I had a dream that was not all a dream. I stood, my back to Commerce street, the pressing thorn milling behind me. The wall of television screens behind store-front gglass broadcast the throng and the barricaded Commerce Street Square, police officials alternately staring the crowd back and nervously wandering like ants amid a rubble of bodies draped with grey coverings. From the vantage point of the news helicopters overhead, the dead littering the square seemed scattered detritus, no different from the decomposing newspapers that tumbled through the early morning streets.

The crowd’s hazily reflected backs stood like ghosts reflected in the storefront glass, a wash of disappointed spirits, backs pointedly turned to the carnage reported live on the news.

At this point I had awakened.

It was rare for me to be called to any homicide. Meat driven indiscretions were the banal daily grind of the regular police force. Nor was I used to being called at night when the yellowed street lamps washed the crime scene in sepia tones. There had been a rash recently of suicides among the various government agencies. For some time we had all been playing down han ensuing epidemic of Regressive Information Disorder slowly dismantling the city?s psyches. It was much like watching a metropolis of grandmothers slowly forget themselves in delirium. And the violence of our murders had become correspondingly more horrific.

The news led with reports and theories, but we suppressed as much as we could, and played off the rest as hysteria and superstition.

It was the homicide officers who were the first to break. Those who could muster the reason fled with what families they had to less urban areas. As if they believed evil somehow uniformly congregated amongst the city?s immoral throng. Other took their lives. At first, seasoned detectives would simply not appear at their desks in the mornings. After a long day or so, a squad car might be dispatched to check on their residence. After the first few, it was merely assumed they had died. Officers merely went to confirm. Then their desks came at their desks, amidst busy afternoon offices, in their cars in the garage, on the benches in front of their lockers.

The youth advanced to replace them broke even sooner not having their elders’ seasoned perspectives. I do not think they were adverse to death. In a world where your comrade’s death is broadcasted and recorded, death comes very naturally, in all manners, in all guises.

It was not long after this the shortage of any homicide detective necessitated the call of just any detective. This was my assumption when the phone wrested me from my dreams of Commerce street during the languid, darkened hours of early morning.

By the time I had arrived, the news anchors were oddly absent. The alleged murder of a notorious prostitute was worth little more than a few words on a local news ticker. Two patrol officers had barricaded the alley’s entrance with yellow police tape. They agitated as I approached. They knew my office by the long grey coats we wore. Their gate-keeping was desultory, automatic, and policy.

Some would call me boisterous. How else should one be?

I carry condoms in my bag. It was my ex who brought me to carrying them. I never had to carry them before her, my first real lover, a person I fucked and loved many times for many years, always carried a condom in the side-pocket of her purse, until in monogamy — not monogamy, but lust — until in lust we ceased using condoms altogether trusting to luck, fate, and the pill, but more often than not, trusting to lust.

Once when broken up — several times when broken up when neither of us was seeing anyone, and certainly when neither of us were sleeping with anyone — fucking anyone, we would meet clandestinely, late at night, once a long day of need and desire — of lust — had slowly simmered, a telephone ring late at night with hesitant, expectant, musk-filled voices would ask what the other was doing: can I come over (can I cum). A couple of times — once, and only once — there were no condoms. I can go inside once, just for a moment, just for a moment more, but no more or else our bodies would be fucking, touching inside, and that would be too much, so we gave eachother head and kissed and fondled in all the ways we had taught eachother. One or both of us had condoms after that never wanting to miss a chance at pretending to intercourse the way we used to — never to miss the chance to fuck — anyone we wanted, whenever, although I’ve — we’ve passed passed on fucking several people, several times. Lust will only overcome so much.

I wonder I do not need to carry condoms, that there will be no random fucking, but what if? Who would I fuck — drunk enough and comfortable to not touch someone the way I know. Lust is not wanting — all day body simmering. Wanting is will and wherewithal, and the condoms in my bag are there in case I come across — in case I grow the wherewithal to fuck someone — fuck anyone. I can think of a few, but I have no wherewithal with them and those with wherewithal with me find only my lust and no wanting.

I do not miss lust having no occassion to. I miss wanting. I do not miss wanting. I miss the act of wanting, the chance to want, the opportunity, the someone.

When I was younger I never lacked for someone. I did not believe in someone. I did not believe in love. I believed in contentment. Annoying less than the rest. There was lust, but no need. The first girl I fucked because I felt I was supposed to. It is what you do late at night all day simmering loins making out in a car. There was no want. There was obligation. The second girl I fucked because I wanted to. There was no wanting. There was lust and drunk and a long day spent simmering, a long furious rut where all I did was fuck fuck fuck.

I have fucked three women and am called a liar. I have made out with others and am also called a liar. I am a liar for not wanting, for having only lust. But I do not believe in lust, only need — I do not believe in need — need is only lust. I believe in wanting. When I was younger I did not believe in love, but I am a liar. I did not believe in love because I did not want. I had no wherewithal to want. I did not want to need someone. I did not want to miss wanting. I did not want to miss love.

Your lingering lips leave me dreaming.

David:

Did I mention I read “Venus in furs”, the reputed classic of German (really Austrian) decadent writing? Maybe it was my translation, but that’ll have to do. What hack crap. Reminded me the only reason most things are classics is they’ve survived till today. The Monk was a Michael Crichton novel for the 1780s. Walpole was like Steven King. Anne Radcliffe was their Anne Rice.

For transgressions, Miracle of the rose is better. Or Naked lunch. Exquisite corpse.

But by the end of “Venus in furs”, the author had aroused an emotion, and strongly, and any artist who arouses truly creates art, so I was left wondering if my absolute despise of that fur-wearing bitch would then constitute the story as art.

It did possess a bit of tragedy. The protagonist’s fetish was to be shit on and treated like worthless scum. That is to say he would love the woman who treated him as such. And he got what he wanted. What a whore. She beat him. Ignored him for other men. Had other men beat him. He was entirely dominated, which is what he wanted (ooh‚ Alien Sex Fiend is on), but in the end he lost everything be loved.

I think it’s fair to assume healthy people possess a sustainable worldview that leads them at least to contentment. How you could live unhappy is beyond me, but, truly, happiness is a state of mind and not the state of affairs around you. “Venus in furs” is hack crap, but I was still angry at the woman’s entire lack of morals and decency.

It’s also interesting that the story raised not one eyebrow. 200 years of transgressional literature has suggested to me everything that could be suggested. The only shock and horror remaining in our world are the personal horrors you never share with anyone, or the few you share late at night with a lover, as excited about the intimacy as you are about violating your own insistent sense of secrecy.

When you betray yourself, it would be wise to ask who you are betraying: your self or your sense of self. It’s somewhat fitting that as I finish this, Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown boy” is playing.