Ambivalent forces in our lives pull and push us in every direction, but in any case, we can know for sure the case is: the familiar versus the unknown. If we keep on walking through uneventful alleys, the light inevitably will elude us. When it comes to popular choices, a majority did not always represent the wiser picture. Like watching a movie, you don’t worry much about the actors, just get lost in the story and the acting. Watching a film in a movie theater, it was of no concern being in a room full of other people, something that perhaps won’t happen in a very long time, at least not the way it did. But really, outside from relatives or friends on rare occasions, I had reclused myself home, did not like touching people’s hands for no particular reason.
Except it’s been ages since I last went out. No, not since the advent of this pandemic. It was years, perhaps even more, the not dating, not drinking alcoholic beverages, not smoking, all of these things were at one point or the other overlooked, positions were relaxed but not when it comes to paying the price for a drink that would perhaps buy me a dozen of bananas. Staying in, then, wasn’t as harsh for me to experience. It’s almost as if I had been trained for such an occasion. Raised by apocalyptic movies, up until a few months before it became official to wear masks in the subway, stores, and gathering of more than ten people was prohibited. The city that never sleeps fell under a long stupor, streets and neighborhoods were half-deserted.
Not that we do so entirely consciously. What we act upon in the outside world reflects a spinning mirror of reflective light, settling like dust after a sandstorm the conflictive images in our minds. Sleep replenishes us, pruning loose synapses, selective memories to recall experiences of importance to our survival. Sleep is how the brain rids itself of unnecessary baggage. The nutty hypothalamus which aside from sleep regulation is also in charge of arousal. A lot of things are at play here, quality of sleep revolves around comfort, darkness, and noise reduction. Noise-canceling devices are of help if there’s noise outside your power to reduce, like loud neighbors. New Age music can soothe your journey or alpha brain waves sounds, something about melodic, landscape music that puts the mind at ease and foments a tranquil environment.
How could we better manage our external lives, if not perhaps by dealing with ourselves first? The world out there will always have a mind of its own, and the fact that there is always more than one choice can often speak to the paths that will unfold as a consequence either of. The choice is what matters most, as there’s always a place to go, somewhere to be, and the hurried lives we lead have little time left to reflect, this is what matters: the mind with which we go about our lives. Being pulled in either direction: to indulge in your impulses or to suppress are more or less the same. Recognize that tension is normal when it comes to humans, and imagine how much time you get to yourself if only you give up putting yourself through the cascade of potentialities in which you end up with the next cutie you cross paths with. What if, instead, we gave up precisely that which has haunted us from the start? What if we dial down the emotional response, scale down from drama outbursts. Like seasoning, emotions give flavor to the experiences of life.
It is like starting a book by the last chapter. When our focus is on a primordial level. It is not an act that spontaneously happens, we have more say in it than others led on us to believe. On a personal account, it meant to transcend the state of affairs by tackling weaknesses inherent in my character due to my personal story.
Having only a mother to rely on, my upbringing wasn’t ideal. First, personal changes were made and implemented. I found meditation in my mid-teens, and it eased the transition into manhood. If you were to take therapy, it’d take years of treatment and it may or it may not help. On the other hand, meditation works immediately, it’s free and you can do it at your own leisure.
Meditation always delivers. It doesn’t take much effort, if anything the less effort, the better. Say you’re sitting on the floor with your legs crossed and your arms folded over your lap, thinking you’re meditating, you’re not. Meditation has as many interpretations as practitioners; no two people meditate the same way, even though you can tell someone is by looking at them. Again, it may be someone who looks and acts quite awake or engaged in the act and be in a meditative state. Very much like sleep, meditation comes down to quality, not quantity. But one will invariably increase the quantity of it once the quality it brings is experienced.
In meditation, we aim to transcend our current state, to manage the anxiety of life. Once you know, it can be as easy as closing your eyes but unless you don’t do so consciously, your eyes will continue to blink intermittently. The experience of meditation varies for everyone, but more or less we can see how the speediness and restlessness with which we conduct our affairs may be the root of our dissatisfaction. Never a dull moment in life, our way of life makes for an agitated state of mind. Anxiety, even when we think ourselves relaxed, you can always use some more relaxation. It’s especially true for those who meditate. Meditation is not a term that denotes the degree of satisfaction it brings. Meditation is blissfulness you engage with.
And engaging is perhaps not the right word, it’s quite the opposite: we disengage when we meditate. Mindfulness (better yet, mindlessness), one aims at quieting the mind. It sounds simple, but if you sit to meditate for a few minutes, you’ll find just how difficult it seems to be sitting quietly, contemplating nothing, with your eyes closed and a serene face. It needs not be, but to the untrained mind there’s nothing no more daunting task. You’ll find your own rhythm, no two people meditate alike.
New Age music or humming help, but just becoming aware of whatever it is that you’re doing is enough; as you go about your day, the world unfolding around you, is a way of meditating. You may have found yourself in such a state, similar to that of flow, in which you feel content, with no worries in mind, perhaps after a good run or an afternoon nap. Meditating regularly, not only enhances our experience, it defines it. It eases the mind into sleep, it invigorates it in the mornings, it replenishes it in the afternoon, and just about anywhere where one may find a dull moment, meditation comes in handy. It can be done while waiting, on the way to work, before an important meeting, or to increase the likelihood of succeeding in the task at hand. It mitigates vices, like drinking or smoking. It increases the blood flow, and relaxes you, it lowers your blood pressure. Unlike other great things in life, like exercise and diet, we are told to do in moderation, meditation is one of those rare things in life that the more you do, the better. In fact, I made it my mission to meditate every moment of everyday, lifelong meditation. It is easier said than done, but it means a drastic reduction in social venues, social media, social anything. We may, however, find it possible to meditate as we write, as we speak, as we are in our everyday life: just pace yourself, live through your breath, and see yourself at the moment as if you were watching yourself in the room.
We seek the next big thrill and find ourselves depleted once the affair is consumed, the event passed, this afternoon wasted. What is time there for if not to find ourselves in situations that we want in? but please, the more intense and alluring, the more toxic and addictive it can be, the more dependent and helpless it renders its victim. The less we rely on external themes, objects, personified liaisons, the better life is. It is the absence of discomfort and not searching for the excitement that centers us. In balancing things out, we know that pleasure eventually leads to suffering. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering we can do something about it. We choose to suffer because we fear pain even more, as absurd as that might sound. It hurts to change so we choose to remain the same in most instances; the pain may be avoided but the suffering lingers on. Instead, we focus on remedying things that may cause suffering in the short-term but be more beneficial to us in the long run. We can postpone the pleasure of reward, then the joy of patience will be enough reward. If we put up with boredom, there’s nothing we cannot do, you may find that it is okay to simply hang around like a cat, rejoicing in the bewilderment of your own amusement. Oh, let’s face it: we’ll never be like a cat. It reminds me of Neruda, in his poem “Oda al gato”.
Cats’ brain waves are always in alpha mode on the cerebral cortex, which is observed in high-level meditators like Buddhist monks. Cats are in a meditative state, not one of lethargy but fixed relaxation that may jump into full-gear action if necessary. Humans may have a similar mechanism in place, one in which things are settled but mildly alerted to potential shifts in paradigms that may elicit a response. Our survival depends both on being vigilant to any threat that may arise and let go whenever that threat is minimum. Evolution took place over eons ago, so we may find it hard to turn off the sirens of worry and stress in our minds. It’s easier to dismiss human nature as a lousy engineer, and in some cases, it seems so, but most of us over-worry, act impulsively, take decisions on the flight without close analysis. We’re driven because we evolved this way, over thousands of years in the savannah, life was too precarious to be rethinking moves, life-and-death decisions arose from every corner. That’s why natural selection talks of the “fittest”, not “smartest”, as favorite for survival. We weren’t the strongest, but we could walk long stretches at a time, chase down prey at a lower speed in order to devise a trap up ahead. We were clever, so we didn’t need to be the strongest, and we worked in large numbers so other animals had no counter-strategy.
We were more of stamina than of a strength kind. It is speculated that other great apes ran us out of the protection that trees afforded us, a high spot where predators had a hard time getting to, and we could eat fruits. But since we were weaklings, we were theoretically cast out. We were puny in size, yes, but nature endowed us with bigger penises than those of the other great apes. They may have been great in size, but we were larger than them in ways that could not have gone unnoticed. Which may have caused, and this is mere speculation here, penis envy. No where have I found studies on the subject, apparently the only mention as to why humans, unlike their ape cousins, have larger and thicker penises than them, comes the way of testicle sizes, a theory that linked testicle size as a result of how sex evolved among different primates. In essence, the larger a sack, the more promiscuous an ape society might be. Gorillas have small testicles because they do not need to fear any competition, usually, one alpha controls the group and has access to all the females, whereas bonobos fornicate left and right so their testicles are predominantly larger. Larger testicles, of course, mean more sperm in every ejaculation. Bonobos need to maximize the potential of impregnating the female before the next guy comes along. Looking at their sperm quality, it is superb, as opposed to that of gorillas which do not have a high concentration of healthy sperm. How do humans fair off in sperm quality may give us an idea as to where in the spectrum as a species we are: are we more like overbearing orangutan cousins or are we closer, as we are genetically leaning, to the bonobos? It turns out we are somewhere in the middle, homo sapiens' sperm is not as good as that of bonobos, but not as bad as that of orangutans. This gray area in which our species dwells may explain why we tend to openly want to commit but keep a backdoor open to stray. It makes us the complex creatures that we are, neither pro coitus-fest as the anything-goes bobono nor tied-down harem-style as the uptight hierarchical gorilla.
Still, it doesn’t explain why the bigger size? It barely explains what needed not much evidence: larger testicles produce larger loads, which increases the likelihood of fertilization. Think of what a larger penis does signify, a deeper penetration, or better yet a deeper connection between the pair. It may mean, too, that we paid more importance to our women, because, let’s face it: a larger penis means a happy female partner. After all, we may have been puny otherwise, but kings of the jungle where it mattered.
Polygamy among bonobos is a social lubricant, there’s less violence, things run smoothly unlike that of the patriarchal gorilla. We may see that females play a bigger role in bonobo communities. It’s simple math: the freer a female (or a man, for that matter) is to engage in sex with a variety of males, the more freedom the society is. Nothing expresses freedom for women as the ability to choose, whether that choice is to be with more than one male at a time.
The more prosperous nations have instituted a marital state, whereas men and women are sworn off to vows of eternal love and exclusivity that serve much better the man’s agenda. As in muscles, too, the bigger the guy, the smaller he may be where it matters. Not that everyone should be poligamous, but the case against monogamy still stands. If monogamy rules, why are we subjected to social penalties if we stray? Why is it more difficult and costly to divorce than marrying? Statistically, two out of three people who marry nowadays either separate or divorce in less than five years. If I were to ask for a bank loan, in a venture that had that statistical output, I wouldn’t be loaned a single penny for that venture. And no matter how disproportionate the penalties are for those who stray, or choose to live outside of wedlock, the prospect of adultery is high. For every marriage that has never suffered such a predicament, for every couple that walks holding hands into the sunset of a life insurance commercial, there are countless who have been taken for all that they’re worth, only to chase mirages and end up in the same proverbial boat.
Hair loss, too, may depict a phenomenon that has its evolutionary roots in an intimate plateau. Think of the skin touching the skin, it is the reason why men shave their balls and women get a Brazilian wax. A less imposing body, too, means that we needed each other to cooperate fully if we were to succeed. We couldn’t use force, as our close relatives, but cooperation instead.
Exercise releases endorphins, creating a heightened state of mind in a composed body. Therefore, those who engage in physical activity show a higher tolerance to stressors and device better coping mechanisms. Neural deterioration occurs when activity, new information, challenges cease to be met. Working out, it turns out, is more important to the brain than it is to the body, but perhaps the problem lies in seeing a separation between the two. What’s good for the mind is good for the body, and vice versa.
The Ecuadorian girls I moved to Astoria with had already decided on a roommate when they interviewed me for the opportunity.
Never before had I doubted as to which out of the two girls was the one I wanted. Initially, it wasn’t a matter of choice, but of not playing favorites. In other words, it may have served me well not to be able to pick between the two, because it could make the chosen one more emboldened. Not that they were both available, as I soon but not soon enough found out, and so I simply chose the one who hadn’t mentioned having a boyfriend but having tons of suitors. Perhaps her unavailability made her more desirable.
They were both stunning and had their own attributes, but one thing for sure was clear: one was more conservative in appearance than the other. The more conservative of the two had a boyfriend; the other hadn’t settled for any and instead had a host of candidates at her disposal over which to choose from depending on her mood. I chose the one with all the options and none of the commitment. The guy they had selected as a roommate, I urged the other girl, the more conservative-looking one, to call and cancel him with the excuse that some family member of hers was coming for a visit and so they had to postpone the moving in for another week or so.
“And when the week or so is over, what do we tell him then?” -the girl with the boyfriend asked.
“We’ll worry about that later, maybe block his number or tell him family’s staying longer than anticipated.”
And so she did and we ended up in a bar, not too far from where we lived, about half an hour away. We sat, drank, danced, in a half-empty bar, where the two most beautiful girls were with me. The one with the boyfriend arranged a party to have me introduced to their inner circle. I remember her opening the door for me that afternoon, knowing she was by herself home as we climbed up the stairs, swaying her ass and smiling back at me. I couldn’t resist and slipped my hand down the crack between her butt cheeks. Her eyes widened, it was as if her heart had stopped as she looked back at me and whispered complicity: “My boyfriend’s here!”
“Is he staying over tonight?” I asked her, my hand cemented firmly between her legs, and she said that he’d leave soon to go to work.
Her boyfriend worked nights, she worked afternoons, I worked mornings, and the soon-to-be my girlfriend worked evenings and didn’t get home until two or three in the morning.
At the party, I knew she had a twisted imagination when she dared invite the guy who was their first choice as a roommate and told him I was a very close friend who had come to stay with them. The guy was not convinced but lacked the ferocity to say anything, instead of catering to her, making himself indispensable: he offered to buy more drinks and we all agreed he should. My girl gave up all the male friends that assailed and courted her and dedicated herself solely to me. In the first week living there, when I hadn’t still put the breaks on her speeding-out-of-control dating lifestyle, I’d see her leave in a different sports car every night and always come back in less than a couple of hours, crying to me, already drunk out of her mind, and telling me that she wanted only me. I made her kneel before me and swallow hard, pressed down her throat, pinned against the wall. I fucked her mouth in an all-out assault, like it was her pussy, and told her, as she gasped for air, that it was okay to go out so long as she didn’t sleep with these guys, that she knew beforehand -I told her- that some of the men only wanted her for her company and that those, so long as they were generous with her, lavish her with gifts, bought her jewelry, and took her to nice places, then she could have her cake and eat it. I made sure she wore a chastity belt, something she shared with one of her suitors casually over dinner at an expensive restaurant because she knew the guy was so into her platonically, that he did not dare touch her, just being in her presence was enough. That much and more she represented for some of these guys, but that was only for my entertainment at home and to show off my power over her. That’s a thing that makes some men uneasy, but it is just for show in reality, a display of dominance that adds a primal element between a man and a woman, the observance of polarities. Men want to be with the most beautiful creature possible; women want men who act and behave in what they consider manly fashion. The more masculine, the better.
That arrangement did not last long. She’d leave and come back too soon, leaving enough space to leave her friend half-fucked, but as she corrected me once: “You fuck me in under five minutes more thoroughly than some of the boyfriends I had, including the one I’m with.”
“Get rid of him,” I told her.
And she’d say so as I put her up against the wall and had my way with her, nothing much just hands firmly claiming all her hidden spots, her buttocks, waist, shoulders, arms, legs spread open like in inspection style.
As soon as my girl disappeared for an hour or two on a date, I made it my mission to have my way with her orally, anally, playfully but virilely smack-pinch-grab-pull her in every conceivable direction. I bit her earlobe in slow motion, starting on her jawline, lifting her hair softly into a knot of fistful hair that kept her in place. Her heart races, her pupils widened, her mouth gasping and moaning.
She knew better than to do her hair or put makeup on before I got mine. It was a tactic that I used on her friend, my girl, whenever she dressed too pretty; but since I wanted her to go out and have a good time, provided that I overheard the entire conversation and the date ended with her just making up an excuse to go home, she couldn’t bear the farse and came back home sooner than anticipated. She had her reasons but made sure I got mine in place as well since she knew I was home alone with her friend and though there were no reasons to suspect foul play, a girl always wants to be by her man’s side, despite how many men had access to her. She wanted only me to have that access and since the game had gone for long enough, it was time to call it quits and stick to one girl. A girl that did not go out anywhere, stayed home and gave up the glamorous nightlife with her entourage, to spend time cooking for me, dressing kinky dresses for me, dresses she knew that if she had chosen to go out, I would’ve made sure to have fucked her and unload all over like I had done once I saw her in a miniskirt or a silky attire like those that come off so easily. She said that she only wanted to look good for me and that if she had agreed to go on dates it was because that was my idea and that she never oversteps her bounds. That she had gone to see how I reacted but that as soon as she had drunk enough, all she wanted was to run to me.
The other girl, the conservative one, agreed: she usually spent the night out and we spent the time she was out coming up with ideas to fuck. We made up ways to have “quickies”, like when my girl was in the shower and the other came out to pee. She really didn’t come out to pee, just to see if while waiting for her turn to go to the bathroom, I reemerged from reclusive and had my way with her before we heard the water in the bathroom shut. Even then, we knew we still had a few minutes before she dried herself and emerged from the bathroom. By that time, I had managed to squeeze her breasts, lick all the way upwards her shoulder, neck, and earlobes; I managed somehow to pinch and smack her ass as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t, and telling her that her boyfriend would never do her as I do. I told her not to have him over as often and that if she did bring him over to make sure I fucked her during his stay, whether my girlfriend by then was there or not, and to make sure she did not have sex with him. I’d do her in ways her boyfriend couldn’t because, as she had confided with her best friend, my fuck-buddy by then, her boy toy had erectile dysfunction.
The guy was ridiculously good-looking, had done some modeling, and used steroids which had messed with his erections. It’s not a slight against the guy, but he did look the part and it fits quite well in his skin, regardless of his only shortcoming, I could’ve envied what he had: a girl like the one I wanted, that I did not choose, out of fear of getting involved with her. Instead, I opted for the one with a man-eater femme fatale. And she seemed to love him, regardless of the games she found herself knee-deep with me. Some things were denied, like the intimacy of having her all to myself. Not that I did not like what I had, my girl of the two was the one who called the most attention, but out of the two, if it had been up to me, I would’ve loved to have her as mine. Instead, I chose the one that needed mending and had to put in more work than it would’ve been required had I chosen the more down-to-earth one.
No matter how many times, in secrecy, I had her, I always wanted her more. It was insatiable, and having had the opportunity to enjoy little of her made me realize how much more I wanted her. It opened up a Pandora’s box that made me jealous at inopportune places, for the wrong reasons, and my girl soon took notice. She’d drink more, stay later out after work had concluded, met up with friends for coffee, talked to other guys on the phone in reprisal. Late at night, she’d stumble upon the room, climbed over the bed, and asked questions in her alcoholic bliss, to know whom I loved. I told her the truth, “I only love you, babe.” Had I chosen the other as my girl and had I the chance to fool around with her, I probably wouldn’t have had. I suspect I would’ve fallen hard for the sane one and leave out crazy altogether. There wouldn’t have been a need to, I wouldn’t be in this dilemma, but things got all twisted by trying to play it safe. It was my choice and so I had to leave with it. And it was so much more fun this way.
I didn’t love her but I knew we would’ve been perfect in love if I would’ve had the courage to choose the one I wanted, the difficult one is a mistake because it may have proved more tiring, the relationship itself more demanding and the energy invested greater. On the other hand, the easy one to love, the one that friends would not be wanting to make a pass on while having drinks, the one with all the attention and invitations, the one I chose was the right choice. She was the girliest of the two, dumped all her suitors in Lamborghinis and Ferraris that would drop her off home after work around 4 A.M, come pick her up for a nice restaurant on her days off. She left it all, the gifts, the parties with her friends, all of which had boyfriends but the only one out of them who wanted to spend time with her man was my girl. She was the more territorial given that we lived with another girl, even though they were friends, long locks of blond hair, and not the jealous type. She’d bring her girlfriend home a few times, and kissed her once, that I know of. I’d be in the middle, and I’d wake up my girlfriend to do her right there with her girlfriend sleeping. I’d start slow, quiet, and once I’d get her in the mood, I’d grab her and have my way with her the way I would if we had been alone.
The one that everyone would look at and wonder how lucky the two of us were to have found each other. The one that would’ve made me happier. Not the one I chose to avoid misery. It is as if sometimes, no matter what we choose in life, we can’t find ourselves satisfied for long. Not a thing that holds everlasting joy, in its place just chasing after yet another mirage in the desert of life that stares back at us and sees us through whether we chose to go along or not.
These ambivalent feelings were quashed the night my crazy girl brought her cute friend for a sleepover.
It was a friend that I initially didn’t get along with, the combative type, always arguing and instigating to have my girlfriend hang out and ditch me.
The girlfriend resented our relationship since my girlfriend hadn’t spent much time with her. The girl and I had a connection since I began by ignoring her pleas to let my girl go out with her; I’d counter, why not stay in with us? What is the need to go out every night? We can stay in.
“And do what?” she asked.
“Relax, order out, watch a movie or have a few drinks, play music… we could dance,” I said, looking at her, brushing a thick strand of hair off her face to see her reaction. She lowered her eyes, and I softened the deal: “You can leave later on to the party, and afterward if you feel like it, come back here after the party is over. I’d probably be asleep, so be quiet; the door will be open, you can come in and lay next to me. As always, I sleep in the middle.” She nodded, so as not to lift her eyes and see mine, and I made sure she understood: “I need to hear you say it” I told her. My girlfriend’s friend lifted her eyes briefly, fixed them on mine to test my resolve, and immediately backed down. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay, what?” I asked.
“Okay… I’ll stay” she replied, her head lowered, her eyes darting mine.
She stayed with us, surprisingly, for a girl who at the beginning of our affair had complained about the bar a couple of blocks down the street from where we live. She’d pop up in our place from thereon unannounced, I’d make her wait in the living room while I’d go back to the bedroom and continue fucking my girl, her friend. My girl would end up drinking more wine than me, more than all of us combined and being much smaller in size, get drunk, and pass out on the couch, so I’d carry her in my arms to the room. Her friend was a modest drinker but had accelerated her pace and intake once she saw herself alone with me.
“Make yourself at home,” I told her.
On some occasions, our lovely friend would continue to watch movies with me in the living room and I’d hear the other roomie walking down the hall, pass us by in a nightgown attire with a glass of wine in her hand. She waved in a friendly manner our way.
I’d call her back and have her sit on the other side next to me, in between these two gorgeous girls just watched the show. Seeing how they’d stick by me like glue, I’d casually turn to one and kiss her as I pulled the other closer. Then I’d turn around, kiss the other, and keep the one whom I had already kissed pressed against me. Except, the roommate one, the one with the boyfriend, the one I had in mind to repopulate the earth if need be, had the night off that evening and had been sipping wine in her room, perhaps awaiting the moment my girl let her guard down.
Instead of worrying about her boyfriend suddenly getting up and coming out of their bedroom, she decided to lick/bite my neck and my shoulders sparingly, as I now kissed the other. They were both kissing me as I kissed them back and forth. I sensed that they were careful not to kiss one another directly, and I didn’t force it. It could only mean that they were more into me than they were into each other and I and my fantasies of them getting it on was secondary to the first mandate of things: follow my lead. Had I pushed them, I ran the risk of having one of them back down, or the risk of them getting too much fun out of it, or the risk of ruining something that up until that point had been a flawless mixup.
They never spoke to one another about it afterward, not that I know of. Didn’t come over again to sleep with us, just me.
I had one of them, as I would again minutes later when she asked permission to go to the bathroom.
“Can I use your restroom?”
“May I, you mean,” I corrected her.
I suspected my girlfriend’s friend knew I had something to do with the other; women are hyper intuitive and she probably detected it in the way I dealt with her and how submissively she behaved around me, asking next to nothing. When she asked to go to the restroom, she sighed “May I?”
I could not help but be spellbound. My left hand, like an equally twisted half, buried deep and firmly between the other girl’s thighs, as I helped her up halfway, held in place by my right hand on her nape, as if I intended to deepthroat her. Instead, I stared into her glossy eyes. Widened pupils, like a night creature in the shredded spectrum of light. The slight tremor of her upper body bent forward, her head lifted and tilted appeared mannequin-like
I could feel the air compressed in her belly with the elbow keeping her softly locked in.
And then the other girl, the one I lived with, the one I had already made mine a few dozen times, got up and pointed to the bathroom. I led her myself, having had her kiss the other good night, They tap kissed, eyes wide and moistened, I took her into the bathroom and fucked her for a while. You could hear if the door in the room my girl slept was suddenly opened, or if our guest in the living room got up and walk our way, but I couldn’t care less, I wasn’t planning on stopping either way, if my girl woke up, or if her friend, the midnight visitor in the living room, would come up to where we were, I think she was being louder than usual, and I heard steps but I kept pushing her down, pulling her up, slapping her silly, grabbing her by the root of her hair and sucking on her breasts, eating those fleshy lobes, biting the neck, sucking on the spot that would leave her marked and having her expose herself to me, head tilted backward, chin way up, mouth gasping as if for the first time.
She loved being around us, our sexual energy, how her most outgoing girlfriend ended up giving up partying altogether, the countless admirers, the nightlife, all to end up cozying up against each other, watching a porno in mute on the television and playing music on a good Bluetooth speaker, not loud enough to camouflage the moaning if you listened in, as I knew our other roomie did. I caught her in the act and pulled aside the very next time I found her home alone.
“You were spying on us the other night,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “I wanted you guys to see if she was okay, you’re rough and she loves it… I don’t understand if it is jealousy, or curiosity, or concern… maybe a little bit of excitement mixed in with the forbidden..”
“…You want it?” I interrupted her. “She’s got what you want and I want you the same as you want me.”
By then, the conversation had spiraled out of control, branched out and rooted in… just like a veil covers a face but does not hide away its symmetry, there are things to be found in the way a mind has a change of hearts, subconscious layers of matter that somehow mimic and go on about things: the secrecy of the reaction time, the ruminating baggage, the untapped world of potentialities locked in a gaze, the tactfulness hid under rugged discretion, the way a mind loses its grip on reality to transcend the idleness of pain, making something abstract and irreconcilable a viable option to explore.
We want to think that cleverness has a lot to do with it, but it could very well be a random and devoid of meaning sequence, set in motion eons ago. We wouldn’t really know what is implied by “eons”, as to what length of time it really speaks of, and what of “ago”, it could very well mean within a few thousand to millions of years ago. It could very well mean, just “a moment” ago, but if we analyze things properly, under closer examination, it is really unquantifiable as a statement. Language is vague, and so we require a sort of math on steroids -again, just a figurative speech-, called Quantum Physics. Funny, though, one of its precursors famously said, and I am paraphrasing here, that if someone ever told you that they understand Quantum Mechanics, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Sort of Socratic spinoff of “I only know that I don’t know, and that’s knowing a lot more than anyone who doesn’t know any better but isn’t really aware of their ignorance.” Knowledge is awareness to the extent of our ignorance, and the more you amass knowledge, the more you learn, the more you realize just how much more is there that we simply just don’t know. It makes you question the things you take for granted and pass off as truths. Certainly, these things aren’t true, in fact, all books, including the ones depicting the universe, are pure fiction; some fiction is useful but most of it can be discarded. If it makes you happy, it can be bad for you. If it makes you miserable, even worse. If it makes you wonder and come to a full stop, giving you the dreamlike sensation that all is nothing more than a not-so-good but definitely worth telling a joke. You laugh, look back at a moment in time where nothing was solved, and move on to the very next thing. No one remembers what they were doing a few months ago today. We were and are two very different things in time, even in place: we find ourselves double-guessing our choices, regretting some, indulging in others; going to bed late with a mind that seems insatiable and waking up with another laborious mind ready to take on the day, though the daytime mind wishes to go back in time and set the record to straight eight hours of sleep, no distractions, nothing holding us back from another crack at night of good night sleep. If we were to repeat the procedure, the result would probably still be the same; we do as we please, and oftentimes we aren’t satisfied with the results. But if we want to be equally productive and adventurous, we need to sleep less, work more, and hope things will get us to higher ground from this lowly place. If we start by feeling lonely unless the ideal lover is next to us, then misery will follow. Misery needs no input, it thrives on indecision, the lack that dwells within is inherent in everything that is, if things are left alone, without any order or input, then the system crumbles. It’s the Law of Chaos, embedded in every fabric of existence, even where there’s no life, it still applies: things observe an order that slowly gives way to a form of chaos, one way or the other. Life represents a phenomenon in the sense that it defies this process, as it grows until it declines, once it achieves its purpose or when its time is up. We do nothing but spend time here, and if we are here to spend time, then we should do so with people we love, the ones we care about, doing the things we are passionate about most of the time. Even then, a lot of time is left up for grabs: even after you sleep well, eat right and exercise plenty, you can still have toxic individuals in the midst making your life miserable the best way they know how: from the shadows which is a byproduct of facing the light.
What others think of us a lot like the receding, scattered shade of a moving object, oftentimes an obscure caricature that takes hold in the reframed picture elucidated by our consciousness, dissipated in broad daylight. Our story isn’t linear, just as the lines written here were once mere scribbles, fragmented paragraphs, sentences hashed and rehashed, the way that our tools are devised nowadays embed more of the affinity and distorted symmetry that lies hidden deep beneath the surface, like scrambled pieces of a puzzle that can be put together in an infinite set of ways. It may be that the mind functions as a higher dimensional piece, it has dreams and hopes one cannot mitigate in time, it breathes in and of itself, whether we like it or not, the most important functions have been sorted in a way that we do not have to consciously make an effort to meet. Perhaps everything else follows this predetermined mechanism, that the mind conceives of and takes on the spotty information it receives and transforms it into a vivid, distinct experience in a blink of an eye. Fourth-dimensional objects have more possibilities, how can we conceive of such dimension if it isn’t built within us? That we may not reach even higher in the dimensional scale, then, it becomes a matter of arbitrary perception. And perception is nothing but arbitrary, somehow wired to see the things that have been ingrained since inception, but devised in such a way that it leaves a tiny particle to make things stay the same or change either for better or worse. We’ve been conditioned to see things the way others present them to us, but if history tells, it is the moment right before the choice we make that holds the magical key to anything. We choose little if anything, when our effort isn’t carefree, consumed as we are by a myriad of distractions, let the dust settle and the muddy waters sit. Things want their space in time, it is by taking conscious of the moment that you stretch time, a tiny universe confined to a fixed superposition teeming with possibilities. Or so I read in a quantum book or quantum physics article. You read the words and then it dawns on you, the mind is a multidimensional device. It dreams with things that no longer are, makes stuff up that is absurd, the past, the present and the future all convene there. We think of higher dimensions, thus in some way we have to conceive of something that no one has seen, stuck in a three-dimensional world as we are.
It may look menacing and take hold of us, a paralyzing force all of our design if we let it. It’s what we hear from scientists; we may put fear and awe in the mind. The mind, it wanders. It requires imagination to fire off the cannons to shut down the glacial darkness rising, stagnant waters that the cold winter of our fear turned to ice.
It melts with the morning light, casting the net to the winds, sinking its web into the deep ocean. Scary creatures, like sea monsters, dwell in the inexorable stream of our minds. Fantasies, dreams, illusions… these all live within reach, in the realm of possibilities casting our minds. Like a coin, our mind has two sides: heads or tails. Half the time, it lands on its head and the other half on its tail. Either way, it animates a hidden treasure buried deep within that lies dormant. The scariest, most gruesome shadows melt when the torch of fire blazes it. What is left? Nothing more than the roar of thunder when the lightning has already struck and faded. None of this is scientific, though I read a lot, I’m not a scientist or anything. And these writings are shared or promoted much unless to a few.
It is not a problem or a fix that happens; you happen. The way we face things, the zest for life, seeing things transfixed in penchant paradigms, life is what took place, the unfolding events, and looking forward to all the good to come.
The mind doesn’t hold the picture, just fragments out of the astounding number of experiences, exits, and exes following our wake. Bullets would do a better job at enumerating, our effort to be from this point on a lot more quantifiable; roughly speaking, measurable. And so, we know that we know what we know because we put it to the test.