My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

She laid next to him, close and safe against his back, her arm across his chest in that comfortable way, that intimate way that makes him think of love and sex and peace and sleep. Before her, he didn’t truly know the feeling that’s slowly washing over him, contentment, something others come by so easily, so honestly. He could find contentment in other ways. Contentment by way of opiates gently passing through a needle, rushing into so many scarred veins, or behind a bar, for six bucks a glass of his favorite clear liquid, or between sweat soaked sheets, lost in some woman who isn’t her, but these things are just lies dressed up as contentment, just poor actors in a miserable off-broadway play. He’s done these things before, knows now that it’s all just a bunch of nothing that leads nowhere. He hadn’t met true contentment until he met her, until he looked into her eyes, eyes the color of sunlit autumn leaves. He saw in her eyes his present, his always. He knew he didn’t want to be anywhere else, with anyone else, ever. He feels that way right now, as she pulls him toward her, her chin gently pressing against his neck, two puzzle pieces locking into place. With a shudder of anticipation, he knows that they’ll fall asleep and in the morning they’ll take off each other’s clothes, he’ll fade into her, get lost in her body, her eyes. He feels like he knows his tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and it’s all so beautiful.

He doesn’t know that things have changed, that the world isn’t the same as it was just yesterday. He doesn’t see that this woman he loves more than the world has turned pale, doesn’t feel her heat against his back like he should, nor the rise and fall of her plain old terry cloth robe. He loves her so much in that robe, it’s nothing that’s supposed to be seductive, just cozy. She’s the sort of beautiful that just is, the sort of beautiful that makes terry cloth look as alluring as satin. She pulls him closer, wraps her leg around his waist. He doesn’t know that just as she snuggled against his back, a mutinous clot of blood lazily floated its way toward her heart. She pulls him closer, tightens her embrace. He smiles, thinks he knows what’s next.

Her lips brush his neck, gentle caressing growing rough with desire, with need. She won’t wait for morning. She’s going to take him tonight, right now. She’s never wanted him so badly, her entire body writhing, her loving embrace pinning him against their bed, a butterfly pinned to a cork board. She’s going to take him inside her, slowly, deeply, violently. She’s going to pull him into her more deeply than he’s ever experienced, bringing him past the point of choice. He feels teeth against his neck where once were lips and kisses. Teeth press through flesh, through muscle, scraping against bone. She’s bringing him to climax, wants him to fill her with liquid-fire, with life. She’s on her knees, straddling him, back arched, swallowing what she took of him, blood running down her face, over her bluing lips, into her cold mouth. She’s the picture of demented ecstasy, arterial blood spraying against her body. Still warm blood dripping from the ceiling, sticky cooling blood pasting curly strands of chestnut hair against her face.

Whatever pain that was screaming at him, telling him he was alive, is now but a whisper. He feels hot wetness blossoming around his head, running down his chest, yet he’s growing very cold, very sleepy. She’s laying next to him as she was, lapping up blood pooled behind his ear. He doesn’t know that similar scenes are spreading throughout the city, he doesn’t even know for certain what happened to him. He does know that all he’s ever really wanted, since their first date, a blind-date, seemingly a forever ago, was to fall asleep next to her until he quit breathing. He quit breathing not long after her unexpected kiss, all that’s left is to sleep.

He always thought his final breath, his final sleep, would separate them, but not so. The sleep he’s expecting won’t be quite final. Soon he’ll wake, and walk the night with her, his always. He’ll see the night sky at her side, he’ll learn a sort of contentment completely new to this new world.

So, TLC is possibly the most intellectually bankrupt network on tv. They have not one but TWO shows about dudes with multiple wives. There’s 19 Kids and Counting, a show about the Dugger family, Michelle & Jim-Bob, raising 19 kids. Aside from being boring to watch, the Duggers regularly use their “fame” to spearhead anti-gay and lesbian campaigns, including a state-wide robo-call against marriage equality in Arkansas. They have a late-night talk show, All About Sex, during which the hostesses seem to go on and on about how they mostly try to avoid sex with their spouses/lovers. Well, except Margaret Cho, she’s down for anything. All these shows have pseudo-intellectual catch phrases, “We just love each other,” “Love should be multiplied, not divided,” “…somehow, we just make things work,” “Dirty, filthy, fucking.” Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so intellectual, pseudo or otherwise, but the others are just things stupid people say to sound smart or profound, or to make their lives sound provocative. These are all pretty spectacular, in an awful sort of way. Dirty, filthy, fucking just might go on my epitaph. However, we might have a new top of the heap from one of TLC’s new reality train-wreck, My Big Fat Beautiful Life, it’s a show about this lady who’s overweight because of a medical condition. but loving life just the same. Now, anybody who puts their life on tv, or on a blog… is open to criticism, medical condition or no. Myself included. THAT SAID… This lady’s, sort of, life motto, just strikes me as totally vacuous, “I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count.”

I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count, it’s so… motivational speaker-esque. It’s just a bunch of words that add up to nothing. Yes, we only get one shot at life, so far as we know, that’s true enough. It’s the second half of her motivational gold that bothers me. See, every life counts, for good or ill, every life counts, no damn sure betters about it. We leave footprints in the world, it happens without even trying. Whether you’re Steve Jobs, or someone’s crazy cat-lady aunt, you’re remembered, you affect the people around you. Our worry should be that at the end of our everything, we left the world a little brighter than when we entered it, not whether or not we made life “count.”

So, it’s 2015, I’m thirty-four years, eleven days older. Yay. Am I supposed to feel wiser? If I am, I don’t. Mostly, I just feel… down… melancholy. كازنو 2015 has to be something good, not that it could just magically be something good. كيف تلعب القمار I have to endeavor to make it something good. I know I can… I can. I still have some fight in me, and when I don’t feel like fighting, that’s obviously when I have to fight harder.

I kind of just let 2014 happen to me, I can’t let 2015 go the same way. كيف تربح المال من الالعاب