Gothic

            It was a very strange sight indeed, I had to admit. In my grey shirt and white boxer briefs, I sat on the floor of my bathroom in the lotus position as if deep in prayer. In front of me, like an altar to a saint I would never want to know about, was the latrine, its lid closed. I was smoking my Marlboro Reds and killing each depleted stub like a giant insect in the upturned palm of my ashtray, only to light a new one up right after. My giant ruled notebook was spread out on the commode lid like a carcass waiting for its postmortem from a very overdue coroner. I think I looked like I may have been in deep meditation. In a way, it was true. This felt like a form of meditation for me.

            Writing had always been a means for me to reflect, recollect and, in some cases, dispose of my thoughts and feelings. It was a means for me to purge negative things from what I believed was my core. In a way, it may have been a sort of exorcism. I cannot remember who it was, but I seem to recall someone famous, or important, or both, say that no place in existence was more haunted than a man’s heart.

            The Virgin Suicides soundtrack wafted through the air from inside my bedroom, reaching into the bathroom with its otherworldly tendrils of flute and harp. With it came the smell of jasmine, borne from a scented candle I had lit a while ago. The jasmine scent mixing with the smoke from my cigarette brought a heady feeling.

            This Kafkaesque moment would be a perfect opening scene for a horror movie. Would it be about a struggling artist trying to make his next great masterpiece, only to find himself in the embrace of a supernatural incubus? Or would it be about a lovesick man trying to find the cleverest words to woo his paramour so as to at last leave the realm of the unrequited, only to find out that his paramour had long since been dead? In reality, the creation of a story can sometimes feel like a little of both.

I had a little trouble gathering my thoughts through the cigarette haze hanging around me like a death shroud. I coughed a few times before I raised myself up and arched my back, like a cat, to relieve it from the crick that had made its home there for about an hour. I imagined how this scene would play out in black and white on a particularly gothic film.

“Too bad it’s in color.” I mused to no one in particular, in a way lifting my concerns up to the universe, just in case someone was listening and could adjust this scene’s saturation to zero.

I felt that everything looked so much less important in color. It felt like a Pierre et Gilles photograph or an Army of Lovers song, all kitsch and no substance. It was very unlike historical photographs and portraits of great men, that had the air of importance and weight about them. These things, if you were observant, were always black and white.

            My mind struggled to settle on a subject or story. Nothing that sprang to mind felt like it was worth writing about. I toyed with different ideas, letting them percolate in my cerebellum. I let them roll around in my psyche like marbles, inspecting at them in the half-light of the bathroom. I paid particular attention to their form, function and flow. I held each to my eye and examined each with great discernment. I rolled each one in my fingers. I felt each one in my palm. Which one was the best to use? Should I imagine it in black and white or in color? I felt strangely uneasy, filled with a restlessness I could not shake, like something ominous was coming.

I decide on writing a strange story. It was going to begin in a bizarre place, and unexpected, inexplicable occurrences would take place within its paragraphs. The strangest part of the story would probably be that it really happened. It happened in color, but I decided to write it in black and white, in the palette gothic horror films, in the palette of the penny dreadful and the other gothic stories I used to read as a little boy. It would be about Paul.

            I had met Paul just a couple of weeks before. His timing was impeccable. I had just broken off a seven-year relationship with John and had officially entered the land of single-blessedness. Years of geographic separation had paved the way for emotional separation. In all honesty, though, it would have made no difference if I were still with John or not, my meeting up with Paul. Being with John had never stopped me from seeing people before. The only difference my relationship status had on anything was that it afforded me more time to spend with Paul.

Paul and I were introduced by his cousin, Oscar, someone who I once dated and occasionally slept with. To be known, when I first met Paul, I was underwhelmed. I did not hear Puccini in my head. My heart did not skip a beat. Still, I did not hear crickets, though, and tumbleweed did not sudden blow across where we stood. I was not one for ascribing to first impressions and decided to give the date with Paul a chance. That proved to be an advantageous decision. Paul was, among a myriad of other attractive qualities, interesting, articulate and smart. The fact that he did not physically attract me was the least of my worries.

            In the span of a week, we had become very comfortable with each other. We talked for about five hours over the phone almost every day. We would start at around two or three in the morning and invariably, find ourselves waiting for the sun to rise together. It had taken the demeanor of a ritual for us. We talked about an assortment of subject matter. Our conversations would run the gamut of inane to inspired. Both artists, although slaves to different disciplines, we would talk about our disparate processes of creation. Still, we would listen to each other in admiration as we each talked about how we dealt with the conception, maternity and birth of beauty.

            For a living, Paul created vestments for life-sized religious statues. In his hands, yards of black, indigo or maroon velvet transformed into works of art. The ones that I was fortunate enough to see caught the light and turned into starry nights or the depths of the oceans. He would hand-sew thousands upon thousands of Swarovski crystals onto these garments until the mundane became the miraculous.

It took Paul about a month or two to finish one of these surplices. Yet his work did not stop there. He would also festoon the palanquins that the statues were carried on and bedeck them with live flowers, lights and ornaments. He glued and stuck and pulled and prodded these elements together until he was sure that the only emotion that they would elicit was amazement. This took him another month or so to accomplish. Paul was very, very patient.

By point of comparison, in this matter I was the exact opposite. I worked in broadcasting as a graphic artist at that time. I came to work in the morning to create graphics that would be used in the news that same evening. My vocation taught me to be fast and concise. I did not have time to look away, observe, feel, and change only to repeat the process again and again until I reached the point where I had satiated my thirst for perfection. I lived in a world and an industry of immediacy. Which was perfect because, unlike Paul, I was very, very impatient.

            To say that Paul was also very religious was and understatement. His was a vocation borne out of a calling. He had, at a very young age, felt the call of the priesthood. He had studied high school in a seminary. He filled his adolescence with prayers, retreats and celibacy. I, on the other hand, filled my youth and most of my adult life with sex, drugs and alcohol. Upon hindsight, the main reason we probably found the other so interesting was because our versions of reality and perceptions were so divorced from each other.

Paul claimed to have, as a child, opened his third eye. This, of course, was not a literal extra eye on his forehead. He was not a fairground attraction nor a mythical being from Grecian lore. Rather, he was what one would call a clairvoyant. He had the power to lift the veil of reality so as to see beyond the realm of the natural world.

He recounted that it had happened, quite by accident, when he was around seven years old. His grandmother had just passed away then, and this grandmother would often hand him little sweet treats throughout the day from a stash she had secreted away within her room. Still not fully understanding the concept of death and the fact that normally, people who were dead tended to stay dead, Paul said he had started getting upset when 2 PM rolled in and he had not received a single sweet treat that day. By three, what had started as him being upset had blossomed into a fully formed tantrum. He had already carried on with tears and screams for the better part of an hour when he stopped. Here was his grandmother, his candy Messiah, right in front of him, smiling and pointing to her room, then her closet, and then big box on the top shelf. A loud thump got Paul’s mother rushing into her mother’s room. There was Paul contentedly nibbling on pieces of sweet treats from a heavily dinged up box. His mother stared at him for a while and then asked him how he found the sweet treats. Paul turned to his mother and, with eyes that were clear and beaming, answered his mother, “Nana showed me where.” His mother just stood there with a strange look on her face which, later on, Paul found out was his mother’s look of fear.

Clairvoyance was not something I had any particular belief in.

            So far, the course that our burgeoning relationship had taken was fairly uncomplicated. Our third date rolled in much like a cloud rolls in, with normalcy and effortlessness. We met up at a little corner bar a few blocks away from where I worked. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall that was not ashamed of being a tiny hole-in-the-wall. In fact, it seemed to revel in its exotic, eclectic third-worldliness. It had old, exposed adobe walls that in some parts had actual vegetation growing through its craggy surface.

It was one of those half in, half out places where, on rainy days, you got wet no matter where you sat. It had an artificial air of mystery about brought about by being forever shrouded in fog. It wasn’t really fog. It was smoke from the grill where a woman continuously cooked a very interesting assortment of meats for the patrons. Sporadic paintings and installations clung for their lives on the adobe walls, the pattern of which only made sense to the person that hung them. This was what people called an “artists’ dive”. The bar hosted poetry readings, book signings and even performance art pieces.

I had, on more than one occasion, been invited by friends to exhibits hosted by the bar. One such exhibit stood out in my mind among the rest. It was a muggy night, which was not particularly rare in this part of the country. Arriving, I expected the walls to be covered by acerbic paintings that thought too much of themselves for their own good. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of a man, completely naked, sitting in the middle of the bar. Next to him was a small wooden folding table. On top of that table sat a mason jar full of markers that had inexplicably lost their caps. Strangely enough, in their present state, the markers looked as naked as the man sitting next to the.

Random people approached him to inscribe their little epithets, doodles and whatever other nonsense came to their minds. They would write, go back to their tables or whatever random space they existed in that particular night, sip their cocktails, and come back and mark his brown skin with more black ink. He sat there, unmoving, as twenty or so strangers familiarized themselves with his chocolate flesh. For someone familiar with the feeling of having strange hands on my flesh, this nonetheless unnerved me. It seemed like a violation, almost verging on sexual harassment, except he was letting them. I think his unmoving body and blank expression were the things that unnerved me the most. I was not big on complacency, and less big on relinquishing personal power.

Still, I myself wrote the words Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, Latin for “For the greater glory of God”, which was the mantra of the Jesuit school I had graduated from. I found a patch of virgin, undisturbed skin on his left butt cheek to inscribe the words on. I felt strangely guilty for my actions.

The ambiance of the bar was punctuated by a sprinkling of very real (and very much inhabited) cobwebs peppered around the corners of what seemed at most forty square feet of space. The bar was not what you would call a shining beacon of interior design, but then it was never meant to be. It did, however, have personality and ambiance in spades. And that was fine.

I couldn’t help but think of Paul in the same context. I looked at him in his running shoes, light denim pants and nondescript collared shirt and the visual did not inspire much admiration. But the conversation did. He was very intelligent, but part of his charm was that he did not seem to feel that it was anything to hold over people’s heads. He just went about his business with not much aplomb, just quiet intelligence.

            Nursing our cocktails, by now watered down by melted ice, we were buried in conversation almost instantaneously. Our minds swam within each other’s experiences, like divers on some unfamiliar wreck. We reveled in the surprising troves we found in each other’s stories. I basked in his words and I think he did in mine. Armie Hammer could have stepped into the bar that night and would not have been more attractive to me than he was at that exact moment. He had woven around me a web of stories and ideas and I was totally and utterly trapped. He was the brown house spider and I was the lightning bug, bright and pretty but still trapped.

As it just so happened, on the eleventh hour, we spotted a couple of rats happily scuttling around our feet without a care in the world. It seemed like they were used to running around underfoot because they were of the remarkably forward variety. Suffice it to say that Paul and I both found the idea of contracting leptospirosis particularly disenchanting, so we took that as our cue to take our leave. Paul had a wealth of talent at his disposal. It just so happened driving was not one of them. He came to the bar in a taxi. I, on the other hand, came in my SUV. Earlier on, it had already been decided that I was going to drive him home so, after paying a very third-world bill for our drinks, we headed towards my vehicle. As we talked, Paul introduced the idea of not heading home just yet. It flattered me that he seemed to want to spend more time with me. I myself was not averse to the idea at the very least.

            In the car, we deliberated on the choices of where to go next. Paul was not big on partying or drinking, so going to another, more crowded bar was not in any way appealing to him. I also felt frisky and wanted some intimacy that night, so I wasn’t in the mood for a crowded bar either. We had had appetizers at the last bar, so dinner wasn’t an option either. It was barely midnight and both of us did not feel like parting just yet. After a little bit of prodding on my part, I convinced Paul that I would just park on a lesser-lit side street and we could just stay in the SUV and talk some more. That would be good enough for extending our time together.

            We drove around the neighborhood for about five minutes in search of a suitably unpopulated spot. We found one with rows of unlit houses that looked both uninhabited and uninhabitable. Strangely enough, every other lamppost was lit. I decided to situate myself next to an unlit one. Illicit actions need the cover of darkness and night, after all. After parking my car, I was surprised at Paul's excitement, especially after his seeming reluctance to the idea a while back. He pulled my face to his and looked deeply into my eyes.

            "I really, really like you." He breathed to me.

            "I really, really like you too." I honestly answered him back.

            We kissed like madmen, like it was a fight as well as a union. I wound my kisses toward his neck, which I knew from our past two dates was his erogenous zone. My mouth suckled his neck like a vampire. His hands were on my head, simultaneously running through and tugging at my hair. As with almost all physical communions, it felt like bliss. Paul was breathing hard with an almost asthmatic quality to it, but the handbrake in the middle console of the car was not making things easy for us. I needed some comfort.

            “Do you want to move to the backseat?” My tumescence was not being helped by the pain on my side while the handbrake bore into my ribs like a dagger.

            “Sure. I’m having a hard time too.” I knew Paul was also having a hard time. He struggled to reach his hands into my shirt.

            As we moved towards the backseat, I took off my shirt with urgency. Paul was doing the same thing. As we moved, we found each other’s lips. We kissed deeply as our hands stroked each other's chests hungrily. He was moaning by now. Paul was of the heftier persuasion, so I squeezed on handfuls of soft flesh. At this he moaned some more.

            Then, as suddenly as he flamed and melted to my touch, Paul stiffened. He jumped up with a start.

            “Can we leave here?” It was too sudden to not elicit anything from me except fear.

            "What's wrong?" I could see him averting his eyes from me. My mind rushed to a million and one reasons why he would suddenly grow cold. Was it my breath? Was it the squeeze? Did I in any way, shape or form make him feel uncomfortable? He was still averting his eyes.

            "Don't get scared, okay." That was an unexpected response. I did not know what to think. "But there's someone watching us."

            "Where? I don't see anyone."

            "There's an old woman staring right at you from outside."

            Tendrils of chilling horror crept up my spine from those words. In a flash, our shirts were on and the car was heading for cheerier, more populated streets.

            Nothing else happened to us that night. I took him home. I kissed him goodnight. I headed home. My sleep that night was less than peaceful. Still, as purple darkness gave way to the orange light of the next day, the night's dreads were swallowed up by the tedium of real life.

            Still in my grey shirt and white boxer briefs, I still sat on the floor of my bathroom in the lotus position as if deep in prayer. In front of me, like an altar to a saint I would never want to know about, the latrine was still, its lid still closed. I was smoking yet another Marlboro Reds, having killed yet another depleted stub like a giant insect in the upturned palm of my ashtray. My giant ruled notebook was still spread out on the commode lid like a carcass waiting for its postmortem from a very overdue coroner.

            I could not sleep, but Paul slumbered in the bedroom, on my bed, spent. We had made love a few hours ago. An hour or so ago, we were in the throes of slumber, enfolded in the arms of Hypnos. The hum of the air conditioner was a lullaby in my ear as I travelled the Dream King's gardens. I suddenly woke with a start. I saw the room in darkness, my closet, my couch, my paintings. I was awake, but I could not move. I tried to move but my entire body felt like lead. I struggled to talk, to scream, but no words, no sounds would come out. It felt like I was paralyzed, yet I could see my room. I could hear Paul’s gentle breathing next to me. I could feel the body heat from his one arm that rested on mine.

            I scanned the darkness again until my mind reeled in horror. I could see a dark shadow in the shape of a man in my peripheral vision. I could not see his face, but I could feel an air of age and rot from him. He felt ancient, like he had been standing in that very spot since the beginning of time. He stood over me, next to my bed, looking directly at me. I couldn’t feel evil or malevolence coming from him, but I could feel an almost crippling sadness, like his regret weighed so heavily on him that it engulfed me as well. I felt like it was that emotion that was preventing my mobility.

I found it harder and harder to breathe. I tried to scream again and still failed. I tried to move my arms, my hands or, at the very least, my fingers. They would not let me. What had been frozen in slumber paralysis a while ago were now frozen in terror.

After what seemed like an eternity, muffled whimpers finally escaped my lips, the only sounds the full force of my being could muster. Paul awoke from his sleep. He shook me. He probably believed he was shaking me awake. I stirred and took a few breaths before regaining movement. My voice, on the other hand, was still lost at this point. Still, I felt a wave of relief sweep through me. At last the nightmare was over, I thought to myself.

            "You were having a bad dream."

            I whimper an unintelligible response.

            "Are you okay now?"

            I nod.

            "You saw someone, didn't you? An old man."

             I could feel the relief seeping out of me. "How did you know?"

            "I saw him too."

           I lay there staring at the ceiling. After some time, Paul fell asleep. I quietly crawled out of bed and into the bathroom, positioning myself in the lotus position in front of the toilet seat, replacing the lid.

           The following day, after I took Paul home, I erased his number. I have never spoken to or seen Paul since.