May 16th, 2002

They were barely in the door. They had just made it inside the entryway, before her mini was slid up around her waist, making a shiny black sequined belt. She turns her head, the makeup on her cheek leaving a sweaty fawny tan mark on the smooth pale yellow paint. Her skin turns red, an irritated trail where the sequins on the mini have scratched her as it is being twisted around and up.

A heel hits the ceramic tile floor.

A bump and she is lifted up, and two hands are imprinting her ass supporting her, as another part makes a deeper impression.

Her back arches away from the wall, but her head digs into the plaster. Her hair rubs against the paint, back and forth against the paint—then up and down.

A steel boot tip hits the wall.

The back of her head hits the plaster hard and she grins a feral cat hunting, and leans forward into the man.

And this is just the entryway. There’s a whole house yet to go.

In the bathroom a man is leaning against the sink, the cold porcelain sink lip biting into his ass, but he doesn’t feel it. All he can feel are the bumps in the entryway, and the aborted sighs in the hall. He peels the label of a prescription bottle with his thumb, and smoothes it back down. The heart-imprinted pills are almost gone. It’s time for Daniel to get more Valium. The man makes a mental note and sighs when he hears the word Jesus shouted in the hall.

Somehow, beyond any known physical means, Daniel and the woman have made it to the bedroom still dancing. He has slid her along the hall walls—they’ve knocked down all the pictures. A drywall nail that had held up that resin cast of the Madonna cut the nape of her neck as they were humping past, and a tiny red line, an up and down cardiac rhythm heartbeat on a hospital machine is drawn on that hall wall. And thus the pulse of fucking has been determined. The flat line has yet to come, but there’s still that man in the bathroom to contend with.

The near empty Valium prescription bottle is put back in the cabinet. And when the man pushes the male end of the mirror back into the catch, there’s that click, and an amber glow of the medicine bottle in his eyes, and he sees himself surrounded by that amber glow. Somewhere deep this pleases him. It’s a screwed up chain of thought, his lover and that woman are out there fucking in their bed, and all he can think about are the tiny heart imprinted pills. The valium is the shape of love—and it’s his lover, that dope and numbness to the world, the sweet abandon in his body, and he will take that body tonight, and the entire world will glow amber.

Screwing high can either mean screwing fast, hard, and final; or fast, hard, and incomplete. But Daniel is acing this test tonight. The woman beneath him, squeezing his sides with her gymnastic legs is brown and tender, her long black hair frizzy from the stroking of the plaster, and that hair is attacking the red Egyptian cotton sheets like razor wire in a rubber dress. The woman finally convinces the buttons on Daniel’s tight black cotton shirt to give up the ghost and release the Holy Spirit in flesh and sweat, and two nipples rings.