by Tim Murphy
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m right back there again,” she said.
Mateo couldn’t avoid a moment of shame. He said nothing, but there was a beat when their eyes met, when she had to have seen his shame, and perhaps that helped him in the end, because it reminded her that he was human and not a heartless using machine.
But he didn’t nurse the moment. In fact, he said, rather coldly, “You know how good you’re going to feel in a second. Block everything else out. That’s what I do. In a second, it won’t matter.”
“Why’d you even come to L.A.?” she asked.
He looked at her and laughed, taking the loaded spike from her. “Why are you asking me that now?”
He was ready with his needle. He looked at her one more time. She was just looking at him blankly, openly, with DJ Khaled boasting and braying out of the speakers wired to the laptop. Just a fucking anonymous, hot, sunny, blank L.A. afternoon, in an anonymous apartment, in an anonymous part of town, with a next-to-anonymous girl. He was once again off the map; he could be anywhere in the world right now—and he was about to fly away, erase himself, and that was the best feeling in the world. The moment before was almost better than the actual doing. But then in went the spike. And then: Oh, the shudders! Oh, the violence inside him! Then: the fall, the fall, the fall. She was always there during the fall, 04/14/1984, the big 1980s hair pouf, the denim miniskirt, the leggings, the studded leather jacket. Why was this the only time she came to him?
Now he was deep in the fall. He didn’t know Carrie had watched him in horror and brutish, lustful jealousy. Or that, up to this minute, she’d reserved a tiny piece of her mind to walk away—to just run to the car and drive to her sponsor’s—a drive that might have led to disaster because her heart was racing, her whole body racked with chills and shakes. But now that she’d seen him like this, getting fucked by the H god, she wasn’t going anywhere, she needed it too badly herself.
A million miles away, he could feel her taking away his spike, undoing his belt. “Can you shoot me now?” he heard her say dimly, across a stratosphere. A hundred layers inside himself, he laughed. Can I shoot you now? Do I look like I can shoot you now? Fucking shoot yourself up. You’re straight and you’ve got everything you need. He felt tremendous gratitude, though—not to Carrie, who, again, was now many miles away, but to the simple state of being high again. He was relieved that that long period of eightysomething days of pretending that he didn’t want this . . . well, that was only half true. He didn’t want this up until he ran out of energy to do what he needed to do to keep from doing this when he wanted this, which was, admittedly, a good deal of the time. He was just tired from the mental back-and-forth. On the floor, leaning against the bottom of her futon, he sank orgasmically forward into the Crouch. The Crouch! God, it felt so good to be back into the Crouch! And soon . . . the Rocking!
“Mateo, can you please do me?” Carrie asked again. He reached for the belt and crouched toward her. He wasn’t computing time but his arm held the belt out, frozen, for thirty seconds before she finally took it from him and began tying herself off. Thank God! He crawled toward her and buried his head between her legs, her smell there mingling with his high and plunging him deeper into bliss, in slo-mo, the same way he’d watched his blood cloud back in the spike. God, how fucking gorgeous that was!
He mustered the energy to push open her legs and rest his open mouth over the crotch of her shorts while she readied her works—it was his way of telling her what she had to look forward to if she could just, could just, get over the moral hump and get herself high. He kept falling—it was the coming-true fantasy of falling down the endless rabbit hole without fear of the thud, the impact—while she did herself up, focused on the work. Then her shudders and tickles went through him, plunging into his own. Holy shit! Again with the delectable slo-mo, he felt his dick bloom to life, as it often did after he’d shot, not that he could ever have an orgasm in that state.
Mateo knew to wait until her shudders and shocks subsided and she was falling, crumpling forward. It felt like a million hours but, lying atop her, he took off her clothes, then his own, then, with the two of them like near-corpses on her sisal rug, he worked open her pussy with his fingers, then gentled in his blood-hard dick, taking the long, slow, mind-shatteringly excellent plunge inside.
She stretched her arms up and back on the rug, her crotch rising to push him inside as deep as he could go. “Mateo.” She said his name like a four-year-old. “Thank you, Mateo. You were right.”
He reached forward, held her hands bound over her head. He’d won. He felt powerfully evil, somewhere fathoms beneath his slo-mo bliss. He was still M-Dreem!
“I was right, baby,” he said, smashing her mouth down into the rug with his own, rising and falling on her like a weapon of destruction. Oh fuck, he thought, I shouldn’t have been born, but since I was, this is what I was put here to do. Spiking and fucking. He was delirious. For maybe twenty seconds, which felt like two hours, he felt that his body had melded with Carrie’s body, but now, even as he fucked her, more and more slowly, he felt himself soaring away from her in black space. It was all about him and that woman, their unholy alliance, him carrying on her whorish work of nothingness, until, when finally his head came up and he looked at Carrie, he saw instead her face from that snapshot and his own face, merged into one.
“Fucking God!” he gasped, shattering the slowness, leaping out of Carrie and off her body, flopping with a spasm on his back next to her, grabbing his dick for dear life.
“What is it?” Carrie said, but it was a drooling slur; she could barely fix her eyes on Mateo.
I think this H is cut with something, acid or X, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t—he just stared up at Carrie with the pleading, terrified eyes of a child, holding his dick.
“I feel something different, too,” she said. She climbed onto him, lowered herself, arched back and out of his view. She was having her revenge on him now. It went on and on. He flopped his head to the side so that the two of them, though joined at the center, could have been leagues away from each other, and he gave himself over to crying quietly. It felt cathartic and vivid amid the more numb bliss of the H high. He cried and cried, letting himself be a little baby, while she rode him, and the next thing he knew, she was nodding on top of him, with him still inside her.
Slowly, slowly, hearing the suck of the sweat around their groins, he pulled her off him. “Mateo!” she protested once, popping awake for about six seconds, before he gently shoved her onto the rug. He crawled toward his pants to retrieve his cell phone; he was feeling an incredible need for Hector, whose beat-up couch in that shithole apartment back in New York had become Mateo’s favorite place to nod before he went to rehab; Hector, too manic to be a true heroin fan, would watch over Mateo while tweaking on meth and ushering various visitors in and out of his back bedroom.
Mateo had gotten used to the tremendous feeling of safety of knowing that Hector was watching him as he nodded, and he missed it now and wanted to reach out to Hector, to see if he was in Palm Springs. He pulled out his cell phone, whose battery was nearly run down. There was a text from Kyla: “Please come home or go to a hospital. At least text me back and tell me where you are. I love you.” There was a text from his sponsor: “What’s going on? You don’t have to do this, you know. You think you do, but you don’t. It’s as easy as calling me.” Mateo deleted them both. There were voice mails from them as well, but he deleted those without even listening.
Hector’s cell number was burned into Mateo’s memory, a huge trigger to use just like the sight of a needle. He texted Hector: “Im in LA where r u u fuking freakshow? r u in palm spring?”
The cell in his hand, he crawled on his naked belly across the rug—oh God, all that scratchiness felt good, alongside the scratchiness inside him—and pulled up against Carrie—but wait, was she breathing? Yes, she was breathing. S
lowly, but breathing. He held her close, kissing her neck, until his dick was fully erect again. Then he pushed her legs open and eased his way back inside her from behind.
“Mateo,” she mumbled, bucking back toward him. Deep inside her, he nodded again, not reviving until the cell vibrated in his half-open hand. He checked it. “Fuck yeah this is crazy Im in ps,” read the text from Hector. “Address? Ill cum 2 u.”
Mateo smiled. Hector would “cum” and make it all right, take care of him and Carrie. Hector was always going on about how much he loved Palm Springs, the dry air and the sprawling desert-scrub landscapes and the big gay parties. How did fucking destitute Hector even get the money for a flight to Palm Springs anymore, Mateo wondered, or for a rental car? How’d he make it across the country with his drugs without getting busted? Where’d he put the fucking dog? Well, who cared, thought Mateo. He was coming.
“What’s the address here?” he asked Carrie, the cell poised.
“Why?” she mumbled.
“A friend of mine wants to come over.”
She squirmed unhappily. “Why?”
“It’s good,” Mateo said. “He doesn’t really do H so he can watch us while we nod.”
She told him the address and he texted it to Hector, an act that felt like it took an hour. Then, still inside Carrie, Mateo nodded back out.
The door buzzer buzzed. Mateo looked at his cell. It was 3:42 A.M.—more than two hours had passed. It buzzed again. Gingerly, Mateo pulled out of Carrie. He managed to stand and pull on jeans. He shuffled his way to the door, hit the buzzer, looked through the peephole and smiled. There was Fagfunk, dark glasses on in the middle of the fucking night. Mateo opened the door. Hector was with some beanpole, fake-blond, meth-skinned little gay rat, barely dressed in a drooping Lady Gaga tank top and fucking purple leggings under short-shorts. What the fuck? Mateo stepped aside and they hurried in, anxious to get out of the hallway.
“This is fucking crazy, negrito, we’re both on the Left Coast,” Freakshow said, his glasses still on, his fagfunk emanating off his too-tight white jeans and tank top. “Why didn’t you tell me you were gonna be out here? You haven’t come by in a while. Remember I told you I come out here every year for a big party? I got lots of friends out here.”
Hector talked a blue streak while Mateo stared at him, slack-jawed. Hector’s torso was more concave on top, flabbed out on the bottom, than the last time Mateo had seen him. His head was shaved and someone had given him a bad tattoo on his neck—some scary-ass kind of cartoon cat. As for his twitching tweaker sidekick—God, thought Mateo, the kid looked like he was twenty-three going on forty-six. His skin and teeth were a wreck.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” Hector asked again. But Mateo didn’t answer. He was nodding, his eyes heavy-lidded, swaying on his feet in front of them.
“Oh, shit,” the beanpole tweaker piped up. “They are out of it.”
But Mateo didn’t care. Freakshow was here. Mateo managed to put an affectionate hand on Hector’s shoulder. “Freakshow,” he mumbled. “New York City freak.”
“You’ve gotten worse since the last time I saw you,” Hector observed, guiding Mateo into the room, where the TV, which had been on low for hours and hours, was now broadcasting what looked like a cable-access talk show out of someone’s basement. He dropped Mateo on the futon before he noticed Carrie, naked, legs splayed, barely breathing on the rug.
“Holy fucking shit,” Hector said. “Is she OD’ing?”
Beanpole just stood in the doorway, looking around frantically, while Hector knelt down by Carrie and pulled up her head. Amid his nod, Mateo felt contentment. Freakshow would fix up him and Carrie. Mateo knew Hector was opening up his backpack with his sex toys and his porn and his lube and his cherished little black box with the glass meth pipe inside; he knew Hector was propping up Carrie and putting the pipe to her lips; he knew she was suddenly sitting up in that dazed, buzzing, time-stands-still nexus between nodding and tweaking Mateo had dwelt in a few times with Hector. Mateo knew she wouldn’t OD now. Hector came around to Mateo next, put the pipe to Mateo’s lips.
In a second, Mateo felt alert to the scene in the room. There was beanpole tweaker reaching hungrily for the pipe and pulling off his shorts and leggings, shotgunning smoke with Freakshow, mouth to mouth, back and forth; Carrie, naked, legs spread, looking at Mateo in a stunned, fried daze on the rug. Freakshow doffed his clothes, right down to a black jockstrap, and stroked his nipples, licking his lips and sitting back wide on the futon couch. Beanpole shoved a DVD into the player, then the thirty-two-inch screen exploded with the orange-tan flesh and pounding techno music of gay porn. Mateo’s eyes felt, after hours of heavy-liddedness, like they were widening so fast, they were about to pop out of his head. He was freaked out and horny at the same time; he pulled off his jeans and started stroking his now-limp dick, then running his hands through his hair.
“Holy shit, oh holy shit,” he kept saying. “What the fuck, what the fuck!”
Carrie was reaching for him from the floor, her eyes wide, too. “Mateo, come here,” she said. “Hold me.”
“I can’t yet,” he answered idiotically. He looked desperately at Freakshow.
“We need to balance you out,” Hector said. He went into his little black box and pulled out some tiny baggies, pulled out a key. He gave first Carrie, then Mateo, then the beanpole, and finally himself a giant bump of something—then of something else from another bag. He put them away.
Whatever Hector had given them, Mateo could instantly feel it working; the wild overstimulation was subsiding and he was descending into a semiparalyzed pool of ecstasy. Hector was guiding Carrie and Beanpole toward the futon, doing that tender hush-hush thing he could do so well.
“Let’s all get close,” he said. They were all naked now; the room was spinning slowly into a horny, mellow, gooshy lull. In a second, Carrie was straddling Mateo, holding him so tight, working her way down onto him; right alongside the two of them, Beanpole was doing the same on top of Hector.
Holy shit, Mateo managed to register, they’re gonna fuck right alongside us. His heart was pounding, but pleasurably; his eyes were closed, but when he opened them he realized he no longer had any idea where he was. Freakshow had given them all acid or mushrooms or ketamine or MDMA or some combination; when he looked searchingly into everyone’s faces, he saw only his own and hers. Hers, the snapshot. Ah yes, he thought, he was back in the sweet spot! Carrie had gotten him inside her now. She had her head bowed down around his neck.
“Oh, don’t do that, oh, don’t do that,” Beanpole was chanting as he went up and down on Freakshow, clearly meaning just the opposite, as they were echoed by the men on the TV screen. Mateo had a flickering realization that the night would probably not end well.
“Ysabel,” he said very clearly, right to her face, as she looked down over him. “Ysabel Mendes.”
Usually, he hated to think her name, let alone say it out loud. God, where had it just come from? Well, she was right there in the room, looking into his face! He kept fucking Carrie, his eyes closed. When he opened them, maybe minutes later, he saw that Beanpole was alone on the futon, looking startled, tossed aside. Mateo scanned the room wildly. Freakshow, naked, was standing across the room, just staring at him, horrified, his hands to his face.
Mateo’s eyes bugged out. He couldn’t help laughing. “What the fuck, Freakshow? Get back here, you’re freaking me out.” Carrie rode Mateo wordlessly, her head dead on his shoulder, a damp spot growing on the futon where they were joined.
But Hector didn’t move for several more seconds. Then, wordlessly, Hector was putting on his clothes, grabbing his wallet and the keys to his rental car.
“You’re fucking leaving?” Mateo asked. Alarmed, he pulled Carrie off him and stood up, so fast he fell to his knees. The room was spinning and stretching; it felt like a funhouse one minute and a horro
r show the next. The techno music from the porn filled his entire head and wrapped around his brain in strange ways. Freakshow was walking out the fucking door! Where the fuck are you going? Mateo tried to call to him, but he couldn’t—instead, Mateo found himself crawling toward Hector, terrified he was leaving.
You can’t leave me now, Mateo tried to say, but could not. He watched the last of Hector’s construction boot as he closed the door behind him. Mateo reached for the door, opened it, crawled and stumbled down the hallway of the apartment, but Hector could still somehow run, and he did.
Mateo watched Hector from the window in the stairwell as he drove away. Sunlight was emerging. Mateo was naked, stinking and sweating, in the stairwell where anybody could find him. Carrie and the beanpole were back in the apartment, with all the drugs, doing God knows what. You should go back inside, he thought from somewhere far away. A huge part of his body and mind were screaming to resume the animal coitus. But he was paralyzed, standing and staring out at the street. He couldn’t muster a fully formed thought. Eventually he started masturbating. He watched a stray morning jogger pass. How much time had slipped away? Minutes? Hours?
Then he heard distant sirens. Were they really sirens? Yes, they were. And they were getting closer. But Mateo still couldn’t move. With fascinated detachment, he watched the ambulance pull up in front of the apartment, disgorge itself with paramedics charging up the front walk with all their gear. He could hear the commotion on the floor below as they buzzed every buzzer. He finally determined to turn around and go back inside the apartment, and when he did, shuffling naked down the carpeted hallway, he was met with the team of five EMTs.
