The virility of Death as we know it.

I am sitting at my desk in the assembly. My Windsor knot's making me gag, so I loosen it and squint at the corner of the podium. Oh,it's him. Hair tied back neatly into a ponytail, and with tie fastened perfectly around his collar, he would have been just as attuned to a Pearl Jam concert than he was to this meet. I had met him three years earlier. He was so blase then. now he looks at his friends passively, his face neatly arranged into a mask, so that all people, high or low, cannot measure his attitude from his countenance.

When the meeting is over, I walk to his side and ask him whether he would like a drink. His face lights up. I didn't notice you, he says. Where were you?

Oh, I was hiding near the coffee maker. Spilled a little of it on my conscience.

We laugh and he proceeds to tell me of his life so far. He is not a very successful person. His grades are average and his projects are never turned in on time. He tells me of working with students of NSD, and I listen to him, amused. He seems happy. Unlike the last time, when his claws were out and he was baying for my blood. Because he thought I had wooed his girlfriend. Messy affair.

We exchange notes on the proceedings and then stop at a bar. I leave my shirt open at the collar, and ask for a mug of Heineken. He does the same. He looks at me and says,'So,how's it going with Michellia? Slept with her yet?'

If it had been anyone else, I would have shoved his head into the ice-box, but I shake my head. No. The whole friend-angle. He concurs, smiling to himself.

You were good today, Ayan. I really liked your views on some of the topics.

Thank you, thank you. (It's awkward. How do you talk to somebody whose girlfriend you have slept with? A childhood sweetheart at that? Maybe, I really am a bum woman-trafficker).

It's okay, you know. She left me for this guy who landed a place in Cornell. I knew she wasn't going to be mine anyway. Love hurts, man.

How are you holding up?

Fine. I mean, it was bad at first. I didn't take it very well. Refused any contact with humans. (laughs). But you gotta pull through. You gotta. She was everything. Light of my life, and all that shit. But, you know what, these things are better left alone. We men needn't bother with pointless human emotions. Otherwise, it chews up a hole in you the size of a Big Kahuna.

True, that. (uncomfortable silence)

He breaks down into aching sobs.

How to skin a lamb.

Another swig of whisky,
Another gleam in the collective eye,
Another rumble as the clouds part expectantly like the lips of her vagina,
Another drunkard trying to squint at the streetlight,
Another rodent scrambling for the safety of its home,
Another prostitute wrapping her mink stole tightly around her bruised body,
Another tramp chokes on his ale,
Another bartender wipes his hands on his trousers,
Another starstruck couple exchange work anecdotes,
Another pickpocket eyes his next victim surreptitiously,
Another urchin finds a furry mint in his shirt pocket,
Another general beats his wife in his condominium,
Another philosopher reads a Confucian text,
Another husband makes angry love to his tired wife,
Another thief pockets the opal he stole from a fellow man,
Another star processes the hydrogen,
While you regale me with stories of your incomparable incompetence.

Domesticity for the average seafaring salesman.

It feels good to be back. To be at my desk, reading up on electric field lines and magnetomotive force, with Ornette blowing on his sax. Feels good to tilt my head back, to cross my arms behind my head and think about how I had solved that last calculus problem in a jiffy. Feels good to look sideways at the nightlamp and reassure myself that it is still there, flickering. Feels good to write on napkins in restaurants, feels good to discuss Proust with my physics professor, to debate whether Nietzsche really meant what he said with the owner of the oft-visited hookah joint, to admire Schopenhauer's beautiful writing style in my underwear. Feels good that my present squeeze is twirling a particularly long strand of her hair between her fingers and doing a Cirque du Soleil with her tanned legs in her bed as she speaks into the mouthpiece. Feels good to have my appetite back and to feel the steel give way under my fingers. Feels good to bring novelty to the kitchen table again. Not that I have a kitchen table in my hostel room.

Bloggy blogga'.

I'm thankful I have this, at least. It's so hard to opine when you have your conscience and your friends breathing down your neck. Better be a virtual Colossus than be a timid lab-rat. And I'm appalled at what people have come to regard as creative.

Look,Ma,Speedy Gonzales!

She is beautiful. And her body is just about perfect. As she slips out of her nightgown, I can see in the light of the nightstand that her breasts are upturned, expectant. Her navel is a finicky dip of an affair. Her waist is perfect - I can see her panties are already wet. I put the glass of wine and let out a slow whistle. She looks at me coyly, yet I can see that she is feeling shy. Her lips are petulant, and I can see the corners of her mouth rise as she smiles. The moonlight reflects off her perfectly formed shoulders, and I see the elegant curves gesturing to me unconsciously. The bend in her elbow. The soft flicking of her wrists as I offer her my glass. She sips a little, and then climbs into bed with me. It is a long night. We make slow, passionate love - our bodies warm with pleasure, and then we fall apart, exhausted with all the feverish lovemaking.

Good God,you were amazing, I compliment her.

Was I? Thank God. I haven't made love to anyone in a decade. My faggot of a husband never looks at my body. You are very good in bed. I take it you are experienced already. She smiles as she rests her head on my chest and strokes my belly.

I look away. What are you doing,Ayan?

Cerelacker.

She rubs some ointment on my temples, motioning to the petrified intern to grab my ankles as she fastens my legs to the iron cot. I can feel leather on my skin, and it's not very comforting. Conviction, conviction. As she reaches across me for the needle, the bulge on her front brushes against my cheek. I pull away, disgusted.

Ah, she says. Puberty didn't quite teach you what to expect,did it?

I look at her and smile weakly. There are a million things I want to say to her right now, but all I can do is whimper and tug at the electrodes. Textbook irony, I think to myself. My mind is playing ball with itself. He'll be back. And this time he won't be happy. I choke on my saliva and grunt in a weak show of discomfiture.

The nurse says the doctor will soon be with us. Bless the bastard. He's a fuckin' queer. The way he snaps his fingers when he talks reminds me of Nino Valenti in The Godfather. These closet homosexuals have nothing better to do than watch nubile male bodies writhe in seamless agony, while they cheer as they get the closest thing to the replication of a gay orgasm. Anyway, I am not in the mood for satirical puns. The hospital gown makes me look like a cross between James Frey and Elizabeth Perkins.

He arrives, smiles to show his gleaming white teeth and gushes over his patient (me) and how good he has been. What a dandy. He signals to the attendant to flick the switch.

The waves hit me. Scooping out emotions from my brain like I'm a fat bowl of Häagen-Dazs. I can see spots of green and blue materialize in front of my eyes. That means I'm hallucinating.

Then, he comes.

He's sitting with one leg crossed over the other, like a caporegime. He's wearing a tux - not a very clean one though. Smiles at me oafishly. Freak,he says.

Fuck you.

Then, he starts to shake as the pain hits me. The veins in his wrist start to bulge, then burst, spraying me with his blood. I am shaking in my cot. Electricity courses through my neural pathways. My synapses start to fizzle. Random memories appear and disappear. Sentences from books I have read do their last tango. The depolarization begins. Dendrites snap. I scream. Silently. Because the electrons are stopping salival flow. Wordless, my mouth looks to my arms for expression of pain. I'm flailing about wildly, my thighs hitting the cold sides of the cot. I can see women I have slept with - he has slept with. I can see places he has visited. I can see people with whom he has talked. They are all looking at me with mild disinterest like I'm vermin. So that they can get the cricks out of their legs and stomp on me with their dirty boots. God help me. You poor thing, I can hear the nurse say. She holds a handkerchief to her mouth, dabbing away her lipstick in one fluid motion. I look at the attendant and he looks like the piss is filling his pants. My eyes roll back to the top of my head. Everything goes quiet. It's over.

I am looking through the eyes of someone else.