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Pilgrim

The first time a sailor from the Old World jerked off in the New, what was his feeling? Was he comforted by the familiar touch in a strange land, distraught that nothing had changed, numb and soggy from the salt water after 71 days at sea, hungry for a new approach to masturbation to couple with the new land? Did he picture Queen Isabella or his idea of a native? Was it in a crude cabin, by the fire, or on board the Pinta, the Nina, or the Santa Maria? Did Columbus walk in on him? Was he killing himself because there was a lack of food and the act of jerking off was essentially suicide: a last, desperate attempt at pleasure within the pain? Did he have any idea that the romanticized freedom the New World idealized might be contained in his jerk? Was he thinking of the population in his cum? Would America have gone smoother if he'd saved that ejaculation for a fertile kitchen maid or Indian? Were his little pilgrims the only ones accustomed to being in an unfamiliar place, the open American air and not the acidic American vagina? Did the cum spill onto the ground, seeping into the deepest foundation of the country to become corn, then tobacco, then cotton, then peppers, then wheat, then oil, then clay, then concrete, then Wi-Fi, then cum on all the computer screens he sailed so long and jerked so hard to provide us?

As it just so happens, Madam, I love my Mary. It's understandable that by the way I look at you and her that you would think an advance would be appropriate, but, and I mean so little offense that it might be called no offense at all, you are mistaken. Mary has even pointed out that I eat with a look of intensity, whether I enjoy my meal or not, so my manner of regard shouldn't be a basis for any impression.  I may be brooding or even cross when I look at my love across the table. It does not matter. The softness with which I regard you is not a plea that you should do what I cannot or will not--it is a softness that is in my nature and so, my regard. While studying French in Nice, my professor, Mme. Corrine, advanced on me in a French, didactic way, saying, "Mauricio, j'adore votre regard." This sentence taught me about both the universality of my magnetism and the connection we share with the French via our derived but common language. The French have stereotypically been the mor-de-femme and I daresay that may have been passed on to me, however diluted by half of my hot and noxious blood that boiled in my ancestors' veins along the equator. Even now I see you staring into my eyes--are you even listening to me Madam Sah- d'accord, I apologize, I apologize. But I see you shiver when I breathe the French r. Do you even see me? Are my eyes all that you can bear to see? Madam, Madam, look anywhere but my eyes, Madam. Look at my voice! Feel my name! Look at me!

Tickle you, smile at you, breathe on you, spittle on you, hear you, muffle you, hold you, kill you.

pink/Brown

                                                                                      ^pink/Brown

Walking in the City with my Partner

Walking in the city with my partner I come to the number 2, a tattered, dull orange plaster sculpture that looms a meter over me. My partner notices her shoelaces are loose as we approach the figure, but I continue closer and stand in its serpentine shadow. Through the top curl of 2 I can see the skyline and blinding reflections from windows that divert the sun my way. Tracing its loop and drop, I come to the acute base with weeds and grasses at its edges as it sinks into the cracked sidewalk. I glance back to see a figure reaching to her shoes, one knee pinning her sunflower skirt to the concrete, her orange hair falling along her back. And, turning around to the mono(or is it dual?)lith before me, I note the upper loop is a broken centrifuge, a golden (or is it orange?) ratio that breaks its own monotony, escapes itself like the nautilus that peaks from beneath its shell, the sunflower that arranges its seed heads in the center to dance out precisely. That part of 2 could circle in itself endlessly, fractions within fractions, a wave that keeps rolling even when it doubles into itself and the water. Looking through the loop of 2, I also see a green sculpture 3 on the other side of the park, a double-centrifuge figure, doubly infinite, deeper. Do numbers only operate on the surface level, I ask myself while staring again at 2's flat base, the orange line that dissolves to concrete-gray in the corner of my eye. And I ask myself whether the base of 2 devalues it when compared to the unity (or is it duality?) or is it triality?) of 3, whether I want long orange hair or bobbed green, my current partner or that woman with whom eye contact was sex from afar when the way we lingered on each other became gross and indulgent, understanding and consensual. Even the breasty form of 3 is appealing to me without making me feel silly. I think of green hair and a naked figure forming its own 3, doubly centered, her nipples' bumps maybe resembling the center of sunflowers with their spiraling, perfect ratio—though that’s just a mathematical fantasy. As synesthesia begins to force itself on me, since the color and form of this 2 in front of me and that 3 across the park are now inseparable from their values, I remember my childhood and my mornings in classrooms with paper numbers scattered along the walls, the way beige 1 soothed me, blue 4 nursed me, red 9 defeated me, and bloody 5 haunted me. I may be falling out of love with orange 2 and into it with green 3. Still, between them there are as many divisions and degrees as there are infinite integers, a small infinity. I ask myself again if numbers only operate on the surface, and even add to that a question of whether the surface coincides with skin. To answer myself, I figure 1 is a reflective number that denotes both a singular value and valuable individual, and to which we all assign ourselves, naturally. 1 equals 1. 1 is 1. We are 1. I am 1. The number does operate on my level, extending out of its system and into my own. Actually, it's obvious just how unnecessary these reasons are, since the axiom is that everything is 1: all levels are the content of a singularity. 2 is the great unifier and producer. 3, a figure that refuses fracture, cannot be divorced, will not suffer fools. This is a digestible answer to my question. So if this small infinity between 2 and 3 also extends to me... can I even hope to understand where I am at either end of the spectrum, the sweetness of orange 2 to the hum of green 3, when between the two I can't even grip the endless, indecisive fractions? There’s an itch to walk away as she is tying her laces and hide behind that figure 3, either lie down on my back and curve my legs and torso to align with the bottom bell, or just stand straight against the portrait backside, the figure being 3-dimensional and thick. Because I'm absorbed in finding a way to connect the depth of me to the depth of these numbers, it makes sense that I should attach myself to 3, as it's the closest representation of nature's dimensions—but that begs me to attach to blue 4, which has always been comforting. And even then, a bloody 5 has even more truth, because it allows for another dimension I may not have heard of yet, and has the humanity of blood in its value, terrifying though it makes it. I'm fracturing, I’m a pink and brown fraction that is decidedly indecisive, whole but split, unsure of its favorite color. The thought makes me feel childish, but I'm already counting numbers so I ignore it. The green girl would be my third lover, I realize. I hump the thought. Limiting myself to the space between 2 and 3, though it's no limit at all, I creep along the part of nature that I've allotted myself by holding to each degree—the problem being each degree slips away from me as it dissolves into slighter, more fickle fractions, either forcing me to jump ahead or fall behind. Still, seemingly hopeless, this is a system of certainty that I've proven to extend to me. Hold on a second, comes from the ground, my partner behind me. A man in the field spins a small girl who is wearing heavy black clogs, and as some wind swirls grass in front of me he loses his grip and she flies away, spinning and sailing, her face finally scattering the dirt. The thud and yelp tear me from the sculpture to consider the green hair bobbing behind a hedge across the park. I hate math but it compels, starts me running across the field and hurtling over the child in the dirt, getting closer to the green girl even as she walks away from me. 

Crushing cigarettes on the sole of my shoe, point of seeping, contact.

Fuck Your Words

Your writing is so big! You look good tonight. Coldness makes you tense and flex, so hot. Your writing touches me!

I have my hand on your dick. Tell your friends. Nobody trusts something they wouldn't fuck, and to that I can say that I'd fuck your words. Fuck your words.

Dry times are terrible times, if only because I hate them. Dry is characterized by tension and futility. Both of which, I say, are characterized by impotence. Sex rarely excites me. I almost avoid it.

* "Warpath" by Circle of Ouroborus

So sex--that's what you want to hear/write, right?--is an afterthought and yet the most inescapable thought. I'm wrapped up in being smothered by the girl who'll understand that numbness, but never suffer for my own, that my erection will reflect the excitement of my innermost ambition.

I went to the movies with Michael, who I have a HUGE crush on. He bought the tickets and popcorn so I KNEW it was a date even though he didn't say it was. His walk is so cute.

I didn't even think about what movie we were seeing. It was rated R but we got in when the person taking tickets yelled at kids drinking liquid butter from the counter. Michael led me to two seats in the back and he even pushed down the butt-flap for me. The popcorn was in his lap.

Michael started making out with me when the MGM lion roared. Then he put his hand in my shirt when I heard the Jerry Bruckheimer lightning bolt hitting the tree. And when the THX thing--the big swell that's cool to do with my friends--came, I came too. I fell asleep for a lot of the movie. I remember opening my eyes and seeing Michael's face under my skirt, but I didn't care, the movie was so boring.

>White line angled against the center-most metacarpals of right hand: ~/: with Rudy on my back, I drove a scooter into the jungle while scooting across the island of Cozumel. Cut my hand while lifting the scooter off of Rudy. Paid $40 for damage to fender.

>Dark brown blotch with a center of raised white skin on left wrist, beneath thumb: riding a bicycle just as my parents drove past me. We raced home and I crashed.

>Small white crescent on the back of right hand, beneath the pointer finger: c: caught on barbed wire while sneaking into an abandoned loading dock. Interior of dock burned into memory.

>Two light dots just above left nipple: odd pickings.

>Pink line just under chin: can't remember.

>Bald trench on right side of parietal, about 5" from ear: ( : can't remember, parents won't say.

The most beautiful girl I've ever kissed is on a balcony 40-some ft. away from me, and I'm sitting across a table from my girlfriend :Situation.

And the stupid, primitive itch to break away from the girl that truly loves me for the sake of chasing my fancies is making my eyes twitch-- twitch so that I always seem to focus on the gutter punk that was sweet when serving my coffee and looked at me as if expecting some offering, waiting for me to expose my(self) attraction. The red lipstick that walked into my workplace did the same, as did a blonde that complimented my shoes, and the rarity of these pretty moments, these pretties, is a suffocating, petty frustration.

Domains of freedom only provide so much movement, depending on the domain. I keep glancing to the balcony, finding the softest girl I've ever kissed sitting across this table from me to be inadequate despite her fulfilling the most desperate wish for unconditional love, warmth, and beauty in pain. I cause her pain (being the first pain also makes the freedom harder to break from) and yet she remains loving.

*I look up--she's gone.

Now back in my apartment, one of my roommates is having sex right now. I can hear them even though he placed clothing in the dryer and set the timer. His partner is gorgeous, and I'm a little jealous that his charm and warmth outstrip mine. The potential for heartache that accompanies a new partner...that's what I miss. Danger, flirting, new gasps, novel moans, scratch marks as funny as fingerprints.

Can't ignore the pettiness, though.

"Wake up, maggots!"

Jeffery is dazed and stares at the ceiling, which looks friendly.

"Breakfast today is--you guessed it--SLOP!"

The door to Jeffery's cell slides to the right before he can put on the orange jumpsuit folded neatly by the toilet. An officer steps inside. Jeffery, still on his cot, is punched in the groin.

"Up, up, up, maggot!"

Of America

The table of Girl Scouts outside the place I work was guarded by one woman. Such a long day I'd had, don't you know, and I wanted a cigarette like death wants a cigarette. After lighting, I decided to retrieve cash from my car just a block away that I might buy some Tagalongs©, feminist that I am.

Down the brick steps, catty-corner at the intersection, along some petunias, behind the troop of girls, and across one last street was my course. Approaching point 4, I smiled at the woman with her brood, who smiled to me but turned away when I came near. My cigarette, delicious thing, was in my right hand when I quietly sneezed--do you smell blood already? No, I did not burn a little girl with a cigarette, but I did convulse and backhand someone's ass. I still don't know whose.

In that moment I met the eyes of a 40-tired-something. My apology came a second too late as I was slapped with enough force to stagger me, with my cigarette in hand, burning the little brunette at my waist.

To that I had no words. I let my cigarette fall as I knelt to the cement, trying to show the crying scout my own tears. Her friend jumped me.

My elbow itched to crack outward, but I held down the fort, exhibiting great integrity and resistance to the scratching, shrieking girls. Babies, really. I let them assault me for a few seconds because I thought I could teach them something about having the capacity to stick up for themselves, to walk over someone, to be the beater, to help them earn their New World Order badges. My next impulse was to lift my upper body out of their reach, standing and holding them back to do so, but the woman swung her purse onto my back. I felt a box of, I think, Samoas, by the rattling of coconut shavings against the plastic wrapping.

I rose despite this. The brunette's feet tangled with my own as I received a final punch to the nose from the woman, who had become strong by hauling the table, cookies, Hello Kitty© stereo, and little girls around the city.

Falling and in an instant laughing, I let myself be strewn across the petunias, satisfied that I had done a good job.

Thanks for listening,

Mauricio

This Mole

I'm picking a mole from my arm because I don't like it. Its placement, its color, shape, its unconformity, its threat, all bad. But on my other arm I have an arrow pointing to another mole, which I like for its rich brown, its discreetness, it flatness, the value I've given it as a corporeal encapsulation of the darkness beneath my darkness (golden olive) and the point in time in which I am always immersed. I need to reconcile the two.

Stars

When I let my eyes relax while looking at stars the sky appears in its entirety, in some illusion, all the points of light in my peripheral field whether they are real or not--since the mind fills in blanks with continuity: I see some stars, so I see all the stars. At 3am, I'm watching the stars move.

Stars are beautiful, but my gaze falls to the blackness between them. Like the melancholy and stagnation that haunts me quietly, inescapable as blackness draws in light.

Rudy and I stare upwards. He pats my back, I nuzzle his arm, we confer, we sigh, seeing the same stars, but drawing our own constellations. Above one of The Dippers, I think The Big, is a bit of symmetry, a kind of Rorschach pointillism--Nature, artist-- and there I find the night's purest medium for feeling at once insignificant, as stars are want to impress, and grand. The stars stare back, and I meet Rudy's eyes. We confer, we laugh.

My coherence is constituted by my sorrow, my vapidity, my disappointment, my search, my futility, my desire, my body, my capacity, my taste, my flexibility, my anguish, my resilience to my anguish, my love of the moon, my love of no one.

Cry. Cry because you have life. You must want to, cry, I mean. You have my blessing, and because I too feel unfounded anguish, I have sad authority. Cry because laughter is to sadness as desire is to pleasure. Is beauty happy or sad? Happy on its impression, but sad in its extension; and crying is pretty beautiful.

A good weeping is good, is the maternal consensus. Collect yourself, recover, recycle, reboot, gasp, suck in, moan, sting, persevere, forget, weep, for your sake, let ink fall out with the salt and water, drain, die, birth. Whatever melancholy has been cultivated is an exaggerated attempt to stem the flow, and the release/restraint practiced daily in all its forms can be summed up by those heaves of desperate fury. Shake. Quiver.

And while suicide is typically marked by comfort in its freedom, its sad nature hints at crying as a flash attempt at drowning oneself with droplets. I've never heard someone say they don't like the taste of tears--salt water may hint at the allure of sinking to the bottom. Wallow.

Cling to a person, or hide your face, or scratch the walls, or tighten your body, or vomit a little, or beat yourself, or beat an object, or beat a person, or writhe, or suppress the retching, or scream, or run, or stand and stare, or shower, or shower an object, or sing, or flush red and hot, or turn cold as tears.

Cry. I give you permission. And see me outside my home and cry that you found someone (I found you) who doesn't necessarily want to see you cry, but who is comforted by your sadness. Though, I can't remember the last time I cried.

Daily Flirt

A girl wants to have sex with me (you wonder how I know). It's wonderful, young guy that I am--it's great. I wouldn't act on it, but there it is.

So while I masturbate I think about this girl along with the others. In the shower it's easy to lose yourself, give fantasies and dreams more heed than during any other part of the day, or maybe that's because my bathroom has no windows, only artificial light, and, of course, the nudity. We're vulnerable while naked, but sometimes the opposite.

And I'm masturbating.... masturbating.... masturbating... a flash of dark skin, another of red hair, a blonde paleness, black mound, sun spots; feelings of regret, resentment, vapidity, self-love, acceptance, confidence, irony, rape, impotence, power, novelty--am I masturbating to introspection? My neck cranes, I don't breathe, I shudder, I sink/sink, light floods back in, I come back. Bits of me are in the drain where they belong, the water long having gone cold.

a truth

Light and night fall at the same time, and it's all I know. And with floating time, however I forget myself each day, one or two more truths might show. How my soul works. Or why it is that I WOULD want someone. What makes me hate?
The carpet's gray but many colors, some abyss drawing my gaze and I.
I'm just disinterested in what's around me, what I can't see, and what I can't see yet. Space from the period, point! Dunka dunka dunka this here consciousness is pathetic rewind

Light and night fall at the same time, and it's all I know. staring 1234 staring 1234 staring 12 idea, that girl is so fi'hn.

Light and nigh- I'm concentrating on my breathing, and the cool air that's been conditioned--I like feeling it cycle something out, allowing something cleaner in." Notice it's opposite this sentence from the quotation mark.

It's been harder to operate despite other people. It's been harder to find myself at the center of it all. It's been harder to break from patterns. So I tell myself to break out, man up, man down, realize that my time is best spent with myself and not with others, in context.

This week on a boat will be good for me.

inside sounds

the throat bubbles, creaks. it's the sound of you swallowing, oh so good, some french fries. and whether it's the heartbeat or the intestines that pound blood, i can hear your insides from far away. i can hear you not thinking about me, feel you not making eye contact with me, smell indifference. the vibrations--jesus vibrates--reach me.

decibles.

so your insides--are they for me to hear? i guess i should turn away, fingers in my wax, but i can't really resist peeping at your pulse without having to have my face over a breast (a vein by the mandible is clearly seething), judging. you love?

come closer. no, i'll scoot over, glance over a book when the stomach sings, repress my glup of water. are my insides compatible with yours? do i fit?

since two people more or less make the same motion during sex, i think penetration just kind of disappears and is more or less replaced by the drive to merge. back and forth, i wish there were some elliptical or angular mode of sexing. so i stop being a penetrator and you an embracer, just connecting at this one point from which radiating connection spills out. wrong sound.

Descartes' Angel

For a method to writing, a structure for building words on words to raise a convincing and compelling idea, where should I begin? :

What is impressed on me most? Then, how would I express it? Good, good. Then... well no, that's about it. But this isn't objective, and so my method to writing fails. Or does it, the method being no method?

Fixation

I don't even know what attracts me to a person, but, well, I don't have to, in light of the pull. I don't know if they somehow make me aspire toward ideals for my own being, and then wanting to keep them around as a model, to be at a vantage point to their deepest. Or the cruelty that comes and goes with rigorous awareness (inner/outer) would, I might hope, be softened by the person's softness. Or if all attraction starts with a mutual edge, whether the attracted and attractor know it or not, that to attract means to cultivate something attractive, that to be attractive is to want attraction. And I hope the last is true, that I'm being begged to beg.

I wonder about having a life-long partner. Until now I've known attraction and fixation, however I may say and convince myself that I 'love' the partners I've 'loved.' Could that monogamy be the search for balance? The most intense form of companionship? I can't let it be reduced to that: love has to be, in some way, fulfilling the part that wasn't even evidently missing. What the fuck is love.

January 29/30 Dream

I awoke climbing a slowly curving staircase. At the top, to my right, was a wall of glass facing a wide river and some barges, a patio cafe, and to my left a magnificent tank. A huge eye passed me, followed by the mass of a sperm whale. I wasn't alone and the place had the structure of an organized aquarium--swirling light, quiet babies, carpet. I leaned against a rail to the back of me and saw that the tank extended for about the length of two or three football fields, several hundred feet deep. Sperm whales, humpbacks, rights, at the far end a blue whale drifting while the others circled it. And at the bottom, I could feel from the darkness there, Leviathan melvillei, lurking.

I'm Bussing 4

I like smoking so much. Unlike weed where you linger on the feeling, cigarettes force awareness of input to the body, the circulation between the world and myself, where my reality conflicts or harmonizes with the state of things that ultimately wraps me but doesn't matter.

Poetry is for writing what can't be written.

I even think I sing a little better having smoked before I practice, either adding a burning traction that I might better control my wind, or slicking my throat to flow more freely. I can't decide, but the idea of a "smokey voice" is less an accent than it is a utility, for me a provision of confidence that my chords, passed hourly by chemicals, are changing--a second, isolated puberty that in some way extends to the renaissance accompanying a deliberate attempt to smoke, to understand, to grow.

But I'm a little more jittery so my penmanship is getting worse, exchanging my voice for my hands, one medium for another. And I like it so much, though my hands constantly smell of smoke.

This Face, This Shell

Longevity

How long is life? Rather than approach the question from the natural inclination of "long" as length in its entire spectrum, approach it as long. Does a human life maybe extend too far, overstaying its welcome for both this worldly latice and its host, the person who might have not necessarily deserved death sooner than it was granted, but for whom their stay was prolonged? Of course, anyone attached to life (I propose this is just about everyone) would say a life extends as far as it can, maybe even that death comes no later or sooner than its perfect deadline. Could death, the definition of punctual, be late?

And my willingness to die might give me an approximate time of death.

If it were down to allowing women and children off a sinking ship at my expense, I think I would have the capacity to calm my thinking, appreciate the flattest expanse that is my own life, and willingly wade into the water. I can imagine that moment now, but I also cannot.

Since we do not know what death is, it is illogical for us fear it. It might be very nice. -Guildenstern

Crushed

I'm watching a guy flirt. The focus's back is to me, her coffee curls dripping down her back, and, having seen her around the campus, I know she's gorgeous. A cute friend to the girl is seated nearby, but this guy has eyes only for one of them. He smiles too much. He laughs a little too easily. His mind is blank. His eyes stare despite him. He scratches his chin and adjusts himself on his crutches, and for his sake I hope some sympathy builds.

I don't remember the last time I flirted with a stranger or crush, though I'm familiar and very aware of the blank mind that accompanies nervous attempts at being casual. What bullshit.

ib3

Naturally, I try to write immediately after a cig for its buzz (immediacy, as necessary to writing). I like the feeling more than marijuana, though I do need to shit after almost every smoking break. Regular air isn't enough anymore. And there's some beauty to the glow of a cigarette, as well as the kind of confidence it bestows, like a pair of brass knuckles makes someone secure to where their relaxed and clear impression lends a dangerous beauty. Or like a wasp. I'm babbling. Nicotine.

Returning home from Nine Roses and a satisfying meal, I lit a cigarette and admitted to Rudy my new habit. He and Rob poked at me for it, and the explanation I had ready at hand was, "I'm curious," though I also had to admit how silly ("douchebag") it was to say so. It doesn't matter, I'm enjoying it, and some insight is starting to accumulate. I don't know if I'm above the addiction, as I did before.

Haptics, A Compendium

Rudy and I have corresponding tattoos, and while not haptic necessarily, we can't deny the unity of skin that extends to our sense of each other, essentially touching from far away.

My dad's hugs have gotten warmer, closer. I remember the breakdown almost ten years ago when I accused him of being ashamed of me, disappointed in his son, even in himself for having wasted time, as I thought he was. And I remember the desperate hug we shared in my room. Now he pats my back when we embrace, he holds my shoulders, he rubs my head.

Mary is the softest person to have ever graced human skin.

My crush on Emma died with winter, but last night we had our first instance of contact: a hug when I entered the bar, a pat when I stole a sex-red tape for her, maybe rekindling something in the coldness. She no longer seems so frigid.

Whenever I see Marc, whether we're high or not, he puts his fist up and bends his wrist. We dap.

I'd like to put another here, but I'm realizing how seldom I'm touched.

I'm Buzzing 2

I sat outside my apartment with music and two cigarettes, a glass of water, a chill, closed eyes, open eyes, black trees, a blacker sky, a growing appreciation for solitude, the beat. If nothing else, I can see how cigarettes are craved as a medium for contemplation, or its imitation.

God damn! I feel dangerous when smoking. Poor soul! whoever threatens me while I'm on my lawn chair, demanding my contents, getting tobacco embers to the eye before I snatch his gun, break his ribs, pummel his nose, and shoot his knee. It's the nicotine talking. I'm sweet. What is this turning me into?

Keeping Still

The most difficult thing to convincingly write about is a matter which I feel rather than know. It's easy to write of, but convincingly-- not so much. How do I impart something I can't grasp, something that relies on a sympathetic or commiserate feeling and the charm of my attempt at its transcription, however evocative? Cortazar may have provided an inlet for that which sits deepest in the soul, but still, it's an amateur writer's dilemma: the tendency to dwell on the sharpness of something in the soul even when dwelling on it doesn't sharpen the understanding.

At this writing, I can't keep still.

*Then again, "Damn understanding more than anything else," said D.H Lawrence.

I'm Buzzing

It's surging molten sludge. I'm describing my first in&exhale of cigarette smoke, my first volume (100-120ml), and its invigorating yet dizzying effect. Walking out of Walgreens with my $6 purchase of Marlboro 100s and a Bic lighter, I was approached by a sagging teenager, asked for some help getting some food in me, sir? Sorry, man, no cash. I lit up then and there, the yellowing filter matching the soul it's saving.

So begins the molten, sludgy experiment on my own body and soul (I equate the mind and soul), an experiment that takes place in a compressed chamber with alien air pumped through vents high along the ceiling. My throat burns when I pull, but the nicotine affects me instantly and I swoon a bit, drugged. Like sex, I can't find a consistent craving for it, but love it during the fact, so I'm still wondering whether this test of will is really going to happen.

Everything is real. I had to convince myself a little bit, but yea, everything is real.