The Eighteenth Post

Bob Addict paces the floor while Jim Addict sat behind him at a desk, chairing the meeting, occasionally checking his phone for text messages.

"I don't ever wanna go back there again, man. I don't ever wanna feel the way I felt that day, man, 'cos what they say is true, man, you never forget the last day you got high. And I don't ever wanna question my sexuality like that again, man. I don't ever wanna feel like that as a man again, man."

He launches himself from one side of the room to the other, in his sneakers, thick gold chain around his neck.

"'Cos I don't need to have two thousand dollars' worth of drugs. I'm sayin' I don't need two hundred, or even twenty dollars' worth, man. I can turn around here in front of you, take a two dollar hit with my back to you, and by the time I face you again, man, I'm a different man. With a different face, man, and a different walk. With different values, man. And a different god."

Everyone's nodding. Or nodding off. Like the waif who's caught my eye, two chairs to my right, blood red lips, beautiful, hazardously de-constructed blond hair. A wool coat with a gray undershirt beneath. Skinny long jeans and high tops.

"I fucked boys, you understand? I fucked young boys. I robbed. I stole. Man I'd bleed you if you were in between me and gettin' high. And I fucked young boys, man."

Filled with fire. Filled with conviction. And still broken.

Later on, during a break, Ken Addict, sitting in front of me, turns around and asks point blank, "You here 'cos of the court system?"

"No, I'm here for my friend, it's his first time," I say, nodding at Ringo, over at the table getting crumble cake and coffee.

"Aw that's cool, man, that's cool," said Ken Addict, his visage softening a little. "That's cool, man. That's alright."

When it was over, Ringo—definitely here because of the court system after being pulled over with a joint in his car without a license for either—went up to get his form signed. I found myself roped into a prayer circle I didn't want to be in, but thought what the hell, fuck it. I was raised Catholic—shit would be like getting back on a bike. Then the waif showed up next to me, and we put our hands on each other's backs.

There was no electricity of touch, no shock, no thrill. Just an awareness of his hand on my back, of mine on his, and when we all said, "Amen", we both looked at each other briefly and smiled.

"That motherfucker must have been on heroin," Ringo said, later, when we walked to the car.

"Yeah, probably," I said. "But he was also beautiful and I wanted to kiss him," I didn't say.

*

M looks at me, and my breath catches. She is simply gorgeous, so unpretentiously beautiful—girl, woman, demigoddess. I climb into her Saab wagon, and she smiles at me, through her shades, looking like a sixties girl out of the Haight-Ashbury, and when she puts her hand in mine, it's loving. M touches me like I've never been touched—like I'm beautiful, not broken. So when even just our palms connect, my blood feels like music. And I start to heal.

But in my living room, after we've embraced, after I've buried my face in her neck and taken her in with my senses, she looks at me with huge, sad, pale eyes and says, "I can't do this stuff with you anymore."

So, still smiling, insides dissolving, I squeeze her hand and let it go.

"Yeah. Of course."

"I don't want to get caught. I don't want to fuck things up with me and him."

"Yeah, no, yeah, I know. I know."

We sat in my back porch, drinking pomegranate wine while she smoked her menthols and I lit a joint. I looked at her. Somewhere else in time and space, M and I were perfect together.

Outside, before I clicked the gate open for her, she rolled down her window. I leaned in and kissed her goodbye, and she held the kiss and slipped her tongue in my mouth. I groaned between her lips, slid my tongue against hers and felt my cock harden against her car door.

Back inside the apartment, closing the door behind me and leaning against it, I wrapped my arms around me and hugged myself, trying to feel M again. I did but I didn't—I just couldn't make myself feel the way M did when she touched me.