When I woke the next day, Ellie was spooning me. I shifted a little and realized she was sleeping so I laid there for maybe fifteen minutes until my bladder insisted I get out of bed. When I came out of the bathroom, El was in the kitchen making espresso. She wore a long t-shirt that hung mid-thigh. We drank espresso in the kitchen quietly, occasionally looking and smiling at one another. We didn’t speak a word and there was no need. When we were through, Ellie motioned for me to follow her into the bathroom and we showered together.

I loved the silence. It heightened the sensations of the water, her hands on me, mine on her. When we were done, we took turns drying one another, taking our time. All the rushing busyness of life had ceased. There was only time, languid, carefree, unending. We were floating through a gravity-less space, a place where speeding up wasn’t possible. With time slowed, life became full. Only when time sped by did life feel empty; the desire for bells and whistles arose mostly because time went too fast to feel anything quiet or gentle.

As I was dressing in the same clothes I wore the previous day, Eliene called Auriana. I asked her how Auri was when she hung up. “Tired, but happy to be coming home today.” Weird to speak and hear Ellie’s voice. El told me she wanted to go out to get a welcome-home surprise for Auriana so I packed my things and got ready to go. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to spend more time with her and see Auriana, but I recognized they needed time to themselves. I said to Ellie, though, “I don’t know what to do after the last couple of days. Everything is so … different. I’ll miss you.” She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’m here. Send me an email, we’ll get together again. Auriana wants to see you, too. She’ll be tired today, though.” I understood.

We hugged and I said goodbye, walking down the stairs in a daze. When I walked outside, I hadn’t left the apartment in days. Lifetimes had passed. Everything looked different. Even my bike seemed different, not in a way that was foreign, though. Actually, the bicycle seemed more personal, like a family member. I unlocked her and kissed her handlebars while rubbing her seat. “Ready to go, babe?” I hopped on the bike, felt the thrill, and pedaled away.

Freedom! The air was light and crisp, filling my nostrils with freshness. I realized I hadn’t had a cigarette in two days. I didn’t think about it once. Weird. Good weird. I still didn’t want one. I smiled, looked up at the thin clouds, appreciating the bright but cloudy sky. The thin clouds made the morning easygoing. My movements and those all around me had a liquidity, even on busier streets like Overtoom. I cut through Vondelpark, got off my bike, and walked along a path before sitting on a bench. Walkers passed as well as joggers and cyclists, all moving slowly with measured paces, as if they didn’t want to upset the quiet or make an impression on the earth.

A flash of Ellie crossed my mind. I didn’t miss her; she was still with me, watching through my eyes. Everyone I cared about lived within me. Not in spirit, but as beings of memory and emotion, not detached from who they were independent of me, but as I perceived them even when I was with them. I accepted the feelings and ideas as they were then got back on my bike to ride home.

When I arrived, I grabbed Susan’s mail. I went inside the apartment, took off my backpack and coat, and checked the plants to see if they needed watering. Most looked okay, but I watered a couple that seemed to be overly dry. I hopped in the shower, got dressed, and tried to think. I couldn’t, but I realized why: I hadn’t eaten breakfast. It was near noon so I ate a sandwich and drank some water. After eating I felt a little clearer. I hadn’t eaten much, really, but enough to give me fuel to check out my next indexing assignment. I downloaded the PDFs, read through a couple chapters, realized the work was going to be straight forward, and shut down my laptop. Work wasn’t speaking to me. I wanted to see Daniel.

Years had passed since I last pedaled over the Magere Brug down Nieuwe Kerkstraat and Plantage Kerklaan to Bloem. I locked my bike on the crowded rack outside and walked toward the door. I wasn’t sure if it was the environment or what, but I had an urge to smoke. I sighed, pulled out a cig, and lit up. I took two drags and put it out. Disgusting. I popped a mint in my mouth and walked inside. I didn’t see Daniel and at first it looked like the place was empty—it was nearly mid-afternoon so that wasn’t a surprise, but as I walked through the entryway and past the spiral staircase to the main area of the café, I noticed that my favorite table was occupied by two women.

I walked past and sat at the table next to theirs. I was angled toward the bar and the women sitting at my damn table. Daniel was still nowhere to be found so I listened to the women speak to one another in Dutch. One woman looked somewhat Spanish and the other I couldn’t place. My first thought was that she was from Iceland. She looked like she may have been a cousin of Bjork: Half pixie, half human. She had jet black hair, shorter, and she wore all black including stylish boots. Her skin was soft and supple, white as snow. She looked toward me. Her eyes were huge, rounded as much as oval, and her eyelashes were lush, shimmering blackness, long and feathery. They were real, I was sure of it. The color of her eyes were rich dark brown chocolate, but soft. They seemed otherworldly and yet earthy. Without realizing, I was flipping through my memory banks trying to find a woman with a comparative presence, but I drew a blank. Bjork was the closest, but there was still a world between them. Her looks were unique as far as I could tell. I also noticed she was busty; her black sweater wasn’t tight, but that didn’t hide the fact. She wasn’t disproportionate, though. If I was sculpting or sketching her I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I didn’t get as good a view of her Spanish-looking friend. I was too enthralled by the otherworldly Icelandic half pixie to pay much attention to anyone or anything else. Daniel saved me from gawking by introducing me. The Spanish-looking woman was named Sophia and the Icelander went by the name Piper. They motioned for me to sit with them and I did, almost falling on the floor as I did so. This caused some giggles and I looked up at Piper and her smile just about sent me all the way to the floor. This made her laugh harder. I smiled, sheepishly. I could feel myself blushing and I covered by saying, “I like to make an impression when I meet Daniel’s friends.”

Piper was still smiling. Those dimples! I was having trouble thinking and I had to make myself look away. Daniel brought them glasses of wine and asked me if I wanted anything. I thought, yeah, I want Piper. Instead I said, “I’ll have what they’re having.” Sophia said it was a Spanish wine and I found out as we talked that she was half Spanish and half Dutch. I asked Piper if she was Dutch—knowing she couldn’t be—and she said, no, she was from Canada. She was “native” from a very small tribe very far north but had been adopted by Canadian parents who owned a cookie company. Her mother had started it based on a recipe of her own. I learned later from Daniel that it was a very successful international business.

Piper was studying microbiology as a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam. She and Daniel used to work together. Sophia seemed about the same age, maybe a little older. She was a chef working at a swank café on Nes. I loved that lane, a kick-ass little sliver of land in the center. I had gotten lost in that area many times because I often had to double back after turning to the east while looking for a smart shop or a café. Inevitably, I would ride up to a canal without a bridge, forcing me to snake around to find a way to cross into the Oude Zijde. The only street name I knew in that area was Nes. It was also the site of my falling out with Sterre; remembering that incident reminded me that she had sent me an email I hadn’t read. I quickly forgot about her, though, while gazing at Piper.

Daniel sat down with us. We were the only customers in the café, each of us a friend of Daniel’s, though I could tell there was a chemistry between Daniel and Sophia that suggested more. As if to confirm my suspicions, Daniel put his arm around her, and she nuzzled into his body. I had no idea when this relationship started but it looked like it was in the honeymoon stage. Sophia was affectionate, extroverted, and gregarious. Sexiness dripped from her. She and Daniel talked food and wine and told stories of bad experiences with customers in their respective cafés. Piper and I listened, smiling or laughing at times, but we were clearly out of the loop. Daniel and Sophia slowly got lost into one another. Piper seemed bored and I felt uncomfortable.

I turned to Piper to talk with her. The problem was that whenever I looked at her I got tongue-tied. I had been with Ellie just hours ago, but Piper nearly obliterated memories of intimacy with her. I couldn’t explain why, not specifically. How was it that I continued to stumble into the presence of women who floored me, each new meeting somehow more puzzling and intoxicating than the last?

I kept trying to think of something to say, but nothing appropriate formed. The questions and statements that went through my mind were better left unsaid: “What’s it like to be the spiritual sister of Bjork?”; “Do you ever need to say anything or do you make your way through the world by exuding who you are?” “How many men and women have died blissfully while looking into your eyes?”

Piper spoke without opening her mouth. When she blinked, I felt a flutter of breeze on my skin. Those eyelashes. Piper saved me from myself by asking about my life. I fumbled for a bit before telling her I was living in Amsterdam for a few months and that I worked in publishing, that I loved the city. Piper smiled and said, “I love it, too. I want to open a bar, just drink and serve drinks to my friends all day.” From microbiologist to barkeep. Endearing.

She mentioned she recently had been hired by Gollem II in De Pijp. I was familiar with Gollem on the Nieuwe Zijde, but I didn’t realize there was another bar in De Pijp. She said she was nervous. “I know my beer, but …” She trailed off and I recalled the giant chalkboards of beer names at Gollem. I could understand being nervous about working in such a place. It would take time to memorize all those names as well as functionally work the bar. She had mentioned working with Daniel so she knew what she was doing. To land a gig at Gollem II she would have to know something.

There was something else about Piper that struck me: Her voice. She had an accent and a certain way of speaking that I had never heard. It wasn’t a Dutch accent and while she may have been from Canada it wasn’t that, either. It was, like her looks, something I had never before encountered. She became all the more alluring because of it. The combination of everything, her background, her intelligence, her education, her unique physical beauty, and her voice, it was something to behold. She gave off a spiritual scent.

Before I could ask, Sophia walked to the WC and Daniel asked us to join him for a smoke. Piper declined, but I went out with him. Once outside, I asked Daniel about Sophia. He said they had been seeing each other for about a week. He looked like he was in love and I told him so. He blushed just a bit and shrugged. “Maybe. It’s new.” I said, “She’s a firecracker, man. Sexy, full of life.” Daniel took a drag from his smoke, his eyes lively. She was infectious; he was under her spell.

Then again, she was under his, too. A good match, but it was surprising to see Daniel feeling that way about someone. Even with Anabel he hadn’t come across like this, but she was preparing to leave for six months at that time so I didn’t know how he had felt about Anabel earlier in their relationship, whatever their relationship was or might have been. I reminded myself that I had only known Daniel for a few months. He was too complex and mysterious to read in such a short time.

I couldn’t hold back any longer so I asked Daniel about Piper. “Is she seeing anyone?” He said, “Well, she was seeing the owner at O’Reilly’s, but I don’t know how serious that is now. I told you about them, right?” I remembered. He had said she could do better. Now that I had met her, I understood; in fact, I was stunned that Piper was the woman he had mentioned that night. What the hell was she doing with him? Saying she could do better was the understatement of the year. Then I remembered Daniel often spoke without exaggeration, that understatement was par for the course, that what I perceived as understatements he saw as clear evidence without the need to elaborate. He seemed so used to profundity that what seemed extraordinary to me was ordinary for him.

I asked Daniel if he and Piper had ever gone out. He said no. “We messed around a few times, but nothing serious.” I couldn’t hold back. “She’s amazing.” Daniel nodded. “She’s special. She deserves better.” I thought to myself, “I’m better.” I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

We went back inside, and Daniel went to the bar to do … something. Looked like he was organizing receipts. I sat down with Piper as Sophia came out of the restroom and asked where Daniel was. I nodded and she said, “Oh. Well, I’m going to go out for a smoke if you want to join me.” I told her I just had one and Piper declined. I was happy about that and yet I still had no idea what to say to her. I needed to relax and take her down off the pedestal. There was an uncomfortable silence for about fifteen seconds. Piper broke the ice. “How do you know Daniel?” I told her the story about the day I met Daniel, Anabel, and Nina in the fall, even about the melancholy I felt, the loneliness, and how those three angels were at exactly the right place at the perfect time. The story brought a smile to her face.

When I finished speaking, she leaned closer and quietly said, with seriousness and affection, “Daniel is special. He’s,” she looked over at him as he remained lost in his work, “I don’t know how to say it.” She looked back at me, and I looked at her with a depth I was surprised to find, perhaps because I was thinking about the impact Daniel had had on my life, too, and said, “He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met.” Then I looked her in the eye and said, “He’s like a celestial body pulling other special people into orbit around him. You’re one of them. It’s obvious.” Piper leaned back in her chair. She looked slightly uncomfortable, but smiled softly. I calmed a little and managed a relaxed smile. I raised my glass and said, “To good friends.” She raised her glass and said, “Yes, to good friends.”

Sophia came back inside just as Daniel was finishing up behind the bar. They met at the end of the bar and she pulled his head down to give him a lingering kiss. Sophia was the definition of passion. I understood why Daniel felt the way he did. Piper looked slightly uncomfortable still and I wondered if she didn’t carry a flame for Daniel. She said “Daniel is special” with such power it practically radiated from her. Yet, the comment did not seem romantic or sexual, more a recognition of his being, made from a quality or composition of qualities that defied description. “Special” was the only word that seemed to fit, and I agreed completely. The thing was, when I said his friends were amazing as well, I meant that without romance as well. Nina, Anabel, Piper, Suzette, Alexander, Andy, Tom, and the list went on and on, yet I had met but a fraction of the people the man knew.

Each person in his orbit was unique. I felt privileged to be among them. I was fortunate to have the type of job that allowed me to spend so much time with Daniel and the others I was meeting either through him or on my own. I was also grateful he worked in a place so easily accessible to me every day of the week. He usually took one day a week off, either Sunday or Monday, but otherwise, if Bloem was open, Daniel was usually there. He had a definite affinity for his work, and he had a passion to make Bloem into a place that reflected his vision.

As the afternoon grew late, Piper and Sophia left. I had been full of love from the morning with El and by the time they left Bloem I was overflowing. Isa had arrived to work, and other customers were arriving for after-work dinners and drinks. I went out to share a cigarette with Daniel before it got too busy. I told him I was going to get going, too. I tried to say something about Piper, that there was something about her, but I couldn’t finish. He could tell, though. He gave me a look. “Piper, huh?” He looked up, slightly lost in thought, and then he smiled, a smile to himself, as if amused. I went over to my bike and as I was unlocking it Daniel finished his cigarette. He walked to the side door, but before he grabbed the door handle he turned to me. He looked as if he was going to say something. Instead, he nodded and smiled before saying, “Piper?” He opened the door and walked back into Bloem, chuckling to himself.

Once I got home, I went to the window to look out on the street. I lived on the second floor, looking down at Kerkstraat near the Magere Brug. As I watched cyclists and pedestrians going up and down the street with the rain and wind picking up. I thought to myself about the day. That led to thoughts about how my life was unfolding. What seemed most obvious was that nothing had happened according to any coherent plan. There had never been a plan, at least nothing beyond a few days’ or weeks’ time.

There were constellations of context, but there was more dark matter than charted universe. Some things happened accidentally. I slipped on a banana peel and I was in a in Ellie’s arms. So much happened without my direction. I hadn’t ordered gravity, after all.

Yet, everything that happened to me was, in some way, the fault of gravity. How could it not be? What impact was gravity having on the rain and wind outside my window? The weather was frenzied and I had to ride my bike to a party in a matter of hours. I was going to be drenched. Sure, it could be said I was choosing to ride a bike. I could take a cab. I could stay home. But even those choices required so much more that was beyond my control to happen. Ultimately, I had resulted rather than arrived.

I thought briefly of Piper again, smiled, and sat back on the couch. Whatever micro-narratives I had been using to orient myself [refers to plot points in previous chapters) in the past week was just a spike in an ice cliff where I had attached my rope. I was going to have to drive a new ice screw into the cliff soon and hope it would support my weight.The pull of gravity. It seemed all of life was like this.

This was no more nor less true than the other stories. They all worked in some fashion, and they all failed in some other way. That was why they couldn’t be believed for long and, sometimes, not at all. I observed those who held onto beliefs long past their usefulness and the accompanying suffering was unbearable to watch. I had experienced it as well too many times in my own life. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I realized that it was dangerous to believe anything for too long, I always reattached to a belief and somehow forgot that, at its best, it had a short lifespan that only worked in a specific context.

I had a memory of my ex. We were lying in bed together, naked. I knew she was leaving me, I was aware of it, and she knew she was leaving me, too. And yet, we were engaged with one another, happy. There was joy and sorrow, but joy was winning. She handed me a pamphlet to read. I had thoughts related to how to respond.

She was amused by the writing. She didn’t say that outright, but I could tell. I had been giving the pamphlet the wrong sort of read. She wanted an honest critique, and I remembered that we occasionally did this sort of thing while lying naked in bed.

So, I told her my views, but views that were earnest yet playful while weaving complexity into and out of the argument. She was more aware than I and could understand, even anticipate, everything my blossoming ideas became. It brought us closer, and I felt myself expanding in awareness as a being through her and her lapping from me what was overflowing from my thought. It was a sort of intellectual sexuality that was drenched in a generous desire.

I had to make notes knowing I would forget while we made love, and—suddenly—I was writing on her, the letters following the contours of her lower abs, pelvic bone, and hip then around and across the top of her buttocks. I didn’t even realize I was writing on her at first. By the time I curved around her hip I could feel her purring.

Her skin was as I remembered it, like butter, smooth but milky, taut yet forgiving. The curves were shallow but supple. Her body, particularly through the waist, so perfectly fit my definition of “woman” that I had become convinced that no other woman needed to exist. To be allowed this sensory delicacy?

It wasn’t just the touch, either; there was her scent as well. Being with her in such ways, it was the first time in my life when I experienced oneness with another person. Previously, my interactions with others were as with objects, myself an incomplete being and the objects not the right size or shape to make me whole. With her, though, in those moments? Something about being aware of her awareness while so intimately connected physically broke down the barrier of self/other. It should have lasted forever.

Remembering this made me weep. On another night, I could have easily laughed. Even my reactions were random, beyond my control or understanding. Yet, I had the capacity to give the tears a powerful meaning, or I could make them less significant than a stubbed toe. There was nothing external to me that said it should be one way or the other. Nor was there anything internally suggesting that the tears should be this or that. They were and that was the only thing I was willing to acknowledge. It made it easier to take a shower and get ready for the party.

Once I was ready to go, complete with waterproof backpack filled with a change of clothes, I opened the window to check the damage outside. The wind was milder than it had been and the rain had dwindled to a light drizzle. I sat down to smoke a cigarette while mentally preparing myself for a long ride in the cold and rain.

I struggled to unlock my bike once outside. The rack was jammed with bicycles, some tangled together. It was always worse on nights of rain because fewer were out riding and the racks remained overfilled as a result. There were only so many racks on a given block and every person in every apartment and store had at least one bike parked outside. After five minutes, I finally extracted my bike from the jumble, cursing and angrily ripping it out onto the sidewalk. Even with the cold, I had started sweating. I was also soaked from head to toe by rain.

It took about fifteen minutes to ride to Vondelpark, but it seemed more like an hour. I was so wet I felt like I was carrying an extra twenty pounds. The rain had become a downpour while cycling on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat. There were no other cyclists out and the few pedestrians I saw were either sprinting for cover or huddling under awnings trying to stay as dry as possible. It was a lost cause.

The rain had dwindled to a drizzle through Vondelpark and by the time I reached Overtoom even the drizzle had dried up. The wind hadn’t been bad most of the ride, but it picked up when I departed the park. Even with my hat, scarf, and heavy coat, I was freezing. My boots were waterproof, but the tops of my socks were drenched and water had been dripping inside the boots. The only good news was that the cold, wet misery was spread fairly evenly through the entirety of my body; no one area complained more than the others. My suffering was a team effort.

I crossed at OT301 to Jan Pieter Heijestraat and ran the length of it into the wind until I turned to left on Kinkerstraat. The name of the street distracted me for a few minutes; traveling to Auriana’s on a street named for kink had to be a cosmic joke. The wind was less harsh, and the precipitation was still holding off which lifted my spirits further. My back wheel lost traction halfway across the Kinkerbrug, though, causing me to fishtail into traffic. A car swerved into the empty tram line while honking at me as I regained control of the bike. The adventures of rainy night cycling.

I crossed the bridge on Postjesweg without incident and two blocks later turned onto Marco Polostraat. The street was much longer than I had remembered even though I knew Auriana’s apartment was near the very end. After I crossed the busy Jan Evertsenstraat I cruised slowly the rest of the way, my adrenaline lowered now that the end was near and the wind had stopped. As I parked my bike and took off my gloves to lock it, my hands shivered. My fingers were shriveled from the dampness. I wanted to strip naked and curl up in a warm comforter. Partying was the last thing on my mind. Making it up the four flights of stairs was going to take the last of my energy.

I buzzed Auriana’s apartment at the outside door to the building. Eliene’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Ellie, it’s Michael.” Before I could say more the door buzzed open and I stepped inside. The hallway was warm, but it felt stifling. I took off my wet lid and put in my coat pocket. I was wet and cold while also feeling as if I was in a steamy swamp. The backpack and my coat made it that much worse. They were like free weights and I almost had to pick up my legs with my hands to get each foot to the next step.

By the time I reached the top of the stairs, I was ready to collapse. I knocked on the apartment door and waited until Auriana opened it. I tried to smile, but I could tell from her reaction that I looked like hell. She ushered me inside, grabbed my coat, and handed it to a concerned Eliene. Before I could get my bearings, Auriana was pulling my heavily soaked sweater over my head while walking me toward the bathroom. I hadn’t even noticed if anyone else was present. The only thing that registered was that the apartment was bright and warm.

Eliene followed us into the bathroom and soon they were both undressing me. I must have been in a state of shock because I didn’t do much to help. Eliene turned on the shower and, once the water was warm, Auriana guided me inside. With the shower pouring over my head and back, I mumbled “thank you” over and over. My blood started to circulate again and I felt myself coming back to life little by little. I turned around and let the water run down my face and chest. I felt goosebumps on my forearms as I crossed them over my chest. I hadn’t realized I was shivering until I stopped. My eyes came open and I wondered how long they had been closed.

When I turned around again, I bumped into Eliene. She was naked in the shower with me. “What are you doing, Ellie?” Her eyes were still filled with concern. “I worried you would fall over. You were white as a ghost.” That brought a smile to my face and I hugged her. She laughed and said, “I guess you’re feeling better.”

As my body continued warming I started to feel the slightest bit of dizziness. I worried for a moment that I might be getting a fever, but that thought disappeared when Ellie turned off the shower. “Woman, give a guy some warning!” She said nothing as she helped me out of the shower. Auriana was waiting with a huge fluffy pink towel. As she wrapped me in it, Eliene dried my head and neck then my legs and feet. They were pampering me. These women, I swore they had been sent from heaven. When Auriana opened the bathroom door and walked out, I said to Ellie, “I hope I haven’t ruined the party.” She shook her head, but said nothing as she continued drying me. I felt like crap for arriving in such a mess. I should have taken a taxi.

Auriana returned with a pink bathrobe, presumably hers as her frame wasn’t much smaller than mine. I dropped the towel to the floor. Auriana hesitated then turned me to slide the sleeves up my arms and the collar around my neck. Ellie folded the front of the robe over my torso and tied the belt loosely around my waist. They each grabbed a hand and led me into the living room. I felt as if I was being presented as a virgin to be sacrificed … except there was no one in the living room and, well, I wasn’t a virgin. Where was everyone?

They sat me on the couch placed against the windows. They had rearranged the furniture since I had last been in their apartment. They had cleared the middle of the living room floor of everything. No coffee table, nothing but a large fluffy white rug in the middle of the room on top of the hardwoods. The couch on the adjacent wall was the only other piece of furniture in the room. There were paintings on the walls on each side of the living room, both large, possibly four by five feet, each black and white abstracts. I couldn’t remember if they were the same that I had seen in the past.

Eliene had disappeared from the room and Auriana was sitting on my right, caressing my thigh through the fabric of the robe. She said nothing and neither did I. I was trying to figure out if I was getting a cold, but I couldn’t tell. I felt dazed, light-headed, and tired. When Ellie returned to the living room she had pink bunny slippers which she put on my feet. They were a little tight, but warm. She sat down on my left and curled up next to me. 

I looked to either side. They were both dressed as if there was going to be a party. Still, there was no one else in the apartment as far as I could see. I looked straight ahead at the dining room and other than the table, chairs, paintings on the wall, and a plant in the corner there was nothing. I could see part of the kitchen. Nothing. The light in the dining room was bright and two standing lamps on either side of the living room were lit. Around the windows were pink lights, the type people use to decorate for Christmas.

I was recovering just enough to be confused. As I turned to Auriana she looked away and invited Ellie to sit with us. I loved these women. They were angels. I blinked my eyes. I turned to Ellie and saw that she had a finger outstretched with a small white paper square on it. She raised her finger to my lips. I stuck out my tongue and she placed the square on it. I had received Holy Communion, the powder and tab of Christ.

“Where is everyone?” I looked at Ellie and she shrugged. Auriana took my chin to turn my face toward her. “What are talking about?” I said, “The party. You invited me to a party.” She nodded her head then rose from the couch and walked to the front door of the apartment. She opened it, looked back, and then walked out. I turned to Ellie. She shrugged again, but kissed my cheek then rested her head on my shoulder.

El tumbled over on the couch as I stood up. She yelped and I looked back. “What are you doing?” What was I doing? A good question. I didn’t have an answer. I stared at her alabaster elven face, her raven hair spilling over her eyes, her lips pinkish red. I couldn’t think of anything to say. She sat up and adjusted her fluorescent pink miniskirt and her voluminous bluish black shirt with its gaping neck that clung to her shoulders. “I don’t know what’s going on, Ellie.” She leaned forward and grabbed my wrists to pull me back down on the couch. “Sit. Relax.”

I couldn’t, though. I was too confused by the situation. Within an hour I would also be tripping something fierce. I wanted to think while I was still able. I knew I was going to have to just roll with it, not worry about what was going on. This may have been the party, just the three of us. Either way, these women had never steered me wrong. In fact, I only ever experienced warm pleasures while with them.

Ellie ran her hands up and down my chest and stomach, slightly opening the robe down to the belt that tied at the waist. I sat still, simply experiencing the sensation of her touch. I couldn’t tell what else was going on with me, though. I was smacking my lips a lot. Hyped up. My vision was strangely vibrant. I thought I smelled Ellie’s excitement, a wafting smell of sweetly pungent nectar. I heard it as much as I smelled it, which I thought seemed unlikely even though I couldn’t entirely deny the sensation. I turned to her to ask where Auriana was, but words wouldn’t come. Instead, I watched her nuzzle her cheek against the robe and slide it to the side of my chest.

My head rested against the couch and I looked up at the ceiling until I felt Ellie’s had squeeze the middle of my shaft. Hard. Tight. Enough to take my breath away and then cause me to inhale half the air in the room. I brought my head back down and looked at the top of her head. All I could see was her black hair against my shoulder and chest and her arm disappearing at the wrist at the fold of my robe just below the belt. She wasn’t stroking, she just squeezed hard then harder then let her hand go limp before squeezing tight again.

I faced straight ahead, my eyes scanning side to side, momentarily focusing on an object like a lamp or a dining chair. Otherwise, I just gasped and tried to control my breathing during an extreme sensory experience. Whenever I regained control of my consciousness, Ellie squeezed me so hard I moaned.

As I was panting, I saw a pair of legs covered in rainbow-colored stockings slowly descending the spiral staircase on the opposite side of the living room. I wasn’t sure they were real, but they kept coming, I was mesmerized. A black miniskirt appeared then a tight red shirt. There was no God, but there sure as hell were goddesses. Before the woman’s face came into view, though, the front door of the apartment opened and I turned to watch Auriana walking back inside. She looked toward the stairs and her eyes twinkled and a smile spread across her face. I looked toward the stairs again. My jaw dropped open: Sterre was standing there. Her hair was wild, purposefully so, dark black with red streaks throughout. Head to toe she was … oh my goddess.

I wasn’t entirely sure she was really there. I heard Auriana’s voice, “Ready for the party?” I kept staring, speechless, at Sterre. Ellie helped me stand and Auriana walked over to me. I kept looking at Sterre. Radiant. She bit her pinky and she tilted her hips. Auriana spoke again, “I’ll take that as a yes.” I lost sight of Sterre as I realized I was being walked to the front door by giggles.

“What the hell is happening?” My question was answered with free-form laughter. I stopped walking as we neared the door. “I’m wearing a pink bath robe and bunny slippers.” Auriana bent over laughing. I turned back to look at Sterre who was just a few feet from me now. Her face, up close, was dazzling. “Is that really you?” She put her hands on my cheeks, but didn’t say anything. She was smiling, shaking her head at me. Auriana straightened up and said, “Let’s go.” Auriana led me out of the apartment.

We walked across the hall to the other door on that floor. Auriana knocked then turned the knob and it opened. She led me inside. Ellie and Sterre followed. The apartment layout and interior design were radically different than Auriana and Ellie’s place. I thought that was strange. I couldn’t absorb it all. There were so many people doing so many things I couldn’t create any order. Eliene walked by me and grabbed Auriana’s arm as the two of them spoke to a tall blonde. The only reason her head didn’t hit the ceiling, as far as I could tell, was because the ceiling was over ten feet. She had to be seven feet tall. She had to be. The three of them were speaking in an alien language; it couldn’t have been Dutch. There “orens” and “nogles” and “yorts,” a feral Swedish, a Druid hollow in the throat, a dialect forgotten for centuries by everyone but these women. I wasn’t sure how Ellie could hear the conversation; the top of her head barely came up to the lower part of the giant’s breast.

Sterre came around to face me. Her face looked shimmery. I blurted out, “I want to kishhhhhh you.” The sound echoed, bounced around the room, and then smacked me right in the face. At that moment everything around me stilled. Sterre’s hazel eyes sparkled and swirled and I said, “I think I’m tripping.” Her mouth opened wide and loud bleats of fury or, perhaps, joy burst forth and knocked me off balance. A cacophony of sounds, strange sounds, disembodied voices rolling rhythmically before shifting into zips and zaps and bleeps.

Visually nothing made sense. Sterre’s face had drifted from me. Auriana had pulled her into the Druid vortex. I was left viewing meta-epistemic art. I didn’t even know what I meant by that, but it hadn’t come from the tiny mind that formed language. There was no room for propositional knowledge in this place. I wasn’t sure if any of the sounds or sights were symbols, but, if they were, nothing about them could be justified or tied to referents. A new methodology was being created and applied to replace traditional epistemology. The art was in the dance between sounds and sights.

Everything in the room was red or of a reddish tint and yet … I couldn’t place the color as red because … it didn’t seem like a color at all. More like a presence. Ominous and inviting without being contradictory. A large circular couch with an entrance way nearest me sat in the middle of the living room. It drew me to it and I fought through sounds of alien languages and electronic beeps and whizzes to get there. There were so many people standing in grouplets, possibly extras who had been invited to make it look like this was a scene. I wasn’t fooled at all. They were living art and they challenged the very notions of justified true belief. They were liars, all of them, and that was the point. Truth was shit. I appreciated their dishonesty and thanked them for getting in my way.

I finally managed to gain entry through the couch hole. There were several lounging cat-like beings snorting lines. I sat down next to a female creature with black leather pants. Her legs were excessively long, and they folded impossibly at the knee. She wore an armless leather vest of a color I couldn’t identify–and then I remembered colors had nothing to do with visibility. I wanted to think of the vest as green, but it wasn’t even close to what that word was supposed to represent. I accepted that it existed and sank deep into the couch. It was exceedingly comfortable and by lying at such a sharp angle I noticed I was still wearing a robe. It wanted to be light pink, but it had ceased being able to do so, what with colors being presences.

There was an orb in the middle of the table that was encircled by the couch. Fuchsia sparks and crackles emanated from it and danced around it. A raspberry lightning bolt zapped a gray-haired man in the shoulder as he snorted a fat white line from a silver tray. He didn’t even flinch, but he made sounds that caused me to think of a baby being born. As he sat up I saw a pile of white powder on the tray. Something about it registered somewhere deep and I whispered, “Whoa.”

The woman sitting next to me spoke vowels at decibels that were imperceptible. I asked her, in Dutch, what she had said. The same sounds came out, but at a higher volume. I answered, “Ja.” The woman sitting next to me looked at me intently, her eyebrows furrowed in what appeared to be anger, and she spoke fiercely, rapidly. Who had decided she had a speaking part in the play? The director was an idiot to let her have so many lines.

The woman continued with her gibberish, a halting harangue devoid of sense. Her tongue clicked and her throat grunted as she spoke. I deciphered enough to know she was not pleased with me. I spoke in Dutch again, asking her why she was so perturbed. What did she think of my bathrobe? Instead of a proper reply, she garbled nonsense, this time inquisitively. She seemed to exist somewhere between confused and amused. I was surprised by my newfound Dutch fluency, but certainly glad to have it. How much easier life would be now that I could understand everyone! Everyone except the red-haired woman sitting next to me, the woman without a decipherable language.

As I listened to the sounds throughout the room, I realized no one spoke Dutch. Nor English or any other human language. They may have been using African clicks or a mixture of primate sounds, possibly even articulations of marine mammals. When I looked at the woman again I noticed her hair was black with a reddish presence. Had I been wrong about the redness of her hair? Had I missed the black? Had she put on a wig or was she a shapeshifter, this long-legged cat woman?

And what happened to Sterre, Ellie, and Auriana? There seemed to be a plethora of beings who were not them and the gray-haired man inexplicably stood and left the couch circle without saying goodbye or even making eye contact. At first I thought he had been rude, but then I remembered he only had a bit part in the meta-tragedy. It was a small part, but he had played it well.

Who was watching everything unfold behind my eyes? Was it unfolding or happening? Unfolding? I looked again at the slice of cake on the tray. What a fucking pile. I was glad I was filming this with my eyes because I was sure I would want to watch this scene again. Who knew what I might discover about the way knowledge was made? A strong strange developed and as I shifted in my seat so did my perception.

I had upset the balance. I lost the ability to speak Dutch. Everyone and everything had been replaced by facsimiles. Did they think I wouldn’t notice? I turned to the cat woman, or whatever it was that was pretending to be her, and asked, in English, if she minded if I had lost the ability to speak Dutch. This new version of her had the ability to speak intelligibly, an obvious sign that she was not the original. “You not speak Dutch? Only English and nonsense?” What was she saying? “Nonsense? The woman who you used to be spoke nonsense, gibberish. I tolerated it. Even though you’re a copy of an original. I think you’re superior. That happens sometimes. Not often, but sometimes.” Her lips changed shapes and her cheeks pulled apart. Was that a grin? A smirk? A snark? Whatever it was it was followed by sensible language. “You are weird.”

Ah, now I understood. With the shift, she was now tripping and I was sober. I should have noticed it sooner. Looking for Ellie might would have been a good idea, but leaving the couch circle seemed foolish, possibly even dangerous. Even with a mind-bender like the copycat cat woman looking me up and down, I felt the circle was more manageable than the insanity that existed in the nether regions beyond. The philosophical art project had ceased and now the colors were just colors, the people just people, the objects just objects. The whole damn project had been a failure except for the couch circle. At least representations of the originals remained. Everything else outside had devolved back into a wary complacency with life-as-it-has-always-been. Who needed that shit? Not me.

The cat woman expelled a haughty hack from her throat. It became a question about why I was wearing a pink bathrobe and bunny slippers. I couldn’t remember why and I didn’t think it was important for her to know. Who was she working for? Maybe these replicas weren’t quite so benign. I tried to trip her up. “I’m not sure what your game is, but I’m wearing a gray flannel suit.” Her head tilted back and to the side so far that I thought her neck might break. She let out a powerful meow; she had a gift for making sounds. “You are American? How you find this party?”

At this, I chafed. “Who said I was American? Why would you insult me like that?” The cat woman shook her head, possibly to clear debris. “I found the party by being who I am. You’re not going to be able to figure that out in one night, I assure you.” The nerve! I was sure there were dead leaves in between her ears. She looked me in the eyes so intently, though, I worried I was becoming her. I didn’t want that. I liked who she had been much better, even if she hadn’t been able to speak intelligibly. She continued speaking. “What you on?” A game of questions. In one sense, anyway. I went for the surest bet and said, “Earth.” She asked, “What is ‘urth’?” Whoa. She wasn’t tripping at all. She was a fucking alien! I pretended to be dumb, like I wasn’t sure what “earth” was, either. “I have no idea.”

I paused for a second then asked, “What kind of being are you?” A look of surprise. I liked her face when she lit up like that. So positive, glowing, happy. Perhaps she wasn’t working for anyone nefarious; maybe she meant no harm. She became sly, though. “You will not know in one night.” The idea felt like slap in the face, not one of malice, but of transporting. “My tongue tastes like chocolate.” I looked at the reddish orb crackling gunfire in the middle of the table. Another player entered the circle. I wondered what had made her appear. I heard the cat woman’s voice in slow motion, but I couldn’t make out the words because the new guy’s pants were orange and I thought that was delightful.

I said to the newcomer, “Did you come here to escape the metaphysical danger of becoming an object? The couch circle seems to be the safest place to remain a being—or to become one.” He glanced at me then sat down to do a line. I turned back to the cat woman who was glaring at me. No, peering at me. She was facing me, and her eyes were fixed on mine. Beyond that I couldn’t discern a meaning. “Do you know who I am?” Was this a trick question? “No. A descendant of cats? An alien life form?” She looked up at the ceiling, said something in Dutch, and an exasperated “Oh my God” followed. She stood up, walked by me, and out of the circle. She had decided to become an object as far as I could tell.

I was at a loss for words. I looked at the guy with the orange pants. He was squeezing his nose and blinking his eyes. He had just done a couple lines. His eyes sparkled and became blue crystals, a kaleidoscope of blues and silvers. I was mesmerized and whispered absently, “Your eyes are magical.” That wasn’t what I wanted to say. “Hey, is that an art nouveau staircase?” The guy looked then turned back to me, “It could be. Are you an artist?” What did he mean by that? There were attempts at entrapment everywhere. “I’ve yet to be defined.” He acknowledged my statement by bending over for a boost.

The room was getting hot. All that red everywhere. The whole place was bathed in it. I opened the top of the pink robe and pulled it down past my shoulders. A woman who had apparently been sitting on the other side of the copycat garbled some words and snaggled her mouth. I didn’t know the specifics, but I knew the meaning. It was part of a flashback to the past when I was at a party and a woman gave me a judgmental look. The party had been hardcore, drug dealers and violence. I arrived with friends who didn’t belong, but I had freebased several foils of freeze so I zeroed in on that bitch and told her I would cut her head off if she kept looking at me like that. That pissed off a couple of tweekers, but someone at the party who recognized me cooled things off. What was she thinking? That I wouldn’t cut her throat? Just because she had made it twenty years without being murdered, she was going to have a free ride the rest of the way?

When was I going to be killed, though? That was a good question. I returned from the past to the party at hand and thought about my teenage years. It had seemed like it was only a matter of time, but then I stumbled into a private liberal arts college and discovered that thoughts of killing and being killed rarely surfaced for a segment of the population. I hadn’t lived in comfortable white Chicago suburbs, rural farm towns, or idyllic college towns like the students all around me had. I had been from the ganglands of the Mexican-American border. Death had seemed more likely than graduating from high school. It never ceased to be weird to me that adult life was so easy comparatively. Then again, I made a conscious effort to live in progressive cities. I didn’t understand the ways of the middle- and upper-middle classes, but they posed no threat. I liked that they never seemed to worry that someone might kill them, but sometimes it annoyed me that they thought they could just say or do whatever they wanted without fear of being knifed. Spoiled and entitled.

Where was I going with this? This was not the right direction at all, not in these environs. There were cat women, bunny slippers, and that woman who was still looking at me. At least now she was just confused. That much I could tell. Or maybe I just wanted to believe it. I saw the mound of blow again. This was Holland, no reason to think that a pile of scrabble would lead to anyone killing anyone. Remnants of the past had surfaced. I still wasn’t entirely used to being surrounded by drugs without serious dangers lurking. She was bent over to do a line. Her body convulsed as the sound of a jet firing up filled my ears. There were others now diving at the tray, like birds swarming fish mating near the surface of the sea. Several heads bent down over the fluff tray, one after the other, snoggering nose whistlers peeping and tweeting. It was unsightly and my body kept getting hotter and hotter. I felt like I was drenched in flop sweat. Who had turned up the heater?

Everything was red, devilishly so. Was that why it was so hot? Was I in hell? I didn’t believe in hell, but there I was, sitting in a ring of fire. Why should I be here? I stood up and reassembled my robe. I had to get out of the circle. The floor was wobbling, and I felt a strong urge to put my back against a wall. I didn’t need anyone sneaking up on me. There were already too many unsavory flavors developing in my mouth. If it kept going like that, others might ask questions I couldn’t answer. The nearest wall, that was my sanctuary.

I walked out of the couch ring, past a woman with long whiskers and Mickey Mouse ears, a person I used to know when I was pulling out of train stations feeling sick about leaving the cartoon confines of Disneyland. Everything between me and the wall was soft and enchanting. Smoke floated up to the ceiling, my steps creaking, bugs in my blood. I felt the wall close to me—all mine now—and I stopped to rub my hands all over the cool and snowy pinkness. Everything around me was rumbling, voices disconnected from themselves, crumbling the walls above me, the coolness of the plaster seeping under my skin, cooling me off, aching to find its way to my crotch.

With my back forming a cocoon in the wall, I looked out at the room, quite different now, thousands of people, red lights blinking and flashing, the Red Light District transported and condensed into a living room the size of a rugby pitch. I looked at the scrum on the back side of the ring of fire that had been posing as a couch circle, but the sound had been turned down. In the fire pit, another cat woman had bent down to open her trunk letting loose a tail wagging back and forth as she forced the floor beneath the table to rise as she sucked a blizzard into her nose. A fiend, that one. Skin red as a demon, nose bleeding stardust all over her lips and chin, the snow pile every bit as big as it was before, like a pyramid of sugar that replenished itself whenever anyone did a line.

From the safety of the wall, I saw the mastermind, the walrus who controlled the glow. He was a massive beast with a mustache that began at his outer lips and hung low to his shoulders-wide collar. His head was shaved, a red bowling ball with wrinkles and cracks. Star-shaped mirrored sunglasses sat above his cheeks. He wore an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and his Buddha belly had been lathered in oil. He had forearms the size of my thighs, so thick with fur that he could have shaved it and sold it to cancer patients needing wigs.

I watched him take a gold-plated square and cut the stack in half before dicing meticulously—mesmerizing! He then formed two lines, lines so fat that planes could have been rerouted from Schiphol to land on them. He took a personal straw from his shirt pocket and zipped both air strips out of sight in a matter of moments, held his nose for a second, then sat back against the couch and spread out his arms on either side of him, resting them on top of the cushions as a short-haired blonde settled her head in his lap to take his girth into her mouth.

The woman was going mad, but the the walrus barely moved. He rested his hand on her head and left it there. She was so tiny his mitt probably felt like wet bag of cement. I watched for what seemed like a day. How long could this go on? He clearly did so much blow he couldn’t blow, but that didn’t stop the blonde bunny from slamming her head into his lap. She was probably as loaded as he was; I wasn’t even sure she was aware that she was sucking him. She might have gnawed on a couch cushion if she hadn’t had his schlong down her throat. The walrus could have pulled her mouth off him and substituted a tube of cookie dough and she wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

A yellow and green zebra walking by distracted me. She had a tongue several inches long lapping about her face. I saw not a crumb of dirt anywhere on her. Not a hair misplaced, either. She wore a yellow plastic helmet made of hair that hugged her scalp. I felt all alone and wondered if she was dead. The zombie zebra spoke and, while I didn’t understand a thing she said, I noticed she was exactly the same height as I was. Her eyes were straight in front of mine. I was simultaneously amazed and freaked by this. As she continued speaking, I surmised she was giving me a summary of her views on the mood of the room. She said there was bad juju to be followed by despair and suicide. She detected not the slightest indication of a change imminent. “The mood will eat away at us until we succumb.” There was no hope, none at all. We would all either kill ourselves or be killed.

Everything she said made perfect sense. I had been thinking along the same lines earlier, but thought we might be safe here in Amsterdam. No such luck. Maybe she was my soul mate, though. She knew the only thing that could get us excited was killing. It seemed she had solved the self/other problem once and for all. “We are in prison. Only death makes us free. There is no escape. This has always been the way.” I agreed completely, but she seemed flustered and walked away. It was only then that I realized I had been the one speaking.

Surely I was here for a reason. I wasn’t sure what it was, though. I had been here for as long as I could remember. Even as a teenager I had been in this place. I had finally caught up to where I really was. It had only taken twenty years to arrive at the present. I didn’t know if that was a long time to wait or not; there was no one who seemed to know. I remembered the orange-pants man had called me an artist. No, he asked if I was an artist. What could that mean? I had a sense he had been trying to put me in a plastic bag, tie me up, and throw me in the trash. Artists don’t fare well. Better to lie in situations like that. I would tell the next person I met that I worked as an assistant manager at a Vodafone store. No one would expect anything creative or interesting that way.

Sterre! I had seen her! She was here! Or was she? Had that been a figment of my imagination? What was a figment, anyway? I could have seen her six months or a year ago. That couldn’t be right, though. I was just born a few minutes earlier, back when I thought I realized I had finally arrived. That was a stupid thing to think. Someone might have accused me of aristocracy. That could be dangerous, especially with bohemian zombies present. Scary. Fortunately, I had the wall behind me. Nothing too bad had happened since connecting to the wall. I had to stop thinking. Nothing worthwhile could be thought any more, anyway. Philosophy and literature had covered all the good stuff.

What had I been thinking about? Wait, I wasn’t supposed to think. Who came up with these rules? Screw it, I wasn’t meant to kowtow. I pulled myself away from the wall. I felt like I insulted the entire room, spit in the face of the bowling-ball walrus, eradicated destiny, and shit all over beauty. That wall had been Very Important! Now … it was naked, absent communion with me. My back, too, was no longer covered. I wasn’t safe anymore. What the hell, though. Life was not made for safety. Suicide and homicide were going to happen either way. Humiliation wasn’t as horrifying with a knife against the throat. I mumbled to myself, “Remember, at all times, your throat is about to be slit and all this will go away.” I looked around. Who was I talking to? Didn’t matter. I was looking for Sterre or at least a figment of her, if any existed.

The room was crowded. There were lobsters and beanstalks laughing together. I had never seen so many inanimate objects come to life before. I bumped into a man with a hamster face. His jaw kept jiggling and his eyes bugged out of his head. He started jabbering at me like he had just won the lottery. He was singing and, I discovered, looking either through me or past me. Was he wired? Tripping? Brain dead? I had no clue. I looked around, but there were no wheels for him to run in place. I figured a treadmill would do, but I didn’t see one of those, either. His voice kept rising until I had to cover my ears and sing, “La la la la la la la la” as loud as I could.

A commotion developed as the hamster man contorted his face into that of a viper. Or maybe he had been eaten by a snake. I stopped singing and pulled my ears away from my head. A familiar face appeared. Auriana! Sweet euphoria. I threw my arms around her neck and laughed joyfully into her bossom. I had the strongest desire to bury my head within her cleavage, but she pulled me up. She looked mildly alarmed. “Are you okay?” I looked at her and smiled, nodding my head. She giggled which made her breasts bounce. “Auri, your boobs are magnificent!” I had said the magic words: she seemed far less concerned after hearing this. “Can we go up the nouveau stairs?” She looked perplexed.

I turned to look across the room, but accidentally looked into the kitchen. It was surprisingly empty of the color red. Fascinating. Disturbing. Beings guzzling from wine bottles, forms of swine rooting through vegetables in bowls, high-strung long necks clucking in haughty tones. No, that space was wrong. It didn’t belong in this environment at all, but at least it housed the creatures who didn’t fit in the red world. I turned my head the other direction, saw what I wanted, and pointed. Auri whispered, “You want to go upstairs with me?” I nodded happily.

Auriana grabbed me by the hand and led me through the throngs of predators and prey, grabbing Sterre and the guy she was hanging all over to come with us. Sterre sang my name and directed me to the guy, saying his name was Mauricio. He was suave, dark-skinned, possibly Spanish or Moroccan, maybe just well-tanned. He was human and that was good enough for me, so I kissed him on the cheek. He smiled and put his arm around my waist and the four of us wandered by the pit of fire.

The walrus had his bowling ball face down in the silver tray again. The couches were filled and the pile looked significantly smaller; it had stopped regenerating, apparently. I briefly wondered, but then forgot all about it when I saw Ellie near a large window across the room making out with a red-haired pixie and I realized I knew her: Tess! I yelled out her name and she briefly looked up, but then Ellie brought her lips back to hers. Soon enough I was at the base of the staircase with Aurie, Sterre, and the hunky suave guy.

As we ascended, I thought of leaving the earth for good. It had been March, but the date escaped me. It didn’t matter. Days were days, nights were nights. The intervals between were dreams and even those moments dissolved to leave more of the past behind. Each step of the stair contained an entirely new shape and this further elucidated the idea that chaos is the closest thing to progression that exists. Mauricio and Sterre were behind me, one with a hand on my ass, which one I didn’t know or even care. In front of my eyes, on the other hand, was Auriana’s bulbous ass, an ass I wanted to bite, but settled for squeezing with my hands. “Your ass deserves songs sung to it, Auri. If I could sing I would serenade your ass, declare it a triumph of life over death, the only life worth living, the reason I haven’t yet thrown myself off a tall building. The only poets worth reading write sonnets longing for your ass.”

Auri’s ass, I decided, was why love still existed. There was no logical reason for love, so her ass was presented as a sensory alternative. Perhaps there was hope for us after all. As long as Auri kept her ass shaking, we could all believe in something. It seemed we had walked up several flights of stairs, maybe even to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I could have made it to the top of K2 if I’d had Auri’s ass to follow.

By the time we reached the top of the stairs the acid seriously took hold. Had all that had transpired been a warmup? There weren’t enough fucks in existence to express the overwhelming fuck of all fucks I experienced at the top of the stairs. Were they even stairs? Had we been walking in place this whole time? There was a terrible roar in the darkness and all around me was a breeze of lilacs, flowers waiting to be pollinated by bees, or more frighteningly, wasps. The swoops and screeches and dives brought me to my knees. “Where are we?”

Suddenly it was quiet. “What are you screaming about?” muttered Auri, her ass hovering somewhere far above me. There was no point mentioning what I had smelled or heard. All that mattered was that the one creature who could keep me safe from everything that existed was with me. Auri was a magical creature, my personal goddess of absolute safety in the hailstorm of life’s evil. I searched my brain for ways to endear myself to her, to let her know I would become her slave in exchange for her sexual protection. That was it, really; she exuded sexuality, and it was so powerful that nothing destructive could compete with her powers of creation. What a boon to be beneath her bosom. It was a tough call between her boobs and her booty. Fortunately, they were part of one glorious body and choosing wasn’t necessary. I could be enfolded in her cleavage or her ass, and I would be completely safe from wickedness either way. For whatever reason, she seemed to find me worthy of protection. I loved her all the more for it, though it made me wonder whether my love was just a bastardized form of selfishness.

I pushed this thought to the floor and drove it into the floorboards. I was ready to launch myself out a window to prove it wasn’t about me at all. It was her willingness to protect me that mattered rather than the protection itself. I was ready to die to prove it was her rather than me. Even as I convinced myself of these things I wondered what the fuck was happening to my mind.

It was quiet again. I was completely twisted. Darkness surrounded me. I had lost physical contact with every other being. Who had I been with? Who was with me now? Where was I? Was I? I felt whispers climb up my spine then a tongue slither in my ear. “For crissakes, man, that’s not an orifice for penetration! My mouth is over here!” I wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but if pressed on the matter I was sure I could come up with an explanation that would satisfy me. The slithering slid down my cheek and into my mouth. It was impossible to talk with that salamander swallowing my tongue. I considered biting it, but why kill an amphibian to save a tongue? Instead, I used my tongue to play with it and even try to wrestle it into submission. The bastard wouldn’t stay still, though. No matter how many knots I tied around the damn thing it managed to slip out of my grasp.

The salamander disappeared and I discovered I was lying on my back writhing like an earthworm. Maybe I was an earthworm. The ground felt too flat and hard, though; then again, maybe that was why I was writhing. Flesh clasped onto me, some parts of me, and I was pulled against gravity to an upright position by beings I could not see. They smelled extremely flowery, though, and I remembered I was supposed to be pollinating. Yes, that was the purpose of this foray. What else could it have been? Certainly not to continue living as an earthworm. Not that there was anything wrong with being a worm. It had been a fine thing to be.

Everything was warped. There was no going back. There was no back to go to. There never had been. If I had known this conceptually before, I understood it in my bones now. Those bones told me other things besides. This was no time to rest. I was standing and I would need to work with my muscles to stay that way. There could be no pollination without communication between muscle and bone. I had to ride this out wherever this hell took me. Was this hell? Damned if I knew. Pronoun, adjective, adverb, none of them made a bit of sense. Language and its parts of speech. Who made these rules? Why was I following them? To make sure I didn’t eat dirt? I had eaten dirt as a child, and it didn’t hurt me one bit. Good for the immune system. Words weakened everything. Auri, I needed to find Auri.

I adjusted to the darkness, perhaps by sonar. I sensed lips puffing out and open like a passionate flower. My chance to pollinate. I pressed my lips flush against the petals and realized I was falling as I did so. I landed on soft flesh and my tongue slithered into the depths of the flower petals, squirming together with an animated pistil. I was pushed up and over and roiling flesh rolled on top of my body. The pistil entered my mouth, apparently believing I was to be pollinated. Maybe I was; I had probably gotten the order of things wrong. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

A voice shattered the space around me. “I want my mouth on yours.” I didn’t recognize the voice. It wasn’t Auri’s. Whose was it? Who else was here in this darkened space? Where was I? I had been with … I couldn’t remember. Some guy named Mauricio. It wasn’t him, the body was too soft and the voice too mellifluous. “I want to eat you. You’d like it, I think.” Did I say that? I guessed from the giggle that wasn’t mine that I had. Who was this person?

“Oh, yeah!” What? I didn’t say that. Neither did she, if she was a she. There were other voices in the room, some I recognized, most I didn’t. How many people were here? How many weren’t people, but were here anyway? Now that my ears were open, I heard mostly groans and moans and yelps and hollers mixed with phrases like, “I want to fuck your face with my cock” and “Lick my asshole.” Every emotion and sentiment I could fathom existed in this room and every one of them was attached to an insatiable sexuality. There was anger, ecstasy, aggression, surrender, union, abandon, direction, hunger, exhaustion. At a certain point, they all melded together as a mass, indistinguishable, a floating cloud of wet, sticky passion that crackled like thunder and soaked us all. I was doused with hunger and gratification as lips meshed with my own and hands caressed and clenched everywhere, my body, hers, his, they were all one now and I couldn’t tell if I was sensing what she felt or if he was thinking what I thought.

“Your radish is feverish, boy.” That wasn’t me, but it could have been my radish. First there were flowers and now root vegetables. I sensed something like a feverish radish and something like me seemed to be connected to the red-hot radish. The precipitation was so fierce it was possible anything and everything could grow in moments. Anything seemed possible in this swampy darkness. I could hear it, feel it, taste it, and smell it, the rooting, but where was my root and was anyone rooting into me? There was no way of knowing. Do plants ask the soil what kind or who it is? I had my doubts. I may as well have been a tomato except that I seemed to be shaped like a carrot or more likely a pepper. I was too fiery to exist in cool soil. I was in a hothouse, growing fervently, the conditions perfectly steamy.

Whatever had existed of my bathrobe was long gone, but I had in my hands the belt and I wrapped it around the hips above mine. I pulled them in toward me then let my hands roam until felt ass cheeks. Finally, coherent differentiation. A woman had climbed on top of me. I didn’t know who it was, but it was definitely a woman. Those were a woman’s hips and, now that I was paying attention to touch, I felt breasts pressed against my chest in addition to her probing lips on mine. I wasn’t rooted in her, but I sure as hell was nestled between her legs and pressed against the dew of her peach.

Throughout the room, as heated as it was, was an undercurrent of playful abandon. I sensed that no one knew who anyone else was and that no one cared. Beneath the hunger, the carpet of wet soil, was a growing joy. Every sound indicated a varied state of exhilaration. This was Bacchanalia, a gathering of gods and goddesses in otherworldly states of unrepentant disrepair. I felt the spring moon hidden but attached by a kite-string to subterranean ruby whiskers. Moods were masquerading as intersecting nodes of grooves whose frequencies varied in ways my instincts couldn’t decipher.

The word “orgy” failed to describe the pervasive rippling that roiled the room—if it was a room. We, whoever we were, could have been underneath a hectare of bloodlust growing the fangs of a long-dormant vampire about to wake and feed on a world that eschewed latent magic to invest in scientific explanations of life and death. The quantum may have been nothing more than vibrations from a cosmic erection about to penetrate the vagina of the Milky Way to create a sixth dimension. The Big Bang was probably nothing more than the ejaculation of Dionysus and the planet earth a fertilized egg destined to become the celestial birth of a star.

Star. Sterre. Her name, in English, was Star. And she was all over me, bringing me back to sanity. Her hair was shrouding my face and she whispered into my eyes, “I’m with you now.”