something that rolls and it keeps me up at night. So I dare you to go tell him about that please?” I really didn't want to have to do that, but as I was thinking she walked up to me and kissed me on my cheek and then looked at me in the cutest way.
“Hi, I live under you. I don't mean to be a bother but every night around midnight I think you are moving things around” I intentionally began looking confused “that roll and 34 | HORROTICA ROMANTICA
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on the wood floor it's really loud and it wakes up my daughter.” “At what time did you say?,” he asked. “At one?,” I asked unconvincingly. “And you said it sounds like I'm rolling things around?,” he asked. “Yes?,” again I asked without conviction.
“I understand, I'll lay down some carpet so it doesn't make the rolling sound,” he assured me. I waited a moment, then asked, “What are you rolling?” He looked at me as if I was crossing a line. “...Chairs.” I gave him one last look and then thanked him for understanding.
“Mr. Kane said he would lay down some carpet so it doesn't make anymore noise.”
“You know his name?,” Lynne asked. “Yeah, he introduced himself to me after the blizzard when we were all shoveling.” “Ah, maybe I'll get some sleep now. Your turn,”
she kissed my cheek again, then went to the other side of the bed to take something from a drawer. As she sat on the edge of the bed and searched through the drawer, I thought of my turn.
“I want a truth. What is a fantasy of yours that you want no one else to ever ever know about?” She slowly lifted her head from out of the drawer which contained
“Vadean Waterfall” and looked at me with peculiar eyes. After a while she told me she would have to think about it because she had more than one. And after that while she finally told me of one of those fantasies.
“I've always fantasized about nursing a man,” she says. “What do you mean? Like breastfeeding a man as if he were a baby?,” I asked.
A look of embarrassment clouded over Lynne's expression as she went head into the bed and buried her face into the pillow. What I believed to be the word “yes” came out muffled from the pillow. “Okay, I need at least one or two details because there are always things specific for any fantasy,” I said. A moment passed and soon she lifted her lower body onto the bed, and then finally said “I ima???? ???dling his h??d ??? ever? ?n?
e in a wh??e ??? c???ing ?? c?????ng on ?y ??l?,” she pressed her face even harder into the pillow. “Huh?,” I asked. She released some of the pressure off of the pillow and began again, “I imagine cradling his head and every once in a while him choking or coughing on my milk.”
I thought about it for a short while. Imagined it full. “I have to ask, do you burp him afterwards?” With her face still in the pillow she responded, “I've actually never thought about that, but now I will,” she laughed.
I slid onto the bed until I was right next to her and put my head next to hers, and sliding my hand up and down her back, I said “Hey mommy, I'm hungry.” She finally lifted her face from off the pillow and smiled, then began laughing, “Aww baby.” She placed her hand around my neck and pulled me in closer as I fit perfectly into the shape 35 | HORROTICA ROMANTICA
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of her and rested my head on her chest. “I wish I could feed you, but I don't have anything baby,” she finished. “That's alright,” I said, “you're still the best.”
As we laid there she stated that she wanted a truth. I asked her what truth. “It's two parts,” she warned. “I'll allow it.” “Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how attractive is my face? And also on a scale of one to ten, how attractive is my body?,” she asked.
Another “mine” question and I thought about how to answer it as the clock read ten. I gave it a good thought and finally told her the truth. “It is not possible to answer this question objectively because I know you. I can answer it subjectively, but the only way I could answer it with objectivity is if you were a stranger.” “Elaborate.” “Alright, the answer is ten for both, but this number is not just a representation of how physically attracted I am to you, it is also a representation of the colossal vitality of my illusion of you. You are a dream that I am adding to all the time, decking it out with every colorful flower that drifts my way, and no amount of fire or freshness can challenge what I have stored up in my ghostly heart for you.”
She said nothing for a moment, but soon began, “I don't really know what that means, but you're good at this game... That's for sure,” she declared.
“I have a dare for you,” I told her. “What's that?” “I dare you to give me a lap dance.”
“Now?” “Yeah.” She hesitated, then as she got off the bed she said “Go get a chair.”
When I returned with the chair I placed it in an open area in the bedroom and saw her standing a few feet away in the corner. The moment I sat down she crossed her arms and stared at me impatiently. “What?” “I need music genius.”
I flipped through a number of songs until finally she affirmed one. I raised the volume to its maximum level and she began to move. She rubbed and hipped and thighed and with every moment she made a movement toward me, sliding her hand along the wall and then along her leggings to remove them completely. When they were off she flinged them across the room to which they landed on the top of a lamp, and the sheer momentum of the leggings tilted the top of the thin lamp and it tumbled onto the tan floor. “Oops,” said Lynne, but she only kept on dancing.
When she got to me, she sat facing toward me on my lap and looked directly into me.
“Hi daddy, I missed you,” she smiled, and began turning while on me so I could see her backside. For a moment, I saw how nice her bum looked in those lacy light-blue boyshorts. And before I knew it, she was facing me again. She hipped again, moving her waist in circles on my lap, and when I went to touch her breasts she suddenly slapped my hand away. She waved her finger at me, then slowly stood up in front of me. And again slowly she took my hand onto hers, turned around, and placed my hand on the bare part of her bum.
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“I want a dare,” she said. And with my hand still warm on her butt, I said “Okay.” “I want you to literally kiss my ass,” she said. I laughed a little inside, then slid my hand off of her and placed it on my knee.
After she leaned forward just a bit, I began to lean forward myself. I knew in my heart and in my mind that this was going to be a moment she would brag about for two lifetimes. Something she would hold over me whenever she felt the need to. I could see the future conversations playing in my head already. One of them went like this: “Hey Lynne you're an idiot.” “Hey Spook at least I don't kiss ass.” Here's another: “Hey Lynne remember when you slipped on black ice?” “Hey Spook remember when you kissed my ass?” And yet I did it anyway. I literally kissed her ass. The future now had this moment in every variation.
As my lips came off of her I could hear her giggle. Then I could see her begin to walk toward her leggings. “Wait, I've got another dare.” She turned around and waited for me to continue.
“I dare you to go out to the second floor, the way you are dressed now, and ding dong ditch.” “I have to go out there in my panties, knock on someone's door, and then run?”
“Yes.” “No fucking way am I doing that. What if someone sees me?” “That's the point of the dare.”
After some convincing, I found myself watching Lynne as she exited the apartment and made her way to the neighboring apartment in nothing but a shirt and boyshorts. She walked quite quickly, girlishly indeed, and soon I heard a knock and soon I saw her run back for our apartment door. But suddenly I closed the door on her and in her caused a rush of panic.
She began banging on the door, begging me to let her in. I timed in my mind the average time it took people to answer their doors, and she was lucky indeed that I let her back in before anyone answered that door. When she was back inside her quarter she began slapping my chest, “What's wrong with you!? This game is over, I'm not playing with you anymore.” I could only laugh. “That's fine, it was your turn anyway so I don't care.”
Of course that statement caused her to say “Wait a minute, since you started the game, it's only fair that I end it.” I agreed on one final truth or dare, and she told me that it would be a dare.
“I dare you to,” she drew it out to increase the suspense, “...I dare you to come to bed with me for the night.” I looked at her suspiciously, “That's it?” She walked up to me, circled around me, then hugged me from behind, directing me to her bedroom and then onto the bed where we laid.
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For a moment I thought about her final dare. “I dare you to come to bed with me,” I think to myself. Of all the daring dreams she must have had in her head... What was so daring about that? What was so horrifying about it? It seems to be something more romantic, but I suppose falling asleep with someone under flowery covers brings the invitation of sharing dreams.
At one I was still half awake, and I assumed Lynne had fully fallen asleep until she began to mutter a few words. “Do you hear that?,” she asked me. “I don't hear anything,”
I answered. “You're my hero.” “What did I do?” “No rolling.”
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Chapter 84
SEVEN STICKS
2:3:9:84
A
ugust 12 th , 1968
I called him up a couple days ago and we spoke more about his business. The next day he had a car come and pick me up and drop me off at his office. For someone reason he called it “The Pool.” I asked why he called it that, and he said it was more a nickname for the area his office was located in. He kept telling me about how this place looked nice now, but a decade before it was a wasteland of abandonment and a few years before that a breeding ground for prostitutes and their customers. I didn't really care, I just wanted to get started with my career. Some details I learned about was that his business was basically beauty pageants and I almost screamed. This is so dearly what I was hoping for!
I left with a packet of information and he told me that he would be in contact, and that also I would be meeting the man who would pay for everything. My training, my look, my everything! It would be so awesome to maybe represent England some day in a great big event. I just hope my Asian heritage and upbringing doesn't interfere in any chance I have of becoming a true beauty queen. I wonder what my father would think about all of this. “Auddy, what did you study cosmetology for? Every couple years it's something new.” That would actually be a tame reply to me telling him of this opportunity.
Knowing how traditional he is, he might even say that I am embarrassing him and the family and would definitely pester me about any men I end up working with. God, I can imagine it now. My mother too. Both telling me that white men are not to be trusted in any capacity or manner. And yet, if I trust the both of them, my life will go about as far as theirs did and be every bit as pointless. So you know what? Miss Universe, get ready, because here I come!
Spring was approaching even the abandoned areas of the district. In this forgotten neighborhood grew again the pinkish purple leaves of rebirth. And as the kids passed through, they held their breath and traversed the spooky site of what was once a graveyard where a serial killer hid his bodies.
“I can't believe Mrs. Grant gave out homework on a Friday,” said Dam Son. “We ain't in fifth grade no more,” replied Gun Ho. “Besides,” interrupted Christina, “it's not like you're going anywhere.” “Why don't you let him take you out?,” Sara entered the conversation. “Dam Son?,” Christina laughed. Dam resented the implication. “Where would you take me?,” Christina asked looking at Dam, who now took pleasure in the implication. “Anywhere you want,” he replied. “I'll think about,” Christina promised.
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Many blocks into the abandoned neighborhood the children still walked. For several weeks now this was their home away from home; the stills vacant of chaos, for no one but themselves were allowed to be bothersome, and nothing but invisible ghosts followed them on the turn of every corner. Once this place had a life, but something came and has changed that.
“Aren't you guys out already?,” asked F. Kane II. “I meant like out on a date, so they can become boyfriend and girlfriend,” replied Sara. “Where can they go? It's not like either of them are allowed to drive,” said Gun Ho. Everyone paused, but in the stillness very loudly popped a firecracker lit by Dave.
This alarmed every middle school student except the pyromaniac, and when he saw the look of confusion which was mixed with fear, he laughed at their uncertain terror.
“David!,” yelled Sara. “What?,” Dave replied. “Mom told you to stop playing with firecrackers, before you blow your fingers off.” “I'm not an idiot, I know what I'm doing.” “Yeah okay.”
After the excitement the conversation of young romance continued, though was revived by someone who had not spoken yet as she was trailing behind looking at her cellular device. “Hey, do you guys think Toby likes me?,” asked Pattie. “Seventh-grade Toby?,” Christina asked. “Yeah.” “Maybe, why?,” replied Christina. “Who do you think she's always talking to on her phone?,” Sara cut in. Pattie laughed, and strangely nothing of Toby was said again.
647-1575: Hello.
768-1849: Hey Christina, remember to be home by five.
647-1575: I know.
768-1849: Okay, bye.
“Who was that?,” Pattie asked Christy. “Just a girl who used to babysit me,” Christy replied to Pattie. Dave suddenly ran past Pattie, intentionally bumping into her while yelling “You put your peepee in her poopoo!,” an inside joke that was created only a day before and which Dave could not stop repeating and which was also beginning to wear the nerves of everyone else in the group besides Gun Ho. Because of this, Gun Ho shortly after bumped into Sara and repeated the same words in the same manner, “You put your peepee in her poopoo!”
“You guys are so gross,” the three girls said almost at the same time and surely in the same manner. F Kane II thought on the process of putting a peepee in a poopoo. Shortly after, he asked the others if they had heard the same strange sound he had just heard.
And finally, they arrived to their destination, the old abandoned church that only 40 | SEVEN STICKS
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recently had become the groups favorite spot. In front of the church was a decaying sign that read: “All t e angels sing abo t Jesus's mighty sword, and they'll shield y u with t eir wings, and keep you c ose to the Lord.”
They wrapped around the outside of the church and found the area they often relaxed in. It was a refuge away from school, parents and the daily pressures of daily life and society. Two miles away from civilization and into the collective recluse.
“Hey you guys,” F Kane II began speaking as the group sat behind the church, “what does it mean if someone asks you for a hand?” The rest of the group stared at him blankly. When he saw the confused looks on their faces, he elaborated, “Your dad,” he said looking at Dave, “he asked me to give him a hand the other day.” “Did he need help with something?,” Sara asked. “Well he was holding a box.” “He was asking you to help him carry the box,” Dave suggested. “Wait,” Dam Son cut in, “were you standing in front of the door again?” “Yeah.” “He needed you to open the door for him because both of his hands were being used,” Dam finished. “Ahh,” Kane relieved.
“He didn't actually want one of your hands, Kane,” joked Pattie. “I know, duh,” Kane replied laughing in a strange way.
“Kane, if you took everything everyone said literally, I would be convinced that you have nine lives,” Dave said. F. Kane II thought about this, and replied. “How could I have nine lives?,” he inquired. The rest of the group laughed, but FKII could not find the same humor the rest found.
“If people said what they actually mean, the world would be a much better and understandable place,” FKII suggested as the laughter died down. “You know,” Christina said immediately after, “I don't disagree. Last night my aunt's new boyfriend took us out to dinner and we ate steak or something, and the waiter was talking about medium-rare this and well-done that. The only one I even almost understood was maybe 'well-done.'
Why can't people just say 'fully-cooked' or 'half-cooked'? A little bit cooked? What is that
'rare' shit?”
“Right,” Gun Ho interrupted, “you know what I hate?” “What do you hate?,” Dam asked with a grin on his face. “I hate when people tell you the time in a fancy way. Like
'ten minutes to five'. What the fuck is that? Just tell me it's four-forty,” Gun said excitedly and angrily. “That would be twenty minutes to five,” Dam corrected his brother, “you mean four-fifty idiot.” “Well that proves my point, there is too much thinking involved when you tell people the time like that,” Gun finished.
“Nah, you know what's the worst?,” Dave joined, “You know how we had eye and hearing tests today? So when Mr. Walker was doing my test, before he started he asked me if I could see the chalkboard well, or if I thought I needed bifocals. I was like what?
What are bifocals? This dude knows everyone just calls them glasses but he goes out of 41 | SEVEN STICKS
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his way to use some strange ass word no one has ever heard of.” “Yo! I hate that,”
exclaimed Gun. “That's 'cause you have no vocabulary,” laughed Dam. Gun resented the implication. “And you ain't got no lexicon,” Gun replied. Dam, as well as all the others, did nothing but remain silent on the subject.
“My mom does that, but only when she's mad at my dad,” said Christina, “if she's mad at him she'll use anything to show that she is smarter than him, and it works usually.
Sometimes it's funny but usually it's just annoying.”
As the subject of word dressing faded, Dave picked up a small rock and threw it across the street. When asked what he was doing by Sara, he revealed to her that he was trying to hit a still intact window of a building across the road. He was mostly ignored as a conversation went on behind him, but came soon was Dam who also picked up rocks and began throwing them in an attempt to hit that window first.
Eventually, FKII and Gun joined them, and the three girls stayed seated and most likely began speaking on things that girls tend to speak on.
A rock went into the air, arched downward, and more often than not failed to even make it past the road. And when the boys switched accuracy for power, the rocks made it past the road but missed the window wildly.
Gun's attempt to balance power and accuracy, however, led to misfortune. His rock arched into the air, had impressive hang-time, and then hailed down directly onto a lonely speeding car. When they heard the booming pop, and then the screeching tires, all seven individuals of the group ran wildly in seven different directions, scattering in mayhem.
647-1575 has started a group call. [4:12:39 PM]
331-8994 has entered the group call. [4:12:45 PM]
351-8693 has entered the group call. [4:12:47 PM]
647-1575: Where y'all at?
922-0193 has entered the group call. [4:12:52 PM]
351-8693: I ran to the yellow building.
922-0193: I doubled back and ran into the church.
603-2305 has entered the group call. [4:12:59 PM]
331-8994: I'm on the roof of some random store.
446-3709 has entered the group call. [4:13:04 PM]
647-1575: I was hiding at first but now I'm on foot in an alley going home.
603-2305: Yoo, I'm hiding in the playground behind the spookhouse.
446-3709: You serious Gun?
331-8994: Ey I got eyes on the driver, he's walking back to his car.
922-0193: He leaving?
42 | SEVEN STICKS
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603-2305: He leaving?
331-8994: Yup, just drove away, we good.
647-1575: See y'all tomorrow then.
351-8693: Bye you guys.
922-0193 has exited the group call. [4:14:25 PM]
331-8994: Bye everyone.
331-8994 has exited the group call. [4:14:29 PM]
647-1575 has exited the group call. [4:14:31 PM]
351-8693 has exited the group call. [4:14:31 PM]
603-2305 has exited the group call. [4:14:33 PM]
446-3709 has exited the group call. [4:14:34 PM]
655-3684 has entered the group call. [4:14:47 PM]
655-3684: Hello?
655-3684: You guys there?
655-3684 has exited the group call. [4:14:55 PM]
“I am not eating that,” said Latasha to Rebecca, “I'm trying to lose weight girl.”
“Fine, more for us then,” Becca laughed. Felicity leaned over the table and grabbed what was left of the desert after Alondra and Becca had finished taking their sum.
On the stage now the performers were readying up their next song, which was a cover of a song made by the now disbanded Cloud Hemingway. The title of the song was
“Monolith,” and Felicity was happy to see her stepmother start the song off with a drumming rhythm.
After the song, the four continued a stagnate conversation about their academic futures. Felicity was enrolled at a university while Alondra was currently taking classes at a community college. Becca had decided to relax and take a year or two off and Tasha had decided to delay school to work full-time at a grocery store.
When the gig was over, the four girls met with Jasmin backstage and thanked her for the tickets, then Felicity told her stepmother that the four of them would be walking around in the city.
San Rashida had a personality at morning. Glowing warmth came over its horizons and its graceful approach to the early hours made it a morning city. San Rashida also had a personality at afternoon. Dry heat and cloudy skies made its late-midday hours a time to reflect on life when it is most still, which made it too an afternoon city. And San Rashida also had a personality at evening. The goodbye atmosphere came with a gentle wind as many ended the duration of effort, so this made it an evening city. And finally, San Rashida had a personality at night. By far it was the most creative of its four seasons, its 43 | SEVEN STICKS
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four faces, four identities; it was a mixture of the people who came out in it, and this distinction alone made it a night city.
And in the city this night were four girls, each of their fates as distinct as the four phases of the city they currently occupied, but to the two given evening and night were more similar than the two given morning and day.
I gave Lynne a sewing pin just before dusk when the lights and shadows in the apartment began to take on forms and shapes. Standing there as Lynne did her business, her I admired and took detail to her shadow. Her shadow made me believe that in the canals of a mind, the first being a person truly falls in love with, they can go on for a lifetime searching for the ghost of that person and be none the wiser.
The article of clothing she was refitting was “Rare Candy,” but to what fashion I am uncertain. After a while I put my hand on her shoulder and told her that I was retiring to my apartment for the night and that I would see her in the morning or afternoon, the evening at the latest. As I went for the door, she spoke out... “I love you.” I turned around before I shut the door and replied to her in the same curious way she did... “I love you too.”
CAM00184: Two men are seen talking to eachother at the backside of a church. One of them is smoking and making many gestures that seem to deal with baseball or some other type of sport played in America. Soonafter, a woman passes by them with an orange rolling grocery cart.
CAM00183: In front of the church could be read the sign which reads “God does not hold an abandoned son.” Several minutes of monitoring this camera would eventually show the conclusion of a church session.
CAM00058: A public street camera for police surveillance displays a playground located just behind a row of residential houses. Two mothers and two girls are seen playing and enjoying themselves to a great extent.
CAM00061: Very close in proximity is another public camera which is located on the opposite side of CAM00058, which when viewing could be seen a mother and her son walking out of the “Spookhouse.”
CAM00251: A yellow building can be seen in the distance. Its distance is too far and the camera's view to obtuse to accurately describe just what the building may be used for.
Mar
ch 15 th , 1985
The music in these clubs could be better. I'm not saying they're hard to strip to, but there are only a few songs that really get me going. And some of the lyrics to these songs are more of a turn off than a turn on. I got my stage name, “Spectra,” from my all-time 44 | SEVEN STICKS
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favorite strip song. And I think it's my attention to detail and my presentation that has helped me build my clientele so quickly. One thing one of the older girls here taught me is that I am my own brand and I have to believe that. Everything, from what I do to the way I perform to the name I choose is part of my identity as an entertainer. The clothes I wear to work, what I take off and as importantly what I put on, it all goes to creating my image and my image determines my success and how much money I will make that day.
My most important client, who really only comes on Friday nights, will sometimes spend as much as $200 on me if the fantasy and imagery I've created for him really gets him hot. Miss Spectra, fulfilling your desires in her lime green miniskirt. On other thoughts, The Pool really has an interesting history. I guess mostly as an area or location. I'm always hearing stories about some of the shit that happened here, like, how in the sixties, after a long period of abandonment, some guy turned this place into an office that hired beauty pageant talent. But it turned out to be something very scandalous and one of their pageants spilled the beans on the pageant industry and how abusive it was towards the women. Some of the stuff I heard about was unbelievable. What became of some of those women, I could only imagine. If I'm being honest with myself, I don't plan to strip for too long. I want to go to school. I'll see how long I do this for but I really don't want to get stuck in it like some of these older women. Make a dollar and invest it in yourself.
45 | SEVEN STICKS
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Chapter 85
THE STARLET
2:3:9:85
THREE years ago, I had a dream. And that dream made me wonder and question a question we all have heard before. What came first, the chicken or the egg? I will first daddle in the concept of the question, then try to answer the question second.
Interpreting time in a linear fashion influences the way we observe and understand the world, and it also dictates the types of questions we will ask. Because we perceive things in a linear method we will inevitably see things in firsts and lasts, in succession and presession; no doubt will we create the word “then,” which will be used to divide and measure time and sequences. But this may be no good, because we are relying on the possibility that the universe is objectively the way we interpret it when in reality it may not be. This renders the question “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” useless. It may be an illogical question which will yield an illogical answer.
Another such question is “Did God create the universe?” Again, we have evolved in such a way that forces us to see the world in firsts, and also in “creations.” Imagine the answers to these two questions if time itself is not a truly applicable concept.
I believe in its early evolutionary pedigree, the chicken was at first a simple single-celled organism which went through many phases of evolution until it encountered a gross mutation, in which said gross mutation allowed it to duplicate itself using the egg we know today.
The dream itself, which I had mentioned before, dealt with my incarceration for a crime I was unaware of. This dream, finally, after many years, revealed my crime to me.
The dream took place in a courtroom; a judge, full jury, lawyers, a crowd of spectators. It seemed to be a case against the state. When the head juror stood up to read the verdict, the part of me from reality was shocked, but the part of me from irreality was not. “We find the defendant guilty on the charge of rape of a nine year old persons.”
Decipher I could not which feeling came first after the verdict had been read. Was it the shock or the non-shock? If it were the shock, then that would mean I was truly perhaps horrified by the actions of my dream-self; if it was the non-shock that came first, then that would mean perhaps there is a small part of my psychology that is aware of any attraction I may have for small persons. But these two things seem to have been simultaneous and I cannot tell which came first.
At around midnight and inside my apartment I could smell my own body odor. I am not sure whether it came from my underwear or from my skin, perhaps both, but a shower was mandatory nonetheless.
As I went to get new underwear and a towel, I could hear the leaves rustling outside 46 | THE STARLET
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and I saw for a moment the new bloom that was on the horizon. And entering the bathroom, turning off the light, turning on the shower to warm water, I bathed in the unquiet darkness.
There is nothing like thinking in the shower at night. Thinking in the shower at day is a well-enough time for thinking as well, but the thoughts that come to one's mind during a midnight shower are potent.
I turned toward the dial, stepped back, and then sat down in the shower and felt the warm water strike my body again and again and it wasn't too long before those potent thoughts then to mind came themselves.
Often it is said that 'as humans, rules separate us from the animals.' Do rules really separate us from the animals? There are a number of insects, who as a whole and on average are thought to be less intelligent than mammals, who present a number of great organizing behaviors. These include the bees, termites, and last but not least, the ants.
The ants, who more than likely need no introduction to how effective they are in carrying out simple tasks to complete complex goals, have more than proven that we indeed do not separate ourselves from the animals because of our order. Ants themselves perform these complexities by obeying a few rules.
Granted, humans have long built civilizations that are based on rule and law, government and centralization, and in favor of the humans I will say there has been as much good as there has been bad. But these thoughts are not to bring humans down, but rather acknowledge that “lesser” forms have come to the same conclusions, deductions and reasonings that we have.
We tend to boast on complex civilization and government, but as Spookieni has mentioned, we are more prone to disease as the systems become more complex. We are given and become susceptible to corruption, perversion, subversion, deviation.
Without a blueprint or a leader ants can complete tasks individualistic in nature and function as a whole unit. To me, this ability almost seems innate. Could this innate ability be something humans lost in evolution or transition? Could it have been eliminated by an old disease?
One thing that has made me wonder greatly is the hierarchy of the ants. “Ant colonies are self-organized systems: complex collective behaviors arise as the product of interactions between many individuals each following a simple set of rules, not via top-down instruction from elite individuals or the queen. No one worker has universal knowledge of the colony's needs; individual workers react only to their local environment. Because of this, ants are a popular source of inspiration for design in software engineering, robotics, industrial design, and other fields involving many simple parts working together to perform complex tasks.” Wiker's Encyclopedia, page 899.
47 | THE STARLET
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What thoughts have come out of this is this, a simple question; should leaders be stripped of certain privileges? For example, in some religions a certain status means a certain amount of devotion and that certain amount of devotion means certain rules must be followed. A priest cannot marry, a nun cannot have sex, a monk cannot possess materials. In the first world of democracy, we hold our politicians to a standard, we expect them to devote their lives to bettering the world. No one actually believes that, but bare with me for a moment.
If we took the same shot at devotion as these religious circles do, who know that humans cannot truly devote themselves to an ideal unless they are required to meet certain rules, and forced politicians into true devotion by forcing these rules onto them, would they be more committed to performing their jobs? Note that the individual running for office must already know what is required of them before they are elected or before they even decide to run; you could not teach an old dog new tricks.
As it stands, and as far as I'm aware, our politicians are not truly held to any rigid standard, which is why often they break the rules they are supposed to enforce, and sometimes even the rules they themselves created. I do not believe one can truly be passionate and devoted to an idea where they are not restrained and given to free will.
The ants know this, but it seems they don't even need the rules to be set in place, it almost appears as if their devotion is innate.
I will say, however, in the favor of politicians; there's a person you want to be when you're young, and there's a person you end up being, and that's a hard reality to face.
669-8488: Make sure you and Favid install Pigeoner because this service is too expensive
351-8693: Ok I will
669-8488: Where'd David? He's not answering me back 351-8693: Him and Dam and Gun are in detention
669-8488: What did he do?
351-8693: I think they copied eachother's homework 669-8488: Tell him to text me back
351-8693: Ok I just did
351-8693: Most of our period 5 class its going I think 351-8693: Is*
603-2305: Not me
351-8693: How come?
603-2305: To expensive
48 | THE STARLET
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351-8693: True. I think I might just stay in class too 351-8693: So I guess it will be just us two and a few others lol 603-2305: I really don't mind it turning into a study hall lol 708-9350: How come you guys stay late today?
603-2305: I told you we gave after school today
603-2305: Have
708-9350: Make sure come home right away to watch Nixia 603-2305: We will
708-9350: I just tell Gun, make sure you come home right away to watch Nixia 446-3709: We will as soon as we are done with after schhol 446-3709: Where do you want to go?
647-1575: I don't know lol
647-1575: The park?
446-3709: Which?
647-1575: You pick
446-3709: Loral?
647-1575: Okay we can do tht lol
446-3709: Lol
446-3709: We should go after we leave split from the rest 647-1575: Ok, that sounds good
647-1575: We're going to the park
331-8994: Which one?
647-1575: Loral
331-8994: Ooh that's an intimate park lmao
647-1575: What? Lol
331-8994: Not a lot of people go there, so it will probably just be you two lol 647-1575: Hmm, I guess that's good
331-8994: Are you going to kiss him?
647-1575: Only if he kisses me first. What if I invited you and you invited Toby?
331-8994: That's actually really gooood idea
647-1575: Invite him, I'll tell Dam
331-8994: Kk hold on
49 | THE STARLET
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331-8994: Do you ever still see Toby at the park?
922-0193: Yeah I saw him playing basketball the last time I went 922-0193: Why
331-8994: JW
922-0193: You wanna play ball with him?
331-8994: Yes I wanna play ball with him, duh
922-0193: He's gonna want to put his peepee in your poopoo 331-8994: Shut up
922-0193: Tomorrow I'm going to go inside the Spookhouse 655-3684: I would heavily advise against that Dave.
922-0193: Why?
655-3684: Because it's haunted! People were murdered in it!
922-0193: Come in with me. Everyone else is too chicken 655-3684: For good reason.
922-0193: I'm disappointed in you Kane
655-3684: Fine. I will enter just the first floor, browse, and then leave immediately.
922-0193: Good enugh for me, knew I could count on you!
587-3239: Tomorrow I will be working all day
655-3684: Okay, I will be fine.
587-3239: Gun's father will check on you when he gets home from work 655-3684: Okay I will be expecting his visit.
587-3239: Very good
I am surprised that the water is still warm. It has been quite some time and I have no indication that the water will cool soon, so for the time being, I will remain in this shower.
I wonder what the rest of humanity is dreaming. Dreaming melancholy. Melancholy dreaming. Hmm. I see. That reminds me. On the subject of diction, language phrases can be so ambiguous sometimes. For example, take the phrase “Negro Assassin.” Now are we speaking about a person who is a negro who is an assassin, or are we talking about a person who assassinates negroes? If someone were to put out in the papers, “Searching for well-established negro assassin,” what kind of response would that get? Personally, I would assume the person is searching for a person who is a negro who is an assassin. And thinking on the matter further leads me to contemplate how ambiguity in the context of language and diction itself has shaped history. Imagine for a second the reader's 50 | THE STARLET
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perception of the following headline: “NEGRO ASSASSIN MURDERS CAUCASIAN
SCHOLAR.” Imagine the confusion when it is revealed that the assassin is Caucasian and not negro, instead a Caucasian man who assassinates negroes; and the scholar a negro, not a Caucasian, instead a negro man who studies the history of Caucasians, thus being labeled as such, a “Caucasian Scholar.”
This potentially confusing language pattern of “adjective/noun, noun/noun, adjective/adjective and noun/adjective” possibility is probably something that should be looked at, at least in the English language, though it is probably inevitable and I would certainly be surprised if this pattern didn't formulate in nature as well.
Thinking just broadly, I might ask whether you live in the universe or if the universe is a product and/or projection of your brain and it lives in you. Continuing to think broadly, I might ask you about the concept of worth and an item's ability to have two or more perceived worths simultaneously; a hairpin's worth may be in the millions to someone who knows its history but may be worth jackshit to someone who knows nothing about it. So many things fall unspoken upon the ears of the English reader.
When the water turned cold I declared I had had enough and left immediately. Drying myself I noticed that my cellular device had received some messages. They were as follows:
669-8488: Headed home, can I sleep with you tonight? :]
234-3938: When are you going to visit?
Just as I had finished reading the messages, a sound came through a walkie-talkie in my bedroom. It was Sara and Dave, letting me know of their current status.
Walkie #1: Spooker, do you read me?
Walkie #2: What, Dave?
Walkie #1: I'm going to sleep, I think Sara is too.
Walkie #1: Yeah I'm going to sleep, too.
Walkie #1: Give me it back!
Walkie #1: Here, God.
Walkie #1: Yeah, going to sleep. If you don't hear from me tomorrow, then the rumors are true.
Walkie #2: What rumors?
Walkie #1: That if you go inside the Spookhouse, you can never leave...
Walkie #2: Go to sleep Dave.
51 | THE STARLET
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A moment later Lynne walked through the door, and it was visually obvious that she was tired from her shift and ready for bed.
Sitting at the table and eating something before we went to rest together, she looked at a piece of mail and said “This phone bill is too expensive.” I took it from her and saw just how expensive a family plan was.
“You know, my offer still stands,” I said. “What offer?,” she inquired. “Let me take nude photos of you, I'll pay you ten bucks for each one.” She slapped my shoulder and laughed. Then she thought. That's when you know you have them, when after they initially laugh, they pause and stare.
“Does my face have to be in the photos?,” she asked. “Nope,” I replied, “but recently I've come across a collection of exotic clothing that now must be a part of the contract,” I finished.
A large portion of the night had me show Lynne the old box of the classic pornstar's wardrobe I had received from the storage unit owner. She looked through them and each article of clothing seemed to fit her. “Well, she was definitely my size,” Lynne laughed.
When after she had asked me “Which one do you want me to wear first?” I'm sure my eyes lit up. I went to her and then to the box and picked an outfit, then gave it to her, and she took it into the bathroom.
There was a long while I had to wait until she finally came out in the outfit, though when she came out she was hunched over and her face was hidden, all from what I would figure out later was embarrassment. As she walked over to me laughing with a deep voice, she passed me by and sat on the edge of the bed.
The thin quiet white transparent fabric covered her feet to her mid-thighs where it ended in lacy flowers. At the start of her waist reaching to her breasts was a small piece of clothing that hung tight to her body; it was mostly white with little red hearts, a small
“V” opening coming down from the top, and little flowery flaps coming out from the top near her breasts. Thin but strong straps held the top to the bottom portion which covered most of her legs, and her upper thigh and buttocks were completely exposed. On her hands, too, I noticed fake red nails.
After she noticed that I hadn't said a word, she became shy and hid herself under the blanket. I sat down on the bed as well and found the outline of her shoulders and rubbed at them, “I still need to take a picture.” She peeped out her face from under the cover and asked again if she could hide her face, to which I said yes. And finally she removed the blanket but stayed on the bed and put her hands to her face.
After I took out my cellular device and started to hold it in a fashion of taking her picture, she began moving her body and leaned onto her side and all the time covering 52 | THE STARLET
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her face, then pressured me into quickly taking a photograph. After the camera focused, I took the picture and she heard the snap of the device and then asked me if it was over.
Indeed it was. That moment created the starlytte, in which she was the sin and the muse, and to every man's daisy his dahlia; the artist nonexistent within me wanted to call that moment a bonding of souls, but the honesty within me can label it no more than perversion.
I went and got her a Hamilton. Then she loosened up and decided to stay in the outfit for just a few minutes more, though I could tell she still wasn't entirely comfortable in the attire. When she finally took it off, she dressed into “Mysterious Clouds.” She was cherry grape.
She went through all about the apartment in the morning dark doing many things on her own and each time I saw her I thought of the picture she posed for and the outfit she wore while she did so. And I thought of all the other outfits in that box that she may or may not wear while I took more photos of her. And finally I thought to myself, “She is a mortal dream.”
Nov
ember 11 th , 1973
Had a show today. But who cares, that was boring. What was exciting was the party we all went to after. Some rich designer who is half German and half Australian invited all us boys to his home and said his pool and backyard were ours. So many guys came up to me asking if I was black or spanish. By far the most common icebreaker for me. Either that or “you wanna do some metro.” I like the second icebreaker waaaay better and someone actually did break the ice with me with that. I didn't get his name but I got his high. I saw him backstage at the show but didn't have time to talk to him. And ugh. I just reminded myself of Bruce. A 35 year-old man so blatantly hitting on a 17 year-old boy while we all prepped ourselves for the catwalk. Look, I know I talk loud and I act as loud as I talk, but I do have some hours at a community college and the only class I took any interest in was sociology. And you know what's so disgusting about pedophilia? Sure when we SEE it it manifests itself in our understanding as something to observe physically, basically a more mature person with an immature person, BUT what really repulses me is not the difference in age but the gross difference in intellect which almost always leads to manipulation! ANYWAY, the only thing I remember after doing those lines was the sound of booming base from the music and a bunch of water splashes from the pool. Half of the guys were fucking and the other half were currently indisposed. I don't even think I ever saw the host. If I did I hope I was nice to him. I hope I blew him or let him put it in my ass or something. I probably would have remembered that tho. The 53 | THE STARLET
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currency of sex. You can go a long way being nice in this city.
In the middle of the night while she slept at my side watching television, I remembered a dream due to what was currently on the television. Two persons walking through snowy woods.
They had not yet encountered the musings of their serial killer, Sid, or who they would later call the “Bat-man,” but detective January Levinson and her partner, detective Jeremy Watson, would indeed encounter the musings of a singular killer. They had been called in by their precinct to investigate a homicide that occurred deep within forest woods that were covered in heavy snow.
As they walked to the scene in sub-zero temperatures, which may have been about a mile and a half out, they conversed on the topic of realistic crime shows versus unrealistic crime shows.
“But most death investigations conclude in learning that it was either a; gang-related, or b; a crime of passion, for example, a wife killing her husband in a jealous fit of rage,”
Jeremy stated. “People will get tired of those, and I have to believe that there are some exceptions to the rule somewhere,” January replied. “And there are, but if your hopes are to one day chase a serial killer, forget about it,” Jeremy finished.
Continuing their walk into the frozen woods, they could both look ahead and see twilight on the horizon through all the dead cold trees.
“I'll admit, a serial killer who secretly creates a serial killing franchise and employs other serial killers to meet a killing quota every quarter is interesting. I even like the business-like concept of the company 'growing' and them needing to buy a large freezer room for all the bodies. But the only reason I even entertain the idea is because it's so crazy it made me pause. At large, these fictional television shows and movies try to compensate so much for the boredom of actual death investigation that they end up boring me with how unrealistic they are,” continued Jeremy. “So you're telling me you would rather watch a show about a detective investigating a corner store robbery and all his paperwork than a show about a detective who is investigating a killer with a perverted mind? Is this what you are telling me?,” asked January. Jeremy paused, “How much paperwork?” “Enough to slow the pace of the show,” answered Jan. Jeremy thought and walked, “Well, honestly, I wouldn't want to watch either.” “Well there you have it,”
answered Jan, “our work is too boring to be filmed, but so interesting that most popular television shows center on us.”
At sundown they found the flicking of the red and blue police lights and sequentially their crime scene. The victim of the killer appeared to be a woman in her late thirties.
As the duo approached the body, a police officer met with them and told them of the 54 | THE STARLET
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news. “The husband confessed to the murder, we're booking him now.” Before the cop could turn away, January asked if they got the reason why she was murdered. “She laughed at his pay-increase,” he sighed.
As Jeremy and January walked back through the snow-filled woods, the old detective made a comment to the young detective, “Sometimes the concept of death investigation is as simple as the murder itself. And as boring, too,” he laughed.
What Jeremy Watson said to Jan made me ponder more on the evolution of death investigations throughout human history. How much investigations have changed, and proportionately, how much murder has changed in the same respect. For the two have been dancing with eachother since the earliest humans, and it seems that the murder has always taken lead.
The train of these thoughts brought me back to the idea of asking questions, which of course is vital to any investigation, death, scientific, ethical, etc. Matter and human perception may influence the types of questions we ask, but so does time. Hundreds of years ago you would never have asked or heard the question “Where are you?” Well, not a lot anyway... But today, this is a common question. One of the most common. Simply because communication has changed over time to allow us to communicate with someone over great distances.
So is the same in the way we ask “Who are you?” With the rise of DNA, the study of psychology and the texts of philosophy, we ask that question in a new way. With interest in human history through anthropology, the question “What are you?” has been changed.
Through developed awareness and constant observation of matter, we ask “When are you?” differently. “Why are you?” has been re-sculptured by the concept of religion and the numerous amount of religions that populate the human spirit. And with science in general, we have attempted to answer the question “How are you?” each and every day.
These are a few of the old questions in their most simple of forms. And the thing about the old questions is that they themselves never change, it's why they are so old and live eternally, but them who ask these questions change with every generation.
Se
ptember 22 nd
, 2009
Everything was stolen. My computer. My web-cam. My outfits. My toys. The worst of it was I had to go back to the pool and ask/beg for my spot back, which was one of the most humiliating experiences I've ever had. Not because I had to ask/beg, but because of what I had to do to get my spot back after it had been filled. Now not only does he have power over me, I've pissed off another poolie. I don't know if I can do this again for a whole damn year and save up enough to buy my own equipment again. Everything that I 55 | THE STARLET
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worked so hard for in the past year is just gone. I have no way of getting it back. Who would help me? Not anyone here. I wonder if Mrs. Lee saw anyone enter my apartment.
FUCK. There is only one girl here who I would actually consider a friend, everyone else is just concerned with being on top of you. I'm going in tomorrow for my evening/night shift of six hours. Some of my fans will be happy to see that I am back I guess, but they will probably wonder what happened to my new place. I wonder if I told them the truth, if they would feel sorry for me and be more generous with their tips? The one thing I've always had over most of the other girls is that I've built a fanbase that is more like a community and my fans know me more personally and intimately than the others. That really is the secret to any success I've had. Being open and honest about what is going on my life. That and my face. I guess the way my body looks in the clothes these guys buy me doesn't hurt either. I so wish I could cam in my own apartment. It would have made the experience of allowing these people into my personal life more real. I swear to God if I find out who stole all of my shit, there will be hell to pay. And not the firey hell, the ice hell.
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Chapter 86
ISSUE #1
2:3:9:86
I have spoken to you mostly truth, but this would not have been possible had I not been given a literary mask. Through words I have concealed my face, and this mystery of identity has allowed me to relay the most intimate of details.
In my estimation, there are at least two kinds of evil; an evil with morality, principality and ideality, which is often found in revolutionaries and terrorists alike, or people with claims of wanting to change the world, and if they are evil, they will never realize it; then there is Dice and the evil that is absent of any of these qualities or properties, an evil without reason, and always this evil is aware of itself.
And yet Dice aware of his own evil has given to me abilities for conflict. Why? I remember that he told me that there are always wars in places that have not, and never wars in places that have. Always a conflict in a third world country, but never one in a first world country. Why?
Dice is certainly no revolutionary and he has not given me such ability for revolution.
If I know anything about Dice, it's that he wants me to add to the fire.
After I last saw him, I left that room changed. A fog that I cannot control surrounds me, sometimes it is only dispersed in feet, sometimes miles. Often I find domino scars on my body never knowing how they got there. I am not sure what is happening to me.
On the thesis of heroes and villains where transmutation through doctrine is concerned, I have done a sort of mental character study. How do good people become bad, and how do bad, good.
One of the oldest tales in storytelling history is of one being's soulful journey through a plain to find a new world. Countless characters in literature have embarked on this journey, but my study will be centered on Roceisious, who traveled through the plain of Oceidicious to find his new world and himself transformed at the end.
During Roceisious's journey through Oceidicious, there is a motif that details his unwillingness to further investigate how his actions will unravel in the lives of others. To put it simply and plainly, I will introduce a quote from Roceisious himself in his final soliloquy: I know in my heart that I have caused the pain of many, but alas I have avoided that certain important question, for avoiding that certain important question keeps you one step removed from any ethical or moral responsibility.
An example of that “certain important question” is when Roceisious develops a tool that may potentially be used to kill many, but when he develops the tool to sell to his traders, he does not ask them what they will use the tool for. Therefore, he believes himself to be morally and ethically free of any responsibility in the way they may or may 57 | ISSUE #1
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not use the tool that he himself developed.
In this process of thinking, one permits evil to enter the world. Roceisious is aware of this but throughout his journey continues to evade that certain important question as he opens the portals for evil to permeate. In consequence, Roceisious is ultimately observed to be a character who was neutrally good, but turned bad, because in his beginnings he is not conscious of the important question.
To provide a bit of historical context to the literature, there was a copycat villainess whom I'd met only a few days ago who told me of the selected names in that period. She mentioned how basically all names chosen ended in the suffix “ious,” because the people of that time period believed in unique beginnings but a shared ending; death. They claimed that you could not see how your own life began but you could see how it would unfold and inevitably ended in death.
Roceisious may have had it fixed in his mind that he could not redeem himself and finally ask that question which would make him morally and ethically responsible for his actions, for it was very difficult to change one's fate. With the idea of “ious” and the personality trait of weakness that he subscribed too, I'm sure he truly believed he was incapable of redemption.
The villainess's name is Invee, and I am on my way to see her now. When I get into her apartment she begins to tell me about a meeting she had yesterday.
I know of Invee because of her ability to hack vulnerabilities of digital systems, and someone else must've known this too as this was the reason for their visit. Spies sat her down and asked her to hack into a government system, and when she asked why her efforts were needed, they did not answer. Instead they took her by force, coercing her by threatening her family, and finally she did what they wanted her to.
Without detection she was able to make copies of what she stole from the government, copies which I am reading over now.
POFQBSJNO+ETTJGZMK_
UGJR+HT+B+UNQ(MDWDM+POFQBSJNO+UN+AF+QTU+JM+ZDSJNO+JM+SID
+SIHSC+PVZSSFQ+NG+UGJR+XFZS[+AFFJMOHOF+HO+UGF+UGJQE+RTBQU
DS}
+VF+XHMK+RUZSS+CFOMNZHOF+NVQ+MFV+BJSZ(XHED+MFSXNSJ+HOESZ
TSSTDSVQF+DZMKFC+?6F}?
+SIHT+QQPBFRT+XHMK+NOKZ+UZLD+0[4+LPMUGT+VMUHM+JS+HT+GTM
KZ+EDQKPXFC+ZOC+TQ+BME+STOMJMH+UN+OSNWHED+RFQWHDD+SP+U
GF+FMUHSD+BJSZ[+HO+UGF+GNVQUG+PVZSSFQ}
58 | ISSUE #1
M.B. JULIEN
+B+WHSTT+XHMK+AF+EHTOFQTDE+JMUN+SID+BJSZ+XGFQF+JS+VJKM+JM
GDDS+ZU+MDBRU+UGSDF+QDPOMD[+UGJR+UJQVR}+DZMKFC+?
DZ(BSU29}?
+HT+EDTHHMFC+SP+JMGDDS+ZU+MDBRU+3[9+QDPOMD+ZOC+HT+JMUDO
CFC+SP+HQPV+DYOPMFMUHBKMX+VJSIHO+1[6+NNOSIR[+XGJKF+UGF+WH
STT+TOSDBCT}
+VF+IZWD+DNOMNZDE+DDSSBHO+NDEHB+PTUKFST+UN+BBTTD+BIZPR+Z
OC+BPMGTTHPM+SP+GTSSIDS+TOSDBC+SID+UJQVR+ZOC+SP}
+DWDO+NNSD+HNOPQUZOSMX}
+DZVRF+UGF+DNNLVMJSZ+UN+EFZS+BME+TDFJ+UBBDHOZUHPM[+UGJR+
KFZER+TT+UN+SID+EJMBK+RUDQ+PE+CVRLEBKM!
+SID+UBBDHOZUHPMT+FZDG+QFRJCFMU+HDUR+VJKM+JMDKVCF+B+OZO
NNZDGJMF+XGJBI+DZO+CD+BPMUQPKMDE+CX+SID+4H+ODUVPQL[+HG+U
GJR+NQDSZUHPM+HT+TTDBFRTEVK}
+JS+VJKM+CD+NVQ+EJQTS+RUDQ+UNXZSCT+UNUZM+DHUHADO+PAFCJD
OBF[
The problem, as she told me I would run into, was decrypting this information. I spent hours looking at it, studying it, using various resources until finally I solved it.
OPERATION DUSKFALL:
THIS IS A TOP-LEVEL OPERATION TO BE PUT IN ACTION IN THE THIRD
QUARTER OF THIS YEAR. BEGINNING IN THE THIRD QUARTER, WE WILL
START DEPLOYING OUR NEW CITY-WIDE NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE