A flick of a switch and the lights go down in another tawdry hotel room, providing me with at least the illusion of night. Outside, I'm sure, it's bright and sunny, with sand blowing in billowing waves that crash against the stone walls of our hotel refuge, but inside its cool and night, and I can lose myself for awhile in a nameless place of quiet solitude.
I don't even remember the name of this world. I'm sure Lance or dancer-boy could tell me if I asked, but I can't quite bring myself to care. One world or another, it's all the same. Always the cheap oblivion that comes in bottle or a vial or a powder, or in the slick heat of skin on skin. There's an aura of almost lingering desperation to the constant rounds of parties where all of creation seems hell-bent on annihilation. I can remember a time when the glamour claimed my soul, marking me hers and taking me through waves of ecstasy to a place utterly beyond even the slimmest hope of redemption.
There's so much money to be had out here in the wider universe. I wonder if the people on the starving war-torn worlds, the worlds to which we appeared just in the nick of time as a glittering metallic Savior, would fall down and weep aloud at the sight of it. Piles of it, so easily for the taking, from people who ask so little. What's the use of one's body for a night, really? Nothing, in the great scheme of things, or compared to the raw sacrifice I've seen in my short lifetime.
And the things you can buy with that money... That may be my final undoing.
At the start it was all to forget. You knew that, didn't you? I could see it in your eyes the morning I left, the morning I ran away from the brassy tarnish hidden under the shimmering light of promised perfection. I could see the love there, and the anger. But worse than that, I could see the desperation. You would have done anything for me, wouldn't you? Anything at all that I asked.
That hurt most of all, more than even the pity I was expecting. I still think of you, here in the darkness when I'm curled up as far as the space of the mattress will allow from yet another nameless face. I think of those lingering smiles and the promise of perfection. I think of the gentleness in your hands despite their size, and I think of the easy laugh that was only for me.
And then, like the thunder of God's voice over the damned on Judgement Day, I see your eyes that last morning, and I know that I brought you to this.
So now I have new reasons to hate myself. I've come full-circle in the cycle, and I lose myself in the attempt to forget as I never did before.
Maybe someday, I'll lose myself completely. Then I'll never lie awake at night and long for the perfection that could have been, the chance that I ran out on before the fragile blossom of love could have burst into bloom.
Maybe I'll believe that if I stay away from you, you'll have a chance of happiness with someone else.
For the moment it has to be enough, and if not, I can always make myself forget.
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