Gainesville (I-V)

by Precipitate8

I. The Last of the Epilepsy

The wave of nausea hit me, and for a second I thought I could control it, but then I collapsed and the rest of this story is hearsay to me.

Anne went and got Mike and they restrained me for about 4 minutes while I convulsed. I had given them both previous instructions not to call 911 in this situation. They kept me from banging my head against my dresser, but they said I started turning blue from a blocked airway. They unblocked it, and I had apparently vomited during the seizures which didn’t help my breathing or Mike’s appetite. They put me in my bed and told me that I was talking to them, but a lot of it sounded like I was retarded. They actually feared brain damage. I wasn’t really aware of anything until about 6:30 Sunday morning. My leg muscles felt like I’d just run a marathon. It seems I am somewhat of a nuisance to live with.

II. The Blood Bank

Sell your bodily fluids for money.

Two vampires sit in the Plasma center and discuss self adornments: “I had my tongue pierced six months after my navel and eyebrow. They had to use a clamp to hold it down….”

The bystander pulled back his pink hair, interjected about his own metal body trip, and tried to change the subject: “You two been donating plasma for long?”

A giggle and reply, “We don’t give plasma; we’re waiting on a friend.”

“If you’re waiting here anyway, why don’t you go ahead and make some money?”

“We’re scared of needles.”

Machines feed whole blood direct from your vein and then regurgitate the unwanted red cells back through the same needle. The product is deposited into sealed containers in front of your eyes…vampire plasma cocktails…we are the feeders.

And why not be a feeder? The pay is good enough, it’s just a little humiliating when the eaters are so impudent that they sit in the lobby amongst their victims. Fuck it…milk my vein for all it’s worth…just don’t ruin it for everybody…donor junkies emerge with track marks all over their body from selling two and three times a day. A marker turns to me from his station, selling through a neck vein: “I’ve got to make my ends meat, don’t I, heh heh….”

III.

Cuneiform abstracts…wedgework scribblings of the apocalypse…giddy with acid and she’s the pterodactyl. She beckons to me with a finger and I lean across the table for a whisper, “Ca-ka reeeeeech!” jerks me away and I laugh my way back to composure. Always the reptile, ancient and in the moment.

The sex fiends want to do whippits.

The sex fiends want us to come home with them. Ah…John and Jill.

Hit the last cartridge of NO2.

So we had gone home with them. She had dirty lingerie magazines strewn all over the house in the midst of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The mediums bleed together with public nudity and a fear of reptiles. On the downslope of Uncle cid coming on to the DXM in the usual alcohol nicotine landscape.

Hit the last cartridge of NO2.

I shove that metal pressure can to my face and inhale the experiment.

Race! Through the fire tunnel. I am a part of the power source and I am strength. Julie is with me inside me and part of the power. Coming to–Coming to–the mucilage is dripping from my face to hers and reconnect at the touch of our lips. A strange film has enveloped us, lying atop ourselves as we do to each other, a parrot fish cocoon, slime and protective–the strange connection and can never turn back.

Full consciousness.

“Did you…”

She nods with complete understanding.

Julie. Samoan. Always one step ahead and it gives me the fear. Nothing is true–the absolute atrocity, but I must learn to know what I have always known: She is with me.

IV.

They did it to me. I’m alone…the events of a wonderful day have been compressed with an empathetic violence streamlined into millions of brillant star lit moments of nothing. Except me.

I woke up to a phone call from Fidel.

“Yeah, we’re going picking. Be there in five.”

What…dressed?…We go to pick up two fifteen-year old girls that have some association to a cow pasture at which we plan to pick mushrooms. Psilly cibon or some such thing. Turns out the one girl is quite the horseman and lends us all a ride out to patty field. Shit…haven’t ridden a horse in years and here we are the four horse peoples of the aniebrieation acropolis marching down the rural swamps of Gainesville.

Shrooms grow on cow shit, their tiny mycelium churning and mating inside the guts of ruminants to be excremated with vigilance and harvested like all other products from these humanitarian slaves. Just don’t get shot by an overzealous farmer protecting the herd. So we turn over the old cow patties and collect our bounty.

Fidel has a connection to sell most of the harvest, but we keep about ten caps (and the four I ate out right) and make a nice fruit milkshake to begin the evening.

But a relapse to the field:

“Fidel–this one edible?”

He looks it over curiously.

“I’m not sure…”

“I figure you’d know best…if I was pickin’ by myself though, I wouldn’t keep.”

At that he throws it down and I hear Bill’s voice in the distance:

“Gotta trust your instincys, boy.”

And it’s old wave night at the full circle. The scene is sooo trashily happy. We sit by the Lithuanian girl.

“Ya, my name is Grenna.”

Fidel tells me right off she’s a Pisces. Wonderfully friendly, openminded, seen quite a bit of the world…intelligent girl. We offer her and her friends the blueberry patch and naked swimming but no takers.

Buying drinks downstairs I meet Dora…as in Mount Dora…so sweet and cute seductive…a bundle of fun…she understands the shroom…but alas, Dora has already found a man for the night. But, an ever-present won ton opportunity offers her company at a later time….

Closing….closing…but Fidel’s turned on to a cult classic song–the DJ throws a bone or two–and I meet a girl that’s got the craze….Christine.

Fed up with this scene, there’s no escape….she’s got the poetry violence. Knows me from Rollins. Turns out…went to school with her four years…who are you?

So we bitch…aughhh school was so dreary…annnhh….work is so demeaning. Says she’ll remember my phone number, call me tonight and come over. What do you take Me for? Oh, yeah…I bought it.

And here I am…alone. But say; did I ever tell you about Fidel?

The most glamorous boy at Goth night. Lavender petticoat elegance. No one knew the envience on the scene. There’s a power to this one.

Strange men come to confront him:

“Man, I just gotta tell ya, you’re the shit.”

He shakes their hands and thinks nothing of it. What can I do but sit and respect the silence of these god damn telepaths?

Sweetness on the exterior…it persists…no bad intentions in this one…does he know the embezzlement of this ancient scheme?

His wife is strong…his four-month old baby has the solidarity of a non-monogamous parental situation committed to seeing what he may become in their friendly togetherness. But he is like me…feigning for nymphomania….the last true cause…

Fidel tells me the lore of the Half-Breeds:

“When God cast the demons out of heaven, he had already given the earth to Satan and his minions. Man shall inherit the earth…which of course is not acceptable to the present landlord. So what do the demons do? They try to breed us out like any sane dictator there by creating the hybrids. So connected to humanity that they cannot live without us to feed on, but yet our shepherds…controlling the blood veins of the world from the shadows…the true vampires…”

And I reiterate…I am alone.

How unsuccessful am I as an animal? How inept am I not to be able to fulfill that mating urge in the mammals that drives their existence. The social congregations nibble at my flesh like pinfish on the rotting corpse of an aged whale floating in the Atlantic sea….

V.

She tells me they’re feeding off me.

Sex all around me, strange girls kiss one another, grab Fidel from the dance floor and molest him, couples joined at the chest and knees, full moon ablaze, every parked car aching from lascivious orgies in the driver’s seat.

They are feeding from my desire but not responding to my desire.