We were sitting facing the ocean after we’d come out of the club. I can’t remember if we were touching. The last time we’d been on the beach, I was straddling him and our bodies couldn’t be closer together. I wanted his hands everywhere and he fell over, holding me, onto the pavement where we tumbled like crazed lovers in the plain sight of everyone �" and didn’t give a f**k (because we were on MDMA). People walked by centimetres from my head, and I breathed laughter into his neck. Not this time. This time we both faced the ocean, and maybe we held hands, but I don’t believe he felt nothing for me, even as he said “I’m going to make you hate me”. He said “why do you like me? Because I’m dangerous. I’m different” I should have answered “because you make me feel alive”. But we can’t be together, because you’re too cruel and cynical, and I am too greedy and gullible.
There was nothing about Noah that would be good for me. Perhaps for this reason precisely, I wanted him, even while I told myself "he’s no good for you, this junkie who you’d give up life to live in dark paradise with. He is a dirty, drug-dealing, manipulative liar, headed nowhere and guarded by the demons of his past misfortunes, his heart broken and battered from his confrontations with the hard truths of the world." He is no good but he understands you. More than you know. More than yourself. He breaks the rules, he breaks the law, he gets into fights, he is rude, he is fierce and wild and builds companies and loves many people, but it isn’t real love anymore. I don’t know how easily he can do that any more. He is not like me because I crave the wilderness but fear to give myself to it. I am cowardly, I am so afraid of unhappiness, so afraid of burning out yet always, always still craving the flame.
In our hypothetical dream we would take a lot of drugs and talk and do nothing, and being the boy he is, he’d get bored of me and leave for the road again and I’ll be in misery, like an animal climbing out of a deep cave after a long slumber during which she has lost her sensory abilities, or a heroin addict crawling through the drug-induced abyss she has self-administered in defiance (or perhaps detestation) of the world.
He said “you can’t separate love from f*****g”. I said “that’s not true. I can. Just not with you”.
“And that;s why I can’t sleep with you”.
That night, with a devilish look in his eyes, he commanded me to leave and forget him, to have fun with other men and enjoy the night. I refused. He made me pay for the cab ride back and then he said he would punish me for sleeping with someone else the night before. Lying unclothed next to him, he gripped my hair back painfully so I could see into his grey eyes as he let out bitter, impassioned words about his cold, hollow world where he could fool anyone and feed them his lies, but the sad predicament was that he could never fool himself into believing. I think I fell in love or in madness just watching him race to finish those words, because I am addicted to tragedy, and I longed so much to kiss that pain away, but he said “no” and pushed me away, which was the right thing to do, and so I just clung to him and lay my head on his chest.
I am an innocent, and you gave me raw, unforgiving sex. I admit I was thrilled by the emotional rollercoaster and the excitement of the power dance. You whispered hoarsely “I’m going to punish you. You’re going to give me head, you’re going to take all of it into your mouth, and you’re going to swallow, and then I’m gonna f**k you from behind. Okay? Then go.” I did everything you said and still, I enjoyed it, even laughed when you said you could see Nick’s face from the bed, with the other 20 people in the room. Your animosity was loving, isn’t that crazy? I think it was my stubborness in putting up with it all as though we were part of a grand joke that got through to you. I can be strong. I’m not like those other girls. I believe in you despite it all. You took me to the bathroom and tried to force it in, and it was just such a mess: my head kept hitting the walls and my hands clutched around desperately on the wet ground. But I was laughing, You made me kneel on the tiles and give you head, there in the showers, with Nick’s voice interrupting “you guys are still at it..?!” But you were smiling. And you cupped my face with your hands and told me to look at you, and so I stared into your penetrating blue eyes high above, while my mouth was full of you, and my hands gripped you and my knees pressed hard into the cold tiles beneath you. Then you pinned my arms back so that I couldnt fight you as you pleasured my breasts, and I was so delirious with your touch that I begged you to stop and told you I needed you inside me.
There’s so much I could say to you, and none of it would be appropriate. I left a note for you too �" “Not sorry. you were worth it”. You found me before I could slip away, and you laughed and crumpled it. I could be held by you forever. I know what it feels like now, when lovers take that deep breath, pull apart and walk away without turning back. And then torture themselves with thoughts of what could have been.
“You fall in love so easily. Why are you so desperate to be loved?”
Because. I have so much love to give. I am bursting with a desire to give love. I am dying to find genuine human affection and understanding. I know of no real happiness dependant only on myself �" I can get by, sure, I can be successful and productive, but I crave a happiness that is far more intense and volatile, an insanity that nobody wants �" such is the delicious desire to put your vulnerable heart wholly in the hands of another gambler.
What more I love about you: your eyes are not naive. Your ability to confound and challenge me. This is good, because everyone else is so easy. You’re complicated. At 22, shrouded in a darkness that is not evident to your friends. You fought your way to where you are now and you earned your own misery. You think you may go insane. I weep because I understand you.
Or rather I hope that because of all of this, you may understand me. How my life seems so perfect but I am always on the edge of grief �" I’ve invited myself to that dismal place.
�"
3 nights before. Noah was accusing me of spiking his drink on the first night. I can’t quite recall what attracted me to him in those early stages. I remember the first night he wore a black and white shirt in cow-print, because I’d looked wildly for it in the club after I lost him and had my phone stolen. The second night it was this red print shirt which he said his mother back in Australia made for him. We talked about a lot of strange things. How the colours of the street lamps in the square outside our hostel were different. I told him how difficult it was to control my own happiness, how afraid I was of being unhappy and unable to do anything about it. And he gave me what he later revealed to be the bullshit he fed the commoners: you have every ability to control your own happiness and you are free to decide to do whatever you want. “You can get on a flight back to Sydney or stay in Barcelona or pick up your bags tomorrow morning and go somewhere new. Look at me, I could leave tomorrow, or stay, or whatever”, and then he tried to throw me into the fountain when I protested that I had no control. I thought of this moment when 3 days later, after our strange night of love and hate and the apology he slipped under my door, he said how it is never just our control of the outside world that matters, and I demanded that he never treat me like one of them and feed me blissful illusions.
But in truth that entire night was one great dazzling illusion. With MDMA in our veins, we went off to Razzmatazz, a colossal nightclub somewhere in Barcelona (I loved being blind in the city and taken into the unknown). He never pays for his train tickets. And like any silly girl I loved when he invited me to break the rules and pulled open the gates for me to slip through �" “Annie. Come on” and held me so close in an arm the entire way as we walked through the shady night district and bypassed the line outside to slip in for free with the club manager who knew him well. Of course, inside, he is a great dancer. He is confident and careless and throws me about like a doll. He is an expert I suppose, showing his girl all the right amounts of attention, one would easily believe he was smitten and enjoying himself.
I grew exhausted because it was 2am and I’d slept 3 hours the night before. He dabbed his finger into his packet and slipped it into my mouth. I licked it clean and was ready for euphoria.
At some point we went outside and he made me leech a cigarette off some vulnerable man in the terrace. I found myself attacking a lone, handsome Australian who I apparently (without recollection) had already met earlier and identified me “you’re with Noah. You can have a cigarette”. He was a cool dude. We had a good time. We smoked for a long time because I thought it was rude to simply take the cigarette and go �" Noah found us and asked for a puff. They then had a long discussion about how awful Australians are. So closed minded. So un-travelled. So judgemental etc etc. Quite tedious but the night was so beautiful and I felt so right with the world, that I could have sat there forever freezing and not feeling a thing but the glorious peace that brings a sedative smile and a cigarette to your lips. These are the moments that I will miss. Feeling desired and loved and full of possibility, buried deep in a mass of strangers who spoke foreign languages, in an unknown place in a foreign city, under that same big blue moon.
Noah wanted to leave. I loved to reach for his neck and kiss him in crowds, to be lifted and carried across dance floors without a care in the world. So we left, but on the way inside passed the massive dance floor where it was apparent that the club had become insanely good and covered in pulsating bodies that writhed in terrific anarchy under the steam and neon strobe lights. It was a madness and we dove to join them, all the while screaming “beach beach beach! let’s go to the beach!”. I wish I could have stayed and danced because it was so manic and the music melt right through me in ripples, begging my limbs to move and my heart to break free. But I wished for everything right then, and would have loved anything. “It’s the love drug” he told me. “You love everythinggggg”. So we went searching for the beach �" if I have learnt any spanish at all during the entire trip, itd be “donde esta la playa?” If everything happens for a reason, then the reason why I followed a strange old Spanish man onto that coastal hike to the middle of nowhere in Tarifa some mornings ago was so I could learn the meaning of this mysterious place known as “playa” . And how glorious it was! I thought I would burst with happiness at the thought of f*****g this boy on a deserted beach in Barcelona �" certainly bucket list material, but ah, how exhilarating and new! the sand, the waves, the darkness. I was crazed and confident and feeling deliciously cheeky �" “Am I about to have the best sex of my life?” I knew I was. But he apologised and said that he has trouble when he’s on MD.
We sat on the sidewalk where melted into each other, whispering incoherent things, falling down and laughing and running our hands everywhere. There would be no skinny dipping because the sand was allegedly gross and the water freezing. He said “we have all week anyway. another time”, and I believed him as I always foolishly do… but truthfully I know by now that moments like these rarely repeat. There is only ever one chance. Just like when Michael said “not tonight, Saturday”, and when Liam said “not tonight. But soon” and Niko’s “let’s do X, Y and Z. and we’ll go clubbing together sometime, but not tonight” I am always always thinking “it’s now or never”. Time isn’t really linear for me and the lives I lead don’t continue one into another..
“We’re going back to the hostel” he said
“But I like it here. It’s so nice. Let’s stay a bit longer”
“Ok.” He kissed me then pulled away and we swayed and rubbed our bodies together in that MD way. “Nup, that’s it we’re going back to the hostel. I need to touch you. Without these clothes”
So I paid for the cab ride back and in the cab he pulled me to him and I sat with the entire length of my body pressed to his. We wished the driver a good night and leapt into Kabul, the hostel where dreams are born and shattered in the Catalan night.
“David likes you” he said. I denied it. “He does”. “There’s 20 people in my room so we’re going to yours”
I contested. “But David sleeps on top of me in mine”
“Ok that’s fucked. We’re going to mine”. So we had the hostel manager let us into his room as he’d lost his keys. And we snaked through 19 sleeping bodies in the dark until… well I don’t remember what happened next. Isn’t that strange? How can moments so tremendous in your life take place, that you don’t remember? I don’t remember the touch of him, or his taste anymore. Sometimes I struggle to remember his face, except I know he has a gap between his front teeth and his eyes are very clear. Anything could have happened. The things that usually do probably did. I remember saying, horrified “you’re so big. Take it as a compliment, but…” I guess it’s all about how you feel about someone that determines how beautiful you think their body is. I always thought Niko had a noble dick, whatever that means. It seemed straight and fine, confident, clean. There are others that have just seemed greedy and unappealing. I loved Noah’s body with all its imperfections, and there were many. I remember his fierceness and his abrupt pause when he had his finger pressed deep inside me, and he said “you feel that? That. That’s your G spot” and I knew absolutely nothing. And later him lamenting “I am ashamed for my sex that no man has done this for you before”.
The first blow job comes for free. I am very good at them so then I have to start charging. He called me a liar later, “there is no way you can have had sex less than 10 times and be THAT good at giving head”. At the time I simply swallowed and licked my lips.
‘Pinga dinga sex’ is the best, according to my friend Gigi. The danger is you may place the love that you irrevocably feel upon the partner in this adventure.
He was defensive about me too. At some point in the night, Nick comes back and makes a raucous and ask “hey Nathan, so did you butt f**k that Asian girl?” and Noah says something like “she’s still here” but in a way that made me happy to be there.
I woke up delirious some time in the middle of the night (or morning, rather) and found him staring at me with a bizarre look on his face, and stroking me and his enormous erection. “Are you ok? What’s wrong?” I asked, and it took me a while to figure out that he wanted to have sex. “I thought MD prevented you from getting it up?”
He says “How can I help it, when I have this sleeping next to me?” He seemed fascinated with my body, the way naked men in bed usually are.
Again, I can’t really remember what happened next.
I was paranoid that I had to check out by 11am or I’d lose my deposit. He kept saying “I can guarantee that nothing will happen to you if they find you in my bed tomorrow.”
“And why is that?”
“Just trust me. They will not do anything to you”
And of course it all worked out fine in the end, though I doubt he had anything to do with it. I can only imagine what the cleaner, who told him that I had to leave when she came and found us still there at noon, thought about us, as we got dressed and I couldn’t resist coming back for more kisses, as though it were young love, as though it would last into sobriety and reality.
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