Chapter 6 - Luxuria - Lust

You had been gone for two months and the tour had ended without you, and somehow I let the possibility of having a new life and starting over seep into the edges of my brain. And then my phone rang and my heart stopped and my lungs sucked in what I thought would be their last gust of Jersey smog as I saw your name flash across the screen. I could barely hear your cracking voice on the other end, and my hopes quickly leaked from my mind, puddling in my ears so that I strained even more to make out your request. The ocean of optimism poured from my lips as I told you I'd be there and hung up the phone.

I walked apprehensively into the bar, immediately regretting my entrance to this little preview of hell. Smoke and booze and drugs. Was this hell or was it my past? Maybe it was both. Like you.

You sauntered up behind me and I could feel the bile rise into my throat. You were so pale that I was unsure you truly existed, your tattoos merely pictures hung upon the transparent wall of your shaking form. The t-shirt you wore was faded and torn, your eyes were bloodshot and told stories that I never wanted hear.

I could not speak to you. Every time words formed I would convince myself that this could not be my Frank, and the sentences would die not-so-heroically upon the smokey battlefield that lay between tied tongues. Your skeletal limb reached feebly towards my hand, and I ran sickened fingers along loose, thing skin as you led me to a solitary couch in the back room of a dive I could have sworn was only a hole in the ground. Forgotten, dirty, disgusting to all who can't call it home.

I sat, you sat upon my lap, and your tongue was down my throat before I could object. I wanted to cry. I think I may have had the courage to push you away this time.

Your hand was grasping at my hair, your knees tightening around my waist and your hips rolling mechanically against mine, but I could not touch you. I allowed the attack but I would or could not return it. You tasted like everything I left behind so many months ago and I feared the mere contact would drunken me. I wanted to push you away and purge the sinful residue from my body, to sit at an A.A. meeting and confess my slip-up to the stay-at-home mom's and a generation they had regretfully produced. But I wouldn't. I couldn't. I can't and won't ever turn you away.

Our clothes were lost and regained. Nudity and moans and sweat and hate tainted air that was already littered with nicotine, swear-words and filth. I could still feel the impression of your body upon mine--all hip bones and ribs and blackened veins to accessorize dark circles and greasy hair. You sat upon the couch, I was fully dressed and grasping a stomach that threatened to leap from my throat as I watched you calmly pull on your shoes. God, Frank. Those shoes. The ugly brown loafers I bought for you. How could you wear them here? Like this? Who the frack's footsteps are you walking in now?

I left not an hour ago and I've just realized that we did not utter one word to each other. I'm looking for a drugstore now, I need to buy glue or tape or the love of a cheap whore on the alcohol aisle. Anything that will fill these cracks before I fall to dust upon this crowded Jersey asphalt.

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