by Gabi Moore
***
After I arrived home, I finally found laughter from the evening’s events. My brain was moving at about a thousand miles a minute. I couldn’t keep a single thought in my head if I tried, but I kept getting reoccurring themes.
You lucky fuck, I thought.
Time and time again, I found myself saying those three words. You couldn’t really believe how fortunate I had been in getting away from that whole situation. I thought about all of the other people who had gotten into trouble because of my actions. I also thought about Stoker. The way that he had launched himself at the nearest cop in order to prevent me from getting arrested. He was so brave.
Sure, there was probably a strong element of self-preservation involved in an action like that. In all likeliness, he had some kind of record. I felt like a bad boy like that probably didn’t want to end up on the wrong side of the law, or at the very least he had a deep disdain for authority. Then I thought about the biker guy who had helped me out.
It seemed like somewhere in the undercurrent of the queer community, there was a general disdain for traditional authority figures, and that tonight had only been a scratch on the surface of that veneer. I also realized that it was highly likely that the percentage of the queer community who held such a disdain for police officers was small. I had to keep my conjectures in check. It wasn’t like I could deduce something about an entire community of people from a small subset in an isolated experience.
Likely the people there were full of artificial bravery from alcohol. There was also likely the pre-conception that the people within that room were examples of those who advocated free love. In that microcosmic sense, I had inadvertently become some kind of mascot for the free love movement. People likely saw my submissive form of exhibitionism as a wave of freedom that they could stand behind. The presence of authorities with the intent to destroy that public demonstration was probably what had set the crowd of so easily.
All of these thoughts came to me so clearly in my state of heightened awareness. The drug had certainly shifted from being a primarily sensuous drug into a highly analytical substance. I was making connections and observations along lines that may or may not have been accurate. I was aware of the fact that my theories were fallible, but that didn’t slow their onset. My mind continued to reel without my permission, spinning out a near endless cacophony of tangentially related conclusions. Eventually the whole thought process had exploded into a cosmic battle, in which I had participated equally on both sides.
On the side of the angelic, I was the representation of freedom and love within our society. By getting fucked in the ass in public, I had shared myself deeply. I was Christ on the cross, who suffered for the sins of my people. Those for whom I suffered were the ones who felt like they couldn’t freely love one another in a society which was primarily heteronormative. I was the demonstration of love in a place that wanted love sorely, but was too restricted to make any use of the action. I was not the force of the revolution -- but I was that which the revolution had been pinned upon. People would go home that night with a renewed sense of freedom -- if they made it out of the club without getting themselves locked up. As for the people who fell into police custody, they would be my disciples. For years, those who fell tonight would likely think of this as their critical moment, when they stood up to the authorities in the name of true love and queer rights. I felt in some profound sense of the word, like tonight was a victory for the side of righteousness.
Then, when self-doubt and curiosity about alternative perspectives came into my mind, my mind drifted toward the demonic. I considered what it might be like if we had been in the wrong. What if the entire point of our exchange had been a violation of stringent sexual taboos which had been in place for the greater protection of society in general. We had stood up against God’s abhorrence for homosexual behavior. We were the fly in the ointment. We were leading the people astray, and the police were there like angels from the right hand of God. They were the agents trying to put us back in our place, and restore order to a society founded on designer jeans and child support allegations.
Of course, the queer community paid their fair share into the coffers of the designer jean community -- and what about the genes given to us by the Designer?
Surely my predilection for homosexual impulse was not something that exempt from the master plan. The Great Designer must have known when constructing my specific gene set that I would be interested in participating in such an experience. After all, hadn’t I gone into the whole experience with a mind focused on locating holiness?
Hadn’t I started off on this journey with a righteous cause in my mind?
I couldn’t sit up any longer. I needed to lay down. I needed to relax. There were too many things going through my mind, and not enough rationale to moderate my own thoughts. My mind was spinning out in ways that I couldn’t keep straight. More than anything else, I needed to sleep, but sleep simply would not come. Only thoughts, and endlessly more reflections.
I played back all of the scenarios that had taken place over the course of the evening, searching for something, but not being able to make sense out of anything. Eventually, when my mind was as exhausted as my body, I fell into sleep. In my unconscious state, there were no dreams. Only death. Beautiful, and silent, my mind found peace until the dawn of the following morning.
Chapter 7: Daniel
If I hadn’t gone to sleep feeling like death, I certainly felt like it the next day. My leg felt awful, and there was blood caked to the fabric of my pants. I felt dirty, and my asshole was sore from being fucked.
They don’t tell you about that part, I thought, rubbing out the soreness along either side of my anus.
I had passed out in my clothes without showering or eating a thing. My emotional state was at an all time low. I had no idea that this would happen, but I was almost certain it was a byproduct of the drugs. I felt like my soul was the equivalent of a burnt out husk -- something that had been set on fire the night before, and now was little more than charred remains. I had lived life so fully last night, that I was positive there must be a price to be paid for that level of exuberance. Nobody gets to experience enlightenment for free. Beyond the feeling of utter exhaustion, I was also experiencing frequent and unrequested flashbacks to various points in the previous evening.
Everything has a price.
During my shower, when I touched my penis I remembered what it felt like when I was inside of Stoker’s throat. He claimed to be dominant toward me. Even if his dominance was one of the primarily expressed forces in our engagement, there was still a fair amount of submission to be experienced. For instance, I know for a fact my cock was down his throat when I came. I remember vividly feeling my shaft expand inside of him. The expansion had taken place just prior to when he eagerly swallowed my seed. The orgasm was a divine moment we shared. In that moment, there were no tops or bottoms -- only something overwhelmingly unique.
The other aspects of the fucking --- God, I couldn’t tell if they were embarrassing or exciting. For instance, the way that he owned me in front of fifty to seventy-five people. I had transformed myself into essentially nothing but a fuck hole for him, while he swung his dick around like a macho man. I essentially objectified myself, and as a result, he was able to use me however he liked.
Part of me thought that felt hot. I liked the idea that I was someone who was attractive enough to be used by someone like Stoker. I know that he was dominant, and to some degree, I was aware that the only reason he was able to be dominant was because I submitted to be passive. The whole thing was an interdependent play on relationship power dynamics; that was one way to look at it.
The other way to look at it involved shame, and near perpetual fear.
My thought processes went on and on, in circular loops. They looked roughly like this:
“What if the next time I see those people, they mark me for what I am, tie me up on the side of the street, and rape me in a team?”
“What if I can’t shit right for days afterward, and I walk around bleeding from the ass?”
“Holy shit… I don’t think he used protection. Oh my God! … shit, shit shit… what if I have AIDS?”
“That’s what happens to people right? They get fucked up the ass, while they’re on drugs, and then they get AIDS.”
“Holy fuckin’ shit. I should get tested. What the hell was I thinking…”
“Well I guess I wasn’t really thinking -- more feeling…”
“Feeling great…”
Right at about that point, I would start to fantasize about whether or not Stoker truly loved me, in his heart of hearts. Then I would fart or something, and my sphincter would be all loose, which would remind me of how hard he had fucked me up the ass. After the reminder, I would get off on that paranoid fear / shame kick again; it was fuckin’ miserable.
Knowing that I couldn’t just continue to kick myself in the ass for the rest of my days, I decided that I needed to do at least two things in order to continue to be alright with myself.
“First off,” I told myself, “I need to go to fuckin’ church, and pray.”
There was no telling what sort of hell realm was reserved for dirty, drug-addicted, homosexually experimental sodomites like myself. Regardless, I was pretty sure if I went to some kind of church, I might be able to atone for my sins.
Maybe they’ll just throw me in purgatory, or something like that.
Just as an aside:
Interesting thing to note about my thoughts -- they were all spoken out loud. There was something distinctly fucked up about my brain in that it was no longer operating like a regular human brain should operate. There were absolutely no filters on my mind anymore, and to be honest, it actually made me laugh.
In regular society, people tended to have all sorts of fucked up, or weird thoughts, but they hardly expended the energy necessary to share those thoughts with the world. In fact, most of the time, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the thoughts that were restricted to the confines of one’s own mind were confined there for a reason. Likely the reason was that the thoughts were not socially appropriate, or it might not gel with whatever pre-conceived notion of self that the speaker was promoting on a given day.
People usually are very busy constructing their self-image in the way that they present themselves to others. I had discovered, in those moments of sharing my thoughts with myself, that there was an awful lot about my thoughts and inner processes that were no longer unavailable to my conscious mind. Everything was laid out on the table.
And number two is to see if they give unrepentant, homosexually experimental sodomites free STD testing at the local clinic. But if I’m damned, I don’t think it will matter if I’ve contracted anything. I need to pray...
Whatever plans I may have had for the day prior to this moment were long gone from my current itinerary. I didn’t even bother to gather my things or change. My apartment was an absolute wreck. I couldn’t even bear to look at myself in the mirror. For sure, I looked like hell, but the image kept shifting in my attention. I couldn’t connect with the image of my own reflection. I was a foreigner in my own body.
God Damn, I thought, feeling my head swim with anxiety. This has to end.
I closed my eyes with my left hand, and walked out the door. I was feeling disoriented about my identity, but at least I had a direction. Sunday Morning -- I’d go to that nice little church down the street. The one with the cute messages that were written on the billboards every week. I hoped to hear everything I needed to hear, and say whatever I needed to say. I hoped I could make sense of all of this dis-orientation. My body meandered down the sidewalk in its disheveled state. In all reality, I was probably not as bad off as I felt. The problem with feeling poorly is that your perceptions tend to be skewed.
Everything gets filtered through the muck.
The morning was still early, and I had not slept thoroughly the night before. Usually, I like to indulge in my sleep, but this morning, my brain was fried, and I had no desire to stay in my bed longer than usual. I was alone, walking down the street, though there were occasional cars that would pass me on the street. The church was not far, and I arrived there in no time at all.
“The Righteous are Right, but are they Us?” was the statement listed on the front marquis.
“Not exactly super creative, but what was I expecting. Of course, the question is relevant.
I walked in and sat down in the back pew. The service was already in motion, and the crowd was singing a hymnal about the glorious resurrection of Jesus, and how He helped the sins of the fallen by taking them into His arms. The entire song was very moving, and in spite of myself, I found my body moving to the sway of the guitar. The people around me were really giving the song their whole attention. I felt like they were truly caught up in the rapture of the moment. I wanted to sing, but I didn’t know the words.
A few more songs went by, and then the Reverend, who looked like a black man from a Seventies Religious Infomercial stood up behind the podium. He started talking, and I did my best to be silent and listen. I felt like God was going to tell me something specific here, and if I didn’t pay absolute attention, I might actually miss out on the experience.
“My brothers and sisters,
In this day -- This holy day. This day of joy, and unrequited loss. We look to ourselves, and our nation, and ask ourselves simply one thing!”
The crowd murmured their assent.
“‘What is that one thing?’ you might ask. We’ll I’ll tell you. Let me break it to you like Moses broke the rock in the desert -- flooding the people with the holy water of Jesus Christ!”
I thought of the ‘holy waters’ that had come out from Stoker’s hard cock, and then shook my head to attempt a renewed focus.
“That one thing! Is the Love, and the Law!”
“‘Now wait a minute Reverend,’ you might say. I can count, and that’s two things…”
The Reverend chuckled appreciatively at his own joke.
“But I assure you, my dearest flock. They are ONE AND THE SAME. Much like the Father, and The Son, and The Holy Ghost are a sacred Trinity, reflexive in nature -- yet distinct. I offer you yet another paradox on this beautiful morning in the words of Jesus.”
“For the entire law is fulfilled, in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“That right there is straight out of Galatians 5:14. It doesn’t get any more real than this… As a matter of fact, you can go home now… I think we’re done here.”
Nobody got up, except me. When I stood up and looked around, I suddenly felt a sense of shame creeping over me. I had taken the man literally, but everyone else in the room was still seated, staring at him. Many of the people nearest to me were staring at me as well. The Reverend did not miss his opportunity.
“We have a man here who knows the righteousness of his own heart is determined by the Love which he shares for his brethren. Tell me Son, what brings you here today. Lay it out for the community how an upstanding young man like yourself will get out of bed in the morning to come here and Pray -- while the rest of your generation lays vacant in the Sloth of Excess and Partying?”
I spoke without a thought for the consequences.
“Got fucked up the ass last night pretty good,” I said, “and drank the sperm of this guy named Stoker. All of that was after I was going to go suck this guy’s dick for some Moli, but that didn’t pan out. Anyway, I basically burnt my brain cells out on some fucking research chemical, and I thought, ‘Today might be a good day to go to church.’”
A lot of the congregation reacted with abhorrence. I watched them as parents clasped their hands around the ears of their children. Older women looked at me with their hands over their mouths. I felt, in that moment, what it must feel like to be a leper, or some kind of deviant social outcast. I turned to leave, but the Reverend didn’t miss a beat.
“And you now know that
Love is the whole of the Law?”
I turned to him, and made eye contact with the man behind the pulpit. I felt disgusted, only this time, it wasn’t at my own behavior. I felt disgusted by these people, and sad. I didn’t care that they were too busy judging me in order to find peace and clarity in their own lives; that was their problem to deal with. I was going to have to continue forward in my life regardless of what they were all going through.
“I think we both know where this is going,” I replied. “Excuse me.”
I left then, feeling the eyes of the entire congregation on my back. If that service taught me one thing, it was that my definition of love, and the definition of love of those who surrounded me weren’t necessarily the same thing -- but they also didn’t need to be the same thing either.
The Reverend had been very specific and very biblical.
“Galatians 5:14,” I said to myself, stepping down the modest stairwell which had led up to the chapel. “Everything I need is right there. The Reverend was right.”
