Monday, April 23, 2007

The Smirk

"In approximately forty-eight hours I shall try to fit forty to fifty people in my apartment". The heathen settles back in his chair, with an air of satisfaction, whiskey in one hand and cigarette in the other.

"That's nothing new. You have parties all the time don't you?" I respond indifferently.

"Yes, but all my current and ex-lovers are going to be there." He takes an abrupt puff at his cigarette and exhales with his head tilted slightly upwards. His arrogance betrays him in this gesture.

"And what's the logic of this suicide?" I ask, wondering if I should feign surprise, but I'm too accustomed to his ways. It pleases him to shock people, so I comply by adding, "You're mad".

The heathen laughs in glee and takes another drag of his cigarette. It always pleases me to see the eyes of the other scintillate. "Logic?" He says. " Pleasure has no logic. I'm curious to see what happens."

I contemplate this. I know he delights in a spectacle, and images of vaudevillian horror enter my mind. Forty bodies crammed in a tiny apartment, sweating and breathing in each others odors. A conglomerate of people getting high on each other in their gas chamber of hellish ecstasy...

"It'll be civilized," he smirks, glancing at me as he stubs out his cigarette.

"I didn't know you had forty to fifty lovers".

He gives a short laugh. "No of course not. Some of them are potentials. Some of my guy friends are coming too..."

"Fifty lovers in one room..." he adds, seeming to ponder. He breaks his own reverie with his customary abruptness: "Sometimes I can't tell between heaven and hell". He takes a last swig of his whiskey, looks down at his empty glass and for a moment appears morose. But then the smirk rehabilitates itself, effacing all traces of vulnerability. His visage assumes once more, an impenetrable smugness.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"We are being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell.
The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves."

Can't remember who wrote these lines though.