Stealthy as a cat burglar, I pulled her panties down over her legs. Then I worked myself slowly, gently, up into her sleeping wet cunt.
I stayed like that, fucking her for hours as she snored gently.
Shagging Narcisa while she slept was a new, tremendous kind of thrill; like playing with a doped-up Bengal tiger, listening to its thunderous, feral heartbeat, running my fingers across the ferocious man-eating teeth.
Taming the sleeping Crack Monster was something special, enticing. And compulsive.
After I’d finished, I got up and washed off in the sink. Tiptoeing back into the room, I glanced down at her amazing, ethereal beauty sprawled out there like a fallen angel. Freshly fucked and dead to the world, Narcisa seemed so peaceful, serene and innocent; harmless as a raging hurricane seen from outer space.
Soon I was rock-hard again.
I fucked Narcisa again and again, at least half a dozen times, as she snored the afternoon away on the sofa. Soft, melodic classical music massaged my weary brain from the box as the steady rhythm of the ceiling fan blended with the steady rainfall at the window, lulling my sex-crazed senses into a soporific zone of peace and comfort, like a deep, sensuous heroin nod.
Sated at last, feeling like a blood-glutted vampire climbing into its coffin, I crawled up to the loft and slept, while Narcisa stayed passed out on the couch.
She slept like a corpse, well into the next day, interrupted only by short waking bouts to stuff herself with food while watching her favorite chattering television cartoons. The blaring noise from the TV awakened me again and again, but I didn’t succumb to the Crack Monster’s wicked enticements to make me murder her. I just covered my head with the pillow, waiting for her to pass out again, so I could go back to sleep too. Eventually, I did.
Somehow, it all worked out.
Having Narcisa on my hands had become like living with a newborn infant . . . You gotta sleep when the baby sleeps . . . Cuz when that goddamn Crack Monster’s awake, it’s all go go go . . . But Crash Day . . . Ah, Crash Day!
I lived for those blessed moments of peace, whenever they came around.
Even Narcisa’s pet fish would conk off in the darkened chamber of my room on Crash Day, lying sideways at the bottom of its cloudy bowl, motionless and lopsided, like a cockeyed Lapa wino; drunk on the overripe, sensual musk of slumber in the cool, shadowy air. On Crash Day, we all hibernated like a pack of sleeping vampires, secure and safe, shuttered away from the blazing tropical daylight world outside.
When Narcisa came to at last, she bellowed like a wounded water buffalo, calling for food. I didn’t mind. With pleasure, I tended to her every need.
We even watched a movie on the TV, cuddling on the sofa together for hours, as she fell in and out of consciousness. By the end of the film, she’d disappeared back down the ladder of dreams into a deep delta slumber.
I got up and swept the floor, cleaning away the debris of her ravenous waking moments.
Still exhausted, the moment I lay down with her again, my hand fell right to that firm, irresistible ass. And then it was on again.
Again, again, more, more, more! Twin Flames! Twin addictions!
Passing out beside her, blurrily contemplating the days ahead, I didn’t know whose addiction would generate more devastation for us in the long run: hers to the crack, or my addiction to her.
As sleep engulfed my throbbing, battered brain again, I didn’t care.
44. SHIPWRECKED SAILORS
“LOVE IS AN ANGEL DISGUISED AS LUST.”
—Patti Smith
The next day, Narcisa arose to greet the world, spitting and cursing, as usual.
I handed her a few bucks to get rid of her before it could escalate into trouble, and off she went to cop . . . Thank you come again! Freak!
A day at a time, I was learning to deal with the madness.
I went out for a quick snack at the paderia. By the time I returned, she was already back at my place, sitting on the sofa, waiting.
Somehow Narcisa always seemed to know when I’d be home. It was weird; like this uncanny tweaker radar. Even not having a key to my apartment, she always managed to gain entry somehow.
I stood in the doorway, staring at her.
How did she get in here this time? Picked the lock? Scaled the side of the building like the fucking Spider-Man?
I didn’t bother asking. Nothing Narcisa did could surprise me anymore.
As I closed the door behind me, she ran over and jumped up onto me like a crazy child, her long, wiry arms and legs wrapping around my torso.
Still breathing hard from scaling the stairs, I grabbed her firm, bony ass cheeks with both hands, like a pair of fuzzy new peaches.
I couldn’t have let go if I’d wanted to.
I didn’t want to let go. This was where my hands lived now. When they weren’t clutching that ass, they were nothing but a pair of useless appendages. Crippled beggars. Homeless, shivering derelicts.
I heard myself speaking. “I’m a lost soul without my hands on this ass, princesa.”
Narcisa cracked that evil clown grin and jumped down, hitting the dusty floor like a cat. I watched in awe as she sashayed across the room to examine herself in the mirror. She stood there, turning around and around, checking out her strange, spectral image from every angle, like a naughty schoolgirl seeing herself as a full-fledged Whore Goddess for the very first time.
“You’re spectacular, baby!” I whistled, blowing her a kiss.
“Hah! You crazy! Fala serio! You don’ see it, hein? I already e’start to get old, Cigano. Old an’ ugly an’ flacida . . .” She turned around again, studying herself with a sad, doubtful look. “Old . . . Definite!” She frowned. “I don’ got it no more tchans . . . Fock! I don’ even exist no more. Only de old e’solitary ghost. That’s me . . .”
“You’re not old! Shit, man, yer only nineteen.” I laughed. “Ya do exist, Narcisa! And yer not ugly. To me, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world . . .”
She turned, hands on her hips. “Hah! I dunno if you only liar or you complete insane too! Or maybe you go blind, hein, Cigano? Whatever. Can’t never trust whatever thing you focking gyp-say peoples e’saying.”
“Whaddya mean? Whaddya know about my people, huh?”
“More than you thinking, mermão!” She chuckled. “When I was a little girl, de gyp-say peoples always come on de horses an’ build de camp outside my town. I know all de cigano ways. Hah! You focking peoples all teef, an’ cheater an’ liar too . . .”
“Well, that may be true, Narcisa.” I grinned back, unbuckling my belt and stepping out of my jeans. “ . . . But the truth is still true, even when a lying gypsy says it. And this shit don’t lie . . . C’mere.”
She came over and stood before me, obedient as a schoolgirl.
“Take off yer shorts,” I said, and she did.
As her underwear hit the floor, I grabbed her ass, lifted her up and fit it right into her, like a missing jigsaw piece. I pushed her up against the wall and moaned as she stroked my hair, her hot, dry teeth resting on my shoulder.
I could feel her breath burning like a furnace on my neck as I got harder, harder, hard as rock. Hard as steel. Hard as a diamond. Superman hard! Then she pinched my dick, twitching, contracting that insane, lethal Supersonic Extraterrestrial Paranormal Pussy Muscle, driving me crazy.
Drooling like a happy old sea dog, I moaned and rocked her back and forth as we fell into a soft, easy rhythm, like a boat taking to the waves, headed out to sea; and like a happy, drunken sailor, Narcisa started to sing, crooning a moody, raspy little dirge with such a deep, soulful passion, I began to cry.
I held my mouth close to her chapped, dry lips as they moved, feeling her feral, crack-toasted breath burning on mine. Watching her calloused pink tongue flickering in her mouth, I was a hungry cat stalking a lizard. Total focus.
We stayed like that, fucking, lost at sea, bobbing up and down, sailing the horizon, as she went through her lazy repertoire o
f melancholy song lyrics, like ancient pirate shanties; we were two starving, shipwrecked sailors, gorging on a spontaneous feast of timeless lust.
An hour of lovemaking with Narcisa, feeling her hard, childlike body clutching at me, grinding away under the ever-present shadow of impending loss, it was always worth the most freakish mental torments she’d ever subjected me to.
All her spiteful, infantile rants and rages, violent cursing tantrums and broken glasses; the dirty dishes, the unflushed toilets and angry cigarette butts stubbed out on my clean floor, or in my face; all the bites and scratches, the torn shirts and mangled hopes and bloodied, beaten, broken, abandoned dreams; it all just went away.
And then there was nothing but comfort.
Until the next storm.
Always looming out over the horizon.
45. APOCALYPTIC SMOKE HOLE
“LIVING WITH INSANE WOMEN IS GOOD FOR THE BACKBONE.”
—Charles Bukowski
By the tail end of her latest run, I’d fucked Narcisa again and again, for days on end. My dick was soft and sore. My eyelids were salty little sandbags, dragging me down into a world of fuzzy, sex-numbed incoherence.
Narcisa sat on the sofa beside me, cranking out maniacal, mystical, torrential streaks of delirious, paranormal crack-chatter. I listened and watched, transfixed, as explosions of alien poetry raged from her apocalyptic smoke-hole, an open gateway to some higher, weirder dimension.
I was captivated, trapped, spellbound. But I was coming to that point of delirious sleeplessness where I just had to shut my eyes, or drop off the edge of sanity. Or die. That’s how it always felt. Like impending death.
Narcisa always had the most demonic timing, totally out of sync with all mundane, terrestrial affairs; it wasn’t surprising that this would be the precise moment for her to wax eloquent. And surreal: Cosmic Mysticism, Secret Science, Satanic Ritual, Quantum Mechanics, Sacred Geometry, Occult Politics, Crop Circles, Vampirism, Necrophilia, Futuristic Archeology, Alpha Centurion Philosophy. Epic supernatural revelations, bubbling from her mouth in wild, manic torrents.
She took a big hit, then exhaled, barking through the smoke. “Capitalismo selvagem! Hah! All de capitalist savage, do they know how to choose de quality things that is necessary but no obligatory for de benefit of de existence, hein?”
“Huh?” I looked at her, rubbing my chin. “Whaddya mean, princesa?”
“ ‘What you mean? What you do?’” She mimicked me, speaking to an idiot. “Afffff! All de time e’same e’stupid questions! ‘What you do?’ Hah! E’same like de peoples in de e’stupid Je-sooz church do? Or maybe de peoples at de work e’say you gotta do, hein? E’school? Hah! E’stupid question all de time! Porra!”
I stared at her in awe, fighting to keep my eyes open as she ranted on.
“Is so many thing ever’body gotta buy an’ aquire an’ consume! Why, hein? ‘Because these de normal way to do it,’ they all e’say. De common peoples e’say, ‘Oh what a big e’sheet, de government, de country, my familia, baa ba ba!’ Is maybe a good beginning, to ask all these question, cuz maybe they wanna know now what is it that exist beyond de hole that exist in all de thing they wanna possess. But really is no good! Hah! Try again! Next?”
Her voice shifted to a squeaking sarcastic tone. “Ooh! Lookit! Here he come now, de famous doutor de fisica, de big genius cientista come from de far away place, oooh, an’ he come make de visita to our little land! Ooh, aahh! Fantastico!”
“Huh? What physics doctor, Narcisa? Whaddya talkin’ about?”
“Pay attention, Cigano! Look it these e’stupid old e’science guy, what de name, hein? E’Stephen Hawking. What e’sheet! All de peoples e’say he de big e’scientifical genius. An’ he sitting on a focking wheelchair! Afffff! How de e’stupid little cripple gringo gonna teach any thing to de earth peoples about de physics, an’ he can’ even clean his own physical asshole, hein? Hah! Ridiculo!”
I laughed. “What does one thing got to do with the other?”
“Is too much complexo for me e’splain it to you, Cigano. An’ here it come again, more e’stupid question! ‘What it gotta do with de other thing?’ ‘What you mean?’ ‘What do you e’study?’ ‘Home e’school? Baa baa baa!’”
“What questions, Narcisa? What th’ fuck are you going on about?”
“De question, Cigano! Like they make in de escola! Fock!”
“School?” I looked at her. “What about it?”
“You know, I always hate it de e’stupid e’school, Cigano, I hate it so-oo much! Hah! One day I e’say, ‘fock these e’sheets,’ an’ then I go an’ walk outside to de bush an’ I put my hand inside de bee-hive . . .”
“What!?” I winced. “What th’ fuck did ya do that for?”
“I do it so I can e’say now I am cripple too, e’same like these e’Stephen Hawking. O grande genio! Hah! I think if I get myself cripple, then I gonna be de big e’science genius too, an’ then I don’ gotta go de e’stupid e’school no more.”
I laughed out loud. “Great. How’d that work out for ya?”
“No so good, bro.” She started to giggle. “They e’say I am de ‘problem e’studante,’ an’ they go, ‘Home e’school for these geer-ool!’ Well, I e’say, ‘Fock you!’ Hah! An’ then I go! Out! Next? Get de fock out. No more home, no more e’stupid home e’school. Logico, hein? Simple like that, got it?”
I got it. The act of studying and learning, all those irritating, boring, ugly gray rows of words and numbers scratching at her brain, demanding her attention, were a deep offense to the alien poetry of Narcisa’s soul. It wasn’t just that she was unfit for everything. It was that she truly wasn’t of this world.
“Matematica! Numero! These is de only real e’science, mano, got it? So I e’say, ‘Fock you e’stupid home e’school!’ Narcisa go to de e’street! Better de street e’school for me, got it? Hah! Perfect, Max! Next?”
She stopped, fired up another rock, then went on. “When I was in de e’stupid escola, de professor de matematica, she wan’ try an’ teach ’bout de Pythagoras, but she don’ know nothing! Nada! Porra nenhuma! I ask to her what do she really know about it, de Pythagorian teoria an’ de number system, hein? When I was only fourteen year old, you know, I already de most youngest kabalista in de world!”
I raised my eyebrows at her latest bombastic claim.
“Is truth, Cigano! An’ then these e’stupid mathematic teacher she sock me on de face! Just because her equation wrong, an’ I e’say to her, ‘These is e’sheet!’ Right there in de class! Crowwn crowwwn crowwwwn! Hah!”
“Yer teacher punched ya in th’ face? What th’ fuck?”
“Poisé, mermão! De focking e’science professor too, he wan’ teach it to me all de wrong e’sheets! An’ de history professor? Hah! Forget it! These one don’ know nothing ’bout no focking human history. Nada! Lissen, Cigano. I e’say him, ‘What are you, hein? Are you de focking artista? Cuz you make it up, invent it all these bool-e’sheets for teach it to me who know already more about de human history than you?’ An’ he e’say to me, ‘Get out my class room!’ An’ boo! I go, an’ I never go back. Then is de e’street e’school only for de Narcisa! You think for me is a punishment? Hah! No way! Next? They make de big favor for me!”
“Howzat, baby?”
“Because in de e’street I meet de peoples who gonna teach it to me all de thing I need learn about! Geometria. Fisica. Musica. Matematica. An’ de philosophy. Nietzsche, Cigano! You know him? I think like Nietzsche, cuz I see all de thing a different way, Cigano. ‘Fock you, I don’ do what you tell me,’ got it?”
I nodded. I got it.
“I never got no interest to be involve with nobody in de human e’society, no past an’ no futuro, only live for these day today, got it? These why I involve only with my own self now, Cigano, cuz I am Nobody here, got it? I no accustom for de life on these planeta, all de e’stupid human society, I don’ know how they wan’ do all these focking thing. Hah! I don’ care about no public
recognition, de follower, de e’stage, de fame, de diploma, de money, de plan, de goal. Hah! Fock all these e’sheets. E’spontaneity! That’s me. Next? I never gonna respect nothing just because they e’say I gotta respect, but only if I feel like it, got it?”
I stared at her in awe, wondering if I would ever fully get Narcisa.
46. HIGHER EDUCATION
“SO THEY PROVIDED JAILS CALLED SCHOOLS, EQUIPPED WITH TORTURES CALLED AN EDUCATION.”
—John Updike
I was seeing double with fatigue. But Narcisa was just getting started.
She hopped along, from subject to subject, like a cocaine-crazed, hyperactive little fairy, flittering between realms of thought I could barely fathom.
I forced my eyes open. What else could I do? I needed to know all about her paranormal genius mindscape; to understand why Narcisa was the way she was.
As if reading my thoughts, she went on, telling all.
“I no come from de city, Cigano. I know ’bout only de country thing, de plant an’ de water an’ de weather patterns, an’ I know de little animal habitat, an’ all they habit. I know where to get de food an’ de water an’ de real psychedelic mushroom, an’ how to make de ayahuasca tea, an’ how to talk to de plant e’spirit peoples too. I know all ’bout these kinda thing. But de human e’society, forget it! Is like one big alien program for de Narcisa. Afffff! ‘My e’shoelace, my e’shoes!’ Argghhh, I don’ like it de e’shoe an’ de clothes, all these e’stupid technological e’sheets, is only for de caution an’ de organization! Fock! No good for me! What de e’stupid human society wan’ for me to do, hein? I don’ wan’ all de e’stupid peoples asking to me all de day, ‘Hey, hey you, Narcisa, what you mean? What do you do? What thing you e’study? Where you work?’ Arrggghhh! Shut de fock up! Porra!”
I stared at her in mute fascination as she powered on.
“Lissen, Cigano. When I first time come to de city, I go live with de most worse tribe of de anarcista. Destruction punks, got it? An’ they e’say it all de day, ‘Lixo, lixo! Trash trash! Destroy!’ In de city, nothing but noise! Arggghh! De whole focking zoological garden can e’scream in their animal language to me now, cuz I don’ care! But I am here living in these e’stupid earth, so now I gotta just accept it. What else I can do, hein?”
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