Sin and Zen, #1

by S. W. Stribling

  We were dripping, drinking each other. We became a waterfall of bodily fluids.

  Then the lion king started to become less of the animal and more the lullaby, feeling her body pressed against mine. My face in her neck, my hand on her waist. Gentler this time, exploring the side of the boob and the curve that defined it from the rest of her body, down to her waist.

  Smelling her, tasting her, feeling her - inside and out.

  We laid there for another fifteen minutes afterwards. Then I got up and left looking back at her naked body still sweating on the futon. God existed.

  ‘Last time, right?’

  41

  I went home to find and read the letter.

  It was in the book she had said, written on a small notebook sheet of paper, dogeared into the front page:

  04.09.2012(That’s september 4th for my American readers)

  -Marseille-

  Hey kiki ...

  I try to understand all... what happened in the last days...

  I loved you! Diferent like i did before,

  But it was notre love!

  You are a very good person, with so much desire and ambition. That one of the reason that maked me stay so long true next to you.

  Malheureusement, it is people who don’t correspond to you. To your dreams, believes or your level.

  You need to be around about the good and beautiful peopel. Like u are!

  For that sometimes I was angree to you : because you let the otherse to take decision for you. The persons who haven’t the same level lick yours.

  Maybe I put a very small piece in your soul?! Maybe I will not be that ‘mad and mechante fille’ in your life!! I hop not!

  I don’t tryed to change you!

  I just see how you can be in this world and how many things you could do!

  Be careful and don’t let les autres t’effacer de la surface ‘terrestre.’

  I would lick to meet you after somes years and see what your life is!

  You have so much to say around!

  Do what you must to do and what you feel!

  Love... ta petite amie...

  Claudia. Biz

  I read the letter over and over again. Laughing at the English, sad knowing she had written it months before the actual break-up. The whole relationship I questioned whether she really loved me, and there it was, in writing. She even spelled out her name rather than her usual, ‘CT’.

  I put the letter back where she had put it and wondered if things could have been different, if only we had communicated the way we did after the break-up.

  42

  The letter was the closure I needed, but it didn’t mean the ghost would stop haunting me.

  I reread some of my journal from India and Nepal and thought about how I was right about her in my worries then. How I was worse than her in some ways and kinder in others. If only she had told me it was the ending, I could have used that time more effectively to get over her. But I didn’t. It was the back-and-forth game she played with me from the beginning. The game I volunteered for. We were always honest with each other, but never completely honest. I could trace the blame game back to where? That we met in the first place? That we were who we were.

  My friends got me plenty drunk though and out chasing strange. But none of it filled what was missing. Never more than a few hours. Women were magic. They were the curse that only they could remove. It was a fucked up world and I loved it.

  Claudia was the first woman to really break my heart. I had been in one serious relationship before. Marriage even. Heartbroken even. But I broke my heart there. This was different. I had been possessed and then discarded like a used condom. A condom that had been to the center of the world and back. The things I learned from her changed my entire perspective on love. She took a boy and made him a man in ways much more intimate than sex ever could.

  Claudia and I were made for each other in that time and space. We never thought we were, because when I loved her, she was never there. Then I would tire of that and fade away and she’d love me, and when I finally realized and started coming back, she’d be looking away again. We were never on the same page. Ever. She was 30, and I was 24. She was 32, and I was 26. She told me I was like her at her age. I hated that. She always called me ‘boy.’ I hated that too, unless we role played.

  But she was right, because I grew more into her ways as time went on, but she grew too, in a different way, more into my ways. The last meaningful words she ever said to me were how I made her feel something, how I made her open up in ways that made her want to feel and be felt like she never had before. Lucky for the next guy I had told her. We were never meant to be together forever. But we were perfect for each other for that time. Perfect.

  43

  My legionnaire boys and I still got drunk on a regular basis, and I usually ended up with a different girl every night. Some stuck around for a couple of weeks or more. Some were interesting. Some were intellectual. Some were caring. But I’d never let it last longer than that. It was good to be back out there and to not have to worry about coming home and waking up to a pissed-off woman. I missed that pissed-off woman though, and no matter how beautiful the naked body was laying next to me the next morning was, it was just that, a naked body. Flesh. There was no love. Only the starry-eyed romance that I felt in the pretense before the nakedness. I loved the chase more than the catch. I knew this, but I’d forget it the next night when I was back out again.

  I started to get bored with it all after the first few months after the break-up, so I started regaining a friendship with Kay. I thanked him for ditching me on our India/Nepal trip as it had been better for me that way. There was that, and he had also recently had enough of Easterhouse. We were back to being mates.

  So when drinking with the guys started to become routine, I would go up and hang out with him in his apartment. He was always doing coke. Cocaine was still not my thing, but I started to get into until I realized I could get MDMA from his dealer. I still had some money left from my payout from the French Foreign Legion and didn’t feel too self-conscious about spending eighty euros on a gram of it two or three times a week.

  Before Claudia, I never did it because of the military career. With Claudia, I had only done it a few times with my Dutch friend. Now I had a supply and a desire to feel happiness whatever the cost.

  The first few times made me want to commit suicide the next day. But then I eventually got used to that feeling, and I realized after the first attempt it was embarrassing to be seen as somebody that tried to kill himself. I learned to lie in a temporary state of death and ride it out. Plus, it was hard to cook when your neighbors took all your knives.

  Kay and I were about to head to another outing. We didn’t know where yet but we went with plenty of gear. We were pros, or thought we were about doing drugs in normally sane places. We always ended up in the seediest of bars until the sun came up, then we’d make the rounds of getting kicked out of nicer establishments until evening came around again. We could go out for three days straight without food or sleep.

  We would roam the entire town, and I visited every bar in that city over the following months and almost never went to my regular. Almost never meaning only twice a week. I drank there for free most of the time, so I couldn’t really lose that.

  One night we were running low on the Peruvian flake and headed to our headquarters, the bar where we bought our drugs. Hollande was the cheap stuff at fifty euros a gram, and Obama was the good stuff at eighty euros a gram. The French loved their Obama, ate that chocolate right up. Hollande was a weak man, weak even for the French socialist.

  We came beep-bopping in, still high, still drunk. It was always a laugh, creating stories in the moment while laughing about the ones we just had. Never thinking about the next morning, it was a beautiful time.

  We walked into La Monde. It was a bar you probably wouldn’t find unless you knew it was there, hidden in an alley hidden behind Galeries Lafayette on the main shopping s
treet in Marseille, rue Saint-Ferréol. It always had the same customers, and we all hollered and kissed each other's scruffy or soft, smelly or sweet cheeks each time we saw each other.

  As I walked in this time though, I met a new person. Not a person, but an angel, or demon, I wasn’t too sure, but I heard nothing but the bells of lust and saw nothing but the aura that surrounded her as she looked to see who was walking in.

  44

  She had her hair up in a ponytail. I loved that. She was blonde. I rarely went for that. She was the perfect height. I had no idea how tall she was, but she seemed to be the perfect height. She wore a loose, delicate shirt. I think it was blue, but it was dark, and had a brown jacket that was barely enough material to be called a jacket. It too looked mesmerizing. She was wearing jeans with holes in them. Something I found both irritating and arousing. And dark boot-shoes. Not really boots or shoes. She was perfectly made, exactly the woman of my dreams.

  I was in love, but I wasn’t sure if that was just the molly enhanced with CC talking or not.

  Then she smiled at me and I didn’t care.

  I had no idea where my partner in crime was, but he was probably still making the rounds of kissing everybody. I didn’t see him or anybody else. It was only her, and I walked right up to her smiling like a damn idiot.

  I stopped in front of her and our eyes never lost each other. I was still smiling like an idiot and she started smiling more in a way that showed she was curious who the hell I was and wondering if I would say something or just keep staring at her.

  I just kept staring and smiling.

  ‘Bonsoir.’ She said.

  ‘Bonsoir.’ I said.

  Breaking the smile made me go into one of those weird ecstasy twitches were you move your jaw around in a circle.

  Damn, I felt that too. I knew I was fucked up then. I was aware enough in my drug experience to know how stupid that looked, but I was also experienced enough to prevent it even when high. Unfortunately, I was too distracted and just kept smiling.

  She was experienced in the drug-induced world too, but she wasn’t high or drunk. She kept smiling though, to keep from laughing.

  ‘Ça va?’ she said.

  ‘Oui.’ I said. How fucking clever. ‘Ça va. Et toi?’

  ‘Bien.’ she said.

  She was still laughing at me through her smile, but it seemed like an amusing and inviting laugh. Not a malicious one.

  ‘Comment tu t’appelles?’ she said.

  ‘Will.’ I said. ‘Et toi?’

  Full of fucking dialogue I was.

  I just kept falling deeper and deeper into her beauty. Her essence. Here was this goddess. On Earth. And speaking to me.

  ‘Aurora.’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen you here before.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I said. ‘I come here sometimes. But not a lot before until now.’

  I was tripping over my words in French. She gave me a strange look and then smiled again.

  ‘Where are you from?’ She said.

  ‘American.’ I said. ‘And you?’

  I was as interesting as a brick wall.

  She laughed out loud this time.

  ‘Me?’ she said. Still laughing. ‘I’m French. Corsican really, but spent most of my life here in Marseille.’

  Then in English she said, ‘I only speak little English.’

  That was the only thing every French person knew how to say in English besides, ‘Fuck,’ and ‘Oh, my God.’ Fuck was something casually thrown around on the public radio here and apparently ‘Oh, my God,’ came from the tv show called ‘Friends’ that the French were watching about ten years too late.

  A French woman could melt the world with her words when she spoke. It sounded sexy, infatuating, and sensual when a French woman spoke the feminine language of French, and when she spoke English, it sounded cute and endearing. It was like talking to two different people. Their voice just sounded different. It was a strange phenomenon that I enjoyed from my experience with French women that tried to speak with me in English. Apparently the effect goes both ways, because after speaking French for so long with one person, saying something in English always threw them off for a moment as it sounded as if they were talking to a different person. As if changing languages also changed your voice. Changed who you were.

  If it was possible to smile any harder, I was.

  If it was possible to be any creeper, I was.

  I started rubbing her arm.

  ‘Your jacket is so soft.’ I said.

  She just stared down at my hand and kept that smile as if holding back a laugh. She knew where she was, and like most girls in these sorts of bars, they were used to dealing with people on drugs and she knew what I was on. Ecstasy and MDMA had such a powerful effect that they not only made the person taking it happy, the people they were in contact with, usually literally, were also given a surge of happiness. It just rubbed off that way. Or it didn’t. For those that didn’t understand, it just creeped them out to have some stranger so loving nearby, possibly trying to touch them.

  ‘Merci.’ She said and started laughing.

  I just kept rubbing and staring at her, and my hand started drifting all over her. She was so soft. She was so beautiful.

  I wasn’t sure if she was getting freaked out or not. She didn’t stop me, but she didn’t really respond either.

  I don’t think this went on long, but it felt like an eternity I could get lost in.

  ‘Everything okay here, mate?’ Kay said, coming up and putting his arm around me and looking at both of us for a response. It wasn’t the first time that I had gotten touchy-feely with girls when out on the happy stuff. If they were on it too, then a world of pleasure commenced, if they weren’t, it was a gamble of getting harshly turned away or embraced. Occasionally there would be a boyfriend around that would get pissy for me touching and dancing with his lady. Kay would sometimes watch me handle it or step in if he thought he needed to. We got kicked out of a lot of bars and some clubs. We would always be back a week later and talk our way in. Most of the time. Some places we were 86’d for life.

  I realized then that the rest of the room existed. Kind of.

  She smiled and then Kay drug me away to talk to others.

  Kay got happy off MD, but never quite the way I did. Sometimes he wouldn’t even bother; he’d just save it for me. He was an asshole to everybody but me. I was never sure why he chose me as his sidekick. He found something amusing about me. He would just always go on and on about how everyone else were just ‘boring cunts.’ Though he would harass me and say, ‘Ah, don’t be boring,’ whenever I ever wanted a night alone. I think I was the only one that could keep up with him, or tolerate him. Like most unloved people, he was kind, just misunderstood.

  It didn’t take long for me to break away and get back to the bar to find Aurora. But she had disappeared. Out for a smoke.

  The bartender and drug dealer grabbed me. He was a friend at this point.

  ‘Faire attention avec cela.’ He said.

  I ignored him.

  Aurora came back in and sat back in her seat.

  We started talking again.

  I started touching again.

  I started kissing her.

  She let me kiss her.

  I was with her the rest of the night. She had me.

  Kay was upset and came over to steal me away a few times, but eventually he gave up and called me a ‘cunt.’ We would usually take over a bar and play the music, usually Queen, I guess that just wasn’t as much fun when your wingman left you to go on the make.

  I did this to him often. Finding a lady friend and then ditching him. I had a reputation already in this town, mostly in this bar and my pub in Vieux Port with my Legion buddies, as a man who enjoyed the affection of women. La Monde called me the ‘American Gigolo’, but I never got paid for it, at least not in direct cash.

  Kissing Aurora was more miraculous than I thought possible. We hit it off, and we spent the rest of the night mostly loc
ked together.

  The guy she came with eventually left without too much fuss. Kay and the bartender helped with that.

  We kissed. And we kissed.

  Her lips, her tongue, her smell, her feel. Fuck, this was heaven if there ever was one.

  WE EVENTUALLY LEFT to head back to my place. I lived in Le Panier, so it was closer than hers.

  ‘I need to stop to grab my purse.’ She said.

  ‘Okay...’ I said, ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At a friend’s.’ She said.

  We went to an apartment building not far away and on the way to mine. She called and buzzed. Looked up at the window, then called and buzzed again.

  Eventually we got in and there were two Arab guys up there smoking hashish.

  It started off pleasant, but then I started coming down off my high and she seemed to get more agitated.

  I couldn’t tell if the guys were being difficult or if she was. I was just sitting down, chilling, and smoking what they gave me and letting them talk, not trying to understand the conversation in French.

  Then she started getting upset, and I heard her threaten them I was a legionnaire and could whoop their asses.

  The guys tried to calm her it seemed, but they seemed to do it in a mocking way. I couldn’t tell if I was high and misinterpreting or if they were, but I was in no mood or state to be taking on two guys twice my size.

  I got a little worried and a little scared we were both about to get raped as we were nowhere near the door and she just escalated things further and further. I just couldn’t understand how grabbing a purse could turn into such an ordeal and I was barely feeling alive enough to make the walk home, much less get into it physically.

  Shit, I thought.

  I sat quietly and looked at both of them but said nothing.

  She kept reaching back to grab my hand or sit next to me and lay her body against mine before breaking out into her next tirade.