

### Age of Reason

### A Young Man's Journey Out of the 80s

Copyright 2015 Brook Milotay

Published by Brook Milotay at Smashwords

ISBN-13: 978-1508450573

ISBN-10: 1508450579

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Preface

In The Beginning

The End

Me

School

The Look

Prestige

The Real World

Dave

Farewell to Friends

Epitaph

Quest for Speed

Love

Love and a Personal Death

Accident

Beautiful Women

Man of Leisure

My Venus

Reality Is A Strange Bedfellow

Driving

Third World War

Virgins

Father & Son

Trust Funds

Shopping - The Demon Game

Sex

Argh, What Have We Here

Starting Over

Lost & Found

Damned and Cursed

Three in the Morning

Tossing Off

Father & Son - The Sequel

The Road to Hell

Marriage & Friendship

Susan

Vamp Fucking

Settling Down

The End, Again
Preface

I wrote this series of essays in the 6 months either side of my 21st birthday trying to capture where I was in my life. There are nuggets of truth in all of them, but there is also some extreme hyperbole. Now 23 years later I have decided to publish it, as my life has gone in very different directions from where I was at that point, and I feel that it is important to honour the dreams and wishes that I had back then, and to give the confused and sad young man who wrote it a hug and the assurances that life would get better.

I now look back at that young man searching and exploring a world that made little sense to him, while he tried to figure out who he was, what he wanted and how he was going to move forward in the world. He was had few skills to live in the workaday world, but knew how many tynes a fish fork has and enjoyed reading Kafka in German. He could walk down a catwalk with the appropriate flare, but struggled to pay bills or understand the basics of day-to-day finances. As a father now, I feel warmth and love for that young man, as well as a deep sorrow. He hid behind a raft of insecurities and grabbed pleasures from anywhere he could in order to try and lessen the pain. In fact much of his purpose in life was to live in an ongoing state of pleasure, because then he could lose himself.

This is not the best written book, as I have decided to keep it true to how it was originally written, but it gives a very honest window onto my life, dreams, and feelings at that point in time.

In The Beginning

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with single step

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Cocaine - Women - Nights spent in clubs - Parties that lasted for days. It all seems blurry now. Like a dream that has passed leaving vaguely recognizable traces in the sieve of my subconscious. In a split second my life has been changed. It has been handed back to me after a motorcycle accident that should have ended everything. I've been re-evaluating my life and what I am doing with it as I've lived it recklessly, never giving much thought to my actions. Pleasure is the ultimate goal of all my actions. Sex being the usual source of it.

When I look around I see a weird and twisted world we're living in. Some will say that it is no more weird and twisted than any other time, but when I look back across my short life so far, it feels weird and twisted to me. By being immersed in the strange miasma of our world, we become obsessed with all that goes on within it.

I am not blind to the decadence of other times. The Roman's partied as hard as any of us in their prime. Their party ended with the fall of their empire. Dawn greeted them one morning and their societal structure had rotted through and they were tumbling down. The greatest empire was vaporized by people. People like those who now leave clubs as dawn breaks to scuttle off home or to work. We have to wake up and smell the coffee. That is if we can after Roto-Rootering our sinuses out with Peruvian Pink. Each snort grinding away at the sinus tissues like sand in a desert storm.

The world won't end if we continue the way we are. It hasn't as each group of people have reached the point that we are at. We have big toys now. Nuclear weapons, cocaine, AIDS, and apathy. Each era has their toys that are able to destroy at an equal level. But it is also unreasonable to believe that it will remain the same. Change is inevitable. The world is far from being a vacuum.

I've spent too many nights drinking, dancing and seducing. Viewing this as living life to the limit. I've greeted morning coming out of an all-night dance club. Wired, my mind struggling for a reason, any reason. To what? To why I continue abuse myself? Searching for sex and comfort with any woman who'll sleep with me.

Drugs. The only ones that have done anything for me are the ones that would amplify the situation. Heighten my senses. When the situation got too big I'd carve the edge off with some booze. I hated the feeling of alcohol so I'd start pumping things up again with coke, caffeine, or homebrewed crank. I could never handle the downward spiral. It scared me, making me feel far more out of control than the manic high I achieved from coke.

It is time to look back at where it all began. When I was fourteen I discovered Brett Easton Ellis's book Less Than Zero. It embodied all the things that I assumed made up the good life. Drugs, money, casual sex, and loads of teenage angst. Being from the same class as the characters I assumed that this was the way to live. It was this way of life that my friends and I modelled our lives around.

I was unsure of who I was. That's why I and I believe my friends modelled our lives on Less Than Zero. We lacked any real role models in our own lives. Our fathers were all pretty much absent from our lives. They were off building green paper castles for us to hide in. I had some ideas from my father as to how to be a man, but there were still some large gaps. The image I developed of how a male of my class should act was very wrong. This is one spot where my life went awry. There were these huge spaces in my life. I developed whacked out concepts of pleasure, women, and life in general. So I am now re-evaluating things and sorting my life out. Sit back and listen to the ravings of a twenty-one year old man.
The End

A good beginning makes a good ending- Anonymous

The eighties are now officially dead. Chronologically they've been over for two years but they still live on in those of us who spent almost half of our lives in them. The nineties are now hobbling the fast tracking teens of the eighties. The Yuppie dream has fallen upon us as an unattainable nightmare. Recession has castrated our spending power, which was already reeling from out of control taxation.

Even without a great war dragging young lives away, a number of my friends are gone. My best friend is currently spending six months in prison after getting caught with a small quantity of coke while flying into Heathrow from Amsterdam, and too many of them are simply dead.

I am sitting here with a broken knee, ribs, and the tail end of a concussion. I've lost the feeling of invincibility that allows one to ride a motorcycle. The power of being young and knowing that nothing can stop you. It ended in a meter and a half at 50 km/h.

Our halcyon days are passed. We lived well under the auspice of conspicuous consumption. We partied from Friday 4 pm. until Monday 8 am. Tripping from club to party in a high speed blur of pain and pleasure, forming a wicked ecstasy. We pursued every extreme. Who could drink the most. Fuck the most. Snort the most. Spend the most. There were no limits. Life was like Le Mans; million dollar machines going around and around the track in a vicious test of endurance. The end was never visible to us on that _Möbius strip_ we called life.

My life has changed since those days and I feel that now is the time to examine these changes. The world is moving at an increased rate and so is my life. The last year has held many changes. The purpose behind my writing this is to examine the changes that have gone on within my own life and the world.

Me

I am currently trying to set up my life so that I don't have to be present - Anonymous

Who am I? No, this isn't one of those Philosophy 101 questions. I've been nattering away for the last couple of chapters and rudely haven't introduced myself yet. My name is Sebastian Istvan Balint, Son of Istvan Gabor Balint. Heir to the no longer existent dukedom of Nyiregyhaza in Northeastern Hungary. While we haven't been aristocracy for a while, I was raised with the remnants of mores that matter little in the world I live in. I am descended from Vlad the Impaler on my paternal grandmother's side. Since we're identified by our names I feel that I should explain mine. Istvan shows my tie to my father. Brook is my godfather, an ex-member of the British MI5 who is one of my male role models.

The Soviets destroyed what my family had in Hungary forcing them to flee across Europe to Britain. My father has worked hard creating his own small empire here in Canada. I have reaped the rewards of his success and used them to further my own.

To focus on the physical, which our world so very much does, I am six foot one and one hundred and sixty-seven pounds. My blond hair, blue eyes, light olive skin and classic good looks have helped me charm my way through everyday life as well as my minor pursuits in modelling. I run my own antique watch business and I've just finished my degree in psychology at the University of Victoria. I've owned eight cars and since leaving home four years ago have lived in ten different apartments.

My attitude on life is for everything to be the best. For how can anyone be happy with less, especially knowing it is so. Add to this an IQ that puts me in the top 2% of the population, a voracious appetite for learning, a warped sense of humour, love of the past, interest in the future, intense sexual hunger and you have a brief summary of me.

School

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.- Plato, The Republic

My warping of priorities and missteps in life began with my going to an exclusive high school in the nation's capital. Rather than molding us into responsible citizens, we had our egos stroked and inflated. This was then coupled with too few limits in our lives. Our parents provided us with the fuel. Unlimited supplies of liquid capital and the freedom to pursue our lives as we chose, for they wanted us to have everything.

We believed that we were the best. Every day at school it was pounded into us. The comments made about our rival schools and proclamations of their defeat on the morning announcements. Our teachers informed us of the fact that universities would scale up our grades from ten to fifteen percent because we were that much harder than other schools. Our views of ourselves and our place in the world became very warped.

The first day of grade nine at Lisgar we were all ushered into the auditorium for the Big Talk. At this point all was laid out for us. The history of the school. How it was the one of the oldest and most illustrious schools in Canada. That an obscene number of our grads each year were Ontario Scholars. Our alumni reading like a who's who list in the worlds of politics, science, and entertainment. The last group was de-emphasized for amongst those were such legends as Lorne Greene and Rich Little.

We were an exclusive group. While the hothouse flowers got sent to Ashbury, we were the ones destined to be the true movers and shakers. The richest and brightest in Ottawa. Each morning the limousines, Mercedes, Volvos and Porsches (BMWs were viewed as being too nouveau) poured into the turning circle before the school. Our parents were ambassadors, upper level mandarins, high power lawyers, corporate moguls, and all the others that play in the financial stratosphere.

Lisgar was an unusual school. A microcosm of a world removed from reality. We roamed within its marble walls with the belief that the world was ours to take what we wanted from it. This was good because it gave us an edge over those who were unsure of the world. The world that we knew, had nothing to do with what was really out there. This didn't matter because many of us would progress on in life along a path created by our parents' success.

There was some politicking that went on in order to protect some of the elite from failure. I was friends with the Colombian Ambassador's son. We sat next to each other in algebra. He used to actively work at failing tests. He would work his way through a question and then intentionally put the wrong answer down. When we would get our tests back he would have been given bonus marks for all sorts of things. No one else would have been given marks for the same things. He consistently scored 75% in all his classes. Not a great grade but sufficient with the right influence to ooze along the gold path of life.
The Look

If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life. - Fashion Consultant Robert Pante

Being a hybrid of private and public school there was no official dress code, but one existed and was enforced more strictly than at any private school. In my first weeks of grade nine I made the mistake of wearing the wrong clothes. I was walking along to class when a grade ten slammed me into the lockers. "You should know better than to wear a fox shirt." He sneered with the contempt of one who had been punished for the same crime the year before. The shirt looked like any of the other polo style shirts but in place of the Ralph Lauren polo player was a fox.

My mother quickly remedied the situation with a shopping trip that equipped me with all the fashionably correct clothes. All the way down to Polo socks. Each year the local paper would do a profile on "What the Lisgar Student is Wearing". A girl I knew was asked if Lisgarites weren't slaves to fashion? She responded with "Slaves to fashion. Hah, we've liberated it!"

Looks were everything to us. One wouldn't think of going to school with a hair out of place. Like clockwork I had my hair cut every three weeks. There were quite a few times when I'd skip homeroom and first class so that I could get my hair cut before facing my school mates.

Tans were nursed from the first weak rays of spring sunshine. I'll always remember my friend Tim's obsession with getting a tan. He turned to me in Law class and said "It's time!"

I had no idea what he meant. I just stared at him and quizzically responded "What?"

"It's eight degrees out and 10:00am. The start of Peak Tanning Hours." he drawled sarcastically back to me. I smiled and we skipped our next class. We got changed into shorts and tennis shirts and headed out on a quest for tanning lotion.

Tim had spent the last half of the winter trying to get a tan. He'd had a relapse of malaria that stopped him from accompanying his family to the Cayman Islands for Christmas. In order to get that tropical bronzing he rented a tanning bed. I saw him the day after he'd got it. He kept asking me if I noticed anything different about him. After repeatedly denying that I noticed any difference, I said "Well, you look little jaundiced, but I figured it was from your relapse.". He was so put off by this comment that he returned the machine that day.

Our lives were centered around maintaining the Look. It is embodied in all those Ralph Lauren advertisements. Perfect tan, perfect hair, dressed to the moment, everything set so that if you were required for a modeling shoot there would be no need to prepare. And like a modeling shoot, it is just as staged and artificial.
Prestige

Half of the harm that is done in the world is due to people who want to feel important.

\- T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

School was not about education to us. It was what brought us together and provided a base for our prestige. The social structure within was an intricate web based upon pointless minutiae. So many things decided the clique that you existed within. Parents' jobs, where you lived, country club, where you vacation, value of your wardrobe, and allowance were just some of the determiners. All the important things in life. We lived the eighties dream of having it all. There was no fear of it ending. We were the Masters of the Universe. The world was laid out at our feet and ready for us to sweep in and glean it for our own use.

The reality of this prestige was that it was based not upon what you'd achieved for yourself but on your parent's accomplishments. This set many of us up for a great fall upon entering the real world.
The Real World

It is a cold hard world out there. So remember: Walk fast and always carry a duck. Preferably a mallard. \- M.S.B.M. June 1991

After four or five years when we'd finished high school and were moving off to the real world, many of our parents realized that unlike them we were completely incapable of existing out there in the real world. For the first time in our lives we were expected to take responsibility for our actions.

The purse strings snapped shut and we had to find ways to pay our way in this world. In retrospect they made this transition far easier than it could have been. Every time I ran out of money because I figured I should be able to eat out every night or buy a new wardrobe to keep up with the changes in GQ, or some other aspect of my life that had once been a norm, my father would bail me out. Just as the wolves were splintering through the door. Each time he let me get a little more desperate, but I learned. For the longest time it made no sense to me that as long as I was working that he was willing to help me out. I thought that he was the biggest hypocrite. Here he was telling me that it was for my own good. Right it is good for me to suffer while he traipses around the world, drives a ninety thousand dollar sports car, and lives in a luxury apartment at a prestigious address. In reality I wasn't suffering. I was living below my previous level but still far above many of my fellow university students.

It wasn't until I started to see ads all over campus of students advertising everything from their cars to clothes and toasters because they needed money. Sell my bomber jacket because I need money for food and rent. How could I, it was a present from my mother. I started to realize how many students didn't consider this a factor. Not because of a lack of sentimentality but out of sheer desperation. My father, luckily for me always stepped in and saved the day way before my mind had a chance to entertain such thoughts.

My best friend's father continued footing the bill after he left high school and decided to go off and bum around Europe. Two and a half years later it ended far from how he'd planned it.

Dave

The best-laid scemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft a-gley - Robert Burns, To a Mouse

Dave and I headed up our clique. I acted as the leader/father figure for the group and he provided us with his family's guest house (which he'd lived alone in since he was 12) as home base on our weekend sprawls. I was serious at times when it came to making plans or helping with problems, while Dave was the eternal party boy always ready with a beer and a joke.

His life was set out for him by his father. He'd go off and play around Europe for a year or so, sow his wild oats, come home, study business and then be groomed to take the helm of his father's corporation.

Unfortunately Dave got selected out to have his luggage searched coming through customs, flying into Heathrow from Amsterdam. Dave had fallen in love with Amsterdam. It was one constant party and he ended up spending eight months there. Finally tiring even of there, he decided to visit a friend of ours who was studying at the London School of Economics.

***

"What's the purpose of your trip?" The customs agent quips with a carefully practiced accusatory tone tempered by his lower middle class London accent.

"Just bumming around." Dave replies with the casualness of one who's been asked this a hundred times.

"I see!" The agent returns

The agent looks at the Louis Vuitton luggage and orders it taken into one of the interrogation rooms. Two agents proceed to search the bags. They check the pockets in each piece of clothing, carefully inspecting every piece of Dave's toiletries, then they flip open a book in his carry on finding a small envelope marking a page.

They open the envelope and find it filled with a quantity of white powder.

"Oi! What have we here?" Accusingly asks one of the agents.

Dave racks his brain trying to remember how he could have forgotten about the flap. Hell, he didn't even remember where it came from. All that he can think about is that he was using the envelope as a bookmark.

An older customs agent enters with a test tube stand with a couple of tubes in it. He takes a small quantity of the powder and stirs it into one of the tubes and the creamy liquid slowly turns a medium light blue.

"Shit!" Dave thinks to himself, "It's not even good quality."

The older agent says "If you could just wait here Sir."

Dave thinks "As if I have a choice, they probably want me to make a run for it so they can gun me down."

The walls of the room start to close in, spiraling towards him. He breathes in trying to clear his head but the reality of the situation hits him. Locking him numbly in the chair. He tries to rationalize his thoughts, but they keep flashing to scenes from movies where people get locked away in the bowels of prisons and forgotten about except by one sadistic guard who takes pleasure in the daily humiliation of the prisoner.

The agent goes over to a phone on the wall and starts mumbling into it.

* * *

A police officer enters the room, cuffs Dave and leads him out a back passage to a car outside. "At least they're being civilized about this." Dave muses to himself "They could be dragging me through the airport, beating me on my kidneys and kicking me across the floor."

He was extradited back to Canada for sentencing. His father brought in a well-connected lawyer (also a Lisgar Old Boy) and Dave got off with six months in a minimum security prison.

It has now come out that Dave's father had the lawyer make sure that he'd have to serve a little bit of time because even after two years he was far from having sown his wild oats. His Father decided that it was time for tough love. Dave is in rehab and with the progress he's making he should be out in another month, two months ahead of schedule. Others weren't quite so lucky.
Farewell to Friends

Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. - Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ii

In looking back at my life so far, I have to acknowledge just how good my life has been. While there have been times that were difficult for me, there are many others who have had a much harder time of things. I'd like to pay last respects to those who are no longer with us.

Coke not only interrupted Dave's life, three of my friends have been killed in one way or another by it.

Joel was the first to go. He was two grades ahead of us so not in our clique but in an equivalent one. He used to deal coke. Not for the cash but for the risk. He drove around in a tricked out, white Mazda RX-7. The vanity license plate with reading "Neige". It inferred an interest in snow, but Joel wasn't much of a skier.

It was a Sunday night in January. He was driving home from Montreal. We all knew that he'd gone to make a pick up. Coming over an overpass he hit some black ice. His car slammed into the packed snow embankment, shot up, overtop the rails, rolled over in the air and landed on the roof. He was killed on impact. They found a quarter key of Bolivian Marching Powder stashed under his school books in his pack in the trunk.

Sue was the next to go. She was an ex-girlfriend of mine who I'd parted with on good terms. We were still close but she couldn't handle my mass interest in women. They found her in her car outside a nightclub in Hull. Some sick bastard had cut her coke with ground glass. It tore through her nasal passages causing her to drown in her own blood.

Chris was the last. He was one of the gang. One of those guys that reminds you of the runt of a litter. He was small and the girls would always fuss over him. His only flaw was that he took things to the limit, always trying too hard but not quite getting it. It was this underdog charm that endeared him to us.

He took a greater affection to coke than any of us. It seemed that whenever you saw him he was sniffling as though he had a head cold. He used his interest in chemistry to start testing the purity of coke. He used to make a fair bit at parties working as a quality consultant. He became obsessed with finding the purest coke possible.

It seemed that he eventually found it. One morning the maid found him lying on his bedroom floor. There were an assortment of beakers and test tubes on his desk. On the ground next to it was a mirror and a dusting of white powder covered the carpet. Cause of Death: Heart Failure.
Epitaph

Whom the gods love dies young. - Menander, The Double Deceiver

Ciao to friends I'll never see again. I shed a tear for your passing on to whatever lies beyond. The world can be a beautiful place, though it too suffers your death, as do we all. In a sense you died by your own choice, but if we truly knew the consequences and realized our own mortality would any of us have lived the way we did? Would we still continue to party on, abusing our bodies and selling our souls to a spirit crushing pleasure? Better living through better chemistry or a new hell. It all depends on how you look at it.

Here's to you guys. I miss you all. They say the good die young. We're supposed to be soothed by this thought. The truth of the matter is that we all lived fast. Some of us were lucky. Others burned out before the going got good. We all knew the risks.

No, actually we didn't. We all existed under the belief that we were invincible because we were the best, the chosen few. That nothing could happen to us because we'd always be caught by the safety net of our parent's affluence and influence.

Unfortunately, like the jackrabbit that gets addicted to running out in front of cars, there's always the chance that the son of a bitch behind the wheel will step on the gas.

Well, here is my farewell to you. I will remember each of you for the times we were together. I'll remember practicing rugby with Joel. I'll also remember all those free grams that I received from him.

Joel hated to get wired on his own so I'd accept his offer, to join in on the uphill bobsled run. You get to the top and then slide to the bottom. You then pack your sinuses with more snow and race up again. This sharing formed a bond between us. Getting wired is a somewhat sexual experience. There's that feeling that you get as you prep it based on the expectation of what is to come. Then there's that feeling of the coke coating your sinuses. Then the rush. It floods over you and carries you to the top of the world. This feeling helps form a bond with the provider of its source. A twisted relationship but a powerful one all the same.

I'll remember Sue the way she looked at me that night when I led her out of the Bijou (a bar patronized by those under age students who appreciated its proximity to the bridge from Ottawa) to my Dad's Porsche 944 Turbo S that he'd sort of lent me.

She asked me if the car was mine. I smiled and said that in a sense it was.

"Daddy's car." She quipped.

I smile and ask her if it makes any difference? She gives me this odd look that she later gave me in those warm loving moments, smiles and says no. It was an incredible night. We drove out to the end of the runways, cracked open the roof, reclined the seats and watched the planes take off. Dreaming that we were on our way to some far off imaginary land where we'd never get old and never be out of style.

Her parents thought she was staying at a friend's house when in fact she was calling them from my bathtub. Monday morning brought our weekend to an end. We drove to school together. Rather than returning home she had clothed herself entirely from my wardrobe. She came with me after school when I picked my Dad up at the airport and assured him that I'd only driven the car home from dropping him off and then to pick him up.

I'll remember Chris for all those times we got thrown out of chemistry class for being too creative, having our experiment catch fire, blow up, smell really bad, or any of the aforementioned combined. The two of us were an explosive combination, like acid and water. We were willing to try anything with any chemicals, too many times using ourselves as guinea pigs.

We once tried distilling the psychoactive elements out of nutmeg and Morning Glory seeds. It was a bizarre weekend that followed that experiment. I am still not sure of what the real reactions were or what was created by our joint imaginations. Whatever it was created a bond between us that in my dreams keeps us together.

Quest for Speed

There is more to life than increasing its speed - Mahatma Gandhi

Our interest in speed started out quite innocently in grade nine when we'd go down to the drugstore and buy caffeine pills. We quickly worked our way up from the flats of twelve to the bottles of one hundred. We then discovered that just over the border forty minutes to the south we could buy amphetamines in the form of diet pills. We would head down Friday after school and pick up four or five boxes each. This was always more than enough to get us through the weekend and into the next.

This made us feel more invincible because we could party non-stop. Sleep-what the hell is that? Coke held a dual attraction. On top of its enervating properties was the glamour and prestige of it. This along with its addictive properties made it a permanent fixture in our crowd all through grade eleven. I moved away at the end of grade eleven which is probably what saved me from joining Joel, Sue, and Chris.

Despite being on the other side of the country I remained part of the Ottawa scene. Almost every Friday night as I was getting ready to head out to party my phone would ring and I'd get to join a party in Ottawa. I returned at Christmas for a week and a half and it was as though I'd never left.

On Christmas Eve we got about fifty people together and had a huge snowball fight in Rockliffe Park. This was also the last time I saw Sue alive. We ended up having a fling together that night instead of exchanging presents. She told me that she still loved me. I was seventeen and had no idea what she meant by this.

Love

In expressing love we belong among the underdeveloped countries - Saul Bellow

There were two occasions when I may have been in love but was too immature to know it. The first was a Mod chick named Siobhan. The Mods were tolerated by the Preps at Lisgar only because they were as vain as we were. They were an element of the sixties that weren't threatening in the way that the Hippies and Peaceniks were. She always looked so cute in her little black cocktail dresses and Chanel suits.

I'll always remember the week we spent together when I was house-sitting for my dad while he was in the Philippines. She had moved to Brampton at the end of the summer before grade eleven. When she found out my dad was going to be away she invited herself up to keep me company. I met her at the train station. She stepped off the train wearing a black Go-Go mini dress with holes cut from mid chest to hip along either side with a silver chain running from top to bottom of each hole. We strode towards each other and as soon as she was in front of me I dropped to my knees, grabbing a chain in each hand and kissed her navel. What a dress. It clung provocatively to her dancer's body. Every time I saw her in it one thought ran through my mind. "Bless me Father for I have sinned. I've just had hundreds of impure thoughts." From a Jew that says a lot about the dress and the woman that wore it.

She later told me that she was going to stop wearing that dress because people started associating her with the dress rather than it with her. They both were fantastic. Together they synergistically created this amazing picture of profound sensuality/raw sexuality/beauty/intense power.

It was spring break so we were able to sleep in each morning. We alternated making breakfast for each other in bed. I know that my feelings for her were more than mere lust. Physically we were compatible, fulfilling each other's desires and emotionally there was a wonderful bond we formed, but never named.

I lost contact with her the night before I moved from Ottawa to Victoria. She had moved a few days earlier from her sister's house. She called me after getting home from work at two in the morning (she was working in a pizza parlour) to give me her new number. The next morning when I woke up I couldn't find her number and didn't know her roommate's name that the phone was listed in.

The second time it was a girl that I'd known the summer before and we'd fought constantly. I'd taken a Leadership course with her. We were so much alike that our personalities clashed. The next year exactly one week before I was supposed to leave Ottawa there was a reunion barbecue for the course. I remember sitting in Nadia's living room (Nadia and I became the best of friends while taking the aforementioned course) debating whether or not we should go. I decided to, joking that I'd get there, meet a gorgeous blonde and disappear for the evening.

Believe it or not that is what happened. Her name was Catherine. I called her Katrina. Kat for short. She noticed my pet rat Nosferatu asleep in the collar of my shirt and came over to talk to me. We strolled down the beach and sat in a little cove watching the sun set on the Ottawa river. I let her hold Nosferatu whom she called Baby. When Nosferatu peed on her and she didn't mind I knew she was special.

I took her out for dinner the next night. My dad was out at the club and I wasn't expecting him home until late so I invited her back to our apartment for dessert and a backrub.

She realized that she couldn't go home with her hair the way it was (She wore it in one of those New Wave sweeps popular in the mid to late eighties). She needed to wash it so that she could re-do it. I offered to do it for her. She was wearing a bright pink t-shirt so we switched shirts so I could pretend to be the gay hairdresser.

When we were finished we retired to the living room to watch TV and cuddle. My father came home and noticed that she was wearing the shirt that I was when he left. He assumed that we'd heard him come home and in the mad rush to get dressed put on each other's shirts. To this day he refuses to believe differently. Not that he would have minded, far from it. He still brings it up when we're out with friends for dinner and laughs as he did over breakfast the next morning.

Cat and I decided to buy lottery tickets so that when we won we could move to Mexico and live in a huge house looking over a bay, with lots of servants. We spent every possible moment together over that week. I even tried to get my mother to let me stay in Ottawa, but she wouldn't. I've often wondered if I'd have continued to love Cat if I had stayed. The night before I left was perfect. Forever it shall live on flawless, locked in the amber of my mind.

Love and a Personal Death

Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses - Lord Dewar

You've been Pussy Whipped! - Mark J.D. Roberts, Private Investigator

There was a third time in my life when I was in love. I had just left everyone in Ottawa and was feeling a gap in my life. I decided that it was time to have a serious relationship with commitment and love, where I'd settle down and eventually marry. I kept seeing a few girls that I'd been seeing before I'd left for Ottawa but I wanted someone fresh to start anew with.

I met her, Ms.S.. I seduced her at a party one night. I got totally pissed drinking shots of Jack Daniels chasing them with V.S.O.P. Brandy. I believe it was Courvoisier. I then went into the bathroom and smoked some homemade speed that I'd brewed up the week before. I came out totally wrecked and announced that I was going to drive up Island. I wasn't really planning on driving. I knew that I was too far gone to even get behind the wheel of my car. All that I wanted was for a girl to follow me out and try and stop me.

Ms.S. followed me out and we sat down on the steps and talked. In my twisted state I told her my life story. I told her about being a member of the Hungarian aristocracy, my life in Ottawa, what an asshole my father was, how much my trust fund was worth.

I just blathered on, free associating. I was beyond caring about anything. If I got laid, I got laid. If not, it didn't matter. She just sat there hanging on every word I said. I was introducing her to a world she'd never been to and she wanted me to take her there.

I then invited her back to my mom's house that was a few blocks away on the ocean. We started in the living room listening to music and making out. I then led her into the bedroom. We started screwing, me punctuating the action by going to the bathroom and vomiting.

I decided that she was going to be the one. We would spend the rest of our lives together. At the end of the evening after I'd purged my system of everything I took her out for calamari. As I dropped her off I wrote down my real number as well as the number at my mother's place where I stayed on weekends when she was away. We dated for a few months. Her father walked out on her and her mother and I moved in.

I paid for all. If there was something bothering her I'd go out and buy her flowers or some little trinket. For fun and excitement we'd go out for dinner every night. More and more I became her protector and keeper. Conflicts flourished out of this set up. She viewed me in a parental light but also felt in debt to me. I got off on the power of providing her with anything she wanted. I couldn't understand why the sexual part of our relationship was dwindling. She didn't want to sleep with her "Father" but felt guilty for not sleeping with me. The mix of feelings is a sure killer for sex.

My moving in fulfilled her needs and mine. None of these needs were healthy but born from neuroses that we both needed to work out. It took me a year and half to work mine out. She's still struggling. I gave up everything in my life that was important to me other than the relationship. I cut my trips to Ottawa back to four days at Christmas. Ms. S. didn't like me being away especially back in Ottawa where I was away from her protective gaze amongst the nymphs I used to swarm with.

I started to want other women, but I kept myself in check. I viewed our relationship to be like a marriage. I looked down on my father as being weak for fooling around on my mother. Now I just realized that we'd fallen into the same trap. A pretty girl who wants to be rescued. I wanted someone to look after and she wanted to be looked after.

I am leery now of relationships. When I had my accident I saw my life flash before my eyes. It was some other guy's and he was having much more fun. I have some plans as to what I want to do after I get my accident settlement. They all involve just moi. I am playing by my rules now.

Shit, I can't believe that I let someone else determine my life. I was a case for Amnesty International. Trapped in a prison with bars of flesh. Every time I'd go away for a weekend with friends Ms.S. and I would have amazing sex the night before and just as I'd start to leave she'd undo my fly and start to blow me. She'd always promise to finish me off when I got home. She never did finish. I'd stand there in a bathroom stall at the airport or on the ferry tossing off, thinking about those lips tripping along my shaft and her tongue on my glans. In the stall, in my mind, she always finished.

I came close to fooling around on her twice. Both times with the same woman. There was this girl I used to see who was a dancer who had danced in the Soviet Union and Finland. She had two positions she'd learned in Russia. She nicknamed them Bolshoi and Kirov.

The first time, I was out with her and a friend for coffee. At the end of the evening they dropped me off at my apartment. She looked into my eyes and asked "Bolshoi or Kirov?"

My mind flashed back to those incredible nights we'd spent together. There was this sudden avalanche of lust created by a passionate stream of thoughts and a liberal splash of hormones. It was very tempting since I'd just come off of six weeks of abstinence while Ms.S. was in Quebec City. I looked deeply into her eyes and gave her a quick kiss, turned and walked up to my apartment. That took more willpower than anything in my life previously had.

The next time was a year later after I'd had a fight with Ms.S. that morning as I was leaving for work. I called Liz to see if she wanted to go out for coffee after work. We went out for a drive. She started telling me about watching 9 1/2 Weeks in Russia and about the European version. She proceeded to tell me her favorite scenes and put her hand on my thigh.

I pulled into a self-serve gas station. I filled my tank, checked the oil, water, brake fluid, and the air in all four tires. I considered changing the plugs but realized that I'd left my socket set at home. This helped me regain my composure. I got back in the car and told her that I had to get home, that something seemed wrong with the car. She gave me a hurt look. Neither time did I tell her that I was living with a woman.

I want to be free now to pursue any proposition from any woman. I used to be that way in high school. Now I have a few extra years of experience. The women I've been with since have told me that those years weren't wasted.

Let's get off this dreary concept of being trapped in relationships. Leaching off of each other until every ounce of life is drained. There must be a better way. Whenever I think about loving Ms. S I just get this empty feeling. I am not even sure if it is a feeling. It is just nothingness. I don't know if it really was love. I've had different feelings about every woman that I have gotten to know. To call any of this love seems almost presumptuous. If it was really love would it not have lasted. I am sure that real love isn't experienced as a vacuum in one's being. I wish that I really knew what love is. It seems to be a convenient way of defining a set of emotions towards another person. Someday I hope to find it. Maybe then I'll know what it really feels like. Until then I'll keep feeling around in the dark and maybe while grasping those things in the dark I'll find love.

Accident

There are few accidents, only lapses of attention – B.S.M.'s Driver's Education Teacher, October 1986

The street lights stream passed through my peripheral vision. The night hugs me and the bike. It's warm for a February night, but this is Victoria. I've shed my vintage M51 parka and white leather riding gloves and I am just wearing my bomber jacket. The road whooshes under my tires. Between shifts my tuned exhaust snaps like popcorn. I park and drop into the office to check on the girls to see about taking one of them out for a ride. None of the cute ones are working so I just cruise the streets.

There's a line of cars at the lights. I start to pull off to the left of them to squeeze up to the turn off, but some asshole has pulled over too far, so I just sit and wait for the light to change. I slip through the curve and wind it out. I accelerate fast but top off at the speed limit. This stretch is watched closely by the boys in blue on Friday nights.

The passenger side of a blue station wagon explodes in front of me as I slam into it. The only thought in my mind is "This is it." I am not quite sure of what the IT is. It is either that this is the accident that I have been afraid of having or that my life is over. I am thrown over the faring. I clear the front of the car. Pin wheeling through the air and landing on my head. My helmet slams up into my shoulders saving my neck. The rest of my body smashes to the ground.

Aided by the chemical cocktail your body mixes at times like this I manage to get up and walk the fifteen feet back to the car. In my haze I sit down in the driver's seat with my legs sticking out the door. I can feel them but not bend them. Some guy who tells me that he teaches first aid starts checking me out and calming me down. The driver who hit me offers me two hundred dollars to settle on the spot. I laugh, or at least I hope I do at this offer. Some guys with a cellular phone in their truck call 911 and summon the police and ambulance to the scene.

The paramedics get me onto a backboard and ease me into the ambulance. They take my wallet to get my license for the police. I tell the police that my insurance papers are in the glove box. Everything is just a blur. One of the paramedics asks me if I'd passed out. "No, but I am not sure?" I get out, my body starts shaking even more. I am shivering like crazy but I am not cold. "Do you know a paramedic named Taylor Mackenzie?" I ask. "Yeah I worked with him the other night, why?". The one beside me answers. "He used to be a roommate of mine." I reply hoping that they'll take better care of me since I know one of their brethren.

They strap an oxygen mask around my face explaining that it will help calm me down. Good luck, with my disposition it will take a hell of a lot more than oxygen to calm me down. We rush along but without the siren. We're speeding but now the boys in blue are on our side.

"Is my watch alright?" I ask since my arms are pinned to my sides. "It's still ticking." He answers "that's an old one."

"1926 Rolex-Takes a licking and keeps on ticking." I deadpan like the old Timex ad. The Paramedic attending me jokes that they're going to have to take my shirt. "I asked my girlfriend for a Polo shirt like that for Christmas and she bought me slippers" He laments. I don't understand the big deal about my shirt but laugh out of my confusion.

At the hospital they wheel me into one of the cubicles in the emergency ward. The paramedic who drove takes care of admitting me using the information off of my Medicare card. A nurse comes in and asks me if I know where I am and what day it is. She then asks me a few questions about my general health. I list off my various stress related problems and then she checks my temperature and blood pressure. A doctor comes in and asks me the same questions.

I get wheeled off to have my knees x-rayed. The tech tells me that by law he can't tell me if anything is wrong but that I am going to be on crutches for at least a month. He wheels me back to my cubicle where I wait for the final verdict from my doctor. An hour later he shows up. He tells me that my right kneecap is broken. Shit! That's really going to cramp my sex life. My ribs are starting to hurt and I've got this vicious headache creeping in.

The doctor disappears again and I have to buzz the nurse for a bottle to pee in. I don't know if you've ever tried to pee lying on your back but it is a lot harder than it sounds. The nurse comes back and collects the bottle. An orderly comes and wraps my leg in this heavy duty tensor bandage. He helps me put my pants on then leaves my cubicle and returns with a pair of crutches. He adjusts them and then tells me to follow the yellow line to the front desk. I sign for the crutches and call my mother.

It's 1:30 in the morning and I know that she's been expecting this call since I started riding. "Hi Mom, I am in Emergency at the Royal Jubilee. Don't worry I am alright, I just had a bit of an accident. I was wondering if you could pick me up and let me stay at your place." I try to sound calm and together hoping that it will keep her together.

"What, are you okay? Don't worry I'll be there in ten minutes." She's not awake enough to hide the fear in her voice.

We drive back to her house. She makes up the bed in the study and tucks me in for the night; slipping a stuffed dog I named Bruce the Psychoanalytic Mutt in beside me. The pills the doctor gave me take hold of my mind and send me off to sleep. It all seems so far off as I drift off into the cosmos of sleep. My knee pulses with pain and it all snaps close again and then I drift off.
Beautiful Women

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. - Raymond Chandler, She Walks in Beauty

Ah, to be happy with just one woman. Why must there be so many beautiful women. Society expects us to pick one and be happy. On this point I differ.

I am sitting here waiting for my next class to start and all around me are beautiful women. A smorgasbord of women. A friend of mine corrected me on this, explaining that it is a buffet of women. I asked him the difference. He explained that a smorgasbord is made up of Northern European women and a buffet of North American.

A red head with mysterious eyes and a tempting smile. A blonde with straight shiny hair that would feel fantastic upon my chest. A brunette with an athletic build and a warm healthy glow.

So much beauty. Pondering them isn't enough. I want one. It may sound presumptuous but I've always gotten the woman that I've wanted. Whether she was single or not never mattered.

The only thing that has ever mattered is that I love women. I love the way they smell-sound-taste. The feeling of a feminine form next to you in bed is far finer than that of a silk shirt or a well-worn camel hair coat.

I don't mean this as a put down towards women. My goal is not to objectify them or view them solely as l'objets d'amours. In fact it is to celebrate that part of them that is different from men. There is no doubt in my mind that women are equal to men. In many cases they even surpass us. I am not talking about that everyday existence, where we're all people not men and women. No, what I am referring to is that wonderful warm intimacy. Not just that of sex but that of a man and a woman together.

I've always felt an attraction to females. I never went through that phase of thinking that girls were gross and not wanting to play with them.

I remember one day in kindergarten. The moment was perfect. The teacher had left the classroom an occurrence so rare in those days. There sat the girl of my dreams. She had red hair tied back in a braid. Boy, did she ever have great hair, even back then I had an attraction to hair. She was wearing a blue smock dress with white wool tights and black patent leather shoes with silver buckles. I lunged across the circle and kissed her. She screamed summoning the teacher back into the room just as I'd slid back into my spot in the circle and crossed my legs Indian style. What a rush. I don't remember if the teacher did anything to me. All that I remember was this incredible high I got from kissing her.

This is such an exquisite feeling. It is as though the heavens have opened and are streaming through to you. This feeling comes out of the fact that women are the other half of us. We are both necessary parts of our species (no matter how much certain extremist groups denounce this). This feeling is bred in the bone. It springs forward from the reptilian part of our brain and is tempered by our intellect into this concept known as love.
Man of Leisure

The pain of waking can only be tempered by a good breakfast and a day without responsibility to anyone other than oneself. - M.S.B.M. August 1991

The eighties were about being on the fast track. Success was measured by extremes. Being a millionaire meant that you made a million a year. To reach this level you lived with a phone under your pillow so that you wouldn't miss that business opportunity that might come while you're grabbing a few hours' sleep. Car phones caught on right away. People no longer had to wait until they reached the office to make a deal. They could work on it as soon as they stepped out of their door in the morning. Hand held cellular phones caught on even quicker because now you didn't have to waste the time between the front door and the driver's seat. Now with stress being rated as the major cause of disease in his part of the century it is time to learn the art of leisure. I am currently pioneering this field. Living a leisurely life doesn't mean not accomplishing things but instead it involves accomplishing them at a refined pace. Not all jobs are suited to this life. A surgeon can't stop in the middle of a quadruple bypass to drop down to the club for afternoon cocktails.

We have to look back to a time when life was lived more leisurely. For this I am looking to the 1920's. Life was conducted at a comfortable pace. Travel was incurred at a pleasant level. You'd grab a train to a ship that would take you overseas so that you could broaden your horizons. Now you hop on the Concord in New York and are in Paris within a few hours. Once there, you have to deal with the time difference and have to adjust to having lunch at five in the morning. Jet lag was unheard of in the Twenties. One reason was the lack of jets and the other was that you had time to adjust to the new time zone on your way to it. The change was made a little bit each day.

Business was conducted in a far more civilized manner. Rather than shouting into your cellular on a street corner, you'd meet at your private club for drinks. There you would discuss the weather, then the merits of summering in the Hamptons and wintering in Palm Springs. After all of this you'd spin together a little deal and retire upstairs for dinner.

I am not saying that we should abandon the technology of today, but instead use it to our advantage. By typing this out on a word processor I am managing to free up the time it would take to type up revisions. Leaving my afternoon free to go out and be fitted for a new sports jacket, meet a friend for a late lunch to discuss a few little business propositions, meet another friend for dinner, and then take in a play.

I see this as being more civilized than gulping down a breakfast shake as I am sprinting out the door to answer my car phone so that I can close at least three deals before getting into the office. Working for fourteen hours, ordering in lunch from the deli down the street and grabbing a quick bite on my way home.

But that of course is just the biased view of a Man of Leisure.

My Venus

Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman.

\- Shakespeare, King Lear, V, iii

After much deliberation I've come up with a list of traits a woman would have to possess for me to get serious about her and enter into a lasting relationship with. My ideal woman:

I've left a few out deciding that although they'd be nice they weren't as important as these. They were things like a penchant for power tools in bed, having read War and Peace in Russian, and the ability to rebuild the engine in all pre-fuel injection V.W. Beetles.

I chose these traits based on my expectations for myself which is why I chose not to include the War and Peace one because I read it in English.

I know she's out there. She is standing there with a list much like my own. Wondering where I am? We'll probably meet in a used bookstore somewhere, simultaneously stumbling over a first edition British printing of Kafka's The Castle.

I'll offer to buy it for her on the condition that she'll make me dinner that night. On pulling up to her apartment I'll see a 1967 V.W. Bug convertible with a license plate reading Gregor that must belong to her. Things will snowball from there. I'll wake up early the next morning, run down to the farmer's market to pick up stuff for breakfast and some fresh flowers. I'll bring breakfast into the bedroom just as she is waking up. We'll spend the rest of the day in bed making love and listening to the Dead Milkmen. Two months later while out hiking in the bush, she'll present me with a morel and ask me to marry her.

This is all I ask from the gods. Well, this and a Ferrari Dino. With expectation like this I may be limiting myself but as I was brought up to believe. The world is my oyster and I should never accept second best.

Reality is a Strange Bedfellow

Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs

\- Lily Tomlin

It's two in the morning and my mind won't slip off. I could go out and search the streets for something. I could join in on the nocturnal quest for that elusive pleasure. My body is still too shattered for such jaunts. The accident has robbed me of the energy. My mind feels brittle and my emotions can't handle the duress. If I go out now I'll run into them.

I'll run into those who are living their lives for the first time. They're just now getting off on freedom. They lived under the puritanical gaze of their progenitors. Now they've grown their flight feathers and have left the nest. They lack the experience to temper their freedom with reality.

They are doing what they want, but it is empty. They run around trying to find pleasure. It's out there but their muscles are still untrained and they can't grasp this freedom and wrestle it to the ground. They instead grab on to its tail as it rushes along flinging them against walls and tables. They hold on for their lives in the belief that since they are holding on they are in control.

Freedom lets the initiates believe this. It draws some sadistic pleasure from watching them. It lulls them into complacency and then invites its bedfellow Reality to drop in on them.

Reality is a confusing creature. It hurts but tempers those that are meant to go on. Encounters with Reality always have high casualties. Morning is one of Reality's favorite hours. When you are laying there, your sinuses feeling like they have been scoured with a wire brush and a woman you think you remember but wish you didn't cuddles closer to you. It is now that reality likes to drop in.

"Hi! Had fun last night, didn't you? Remember that $300.00 you spent. Yeah, you remember. The money you took out to pay your Visa with. Well you may have enough left to send your bunkmate home in a cab. She sure had a good as did her friends that you bought the coke from and then shared it with. Hey, everyone was your friend last night, that's all that really matters. Oh, by the way you were supposed to be at work an hour ago so that your boss could discuss your tardiness problem with you."

If you're lucky you can get rid of her and make it to work pleading that you slept in because of the cold medicine you took to get rid of this head cold you have. If your luck continues, your boss buys the story and you ignore the messages on your answering machine from a guy named Raoul whose girlfriend you've supposedly stolen. You work your ass off at work taking your boss's job so that you can stop paying your Visa off with your MasterCard and then vice versa.

If you're not lucky you end up hanging out in nightclubs peddling yourself to anyone for anything. you spend your days working some pathetic job, living in a hole so that you can go out at night and appear to have a good time. Freedom keeps battering you against those walls and tables and when you're lying there almost unconscious from the beating invites its pal Reality in for an impromptu visit.

I've been through it. Reality slapped me awake one morning and made me lay my cards on the table. A jack of hearts, a two of spades, a four of diamonds, a seven of diamonds, and a ten of clubs. Not much of a hand and I didn't feel like bluffing at this hour. I folded and let Reality claim the winnings. Reality is a merciful winner and after wiping you out will help you back up onto your feet.

Driving

Take most people, They're crazy about cars. I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

\- J.D. Salinger

It's 3 a.m. and I can't get to sleep. I get dressed, grab my car keys and head out into the night. It sits there squatting under the street lamp. A black on black 1984 Saab 900 Turbo.

I strap myself in, insert the key in the ignition between the seats and unlock the gear shift. With a quick stab I hit the ignition button and the car explodes to life. There's a low whine from the turbo and the high compression exhaust. The heater within the seat starts to warm me. I slide the sunroof back. Next I grab a tape labeled Driving Music out of the glove box and pop it into the stereo. The music streams out of the Boston Acoustic speakers with Dolby precision.

I glide the shifter into first and explode from the curb; my Yokohama's grabbing the pavement. I race through the streets. Drifting through corners. Launching off from each stoplight. Finally I hit an on ramp for the highway. I pull into the shoot and punch the accelerator. I fire out onto the highway already twenty clicks over the limit and still accelerating. I shift into fourth and break out of the city limits.

The street lights are farther apart out here so I turn on my driving lights to fill in the edges. I am flying along within my own little planet along the universe of the highway. I have an environment that I have carefully set up for myself. My seat is positioned just so. The mirrors are set and locked into place. The stereo meets my possibly neurotic qualifications. The car itself has also been altered for my expectations. The suspension has been beefed up with heavy duty adjustable gas shocks. The cooling system has been revamped to keep the engine running cool on these high power jaunts. The car meets the road on four extra wide tires. The engine is kept perfectly tuned.

These late night drives always seem to have a sexual aspect to them. It's the ultimate fuck. Just one continuous thrust through the moist darkness. Never pulling back. Just going deeper and deeper. There is no bottom. The wind. The sound. The power. I let out moans and growls as I push the limits that much further. Tearing through corners, the road trying to throw my car off of it. Crosswinds allow fingers of the universe to creep in through my sunroof ripping through the warmth and tousling my hair.

I hit a cloverleaf, whipping down through the shoot and then hit another shoot and zing back up onto the highway towards town. Rather than cutting straight through the city I follow the ocean route home. The salt air and the smell of the tidal flats fill the car, tugging at some primal part of my brain. It settles my spirit, calming me. I turn off at my street and pull up in front of my house, parking under the same street lamp. I climb into bed and fall asleep in the afterglow of my high speed romp.

Third World War

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry - Joseph Heller

War has finally broken out. Saddam Hussein refused to back down and Bush couldn't let himself and his people be portrayed as cowards. It is all a big game and I don't want to play. Hell, I don't even like the toys.

Try as I may, I am unable to stop worrying about this stupid war. See, I figured out that I would make it through my lifetime without there being a major military conflict. Some luck. My luck exists within the fact that I stand a pretty low chance of being drafted for I've been equipped with flat feet.

I've been trying to cover up my feelings about the war by complaining to people about how it prevented me from watching the Rockford Files at lunch because it was pre-empted for shows about the Gulf War. Since a lot of what this war is about is oil I guess the name Gulf War is apropos. Gulf/Gulf - get it?

If you don't, forget it. Ms.S. used to claim that I'd lost my sense of humour.

One of my concerns is the draft so I'll just close the window. I know we don't have a draft in Canada but the way Brian Mulroney worships George Bush, When George says "Jump!" Brian asks "How high?" So if George decides that he needs more lives for his cause, where do you think he'll look?

Personally there is no country that I'd die for. Nationalism is a dead concept. We should look at Europe as a model. They're pulling down the barriers and becoming one economic community. There is no way that I'd go off to the Middle East to fight. The truth of the matter is neither would George Bush.

He sits there in Washington in the Oval Office talking about Surgical Strikes. Making the brutality of war sound like a necessary medical ordeal. At least Saddam Hussein is out there with his men. We really have no right in interfering with what is going on over there.

The conflicts over there stem from thousands of years of cultural relationships that we have very little comprehension of. We're a relatively new civilization here in the West. Our society has only been formed within the last few hundred years and with all the new immigration it is still changing. Their society has existed for over a thousand years with very little change in its basic structure.

What makes this war even more ridiculous is that the Americans provided the Iraqis with large supplies of cash and weapons. Bush calls Hussein a madman, but what do you call the person who provides the madman with his tools of destruction.

All I want is for all of this to end and turn out alright. Has it been so long since the atrocities of Vietnam that people have forgotten that human lives are lost in war? Life is cheap to our leaders so long as it is not their own. I've heard no mention of Bush's son being sent over there to fight. Well, I guess he's busy over here trying to sort out this whole Savings and Loan problem that he was involved in.

Alright Bush you're not a wimp. Didn't your mother ever tell you that it takes more courage to turn your back and walk away from a fight than to actually fight. Just let this all end with as little loss of lives as possible and remember:

War!

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing...

January 16th, 1991

Virgins

To all the virgins I've known. Thanks for nothing!

\- Anonymous

I just came across a letter written to me by an old girlfriend. It brought a lot of things to mind. When I first read it, it scared me and reading it again brought those fears back to the surface. I'd always taken a casual attitude towards sex. Each new woman made me that much more of a man. I never thought about them having feelings. Reading it now not only scared me but has caused me to rethink my promiscuity. It's not just my feelings, but hers as well.

Dearest Sebastian,

Jesus what a day. It's 11pm. I'm in bed. I've just done my hair with the new stuff, it's great, but I'm not. It's really weird, when you came back to the phone and said, "Can you stay at Sarina's tomorrow night?", I knew what that meant. Suddenly I was enveloped in fear, I knew that Friday night could be the proverbial IT! I know this relationship of ours has been, or rather seemed sort of flippant and very nonchalant at times. I only sort of know how you feel and vice versa, but I intend now to set it straight. I'm scared Sebastian, I've never been so scared. At least not for a long time. You see it hit me all of a sudden. This is the thing I've been thinking of for the better half of a decade. I mean this night is the night that could finally dispel all this mystery that this is shrouded in for me. You see, if we do make love, it'll live in my memory, this night, for a long time. I want it to be a good memory. I want the night to be perfect (Well not totally perfect, but you know). I want to leave knowing that I was loved (Not an "I love you" love, it doesn't have to be, but just a sense that I was cared for, respected). After you read this letter, you and I will talk. I really love being with you, because you and I can talk of many things and be at ease. I do feel intimidated by you because you have slept with other women, girls, whatever. I do really like you because you quench my desire, and it hasn't been like that for so very long. You are so mature and it's so wonderful to be with such a person. I just hope you view this with the right amount of seriousness. On the one hand I'm scared. Scared of it not going well. Scared of it not living up to my dreams. Scared of something going wrong (you know what I mean!). On the other hand I want you and IT so badly. To be able to be with someone who knows what he is doing. To finally make the change from unknowing to knowing. I'm not changing my mind, just that it's a very big step for me.

L.

When I finished reading this letter I was terrified. My first thought was to find a way out. I confided my feelings to my best friend. We came up with a plan. He'd call me just as we were going to bed with a supposed crisis. I was then going to rush over to see him. We'd then go out for a few hours so that I could return when she was asleep.

The phone rang at the designated hour and I was suddenly gripped in a conflict that I had thought that I had solved. Here I had a living, feeling person that has selected me to perform this act that she has such intense feelings about. I had worked hard at seducing her but the final decision had been up to her. For the first time in my life I was seized with the emotional side of sex. I was terrified but I also felt that I should explore this side of sex.

I told my friend that things were going fine and that I'd call him back the next day. We proceeded to do all that happened that night which climaxed with her losing her virginity. Laying there with her head on my chest in that post-coital blur I started thinking. I wondered if I'd really met her expectations. I couldn't bring myself to ask. I knew it had hurt. I had her mount me from above so that she'd have total control over it. We'd tried the good ol'missionary position but she kept making me stop. I was fighting to keep my erection while staring into her mask of pain. She was tight and tense and my size didn't make matters any easier.

We finally got me all the way in and just lay there. Her lying on top of me with her head buried in my neck, breathing deeply. She was still in a lot of pain. Something was wrong. I pulled slowly back until I popped out and then gently rolled her onto her back, kissing my way down her neck to her breasts. I then worked my way down her stomach slipping my tongue into her navel en route to my final goal. I started licking her thighs working my way into her. Amongst the usual tastes was Nonoxyl-9 and blood. She kept bleeding. Far more than any virgin I'd been with. I buzzed my tongue back and forth across her clitoris bringing her off three times in quick succession. From the covered casserole dish I had beside the bed I removed a warm face cloth which I used to clean her.

Neither of us said anything. There was this unusual tension in the air. I just held her in my arms until she drifted off to sleep. I waited until she fell into the deep regular breaths of sleep and got up and went to the bathroom. I peeled the condom off of my limp cock and started stroking it. I hadn't come yet because of her pain. Standing there in front of the mirror I watched my cock as I jerked it back and forth. I started to build a fantasy but my mind kept snapping to the cold metal towel rack pressing into my back. Almost without realizing it I began to come, splattering against the mirror and all over the sink and counter. Hours of pent up sexual tension as well as the tension of her expectations and pain were released.

I climbed back into bed and she clung to me like a koala bear to a eucalyptus branch. I held her body tight to me and told her that I loved her. I didn't mean it, but I wanted to. I kept drifting off and then jolting awake. Something seemed wrong but I didn't want to deal with it. I was young and definitely didn't want to take any responsibility for my actions. This was more than just a fuck and that scared the hell out of me.

I fell asleep for a final time just as the birds started chirping outside my window. I wished that I could join them and fly away. That was the first time a girl had shared her feelings with me about sex or maybe it was just the first time I'd ever listened.

From that moment on, with every new woman, that night has run through my mind.
Father & Son

Who doesn't desire his father's death? - Fedor Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov

My best friend in grade twelve's biggest fear was that he'd turn out like his father. To me then; that was my goal. My father is rich, incredibly successful with women, and has the freedom to do what he wants in life. It took me years to realize that my father was far from this ideal I held him to be. Sure those traits that I admired were real but so were all those flaws that made him a very hard person to be with.

One of his biggest flaws is his need to control everything and everyone in his life. This is fine at work where that is his job, but at home it was a scary matter. His biggest control is money. He has always rewarded me with money. I'd get x dollars for each A and B on my report card. He could be very generous with his money, but he'd attack my mother for spending too much money on groceries and gave her an allowance that was more of an insult than anything. Whenever we've gotten together since I've moved out on my own he reminds me of the last time he paid my tuition, bailed me out, or this year, how much money there is in my trust fund that has now started paying me off.

Actually my trust fund was the Sword of Damocles he held over my head ever since it was started. Ten years ago he started it with $160 000.00. When it matured last year it was worth 2 1/3 times that. Every four months I'd receive an interest cheque of which I'd re-invest part of and live off the rest. The only stipulation was that I had to be working to receive the interest. If I wasn't it would just go back into his own investments.

The job I was working at was too stressful and with my whiplash I was only getting into worse shape. Working for eight to ten hours straight monitoring the computer system at the paging company I was working for. The company was too cheap to upscale the system to handle all the new business, so I had to keep checking the system to keep it from crashing and freezing. It would do this at least once a day and could be down from three minutes to four hours depending on what went wrong. When it would go down the customers would immediately start calling in and complaining. The flack would trickle down to me because everyone figured that it was I who failed, not the equipment.

So in interest of my health I left there. My father was furious that I would quit my job. I explained the situation to him and all he could do is yell at me and tell me that I wouldn't receive my next disbursement that was due in a week's time. Two days later I was awoken at 4:00 in the morning by the phone. It was my father calling me to see if I'd found a new job. Since he hadn't been able to reach me the day before he thought he'd call me when he got up. It was 7:00 in Ottawa and he'd had a full night's sleep. I once again explained everything to him. Telling him that it is my life and that I realize that my decisions have repercussions. He then played hurt and then laughed asking me what was I angry with him for. I told him that I was angry with the fact that I've been living on my own for three years and that I've grown up considerably since I lived with him. He laughed again and asked me if I was going to get a job that day.

The next morning, this time at 9:00 he called me again. He told me that he was going to be moving to Vancouver even earlier than before. This would mean that he would have to receive a penalty on his pension. He started telling me that he wasn't sure how he'd live on it. He suggested that he could move into my apartment with me. He then told me that he would probably have to get a job as a clerk or a car salesman. He then brought up my plans to drive around the U.S. and write during the Fall. Since he was moving out here to be closer to me, he should come with me on it. This conversation prompted me to write this letter:

05/15/91

Istvan,

This has to stop right now. I am not buying into trips about money anymore. Those are your insecurities. Your sending money home to your parents when you were working was your own choice. I am not your parent. If you so desperately want to be looked after by one of your children there is always Leslie. I have my own life to live and I am not letting anyone get in my way. I love you, but I also love myself and realize that I have to look after myself because no one else will. No you cannot live with me! It was your choice to leave your job and if you find pension and investments insufficient to live on that is your own fault. Mum and I managed to live on less than that. You have an M.B.A., a Masters in Economics and many years of practical experience. I find it very hard to believe that with those qualifications that you'd end up having to get a job as a clerk or a car salesman. If you're going to get a job that pays commission such as a car salesman then why not get a better one like stock broker. I appreciate the fact that you've paid my tuition for me all these years but it also posed tax advantages for you. You claim to have no money which makes very little sense to me. One can't earn as much as you do and live as frugally as you do now and we did when the three of us were together and not have a little something socked away. You have to come to terms with your concerns about money. I realize that you had some drastic changes in your childhood and I understand that, but it doesn't make your behavior any more acceptable. You pass judgment on my life sitting there in Ottawa. You attacked me about giving up my job and the next day called up and asked me why I wasn't out pounding the pavement. I am in incredible pain these days. I am unable to tell you how bad everything is over the phone because the whole time I was growing up you'd get so upset and angry about things like that. There is a lot about my life out here that I don't tell you about because you'd just get angry and yell at me. I spent my childhood walking on eggshells around you so as not to do anything that would upset you. I am not accountable to you anymore. I am living my life as I see fit and I think that I am doing a really good job. I was nearly killed in my accident. The odds are that I should have been. I am learning to take chances in life. You've always been overprotective of me which is very controlling. I don't need you to control my life. You want me to buy a new car because it seems to be a safer choice. The odds are just as good that I could buy a new car that is a total lemon. This seems to be a big issue between us but the real issue is control. I am not asking you to take responsibility for my life, so please don't. I love you and I think it will be nice for you to be living in Vancouver and I will visit you, on my terms, and I won't live with you. I am planning on travelling next year. One day I'll be in Seattle, the next, New York. I refuse to be tied down to anyone or anything.

You're not invited on my travels next year. We can go away for Christmas, but it will be a mutual decision. I am discovering who I am which is what my travels next year are for. I really like the person that I am becoming. I think that you would too if you stopped and viewed me as another adult.

Love,

Sebastian Balint

My interest cheque arrived in the mail a few days later and I returned it to my dad and advised him that I no longer wanted my trust fund. I knew that as long as I continued to have it that I'd be tied to him. I know that I can make it on my own in the world. That money would make things easier but the price is too high. To have to ask his approval before doing everything is to make me ten years old again. It is to become a slave to my father's whims and to totally relinquish control of my life to him. There is no amount of money that would make it worthwhile.

I am now trying to make a break from him. I realize many things in myself that are like him that I don't like. I was out with a girlfriend of mine the other night looking at cars. She was trying to figure out if the Mercedes was the same model as a guy she used to know owned. When she looked inside she said it was the same. I noticed that the passenger side seat was reclined and asked her if that was what tipped her off. I couldn't believe I'd said that. I don't know where it came from. She flashed a hurt angry look at me and didn't even bother to reply. I don't know why I said it and instantly regretted it.

Another stupid remark was when I was at the bank applying for overdraft coverage on my chequing account. The manager asked me if I had any children and I said "None that I know of." One more great Istvan line. These asinine comments just seem to bubble up out of some swampy part of my unconscious.

I am trying to reclaim this swamp and put something useful up on it. My father has always made remarks like this. I don't know how someone with his education and breeding can be as crude as he can. He seems to think that it is funny. He's not always like this. When necessary he can be as suave, learned, and witty as the best of us. Unfortunately there's this awful side that comes out. I am afraid of this side. I know that the potential for it lies within me. These recent occurrences are evidence of this. I need to raze this part of me. Out of the ashes I'll rebuild. Out of the swamp will rise a golden dome.
Trust Funds

All heiresses are beautiful. - John Dryden, King Arthur

Growing up with a trust fund affects one's whole perception of life. Having that security blanket gives one a confidence to face life in a different way. It extends the choices offered to you in life. This has its benefits but also creates problems that most people don't have to cope with or if they do it is on a much simpler level.

It gives you this belief that no matter how bad things get you'll never hit bottom. This also can set one up for a great fall for even trust funds have their limits. In the pursuit of the extremes one can drain even the largest of financial marshes.

Many of the untitled aristocracy are destroyed by this doomed existence. At least the titled aristocracy still has their title to run on when the resources are depleted. Title alone doesn't carry it. You have to have the attitude to hold everything in place. But then all you have is a title, an attitude, and a collection of coat tails to ride upon.

Maybe I am being cynical about trust funds and titles now that I've given up mine. But I feel that the only things that are really valid in life are those that you achieve for yourself. I don't want to have my successes in life based upon my title or someone else's resources. I want to be able to stand back and see all that I accomplished and know that I accomplished it.

Shopping - The Demon Game

The goal of all inanimate object is to resist man and ultimately defeat him. - Russell Baker

Suburbia has helped amplify the drive for shopping. The popularity of malls is that people can fulfill their need to accumulate possessions in furious pay tomorrow plastic spending sprees. People who live in cities and are surrounded by a constant stream of commerce are deadened to this narcotic to a higher degree. But now with people cocooning within their homes curled up before the hearth of the TV set they get this need fulfilled by these home shopping networks. Now you can be subjected to 24 hours of K.Tel products and Ginzu Knives whereas before they only attacked you late at night while you were watching Return of I was a Teenage Werewolf.

What causes this spring of consumerism? It seems to be an innate trait of the human animal. In less "advanced?" cultures your position in the community was determined by the number of goats or horses that you owned. These were functional signs of prosperity. It proved to the community that you could provide for yourself beyond your basic needs.

Shopping in some ways is just a natural progression of our evolution as consumers. We started out as hunters and gatherers constantly scrambling to get enough food to make it through each day, and if you were lucky you were able to put a little away to hold you through hard times. We then realized that we could raise our own food and guarantee the presence of our food over the chance game of hunting and gathering. As farming progressed we started to be able to grow more than we needed. This allowed us to trade with those who were raising things that we weren't.

In the animal kingdom, creatures hoard when winter or other times of cyclic hardship are coming. We show our superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom by hoarding automatic potato peelers and the Best of Englebert Humperdinck compact disc collections.

Then there is catalog shopping. L.L.Bean offers 24 hour phone ordering service so that at 2:36 in the morning when you get a craving for a Norwegian Fisherman's Sweater you can fulfill this need. I think that that is level four on Maslow's Pyramid of Needs. I have to admit that I fall prey to this catalog fever. The one that does me in is the J. Peterman catalog. Filled with one of a kind clothes displayed in watercolour beauty and accompanied by entrancing stories that draw you even deeper into the world of J. Peterman. Causing your credit card to just happen to be in your hand as you're passing the phone and help you to buy that pigskin vest.

The more I think about it shopping, consumerism in general is an innate part of the human condition. It is what in some ways joins us to the rest of the animal kingdom and in its own way holds us in a perverse way apart from them.
Sex

Sex is the most fun you can have without smiling. - Unknown

Sex has become surreal for me. Pleasure for me comes from strange sources. The norms of society were only mine for the first few months after I lost my virginity. My first ideal about it was shattered when the girl that I lost it with broke up with me. We were no longer in love. At fifteen I knew nothing about love. I figured that I'd love her the rest of my life. When that ended so did my belief that sex and love were part of each other. Last week I picked up this girl and went home with her.

After thirteen hours of sex I just stopped and looked at what was happening and none of it made any sense. All I saw was flesh slipping, sliding, and grinding against flesh. I didn't know why I was there. I didn't understand the situation. I felt nothing for her. I wasn't as turned on as I was when I first picked her up at the party. I have no feelings for her. I keep thinking that there has to be something there, so I go deeper. Burrowing into my mind, searching for a fleck of emotion hanging on the cliffs of my mind. I panic not being able to find anything so I rappel down to the bottom and look for a way out.

I look at the Mickey Mouse alarm clock on her bedside table and tell her that I have to get to my mother's house for a dinner party. She comments on the fact that it is only two in the afternoon. Come on Sebastian, think. THINK. I tell her that I am cooking the main course. She concedes and offers to give me a lift to my mother's house.

We exchange small talk on the drive over. Mostly about directions and last night's party. She drops me off and I hand her my business card and tell her to call me some time.

I wasn't lying about the dinner party but I didn't need to be there for three hours. I just couldn't stand to be there any longer. The whole thing seemed almost boring. Sure there was a degree of turn on from the sex, but I found myself drifting off. I just kept slipping away from what I was doing. I was getting wrapped up in thinking about things I want to check over on my car before taking off for the weekend. This disturbed me. I felt like I should be there one hundred percent. Hell, I would have settled for fifty percent. The reality of the situation was that I was nowhere near what was going on. This wasn't like when you try thinking about other things other than the fact that you're screwing to keep from coming. No, this was a real yearning to be elsewhere.

I wanted to respect and care for this girl. I wanted to hold her in my arms and feel that warmth. I held her in my arms and realized that with her it would never be. This was just sex. We both were where we were for no other reason than to get off. Nothing other than sex can come about from an arrangement like this. For a long time this was fine for me. Now it just leaves me feeling sad.

I just sat there at my mother's house wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. I know what I want but I just can't seem to figure out how to get it. There has to be a simple answer. Where the fuck is the woman of my dreams?

Argh, What Have We Here

Canada is so square even their female impersonators are women. - From the movie Outrageous, 1983

Paul and I were out clubbing as we had been for continuously for the last couple of months. Every night we'd meet, hit the same club, stay out until dawn and spend the rest of the day preparing for another night. There's this chick he's been scoping out for a couple of weeks, building up the courage to approach. She's attractive but a tad butch for my tastes. She has severe platinum hair. Short and fired back on her head. Nice body but there is something about her, something in the way that she carries herself that doesn't ring true. She wears these incredible leather skirts with a PVC bustier and she had the most incredible collection of stockings. Every time we see her she has a different pair on. Fishnets, spider web, funky prints, and even a pair that are hand painted with Picasso-esque images.

Despite these outward accoutrements that would usually turn my crank, I customarily like them balanced with a feminine carriage and being. She is definitely lacking this so I let Paul pursue her with hearty encouragements from me.

He wanders over to her and buys her a drink. One leads to many as they dance together, talking and generally getting a better knowledge of each other. Desmond Morris would be done proud watching the steps of human courtship followed to the letter.

After about three hours of this Paul wanders back over to our table to say that she has invited him back to her place and that he doesn't have any condoms. I give him my coat check chit and tell him to get some out of my jacket pocket, but to leave me a few because the night is still young and that I've just been invited to a party that was starting after the club closes. Yes, while Paul was off playing the seduction game I've been at work on a couple of girls. One has panned out, but she first has to make a show at the party to maintain her place in the scene.

While at the party my pager starts to go crazy. It goes off three times in a row. I find a phone and call in for my messages.

It's Paul and he's frantic. He is calling from a 7-11 and will not leaving until I get there. He sounds crazed and terrified. My friendship with him is more important than getting laid so I hand my femme de la nuit my business card and tell her that I have an emergency and to call me sometime.

I hop in my car and race to the address that Paul has left. I find him pacing back and forth just inside the door frantically staring out into the night. A momentary sense of calm appears on his face when I pull up in front and he sees me. He bolts out running for the passenger side door. Which I am reaching over to unlock as he's frenziedly yanking on the door handle.

He locks the door as soon as he gets in and orders me to do the same and to "Get the FUCK outa here!" I peel out of the parking lot and look over at him. He is pale and shaking.

"What's wrong?" I ask hoping that whatever it is isn't too weird, for this is a weird enough hour and anything else will push this night through to the next. "It was awful, absolutely awful." He states shaking even more.

"Even a bad fuck is better than no fuck at all." I joke hoping to break the tension that has filled the car and is threatening to blow the windows out. "You don't understand. It was..." He breaks, his face closes over with the pain of the memory.

"Okay, just sit back and close your eyes." my voice tones down into its therapist manner. "I want you to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Each breath will take you away from your pain leading you to a safer place." I order him gently; hoping to get him into a place where he can deal with whatever it is that happened to him.

I pull up in front of my apartment and lead him in. I grab a bottle of brandy off the shelf and two tulip shaped glasses. I lead him into my living room. I seat him on my chaise longue and he gratefully accepts the brandy, drinking half of it off in the first sip. I roll my glass back and forth in my hands humanizing the brandy and then take a small sip.

"What happened Paul?" I ask firmly enough to prompt an answer but tempered with tones of friendship to comfort him. "She - She - I uhm - I am not quite sure how to say it." He stumbles trying to move through the blocks that the stress of whatever happened have created. "It's okay Paul, you're at my place now and she is nowhere around." I say reassuring him of his safety.

"Okay, I am going to tell it right from the start." he breathes in and prepares to finally tell me what happened. "We went back to her apartment and she led me right into her bedroom. She took control as soon as we got through the door. She kept the light turned off in her bedroom and ordered me to strip and then pulled me into bed. She sucked me so that I even harder and then ordered me to put a condom on. She got up and wandered off to the bathroom for a few minutes. I assumed that she was making some contraceptive actions of her own and didn't think anything else of it. She then lay down with her back to me and slipped me in. Man was she tight. I felt weirded out by the fact that there was so little foreplay. I always try to make the woman come at least once before I do. So there I am thrusting away and playing with her breasts and I start to let my hand roam down figuring that she wants me to play with her clit while screwing. I reach down only to find a warm, very hard cock. I pulled out, leaped from the bed, and grabbed my clothes getting dressed while running for the door."

"It's okay. You're not there now." I state reassuring him. "But, I didn't know that she was a man." He pleads. "Hey, I thought that she was a woman. It could have just as easily have been me that had gone home with him." I counter trying to set his mind at ease. "How was I supposed to know. I just didn't know!" He implores. "Don't worry. I don't think any less of you and nobody else needs to know about it. You were conned at no fault to yourself." I offer, hoping to calm him.

"Thanks Sebastian. But what if she tells people? People know I went home with her. What if they know that she's a guy?" He appeals.

"If you want my honest opinion I don't think that he'll show up there again. You know that he's really a man and not a woman like everyone else thinks. Hell, he won't be able to use the women's room there anymore. Right now he is probably worrying about whether or not you're going to tell everybody the truth. He stands to lose a lot more than you do. He's now lost his personality that he worked so hard to create though not quite hard enough or maybe too hard." I state hoping to add a degree of levity to the situation.

"Sebastian, I am just so glad that you came and picked me up. I know that you had other things going down and would probably rather be in bed with that chick who took you to the party." He says genuinely.

"Listen, Paul in complete honesty our friendship comes before as Henry Miller would say it, a Fuck. We're friends she's just a momentary release of hormones and tension." I say sounding a little harder than I intend to. I guess the hour and the break in the tension has frayed my nerves enough to uncloak my emotions. "Don't you think that you may find Ms. Right in one of the girls you pick up?" He asks.

"That's how I met Ms. S. I thought that I could use my usual methods to meet a girl for a life partner. It didn't work so now I am just having fun splitting my time between seeking the woman of my dreams and the women of my wet dreams. It works to a degree. It seems that I've only been meeting women of the latter set." I remark noticing the change of direction in the conversation.

"How are you feeling? Do you want some more brandy or anything?" I ask.

"I am feeling a lot better, but I could use a tad more brandy." he states. "Actually there is one other thing, can I crash out here tonight." he adds bringing a close to the situation.

"Sure." I answer and get up to get him some more brandy. I pour him a finger more and take the bottle back into the kitchen. I grab a blanket and some sheets out of the closet and head back into the living room.

Paul's fallen asleep so I tuck the blanket around him and turn off the light and head to bed myself. I check the clock as I get into bed. Five forty in the morning. I turn the alarm off. The thought of getting up at seven fifteen no longer appeals to me, not that it did yesterday evening when I set it, planning on getting an early start on the day.
Starting Over

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. - Abraham Lincoln

I've been re-evaluating my life and have discovered many things that need to be dealt with. These are as follows: my slutting around, drug use, and clubbing. The first two stem from the third. I'd gotten away from all of this stuff for a while but I've fallen back into it.

I am a preferred customer at this one club. I show up and just get waved in. No cover charge. No I.D. check. Just a smile and "Have a good evening." As soon as I enter I start the prowl, selecting the women I want to dance with that night. Out of them I choose the one to go home with. To keep going I keep hitting the bathroom to irrigate my sinuses with crank. Ever since I gave up coke I've been doing this speed that I brew up in my kitchen. I owe thanks to my grade twelve chemistry teacher for teaching me how to make it.

It is becoming more of an effort to go out and get into another night of this. I've started having nightmares about chicks biting my cock off while giving me head. The first time I had it, I woke up to find some girl sucking on me as I lay there in her bed. First there was the fear from the dream and then I tried to remember where I parked my car.

The dream keeps coming back. I know it's a sign and I have to pay attention to it.

That dream hit me hard and my friends have gotten sick of my bringing it up. Part of it is that they don't want to hear about it anymore and I also think it may ring true for some of them. We've all been going at it pretty hard these last couple of months. Every night we're out. Fueled by booze, lust, and crank. This has all been cloaked under the auspice of Paul moving away to Toronto where we'll never be together again. Friendships like ours die once they are forced to exist outside the confines of a room filled with noise, mind warping substances, and writhing bodies.

My sinuses have been roughed up pretty badly also. After every shower my sinuses ache and itch. I am not sure why but the steam seems to really irritate them. I've also developed a case of rusty pipes. It is oh so glamorous; out dancing when the old blood starts trickling down your lip. First you think it is sweat and wipe it away. But then you see it on your hand and taste its syrupy saltiness and you know that the party has gone out of bounds. You hurry back to the bathroom wearing the badge of a junkie. People know that it's not just a common nosebleed. The two common causes of nosebleeds in clubs are fighting and abuse. The paranoia that accompanies coke or crank makes you sure that everyone one knows what cause it. Even though they wouldn't care, it still becomes an issue. It is just the fact that you've gone beyond the acceptable boundaries.

I always seem to take things beyond their limit. I had a small drinking problem. I took a bulimic approach to drinking. I'd go out drinking and every so often head into the bathroom and throw it all up so I could return and keep drinking. There was also a period of gambling that temporarily ruined me. I still can't go anywhere near the casino downtown without having to fight the urge to go in and just play a few hands of Blackjack.

After giving all this up nine months ago and deciding that I was going to get my life in order I've slipped. I won't consider it a failure because all of these things have further shown me that I must be moderate in life because living like this can kill you. AIDS. O.D.ing. They're possibilities and I wouldn't be the first to be claimed. I am getting out while the going is good. I need to find ways of dealing with my vices. I am going to have to go cold turkey on drugs and alcohol. Gambling I've managed to sublimate into the playing of a little hand held video game that cost me fifteen bucks. Less than eight hands of Blackjack. Women-I need to start working on having relationships with commitment, respect, and maybe even love.
Lost & Found

Foresake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him; a new friend is as new wine. - Bible, Ecclesiasticus 9:10

Siobhan has returned to my life. After four years of searching I've managed to get in touch with her. I was on the bus when I thought I saw a girl who was a friend of Siobhan's and mine at Lisgar. Last thing I'd heard about her was that she was living somewhere up north. Then I saw her violin case with a peace sign intertwined with an anarchy sign.

Yes, it was definitely Caradwynne. We look at each other and smile.

"Sebastian, how are you? What are you doing out here?" She races enthusiastically.

"I moved out here to avoid grade thirteen and to accompany my Mom to the Coast." I coolly respond, secretly hoping she knows where Siobhan is.

I ride with her to her bus stop and get off with her. She invites me inside for a cup of tea. We start talking about Siobhan and she tells me that she has some letters from her but that they have also fallen out of touch.

She lets me read through the letters and I discover that Siobhan's engaged. What! Engaged! No, the one woman who can fulfill all my needs and desires is engaged. I look up at the date on the page and realize that she's probably married now. Another dream shattered. The fragments blow by me gouging and drawing out my soul. I search for her "Husband's?" name so that I can try to track them down through the Toronto phone directory. I find it. I call 1-416-555-1212 and get one listing in his name.

I dial it and he answers. "Hi, is Siobhan there?" I ask hoping that this is the right number.

"Yeah, who should I say is calling?" He responds, probably wondering who this guy is calling his wife.

"It's an old school friend, Sebastian Balint." I slam out, hoping that she'll remember me.

She comes to the phone and it is as though the last four years have never broken up our friendship. We both spew out the highlights of our lives since we last spoke. Everything seems trivial when trying to summarize so much. We only talk for ten minutes because I have to run off and meet a friend to see a play.

I get off the phone and I can't believe that I actually talked with her. The woman that I've held as an ideal for the last four years has now been torn from my grasp but has also returned to me. I know that I will have to work on my feelings about her. She's married and happy and I respect that. Her husband is a lucky bastard. I know that I'll have to be content with friendship, but when it comes down to it in life friendships are the most important thing.
Damned and Cursed

What do women really want? - Sigmund Freud

I just got off the phone with my sort of girlfriend. A few weeks ago we had a long talk about her not wanting any commitment. This was fine with me since I was seeing other girls.

Well, she is currently pissed off with me. It seems that I've driven by her twice in the last week without honking or waving at her. I did see her once but had other things on my mind and on top of that my horn is broken and I haven't gotten around to fixing it. To make matters worse it has also been over a week since I last called her. What's wrong with her? She saw me. She could have waved or called me. Fuck I hate temperamental people.

A friend of mine told me that it is the fact that she's only eighteen. She said "You're not dealing with a rational creature. You're dealing with puberty!"

She doesn't want commitment but she also expects me to have her as the central focus of my life. I wish that she'd explain what she expects from me. I started getting serious with her and figured things were going well. She told me that she didn't want to get serious. This I can handle. My definition of non-commitment is friends with a bit more but not best friends. I wouldn't go a week without calling my best friend but I can quite easily go a week without talking to someone who's just a friend.

I guess that I am upset because I thought we'd defined the boundaries of our relationship only to find out that I was wrong. Maybe now she'll define how things stand between us and we can get back on course. On the other hand maybe we'll just decide to end things and go our separate directions. Either way I'll be happy. It's just this not knowing that gets on my nerves. When I am not sure of what is going on my mind starts to fabricate all these horrid and scary situations. They are always far more horrible than reality. I guess this is sort of okay because it makes reality that much easier to cope with.

She told me that she'd call me back because her parents just got home from being away. I don't know if she'll call me back, but I do know that if she doesn't I won't. I've made contact only to be berated for not making contact sooner. Rather than saying that she's glad I called, she harasses me for not having called. This does not improve the chances of my calling her again.

Alright possibly if I get horny enough I'll call her up. Actually I'll add her to my list of women to call in such an event. And it will carry a warning of wrath for not having called in such a long time and will need much money spent to assuage her slighted feelings and to achieve my desired end.
Three in the Morning

Solitude is the playfield of Satan. - Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Three in the morning is an ugly time. It is that pivotal point where bad things seem to happen. It is the point where I am usually thinking about calling an end to the evening. I've just gotten in from clubbing or just finished fucking some girl that I've picked up and I start thinking about the next day.

Anxiety slips quietly in and starts to scream. If the attitude adjuster of the night has been booze it is now that I lock myself in the bathroom and try to vomit all of anger and pain out of me. If it has been coke or crank it is now that I lie there sweating and shaking, my mind racing all over my life and tearing at it. When the anxiety is crashing over me like this I look for anything to get me to sleep; Valium, tincture of Valerian, sleeping pills, even antihistamines washing them all down with a couple of lashes of Absolut Crystal.

Three a.m. is a time of confrontation. People shoot each other then, houses burn down, and any evil element in your soul hurtles forth and attacks you, forcing your fears and troubles down your throat and then ripping back up into your brain causing you to scream out. You pant; dry heaving away at the pain, but the ugliness of the hour just amplifies it. It is at this hour that you realize that you can't run away from your problems and you make pacts with anyone to help you escape it.

The city seems so quiet at this hour. You look out over it and see that orange-ish glow signifying that although it is dark and late the city is alive. You lie there pressed up against the wall savouring the coolness of the paint and you can feel the city pulsing outside, calling to you. You hold yourself while the emotions crash over you. You know that you should just ride with them. That you should be like an empty boat and just bob with them riding them out and experiencing them for what they are. But the pain of them scrapes away at you with its serrated edge.

You lie there and hope that sleep will extinguish you into itself and hold you there away from your pain, but even your dreams are twisted at three in the morning. Goblins steal in and set up camp. They start to play their games of terror upon your psyche. The dreams that they create are the ones that cause you to dwell upon them all day wondering what brought them about. They only become more terrifying when you confront them. But this confrontation helps you get a better handle on them and starts to diffuse the power of that demon hour.

If you avoid dealing with the pain you feed the demon giving him more power over you, making the hour all the more terrifying. You have to stand there and face it all down and get a complete handle on it. Even if you're shaking in your boots, so long as you don't turn and run, you can help tame the demon and restore some calm to the hour. You can wrestle it into place with your emotions and hold it still. You can then tap into the deep powers of the hour and have them work for you whereas before they stampeded across your brain. Once you gain control of this hour it possesses a beauty that the others seem to miss out on. There is a clarity that you can hold onto at three in the morning that can let you see great beauty that isn't visible at other times. Great things can come about at this hour. The first step is to conquer it by learning who you are and to not shrink away from that which confronts you but to step down upon its tail to hold it in place while you get it in perspective and then slay it with your understanding. It is by doing this that you can become a whole person.

Tossing Off

Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him. - Jacqueline Susann after reading Portnoy's Complaint.

The only reason I feel guilty about masturbation is that I do it so badly. - David Steinberg

Statistics say that 98% of men masturbate. This tells me that 2% of the men polled were lying. Every guy I know masturbates. Steve Martin once made a comment as to the hours he has spent holding up a picture of Farrah Fawcett with one hand. It is an act that is becoming more and more accepted, especially now with the fear of AIDS. Casual sex is giving way to mutual masturbation. This girl I'd met invited me back to her place and then told me that was all she'd do now. We started by washing each other. Then we began exchanging fantasies while stroking and rubbing each other. I felt like I was thirteen again, when the girls I knew would only go as far as a hand job and made you wear a condom because touching it was "icky".

Philip Roth brought this simple but wonderful act into popular culture with his novel Portnoy's Complaint. These last few days the news has been filled with the story of film and television's Pee Wee Herman getting caught pulling off in a porno theater. He had his Saturday morning kid's show taken off the air for committing the Sin of Onan. I had a great headline for it. Pee Wee Pulled For Pulling Pee Wee's Pee Wee.

Remember how you felt the first time you were caught jacking off. A parent or sibling walked in on you while you were lost in that state, oblivious to all but your own pleasure. The shame and embarrassment. This gives me sympathy for Pee Wee for the thought of getting caught and having it broadcast all over the world and then losing your job for it seems a tad unreasonable. My word to the show's producers is judge not lest ye be judged. They have to be the biggest hypocrites. If they're afraid of the kids discovering about what he was doing they should resign from the human race. I started enjoying myself at the age of seven and haven't looked back.

Well, okay there was a brief period when I was eleven and a friend told me that his father had told him that it would make you go blind. I worried about my sight for months afterwards. He came from a good Roman Catholic French-Canadian family. Even that fear didn't stop me then, I kept going and one day realized that what he'd said was bosh.

I can't see myself ever stopping. I've been doing it for fourteen years now through relationships and through those brief periods of sexual drought. It's that constant source of pleasure that has been there no matter how bad life gets. And finally there are no, I repeat no negative side effects to masturbation.

Is it just me or is this page getting blurry?
Father & Son - The Sequel

It is a wise father that knows his own child. - Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, II, ii.

This last month has been one of change in my life. My father has just moved from Ottawa to Vancouver. Now that we're living so close it feels strange to be as separated from him as I am. It has been four and a half months since I wrote to him and four months since our fateful Father's day phone call when he froze me out refusing to talk to me.

He's my father and I feel that we should settle our differences. I've heard so many stories from older men lamenting that they hadn't resolved things with their fathers and now their fathers are dead. I don't want this. I am going to be over in Vancouver for a week visiting some friends I'll write him and ask him to meet me for dinner to talk things out.

On my second day in Vancouver my mom calls me at my godmother's where I am staying to tell me that he talked to her and that he is going to call me. That night while out for Chinese food with an old girlfriend of mine he calls me and leaves a message on my pager asking me to call him. I call and we arrange to meet the next morning after the traffic dies down going across the Lions Gate Bridge since I am staying in North Vancouver.

I meet him at his new apartment down along the ocean in English Bay. It is surprisingly decorated in tasteful modern with equally surprisingly nice artwork. He gives me a tour of the apartment.

"Very nice." I state cautiously even though he has agreed to meet me and work things out I am still scared. This is this powerful man who was partly responsible for my creation.

"I am powerful now too though. I am in control of my life and everything that happens to me." I think to myself reassuringly. "Thank you?" he replies guardedly.

"Sebastian, I was really hurt by what you said in your letter to me." He states putting my guard up.

"Dad I want you to know that I meant everything I said in that letter." I respond repeating over in my mind that I am strong and in control of the situation. "I've grown up and am living my life for myself now.".

"You're my father and I love you. Our relationship is too important to me to throw away but so is my life." I say maintaining a cool settled appearance while my thoughts and emotions whip around me. "Well, let's start over from here." my father offers. I smile and hope that with our new understanding that we'll get along as equals now.

* * *

I've just flow into Vancouver after spending the last month in Toronto and Ottawa. Yesterday was my twenty-first birthday. My father picked me up at the airport and he's letting me stay at his place overnight so that I can rest up before heading home.

We're driving along to my favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner when my father says " I wanted to give you something really special for your birthday so I've decided to give you the family ring as well as all that goes along with it.".

What? I am shocked this is the man who always writes me cheques for presents the only thought going into the amount.

"Thank you. This really means a lot to me." I reply hoping that my appreciation and thanks is obvious. I reach over and squeeze his arm and then my emotions slip from their ledge and I start to cry. This is the first time in my life that I have cried in happiness. If anything would this indicates how much this gift means to me.

"You'll have to contact the Hungarian Embassy to find out about your title. With the communist government dying there is a chance that you can get it officially recognized again." So I am now the Duke of Nyiregyhaza. Not that the title itself means much but the fact that it came from my father is what means so much to me.

I am not going to ask for my trust fund back. I meant what I said earlier about making it on my own in this world without relying upon trust funds or titles. I have what I really wanted the love and respect of my father. This may sound corny to some or maybe all of you but after not having it all my life it's kind of nice.

The Road to Hell

When I saw a sign on the freeway that said, "Los Angeles 445 miles," I said to myself, "I've got to get out of this lane." - Franklyn Ajaye

I've just got back from what has to be one of the most hellish trips I've ever been on. I was starting off on my two week road trip down the American West Coast.

While I was in Vancouver I met with an old girlfriend. She asked if she could join me for a few days and then grab a bus back to Vancouver. The idea of a few days of sex as well as a date to my best friend's engagement party in Northern Washington sat well with me so I agreed.

We pulled into Bellingham for the night so that we could do a little shopping the next morning. Every hotel and motel was filled. We drove from town to town along the interstate. At one town called Alger we followed a sign for a hotel that pointed down a country road. After about twenty minutes of travelling down this deserted road in the pouring rain we decided to turn back, writing it off as some sick joke by the locals.

For the next five hours I drove through every town between Bellingham and Northern Seattle. We were met by No Vacancy signs at every turn. It was so bad that on the trip back we were still checking hotel signs for vacancies and there was no longer need for a hotel, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Finally in Lynwood just North of Seattle we pulled into a Best Western hotel. I asked the desk clerk if there were any rooms available. He told me that they had one suite for $135.00. By now I was tired and willing to pay anything for a room, so I said sure. I registered us as Mr & Mrs Balint and went out to the car to tell Anne the good news. We grabbed the luggage and headed up to the room.

I popped the magnetic card into the door and entered. The suite was larger than my apartment. It had a full living room, kitchen with microwave, large sumptuous bathroom, and a bedroom that framed an enormous bed. I put the bags into the bedroom while Anne changed into her pyjamas.

I started to put the groceries I'd bought for breakfast away and chill the bottle of champers that I picked up to celebrate the start of the adventure. It was great being able to buy booze in a grocery store. It reminded me of when I was fifteen and would go over to Hull to buy wine or whatever to take to parties.

It wasn't a great vintage but with the strawberries it helped set the mood for the night or at this point morning. We curled up on the couch together and watched this great early 80's B flic called Modern Problems with Chevy Chase. There was a degree of tension in the air in regards to going to bed. I decided to break it by saying that the bed was more than large enough for the two of us and that we could watch the rest of the movie in bed.

We snuggled up tight and preceded to go to sleep. I don't know what is wrong with me but I have trouble when I am in bed with a woman to keep myself just to cuddling for any length of time. My hands started to roam over her body and I kissed her forehead. She started sighing so I continued. I started to finger her and she began to whimper and moan. We then started necking. Something seemed weird. She was a tad sloppy but I chalked it up to being tired.

With her assistance I pulled off her pajama bottoms and went down on her. Then it happened. "What Are You Doing?" Anne screeched. I stopped and rolled over to my side of the bed. The strangeness of the situation finally clicked. She'd been asleep the whole time. At this point I couldn't handle another thing so I decided to deal with it in the morning and fell into a weird sleep.

After two hours of sleep I woke up and the situation was no better. Anne was sleeping on the couch in the living room. I hoped that she'd moved because I'd been snoring or grinding my teeth, but I knew the real reason. I'd stepped beyond her boundaries.

Sure we'd been lovers in the past and yes she'd responded to my actions but she wasn't conscious and that is what made things wrong. I went into the bathroom and performed my morning toilette. I scrubbed and scraped hard trying to repent for the wrong I'd created. As I lifted a towel off the rack it exploded from the wall. Thin metal rods filled the air and crashed to the tiles. Well, Anne is probably awake now.

I exited the bathroom and let her know that I was done in there. Without saying anything she grabbed her stuff and locked herself in. I crawled back into bed to watch some TV until check out time. I'd paid for this room until 12:00 and I intended to stay until 12:00

At 11:00 we were both ready and the tension had grown too large to be contained by even this vast suite. Anne was sitting quietly doing nothing in the living room. I was burying my head under the noise and mindlessness of Saturday morning kid's television. What ever happened to those old shows like Land of the Lost? The shield of the TV started to crumble so I grabbed my luggage and told Anne that it was time to check out. She told me that she'd meet me at the car.

I go downstairs and grudgingly pay the bill. The desk clerk asks me if we'd had a pleasant stay. I smile and lie in the diplomatic manner that I was brought up to. No matter how bad things are you never let them see you sweat. "It was great, thank you." I oozed with perfect prep school charm.

I put the top down and loaded the luggage into the car. Anne got in and I tried to start the car. The engine kept turning without catching with the choke full out. I popped the bonnet to have a look. The choke unit had pulled off of the carb. Rather than spending the next couple of hours fixing it I duct taped the choke unit out of the way and primed the carb manually.

I hopped back in and started the car. We pulled onto the I-5 and headed north to Sedro-Woolley. Anne remained silent. I decided that if she hadn't said anything by Burlington Then I'd bring it up. This gave me enough time to work out a proper apology.

Aggressively, I hurled the car through the Saturday morning freeway traffic. The tension followed us no matter how fast I drove. Why can't people be as simple as cars? There's almost nothing that can't be remedied on a car with a little duct tape. No, I am a better mechanic than that, I just wish that I didn't get into messes with people like this. So much for thoughts of this developing into a meaningful relationship. I really believed that I had a chance.

I pulled into a gas station in Burlington and topped the car up. I got back into the car. This is it. Speak now or forever hold my peace.

"Anne I am sorry about what happened. I thought that you were awake. You weren't acting as though you were asleep." I rush out.

I am glad you said something. I've been building up my courage." She replies with a jagged edge to her voice.

"I couldn't take the silence anymore. I feel like shit about what I did but I really thought that you were awake." I answer striving to keep any defensiveness out of my voice.

"Okay, but in the future ask first." She absolves me of some of my guilt, but I know that only time will grind it all away.

We head back to Canada. She tells me that she can catch a bus in Bellingham so that I don't need to cancel my trip. I tell her that I am also coming back to get my car repaired.

The truth was that all I needed was a new gasket set and some special bolts to put it back on, which I could have bought in Seattle. My trip ended when I invited her along.

My reason for going away was to get in touch with myself. To be alone and free myself from my problems that were interfering with my life back in Victoria. Particularly those involving how I screw my life up over women. My trip ended as soon as I allowed her to come along with me.

Sex always makes life so complicated. Well, sex and all the other stuff that goes along with it. Maybe I should have stayed a virgin. If I'd never developed a taste for it maybe I wouldn't have pursued it with the verve that I have. There's a lot there that I have to examine. The problem isn't just sex. If it was I'd just become celibate. What I want is love, companionship, intimacy, respect, and above all friendship.

Is it out there? This thing I am searching for. My friend Sam and his fiancée seem to have it. She told me that he's her best friend. I see them together and they're so happy. They've both made alterations to their own lives to accommodate each other. They have also managed to keep their own lives. Rather than taking the slash and burn approach that I always use they have managed to maintain their individuality. They haven't given themselves up for each other, but have created something better to exist within and still be true to themselves.

This is definitely a simplification of things, for life isn't black and white (Even for a Two Tone Ska Boy like Sam). It is a direction for me to investigate. To scope out. Check all the angles. By knowing what it is I'll be able to create it for myself. It all comes down to needing to know myself and from there I'll be able to find it. When the parameters are all clear they can be filled.

Despite this personal clarity I've achieved from all of this, Anne is still angry with me. I've apologized repeatedly to her answering machine, but she isn't returning my calls. I am putting it down on paper to convey my sincerity in a form longer than the twenty second chance that her machine offers me. I hope that she will eventually return my calls and we can discuss this all out with the objectiveness that time creates. Up till then I am getting my life in order to prevent anything else like this from happening. Maybe I should try celibacy until I have my house in order.
Marriage & Friendship

Friendship is a commitment between two people; marriage is just a legal contract - M.S.B.M. Being cynical on a rainy winter afternoon when time and space gave forth to emotion.

Marriage. I am not thinking about it for myself for a while. What I want to look at is the effect of marriage on my friendships with two different friends. They are Siobhan and Sam.

The first one is Siobhan's marriage. I've just got back from visiting her and her husband in Toronto. The moment she opened the door the old sexual energy between us flared up. For the last couple of weeks it had been developing in the ethers of our respective sub-consciousnesses. When we hugged and looked deeply into each other's eyes it spun up around us, wrapping us in its warmth.

What had started its rebirth was that she was thinking of leaving her husband. We had talked about her coming back to Victoria and living with me. This all turned into a beautiful, sexual, intimate dream that vaporized as soon as I shook Wes's hand in the same way that the rubbing alcohol does that precedes the jab of the needle. I couldn't take his wife from him.

Luckily for me the situation with them had changed since Siobhan and I last discussed their separation. He was now seeing a psychologist and getting his life back on track. The worst part of it all was that he was a nice guy. How could I even dream of snatching his wife away? Here he was inviting me to stay at their apartment for the month I was going to be in Toronto. He set up a bed for me in the living room and did all that he could to help me settle in and feel at home.

On the trolley to Siobhan's work we discussed the fact that she was going to stay with Wes now that he was getting things together. We also talked about sleeping together. This was something we'd both been discussing ever since I decided to go to Toronto for a visit. She'd brought it up with Wes and it was an issue for him. With the recent insecurity of their marriage the thought of sharing Siobhan with another man (she hadn't told him that she was thinking of moving in with me) was more than he could deal with. Siobhan had thought it would be alright because he'd allowed her to pursue liaisons with women. Maybe at an earlier point in their marriage it would have been okay but now wasn't the time.

Our relationship had changed but I like the new form as much as the old one. We've now replaced the passion and pleasure with love and respect. In my last week there when I'd be walking downtown with Siobhan we'd hug and walk practically on top of each other trying to absorb as much of each other as possible before I left. During these moments I'd consider moving to Toronto. I came close to doing this repeatedly.

I realized that I couldn't live in Toronto because I hate the climate and pollution as well as the size. There is also the higher cost of living and I couldn't afford to drive my MG there because of the insurance rates and environmentally I couldn't drive it between November and May because of the snow and cold as well as the salt on the road. I don't resent the choice for I still have my new friendship with Siobhan and Wes which is only slightly affected by the distance.

I became really close to both of them. We eventually got to the point where I'd crawl into bed with them in the morning to watch Breakfast Television. Like Henry Miller getting into bed with Hugo and Anais Nin while they read Tropic Of Cancer. I became part of their family. This is far more important to me than the sex that I'd originally planned on.

With Siobhan and Wes our friendship became better because of or maybe despite their marriage, I am not sure. My friendship with Sam has deteriorated since his marriage to Meaghan. Now they only call upon me when they need something.

From when Sam first moved back to Victoria last May until I left at the end of August I practically lived at his apartment. When I felt hungry I'd help myself to whatever was in the fridge. It became my first home and my own apartment became a place where I showered, shaved and changed my clothes.

Three days after I returned from Toronto I had to drive down to Northern Washington for Sam and Meaghan's wedding. While we were making arrangements for me to keep an eye on his apartment while they were on their honeymoon Meaghan told Sam that he should give me a set of keys. He told her that I had my own set. She got upset about this and wanted me to give them to her when they returned under the guise of her needing a set. Sam suggested getting a set made for her. She said why do that when Sebastian has a set.

Now Meaghan won't let him out of the house. The last time I spent any time alone with Sam was when I took him out for lunch one day when I met him at work. Two years ago on a drizzling Friday night in Vancouver Sam told me I was pussy whipped. Now he's not only whipped but flayed. She spends his money and she only got a job when Sam made that condition for their moving into a nicer apartment.

The last three times that they have called me have been them needing things from me. I am feeling really hurt by this. Before they were married Sam and I were constantly trading off favors with each other. Hell, I didn't even consider them to be favors, they were things one does for a friend because he's your friend. Now that they're married he calls up and leaves messages on my machine asking favors from me like lending them money or helping them move.

I feel like I am whining at this point. We've all changed and have to live with that fact. I have to get on with my own life and stop living life like a ledger book. If I have a problem with my relationship with Sam and Meaghan I have to take care of it. We need some space. I am going to step back from them for a month or so. I have my own life and if I get bored then I can go and hang out with my friend Mark who's an artist in Vancouver. Rather than spending weekends in Victoria feeling rejected by Sam and Meaghan I can get away and drink the Big City in. There's also Flash Master Gav who I've been meaning to go over and see. The only thing keeping me over here on the island is me and my self-pity.

Susan

I'm as pure as the driven slush. - Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

I am sitting at Siobhan's desk at the Ontario Craft Council while she works at the front desk. I look through the window and see her talking to a tall, dark haired, dark skinned woman in a black catsuit and black patent leather Doc Marten boots. She walks into the office and says "So you're Sebastian. Siobhan tells me that you like to play with pain."

Not quite knowing how to answer and wanting to appear suave I simply say "Yeah."

"I am Siobhan's friend Susan, she's been telling me about you ever since you called her last Spring."

Still trying to recover my control of the situation I ask her out for a drink. I take her to Trader Vic's and order us a Scorpion Bowl to share. We start swapping stories trying to top each other's wildest sexual exploits.

"I belong to a private members nightclub, do you want to come with me tonight?" She offers.

"I'd like to come with you anytime." I reply finally feeling comfortable enough to let my guard down. "Then how about now?" She answers.
Vamp Fucking

Afternoons are prone to magic - M.S.B.M. Oct. 1991

The late afternoon light cuts through the blinds slicing the bed into quadrants and glints off the dissection kit on the bedside table. The television set hisses on a non-channel blocking out the street sounds from down below. Despite this a truck makes its presence known by causing the table to rattle and the metal instruments to clank against each other.

They kiss and he reaches across to the table removing a medical grade scalpel from one of the slots. Her wrists are cuffed and held above her head on an antique brass hook set in the wall. She squirms playfully trying to slip the cuffs up off of the hook. He'd moved the bed away from the wall before bringing her over. It is precisely the right span away to keep her from escaping.

Her black hair pools out around her on the pillow. He kisses her forehead and then quickly licks her right eyebrow. They smile at each other as he cups her breast. She closes her eyes and her smile becomes contented as her nipple hardens. The tip of her tongue appears between her lips. He tips his head forward and lets his bangs brush across her right nipple.

"Do you trust me?" he poses to her. "Yes." She replies and then for a second after looks as though she is about to say something else but then stops and settles back into her contented look. He sits up and holds the scalpel between his thumb and forefinger just above the blade. He starts tracing around the outside of her areola. She gasps and he snaps the knife back. "Don't do that!" He warns and then kisses her.

He then slides the blade over her nipple causing it to start to harden again. Circling down from the tip of the nipple he describes a spiral out to the edge of her areola. "Stop!" she gasps. He sits up, tosses his hair back out of his eyes and sets the scalpel down on the table. He opens one of the small drawers set into the wall next to the bed. Out of it he extracts a small chrome key and unlocks the cuffs. He takes her right wrist gently between his hands and rubs them urging the blood the blood back into it.

As she reaches over to the table he leans back settling his head back onto the hard pillow. She snatches the scalpel off the table. He breathes in slowly through his nose, holds it and lets his shoulders relax. His cock bobs up and down like some sprung play toy. She snaps her head down catching it between her teeth holding the edge of the scalpel between the base of his cock and scrotum. He hardens more in response to the touch and the risk. She holds the blade against the side of his shaft. Taking his cock just below the blade between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand she pulls the skin back dragging the skin across the blade. She pulls the blade back and slips it down his thigh. He grabs her wrist and holds it off to the side. They sit up facing each other; their groins pressing together with their legs creating M's. He extends his right arm over to the bedside table and grabs the second scalpel.

On each other's opposing right shoulders they quickly slash each other. Not deep enough to cause permanent damage but deep enough for a steady flow of pain and blood. She lies back and he positions himself between her thighs dripping blood onto her cheek. He thrusts into her and licks the blood off her cheek. They fasten onto each other's cuts and start sucking.

The throb of the pain forms a counterpoint to the pleasure. He grinds against her and sucks in hard causing the blood to gush into his mouth and swishes it around his mouth. The pain washes away as the pleasure builds. She pulls him up higher so that his cock rubs against her clitoris while he plunges into her. She turns her head and drizzles some of the blood and saliva out of her mouth into his ear. As he approaches orgasm she places her hand against his ass holding him still while she slowly milks him. In opposition to the slowness of her thrusts she starts sucking harder. She picks up on his excitement and starts to pulverize his cock striving for her own release. They're both sucking away furiously at each other. As he starts to come she finds her own way over the edge and they both bite in harder. The pain has been replaced with the pleasure pulsing through and over them.

They start kissing letting the blood they were pooling in their mouths meld. He takes a blinder out from another of the drawers in the wall and covers his eyes and rolls over to the other side of the bed. She puts a neoprene glove on her right hand and starts stroking him hard again. Once erect she straddles him and starts using the head of his cock to jack herself off. She holds him painfully tightly and rubs him back and forth over her clit.

As her excitement builds the blood starts flowing again down the right side of her body dripping off the tip of her nipple, hard once again with excitement. Having already come once she is able to use him at her leisure to bring herself off not having to worry about him exploding unexpectedly. Finally unable to hold back any longer she starts coming. She drizzles honey onto the glove and starts jerking him off as he would himself. The variety of textures excites and intrigues him. Rather than analyzing them he gives himself over to running with the pleasure and diving into it. As it becomes apparent that he is about to come she leans forward over his cock. He sprays his come up into her face as she tries to catch some of it in her mouth.

He peels the glove off her right hand and they lick the mixture of honey and semen off of it.

They both lay back and play the events back over in their minds while masturbating. He falls asleep rather than finishing and only awakens when she whimpers with pleasure.
Settling Down

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love. - Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

I want to get into a relationship. The woman doesn't have to meet all of my requirements. What I want to do is establish a friendship first and then move to sex and the relationship. My friend Sam's wife told me before they got married that he was her best friend. I want to have that. I don't want to sleep with her the first night. I don't want it to be maintenance sex. I want for the first time in my life to make love. I want it to be a sharing of each other's bodies not just friction. I am really committed to working at this.

I met this girl a couple a weeks ago at Sam and Meaghan's wedding. The only problem is that she's a practicing Christian, I am a Bacchanalian. She belongs to one of those fundamentalist religions. Sam and Meaghan's love won out over her being a Mormon, so maybe we can arrive at a happy medium. I know that it is useless to argue theology with her because she has faith. That invalidates any form of logic.

Since high school I've had one big rule with women. It has remained constant up until now. I always avoided women who wore crosses that were visible unless they were upside down. Now I think that I can look past her religion and explore the woman behind the mask. Shit, what kind of a point is this for me to work from. I am viewing something that she holds important as being a mask. It is going to take a lot to get past this. I am going to visit with her just as friends. It took Sam and Meaghan six years to get to this point.

Who knows how things may go between us. I've never been involved with a religious woman at least not one with vastly different spiritual beliefs than me. Her whole way of thinking will be influenced by her beliefs as are mine. This is all too complicated to be analyzed like this. What I need to do is to meet with her. Talk with her. Get to know her. Become friends. Only after following this process can I start to even think of getting romantically involved with her. In some ways it would be nice if everyone believed in the same things. Then again that's one of the things that keeps life interesting.

Fuck it. Our basic ideologies will be in continuous conflict. She can no more understand maintenance sex as I can repenting for sins. I don't really believe in sin at least not the Christian ideas like impure thoughts and sex outside marriage. I don't think that I really am ready to settle down into a relationship. I am going to ride this trough between maintenance sex and love and commitment.

The End, Again

This is the end. My only friend, the end. - Jim Morrison

So I have reached a conclusion. Life is what we make of it. You can live fast but you just reach the end that much faster. There is more to life than fucking and drugs. There is finding out what there is inside of us. I am not talking about some Judeo-Christian soul concept. I am talking about that which makes us alive and sentient. We have to be true to our own existence. You can't keep bashing your head in the name of a good time. The pain et al isn't worth it. Life is short enough as it is. I am not saying to stay home and live your life hiding in the closet (Sorry Emily Dickinson). All that I am getting at is that we have to realize that we are all people.

Drugs. I am not against them but learn all about them first. One has to realize that every act has its consequences. When I first started reading Carlos Castaneda my mother warned me not to try the drugs that he did until I was twenty five. She felt that by that time I'd have a good enough perspective on life to make that kind of a decision. It is a big decision. One that most people enter into without the right amount of thought and seriousness. Most people including myself use them to escape from life. Carlos Castaneda was taught to use them to gather a deeper insight into life and that was the lesson I learned from him and only ran into problems when I veered from that path.

I've learned that my actions do influence other people. I lost a girlfriend with whom I was developing a relationship with because of drugs. She couldn't understand why anyone would do them and consequently couldn't handle my need to do them. She felt that her being with me should be enough to make me happy. The truth was that at that time they weren't making me happy, I just felt I needed them to cope with any degree of stress in my life. One should never try to combat stress with coke. That's the kind of idea that coke helps develop in your mind. It only amplifies everything and shows it in a bleak and barren light. When the initial rush wears off my personality gets twisted into a monster. Simply, I become an asshole.

So, I have decided that my life is mine to live as I see fit. My parents can't run it any longer and to be true to myself I am going to live my life exactly as I choose. I've been offered a job at a resort in Japan as a combination English teacher and banquet waiter. Weird combination but it works for me. I am going to take it and I shall live each day as though it was my last.

Carpe Diem! I no longer need to rely on drugs or other people to make me happy. That I can generate on my own. As I said before this world is moving fast so you have to scamper quickly to make your niche in it. And once in it make it as comfortable as possible while remaining flexible to change.

This is all I have to say. At least for now.

\- April 12th, 1992

About the Author

Brook Milotay started writing stories at 7 and hasn't been able to stop. In 1990 he had a motorcycle accident that nearly ended his life and during his recovery he wrote these essays as a means for exploring who he was and what he wanted out of life. While there are nuggets of truth in them, there is also a hefty dose of fantasy.

Connect with Brook Milotay

If you enjoyed the book, hated the book or just feel like chatting drop me a note at Brook@Milotay.me.
