tv on the radio

We took our first pill when the music was shit.

 I said fuck dancing all night, but then that's just what we did, 
it felt like floating.

Dragonfly starting to pop in the small of my back. I can barely feel it, commencing to pull on the strings of my muscles. My legs are resting on top of the steering wheel, if you look at me from the side I think I would look like a capital V. V for vascular, like the arsenal of rivers inside me. Hold on is playing, and Sade's voice is melting into my skull, and my skull is melting into the headrest, and the headrest is melting into-

"Let's get out of here!" He knocks on the window frantically.

P and I turn to look at him slowly, and slowly open the locks. He scrambles behind the car and jumps in the backseat, with the family of drums.

"This place is fucked up I fucking hate it, let's get the fuck out of here!"

He's sitting all spread out, his mouth pissed off and straight.

"What the fuck, chill out. Whats wrong with you?"

I can't bring myself to talk. I just look ahead. Nothing can take this groove from me.

"All these fucking people are fucking stupid, T's been fucking talking to his sister for a fucking hour, fucking mob, all the little drunk brats, I was talking to this girl, and shes fucking hot, but that's it! I dont give a fuck I want to get out of here! I knew you guys would be chilling so I came to look for you. Let's go!"

We try to mellow him out, after all, he's just an interruption in a perfect personal concert. But he insists on finding the hotel room. I wonder if P can drive. I vaguely mention the fact that I can, Im not as fucked up yet, but he insists. K an I squish in the copilot seat, the family of drums overtaking the back. My ass hovers somewhere between his left leg and the hand brake. P turns the car on, adventure begun.

These streets are all vascular, too. They stretch on like horizontal zig zags, v, v, v. Huge hills, one after the other, face to face, side by side. The dragonfly tickles and I feel calm. P is driving smooth down a slope, Ks arm hugging my waist. We start rolling (rolling) faster. I feel a tug warm breath and a kiss on my neck. I smile cause it doesn't matter.

The street looks like a wall from this angle. We hit the end of the slope hard, drums and drumsticks leap and crash and I hear what I think a thousand miniature bell chorus would sound like. I look back and see the back window is now a huge spiderweb, hissing with new form. Hissing ringing cracking. Its a work of art. I

smile cause it doesn't matter.

We end up in a decent hotel room, after desperately failing to land a cheap motel room with a jacuzzi. Dragonflies buzzing. Were in the lobby waiting for P to check on the car, all twisting all turning joints.

"Hey, we're sleeping in the same bed."

His eyes are laughing. He's a little boy and I'm a little girl.

"We don't have to do anything." He smiles.

I looooook at him hard, smile smile smile. Nothing matters and that makes me happy.

We get up to the shelter and K pounces to the shower. P lies on one of the beds and tries to keep the tide from flooding him. I lie on the other bed and bask in the chemicals. The waterfall stops. He comes out in briefs. Hes glowing. P jumps up and locks himself in the bathroom.

Were spread out on our bed, bellys down and he lights a joint. The tip crackles  orange and he pulls on the smoke hard. I can almost hear it swimming down his throat. He looks at me and gets really close, his open mouth barely touching mine. He breathes out and I drink it in.

P springs out of the bathroom, waving around.

"Fuck, this shit is really intense man, what the fuuuuuuck, I need some fucking coke."

He's looking in his pockets and pulls out his little funbag. He crumples on a chair by a little table and starts inhaling. I slowly get up, paying careful mind to each knob and its twist. I am a complex machine, and right now I can almost feel every layer of me. I float into the shower.

I cant believe how smoothly the water pounds into me. It feels like warm porcelain dripping on my grateful skin. I stand under the crash and do eights with my hips. Infinite pelvic movements. Left loop right loop left loop right. I start to feel a circle of heat snowballing in my stomach.

The Big Bang exploding between my legs.

I cannot believe how happy my body is. What should I do with it? I think of the possibilities. I gasp, gasp gasp and realize I could stay in here the whole night and not know it. I step out and snuggle in a towel, pick out underwear, shorts and a loose t shirt. I come back into the bathroom and I cant really tell if im wet or dry so I slip into the clothes anyway. They cling to me, humid and begging.

When I come out, P is still trying to keep it down. I have no idea what for. An Iphone is humming a song somewhere. I walk in a straight line, back and forth a few times and shoot out into the balcony. The sky looms over the city, a huge pink blanket. The streetlights look like flowers in a junkyard meadow.The sea is gray and fuzzy. For a while I wonder why anything should be so pretty. I stretch on the balcony like a drunken ballerina.

He grinds into me from behind. Ive decided anything can and will happen.

He stretches with me, flexing and convexing with me, rubber boy.

We come back in and climb on the bed. P is still sitting, with his eyes closed, busy rushing into the rush. Little burnt out dragonfly. Im thrown on the cheap bed, and hes sitting, host to one of my legs. The other one is bent, tiptoeing on his back. I lower it and hug him  with both limbs. He t-t-touches the hamstrings, my legs separating him from the rest like a parenthesis. I sit up and look at his tattoos. I lean in on the sun on his back, lean lean lean in close and kiss it.

"What does it mean?"

"Did you see i filled in the center? Where the cross used to be."

I nod, I don't remember. It's the first time I actually really see them.

"What then?"

He smiles.

"You know, Ive never talked to anyone about the meanings"

"But youre gonna tell me."

"Yeah"

I melt back on the bedcover. This rush feels wonderful and guilt free, light on my shoulders, heavy on my hips. It feels real. P flops on the bed, and we look like an H from above.

______________________________________________________________________


"Scratch my head." P is dying.
I scratch his head but I can't concentrate on it. I'm on my side and I look behind me and down. K is hiding under me, hidden behind my legs. The top of his head peeks beside my hips. He looks at me, his eyes are fucking smiling. His mouth is smiling too. He lifts my short and delivers one kiss on my ass. I giggle.

P transports himself heavily to the other bed. Hes just a sequence of movements around the room. I think he realizes K and I are in a bubble, and hes trying hard not to pop it. He wouldn't want someone to pop his, if he had one, right? He's so unprotected. I feel a little bit bad.

But on my right perimeter there's a little wildcat, and he's licking his way to survival. I look at him and everything fits. Everything fits through the needle in this moment. I'm pretty amazed and I don't want to rob myself of it. Our mouths melt like hot butter against each other. Were laughing softly in the kissless moments. We know where we are. I don't want anyone on the face of the earth to talk, ever again. It's so easy when you just really look at things. He motions to the bed.

"Under the covers" he mouths.
I feel slightly annoyed by words. They're so loud.
But I get under the covers. And there we are, in a little cave. We kiss endlessly. He's touching me but softly, stroking me like a pet. I'm not really thinking. This has never happened to me.

P is sitting on the table again.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, this shit man this fucking shit what the fuck what the fuck."
Dragonfly riding riding riding the white horse.

J gleams at me from above, half of his body on top of mine out of the cave.
"I was looking forward to this" He pauses.
"With you."  His eyes are a dancing jungle, his teeth happy.
I just smiiiiiiiiiiile like a shiny piece of quartz. I couldn't be more open than I am right now. I am a 360 angle, I am the primal smile, the oldest one, the one that's been passed on by each generation like an ancient secret. I don't feel any different from anything else.
"Pretty fucking nice." We laugh laugh laugh like we always knew. It's pretty funny that we didn't.

Back to the cave, just my t-shirt and us. There's that circle of fire again, everything's so wet. Are we underwater?

"Condom."
He nods.
"This is fucking perfect."
I nod.

He turns around, props and out comes a triangle from between his arm and the bed. P is inside the triangle, busy busy busy trying. Again, I feel bad. Again, I forget.

But K turns around and everything happens so fast and then it's just him and me. Is there a him and me anymore? Us? What? This doesn't hurt. It always hurts. No hurt. Eyes, eyes, lashes, kiss, eyes, kiss, lashes, kiss. He stops and closes his eyes for a few seconds. Looks at me.

"I almost came."
"So come." Isn't that the point?
"Not yet, no."

Kiss. Wet. Hug. On top.
Vertical cave. We must look like a monster from the outside. Poor P.

I pull him closer, and we're both sitting. I'm so full of him. Circles circles, beautiful rotation. Perfectly synchronized dance. His tongue sucking on my nipple. Impossible to and fro. There are no opposites, everything is one, like us right now.

He thrusts me slowly back down. He follows the rythm hard, I set it. I can't come but this feels like the origin. His eyes close and they roll back. I can see a little slit of white. That looks wonderful.
He opens his eyes smiling. Hes still inside me and lies on top of me for a second. He pulls out and I throw the condom out. It's weird, but it feels like we're still doing it.

He lies down to my right, and sparks a cigarette.

"This is the only thing right? Just this. There's nothing else."
I shine at him. He gets it, someone's in the moment like me.
"Yes." I say. "It makes the world go round."
He chuckles.
"Yeah. Pretty fucking nice."

I don't know if P exists anymore. We lie there, in the only place, and it is pretty fucking nice. I smile smile smile cause it doesn't doesn't matter.

castles in the snow

We leave that overused little bar at about 5:00 am. He's the last guy I make out with there, one week before it suddenly gets shut down. I sit on top of the bar and he fingers the outside of my damp leggings obsessively while sitting between my legs in a little stool, murmuring things I didnt ask for. The little multicolor lights keep spinning and changing paths on his face and the empty dancefloor (it really is a slow night), and I pull back on his hair and suck a kiss out. I am, of course, drunk out of my mind and I know I shouldn't be doing this, and there are split seconds when I look at him from above, from my angle, his chin resting on my belly, looking up at me with sad eyes, and I can tell he's almost gone, but I brush it off. Call me masochistic, but isn't what I'm already doing where I was supposed to end up in the first place? Destiny is present. I refuse to fight the one moment I have. He keeps violently biting my neck and I keep letting him, I know he needs something to destroy. Our tongues fighting a war, him giving me dark and me giving him a little token of spit for it. Little antonyms cancelling each other out on a Thursday night.

We walk lightly like little drunken elves, waltzing down the streets to the car hand in hand.

"If Im with you I definitely won't kill myself, that I know."

I just smile, because I lack the strength to tell him that I know it won't happen and because I'm a coward. His lies are pretty, anyway. He also seems to think he's telling the truth, or something like that.

"That's it, I am completely commited to you, forever. I am. Do you believe me?"

I just smile and wonder how much I wish it were true and how much I am relieved its not. I look at the paint splattered boots Im wearing, at the nuisance of white little light bulbs leading the way to the end of the night. They're so bright and cheap, just like my city.

He tries to lift me up a few blocks, my legs wrapped around his hips as always, and I pretend I'm not embarrassed about how heavy our history is. We crash into steel boxes on the street, the ones dubbed hazardous and some more innocent ones and on every one of them I sit with legs open and we forget we're on the street and grope some more. After a while, we manage to get to the parking lot and go up a few stories, get into my car. He looks in his pockets and pulls out some dollars and change, throws them in the cup holders beween us. I ignore it and pay the ticket, we pull out. We drive up two streets and then a few blocks to the left, rest right behind his car. 

"Have sex with me."
Little wolf eyes.

"..No. Youre gonna go meet her tomorrow, talk, and then we'll see what happens after that."

"Have sex with me"
His pupils wild with hope. Maybe I am the knife that will cut him loose.

"No..." I say, unsurely. He looks at me, and repeats his declaration.
"Have sex with me."

"...Okay." I go.

His eyes go wide(r).

"Really?"

"Yes" I say, smiling a knowing smile. 

I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

"Okay" he says excitedly, and then, as always, looks into me and says

"Follow me." Always with the emphasis on the end.

The sky is glowing with that annoying shade that teases you when its about to get light but not really. As I drive behind him I can see his red sticker telling me to "eat my own spaceship." Isn't that what I'm doing? I wonder what exactly I am doing, why I'm so excited and try not to think about the next day. I know I'm getting left, in the weirdest of ways. Im the sheep walking straight into the lions den. Why am I so curious to see how it happens?

We get to his house just before dawn breaks. I park behind him and I don't remember anything about getting out of the car, except for smooshed kisses and the mirror inside the elevator on the way up. I tip toe behind him, trying not to wake his sleeping parents. We walk into his room and Im lying down on his shining bed on the 10th floor of a white tower, with all the curtains up and the face of our soon-to-be dictator pitifully looking  down at us. The sky is purple like a bruise as he starts to take off my leggings and underwear. For a second I worry I havent shaved 1) because I really wasnt expecting this and 2) because I try to keep myself from having impulsive sex by making sure Im not that presentable for such occasions. So much for that. 

He kneels beween my legs and pulls at the fabric, looks down at me, and opens my lips. With two fingers he stars to rub my clit in circles. Hes about to stick his whole finger inside me (sticky), but I insist on accelerating the humilliation. 

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Put a condom on." I say hurriedly.

He obeys, reaches for his drawer, breaks the pack with his teeth and pulls it over his erect dick.

He looks at me again for a second, lying beneath him, and he crouches, like a baby tiger, without losing eye contact. His mouth opens, his tongue rolls out and the tip of it melts against my navel and up, while I watch him in awe. He licks between my breasts and pushes into me as he falls into my mouth. We are looking at each other in the eyes as always, and I know I should feel intense pleasure and a sense of I dont know what but something, and yet I feel nothing. I love him and that makes me inadvertently, completely and irrevocably separate from him. I can't say I'm moving.

"I love you" he says

"I love you, too." I shoot right back, a desperate attempt at crystallizing the moment.

We thrust and stare some more, me, completely alienated and observant, and Im not so sure about him, but maybe both of us are looking down on our bodies awkwardly joining, tsking from the ceiling. I feel disappointed that I can't let go with him, even though I already knew it was too late. I realize that he is fucking his memory of me, 7 years ago, fucking me on my teenage pedestal.

He moves some more on top of me while I watch the movie, and suddenly pulls out, pulling me out of limbo and looking worriedly down at his cock.

"It broke"

"What?" I say

"It broke" hes kneeling, looking at it and me with a confused expression

"Thats never happened to me before. Ever."

We look at each other and he lies down next to me, under the covers. With him out of me, I recover some of my speech skills and try to say this in the most nonchalant way:

"I know what youre thinking, stop"

 (Even though I don't want him to stop, I want him to read into the signs the way I know he is, like the broken condom means we are going to have incredibly crazy and cool and troubled babies.)

He looks at me and nods.

I know he hates this next part, and even though we both know, he still puts his arms around me, his mouth on my forehead and we fall asleep.