The train-window felt icy-cool on my forehead, venting a marginal portion of the disarray brought on by nerves protesting their lack of Ketamine. Droplets of sweat sat perched like pigeons on my upper lip, coo-cooing for nutrients or further decay God knows naught. It wasn’t a difficult exercise to endure if you factor in the expectations of my peers, the un-ketted zooming across twilight plains of wheat stalks dancing, cows mooing, manure reeking, bumpkins bumming, hopes kindling. Smile, avoid eye-contact, don’t harass the locals. Same pipedream rules that apply for humanity independent of individual shape, hue or conviction in a decent society. Sit still and shut yer yap. It wasn't my first rodeo, surely not the last unless Weavers of Fate got some grim plot in store. Breathe, and sit. Enjoy the ride. Don’t negotiate.

Nan isn’t a devious person. She hadn’t pried it out of me. I crumbled straight off when she called to inquire about my arrival in MCity, that is the state of me. Told her I was a walking carcass, a carved out shell of a man. She’d never believe the innocent little lies fabricated in my moments of despair preceding the call anyway. The odds of Ketamine poisoning are fortunately abysmally small, and I can’t justify the existence of vats for in-slipping either. She’s well aware I don’t have any close friends, and none of my fictitious ones are veterinarians. Besides, the guilt of keeping secrets from her is a vex. A torment more bothersome than to-whom-it-concern’s scorn—best flushed out to rob the shroud of mystery of its sleeved aces. Bite yer cheek and face the music. The little lies are naturally excluded, like the knowledge of Teddy’s reappearance. He could've just showed up at my doorstep out of the blue. It fits his character. Maybe she believed it. Maybe she didn’t.

As is natural for a woman of her stature under the given circumstances, she lost her shit. I was a scandal, mutually agreed. Degenerate. True under the circumstances but, as it was derived from the crime of substance abuse at an untimely hour, with emphasis on the hour, an enterprise in which she herself had indulged prior, on numerous occasions nonetheless, alongside me—it had a skewered ring to it. Something about bricks and orangeries. I settled for a partial degenerate, a conclusion I obviously didn’t share with her. And then there was Teddy. Staying true to the makings of a contrite confession I’d delivered a minute report on the state of the boy along with the clouded reasoning behind my obligation to oblige his K-request. Said I'd struggled, objected to the madness but, given our history and the prelude of our little play, I’d been powerless to circumstances. Yet he was treated like a ghost in her bombardment. This little omission hinted at the core issue at hand. That it was his intrusion into a space reserved for me and her, for our love, his intrusion into my psyche and the debaucherous departments where, for the past year, she was the sole proprietor. This was a grave concern, a truth much worse than the potential of me being a simple junkie.

My mind was the only dissident in need of a whipping on the eternal train ride into MCity. I was a scatterbrained master, having plenty of time to atomize every word and stutter, tone and cadence of our conversation. The invitation to join her was still on the open market, with the foreboding addition of unimaginable consequences if I failed to catch the six o’clock train. No matter how I twist and turn, I can’t find a punishment fitting the crime. It could be anything. Toss me to the wolves, castration, pinch le bum. But it doesn’t matter. I’d rehearsed the lines and arrived on time. Dressed up in fine attire; jeans, black hoodie, and the most obvious telltale sign of my decline hidden behind counterfeit Ray Bans. Teddy left early, off to see his mom when things started to get way awkward after the high diminished. That left me plenty of time to rinse the worst mess off, trim what needed trimming, rid the apartment of our stampede, fresh sheets, the works. It was spotless when I left, impeccable. A selling point in the atonement to come. And now, squeezed between a wall and a blobby man smelling faintly of hamburger grease, probably off to hunt for Easter eggs, I didn’t have a clue what Nan’s fury would look like. She could rip me to pieces, it was fine. All I needed was her touch to fill the hole drained by Teddy’s misery.

We hadn’t been at this juncture before, Nan and I. Our unity had been a wild one from the getgo and the fires awoken on the first night together hadn’t subdued or slackened as they usually do a year on. We burned with a feverish intensity together. Next to her the world went mute. My ears deaf to all but her voice. Bodies drawn together by magnetism. Those around us, our families and friends, random people on the street, were enchanted or disgusted by the public displays of affection, their sentiments but a pebble in an aromatic hailstorm. There was only Nan and I, living on raw love that neither of us could ever imagine existed before a fateful night in February one year prior. I’d arrived at a party outside Pisstown at the farmhouse of our mutual friend, Pierre, in the company of my hookup, Emma. I had a longtime rival back then, in a modern yet medieval sense of the word, sleazy Chileno fella’ smooth as butter. He was also there and couldn’t hold back on a chance to imp and ruin my chances on a lay. So while he tooted his flute and Emma soared over to him I spotted Nan alone on the couch, rolling a joint. A familiar face, words exchanged prior. Pisstown being relatively small, there wasn't anyone in your own litter that you didn’t recognize, and Nan did one better. She hung out with Teddy’s twin-sister back when he and I were at our peak. From our flash-encounters in hallways and kitchens, looks traded over ciggies bummed from whoever had them, at the parking lot outside the Munter residence, I’d developed a low-key crush that never came to fruition, hoping our paths would cross until they didn’t and I forgot about her. So when I crashed down next to her on the sofa of la mere de Pierre, offered her a beer, there was no intention, no grand scheme of fuckery. We quickly found our rhythm, kidding around. Laughing at the attempts of courtesans to woo her. I’d rolled out a plan of acquiring a hippie van, touring Europe (which was an outright lie, I dunno why I ever said that, having no driving license, dough or semblance of mechanical proficiency) that piqued her interest, an eye-opener as she later put it. We got bored, taxi’d back to town after consuming our consumables, anointing the other superior company, making a pitstop at my dad’s to stock up on grass and beers before heading out into a blossoming night. Somewhere in there, looking up at her sitting in my squeaky office chair grinding weed or roasting a ciggie or twisting a joint, the light reflected off the glass table onto her face and it struck me that she was awe inspiring, the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen up close. Blonde locks spiraling down narrow shoulders, bobbing whenever she moved. Gracious hands working the weed like an artisan. Slender figure covered up with a loose tank top and baggy jeans, only hinting at its naked contours. I’d cry bloody murder if I let the moment slip. She was genuinely surprised when I gently embraced her face, ran my fingers through her hair and kissed her. What ensued was otherworldly. We weren’t like, cherries in nagoy or anything. We’ve concluded it several times on a billion all-nighters, running through the details, taking turns wrapping the events of that night in the truest words we master. Like, sometimes you just know that you’ve stumbled upon something else. You walk through life and you’re full-on ready to throw yourself into a war full passion, willing to sacrifice all your memories and everything that has ever been for unspeakable ends, but you don’t actually believe that the day will come. Until it does. Erasing your past, like you wake up from a nineteen year old dream and breathe clean air for the first time.

The ride from there to now wasn’t all calm waters. Life sludged on, we made attempts to hook up again but she was busy during the weeks working full-time as a teleseller while I peddled dope to the masses of Pisstown on a vagabond’s clock. It came close to never becoming more than that one encounter. The mind forgets, busies itself with whatever distraction offers up. But the body remembers, speaking through electric jolts of lack. When we did meet again, the moment she shut the door to my room and hearts went silent, we were taken back, in that moment, like something had pressed play, resumed living. We both had a healthy appetite for narcotics – different experiences, fields of study, but the desire for explorations into the unseen was mutual and on the same level. It’s a rare thing, to meet on equal grounds, at the same internal wavelength, the same semester in the curriculum of drug use. The playing field was leveled, two students versed in the elementary table, adept in the cuttings and carvings of worlds, still only scraping at the surface of a universe whose secrets we were resolutely intent on unveiling at all costs. There was a childlike want for it, to play with fire, neither having soared too close to feel a scorching. With dope you only get one shot at a grand entry, and we were dressed to the teeth for our arrival, waiting for the right suitor to grab our arm and lead us through the gates. We’d already peaked through the blinders, felt the odors of the heavenly banquet inside, but the route we’d taken to the Holy compounds had passed through opposite endpoints of the grid. I was engaged in the introspectives; mushrooms, acid, tramadol for chilling. She was on the powertrain; speed, ecstasy, coke and pure MD. An uppity gal’. From that first reunion, we congregated in my room every weekend for two months sure as clockwork, soared off into the void, slithered around each other. With a head full of mushroom, it seems absurd at first, like it can’t be done, that having sex is an unpure and dirty act unfit for the childish atmosphere of a rising trip. But as soon as you kiss, electricity of touch coursing through you, you’re absolved. Mind leaves body, ascends the astral plane. And on that phantasmal plateau you’re not alone, you are in the presence of divine entities, body interlocked with the one, gyrating up waves of emotions with a potency unfelt prior, showering you in the most basic and pure sense of unity, of belonging. Through love we grew, left permanent marks on the future of the other. And now I’d done fucked it up. Broken the spell.

My relief was immense when I stepped onto the platform of MCity Grand Station. Nimble feet carried me away from the scene, spurred on by the paranoia I’d been such a goody-good boyo to stave off on the train ride, that is until I broke one of the holy rules of civility. It started with a couple in front of me. Clean, tidy people, talking in whispers. I caught a fragment from her along the lines of if you don’t say something I will and in my head it was the queue to exit, wriggle away like a lubed up eel, else my nerves would explode. Some part knew that they weren't talking about me, but it be like that. Nothing left to chance. As I stood up to leave the train jerked, almost tossing me off balance. There was still the blob blocking my path and I considered if I should ask him to move or clear my throat or climb over or sit back down, but I was invested in the flight. Aborting was equal to begging my neighbors to call up the psych ward and hose down a padded cell for my arrival.

“This is me,” I said, putting on the normalest smile I could muster. Pain shot through my jaw. It was a difficult pose to hold.

He looked up with beady little swine eyes, crewcut, like I'd just called him a cunt, said “That's ok, I'm getting off too,” and didn't move. He was toying with me. Meanwhile the coupled guy peered back, and I made sure not to turn my head when I looked at him.

“Well I need to use the restroom, so if you could just…”

“It's out of order.”

Jesus fucking christ, I thought or muttered. He had me backed into a corner and I was soaked and unfit for this climate. I needed a moment's respite to prepare my defense. It was detrimental to the future survival of my sanity. Then I was tossed off balance again, saw my leg hoisted up and stretched out in front of me, hovering over the fat fucker. My body was already committed to the lean, Hail Mary’s while gravity pulled me forward, him baffled and I terrified. There was an empty square between two standing bodies on the packed train and I nailed it, rotated, straddled the space above his legs, moved the other on sheer momentum and swiftly got the fuck away from there, pushing past the crowds until I was safe in the end-car. These things happen, I tell myself.

Reaching MCity did wonders. It’s something about being in a big city, the open spaces or towering buildings, that shrinks you down, anonymizes. There’s a fair share of weird fucks, and people, generally speaking, have been conditioned to steer clear. It’s the wobble that gives you away. A discordant walking pattern, limbs moving irregularly, eyes darting erratically. Now I wasn’t one of these spectacles, I’m sure of it. But these bits of knowledge are good to have, for rainy days. My presence was already a thorn in the side of passer-bys, creeping through the finer parts of Old Town.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Nan was cooped up at Melvin’s, our home away from home in MCity, an enormous apartment fit for the likes of Mushkin that housed three generations of his bloodline. It sat right across the road from the lush and bombastic Malahm Garden safeguarding trees two hundred years old. It was the peak of bourgeois, yet his kin were far from it. They’d snatched it off the market for a measly sum somewhere in the dawning 90s, let the years fill it with paraphernalia, mystery and a musky odeur extruded from Melvin’s grandmother (likely candidate, think retirement home decay); a curled, miniature woman who’d lost all interest in the outside world, investing her last earthly days into teasing the immediate flock. I could only manage the bare minimum charadery that would get me in. Press the telecom, wait an eternal minute for Mellie’s mummy or grandmére to buzz me in, stalk through the broad lobby leading to the furthest door on the first floor. And then there were the inevitable greetings, nods and reports. Luckily this didn’t take place in the vestibule. They never locked the door, which gave me a moment to adjust bearings, bathe in musk d’mami. Passing through the kitchen I greeted the wrinkly old sod. They always sat there, in the kitchen, Mellie’s mummy and gamama. Kitchen people. She kept at it, sensing I was off my baseline. Courtesies had no end in sight. Oh and the ride over yes, most marvelous scenery this time of year. I do envy you. Don’t you agree? And how will you be spending summer? On the riviera? Not working I hope? Yes, ah yes. In my days we’d work the winters and travel the lands once the first wheat had been cut… Tell me, are you familiar with wheat? There was a glimmer in her eyes, a sinister fractalization of the dim kitchen lighting that made it harder to act, to speak. My hands were twitching uncontrollably. I squirmed them into pockets, convinced myself that she was indeed toying, laughed mid-sentence and excused myself for the bathroom.

Techno sent skin into full vibrate when I entered Melvin’s room. It had been rearranged again, for such is his restless way. I threw myself on the couch now placed smack-center in the room overlooking the relatively new aquarium. Watched the fishies lick the glass, feeling thirsty. Melvin turned around and said hi, poorly trying to conceal a grin. Nan, standing next to him, ignored me, bent over a laptop in the opposite end of the room, shuffling through playlists or whatever it is you do when you’re gearing to strike the iron sizzling hot off the coals.

“I’m dying, send help,” I pleaded but she pretended not to listen. Trying to find some must-be-played tune, all part of the act. I focused on breathing, tried to enjoy the anticipation. After a while Melvin came over with a beer from the mini-fridge, told me to open wide, placed a pill in my mouth and patted me on my moist forehead.

“You’ll be good as new in a heartbeat,” he said, opened the beer – a Polish brand smuggled in from Germany or Denmark or some other second-rate country – and handed it over. Swallowing felt like pushing a corpse over a spiked rug. Once it passed the trachea, there was no going back. The tune got abruptly cut off for a favorable BPM. Nan turned and hovered casually, slid over the couch’s back, straddled me, took the beer, placed it on the coffee table and held my arms in place above my head. Leaning in for a kiss, she swerved, strafed my cheek and placed her lips against my ear.

“If you don’t perform tonight I’ll crush you.” As she whispered she repositioned, pressed her knee against my groin and started to push down on it.

“Ok, ok,” I yielded. “I’ll do anything.”

My hands now free intertwined each other behind her back, pressed her body against mine cus’ I knew it would soften her, ingratiate myself back into the spotlight. A fool. A simple, monorailed fool I was. My punishment laid ahead of me, not on top. An internal gauntlet where external aid would do little to advance my standings. Before she kissed me, she held my face, elevated on elbows looking dead serious. Smile, wave, give les publicum zheir show. Wier playing zhe big stage Martha, tap-tap-tap. Tap for glory. Tap for mercy.

Activate standard routine. Melvin’s paradise filled up with smoke. Trays ashened, bottles drained. My quest was that of survival, stringed along in conversations, reduced to a hugless centipede crawling up and down Nan and Mellie to their heightened amusement and my salvation. She saw straight through my translucent skin to the fermenting core, saw the inner child operating a squiggling fleshy machine too big for his size. A child tormented by images of unspeakable horrors. She didn’t ask about Teddy. Didn’t have to. She could’ve gone full brute, played the bad fiddle, let me rise to the occasion on my own metaphorically stubbed arms. Entitlement was present, she had every right to press me. But it never came. She picked me up, licked me clean with an invigoratingly honeycombed voice, marinated me in the sap of raw devotion for which I was wanting but didn’t dare to request aloud. Melvin wasn’t far behind in his uplifting endeavors, though wrapped in motives of a different nature entirely. Over the course of me and him, the bestest lovelyboy in Nanski’s arsenal going back five or so years, he’d popped out of a smothering closet, and I sort of have to take partial credit for that escape. When we first met, in his fits of molly-infused lusts, he couldn’t keep his hands secured to his own person. He took every opportunity to feel me up. That is before he’d openly come out as gay, popped his cherry on a terrace overlooking MCity with a frenchmen known as Bob on Grindr. I’d given my body up freely for him to discover. A testing ground of sorts to see if it would harden his baguette, and it did. He’d slobber all over, kiss my abs, tell me to flex, longingly watch as Nan caught the jellybug and pushed him off me. His pitch black eyes were wild with want, and from those experiments we moved on to the more practical question of his heterosexual facade. I was the one who installed Grindr on his phone, handing over my work to le Bob for post-production. It was I who corrected his path when he’d stumble into a morose pit of despair at a rave or on our nightly hikes through the floral mazes of Malahm Garden. Nan provided moral support, sure, but she lacked the genetic disposition to lure the snake out of zhe zipper. And with the gates of Eden swung wide open for our power-bottoming accomplice, his sweet tooth for my nectar hadn’t been subdued. On the contrary, and in this particular state of being and non-being, my groundwork was a savant stroke of foresight, for attention ooh that lowly herald of the depraved, was the only sin capable of instilling relief.

When darkness had conquered the city, we left for populated pastures. I’d lost concept of time and space, leaving the tactical side of planning ahead to my amorous patrons. Walking had become increasingly difficult, my only demand thus being that we’d travel by taxi. Mel phoned up a taxi noir. A smiley-faced Nigerian pulled up shortly thereafter in a microscopic Fiat. Made us feel at home proper, like we were riding in a chariot of pure opulence. It was hell, fighting off gravity, keeping eyes open to smile yes smile, grin and oblige, but every time I started to nod, one look from Nan set me straight again. No room for half-measures. The first stop was an apartment somewhere uptown, scores of loud voices, music. Sweet, misty smoke from a smoke machine meant to envelop us in a dreamlike state, only making it harder to find whoever needed finding. Faces flashed by in a flurry of highs and lows. Just when I was about to throw the towel, a hand belonging to life itself, or a kiss from Nan or some boy she’d coaxed to kiss me, delivered powder and pills, spiked drinks, jolting another inch of adrenaline into my system. And she got off on it, this I knew. We had a set routine on our MCitian adventures through la société. She, the role of convivial charmande, entertaining the people, spiking their interest. She had a real knack for unveiling the topics in which people felt superior. I was cast as her toy, an angel-faced whore whose sole sustenance was dope and sexual innuendos. Under normal circumstances, I was capable of attracting a crowd too, but my patience for social games couldn’t match her's. I get bored, start uttering profanities and edgelord to see how people react, and when they in turn find me appalling I lumber off to the dancefloor to get lost in a stampede of feet. It’s where I belong, my natural pen. Soaring off to a pounding beat, sacrificing muscular energy to the ruinous powers. Occasionally she’d come fetch me up, lead me towards people she introduced as the cooliest, rowdiest, most amazing des la temps; she’d do this just to put me on display, her trophy, lure a cute boy to kiss me, girls too if they were exceptionally beautiful. My future wife, the cuckold. I didn’t mind, it was cute and flattering. So when I once again found myself on the bottom, slumped together in a corner at the party, some rakish little thing straddled me, said howdy soldier and pushed its tongue down my throat. I was already groomed and primed for it. I knew that it was a gift from her to awaken that which was effectively dying. He paused, told me to open wide, put a chem-laced finger in there and slid it a bit too far for comfort, forcing me to bite down hard to prevent a cascade of vomit. His face contorted, with pleasure or pain I couldn’t tell.

At precisely the right time we phoned our Nigerian friend. This time he arrived in a Subaru, even smaller than the last one, and took us through downtown and uptown, away from the partygoers stalking the streets outside pubs counting down to closing hour, through the suburbs and into the industrial complexes towards our final destination. You felt it before you saw it. Rows upon rows of cars parked outside a run down brick warehouse with shattered windows. People clustered onto the streets, Arabs chanting taxi taxi taxi in an ill-rehearsed chorus. Nan and Melvin casually walked past the line of indifferent veterans, anxious newcomers and dope dealing Arabs dressed in the latest fashion, man bags strapped across their chests. Intermittent, slow movements, kissing cheeks, hugs, hollow phrases exchanged on the sluggish crawl towards the front of the conga line. When we arrived, the doorwoman nodded, vaguely familiar, greeting me by name as she ushered me in, opening the gateway leading to the cellar, unleashing a pounding baseline at a minimum of 150 bpm. Smoke bellowed out from the opening, and when the heavy metal door closed with a thud behind us I felt trapped. Locked in a time-capsule. Nan pulled me through the dancefloor, generic faces nodding off, eyes rolling backwards into the unknown as feets shuffled about and smoothed out the concrete floor, arms flailing ecstatically making them into one big multi-limbed amoeba. Eric manned the DJ booth. All of this was his doing, the club, the people – all of it. He was my friend more than theirs, but things tend to take on a life of their own. Him and Nan got along mighty fine, and Mel tried his best to attain the same status of comradery. I used to buy shrooms off him back in my dealing days, getting scammed on the scales but I didn’t mind it. He’d left his enterprise for a more favorable one, arranging the most sought after raves in MCity, stiffing whoever he could to bump up his own profits. But never us, never once had we felt the burn whispered in certain circles. It’s not that I doubted their validity, though. It’s just hard to think poorly of a guy who’s about to dope you up. Ducking down behind the booth he pulled out a plate with four thick lines chopped out like incinerated worms, laying next to a fist-sized pile of white. My head caught on fire as the first line disappeared and he smiled his evil smile, approving of the state of I with a discreet nod. I got back onto the dancefloor, left them behind without a care in the world, closed my eyes and started dancing.

At some point I woke up. Someone had stuck another chem-dipped finger in my mouth but the culprit couldn’t be identified in my closest lineup, suspicions be damned. I’d lost myself in time again. A woman had taken Eric’s elevated throne behind the decks and I got back to focusing on breathing, looking for my inner Zen. Nan’s familiar hand slid over my chest into my pants, clasped around a flaccid cock, pulled on it like a leash, leading me into the restroom. We fucked quick, rough. Like feral animals, nothing beautiful about it. Greed rising and falling with the cock. An orgasmless affaire to sooth the idea of fucking more than some bodily craving. When I came back to realtime, I was on the dance floor. Poof. Like it had never happened.

Nan found mercy somewhere in the twilight, and the same Nigerian drove us back into town. Melvin stayed behind, looking for a fabled afterparty. I had done it. Crawled through the barbed wire trenches. This was my reward—a royal pardon. Eyes felt like bricks, they wouldn’t obey despite further attempts at artificial reboots but my cock was functional and that was all that mattered. She undressed me down to full nagoy before sorting herself out, tucked me away under the covers into a universe so soft and forgiving. We drifted in and out each other, a comatose dance fueled by bursts of adrenaline and primordial urge, until Melvin came back empty handed and we all fell asleep in one big pile of flesh; Nan’s hand on my cock, Melvin’s on my asscheek, mine blissfully tucked in under a satin pillow.