Incompatible

by Mauricio R B Campos

  The sound of the door handle being turned took her off her thoughts. Then a key penetrated the bolt with its sound of metal against metal and the door was then opened, and revealed Cesar:

  “Hi, doll, how’s going? The guys went away, we’re only Bia and I here, let’s watch something?” he asked with a forced smile.

  “Ah, sorry, but I’m making some researches here.”

  He entered the room to check what she was reading on the computer screen. He made a grimace and with a rude tone of voice, he said: “Chaos magic. This shit doesn’t work.” “Of course it does” she replied.

  “Works shit! If it did, these wizards...”

  “Magists” she interrupted. “The correct is magists.”

  “It’s the same thing. As I was saying if this stuff worked for sure, do you think they would let this knowledge to the reach of anyone? So, the man can change reality as he pleases and gives this knowledge easily to others? I don’t think it’s how things work.” he contested and took a joint from his pocket to light.

  “It’s not quite so, you can only be served by Chaos if your request doesn’t disturb too much the balance of the universe.”

  “Mambo jambo! Then why do your magist friends are all poor guys? A flock of broke men?” he explained and lit the joint straight away.

  — Grant Morrison15, Alan Moore16, Yolandi Visser[14], Damon

  Albarn[15], William S. Burroughs19, Aphex Twin20, all these guys wrote

  15 Grant Morrison, MBE (Order of the British Empire)(born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer and playwright. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and countercultural leanings in his runs on titles including DC Comics's Animal Man, Batman, JLA, Action Comics, All-Star Superman, Vertigo's The Invisibles, and Fleetway's 2000 AD. He is the current editor-in-chief of Heavy Metal. He is also the co-creator of the Syfy TV series Happy! starring Christopher Meloni and Patton Oswalt.

  16 Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, and From Hell. Regarded by some as the best graphic novel writer in the English language, he is widely recognized among his peers and critics. He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.

  their names in the world culture and became rich men. That is to say, except for Alan Moore, who doesn’t know how to read agreements.

  “Have you ever stopped to think that this half a dozen men can only have remarked because they were really talented and they were at the right time, the right moment with the right stupid guys clapping hands for them? Can’t it only be a coincidence for them to have had interest for this magic bullshit? It may have nothing to do with influence in the

  and Think Tank (2003) incorporated influences from lo-fi, electronic and hip hop music.

  19 William Seward Burroughs II (/ˈbʌroʊz/; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was also briefly known by the pen name William Lee. Burroughs created and exhibited thousands of paintings and other visual art works, including his celebrated 'Gunshot Paintings'.

  Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), but he is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a highly controversial work that was the subject of a court case after it was challenged as being in violation of the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964).

  20 Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known by the stage name Aphex Twin, is a British musician. He is best known for his influential and idiosyncratic work in styles such as ambient techno and intelligent dance music during the 1990s. He is among the most acclaimed figures in contemporary electronic music.

  Universe functioning. What is the difference for the Universe, at last? What is the difference for the Cosmos if some guys are poor or millionaire? As Douglas Adams would say, our planet is an unimportant shit in the outskirt of the Universe.”

  She stared at him and became serious:

  “I’m not asking you to believe, ok? Just don’t pull my leg. This is the way I’ve found to take me off this crossroad of shit that our life is.”

  He didn’t answer right away, he swallowed the smoke and kept holding it for some time to begin releasing his smoky phrases:

  “I just think you waste too much time with this shit of magic. If you studied for College a tenth of what you study these little stuffs, you wouldn’t be full of course failures.”

  “Shit, Cesar, fuck you, man!”

  “God’s phlegm! You need to smoke one, doll, you’re too stressed” and by saying this, he left, after having closed the door.

  She thought that perhaps he was right, at least concerning the joint, she took one from the drawer and lit it.

  She then started researching about shamanism, use of psychotropic for experiences out of the matter and the matter altered states. Again, the sentence by Carroll drew her attention: “There may be inherent magic forces in a drug if it’s done by a living thing or if it’s prepared specially to contain some occult force”. Nobody knew what could be found in the ingredients of that Israeli drug that was offered to her at Tony Perry’s. In another text, she found references to shamanic flight ointments that would be made on a fatty substance the witches passed on the mucosa and even applied on broom handles and in the middle of their legs to be absorbed by the vulva (which gave origin to the myth of witches flying on a broom).

  Jean became surprised with this information, the article went on informing that the herbs used for this fatty base was of the family of the poisonous Solanaceae (aconite, belladonna, stramonium, hyoscyamus niger, etc.); which means that the flight of the witches had less to do with the Quidditch style[16] and more to do with a shamanic flight experience? In the shamanic flight the consciousness projects out of the body and wanders through other plans of existence. The fifth dimension, she thought, reminding her studies in the website of Chaos Magic. The fifth dimension is where magic manifests, the plan where reality has a real meaning. There is where the causes are found; in the plan where we live, we can only feel the effects, that is why it is so hard to understand our existence, our ego, the Universe or everything. We’re like men arrested in a cave,[17] who only know the truth through the shadows projected on the wall, the effects; and we completely ignore the nature and the substance of the causes.

  However, she could not find a way to identify whether the trip she experienced was purely an action of the drugs in her brain liberating things stuck in her subconscious or she effectively had a consciousness projection experience. Anyway, it was quite real to be discarded, and it truly confused things inside her. There are things that we cannot know

  without being able to move, forced to look only at the wall at the bottom of the cave, without being able to see one another or themselves. Behind the prisoners, there is a bonfire, separated from them by a low wall, and behind this bonfire there pass people carrying objects that represent “men and other living things”. People walk behind the wall so that their bodies do not project shadows, but the objects they carry. The prisoners cannot see what happens behind them and only see the shadows projected on the wall in front of them. By the walls of the cave, echoes sounds from outside, so that the prisoners quite reasonably associate them to the shadows, think they are the speeches of the shadows. Therefore, the p
risoners judge these shadows are the reality.

  Imagine one of the prisoners is freed and forced to look at the fire and at the objects the shadows formed (a new reality, a new knowledge). The light would hurt his eyes and he would not be able to see well. If they told him the present was real and that the images he was seeing before were not, he would not believe it. In his confusion, the prisoner would try to go back to the cave, to what he was used to and could see.

  In case he decides to return to the cave and reveal to his old companions the extremely deceitful situation where they are, their eyes, now used to the light, would become blind due to darkness, as well as they became blind with light. When they see it, the other prisoners would conclude that leaving the cave had caused severe harms to their companion and therefore they ought never to get out of there. If they could do it, they would kill whoever tried to remove them from the cave (from Wikipedia).

  whether they are real or not, it is like being in love, you simply know, it not easy for someone else to tell you whether it is or it is not (although there are a number of quizzes that promise to answer to that if you hit questions like “I feel my legs trembling when I approach him or her” and other bullshits.

  She left the computer and turned off the light. She lay down in bed and closed her eyes meditating about the subject. Would it be important to know whether the experience was real or not? That scene of Matrix in which Trinity clarifies Neo concerning the nature of the questionings came to her mind with all the shine of the PVC synthetic leather of Carrie-Anne Moss:

  “It’s questioning that impels us, Neo. It was questioning that brought you here. You know the question as well as I know. The answer is out there, Neo.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The twilight dyed the city of red tint when the Uber’s driver stopped the car next to the sidewalk and the car door opened. The red-hair girl got off the car and headed to the entry of the building carrying a little Felix, the cat’s case in the right hand and holding a pizza box in the other. It had been some time since she was not home at that time. She had been full of clients, lately, thanks to the feedback of having tattooed Tony Perry, the Brazilian who reached a face-to-face space with the gringos of Death Metal. The rumor was not more accurate than rumors used to be; at last she did not even come close to prick the musician’s epidermis; the tattoo was for his girlfriend. But the effect was willy-nilly the same.

  She decided to make a surprise for Cesar, bringing his favorite pizza: Portuguese. She put her case on the building’s corridor floor and opened the door, trying to make as minimum noise as possible. She had the idea of appearing with a smoking delicacy at hand and saying something idiot, like tah dahn! But at the first opening she was involved by a series of moans coming from the apartment, the male one she recognized immediately, it was Cesar’s. She pushed the door and went to the room with the pizza in her hands.

  All that she wanted to know was the source of those female moans while she was supposedly working to help pay for the rent and put food on the table and beer in the refrigerator. Not only help in the last months, she was paying for everything alone, since the young filmmaker was recording his masterpiece in his smartphone. She heard female rhythmic and strident moans as she approached the room, the same room where almost one month ago they found Pimenta in the keyhole[18]. So, one of the feminine voices said something in the erotic verbal diarrhea and the tattooist’s blood froze. That voice was not unknown. An ice wave ran through her body, as if she had converted into a walking corpse: that was Bia’s voice!

  She placed the pizza on the coffee room table and, by walking as softly as possible, she peeked the room. She saw her supposed friend on all fours, closed eyes, moaning at each Cesar’s stab, and he penetrated her with an enormous excitement. Stuck under her, there was a girl fondling her tits as she masturbated. She backed off faced with the ménage à trois. She thought of pouring that pizza on them, and, when she realized it came to her mind, she censured herself. What kind of person would do this? She was not that kind of woman, and despite the hate she felt at that moment, the bitter feeling that contaminated her soul was disappointment. Her chest ached and the air of her lungs seemed to burn. Since she moved to São Paulo, those two people moaning on each other were the people she learnt to rely on. Bia showed the hints of living in the capital city, basic things for her that had hardly left her hometown in the countryside. She showed her the city ways and her interest points, they went together to parties, night clubs, they tried many things together, some good, other bad, but always united. And now she saw that!? She never realized any sexual attraction between the two, although they were friends. Yet certainly, at some moment, things changed, now she could understand a good part of what was happening. The sexiest clothes, the complicity, the phone calls, a different way in the last months, and, mainly, the recent survey about swing. Now she understood the reason for that surveying. If, when Bia asked her if she would accept sexual experiences in group, she had sad yes, what would have happened? Would she be the one under Bia now?

  She could not say Cesar was the romantic kind of man, he had never shown more than a minimum one would expect from a partner in a serious relationship. But finding him with the one who had been her best friend, in bed, she considered too rude; it was a stab on her back, and she did not expect that by any means. She could even imagine he would catch someone in the street, but her best friend? In her own house?

  Three-way? The sex scent was going impregnate there.

  “Son of a bitch” she shouted when she left slamming the door.

  What to do now? Where to go if the person who would be ready to comfort her was the person who was doing something else with her boyfriend? They never used this expression “boyfriend”, but partner or in a serious relationship. How serious did it sound now? What kind of partnership was that where she split her friend? The more it seemed she was old-fashioned concerning her sexuality, what she thought while the elevator led her way from there, she felt that it was not true and that it was not even the point. She had already been in bed with several women and had taken part of a non-conventional erotic party, to know other ways of pleasure and test her limits. However, the issue there was another one: Cesar had not respected his limits, far from it. Quite the contrary: what he did was a violence against her and against all they had lived together until then.

  The sensations she had were terrible, a constant chest tightness and such a pungent shortness of air that she clang to the building gate unbalanced. When she felt teardrops falling on her blouse, she passed her hand on her face and saw that she was crying.

  “Son of a bitch...” she tried to say, but her voice was so seized that the words remained arrested at the bottom of her throat.

  She left walking without anywhere to go, and she could not say how long she walked without a destiny through the streets; when she realized a sour faced individual desiring her with a maniac lust in his look, she feared him. The only thing that could happen was being raped and my life becoming a book by Christiane F, shit! She took the mobile and ordered an Uber car to Milo Garage, the best she could do now was getting drunk. She asked for an UberSELECT: once it was to suffer, the best thing was suffering with elegance. She liked Milo and she knew Cesar hated it. It seems its owner stole an ex-girlfriend from him or something, therefore, he never talked about the subject, but there was always something in the air from his friends. Who knows a night when he went home carrying a smoking Portuguese pizza, he found the guy fucking his girlfriend? The Universe has this kind of ironies, Chaos, shitty Chaos, has such a sense of humor.

  “God save Chaos!”

  A red Kia Soul stopped beside her: it was the Uber’s driver. A young guy, wearing tie, greeted her, but she noticed there was a shadow in that look. She passed her hand on her face and felt the tears. She took a tissue paper from the purse and started to wipe them.

  There were not many people at Milo. She went to the American bar of the house, and leaning on the counter, she asked
for a Brandy Alexander. While the barman prepared the cocktail, she observed the decoration on the walls of the bar, which was not more than an anarchic series of doodles, scribbles and squiggles, some good, some bad, some terrible on white painting that covered the upper part of the wall, the lower part was coated with wooden slats. Someone had scratched a circle from where eight arrows irradiated; each one with a different length, like a watch with eight strange pointers. That symbol was the chaosphere, the symbol of the chaos magic.

  The waiter put the cocktail on the counter and noted the order in the tab. She took a drip, feeling the sweet softness and the comforting heat of alcohol.

  We’re everywhere, she thought. And this thinking gave her another perspective. What was she doing of her life? Trusting in people who were only having benefits from her, using her. Break the Ego. The order of the Greek goddess resounded in her mind once again. Who was she? She wondered. What was under the experiences she had until then? Was there a person under everything that was taught of what was right and wrong or she was only a blank page on which society had written an identity that she was forced to accept? What was written in that blank page? Was that her real self?

  Was that goddess that appeared to her really Artemis? Could it have been Eris[19] that appeared to her in some type of disguise? Could Eris have transformed to give her a message like that? If that was true, what could the tattooist be considered? A prophet of the Chaos?

  Would it be possible to track the way of anathematization? She reminded the teachings from Peter J. Carrol: “The personality, a convenience mask, glues on the face. The vision becomes blunted by the ‘ego’”.