Sin and Zen, #1

by S. W. Stribling

So we did.

  It was more evident to me than ever that this girl was 6 inches taller than me.

  We walked holding hands and talking and I could barely concentrate on her story because I was so mixed up about the awkward swinging of our hands because of the size difference.

  I took her hand and pulled her down into the sand.

  There were too many people around and she needed more privacy so we got up and walked further down the beach.

  We walked until the beach ended and turned into a concrete barrier that protected the park. We walked along that until it turned inwards.

  We weren’t the only ones. We walked past people, some gay, some not, laying with each other until we got to the end. Then we started our own exploration of each other.

  She went down on me. Then asked for a condom.

  I didn’t have one.

  She did. I didn’t understand why women asked when they had one.

  We went at it for a while, but between the 48 hours of booze and the 48 hours of coke to go along with it, there was not a chance of cumming with a rubber taking away the feeling that was supposed to be felt between two humans.

  She was adamant about protection so we just played with each other and went down on each other for half an hour on that concrete slab.

  We laid there for another half hour looking up at the stars, touching each other before she went down on me again and then we got dressed and walked back towards the beach.

  Kay and Angie were still there but looked like they had exhausted pleasantries and were tired of waiting on us.

  Mariella gave me her number and said she had to go. I told her I would come to see her in Italy. We texted for two weeks, but she was too far for a train ride, and I never attempted to fly.

  She had smiled that night, and that made never seeing each other again tolerable, even if I regretted it.

  50

  Aurora and I were still off and on, but mostly off. I wasn’t sure anymore if she was still broken up with her ex or not. I didn’t doubt her feelings for me, but I doubted her honesty in everything else. I got to where I could think of more places where we had fought than kissed.

  Kay and I were tighter than ever though, and my despair with love was comforted in brotherhood and drugs and alcohol.

  Then I got a call from Aurora.

  Kay and I had been up all night again. Another round of sleepless days, I believe it was day three.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

  ‘My ex hit me.’ Aurora said.

  ‘What the fuck?’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Don’t do anything.’ She said.

  ‘Why the fuck would you tell me something like that if you didn’t want me to react?’

  Kay looked at me.

  ‘Can I come over?’ She said.

  ‘Of course.’ I said. ‘What’s your apartment number again?’

  ‘No.’ she said.

  ‘I just want to talk to him.’

  She hung up.

  I told Kay about what happened. He was ready to fuck somebody up too. We’d usually pick fights for no reason. But hitting a woman would enrage any man into action.

  I called Pierre and told him that Aurora was on her way, and that I would explain later, but to keep her company until I was back.

  He said, ‘Okay,’ as always.

  Kay and I went to her apartment building. It was the tall tower at the rond-point du Prado. We walked in as somebody walked out and took the elevator up to her floor.

  We knocked on the door. Silence most of the way, just letting the tension build.

  I beat on the door.

  A man opened up.

  Kay was a big boy and grabbed him by the throat as soon as he opened the door and started cussing him out in French. French I didn’t know. We beat him down and he just kept saying he didn’t understand.

  We left and made it back home.

  Aurora knew what we had done and therefore Pierre did. They both were standing up and waiting to hear what had happened.

  Aurora was crying. Pierre looked horrified. Kay and I just got even more pissed off.

  We yelled. Aurora tried to explain.

  Something about her ex not wanting her to move out and then getting jealous about her being with me when he was trying to work things out with her.

  The worst part was, there were two sides to the tower and I think we went up the wrong side. The room numbers were the same. It was just a matter of south side and north side towers.

  She told us about the cameras throughout the building and then cried more.

  Kay and I considered our lives forfeit at this point and ran off to Montpellier for the weekend.

  WE HAD ONE HELL OF a weekend in Montpellier but decided at the end of it we should face the music and see what was to become of us. Surely, the judge would understand our actions. We agreed in this world, that would be the case. We would go down as noble heroes rather than cowards.

  I had been texting Aurora and Pierre. Pierre didn’t respond much and Aurora was staying with Pierre and said she was okay and that nobody was looking for us.

  If it was the wrong guy, maybe he deserved it and didn’t dare call it in.

  It didn’t matter. It was worse than going to jail. Aurora now looked at me like an animal.

  She wouldn’t forgive me.

  She stayed with Pierre for a while, strutting around in her pajamas. She won him over with a smile, so he was against me too.

  She must have stayed there for two weeks on his couch. Occasionally she would come down to sleep with me, but mostly she just harassed me from afar.

  I didn’t care. I didn’t regret what I had done. But what love I felt for her was now a love on a back-burner. The last month had been hell trying to understand where we were and when she called for help, I came, and I got crucified for it. Now she was turning one of my best friends against me without even sleeping with him. Just teasing him like a stripper with a client and he was too dumb to realize it.

  My closest friend who consoled me after Claudia had just become my closest enemy, harboring my former lover right above me.

  The whole situation caused another divide in the friendship of the apartment building, and Kay at least took my side this time.

  I said goodbye to Aurora in my mind, but never in speech. After a few weeks of her realizing she wouldn’t control me that way, she left.

  Pierre never got laid and felt like an asshole for betraying us.

  We forgave him, because we knew who he was and it wasn’t the first time.

  Kay, Pierre, and I were back to our normal roles again.

  51

  The next couple of months went in a blur of more drugs and alcohol. However, in comparison, I really started weaning off the drugs. They left me feeling so physically exhausted the next day. My muscles would ache from the torture of strenuous dancing and fucking the night before and countless miles I would roam the streets alone singing the ‘tambourine man’ in my head.

  Booze was more honest, and because of that I started to spend more time with my legion friends again back at the bar and not so much with Kay doing lines and singing Queen.

  I had met a few women since Aurora. Some I sang Dave Matthews, some I slept with and left before they woke up.

  Once I even woke up in a parking garage, covered in piss, bloody knuckles, and one shoe missing. I couldn’t remember a fucking thing, but I remembered the walk home with one shoe and still wet of my piss.

  But there was always one woman to rescue you from the other as she sets her claws in you to destroy you. I met her. Another her. Nothing to brag about, but she had it. Her strength may have just been an accident that came from my weakness, but she had it.

  I couldn’t help but think it was a coincidence that the night before I met her, I watched a movie where the lead actress looked like her. The same lips as one of my first lovers. The body, a beautiful average of my last two lovers.

  A ring on her finger, she was invisible to
me at first. For three nights she tried talking to me. I was so oblivious, and she was so obvious. She thought I was married, gay even. Her third attempt I proved both to be untrue.

  Here I went again. I was falling for one that confused me rather than one I could so easily read. Was it the challenge? Was it the chase? She showed interest, but I did not feel the same control with her as I did with the others. Was that what grabbed me? If she submitted to me like the others did, would I lose interest?

  I wrote poetry about her to better understand her, and I walked away with no answers but a stronger desire to find them. This was a woman I would write poetry about, and that scared the shit out of me.

  She was something incredible. So sweet and gentle. We went home that third night and the next day she told me we made love four times.

  She was cute and younger than me. This was new to me and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not.

  AS MUCH AS I LIKED her though, I was somewhat entangled with another. She was very much my type aesthetically, but not the right psychotic. When she kissed, her tongue was everywhere. Which was nice unless we kissed. But her body was perfect. She did anything I asked, and she loved camping and took very good care of herself.

  So I already had plans with her to go camping on a small island off of Brest, and I followed through with those plans despite my new infatuation.

  Alice and I continued to talk during my train ride up to my camping trip. I was already looking forward to coming back just to see her again, but she wasn’t intending on staying in the area since she was going to school in Corsica and would return soon. I was apparently her first one-night stand.

  The girl I camped with was just as awkward and conservative has she always had been since we had met. We still had a pleasant time bicycling the whole island and visiting all the lighthouses there. I also met her parents who came to my surprise. They rented a cabin rather than camping so we didn’t stay the night together, but we spent some dinners together, and French dinners can last a lifetime when you didn’t want them to.

  The weekend finally ended though, and I told her I just didn’t see things working out. She was much more heartbroken than I expected considering our short time together, but she seemed to understand.

  I got back on the train and started texting Alice again. I wanted to see her before she left for Corsica.

  52

  Alice was waking up. We had been together for a few months now. She never left for Corsica and stayed in Marseille. I’m not sure if it was for me.

  I was calmer now and had calmed down since I started seeing Alice. I can’t say it was for her, but it worked out that way, as if I meant it to be.

  I was running late, which was normal, but now I could blame it on Alice, in my mind at least. She was still getting ready, and we weren’t to the point yet where I would let her lock up behind me.

  Teaching wasn’t a dream job, but it wasn’t bad either. Unless it was a new class. You couldn’t help but wonder if they liked you or not. If they respected you or not as a teacher. I always worried that they knew I did not understand what I was doing. I always counted on that first class going well to give me momentum for the rest of the day.

  It seemed like no matter how well you did though; you were always being judged. The new prof d’anglais. Look how young he is, is he really going to speak English the whole time, this isn’t how I learned English before, I want a human dictionary. Most of them didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to be there with them. I’d be happier laying in bed next to a beautiful woman and having a glass of wine to start my day. I didn’t want to have to get up, shit, shower, and shave to entertain these people to help them find a job or help them keep their job.

  You would find a few who were there to learn though, and almost all the private classes went well. Yet most of the students were adult children that needed constant attention and positive reinforcement to convince them to better themselves.

  I couldn’t seem to make myself a better adult, the more I tried, the more I seemed to fail. How was I supposed to help others do what I couldn’t?

  Alice gave me a hug from behind, and I knew she was ready to go. She really was a sweet girl. I really hoped that I wouldn’t hurt her. I was sure she loved me.

  I was missing my blurry summer as I was waking up into a world of overdue taxes and bureaucratic shit that killed me inside more than the pack of cigarettes I smoked every day.

  Just waking up every day into this world is the most painful part of my day. I didn’t think falling asleep took me as long as it used to. Alcohol and sex always helped with that, but damn I really wish I never had to wake up. I wasn’t sure if it was because of laziness or a lack of motivation or both.

  There was a part of me that wanted to get my life together. A positive change. I even didn’t drink as much. I knew how much money I had in the bank account and there was a small part of me that could see myself growing into a man that could support a family. To love and take care of them like a good man would. I wanted to know if I could be that person.

  53

  It was Friday, and I had my psyche appointment in the afternoon. I had been going since the end of summer, not long after Aurora and just before Alice. It was the end of November and I felt like I was doing pretty well and started to question if I was really as unstable as I had been convinced I was.

  She was an American woman providing services to mostly anglophone expats and students in the Aix-en-Provence area. She was a kind of hippie and I liked that about her. She understood all that Eastern philosophy that I used to understand the world. We got along well and had some intense talks about my relationships with women and love. It was mostly all we talked about besides perhaps my creativity. She said I had something that needed to be said and so every week I’d bring something I had written. She enjoyed it and would then talk about it with me the next week.

  The appointments weren’t covered by the universal healthcare system though and cost me €80 a pop. I was wondering if it was worth it. Besides that money, it would take up my afternoon with the bus ride there and back, but she was the only English-speaking psychiatrist I could find.

  It also didn’t help I wasn’t working as much as I could have been. Working for yourself was never easy unless you truly believed in what you were doing. And as much as I enjoyed entertaining my students, I hated preparing for them.

  After cleaning up from the summer and realizing my financial situation, the sessions were looking like an exuberant check-in. A luxury I couldn’t afford. I would have a talk with Lisa about it.

  One thing for sure, I could never understand was that no matter how much I slept, be it four hours or ten, I always woke up just as tired and unwilling to face the day. I knew I needed the time to get things done in the morning. Mostly just walking the dog, but I would fight it with everything to stay in bed; my nice warm bed with a naked girl in it.

  Shit. My life wasn’t so bad.

  I mean I found out I gave Alice chlamydia, but she wasn’t that upset. Her friends had warned her when we met that I was dangerous for women to get close to, and to her friend's surprise, we were still together months later. I felt bad about the chlamydia thing though. We were supposed to avoid sex for a week while we took the medication, but that didn’t happen. I guess we’ll go back next week to see if we kept the bacteria or not. At least I wasn’t sleeping around with anybody else.

  Alice and I were an undeclared item. We were becoming more infatuated with each other as time went on. I drew her naked one night, and it reminded of me when I had done the same thing with Claudia. I wasn’t sure if that was fucked up or not, so I didn’t mention that detail to Alice. I also shared with her one of my favorite things I started when dating Claudia. Double-blind folds, losing sight and each fumbling, discovering each other purely by touch. That always led to a night of passion. Sharing these things with Alice made me worried that I was falling in love with her. I didn’t think that would ever be possible again.

&
nbsp; And though, Alice had yet to say she loved me, I loved the way her face looked when I would pull away from kissing her and would open my eyes before she did. I could see her still feeling the kiss. It made a man wonder, can love be as temporary as a kiss? Can a man love a woman in just a moment, in just a night. Did love have to mean tolerating each other for eternity or could it be as powerful and as temporary as having a moment of nirvana? A small moment in time where everybody around you was happy at exactly the same time. One moment that was shared collectively, unknowingly by most, but felt by all.

  If love could exist that way, I had loved many.

  And then my thoughts faded from Alice’s face, of her sweetness tasting what love I had left to give her and back into the real world. I was still being harassed by taxes and was succumbing to the pressure. My carte vitale still wasn’t working. As an immigrant, I didn’t get all the benefits of this country, but they still wanted my money.

  I also thought about what I would teach for the next week. It was Thanksgiving next week. The least commercialized holiday of them all. I wouldn’t get the days off being that it wasn’t a French holiday, but I thought I might still do a dinner even if it would only be Pierre and Alice that would show up. Something small for the ones that still wanted to spend time with me.

  54

  I slept in until 15h the next day. It was a Saturday, and I had stayed up all night until 09h watching movies and eating. I was doing my best to avoid alcohol and the pub and though it felt good to be alone and sober, I’m not sure if it was any healthier than being drunk.

  It gave me time to think about stupid shit that I never cared about before. Like how long my hair was getting. I liked it long when I combed it back, but that took a couple of days before it would train to stay back and then it was time to wash it again and go back to a fluffy mess that came from the 70s.