Darryl, p.11
Darryl, page 11
SLEEPOVER
Since Mindy’s still in Northampton, I invited Bill to stay the night. I didn’t exactly invite him to do that, but I invited him over to watch movies and we got wasted as usual and obviously he wasn’t gonna drive home. Sometimes I wish I could be sober with him, but that’s what it takes with a guy like him. And besides, I’ve kind of given up on being sober. I drink with my friends who drink. I’d probably do G with my friends who do G, but nobody does G, which is probably a good thing for me. I was really out of control with that stuff. But I’m not out of control now. And I was actually shocked by how smoothly it all went with Bill. I was a little more dressed up than usual and he took it in stride. I felt like because Mindy and Kit weren’t there I could admit to myself that I felt like a woman with him. And he was such a man!
After all of my thinking about it and all of my working up to the thing with toys, Bill actually fucked me and it was, I don’t know, it didn’t feel the way I’d hoped but also I felt complete in a way I hadn’t before. Mostly after. During was a little like going to the dentist. The toys weren’t good practice for how he moves, but none of them were good practice for how motivated I was to take it. So ups and downs, or maybe ins and outs. I felt myself moving with him and it all made sense. There were no worries. What was this like before silicone lube?
I felt how naturally he moved, and I’m glad I felt that, Satori moves that way too, but not as rough. Yin and yang. He spooned me for a while after and I got cleaned up. I’m still thinking about the feeling of him in me, how much it meant to me when he came, how he seemed to be striving to get as far inside as he possibly could at the moment of release, and how he moved then. I wasn’t even hard, it was all about him. I was hard after, every time I think about it. And I had this kind of well-fucked feeling that was better than I’d ever imagined it would be. I think women have the better part of sex, and apparently I can play along too.
It actually felt so good that I wondered whether it would work with someone who doesn’t know me, and who doesn’t have to look past my male body, just a regular gay guy. Luckily I don’t have to find out. I have Bill, it feels like I really have him now. But I can see why gay guys all jump into bed with each other so fast, this is great.
In the morning, I asked if he wanted to come with me to the mall and he hesitated. I thought, right, it’s weird for you to be seen with me. Especially like this. That feeling of belonging-to-him that I have now, he feels that too. Maybe strangers can feel it. I was frustrated, told him in anger that I love him, that I do everything for him, then paused. “Let me wind that back, ok?” “Ok.” It was just a new set of emotions. We talked through it a little. I know Bill is scared of love.
We talked a little about Brad finally and I understood a bit more. Brad had been Bill’s younger brother, or half-brother, that much I knew. And he had run away early because he was gay, and maybe more importantly than that, Bill thought something had happened to him as a kid that he never talked to anyone about. He was very sick when he died, so that nobody quite knew what his death meant, or his self-destructive behavior, which started a long time before he got sick. I thought about a documentary I once watched about a guy called Bob Flanagan, who was a masochist and did a lot of very painful performance art because he already had chronic pain from a condition he was dying of. Something in his lungs. I think there was more to it than that, but what do I know about art? I thought ok, maybe Brad was a little bit like that. I asked if he knew about Clive.
“You mean Brian?”
“Yeah. I figure that’s the same guy.” I didn’t want to say too much.
“You figured right. That guy belongs in jail. I might go to jail for kicking his ass if I ever see him.”
“Bill, am I safe?”
“I don’t know.”
SCAB
Things with Satori feel better than ever. When I’m with her, I feel like maybe I could be a well-adjusted poly guy. Bisexual. I never used that word for myself before. Is it possible that’s what was going on with me all along? Anything’s possible. That’s the thing, everything’s possible now.
I think I need to be with people who are spiritually realized and direct in a certain way, and that’s frightening. It’s scary because that’s not how I see Mindy, or Bill. Especially Mindy, it feels like I don’t know her sometimes. But here’s an observation: I have this endlessly elaborate interior monologue, right? I feel like I’m always narrating. But everyone I love is full of silence. Whether that’s Clive’s coldness, Bill’s inarticulate masculinity, Satori’s oceanic depths. So where’s my silent place? Or are they all chattering to themselves inwardly just like I am? Maybe from the outside, I look like them, and this is just the view from the inside that everybody has. But I don’t think so. I think that silence is a real place, and I think Satori helps me find it.
After I came this morning I lay there in this quiet moment that felt like forever. I wasn’t male or female, there wasn’t success or failure, there wasn’t even the absence of those things. It was just a moment unmoored from striving, thinking, speaking, not even talking to myself. I don’t need to label it. I wondered after whether this wasn’t what orgasms were supposed to be like, like, maybe the simplicity of other people, and the way they chase it, it’s because this feeling is more accessible to them. I’m always saying that, everybody else is simpler than me. I thought about Bill speeding up at the end, in the heat of it, chasing something that isn't there. He can’t get me pregnant. I wish he could.
Mindy got back a couple days ago and seems to mostly approve of what’s been going on, but she’s a little bit off doing her own thing. She had a session with Clive and it ended up injuring her pretty badly. She says he wasn’t trying to do it, and I believe that, he’s just too thick. But that’s pretty cold comfort considering what else he’s done when he wasn’t trying to. Is that how he killed Brad? Hopefully she can just rest up and it’ll get better, but she’s not having sex for a few weeks. And Kit, who’d seemed for her part so romantic, seems angry. I think this is part of the lesbian thing, ultimately there’s a bit of a rage that she isn’t enough for Mindy, and that women in general aren’t. I think bisexual women must have a hard time with that kind of thing. But I sympathize with the lesbian side of it too, like, wouldn’t you want to know someone didn’t see you as a phase, or as a little something on the side of their real relationship, or their real life? I can see Kit’s side of things. But that’s not Mindy, she’s just tired and a little sore. I get that too. Satori gave me some jojoba oil and told me how to use it, I hope it helps. I’m gonna take an epsom salt bath too.
It’s funny, as excited as I was before about Mindy using a strap-on, or Satori, I don’t really want that. I can’t even imagine asking Satori for that, even though I know she’d take it in stride. I want to be penetrated, and I’m getting that from Bill. That’s something I want from men who are men. I don’t mince around. I wonder what Oothoon’s deal is with that, what kind of expectations people bring to her about it. Half of me wants to start a conversation to ask, but I think that must be another thing that gets old if you’re trans, people asking lurid questions about your dick under the cover of being an ally. “Does that feel strange? Do people treat you badly? Do you wish it wasn’t there?” She says she wants to talk about poetry and I’m happy to do that although I don’t always feel like I can keep up. And actually, when I talked about poems I knew like Byron or Walt Whitman, she didn’t have that much to say. But she talks about trans stuff all the time, maybe next time she does I’ll sneak the question in there. I can be slick.
Satori had to cut our session pretty short because she’s meeting up with another lover. I can’t stand this guy, a young “relationship anarchist” guy with a lotus tattoo on his neck. He’s a yoga instructor, a kundalini something-or-other, and an “energy practitioner.” Sometimes I think I’ve got to get out of this town, it’s full of hippies. Reno’s got its own problems but at least people there don’t claim to be arhats. And now here’s this guy who at the age of 28 is passing himself off as an enlightened spiritual teacher. And you know what? He might be. What kind of a guy calls himself Moonbeam? Well, what kind of a guy puts on a little dress and begs his best friend to fuck him and to fuck his wife? It’s not like I can judge exactly, but there’s something about guys like Moonbeam that gets under my skin. Like it’s all love and light with them. I sort of wonder if we’re the same species.
To me a guy that acts that way is a scab. That’s a word I learned from Bill, for a working man who betrays the union. It reminds me of school, of the people who were so chipper and did their homework a week in advance, who got up early, the shiny-apple-for-teacher guys. I’d always think, “don’t you see how much harder that makes it for the rest of us? Don’t you see that you’re trading on our misery?” Fuck you, Moonbeam. You don’t know what it’s like. I look into his eyes and all I see is a world where I have to be like him to be worthy of love, that’s all I can think about. It’s a world where I’m wrong, and where I’m worthless. And it’s just a different brain chemistry that gives him that. When Clive gave me MDMA I was like Moonbeam for exactly three hours. Then I was down for a week. He’s like that all the time and apparently the better part of this world, which is Satori, belongs to guys like that. Why? Another inch? Serotonin? Oxytocin?
Breathe, Darryl. Breathe. This is jealousy. Why isn’t it hot?
INJURY
Clive cancelled on me! Just as well that he did, I’m still sore from Bill, I don’t think hiking would be very fun right now. I think my curiosity about him has really diminished since making so much progress with Satori and Mindy and Bill. It’s like it was all a dream, all of that darkness. It’s bad enough that he killed Brad, it’s bad enough that he ruined my wife with his big stupid cock, I’m ready to not think about him for a little while. I wonder if he’s embarrassed. He once told me that he doesn’t know how to apologize to people, he just goes away for a long time and lets them process it, then he returns a few times. If they don’t want to forgive and forget, he’s gone. Wasn’t there something about vampires not going in where they’re not invited?
I’m sure we’ll see him again. Meanwhile I’ve built up a serious supply of psychedelics from him, I might take some again soon. He must know that I’m doing this, I buy them every chance I get but I don’t take them very often. So I’ve got a freezer full. I’m overdue for it, I think. I’ve been thinking about it, it’s so different than the GHB I used to take all the time. Tripping isn’t about fuzzing out or taking me out of it at all, and it isn’t even about feeling good. If anything, it’s a way to feel more intensely. That’s what I want, now. I wonder if Satori would want to do it with me.
I’ve been writing more to Oothoon, and it occurs to me that I never say her real name. It’s Jenny, I always think of her as “Oothoon” because she introduced herself to us under her pen name when we met on that road trip. I miss those moments and I think I might go out to see her soon. She invited me to stay with her for a bit “next time I’m in Reno” and I thought, you know, why not? I could visit my mom, that could be an excuse. But I don’t want to leave Eugene until Mindy’s feeling better, and that might be a bit. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like with Oothoon. Are we going to have sex? What does she see in me? Is she trying to “recruit” me? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Satori told me that I should be saying “Yes to Life” and that sounded so right until she added the context that it was something Moonbeam had said about me. That burns me up. I don’t want to believe they talk about me, all I want is peace from that guy. All he wants is peace too, everybody acting his way, all smoothed out. I think I’ve never hated a guy more than that, not even Greg.
When we met Oothoon, she was in our world. We were on a road trip, we were playing pool, and here was this tranny in our group. She actually walked up to us, tweaked the flower behind my ear, mine was on the left, Mindy’s was on the right. She asked “so which is which, swingers?” and picked up a flower from the tables, put it in her teeth and sunk the eight ball. It didn't strike me as particularly female, but God was it cool. I guess I shouldn’t say “tranny,” but she used it for herself. She makes a lot of jokes. But when I go there, I’m going to be at her house, with all of her roommates and her friends and all of her books on the shelf. I’ve got to be careful. Somehow I never thought to imagine what her life is like. She wasn’t always in Reno, she told me she was living in San Francisco when she transitioned, and maybe New York too? Her stories always sound so amazing and impossible, full of amazing and impossible people. I wonder what that’s like though, to transition someplace full of people just like you, full of all the freaks and weirdos, and then to just move out to the middle of nowhere. Well, Reno isn’t nowhere, but you know what I mean.
MOONBEAM
I had tea, because of course it would be tea, with Satori and Moonbeam. I want to die. There’s a way of moving that these yoga guys have, I just hate it. I don’t know what makes it different than Satori’s way of moving, her “presence,” but it is. Why does he breathe so slowly? It’s as though he has to wear his progress in meditation all the time like peacock feathers. I thought the whole point of meditation was that it isn’t about that, but here we are. Another thing for me to be worse at. It’s bad enough that I’m older, that I’m in worse shape, that he probably has a better dick than me. I don’t want to think about that.
I don’t know why it was so easy to cope with all the other guys when it was Mindy, even in the first stages of our lifestyle exploration. I think the difference is that I’m over it, I really am just over being a cuck. But now here comes Moonbeam, the punishing reminder that being a cuck isn’t a matter of an enlightened lifestyle at all, it was never a choice, never a kink, it was just a fact. It’s a fact about nature and it’s confirmed in the heart. He’s the better man, so he’ll take my woman. They always do.
What I feel for Satori is so pure and I haven’t felt that before. It’s a different kind of love. I think I get better and better at falling in love in my life, there was Mindy, then Bill, and now Satori. And I do feel very modern in one way: I feel like I can love them all, I really do. I’m full of warm feelings for Oothoon, for Patrick, even for Clive. Why not? But just now when I finally have something like a normal sexual connection with Satori, I can see it already. She’s going to leave me. That’ll be it. That’s her prerogative. She’ll pick up her ball and go home. She’ll find someone more fun to play with. I don’t know what I’ll do.
I reached for the teapot and they both laughed, I guess at the idea I’d be so impatient, direct, impolite, un-Japanese. “Hold on, Darryl, we’ve got time.” Moonbeam poured me a cup in what looked like slow motion, from a great height, and painted a Japanese character on a scroll. “Calligraphy,” he said, in a very satisfied way. I almost laughed. Of course it’s calligraphy, that’s literally the fucking word for the thing that you’re doing right now. Do you have anything to say about it? I think Moonbeam never has anything to say about anything, but he has this way of speaking that clearly conveys at least that that he thinks he did, that he’s communicated something very deep, and we’re all supposed to appreciate it. We’re all supposed to just play along. And now I have to. I can’t say how annoyed I am, because I have to convince Satori that I’m on the level, that I’m a spiritual guy too. Unless they’re testing me. Are they testing me?
When I finally took a sip of the tea, and seemed to drain the tiny cup much too fast, Moonbeam poured me another, this time from even higher, and drew another character, definitely different than the first one. That made me wonder if he even knew what he was writing. It’s not like we’d know, maybe they’re just squiggles. He looked into the middle distance and asked, “Darryl, you seem to be a man who thinks. What do you think about the nature of time and the moment called now?”
What a question! How can anyone think anything about time, it’s so abstract and confusing. But these people romanticize it. They like the confusion. I tried to say something too literal, that subjective time is sort of false, that what appears to be a sequence of moments isn’t that at all. I said that when we think we’re being, we’re really remembering, what gets called experience is something assembled in retrospect, and that there are really no true moments. Satori and Moonbeam both stared for a while and Satori asked if I really thought that, that there is no moment. The look in her eyes was sort of sad, the way Christians look at you when they realize you’re not just another prodigal son, that you actually don’t believe in their guy and you’re going to hell for that reason.
I wondered if I wasn’t missing something, I don’t know. Like I was supposed to say “Be Here Now?” That’s the magic phrase, right? But I was frustrated and said yes, and that I wasn’t taken in by the new age cult of immediacy and presence, and I tried to explain what I’d been talking about with Oothoon, that spiritual people seem to just be privileging a special layer of experience, the one that feels “primordial.” The layer that appears as what’s given, as what’s under, or what’s before. That’s just a part. It’s the bottom part. Does that make any sense at all? Satori and Moonbeam seemed sure that it didn’t. Satori actually seemed hurt, and Moonbeam seemed amused. That’s two strikes. Then Moonbeam said that he thought that there is such a thing as now and that he could prove it to me right here. As horrifying as that sounded to me, it was a very aggressive thing for him to say, a bit out of his usual mode, which made me feel a little smug, just knowing that he’s on his back foot. I agreed.
