Reviews

Never Negotiate: Bibles Appropouture – Manuel Marrero

You Had Me at Ello

 

Bibles had failed. The Doves were failing. Sid, Bibles, and Candy were an indivisible & irreducible sum, a chimeric, eldritch aberration, a cosmic joke with the single-minded teleologic purpose of terrorizing me, livestock for a defeated creator. The summit had failed. Sid strode into the citadel with all the cultivated conviction of a labor leader vying for stolen credibility, cradling breviary, a seat at the table, no more nor less than screaming for justice on behalf of a house long bereft of lordship, his Right of Return, from the justly reviled Seraphim who had preempted to intercept good will, stormed the hall in bad faith, planted Spies in the House of the Lord, kindled malice to advance their eschatological agenda. Failure was the business end of a glock. Failure snaked around the hellscape at eye-level. Failure was a Dove in the Stitch Cartel’s custody. But most integrally, I was failing. Slipping at the wrist. The abortive singularity at fever pitch, threat level obsidian. The hour midnight. Were they the trident? I wasn’t sure about much anymore. Anxiety was a drill, and one thing I was certain of; the efficacy of inducing my baseline, cocktailed homeostasis, a needle in my arm pushing liquid ecstasy ’til the warm current arrived first class at CNS bringing increasingly attenuated waves of relief. History was taking matters into its own hands. Heaters on deck, I must break into waves. The pain was too great. It was reverberating up the cornerstones and cufflinks, into the nodes, visceral and interminable, impenetrable by the agencies of humanking or queen. The Angels were winning.

 

It’s the story of an obsessive pursuit. A grand hunt against a god who has maimed you.

 

Bibles waxed Moby Dick with authoritative reverence, casually turning a third eye from the encroaching madness. A creature of the screen, void of form, pseudonymous with Sid, and vice versa. Sid and Bibles were both characters, but I’ve never seen Bibles, the preternatural writer whose roots suckled at the streams, the demon king who locked eyes with my own horde and danced. They were both of them byproducts of an overactive id, multifariously duplicated in the spatial-temporal convex so many times that their incarnations were unmoored to a static identity, fluid as the spidered, auroral ripples that now painted the foreshortened cordillera looming over the dashboard in my sclera. The Sids variously appeared as excitable loose cannons and demure old souls, wise beyond years, sharp enough to know that the rush was in the emptied clips and wildly delusional dips, always footloose enough to trip me up on Devil’s details, ever evidently Sid by their familiar signature greeting.

 

It’s me, mate, your friend.

 

There were few things consistent beyond physiognomies and genderless countenance. Sid was both effete and grizzled, code switching as needed to navigate my psyche. They were husband to Musette, who came to find them in New York, slutty or matronly depending on the book and the year, Paris in the past now, where they were engaged.

 

We’re not getting to Paris tonight.

 

Is Paris still the capital of France?

Iono, is it?

 

They were father to a daughter whose name changed with each new incarnation. They were always on the verge of welcoming a newborn retard. Their words. Their books.

 

You tell me.

 

But it was Bibles and not Sid who wrote books, at least since Plutopia and Ello’s infancy. And it was the Bibles’ words that drew me to them, seductive in how they intimated private recollections and uncanny in their timing and attunement to my most unspoken emotions and inhibitions. Plutopia was the name of the only book written by Sid Markham, before their publisher pulled the edits, broke contract and broke them, heart shattered and left for dead, a time cowboy whose lifelong sole ambition was to be a writer, Sid pulled on their jaw until it cracked, submitted to the lockjaw life, assumed the mantle of patriarch, the LDS nuclear family. Bibles was spawned, born of animus and venom, Triple Scorpio with the long claws of vengeance and balance.

 

God, I was so naive then. I remember how happy I was when I got the acceptance letter, how wide-eyed and innocent. I’m allowing myself to feel something approximating that again.

 

The Bibles never had a face. They were strictly a creation of the internet. A greyseer and member of the Great Grey Nineteen, who, during Ello’s romantic period, before the mass bans, scramble suit shenanigans, doxxing and cyberbullying chased these irreverent auteurs into their Telegram tunnels, sometime after the Devs themselves fled, but before the second Civil War and the pogroms, the mass graves for the slain settlers.

 

That’s how it went. Nineteen Gone, just like a cant. They bore the mark of the beast. There was Changeling, Lirpa, April Showers, Karina Sais Quoi, Ken Kismet, the beloved Galaxim, but that’s a rabbit hole of lore for another chapter.

 

Modern day Mormons are trash, buncha cowards and curs. Latter Day Saints were a great, proud people drunk on their collective imaginations. Joseph Smith was a remarkable man who spoke to God, and it didn’t matter whether it was true or not, because people saw God in his movements, and were inspirited and touched by joy.

 

I’ll tap on the glass but I’ll never break it down.

 

I don’t even think about gender anymore.

 

This is a place for delusions.

 

This is how writing was always meant to be.

 

Plutopia, with its themes of paradise lost and humanity’s ultimate desire for death and destruction, with its racially-motivated reductio ad absurdums, Star Wars and anime allusions, became Hosanna in Hand somewhere over the Utah desert where I was now steadily approaching my destination, tablet in tote with Candida’s cryptokey, payload from my sub rosa incursion into the grifter couple’s sordid den. I would tender a lump sum and lid the case for good.

 

Telegram isn’t safe anymore. They’ll nail us to a higher cross than before. I’ll be impaled by what I love most. My words. The new app is called Riot. It can be accessed directly from the web. Register. Make sure you use custom not default and type in https://matrix.ketchupma.io into the home server URL. You’ll pick a username and stuff. Let me know when you’re in, and I’ll invite you to my room.

 

Candy Dawne, my madeline, was an ivory tower bride of the Deep South, one of the Blue Wives, Louisville sluggers bringing Lousville ruckus, disaffected fallow souls who pined for nostalgia, always tethered in some inextricably ministerial capacity to sickly husbands, whether in luxurious penthouses or modest homes or trailer parks, their familiar environs eventually inbred contempt, the internet their porthole into life’s inexorable gravitational pull, its vibrant milieux beyond the lockjaw life. Never hold a good woman back, I thought. They were often freelancers and hobbyists, vocational anarcho-filmmakers with unstudied private school equipoise, baseheads and junkies who sang in dilaudid drip octaves. Noble savages. Fearless and fearsomely intense. Art school dropouts and philanderers, voluptuous minarchists, activists and shrill harridans of secular persuasions, sepulchral pulchritude and proud pedigrees aloft. A testament to emancipation from the new American opiatic nightmare, which, by the way, welcome to mine.

 

You gonna try that on?

 

I hadn’t seen Sid since the gate crash incident which landed them in their clutches. The Sid I was en route to meet would have ashy long blonde hair and a checkerboard button-up. The old Sid, probably dead or rotting in a barrack somewhere next to nowhere. Next to the crash, Second Ruction seemed like a prelude. Bibles now was my only link to the noumena, my empyrean amanuensis, girl next door. Last time I saw Sid, they took a pen knife and drew a circle on the oak slab that parted us. Last time it was Bibles, telling me they would spiritually die soon, giving rise to another character. When I asked why, they messaged me an emoticon of the sun.

 

The freeway is a blue vein, a dedicated arterial road into the cordiform mass of Utah flats.

 

Currentivism is my religion. Fairy tale. I am gender fluid, but I don’t let it out anymore, being a father and all.

 

Couched in a cookie cutter subdivision of McMansions and concrete lakes abutting an aquifer — garden sprinklers and picket fences stretching out as far as the eye could discern, Revenge of the Lawn, Candy dwelled. With respect to the fentanyl patches and gabapentin tablets in the glove, the Devil spoke to me in cured libations. Dislodge this mortal lock, baying at the mayhem distillate trembling in my pocket’s pocket. Impertinence, black hats, black glove shit. The Devil stirs in the sibilance of Celinean nocturnes, in light of what I could become through him, through the burden of divine revelation. His was an old, melancholy song. I wake people from their dreary, dismal ethers and they decide to go back to sleep. I’ve lost so many subalterns this way. The Devil grudges nothing more than the rejection of his advances, refusal of his allure. His confederates can be felt now in the desert, numbered in the dozens at least, and I’ve yet to meet the man who can outmaneuver him. Perhaps you don’t understand the dire straits of your situation, Lately. I mean, what have you done for me, Lately? You’re a trouble rouser, Lately. I told you, I would set the world askew, ribboned praying hands, famines and floods, blighted neurological headcases sensual like the–

 

I pulled over on the sand and prepared to fix once more before meeting Sid. There was never any guarantee what personality type I’d be reckoning with, and something the Bibles said,

 

Judge me on my works. They justify all else.

 

told me I’d be dealing with the lurid and unconscionable Sid, the bloodshot eyes, the stimulant-popping. I was in no mood. Bibles was broken, a wounded, wonderful soul. That’s how Changeling, their therapist put it. But Sid had seen too much. They made people who could accurately be described as unreserved look meek.

 

Bibles surrounded himself with characters. I was one, of course, but there were others. They told me I was the only friend they had left. There was, however, the accountant.

 

Who’s the accountant?

 

Depends on the day, the book.

 

Bibles, why did you impersonate Candida? You pimped pain and perturbation into my life. Why’d you do it?

 

Why do you think we had her audited? Her movements resembled stochastic processes. It was almost as though she were reciting a script. Were she a bot we could’ve had her decommissioned and that’d be that. But she’s sentient. And God isn’t into retribution. Artificer not arbiter. Impartial, yet inflexible. A Deist God. It’s demigods that make the world turn, or burn.

 

LAZY BUTT GOD! Karina chimed in.

 

One hit wonder!

 

That doesn’t answer the question, Bibles.

 

YEAH, BIBLES. This is just like the Ello days. You always had everyone crazy over who what when where–

 

Bibles boots Karina from the room, so it’s just they and I. Face to glass.

 

I told you I was an agent. I liked wearing her skin in your mind. She reminds me of myself, were I a woman.

 

You said she reminded you of one of your worst enemies.

 

That too.

 

But you were really convincing, and all this shit you’ve been writing, depositing in the Telegram streams…how could you know these private things? Who have you been talking to?

 

I know it’s difficult for you to understand, but she was speaking through me.

 

What are you, fucking psychic?

 

Something like that, yes.

 

Where did you hear it?

 

There was choler rising in my throat as I typed.

 

The Holy Ghost.

 

The Holy Ghost?

 

Yes, the Holy Ghost.

 

Fuck you.

 

She’s the person closest to your vitals–

 

Depress the keys. O, but How Deep is Your Love? comes on the radio. When my lawyer wired the funds for repatriation and resettlement to the UK once a plea deal had been bargained, I ran. I anticipated he’d have his retinue waiting for me, so I asked the Doves to intercept them before they could give the resident homesteaders any trouble. I wouldn’t be going back to London. I wouldn’t be going back to Miami. The skag-brained computer zombies were making me sick, turning me into one of them. The bloody barrios and pseudo Silicon Valleys, the money laundries, tunnelvisioning me. I’d rather K Street bowels. Erotomania churning in me, I dug myself deep into other addictions as a kind of replacement therapy. Unlike my erotomania, the heroin wasn’t tempting the gods, causing the earth to spiral into a miasma of violent energies. Balmy, inclement weather no longer did anything for me, one emotional hurricane too many. We’re right in the epicenter of the blue tsunami. We’re at the cutting edge. We’re close to the water. I can walk to the ocean. We’re whalers. At sea level.

Ain’t no dick like Moby Dick. Another of Karina’s interjections.

 

I brought everyone here. And there are more here than you know.

 

Bibles had written voluminously. Not just during Ello’s salad days, but a search for Bibles Appropouture yields a Medium page, a digital journal called The Currentivist, various coded websites, encrypted language for dangerous times, Geocities, tilde.town, a tumblr that was a plethora of pornography, mainly sapphic, women’s fashion, literary quotes, writing on a gamut of subjects. There were message board posts, a Telegram channel, and at least two more completed digital books, plus one arcane, physical-type book forthcoming from a nebulous entity called Expat Press. Psychopompous was a primal scream, a hallucinatory cri de coeur that employed Greek archetypes to tell a tale about television and modern love, about the sun and stars and fuck knows what, about Penelope, their old flame. It was dedicated to Dyonysus and Bibles didn’t remember writing it.

 

Some things are forgotten, and better left forgotten.

 

I read it in an addled stupor. An excerpt:

 

“Up in the belly of Mount Olympus sail our essences through the stars. Do you care that I have found my own name as a feeling, more than a word, and could find yours also if you only asked? Everything through my inward looking eyes looks so electric and dreamy, and so full of star child glitter pop, that I wonder if it possibly compares to the beauty external vision holds for all others with eyes not plugged into vanity like mine.

 

For I am the character who sees into the mountainous base which makes the me of us. And I am the messenger who knocks upon the knotty flow of my tongue. And I long to pull everyone into the gyroscopy of my blinking gulp. For I am an atom of our star spangled constellation longing for a chance to grow endlessly.

 

I am the psychopomp, not bound by Celestial ties; and the Underworld is not off limits to me. In the dark of its flame I have reamed the tongue of Lucifer. With gospel in hand I have tunneled surface bound, through the land of shade into the realm of reality, wondering where lie the distinctions between form and fiction.”

 

and Antiquity Fails, dedicated to Musette, another piece of the labor of love, a tragic, grueling affair, but if we are ennobled by the sobering majesty of grief and loss, this is a journey to the end of that night. This is a work of raging beauty, a phosporous pipebomb to paralyze you into one sitting. His corpus was an interactive immersion. It was an ongoing chronicle about Adam and Musette, the creation of the universe, and their place in it, toiling at a rare bookstore, caring for a daughter, letting their unbridled thoughts expand and contract crossplatform. But where the writing was, where the narrative was impacted, what currentivism was, an edifice for the dead, an ongoing serial the bulk of which entailed conversations, fluidity of personas, theosophy. Our saturnine discursions into escapism and fantasism, Bibles the black dot. Achieving a state of mental undress and naked grace.

 

O Psychopompous, you are bold today. Say the word I am longing to hear, offer me the weed I am wanting.

 

You asked for the devil.

 

I just like that sweet ear candy, but for the eyes. A soothing coo in the pupil, a rumble in my pocket, the blinking light on the nightstand. Can I pay you in emojis to continue talking to me?

 

There’s definitely something to machines.

 

I love pot more than almost anything.

 

The danger only multiplies. The spread heart is open to more wounding. The responsibilities of life are only more present in your reality and the malaise…are you kidding me. One day it’ll happen for you and feel like nothing. The so called ball and chain. The insanity of a living prison. A permanent pussy. A lockjaw life. I don’t need sex where I am at, but my crown is built of worship, a cathedral in the clouds.

 

I know what the fatigue of routine feels like, and it’s not this. I’m just in an anxious state. Reaching out to the few people I feel comfortable enough to, looking for a magic answer. It is truly fatigue. That is a proper way of putting it. The walk through the desert, spotting an increasing few as we approach another inhabited zone. It’s hard to say if you’re going to make it when you’re out there on the sands, beard growing and hair etc. And then you start seeing people, and you’re hungry for a warm bed, a meaty breakfast. You kind of get to jogging, doing your best not to give up your birthrite for a bowl of soup. It’s an aiming of the gun for the long distance off, the attempt to hook Christmas and drag it towards you.

 

I’m always there to a degree in comparison to the state of everyone else.

 

In the end, beneath all the power games and skill reaching, the fact that it’s there and that it means something to someone means that what I do matters, that I matter, and that I am seen.

 

I have prayed a collector. An assistant. A currentivist editor. Publisher. But it would all of someone’s time. So I have fashioned machines. Connections, automations, distribution methods. What is currentivism to you? I have, at this point established a more effective machine. There is a messier middle that I have to dedicate myself to collecting. But I have not been too messy at the making of it. This is not my first rodeo. Truth be told, the cameras are, like, always on. Another member of the team that is helpful is the machinist. They can save on personnel. Jack the feed right into the mainline public broadcast networks. That’s the toughness. The contradictory nature of currentivism. The need for an assistant. An editor. A currentivist cameraman. Currentivism is here and now. It is interplanetary. Books are weapons. My machines are the mech of me. There are life points. Narratives are like religions. It is all recorded.

 

I like being thought out loud to. Last time I was an interviewer, I worked for Mallory. For Maudlin House. It was exciting kind of, but I was doing five a week, and I was getting some negative responses, and I wasn’t wanting to get into a war. People hold a lot of effects upon their identity. They need things to be their form of perfect. And some people didn’t like the kinds of questions that I was asking. They called me unprofessional. I was more interested in focusing on my own work. Looking at others’ stuff was driving me crazy.

 

Everyone is always so “professional.” People are very concerned with their image and things going a certain way. They separate before the level of friendship sets in.

 

This is a long game. The show has only just begun. It’s a wonderful world of factions, houses, hovels, and war. In the new landscape, we, the writers, are the agents. Distributors, publicists. Teams. An agency. We’re on the case. We all kind of investigate the same thing. Other agencies work at other things. Hypists. Hypsters.

 

Maybe no one will ever find us, and isn’t that a thing of beauty in itself? Did it all for God. Bangin’ em out for the Lord. Paving the path to paradise. Emptying the vessel to fit through the needle’s eye. Camel through a needle’s eye before the rich get into Heaven. My prayer though, bro… have an assistant by my side. Submit things for me. And help me find a way to get some more alone time. Help me out of my job. You know, like day job, of course, is what I mean.

 

We’re so lucky to have each other. We’re so lucky to be each other, in fact.

 

Can’t you see it all coming together?

 

The Better Face of Fascism, a chronicle of the birth of their first child, was a vulgar, scathing critique of the cuddle corners that had emerged as a reaction in the wake of Trumpism. Bibles is the hero we need, maybe not the one we deserve. A self-styled nazi, a laughing doomsayer, a pedophile, Bibles dares to confront us with the inferno of the zeitgeist, a life with smatterings of American dream, now nightmare, of an average nine-to-fiver slaving away and their unfettered quotidian perversions, their comical kaleidoscope of modern day Salt Lake City. It whittled away at me, it consumed me into the narrative, a piece of Americana for the new realist, the dreamweaving Dreamer Deceiver.

 

These thoughts subsided as I arrived. Welcome to Utah, the Beehive State. Perseverating now from the fentanyl, I skid off the road and drive straight into the desert, outcrops canyoning around me, until I find the location, deep in the bed of an arroyo all but hidden. Sid was already there, phenotype Caucasian male, unkempt, unwashed, wearing a transparently white robe three sizes too large for his slight build. He seems irritable as he opens the passenger side door and situates himself like an edge case failing every stress test.

 

Jameson, Missouri. Eden. The cradle of original sin, according to the Latter Day Saints. It’s an even longer way from Paris, but if the third coming of Christ occurs, we need to be there. The Doves need to be there because God won’t be. We need to laugh or we’ll cry. And if the Angels beat us there, it’s gonna get worse. Luckily, time is on our side, whatever that means.

 

Why did you tell me God was a ruthless, spiteful motherfucker? Those were your words.

 

Because it was simpler. You were three separate ways from lucidity, friendo. What was I supposed to tell you then? Drive faster. You can peal it the whole way. I’ve cleared our trajectory upstairs. The concordance was geotyped, so it took a while, but from what I gather, you haven’t followed our instructions. You’re still fucking around with Candida, and now, if your petulant insubordination on this wasn’t bad enough, you’re fucking around with another one. Karina Sais Quoi, one of the Grey Nineteen. And one of the Blue Wives. The calling card of batty broads everywhere. So…whatsits compels me to ask you, are you out of your fucking mind, Lately!? What do you think this is, a goddamned game? You think I like deliquescing and being shoved through the howling rictus of existence over and over again? You think I like this? Voices Tower of Babeling all around me all the time in thousands of languages, just whooshing around? I’d rather be dead! But I can’t die, bud. Not yet.

 

You told me we were time cowboys. You’re more like an outlaw.

 

Well, your exploits are causing schizoaffective reactions in teenagers. The ley line is somewhere in Jameson, Missouri, where we’re headed, to intercept the third coming of the Christfigure and prevent the release of the Antichrist.

 

Wait, the third coming? What about the second?

 

He’s a little black kid in federal custody.

 

What?!

 

Listen to me, you shit. We may not be fictional characters, but this is a game of thrones. Factions fight, proud houses fall, and treaties are written in the blood of invading armies. And something inhumane is coming for us all, indiscriminately and full tilt, damn the torpedoes, and if we don’t unite we’re doomed, you hear me? If you keep on with your piety, your lack of pragmatism, striking down imperfect allies that don’t pass your bullshit purity test, it’s not gonna matter who sits with blood and iron over the ashes. You need to hear this. The more ruthless we are with our enemies, the more ruthlessness escalates. And the second we let up on them, they’re gonna come back 10x as hard on us. Because I’ll have you understand something, bud, listen, do you have a daughter? No, you don’t. As difficult as this might be for you, it’s 10,000x more difficult for me, bud, and 10,000x more beautiful. They are devils in the stairwell, mate, they are angels in the trees.

 

No, you listen to me, pal. I’m taking you as far as the state line, but I’m fucking tired, man. I’m tired of you not telling me everything. I’m living a nightmare I can’t wake up from. Angels, Doves, the Mother of Chaos, death around every corner! Gaslighting myself for you! I’m losing my fucking mind, man. You presupposing I would get better, and I’m fucking splitting!

 

Yeah, I hear you. You’ve been shot through. You’ll have to learn to walk upright again, with dignity and grace. This is real pain, and it’s a doozy. Real pain is stunned silent. Real pain is damn near speechless. Real pain is stultified shut. Real pain finds you at random times. Buckle up, buttercup. I wish I could tell you it gets easier. But it’s getting dark now. I’ve planned for this. Pull over at this deserted drive-in, they’re showing Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Perfect movie to ignore. We’ll spend the night here. Jameson in the morning. Still got that vial I gave you, huh. Keep it close.

 

I rather drive through the night.

 

Yeah well, it’s not just place, it’s timing. Something hasn’t happened yet. Now, pull the fuck over! I’m bleeding piss!

 

I comply. The drive-in is abandoned. Empty concession stand. But the film is Fast Times, and the opening credits flicker on the massive screen as I pull in and Sid jumps out saying he’ll be right back. Amy Heckerling. Cameron Crowe. There are other stationary vehicles, all of them empty, and briefly I imagine smooching couples just beneath my line of sight. There’s no tape. The film is silent. I turn the radio knob. I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues plays. I turn the volume up, reach into the glove compartment and blindly pop four gabapentin, preying for sweet release of sleep, before I go and have myself a breakdown. As the warmth reaches me and the pleurisy of withdrawal recedes, the spring coil mechanism, Sid sidles his way back into the seat next to me. Things start to glitch. I’m in a station wagon. Subtext is the lingua franca of erotica. Abuse the love language of addicts.

 

Don’t wish it away

Don’t look at it like it’s forever

Between you and me I could honestly say

That things can only get better

And while I’m away

Dust out the demons inside

And it won’t be long before you and me run

To the place in our hearts where we hide

 

My vision starts to get bleary, and I hear a voice gently rubbing my eyes and earlobes.

 

This song makes me emotional.

 

Nothing wrong with that.

 

I know, but I have to be careful. I’m bipolar.

 

Me too. It’s a superpower.

 

I know. We’re angels.

 

Angels are violent.

 

Not those angels, dummy. Bipolar angels.

 

I laugh.

 

Time on my hands could be time spent with youuuu.

 

Sometimes I cry in my car.

 

You’re doing that shit again. Stop it.

 

Doing what? What’s the matter?

 

You know exactly what you’re doing.

 

No, I don’t.

 

Into the vermiculate reticulum of night’s ovulum we vanish.

 

I look terrible. I’m always complaining about my looks.

 

Why aren’t you cuddling with your wife? It’s late.

 

I’m cuddling with you.

 

our clammy bodies

 

unraveling linchpins, loosening hinges.

 

Can’t believe you were four days late reading my tweets. Like I literally don’t believe you.

 

I don’t know why I didn’t see them…

 

I’ll let you fuck your fake wife. Good night.

 

I’m brushing her hair. I’m not fucking her. You pervert.

 

Haha. You fag.

 

You fuck.

 

You cunt.

 

You bitch.

 

You offal-stuffed vagina. You soft ass white boy. Vanilla ’bout to have a seizure or something.

 

You nigger faced butt nugget.

 

Better back the fuck up before you get smacked the fuck up…nigger faced butt nugget, That’s pretty… wow. That’s pretty racist.

 

I’m pissed off.

 

At black people? Why are you pissed off?

 

I’m pissed off at black people for making me white.

 

Why, man? What the fuck?

 

Before there were black people, I was just a person.

 

You sound like such a bitch.

 

Thanks, bro.

 

Don’t aggressively bro zone me, okay?

 

Alright, cunt.

 

Might just shove my cock in you, and then we’d both feel pretty awkward.

 

I’ll break off your cock with my ass, and shit it in the toilet.

 

Touché. It’s starting to pour. You’re gay.

 

Whataboutit?

 

What? Do you mean what of it? You bowel smegma. You acromegalic fuckboy model.

 

Hey, take it easy bro…snap out of it. What of it? You knuckle dragging slopehead.

 

Nothing. You’re just full of shit. And I know it hurts ‘cos it’s true.

 

It’s not shit; it’s your cock.

 

Disarming. Touché again. I don’t believe you’re Sid. Or Bibles. You cunt. Gash.

 

Who do you think I am?

 

Some cunt. Why do you think I treat you the way I do? ‘Cos you deserve it.

 

Like, you mean, I’m cool or crap?

 

You’re worse than crap. Your fetor is demonic. I’ll fuck you in half. I’m into verbal abuse. Pick a safe word.

 

My safe word is ‘nigger.’

 

Glitching, warbling into all the ivory tower brides we’d never fuck. Candy, Karina, Sid. The bibles dick. The biblesdook. Sweat beads ricocheting like bullets from our pecks. Te voy a comer la boca. Spanish for I’m going to kiss you. Translates literally to I’m going to eat your mouth.

 

Do it then, fag.

 

I do it. The devil’s furnace hyperventilates, fumes from the carcasses of babies fucked and left to burn. Conceived of misery, executed with joy, we fuck long and hard on the leather backseat, fingers laced and swaying. After a torrid, sweaty interdimensional sex bath, I cum in his asshole as he moans my name. Tension resolved, dissolved, consumed by relief, taken, Sid flips me over, assuming the dominant position and I feel his weight and get turned on again, and as I engorge, his hard dick resting on my abdomen, pulsing, throbbing, he arches over the front seat, recovers my crumpled jeans now strewn over me. He reaches into my pocket’s pocket. He holds the vial of mayhem distillate in his palm. The burden of divine revelation, he says. He seductively twists the cap off, and in the shadows his silhouette shifts like an inkblot. I notice how skinny he is, and how his ashy hair is like that of a girl’s, his pecks actually soft and pendulous tits. He smiles and pulls the cap clean off, like the pin of a grenade. Looks me in the eye.

 

You ready to find out why this hurts?