Your whole neighborhood randomly pulses a symphony of the expected reds and greens, also the intrusive blues, oranges, yellows, pinks, and whites: a chaos embedded within the controlled sentimentality of this sanguine season. Something always gets out of hand.

Colored lights blink in doorways and windows, strung across iron balconies, wrapped around pine trees (and any other kind of trees handy). I look through the glass doors of an apartment lobby where some transplanted brown rocks are tinseled and roped with strings of bulbs in the shape of miniature filled condoms, like the ones in the sex store a block back that they’ve blown full of air and lined up in a row to show the difference in size, shape, and texture.

I’ve always liked the little fenced-in gardens on street corners here. On the West Side every empty lot is paved for parking. Some of these gardens have no flowers. Others are crowded with chairs and tables and unused carts on wheels, the same carts that sit on sidewalks in the summer, while old men behind them sell flavored ices. But now in the frosty air, they wait in no particular arrangement, abandoned reminders of the remedies they carry when we’re pivoted closer to the sun.

The closer I get to your place, the odder the mishmash of trendy fashion outlets, dingy botanicas, yuppie theme restaurants, and clusters of indistinguishable bodegas. The new sushi bar has a large duct tape spider on the central picture window. Its body is a cardboard sign that says in black marker “This window broken glass.” It has at least twenty legs all radiating out asymmetrically from its body, hiding the cracks and holding the paned surface together. A young couple sits there behind the spider, pretending it’s not there or being too pre-occupied with each other to care.

I wonder if the fish is fresh inside. There’s nothing more revolting than chewy old sushi. The fish must be fresh enough to form a succulent slice of silken flesh, perched perfectly on that little pad of rice and wasabi as it lands on the tongue.

I stopped and had a falafel in my own neighborhood before I got on the subway. Good, but I’ve had better. As I ate it, I remembered that you wanted something from the store. What? It might have been important. No matter what comes out of your mouth these days, you try to make it sound so life and death. I’ve no time for melodrama anymore.

Fair is fair, you know. My mother used to say that, almost as much as her number-one phrase, “You can’t live all your life.”

Don’t forget, you started all this. I never asked you to leave. Didn’t I tell you that you’d get yourself in trouble without me around?

Another nice thing about your neighborhood is the Spanish boys. They like me. They always look at my fair skin and my blonde brown hair and smile and rub their cocks through their baggy pants. So much left to the imagination.

I like them. Hispanic men have the most amazing lips. Certain black men are even better mouth-wise, but overall, the Spanish guys win.

That’s what I first noticed about Angel. His mouth and then his ass. Of course, he’s always wearing tight pants, so once he is facing away from you, you get the contours immediately. Don’t misunderstand me, Angel is easy to look at wherever your eyes fall. And now that I’ve seen every hair, every crevice, every inch of him, I consider myself an authority on the subject.

I wonder what he’s wearing right now. A white tee shirt. V-neck. White briefs, a size too small. A cigarette for a baton, directing a music that will not seem to change tempo as it imperceptibly speeds up over the hours. Beats per minute. A sampled moan comes back again and again like clockwork. Fair is fair, Angel. Deep house. Something familiar builds up slowly in the background for such a long time. That’s what Angel says. A melody from an old, old song. Just a snippet. The hook. Deep in the background.

I haven’t been in the big clubs like the ones where he spins, since I first moved here. He is the master manipulator for the disco marionettes. I can see them jerking and writhing, oblivious to the relentless monotony.

They deserve to be controlled like that, to pay good money to be used by Angel. He uses them better than any of the other DJs. That’s why he will get to remix the hottest dance tracks of the biggest names. In just a couple of years. That’s what Angel says. A lot. He’s a Scorpio. Moon in Virgo. Uranus sixteen degrees in Libra. He’s psychic. He moves to the music like he’s getting rimmed from behind, but with even more confidence than someone who’s getting it like that.

Angel has faith. You don’t. You don’t believe in anything. Not even yourself. And not me either. Never me.

It’s four more blocks to the building. It’s right next to that Iglesia de Maestro. Those naughty Catholic boys stroll past during the services and never even look inside. They yearn to serve a different master. For all their posturing, deep down they want Jesus to bend them over and fuck their pretty brown asses, to hold them in place with His hands, the sacred Blood pouring out of the nail holes in the palms, running crimson down their shivering legs.

Come inside me, Jesus. Fill me by the power of your saving grace, while the blessed Virgin hovers somewhere above, blinded by the Light that shatters the night shadows into dazzling always noon.

The pot-bellied landlord will open his door halfway, peer out, yarmulka on his hairless pate, and reveal two perfect sets of teeth to me, as polished as his smile. He checks to see if I look like someone who will turn him in for selling crack and then when I look familiar, he’ll wonder if I’m interested in buying some.

That sadly upholstered chair, olive green velvet on dirty white, parked at the base of the stairs, will be there, blocking my way. What kind of perverted consensus of the tenants would lead to this as its final resting place? What unique combination of drugs is it that makes people squeeze through the narrow space between the chair and the banister throughout the day without ever becoming annoyed enough to move it some place where it could be sat in instead of angled around?

One flight up, the newest turds from that yapping terrier will be hardening just the way the last ones were a few days ago. This day’s layer of dust on those fluorescent Pop paintings propped against the wall will make them just a bit duller than they were yesterday. A battered stop sign, face-up, is the welcome mat for a corner.

Things change. Everything has changed. You have changed. You will never be the same again. I won’t let you do that to me. Fair is fair, but I had to put my foot down. It had to come to this. No regrets.

I’m sitting down for a minute in my favorite little garden. I noticed that two sections of cyclone fence weren’t chained, so I slipped inside and found the bench in the fractured street light. Right now I can’t see the layers of graffiti I know are there on the bench. In the daylight I’ve tried to read the mangled words. Darkness makes the bench look clean like a Monday morning chalkboard. And I can invent any kind of flowers I want to be growing here at my feet. Maybe a small pond or creek, but there is no sound of running water, just the click-click of the sign lights from the bodega around the corner, out of sight, so it will have to be a pond. But ponds have algae in them, coagulating into scum that covers the mirror where the water meets the firmament. Okay, so no water at all then.

Three boys are walking by the unchained fence. They are too busy with each other to see that the garden is open. If I called out they would come back to the bench and I would make them all pull their pants down and give them something to remember on this Christmas Eve. The power and grace of Jesus illuminating this night. What punishments would await them if their names were written here on this bench, if I checked their pockets and found thick black magic markers with the tips worn down? Ignorantia, Tristitia, Inconstantia, Cupiditas, Luxuria, Injustitia, Deceptio, Invidia, Fraus, Ira, Temeritas, Malitia. Fair is fair.

Last night was hard for you. I know it. It was hard for me, too, but it was the only way. You admitted it before I left the apartment tonight. You wanted me to get you something at the store. Food, I think, was it a hamburger? I can’t do that. Burgers kill people these days, you know.

Now, I know you’re going to tell me if I can eat raw fish, you should be able to wolf down a Whopper once in a while. A Whopper might be okay for you. It’s probably not real cow meat anyway. But you should really be eating better. You need your strength.

You should know by now not to argue with me.

But no, there has to be water in this garden. The plants suck the water out of the soil to grow, but too much water kills them, drowns them. Moderation in all things. That’s what she said. Maybe it’s raining. The sound of masses of wind-driven drops on the window. Cars go by outside and make that hissing with their wheels on the water. It relaxes me.

Angel told me you saw a mouse in the apartment and thought it was a big rat. He said you were scared. He said you didn’t put your feet on the floor for a long time. He said you thought I was one of the most interesting people you’d ever met. I didn’t know you could think such thoughts. Maybe you could be saved, after all.

I like Angel’s voice on the phone. The soft accent rounds the edges of his words into suggestive syllables that in turn merge together into supple streams laid end to end-- and before I’d even met him, I imagined him talking with one hand in the air, wavering in tempo to the house music in the background, or his middle finger tracing an eyebrow three times from the top of nose to temple. I have seen him do the waving thing while he talks on the phone to his friends, but not the finger over eyebrow gesture, not yet.

A voice with such synchronic certainty, saying the simplest things, insinuating that each idea is a revelation, either completely original or passed on to him from illustrious sources, mystical sources. Solidly, a Scorpio, his moon in Virgo, Leo rising; smelling of (the first time I was close enough to him) in descending order of strength: pot, Tiger Balm, cigarettes, Clorox, Dewer’s, and valerian root. One front tooth slightly chipped. I wait for the right time to ease that childish story out of him. I know it is a delicious tale. I want to tell it for him.

This bench is hard on my ass, but I don’t want to move yet. I might step on the flowers or in a deep muddy puddle, if I stand up. There’s always a right moment to disturb the balance, to tip the scales.

Angel laughed and his eyes glowed when I said I was a Libra. Everything I am, crammed into three adjacent houses. This is deep house. Heavy burden. Twelve houses on a wheel. Twelve distinctive features, unmarked. Twelve apostles. Nine houses empty in a row. No caffeine, no blow, only if Angel offers it. Never turn down a gift from an angel, she said.

And you, what does it feel like now? There in the dark. Learning to wait for the first time. Remember the first time? That stale bar smell, white candles in round metal cages hung from the ceiling, erratic jukebox music, all that pathetic sleaze perched over their foamy pints. Diana Ross trapped in a speeding photographer-driven sports coup. On a bridge, I think. We laughed at the camera work, the editing, the close-ups of that crash. You remembered Liz Taylor in an even more ridiculously filmed car crash. A whole novel was built up around that in the seventies. And I watched your face while you were lit by the television flickering and you were saying you want to be a writer, but you always hate all of your stories and throw them away even if they happen to get done.

You want to forget everything. Good or bad. Just neutralize it. Heave it out in front of a punch line.

But it’s like a circle, you know. Angel says so. He always depends on the curving back around. He said he likes vinyl better than CDs because they spin slowly enough so you can see whatever’s on the label turning around. The stars are no longer fixed. The narrow beam of light that sprays out in front of the needle and the cartridge, illuminates a half inch row of black grooves, half of them holding what we’ve just heard, half what we will hear next. (“You can watch it all night,” he says.) The beat holds everything together. That’s why it has to change imperceptibly. The earth is still at the bottom and at the center. The spheres of the other three elements hover above. Fire, air, water. He imagines people moving while he practices mixing his sonic web. They move every part of their bodies, but they stay in one place for such a long time.

I’ve decided that the rain has to stop in this garden. When the garden has moved to the point where the sunlight directly hits the plants, a miracle of blooms will erupt: reds, greens, blues, oranges, yellows, pinks, and whites. It will take a day for the soil to dry because the buildings move into the path of the sun by about one in the afternoon this time of year. I wonder if I can catch cold by pretending I’m soaked to the skin. Do viruses respond to wishful thinking?

You’re going to be so hungry by the time I get back. You should have eaten more last night, but you won’t ever eat when you have that look in your eyes. Those accusing eyes that prick me like needles. They sting when they slide into that one pronounced vein.

It’s like that Puerto Rican who tells me to keep my arm straight so it can move easily inside and suck out the blood. He’s burned from being in the Marines a couple of years. His aura is damaged. He obeys the calculated shouts that still ring in his ears. When I opened my fist, I grazed the head of his cock through his scrubs with my index finger. He didn’t move away. He filled four test tubes.

I hate the big yellow bruises that form around the entry point of the needle days afterwards, on top of the purple and brown. A temporary orchid tattoo. But even so, I’d rather use the needles myself, to put things into my vein. Muted chemistry. The blood of the Lamb, polluted by a secret arrangement of letters, characters I can’t make into understandable words.

Dirty blood can’t cleanse you. All the past sins strung together like a dark red stream that can’t be washed out of your clothes. A washing machine spinning with all the cum-stained towels mashed together on one side. It builds up that banging noise and if you don’t stop the turning drum, the whole thing shimmies out of place.

But you, you did it to yourself. You called me after all these months. No money, just out of the hospital, elaborately deeper in debt, bragging about the new young boyfriend, already back at the gym everyday. It was time. It was halfway around the circle. The inevitable realignment thwarted your disobedience. Perhaps it felt like guilt to you, as if you had no choice about reconnecting with me. Maybe you didn’t. I’ve underestimated myself so many times before with you. Not this time.

I’ve willed the rain to stop and all four seasons to overlap. I’m walking through the flowers to the gate. They are fading pastels in the light of the full moon. This light comes from the sun originally and is deflected to earth and weakened by the dusty pock-marked mirror: gardenias, snapdragons, grape hyacinth, azaleas, bird of paradise, camellias, daphne, honeysuckle, iris, marigolds, pansies, tulips, brown-eyed susans. Some for fragrance, some for color, some to stir those old memories.

The sidewalk has oily spots and the extremes of weather have made the concrete crack and shift. Car window glass pellets and cigarette butts line the gutters. Trash blocks the sewer grates. I can’t bring the garden out here under the streetlights and the neon beer signs. It won’t grow here. But the guys walking toward me compensate. Many of them are high tonight. I can feel their elation as they pass within inches of me. Jolts of electricity leap from their bodies to mine. I steal it from them while they stumble and laugh, not even aware they are touching me and I them.

They need the Master’s touch.

You there, standing on the corner, tracing there on the pavement with your eyes, the outline of a bad dream you can’t quite remember. I’ve never seen you before this moment. You must live nearby. Your posture tells the world you crave whatever someone can offer you. You’re starved for it, ready to be opened up with salvation.

This is how it happens. Time slows down for you. Everyone walking on the street freezes. A light glows behind you. You’re too scared to move. You feel your pants unbutton themselves and fall to your ankles. Someone touches your neck from behind and a ringing starts in your ears, a droning that moves around your head, the sound of a motor or an air conditioner in August. The touch slips down your spine toward your sweaty ass, a direct line from light years above, straight down to the soft center of your being.

What once was used only to cast out is about to become the portal through which the Divine will enter the sinner.

The holes in Jesus’ palms are kissing your hips while His fingers pull back again and again, anointing the puckering target with His milky dart. The thousands and thousands of drops of sea water from His head stain your white pants. The wounds on His body gurgle and cry together in a chorus of praise. The dark blood of sweet fruit, the bruised, the violated bloom that sets the wheel spinning in the spire. A blessed union with the Divine Light. You sweat glitter into the water as it drowns your soul. And all you hear now is the hard breathing of your Saviour before he ascends to another sphere, leaving you sore and wet between your legs, and grateful that every place His touch graced your skin is on fire.

I’m passing a family clinic and an elementary school. During the day the schoolyard is teeming with noisy children. The older boys call the young boys “faggot” and chase them. The girls shriek at every violation of their space by the younger boys who want to steal their candy. You can sometimes tell which boys already have an inclination to love other boys. Maybe it’s natural at a young age to like what is like you instead of what is unknown. Maybe at that age it’s easier that way. I like to imagine what these boys will look like in a few years, when they’re just done growing, the moment when everything is as big as it’s going to get.

In the dark, the long row of windows reflects distorted headlight beams of cars crawling by them. Paper snowflakes, Santas, decorated trees, and the crudely enormous letters spelling out a dyslexic “MERRY CHIRSTMAS,” all drawn and colored by the kids, are spotlighted as the light moves across them. Was that misspelling some kind of in-joke among the faculty due to bilingual frustration? Surely someone noticed it. It’s been there two weeks.

I never see kids much after dark in this neighborhood except in small groups of three or four, huddled around a video game in a corner grocery, hypnotized and so good at the game they only put in one quarter for a half hour of play. Which ones will get swatted or knocked around for staying out too late? Which ones will learn to like the same treatment from a stranger later in life?

There are three bodegas on this corner. I don’t know which one makes the most money. The bright new one with the fancy awning is twice the size of the other two, but they don’t have such a great selection of products. Mostly low fat chips and diet sodas, which overweight women cart out in overstuffed plastic bags.

Then there is the smallest one with the quarter glued to the yellowed tile floor, right near the door: a little sociological study invented by the owner to see what percentage of first time customers bend over to try to pick it up. The Rice Chex and the Saltines have a dense layer of dust on the box tops. They sell something besides the products on the shelves at this store.

My favorite is the middle-sized store, not because of what I can get there, but because there is always this beautiful young man behind the counter. He flirts with everyone. I wonder how many times you’ve fantasized about him. Even other Hispanic men look at him funny, talk to him in a quiet kind of way. He is nice to everyone. I’ve never seen him upset or rude to a customer.

He is there tonight. His smile is waiting for me when I enter the store. He stops talking to his friend and leans back so I can come up to the counter and see all of him. He is older than Angel, but even more lovely in the face. I think he is only half-Spanish, Dominican probably. The other part could be Asian or Indian. I can’t figure it out. I am considering asking him tonight. But somehow it feels wrong, as if some kind of magic will be ruined with the key to this mystery made clear.

You never learned that. You just blurted it all out whenever you had the chance, when the liquor soured in your brain, or the particle waves of daylight coming in the window wounded you. There’s nothing worse than a mirror in a brightly-lit room. Air meets water. The room where Angel slept alone last night, your room, with the useless fireplace, twelve shards of mirror sunk into the rough plaster around the opening.

Santa Claus can’t get down that filled-in chimney. He has to walk in the front door like everybody else. Will Angel kiss me softly at first? Will he beg and pull me inside his circle? His clutching ring of fire, the way he did last night? But tonight there won’t be an audience. No one watching what we do.

Your place is so cold this time of year. The steam heat only comes on for a few minutes twice a day. The rusty tin ceilings leak copper water. When it rains hard, this water drips into the light bulb over your bed until it bursts. Angel has painted the center room of three a flat white, but the old flaking plaster is still falling: giant dandruff specks on the floor near the baseboard.

The whole apartment slants toward the center of the building, a freeze frame of the last moment before this dismal box implodes.

The front room is a combination kitchen, bathroom, dining room, office. Your computer is right by the front door on a new desk that Angel bought for you and assembled. It is the only new thing in this place. A pseudo leopard pattern covers one wall. The other walls are a dull brownish red. A stained Japanese shade hangs over the bulb in the center and softens the harsh light, almost hiding the baked-on grease on the stove, the crumbs on the floor.

The white room is where Angel’s three turntables sit on a ledge made of milk crates bound together with wire. There is an old dining room chair and a funky sofa full of clean and dirty clothes nearly sorted into two piles. The wall above the turntables says “Jack Your Body” between two dancing ghost outlines in black chalk.

The last room is your room. There is a mattress on the floor in front of the two windows. Out the windows to the left is a partial view of downtown across the roofs of other buildings almost like this one. A blotchy dresser rescued from the garbage outside and a spindly coffee table are the only accompanying furniture. The mattress is covered with a fitted sheet of pink felt. A satiny aqua comforter sprawls over it. Four obese pillows are scrunched into yellow cases covered with rows of brown ducks in profile. A framed reproduction of Picasso’s “Blue Boy” is the only decoration in this room except for the broken wood crucifix on the dresser that doubles as an incense burner.

I’m standing in front of your building. When I press the buzzer, I hear my heart thumping and I see Christ on the cross above the signpost of the door, the needle still taped into the vein on the back of my hand, the nurse checking my chart. She’s thinking about how much longer her shift is, oblivious to the last eighteen hours of pain I’ve endured stoically.

As I lay in that hospital bed, clear liquid streams inside me, diluting my blood, filling me, pushing out the impervious hunk of stone, a tiny rune to catch in a sieve, as if I’m straining the well-steeped teas Angel makes in oversized cups: valerian, chamomile, mace, galangal, chrysanthemum, hibiscus, cardamom, clove, eucalyptus, ginkgo, ginseng, sage. I feel hidden treasures swell up inside me, ready to burst out of their secret drawer, ready to cut me inside like jagged jigsaw pieces of unpolished jewelry.

Angel just threw his keys down to me tied in a dirty sock. I don’t let them land on the concrete this time. Instead, I relish the impact of metal wrapped in cheap cloth against my open upturned hand. I await the bruise that will bloom on my palm over the next days.

Last night, you were there in my closet, unable to move behind that two-way mirror. I made sure no amount of struggling would gain you your freedom. Your face was only a couple of feet from Angel’s when he came while I was fucking him on the dinner table. All three of us could see his face when he shuddered and lost control.

You didn’t even squeal into the muzzle that held your mouth shut. Maybe you didn’t want to let him know you were there. Maybe you wanted to see what he would do with me. What I could get the boy to do. Where I could take him that you never could.

Some part of you likes to watch. The same part of you that can look at that video over and over again of that blonde bitch who services a dozen guys in the airport men’s room. You were rock-hard when I opened the closet door after he’d gone back home to find you. That look of anger and confusion on your face felt as good to me as Angel’s asshole and his mouth.

I’m standing in front of your apartment door. The driving bass shakes Angel’s whole world. Good. It will make things go more smoothly. Angel will do his finest mixing tonight. So will I.

The backs of my fingers take inventory in my backpack: the cold metal of the gun, the razor edge of the knife and the scalpel, the fine diamond braid of the rope, the cylindrical bodies of the syringes and jars.

Angel is unlocking the door. I can smell his spices, feel his heat. He’s psychic. He knows there is a lot in store for him tonight. He won’t resist too much.

I hope he doesn’t have coke tonight. Makes me too talkative. We have all night to make our Divine Miracle. The planets will never be situated like this again.

Don’t misunderstand me. I needed you there last night, watching, not just to make you feel bad, but to show you what happens when you pull away from me. I needed you there to make it complete. It was essential for me to let all of those things happen. Now you know that I can touch him in a way you can’t even begin to understand.

It’s nearly finished. Just a few more hours. Angel is smiling. His teeth are so white, his eyes heavy with hope and drugs.

Tonight he is mine alone. You will never have him again. I will make sure he understands how important his sacrifice is for me, for us. Each special pleasure, each drawn out torment given to him tonight is another punishment for you.

You are waiting there for me just like you should have been for all of these months. You will come around. You will see it my way sooner or later. The Light will shine on you, too. I’ll be home soon, my love.

Fair is fair.

 

© 2005 Rob Stephenson - Contributor's Bio