The brat-prince: Harlow.

Three years ago.

This was their two year anniversary. The headboards were raging with limp handcuffs, freckled with spilt, buttermilk-fragment candle wax. Razorblades were dressed in blood and rained next to an avalanche of wicked powder lines on the nightstand beside the bed. There was a jet black, liquid dress puddled on the carpet, a tie, a pinstriped dress shirt, underwear. In the wake of fifth floor, panting madness, there was a boy and a girl, strewn on the mattress, taming their labored breathing with the relaxation spells of Parliament Lights. His belly was the resting place for the ashtray, his ribcage braille dimpling through corpsewhite skin, a grungy cherry-scabbed scar slashed down the middle of his emaciated chest where his heart was once manipulated by rubbergloved doctor's hands, tools and infringing scapels alike. The only part of him that was still bleeding were his fresh wounds; the jail tallymarks on his wrist were casually splattered on the white linen. He bit at her back like a fucking rabid cat with a scratching post, but he carved his name into her pretty clavicle in a jagged toggle.

H a r l o w

Her name was Samantha, it seemed plain-jane and miles away from exotic. But her pinup figurine, lavish garters, and dropdead gorgeous face said otherwise. Her red lipstick was smeared pink sloppily around her mouth. There were remnants of it trotting breadcrumb trails all the way down the sloping canyon of his pelvis.

After he jabbed out the cigarette, he flipped the overgrown mouse-brown vines of his hair from plastering his perspiring brow, and he grazed the ashtray aside. Still bleeding like some sort of maniac, he climbed over her, and ended up resting his scalp in her lap, as though she were some holy maternal/nocturnal saint. Samantha rustled through his roots, and smoothed away the leftover veneer of slick sweat.

"I love you baby," she confided, sniffling absently. It was from post-nasal drip, not out of sentiment. "I'm glad I didn't leave you last year, you know? I'm really glad that... I'm really happy this all worked out, baby. One more month, one more month." And even though she was twenty-seven, and he only twenty-two, they were going to get married. The invitations weren't fringed like hallmark valentines, but rather they were black-and-white and printed with real blood. They were sadistic fireflies.

She rocked him back and forth, folding her legs indian style, and he just stared up at her, narrowing his eyes.

"Samantha-love?" Forlorn with an underlay of Limerick.

"Yes?"

"I'm gay."

<font color="#f22735" size="1">[ January 11, 2006 04:05 PM: Message edited by: methadrone ]</font>

He sent her out tumbling into the rain with her suitcase, a duffelbag and a box full of her things. After all, he was paying for the studio apartment. She was throwing curses at the window panes for a good hour until he finally opted to ghost towards his telephone, and dial the cops. When the hysterical girl was carted away, he hung his chin to bask for a split-second in the nauseating churn of remorse. Twenty-two, and his heart was just as good as being surgically removed.

The next day, after bellowing at his agent that couldn't even get his short stories or poetry laminated in magazine pages, he returned home, stressed, throwing his blazer on the back of a kitchen chair. The apartment had a chic woman's touch, but it was him who had decorated it. Her paintings were ugly and a sore excuse for abstract hard-edge. As soon as she left at three am, in the wake of sexual fireworks and no mercy, he tore them all down and stashed them beneath a sheet in his closet. They were just that grotesque.

But the girl still had her keys, and that would explain the envelope marked with his name in cursive on the table, just beneath a vase of fresh veinslit-red roses. One of his brows perked, and he sliced it open with his thumb, and to his dismay, he discovered that it was two pages! Front and back! His eyes scrolled over it, nonetheless; skimming over the brutal, verbal wounds.

Harlow,

I came back today to collect my things, and everything I bought. You'll find that a lot of your clothes are missing, because like you, I'm an indian-giver. I bought it for you for Christmas, for your birthday, for our anniversaries, it was my money, my credit card, my plastic. My earnings.

He paused right there with bugging, thirsty-blue eyes, ripping an irate scowl.

"That... bitch!"

Frustrated, he read on.

I see that you didn't even hesitate to tear all of my paintings down. Obviously, it's been itching (kind of like the dick in your pants that fancies either fucking--or being fucked by a man, I think it's the later, you look like such a girl) you for the past year. You've always been a liar. I knew you didn't like my art.

He snorted, adding mumbled commentary between the margins. "That's right."

But I would've never suspected that you didn't love me. Or maybe you did, and you decided to pick the worst possible day, one day on the eve of our wedding to break it to me that you're a fucking fag. I should've known better. I should've told you, the day I met you, I had my suspicions. The way you're always grooming yourself, the way you're so vain. Sometimes, I thought you thought you were prettier than me. You probably do, you sick fuck. What kind of straight man doesn't like Julia Roberts? That's right. I should've known you were gay. You don't like sports, you won't watch tv, you are always dressing as though we're going to a fucking ball, and sometimes, you're so cold. Is it because you had no father, and that you're a sick, sniveling little mama's boy? I bet your "Mum" would be really happy to know that you like to fuck guys up the ass. Have you even done that yet? Or is it just some sick, twisted fantasy you have? The first sick, twisted fantasy that you couldn't put on me, because I lacked the parts.

"Learn to form a sentence, love."

Honestly, your novel is horrible. It's a cheap, thrown-together inspiration from our own relationship, except in another time period and under other circumstances. The fact that it sucks isn't because I was your muse, but because you *can't* write. I hardly got passed the first page and I was forcing smiles at you. Your poetry is shit too. At least make it rhyme. And when it does rhyme, it sounds like fucking Dr. Seuss on Xanies. Oh, and by the way, I took all your scripts. No more free refills from the pharmacy for you. Suffer and die alone, you fucking addicted bastard.

Love,
Samantha.

P.S. I overfed your goldfish.

To say the least, by the end of the letter, he was shocked, appalled---and flinging himself into the living room to check on the aquarium.

Dear Mr. Adams,

I regret to inform you that we cannot accept your manuscript, Chasing Tomorrow, Although this is the fourth revised copy you have sent us, I am still wary about the extremely controversial subject matter. The characterization is strong, your description is vivid, (if not a little too graphic at times) however, there is no way to market a book in the states as explicit, violent and vulgar as yours, despite your talent. I wish you the best of luck placing it in another house. I would be happy to look at any other manuscript that you submit to us that contains milder content.



Senior Editor,
Cellar Door Publishing.

<center>Beneath the snowflake confetti of the sky
he popped a pill and adjusted his tie
And set out for darker meanings

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...ES/harlow5.jpg</center>

Name: Harlow Bryce Adams.
Birthdate: May 3rd, 1979.
Sign: Taurus.
Hometown: Limerick City, Ireland.
Sexual preference: Gay.
Status: Single.
Occupation: Writer, substitute teacher, full-time terrible person.

<center>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...NES/harlow.jpg</center>

Likes: style, classic novels, bondage, winter, conspiracy theories, tabloids magazines, pharmaceutical drugs, flirting, classical music, death, collecting newspaper clippings, dominating, destruction, red wine, men, dining out, cult serial killers, explicit public displays of affection.

Dislikes: television, rednecks, anyone without manners, loud music, therapists, Jesus, butterflies, ketchup, transexuals, romance novels, Julia Roberts, cheap alcohol, typical house pets, morning joggers, warm weather.

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ May 10, 2005 04:22 AM: Message edited by: clockwise culture ]</font>

<center>"I very much want you to enjoy this,
my little brat-prince; I want you to love it,
to scream for it, I want it to ruin you for anyone else."</center>


The title was so apropos; he'd always fancied himself a prince. He ruled over planes dusted with ash after a nuclear winter, with fences made of barbed-wire, protecting the sheep who often drank blood from the more ferocious carnivores. Something inside of him was alive, when he found himself gasping against the empty theater's walls. He was already becoming a junkie, whimpering at the sharp words echoing behind him. They were so recalcitrant and sickeningly beautif--

The galloping of his fingers against the keyboard was cut off abruptly, so that his switchblade stare could span over the room of high school deliquents. He was a fucking detention nazi. It was once in a blue moon that the teacher he filled in for had detention duty, but when he had to, he was as harsh as a nun bearing a whipcracking ruler. The room was full of lazy, sulking teenagers, all cradling their foreheads in lotus-folded arms, cat-napping until three forty five. But, he swore he just saw a butterscotch rubberband fling itself across the room. There were two guilty subjects:

Fat boy with the tragic haircut and ungodly freckles, he determined was number one,

Awkwardly skinny boy in the filthy Slipknot t-shirt and billowing, unforgivable jeans he thought, was number two.

Beneath the anchor of his stare, they both jack-knifed into marionette-strung composure. He was a regular subsitute, and he was known for humiliating the students with a shameless snarl. There was a rumor wafting through the hollow hallways once that he made a girl cry for eating her leftover lunch in class. He told her that she really could stand to lose a pound or twenty. He simply denied it to the principal. Satisfied by their reformed postures, and cowering, evasive stares (he pondered insulting them at whim, but thought better of it) he turned back to the Macintosh, continuing his recollecting adventures in word processing.

The room was inhumanely cold, because he parted every window as method of torture. Since he also knew that teenagers tended to loathe classical music, the minimized internet explorer box was merry with baroque masterpieces; namely Jean-Philippe Rameau's Le Vezinet. At the beginning of the period they all mutually flailed their arms and groaned--- then they saw just who was lurking behind the computer screen and obediently crumpled in their seats like puppies with their tails caught between their legs.

His dark hair was mussed, his pinstriped dress shirt sleeves rolled casually to his elbows since professional school was over. His blazer was strewn on the back of his seat, his kneecap anxiously wavering under the cheap desk. From his angle, he was certain that he was fairly obscure. As he thundered down his free-verse thoughts and the anthems of the night prior, he began to flirt with the idea of perhaps indulging in something wicked. Everything seemed in check; there was a tissue box in arm's reach, a blockading monitor, a swivel chair that brought his seated hips with ease beneath the desk.

ul. This foreign touch, the taste of the theater boy's language, the thrill of his relentless hips -- oh, they were starting to prematurely blowdry his frigid heart to lukewarm...

With such discretion, his hand pinched his sharp, scarlet tie and took a ski-slope downwards and plunged along the copper-notched teeth of his zipper. The classical music muted the slow, unfastening sound, and the screen guised his jarred lips when he eventually wrapped himself up in his hand. The veins in his forearms jumped to skin-puncturing tension, his scalp tilting back on a subtle axis.

Ah, if only Chance was aware of what a filthy muse he was.

The playground was like a landfill, beneath the gray splash of sky. Early October presented a range between forty to forty-five degrees, and the dampness alone was responsible to congested chests and flus oppressing the old and weak. At nine-years-old he still turned his nose up at the elderly; their clammy, arthritis-gnarled fingers were more grotesque than any nightmare-generated monster. At recess, a steady breakoff from the drone of schoolmaster nuns wielding rulers, and sexually-deprived angst, he was kicking a soccer ball alone. Unlike the other boys, he never minded his uniform. He couldn't wait for Confirmation in a couple of years, because he knew his mother would save up money for a proper suit and polished shoes. Whirling around in dizzy circles, with his chin sloped low, he booted it a sliver too far until it landed in a mess of brush. He took a lazy, dreamscaping gait over to retrieve the ball, dropping to his haunches in vain; he didn't want to dirty knees.

That was when he looked just beyond the fence. He tucked the sphere of the ball beneath his armpit and slowly gathered to a stance, daggering him point-blank with a vacant stare. His lips pursed, his tender, pale features were emotionlessly still, overgrown blades and wisps of brown hair shingling his brows. The way he didn't move was eerie, but nothing in comparison to the man that lingered there. He was dressed in goldenrod-faded-to-gray stubble, a putrid green trenchcoat. He would've looked like a fisherman if it weren't for the beady pale eyes hiding behind the ovals of his glasses and the candycane striped tie. The stranger seemed almost intimidated by the expressionless boy, and thus tickled the bitter air with an awkward, demure wave, trying to gauge a reaction.

Harlow was unbudging, unresponsive. Inwardly, he was amused at his antics. At such an early age he could read the mapped wrinkles of the man's face literately; every pore and margin. He knew he was a pervert. The kind that his mother warned him about. (Oh, his mother, and his three, lanky older brothers- they struggled to put bread on the table. And such potential she had, and was using it to stamp sales signs along glossy-mopped grocery store aisle.)

It was then that the shrill recess whistle pierced the air, and brougth a tumbling cringe down the forty-something man's spine. The boy threw down his soccer ball, and pivoted to stroll away, lagging behind all of the other children. Just before he climbed into the door, with a balmy teacher's hand ushering his petite shoulderblade, he snapped one last glance to the stranger. Even when mute he insulted the pervert in so many ways.

Which only sparked an obsession. He started to come to the playground every day after. Harlow never told his mother, because he didn't think it was relevant, and his early-developed sadistic side quite enjoyed taunting the man with what he couldn't have. Youth, soft skin, naivete.

But he was never expecting him to take his hand on the fifth day and jerk him into his car.

With his chubby hand caught within his mother's steel-enclosed grip, he was escorted by the house, surrounded by black-suited police; two in front, two in the back, pairing off like the nazi regime. He canted his chin up at his mother, who was visibly devastated. He stared up at her in pure wonderment as she stifled her bodywracking sobs in the clap of her hand, and kept her eyes sealed in slits to build a dam to her salt-taffied tears.

It was night, the stars couldn't duck through the shawls of smog, but the police lighs and ambulances lit up the street festively like a perverse parade. He saw his captor, with his dishevelled hair, and red-splotchy face with a tall cop's hand swallowing his skull and ducking him into the backseat of a car. He wasn't the least bit gentle with him either. He jabbed his nightstick at him instead of asking him to move in further and then threw the door shut, unapologetically and resonating on its hinges.

When mother and son had to waddle down the sidewalk to take the trip to the station in the caravan, he absently waved to the window at the wrecked man who had him locked in his house for a little over a week. He did not wave back however, and this angered Harlow. His mother caught this gesture and squealed loudly, crumbling onto her knees in front of her little stiff little boy, jostling his shoulders, raising her voice to high-pitched notches. But, he didn't know why.

"Harlow. Harlow? He's not your friend, Harlow. Don't look at him---listen, look at me. Look at Mum. Harlow."

Vividly blinking, he shoved his hands in the pockets of his plaid knickers before he decidedly brought one up to stroke her hair in a childish attempt at comforting her.

"Don't worry Mum, I'm not even hurt one bit! Why are you crying, then?!"

If there was anything in the world that ever pained him to see---it was his mother's tears.

Chance,

The ways in which I adore you are unholy. Whatever it was that we quarreled about last night has completely slipped my mind. I don't know where it started or where it ended, just like I don't know where I start and where you end. We have been Siamese for a week now, and to most people that seems like chump's change. It takes other people months, maybe even years to actually fall in love with one another. No, I'm not jumping the gun, I'm not in love with you just yet, but it lingers overhead in the near future. I cannot resist you no matter how hard I try. Your eyes are so electric and your voice so cryptic when you're weaving your spell. My knees are always knocking together like a frightened school boy. I launch my chest and puff it out but you're always the pushpin that deflates it.

I've been calling you obsessively, and I can only imagine that your cellphone must be turned off or else you'd be simply annoyed with me by now and pick up. You're a stubborn, filthy bastard alright, but that's exactly what I adore about you. I think I may have finally met my match. What does love taste like? Maybe love tastes like strawberries or the metallic taste of blood. But, when I taste your sweat, when I taste your come, that's what I imagine it tastes like. You taste so sweet even when you're rough, even when your voice is like gravel and spitting the sickest, most twisted things in my ears.

It has only been twelve hours, and already I've managed to fling myself in the movie theater where you work. I chose the theater where we had our first "date" and was angered to see that it wasn't empty, with spotlights shining on you and I. Of course, you weren't there, and coincidentally it was that movie you were threatening to leave me to see the night before. I stalked up and down the aisles, completely shell-shocked that you weren't there, and for some reason, as silly as it is, I jabbed my finger at the projector and demanded that you come down and show yourself. Your coworkers were as amiable as they could be with a madman giddy and slurring on Xanex, so when you get a chance thank them on my behalf for their endless patience.

I worked at a school today that I'm familiar with. It's just over the bridge on the outskirts of the city, and is lined with dead trees and monotone suburbia. I must have taken out every ounce of my frustration on the teenagers, and I was surprised to have went home without being permanently banished from working there ever again. (I smuggled time in between periods to crush myself in a bathroom stall in the teacher's lavatory and I reminisced and tried to become possessed with my leftover rage from the night prior. I jerked off with a vengeance, and my inspiration was the mere thought of you in my cotton.)

Now I'm home, but I'm not about to give up. I have no idea how to give this letter to you, since I don't know your address. I'm afraid this will never make it to you in the first place. My hand is tired and my throat is dry. There seems to be only one option left: to saunter to the place we met and pray to a deaf God that you will be there. I'll drown my rue in alcohol and pills, and I'll fall like poisoned royalty pathetically in your arms. I can only wish that you'll have me back after my behavior. Although, I must admit your retorts last night were sincerely less than witty.

Know this, if you ever get the chance to read this: you're the oxygen on which my lungs are functioning. You control my heart-rate with your words and dirty touch. I don't quite know how to handle this alien feeling, this feeling of wanting someone so bad I'd slit my throat if I had to breathe for one second without the reassurance of their company. You will never see me fall to my knees like a peasant to beg for you back, albeit I'd gladly do it to suck you off. But, I would gladly extend my arms to reach for any other measure.

Sincerely yours,
Harlow Adams
(Your brat-prince.)

"Why don't you take your sunglasses off, Samantha? We're in a restaurant, and it's dark outside. In winter, the sun usually sinks around five pm, are you aware of this?"

She perked her chin at the table, her cherry-red lips teasing a forced grin before they just opted for smugness instead. She tugged her glasses away from their perch on her nose, and folded them neatly in a compact case inside her black purse. "Sit down." Then, she flagged down a waiter with a distressed flail of her bare arm. Now, that her coat had been shed at the door she was wearing a new funeral-black dress, and the plunge was magical.

The waiter turned to Harlow to ask what he wanted to drink, his mouth barely unhinged before the Irishman spat an apathetic reply.

"Just water," he grumbled.

One of her sloped brows took a surprised quirk, sewing lines into her milkwhite forehead. "Water? Aren't you going to get some wine---something real to drink? You never just get water."

"One glass leads to seven more for me, love. I have a date tonight."

"Oh, a date?" She was trying to mask her jealousy with cynicism, even though, she, after two years had moved on. "What's his name?"

"I don't see why that matters to you. You don't see me asking your new beau's name."

"It's Thomas."

"And by Thomas, you mean Tom, and Tom means another simple American with sandy-blonde hair and a jock-white smile."

"His hair is brown actually. Why, are you jealous?"

"Not at all." He creased his fingers in his temple, circling with an exasperated sigh. "I wasn't aware that I was lured here for you to try and provoke my jealousy. Know this now: every attempt will fail. I could care less about your new boyfriends, or even what you're wearing. My sexual attraction to you has dwindled down to nothing." Even after such a curt statement, he tossed a full-fledged grin up at the waiter, who, physically embodied his former description of Samantha's 'boyfriend.' Now, she knew where he took his inspiration from.

"May I take your orders?"

"Yes---"

"No. I haven't even glanced at the menu, really Tom."

"My name isn't Tom---"

"Go away for a moment. Shoo. Go."

His ex-fianc? just looked horrified at his snotty behaviour, but then again, she should've acclimated to it by now.

He'd been like this ever since he was fresh-faced and nineteen, attending University in Glasglow, turning his nose up at all the average-looking, intellectual girls that so hungrily chased after him.

"You're in a bad mood tonight, Harlow."

"That's because you're sitting across from me."

She knotted her fingers in the stark-white table cloth, until her knuckles burned a whiter shade. She was trying to hard not to lose her patience, because they both knew that older women were ticking timebombs.

"Onto easier subjects, Harlow, how's school?"

"Fine."

"Have you been writing?"

"No."

These monosyllabic answers were beginning to annoy her. The pompous expression written sharp across his face completely blighted every last inch of her patience. It was like he was taunting her across the table.

"And the sex? The gay sex? I mean, you were always pretty dominant in bed with me, but I take it that with other men you're the bitch---er, the bottom?"

The smirk from his face faded.

With a noisy clatter of pre-set dishes, he braced one hand on the table, and sloppily leaned across, striking her cheek feverishly with the razor-red imprint of his hand. When she surfaced from such a blow, gasping and shriveling into herself, her nose was trickling with oozing blood, and her eyes were as wide as a fawn. Complacent, he crashed back into his chair, refolded his skinny legs, and ironed down his white tie.

But, this didn't happen: it was all in his imagination. Once revived from reverie he was met with her disgusting saucy stare still fixated on him, awaiting an answer.

"I play both roles. Most of the men I fuck are terrific at it. I mean, they don't whine and squirm around. They don't beg for mercy like a little girl. I can have sex with them everyday! There's no bleeding once a month to deter that! The sex is brilliant. And yours? How's your heterosexual sex?"

She threw down her hand and made a whole scene, shoving herself from the table, throwing her bag over her shoulder, stabbing lethal knife-point stilettos into the carpet. She didn't even say 'goodbye', she just haughtily marched away, her jaw set firmly, her gothic veil of black hair breezing behind her.

"Bye, love!" He called, flashing a wave to her unseeing shoulderblades.

<font color="#EA2539" size="1">[ December 25, 2004 12:12 AM: Message edited by: london's burning ]</font>

"Hello?" The number was private. Therefore, the tone he chose was labored and husky, as though he were in the process of dismounting a sweat-sticky lover.

"Harlow. Do you have time tonight?" It seemed as though the man on the other end was trying to tame the nervous rattle of his basslined voice, but his attempts failed, and it only came out as point-blank desperate.

Harlow zoomed out into a silent trance, staging a lean, bonesoaking recline in his black swivel chair that lingered behind an alien glowing computer screen. The word processor was drawn, but there were no words functioning in a sentence. He had unconsciously typed: 'Chance Chance Chance Chance' at least a hundred times. In contrast to the rest of his apartment, his office looked like ground zero; there were crumpled papers littering the polished floorboards as though inspiration came in snowfall. There was a cork bulletin board ripped dry of any notes or messages hovering above his monitor, a faxing machine that was dusty, and one single cordless phone cradle that boasted in neon-red digits--- seven new messages.

This was how he worked; he divided his social and working life apart. His employees knew his house line, his friends/family/lover knew his cell phone number. He'd always done a very good job at keeping them separated.

"Who is this?" It came like a riddle, his watercolor eyes sharp and minding the time on the pixelated toolbar. Four hours until he met up with Chance, four hours until his baby was out of work.

"You know who it is--- listen-- I don't have time to fuck around. She's--she's gone, if you come over right now... "

"You have to understand, I have a lot of clients named John," he lied, cutting in with lilting amusement.

"It's John."

"John, who? I know a few Johns."

"John McCan---Harlow, please."

"One hour, John. That's all. I have to be home to shower, I have a real date tonight."

When he killed the line, he brooded alone for a moment, smugly cleansing his face with the webbing of his hand. If he didn't enjoy it at all --if it was just a way of making money, then why was there guilt?

Because there was deceit, and he loathed it.

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ April 02, 2005 12:22 PM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

<center>pick a song and sing a yellow nectarine
take a bath, i?ll drink the water that you leave
if you should die before me -
ask if you can bring a friend

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...ES/harlowx.jpg</center>

Fuck being star-crossed lovers, we fucked our names into the stars. My obsession with our strapping young lad, Mr. Chance Laurent is strutting (in lethal stilettos, might I add) on the dotted borderline of lunacy. Obsession, infatuation, compulsion, addiction, fixation --there is no word for it. My brain is perpetually strangled in some stylishly-buckled straitjacket, because we've written a novel of a definition for the word love. We've created a new breed; one that runs on the power lines of impulse and madness.

Every time he walks through the door of my bedroom there's some revolution of synapses jolting through my body. He dirties my mind and triggers this need to lay out like a virgin whore on an altar for him. Whenever we're apart, he sits in the very front pocket of my imagination. I try to form actual words and actual sentences, but his name just stage dives from my tongue (which is always proud to bore his juice.)

"Have you the time, sir?"

"Chance?"

"Harlow, have you sent in the mail order?"

"Chance?"

"What is the property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force?"

"Chance?"

Oh, but I do not treat it as a curse. I embrace my madness for him whole-heartedly. I let everyone know it. The sky knows because I often converse with it about how his lips feel like the finest chiffon, the sheets know because I often brag about how that his ass is the sauciest thing on the planet, the city knows because our thrilling, exhibitionist tendencies know no boundaries. I laugh and pity all the sane, tedious couples that hold hands and go out to dinner on weeknights. I pity their zombie smiles, fumbling hands and modest first dates. They don't know what it's like to come so hard that the world becomes your own dizzy carousel ride. They don't know what it's like to want to kill anyone that looks at your lover wrong with your bare hands without a drop of guilt.

Do they miss their lover so much when they're gone and have to pollute themselves with the sick essence of the real world for a few hours that they actually stalk them? I think not. Our love is a thousand layers below rational. I worship every patch of skin; every solitary pore on my sweet prince's body, so much that when he slaps me and I fall back to dent the wall, I wear the imprint on my cheek like a diamond ring.

What I would give to keep him stuffed in my pillowcase like some toy figurine to bring out anytime at my own convenience to play with. I'd keep him tethered in the corner of my bedroom, drag him out onto the city streets on a leash of chain links wrapped in velvet, stifle him in a muzzle when I just wanted to drink in his beautiful face, and climb inside his skin and be him for a day.

I've picked up on his every microscopic, little quirk. I've watched his routines vary on his way to work almost everyday. I memorize the exact slant of the clock's hand when he comes home from work.

We're beyond taking bullets for one-another. I'd take the worst brand of death for him; I'd let someone's bare hands crush my throat until my jugular caved, I'd lose a limb and bleed myself dry all over a barbed-wire war trench, I'd be buried alive, choking on moths wings and oil. And why? Because I know that when I die, he'll die with me. I'll arrive on some alternate plane, on some new demented dimension --deliriously giddy because I know I'll wake in his arms, and we'll fuck each other into oblivion.

Our love is a dark kind. It's forbidden by stitched-together lips and chopped up tongues. We've created our own kingdom, where he's this radiating tyrant crowned in lead, and I'm his brat-prince, curled up in the hearth of his lap, grinning high-wattage smiles of deviance. Together, of course we'll take over the world. Nobody knows that yet.

<font color="#737371" size="1">[ January 04, 2005 08:04 AM: Message edited by: london's burning ]</font>

He was a shy, insecure, but passionate bastard son in his childhood. His mother often told him he was going to grow to be the most charming little prince, but his ego didn't bud-- he remained sweet and handed her the dishes. It only took one week when he was nine-years-old to drain the innocence from his eyes. She watched his perspectives change, she watched him tear apart cancerous dandelions without making a wish first, she realized he wasn't staring out at the other children in envy any longer (because the weather was damp, and he was in no condition to play) but was rather visually dissecting their flaws for his own sick pleasure. She watched him grow into a wicked spitfire, baiting boys and girls by a barbed-wire leash, before he eventually left because he had always been too big for Limerick. Taking a strut across the Atlantic on the unfurled tongue of a velvet red carpet, he reclined in his scar-encrusted throne, building scrapbook memories by turning everyone he met into enemies. By the time he was finally crowned in the gold-painted jawbones of all the skeletons that crumbled at his feet over the years, a foreign hand extended, and he was shockingly merciful towards it. It seemed that the world was the unfurling tongue of a velvet red carpet for them. For the first time since he was nine-years-old (when his innocence was drained, and he stepped into an emotionless comatose) he became electric-eyed and giddy. There was the promise of open-heart surgery in those eyes and stitches for all of his wounds. And the brat-prince swore that his suitor had 'happily ever after' etched in Braille goose bumps whenever he kissed him.

If anything, I'm too stubborn to seek him out. I haven't seen Chance in over a week, and instead of leaving obsessive messages on his voicemail (which I'm tempted to do) I figure I might as well wait it out. I have this nervewracking knot in my stomach, that I'm not sure is a product of returning to Limerick for a short while to show him off like a diamond ring, or if it's because I'm paranoid and guess that maybe he's not going to call.

On a lighter note, tonight I wrote thirty-four unedited pages. I've started a new project ---which I musn't reveal yet, but I've never been so excited before in regards to my own work. The past two days have been quiet, but let's just say that this week I've made a few grand, and I'm very glad that first-class was an option.

Ever since I was a child, I've been having the same nightmare again, and again. Since I've met Chance, they've all but stopped completely. But this week, oh, this mad, mad week it's begun again. The week's been wild, I've been starving, literally and metaphorically; my color's wan, my ribcage is nibbling impatiently at the skin, my fingernails are full of flesh, my insides are frostbitten. Thoughts of suicide were raging, and the floodgates of my imagination opened. My whole entire world became very dark---and in that nightmarish way. But, Chance is back, and he's explained himself quite well. I never even dreamt he'd have surprises up his sleeves, gliding along the winding blue of his veins.

Back to my nightmares. In my nightmares, I'm always confronting a mirror. No, my face isn't terribly disfigured. I always look like me, depending on the different physical phases of my life. I'm just breathing, I feel paralyzed and cemented to the floor. But that doesn't stop my chest from rising and falling heavily. I can feel my pores popping out these scalding crystals of sweat, and my cheeks running red. Then, a cold hand glides along the slope of my shoulder, massages me, falls away. Whoever it is, whoever it is, whispers against my ear and tells me to do horrible things. In these nightmares, I want to fulfill them, too. I want to do these things that I'd never dream of doing while I was awake--even in my darkest fantasies.

It tells me to hurt the people I love, to hurt myself. I don't love many people, so the list is very, very narrowed. When I was a child and growing older, it was my mother. Then it was my mother and Samantha. When Samantha fell out of the spotlight, it was just my mother again. But now, it's Chance. I wake up, and I'm heaving dry sobs, because just the thought alone of harming Chance even if its completely imaginary makes me nauseous.

Last night, was the first time in any of those nightmares that I actually looked up and realized who it was. I should've been able to tell by the descriptive hoarseness of his breathing, and the pudgy hand. I abandoned Chance to throw up in the bathroom, and cling to the toilet bowl. Because it was him. And I never thought I'd ever think about him again.

<center>
the time has come to speak of many things
of jacks and queens and kings

i bared my wrists and promised to begin
but you cut the blade straight in

the time has come: let's play 'find the missing song'
there is something very wrong

try hard, my love do you hear the distant strings?
please remember what this means

did i come back for all of this?
it seems absurd somehow...
with one well-placed flick of the wrist
you've really done it now...

all of my blind ambition left me deaf with perfect vision

it took that cut to bring me back to life
they're bleeding and they're frightened
still i hold out both my hands:
no one in the world will ever touch me there again.

-- the dresden dolls.</center>


Week one.
Tuesday

The television had been going for quite some time. The wall's plaster provided a screen for all the fractured blue flickers reflecting from the television screen. His draperies were shields from the leak of moonlight and the jeweled stars (they had his fate scrawled in their peppered wonder -- and the future wasn't nearly as bright). 'Mute' glared from the corner of the screen in a neon-green glow, and the reporter with a plastic-squeaky smile relayed the weather from beneath a rain-splattered umbrella.

The clock in the kitchen's hands were muffled by the shivers rupturing in his throat. But, it was creeping ominously on 3:52 AM.

Harlow was crouching on the couch, with his kneecaps drawbridged against his scrawny, naked chest. There was a throw blanket pooled at his side, which he neglected to use. He rocked himself to the tune of his own ragged breath. His delicate face was distorted with a wry mask of agony, and the tears were greasy sheets all over his cheekbones. His spine rippled violently like a demon possessed with every stifled sob. All along his gaze was trapped on the door-- just two fever-red pinholes, hoping, and wishing. There was a prayer hammering in his heartcage.

Week two.
Friday

The room was divided like there had been a civil war between two lovers. His bed was a mess. The sheets were tousled from chronic tossing-and-turning, the pillows were napping on the floor. Once again, it was the middle of the night, and Harlow was cradling himself in a chair on the opposite side of the room, staring at the bed.

He nursed a cigarette and ashed in the crevice of his own furniture, and kept silently debating with himself. Every now and again his muscles would flinch beneath the chalky leash of his flesh, but he'd just seep back into a heap of bones in his chair again. His bare toes flexed and audibly cracked. The more he thought about sleeping in that bed alone, the more his fingers his fingers lost their tolerance and submitted to sickly earthquakes.

He stubbed his cigarette with a blind, smoldering kiss on the polished wood arm, and ascended to his feet. Like a ghost, he sauntered across the floorboards, spilling his own shadow. He braked suddenly a few feet from the bed, and lost himself to a kneel, like a saint cuffed to pews. Using his foreknuckle as his personal kleenex, he soaked up the only tear left, and continued on his pilgrimage to his own mattress.

By the time he slithered onboard the linen canvas, he felt nauseous, and tried to quell the feeling by fisting a tuft of the sheets. He dripped forehead first over, the braille of his spine cutting in the air, as he folded in half.

But, little boys always managed to whimper themselves to sleep.

Week Three.
Wednesday

The brat-prince jerked the shades aside, standing tall and hollow at his sliding glass window in nothing but dress pants and argyle socks. It was a hazy early morning, striped with fog and city birds singing the prelude to spring.

Despite being freckled in goosebumps, he seemed to be virtually immune to the cold. He floated onto the balcony platform, and hitched his jaunty elbows on the railing. It was slippery with raindrop-laminated rust, but he managed just fine. That was when he heard it---the skitter and shuffling of tiny feet, and weeping coos.

He glanced down to the cement, and his glossy, watercolor iris melted over the pathetic imagery of a wounded pigeon. It was trying in vain to thrash its wings, but one just wasn't cooperating, and take-off just wasn't an option right now. It did everything in its power to avoid contact with the human, but Harlow steadily advanced on it, and used his sock-clad toes to nudge it from the balcony.

He watched it plummet to its death on the cement below, but didn't react. His gaze just switched to the puffy sky and the smoggy luminescence of the sun. He became enraptured by the sight of his own breath clashing with the cold. Spring.

Week four.
Monday

Knotting his burgundy tie in front of the mirror in his bedroom, he smoothed a hand through his glossy, sienna hair. It was growing shaggy, because it'd been over two months since it'd seen the gleam of scissors. He openly cringed at the sight of the miniscule blemish on his chin, and dotted over it with his forefinger, viewing himself as though it weren't there to begin with. In the backdrop his bed was crisp and made, and it was inheriting crashing strands of sunlight from the gaping window.

The soles of his dress shoes clapped against the floor, and he tossed his coat over the crook of his arm, and bowed to collect his suitcase.

Before he departed from the room to take the subway to work, he whipped one more glance to the mirror for the sake of vanity, and grinned.

You beautiful, beautiful fucker.

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ April 02, 2005 12:20 PM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

He still made her feel beautiful, you know.


She was jealous of his ribcage, even though she was strumming it. It faired well against his youthful, chalk-white skin. His stomach was concave. His flesh was just scrolling luxury. There wasn't a mole in sight. Twenty-five, and he still had a body of a nineteen year-old.

Forty-five, and Vivian looked her age.

They were stretched out on royal red. He was nursing a cigarette, with one scrawny arm folded behind his mussed hair, his eyes gravitated towards the ceiling. She was snug against his side, latching on for dear life, letting her pores dry, dreading the moment when he'd finish his cigarette and leave. Usually, she didn't attempt conversation in the afterglow of sex, but she couldn't help but to lift one stencilled brow, sheeted with tangled auburn-dyed hair. Her lipstick was smeared like a clown, and it disgusted him. He spoke nothing of it. The ceiling was more attractive.

"Harlow..."

There was no response, just another ribbon of smoke crawling from his flared nostrils.

"You were a little rough this afternoon, is there something bothering you, honey? You know you can tell me..."

He paused for a long, gaping moment of silence, before he whipped her sheets again, and craned over in seated composure at the side of the bed to stub out his cigarette. He slammed to his feet with an apologetically raw brashness, and started footing in his pants. His hands were preoccupied with galloping over the buttons of his shirt, his eyes were downcast.

She shifted in the bed, startled and shocked. The poor boy never treated her like a client. He made her beg like a starving slave. She never felt desperate in her whole entire life, until he came along every Wednesday at four PM.

"Where is it?" He murmured, drunk with his Irish slur, moodswinging under his breath.

"What?" She couldn't dissect what it was he said.

"I said --where is it?" His voice was sharper this time, the look that snapped over his shoulder was drenched with disgust.

Helplessly, she erected her forefinger to jab towards the dresser, embellished with antique lamps and an envelope.

The moment he ironed out his tie, and slid into his shoes, he clattered across the floor and swiped the envelope. He replaced it in his inner three-piece pocket, and swiped the neon-orange Rx bottle of Valium.

She collapsed just in time to listen to the click of his soles demanding their way to the doorway. Usually, he hesitated to blow her a kiss. But this afternoon, he didn't.

Two-grand and a bottle of Valium: that was what she promised him every week. But, Harlow Adams was starting to get expensive.

I've always been quite the clever liar, but lately, I have not been so sly to say that perhaps, I am a tiny, tiny bit of a walking trainwreck. That doesn't mean that I've diverged at all from my path, or rather, my routine. I've been going to work (both jobs) religiously, I cash my checks, I come home and write. The book is coming along a lot better than the others. Tainted lovers and darkness are subjects that I never stray from, but this time I think it may transform into a tale that might actually captivate readers rather than ... repulse them. But, publishing companies are petty. What do they know?

There isn't one moment when he isn't on my mind - you know. In the shower, on the rattling subway, under my sheets---in my head, always, always in my head. Sometimes, when I stretch my arms high in the morning, there's a lapse in my heartbeat and in that very small fragment of time one thought races through my mind before a hasty dismissal: "Will I ever fall in love again?"

Now, if love comes twice in a person's life, they are very, very lucky. I have never been a man blessed with much luck. I have my own cruel charm, and let us thank the Lord Jesus for giving me such gorgeous face, a razorsharp memory and a mind like a sponge. I know that I will never love another man as much as I love Chance, because there was no closure to the end of our relationship. It wasn't sealed away mutually, it was wrecklessly torn apart and shredded into a thousand pieces. I don't know where he is. I don't understand why he left. I don't even know if he's dead or alive. His parents claim that he disappears on whim, and reassure me that I musn't worry -- but I know him, he would never leave me! I'm not his parents! He will never, ever, ever find another man like me, because there isn't a soul out there that could possibly adore him as much as I did! There is no one that could relate to him on those sick, sadistic levels. No one that will take the time to watch him as he sleeps, and trace their names on his ribcage when he inhales! Fuck him if he ever, for one moment, contemplates kissing another man! If he's out there right now, in somebody else's arms, I'll find out. I'll find out and I'll murder them both, and I'll make sure I rip his beautiful, Norwegian dick off and feed it to a merciless pack of hogs, and then we'll see who will be missing who, and who will be laughing.

-- On a lighter note, I bought a pair of veiltail fish and a tank for company. They're rather boring, but I'm managing.

His jeans were cuffed at mid-calf, his feet saturated by the froth of the tide (that lunged at him like a yipping terrier all of a sudden, and receded seconds later because it was intimidated, only to make another rebound) his whole entire body caked with sand. The family Caravan crowds that had been swarming the beach earlier were rinsing away, baked by the scorching breath of the sun, miserable and exhausted. Day was shrugging off the shawl of its fluorescent charm, and twilight came in romantic pastel scribbles over the neverending horizon of the churning sea.

All day long, Harlow had been snapping like a twig at the cock-eyed, aimless seagulls that dared to trot near his masterpiece. Now, they were in a group huddle several yards away, gossiping in screeches and caws like an amateur's sour musical notes. His sandcastle was this uncommonly sophisticated architecture; its anatomy was sculpted with careful fingers and seashells.

Prepubescent teenage girls in their skimpy, string-tied bikinis had strutted by with indian-brown tans and tidal waves of highlights, muting their sprees of giggles into the open wombs of their hands through the entirety of the afternoon. There was something so very sickeningly cute about a modern day James Dean packing away at his sand castle as though it were the most important thing in the world. Harlow paid no mind, as their presence was just as trivial as the seagull's.

Finally, he reclined onto his hands as a tent of support, and admired his fancy masterpiece. There was even a fucking moat. He had just enough time to pull his t-shirt back on when a little boy that couldn't have been older than seven strolled on by with his parents. They were hauling origami-folded beach chairs, and a chunky cooler, but his striped beach bag wasn't enough to stifle him.

"Ma! Dad! Lookit his sand castle!"

Harlow did his best to ignore the kid, he went as far as to blink up at the sky, searching for an answer to some hidden riddle in darkening clouds.

"Mine's better though. Right, ma?" The boy arrowed a finger at a soggy, puddled castle molded by toy store buckets just down the way. His mother wearily nodded, and kept on sluggishly. The boy took just enough time to stick out his tongue before he rushed up to his mother's side again.

Harlow's mouth hung open in disbelief. Slowly, he tripped to his feet, his hands like broomsticks, blotting away at all the sand. Casually, he ambled over to the boy's miniature castle. Bordering his thick mouth with a cupped hand to make his voice carry with reverb, he shouted.

"Hey!"

The trio stopped and pivoted halfway.

Once he had their full attention, he started to stampede on the castle, flattening it to the ground until there was nothing left but memories. The entire family stared, gaping in sheer horror, but Harlow was grinning wolfishly like an officer with a brand-new, glimmering badge. His teeth only bared when the kid exploded into tears and waterworks.

This is not constitutional, but I've never been a morally upstanding citizen. I've felt my old nickname waning in the recent year considerably. I am no longer the brat prince. I've gone from episodic monotony to cloning each day. I go to work, I rattle timidly on the subway. I give lectures, I avoid argument or debate. I go crazy with my red tape. I bathe in bath salt, I soak in nostalgia until my skin is infant-red. But instead of rebirth, I just feel the weight. Chance is gone now, he is not coming back. He was not resurrected in Christian. I know that now. Christian is a different person. Of course, I was stubborn and openly resisted him. But I'm going to have him. Why? Because he is worthwhile, because I'd like to see his lips sore after he kisses me. My bed is inanimate, but no matter how hard I try to shuffle the white sheets on the left side of the bed, it refuses to budge. It knows already that the right side will hold an indent, and the right side only. I despise being so predictable. The wall clock mocks me, as does my litter box of cologne. There is no one to impress.

But I will impress you, my darling. I'm sorry if this will scare you. If I get away with it, you'll wake every morning with 'thank you' hanging like a thread on your lips.

I know that the act has to be impulse. There is no success in slow and calculating. I've always known that.

I will have you, though. That is the ending to this story.

Because I said so.