Sin and Zen, #1

by S. W. Stribling

  Shit. I guess it has been that long.

  ‘Crazy.’ I said.

  Shit. That was probably the wrong thing to say. I still felt like I was leaving a relationship. Maybe that was the way it was always supposed to feel. To feel. To feel something for someone always, and transfer that feeling over from one to another over a process. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Cigarettes.

  Oblivion.

  Sex.

  This is what I knew.

  This is what I thought.

  ‘Stop drinking so much. No. Fuck it. Drink to death, get it over with, give up. Quit.

  ‘My tattoo: Om

  ‘Peace.

  ‘Love.

  ‘Give up - Give in. Release control.

  ‘Humility.

  ‘Courage.

  ‘You can do this.

  ‘Do what?

  ‘Stop the spiritual bullshit. You are nobody special. You are a piece of shit. Lower than or just as low as the other scum out there. Stop walking so tall. Crawl your way back home, broken and defeated, and cry. Cry in your bed. Where even your dog won’t feel sorry for you. He’s just as tired of your shit as you are.

  ‘Stop your whining. Look at your anger. Get angry, but don’t get sad.

  ‘Paralyzed.

  ‘Get angry and make a change.

  ‘Alice is writing her bilan. Maybe I’ll do one too. It’s like a journal entry describing your evolution over the past year. Not a bad idea. I’m sure I’ve done something similar before. I’ll wait and do one closer to the end of the year.

  ‘Cliché!

  ‘That’s it. Get angry. At least do something when you get angry. Go running. Remember that painting kit. Go do that. Maybe it’s a new outlet for you. A new hobby. A new passion.

  ‘Alice is tearing up her bilan.

  ‘Fuck this shit.

  ‘I need to trim my beard.’ I thought

  60

  The ass fucking at 16 issue came up again.

  During our first weeks together, Alice had told me about a lot of the things she had done sexually, and one that caught my attention was her getting fucked in the ass at 16.

  The first time it came up, it was a fairly short conversation.

  ‘I didn’t see why it’s such a big deal.’ She said.

  ‘I didn’t see how you could be so bored with sex at 16, you need to take it up the ass.’ I said.

  ‘You’re just jealous because you didn’t do it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘maybe if I had just been having sex at 16, I would have been happy enough with that.’

  This time it went on a little further.

  We piled all this onto the recurring issue of her bragging about the things she had done before, but then refusing to do them with me. And when I drank, I liked to pick fights, and this was an easy one to start.

  ‘You’re so immature.’ She said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Well, maybe there’s more to it than just taking it up the ass as a kid.’

  ‘I wasn’t a kid.’ She said.

  ‘You were where I come from.’ I said.

  ‘It’s normal here.’ She said.

  ‘That’s normal here?’ I said. ‘Jesus Christ. So if I went around and asked French women if they got fucked in the ass at 16, they would say, ‘Yes.’’

  ‘Normal in Marseille.’ She said.

  ‘And you’re proud of this shithole mentality?’ I said. ‘I still think you’re full of shit about it being normal even in the asshole of France.’

  She just rolled her eyes and made a loud huffing noise.

  It started to worry me, that maybe there were some deep underlying differences in us that would last forever, if we lasted forever, if we had kids, would we teach them it’s okay to get fucked in the ass at 16 or to maybe wait until they were at least an adult before taking it that far. Shit, I’d be happy if my kids waited as long as possible. Well, not too long, life is short. But the brain isn’t even fully mature until 25, and sex fucked things up in life just as much as it made it great. I wanted any offspring of mine to have some shot at making it in life. Was this my Arkansas bible-belt coming out?

  I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want them to grow up using sex for popularity, or just to get somebody’s attention, or any other fucked up reason. Especially if I had a girl, a double standard or not, I wouldn’t want her being judged. I knew it sounded heroic to not care what people thought, to do what you wanted, but I didn’t know many people that were actually happy that way. Hell, maybe nobody was happy.

  I was thinking like a parent. My parents even. I guess you can never really escape them. But I understood why so many parents were like that. You didn’t want to point them or allowing them in the wrong direction, at least not until they were an adult and out on their own and making their own decisions.

  Then I realized it was something more than just sexual experimentation - which I would have been okay with. I could tell she was almost ashamed of it and was just defending herself because I was attacking. And I knew it wasn’t just a culture thing.

  Alice was actually a lot more of a saint than myself with sex. Yes, she started younger, probably normal by most standards, and I started late by most standards. But that was always the case with any girl I dated and it never bothered me. Alice was a good girl and had nothing but a few long-term relationships before me. I was the whore of this relationship and here I was giving her shit about her sex life.

  But more than anything, I wanted to understand why she did what she did. For someone so timid and from a good family, why was she attracted to that so young. Was she just doing it in a desperate attempt to be loved, to be accepted and appreciated?

  I looked at her and I knew I would never get my answer out of her.

  We were both quiet.

  I just looked at her and she looked at me with those eyes. Eyes that were angry, but mostly sad.

  I was falling in love with this girl. That’s why I wanted to pick apart her life and understand every part of her, to understand why she made every decision she made. I didn’t give a shit if I was being unfair or going overboard with my gestapo. I was vetting her like some CEO taking on a new partner. I wanted her to be more than just a friend I spent time with.

  Shit.

  I hugged her and she let me.

  We talked things out a little, and we seemed to be good.

  Then we played the Sims together. Well, she played, and I watched with amusement. It was nice. We cuddled and pretended to be a little family. She made me a writer and let me pick the names of the books I wrote.

  ‘The Kepi Blanc with Shoe Polish’

  ‘Simba the Kiki King’

  ‘Found in Translation’

  There were a few others and then my favorite, ‘Sex, Farts, and Skydiving.’

  I figured if I ever wrote a book, I would call it ‘Found in Translation’ with the prequel being ‘Sex, Farts, and Skydiving.’

  Then I stayed up all night wondering if this would work out.

  THE NEXT MORNING WAS another Monday morning. I was still unresolved with myself about what I wanted, but I was tired of thinking about it and tired of feeling that way. Moving forward always seemed erratic, two steps forward, one step back, but the thought of going forward this way though, a day job, one day at a time, did not seem like the reason for living, the modus operandi.

  I needed to go for a run to clear my head. It had been almost two weeks since my last one. I wasn’t quite the runner I used to be with my leg, mostly in distance; it didn’t slow me down too much. It just left me more sore the next day. An internal pang rather than just a tired muscle. Shit, it was that time of year though, between Thanksgiving and New Year, gaining a few pounds would keep me on the modus operandi.

  I would trudge through my classes and days.

  61

  Claudia was still on my mind from time to time. I wondered how she was doing. If she was happy. How I would react if I saw her. I got a nervous feeli
ng thinking about it. It had been so long since I had seen her. I figured that was why it would be weird. The last few times I had seen her I was okay, no strong feelings either way. Whatever I felt, I doubted I would see her again soon. We had avoided each other this long. That was once again her decision, as we had slept together a few more times after Aurora, until she told me she was having feelings for the other guy she had been seeing and wanted to make things work with him. Then I met Alice a few days later.

  I still didn’t know how to feel about her. We were well beyond closure. It had been 10 months since she moved out and 4 months since we last slept together, yet I was still feeling something inside of me for her that seemed to set up its own private room inside me, refusing to leave.

  I wasn’t sure if it was love, but maybe a reminder of another disappointment and failure in my life. A rocky past that would stick with me forever like shell shock. It made me feel sorry for her she got that part of me, but the truth remained that Claudia was the past and Alice was the present and possible future.

  Just as I finished that thought, Alice texted me. Funny how those things happened, it made you believe in a Jungian collective unconscious.

  ‘I just want to say,’ She said. ‘To add on to our conversation last weekend that I thought a lot about what you said about values. I didn’t have any before. But I do now. And I want to develop them. I appreciate your values and the fact you have them, and I hope in the future, as we grow, our values will mesh together.’

  ‘Nice idea.’ I thought. But I doubted I had any real values. I had imaginary ones passed down onto me I yelled without thought, but they weren’t mine. They belonged to others, and I was now enforcing them on those I cared about. It was an ugly thought, and I hated myself for it as I reread the text.

  I talked to Pierre a little about it. I talked to him about everything with emotional conflicts. Most of the time, I didn’t agree with his way of thinking being as Christian Orthodox as he was, but he was a good guy for unloading on.

  ‘Alice’s good for you, mate.’ He said.

  ‘I am happy with her.’ I said.

  ‘You look happier.’ He said. ‘I thought you would not make it through the summer.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘I never want to see you in your own blood again.’ He said.

  ‘Okay, Pierre.’ I said.

  ‘Seriously, mate, that scared the shit out of me.’

  ‘Well, all good now.’ I said.

  ‘You’re still seeing the psychologist?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Keep going.’ He said. ‘I’ll pay for it if I have to.’

  ‘You don’t have the money for that, Pierre.’ I said.

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘So I just don’t know what my future is with her.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He said.

  ‘Alice.’ I said, ‘I mean I care for her, but I can care for a friend. Would I enjoy her as a partner? The aspirations and standards raise when you talk about that possibility.’

  Pierre just gave me a look like I was an idiot.

  ‘It’s not fair to put that kind of pressure on her so early,’ I said, ‘but it’s also not fair to find out in six months that she’s not the one and break her heart.’

  ‘Don’t fuck this up, Will.’ Pierre said.

  ‘I’ll stick it out then.’ I said. ‘And leave the question in the back of my head.’ I thought.

  62

  Alice let me come in her mouth, which was an achievement for me, to overcome the thought of doing something like that. I couldn’t figure out why I could never do it before, why it was such a mental block for me. How it seemed so normal for the rest of the world and yet more disgusting to me than to her, or any of them. But she was patient with me. Worked at it. And worked at it until I came. It was amazing. A victory of some sort I couldn’t describe, but a victory. But only for about five minutes, until it bombarded me with guilt. Why would I do that to her or any other woman? I just became another guy on her list of guys that had done the same thing to her, except they were before me. And not only did they come before me, they had many times before. Well, I played it in my mind as many times, truthfully it probably wasn’t as often as I made myself believe.

  If I found it disgusting myself, how can I truly accept it as a victory, especially when I was supposed to casually accept all the other’s she has taken? Her soft lips on so many other cocks. Not that many cocks I guess, but the amount of times I still tortured myself imagining. Imagining her at 15 or 16, so much younger than she was now, wrapping her lips around a penis.

  I felt so immature by a girl younger than me, by the world. I was too far behind. If I thought of her doing these things as an adult, it wouldn’t bother me, but she did more as a teenager than an adult and I could only see this young, innocent version of the girl I know cared about as some manipulated porn star.

  I could talk about this shit with Claudia or Maju or anybody else, but Claudia waited until 20 and Maju waited until she was 18. Alice started fucking at 15, taking it in the ass at 16, and swallowing come ever since. And not just for one lover, but many. Men she thought she loved, but admitted she wasn’t happy with.

  There wasn’t anything I could do about this, but the thoughts always came back like cockroaches. The more I tried to swat them, kill them, the more they would come out of other corners of my mind. It was my mind that was the problem. Not her or her exes. It was my mind, and I knew it, but I would continue to take it out on her whenever drunk and given the opportunity.

  My logical side was one side, and it worked out okay. Most of the time, I was okay with the cockroaches. The lights were on; they were in their dark corners, out of sight and I wouldn’t even think about them. But then once a month, that one hour of every month where it crept in and haunted me ruined any chance of me being happy with her.

  I wasn’t sure if trying to find a new love would be the answer, at least not in France if my issue was about my insecurities with sex and this country and its women were half as sexually mature as Alice claimed they were. I figured I would keep my eyes open, but then again, maybe that’s what the issue was all together, an escape route. A way to run from this girl.

  She was a good girl, and that scared me that things might work out between us if I stopped fighting it. But I wasn’t ready to stop fighting. I wasn’t ready to settle.

  What shit.

  I was having a hard time swallowing.

  I HAD THE DAY OFF AND I woke up with a sore stomach and a headache that had been with me for a few days. I was supposed to go to Cassis today, then a show at work. I just wanted to stay at home and relax, but I did my best to convince myself to make the most of it. I knew it would make Alice happy.

  Lisa texted me saying we wouldn’t be able to meet up this week and that our next appointment would be in January. All the better. I couldn’t be bothered sitting on the couch. It wasn’t her or the hour we spent together. It was the idea that I had to be there at all that bothered me.

  I had a dream about a hotel, skydiving, and fishing. I wished the shit made sense to me afterwards. It was like I had the keys, but couldn’t find the car.

  Besides waking up sick to confusing dreams, I had more dreams about Claudia. She was dating an old sergeant of mine from the Air Force. It wasn’t as weird as I thought it should be, especially since in the dream we had just broken up. The weird part was an old legionnaire buddy of mine, Buell, was having a training camp in my apartment with a bunch of shirtless men. It seemed kind of gay and I didn’t bother asking what the hell was going on.

  My headache was still there as the day progressed and my throat became sore. I was sure I was sick.

  I talked to Alice about the shit in my mind.

  She understood but found it unattractive. She was right. But then she said she got jealous all the time too. I wanted to correct her I wasn’t jealous, but envious, but I let her go on. She got jealous whenever Claudia would post something on
my Facebook wall.

  ‘It makes me want to vomit.’ She said, ‘But I control my feelings. I do my breathing exercises.’

  It made me feel a little better that she got that way too. She controlled it better than I did though. I just got drunk and yelled about it.

  She impressed me. Younger than me, no great trips to India or Nepal to find calmness, she found it in a fucking breathing exercise here in her own country. A breathing exercise and she was as calm as a Hindu cow. Voila. Maybe this woman would be good for me. Maybe she just might be the one to save me.

  IT WASN’T QUITE THE weekend or the holidays yet, and I had another class to teach. I hadn’t prepared for it and was struggling to come up with something new with my mind elsewhere. The conversation with Alice seemed to put me through the five stages of grief, and I was finding any random ideas I had for the lesson plan to be boring. A news article. No. Friday the 13th folklore. Fuck no. I’d just wing it.

  63

  I was sick all weekend and kept mostly to myself.

  Kay had come in at five in the morning coked up, and I talked to him for a couple of hours until he passed out and snored the morning away, keeping me up. When I finally fell asleep, I must’ve been woken up about 15 times from my phone.

  Pierre.

  Voicemail.

  Claudia.

  Alice.

  Repeat.

  Pierre didn’t answer when I called him back.

  Claudia was next.

  ‘Coucou,’ she said, ‘ça va?’

  ‘Yeah, Claudia,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Just wanted to know what the name of that show was that we watched together that one time.’ She said.

  ‘What show Claudia?’ I said.

  ‘That show we watched together.’

  ‘We watched a lot of shows together.’

  ‘That funny show you made me watch.’

  ‘When you say show,’ I said, ‘do you mean TV show or movie?’