To -some- unassociated with this world it might seem antithetical to suggest that the adult business, or the people who work in it (particularly the performers) have an authenticity when from the outside what one see’s is the packaged, final product: a generally concentrated, sort of glamorous, super sexualized idea. It is, like it’s sibling the mainstream movie industry, entertainment. Both these industries take some flack (sometimes rightfully) for being incredible superficial. But I’m not sure it’s entirely true or fully deserved. In many ways these industries aren’t too far related to theatre, say. Theatre, despite trying to reflect human nature, is a highly unnatural arena filled with artifice. But it still get’s a pretty good rap. But these three worlds are populated with performers who are pretty much similar. To me, at least. People, using their emotional and physical resources to tell stories. All kinds of stories: highbrow, lowbrow and sexual. The performers really are all cut from the same cloth. Adventurers from all walks of life compelled to take a risk, to put on the greasepaint, take part in a strange ritual, (get paid) and enact humans being well, human. But when they’re at home, busy not being famous or having beautiful looking sex for money they’re just like everyone else. Tired, happy, sad, lonely (or not) and taking solace in the company of their most intimate beloved, their pets.

These photos are just previews of a much larger project we’re working on tentatively titled “Pornstars and Their Pets” but I wanted to share a few photos because I thought they were right for the moment. These are just a small sample and there and many other people not yet shown. I’ve thrown in a few impressions about the performers here and there.

ELA DARLING: This is lovely Ela Darling with her doggie MC Gonzo Gwandoya Ghettoblaster Salinger: The Zombinator. Ela is an original. A former librarian, now a girl girl performer, a total comic and Harry Potter nerd and articulate presence in the adult field. She’s a gracious hostess frequently putting me up as I shuttle myself around LA. The yellow smudge is flower pollen from a gigant orchid I had her devour in some photos just prior. I generally retouch all photos but I thought these (and all the photos in this series wanted to come out of the camera unaffected-I hope the subjects can understand this one time) She’s gamesome and loved by all.

GABRIELLA PALTROVA and Bellatrix I met Gabby at AVN in Vegas through my friends Veruca and Damon James. I haven’t spent that much time with her but I loved her free and unaffected spirit-she was game to be in gesture share the awesomeness that the then tiny Bellatrix was. They are both two foxy felines:

VERUCA (and DAMON) JAMES with Gus, Suzy and Sashimi Veruca and Damon have become my LA family. They have a fiery (and authentic) love, are ambitious, wild, salty and loyal friends. They like busting my chops for things like pink manties (easy game) and my one bottle of whiskey limit. I love them to death, like they do each other.

KATIE ST. IVES and her doggie MR. BEAN. Katie is warm, wild spirit not to mention gorgeous as hell. I have a ton more photos from this shoot which I’m saving for a rainy day.

MADAME ROSEBUD This one is sort of cheating. Rosebud does have a dog and a pet husband (zing). This isn’t her cat. It’s a studio cat that walked up to her on our last shoot. I will shoot her with her pets soon but I can never remind people enough of the beautiful white witch magic that is my friend Rosebud. I hope her and Abe are in my life for a long time to come.

SOVEREIGN SYRE and COCO. Sovereign and I have had, and will continue to have I imagine, many kinds of relationships and colours both in our past and moving into the future. We were romantic partners for two and half years and now forge forward as friends and creative collaborators. Sov is as brainy and complex as people say but put her around an animal, almost any (amphibians included), and you’ll find her at her most unguarded self. When I first met her father he immediately pulled me into the house showing me a gallery of photos of her as child. In each of them she was holding an animal. He grinned his coyotes smile and said: “She loves animals” as if to say: “we both know this part of her”. Coco is our dog, the beautiful, floppy eared, mildy retarded child of the Darling/Syre divorce.

VERONICA RICCI and TWIX Veronica and mine is a new friendship, a very fun work in progress. I can say she is a delightful eccentric, a quirky mermaid of human and great American beauty. Despite her solid following and Penthouse Pet status she has a remarkably level head. She’s rad. Here are some previews of her and Twix.

I first met Mara when she and a friend walked by the studio where I shoot. Her friend was a young photographer and they were on their way to an exhibit at the local art college where Mara would be attending the following September, it was then May or April.

Her friend and I talked about the studio and what went on there and the conversation turned to my work. He asked if I was on Model Mayhem and I said yes, he asked what I went by and I told him. Mara then shoves him out of the way and says I know your stuff and I would love to shoot with you. I asked her her age and she replied seventeen. I said I would be happy to shoot with her but her mom or dad would have to accompany her. She said, “Fuck that. My birthday is soon and I’d rather wait.” We continued talking about photography and the studio and her friend wound up applying and getting hired as an intern.

A few weeks later I get an email from Mara, “I want to get naked for your camera, when can this happen?”

That was the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship and working relationship and I have had the distinct pleasure of watching an amazing model blossom.

This set was a spur of the moment shoot this afternoon and I really hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Mara: www.modelmayhem.com/1222550

we double stuff him, me in front wearing Alex’s cock the harness snags my fishnets on the way up to my hips and i pretend to care but i really don’t and she puts him on the bed all fours legs spread so his lips rest right below the tip and tells him to kiss it and he does nice and sweet and starts to suck but she said kiss and reminds him of this so he starts pecking again all around and under and then uses his tongue to lick it and roll it up and down the shaft of my cock and my pussy starts to pulsate and then he begins to suck and i thrust my hips so it would go a bit deeper and she takes her fingers out of his asshole and works her dick in slowly first and she pulls up his shirt and my view gets better and my eyes go back and forth as he swallows both cocks one in his mouth one in his fuckhole and i throw my leg and heeled foot up on the bed for a better stance and he grabs my thigh without permission and she makes him ask and i pull out so it sounds like English and i nod and tell him only the left one and she starts to fuck him again this time he is more relaxed and it goes right in and she starts to slam his ass repeatedly her hot tits bouncing in the slick black latex bra and an audience forms and disperses and forms again and all of this gets me off and i jam it down his throat and he gags every so often and i love that sound and it makes me giggle gasp and soon there is a stream of saliva falling from the corner of his mouth and i am wet fucking wet and cram it in deeper and soon a puddle of bile and spit on the bedspread and he looks up at me with his moist doe like eyes all pretty boy style and Alex comments on them and we high five over his fucked body and she does not ease up and i like to watch the flesh colored dildo get all glistening and slide in and out from between his teeth his lips in a perfect O those big fucking eyes forming a perfect tear and we all groan and he feasts like one hungry little boy and soon my cock is replaced by a real one a man in latex a friend of Alex’s unzips his pants and pulls it out and i lounge on the bed watching the threesome wanting to touch myself but don’t for some reason or another and then as his cock is getting really hard from the blowjob and Alex is slamming away on that asshole again i decide i’m sleepy that it’s time to leave and give her the standard good bye cheek kiss over the sex and seek out the elevator excited for tomorrow morning’s pancakes. this time i will order blueberry banana.

So…there isn’t a whole lot of artistic authenticity in most of my work – almost all “O” faces are faked, boob scars are removed, hot girls don’t just show up in latex and decide to take a showers in my bathroom.  But, in my head – this is how I see the world when I’m shooting: everyone is pretty, no weird blemishes, no bruises from a drunken stolen shopping cart ride the night before a big magazine shoot, all the bands are cool, all the models are tall and rad…So in my heart of hearts, I am authentic to my vision and my thru-the-view-finder worldview.

Welcome to Vegas, My Vegas, where two hot tattooed Swedish girls wrestle naked in latex gloves high above the strip in a posh suite:

Models: Ellegy Ellem & Amelie Calamity

Gloves by All You Need Is Gloves

Mistress Alex negotiates domestic bliss with a consenting kitten (masked). NYC, Sept. 2012 by JM Darling

“Bridget always consents.”

Jezabel is her human friend. Her Twitter and site are below.

Jezabel Knight

https://twitter.com/JezabelKnight

http://www.jezabelknight.com/

*the title is a lyric from the song “Montague Terrace In Blue” by Scott Walker

All the best,

O

By the end of the day, the police had arrested one-hundred and eighty-one people, which, for someone who was there and witnessed first-hand the non-violent nature of the event and the innocuous jubilation of the majority of demonstrators themselves, is an extraordinary number. Among those taken into custody were journalists, writers, and artists, including writers John Knefel and Wes Trexler, and the prolific artist and entrepreneur Molly Crabapple, whose only apparent crime was showing up.

The following are photos I took throughout the day.

These men and women were ready for action and when there was no action to be found, they wasted no time creating it themselves.

Wake up with me. I swear it will feel good. XO

Hello readers/lovers.  I hope this finds you well.  As my last article was addressing a very literal and physical form of consent, with this piece I wanted to move into something a little more interpretive.  Since the publishing of the last piece, the word “consent” has been ever-present in my mind.  I find myself weighing each and every situation I’ve been in recently against the notion of “Do I or don’t I?”  I also coined the phrase “consent as philosophy,” which has stayed with me as well…haunting me.  I find myself devoting time each day to dissecting the subtle and nuanced ways in which a “philosophy of consent” can affect my life.  It is not really until one steps back from the entirety of oneself and bounces each and every thing off this concept that one can see how little of their own existence they’ve truly said “yes” to.  This butterfly effect is not confined to my present, either.  These small but magical shockwaves are reverberating through my memories, rearranging how I feel about things I’ve felt powerless towards my whole life.  This month has enlightened me to a very old idea indeed: that consent can equal catharsis.  If one empowers oneself enough to grant, it or revoke it.

I knew I wanted to be a seductress as far back as I can remember.  Even when I was very young, in pre-school, and saw myself as a son rather than a daughter, I wanted to play the role of siren.  Because it’s just that: a role.  Even though I felt like Peter Pan, that did not mean I couldn’t learn how to walk, talk and flirt like Jessica Rabbit.  Like so many flesh and blood sex goddesses, she was a creation.  And still to this day, whether or not I identify as female is of no consequence.  I can still follow in the footsteps of self-made vixens.

But until recently, this path has always held conflict for me.  There are so many things I’ve internalized over the years that impede my success and happiness.  I’ve passively consented to these conflicts of interest because I haven’t taken the time to consider whether I even believe in their legitimacy or ought to have engaged in them in the first place.  For example, one of my earliest memories of being humiliated for being myself (and parsing what “myself” was) was on the playground at age 6.  I basically conducted my own form of Drag School using Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman as my template.  A friend and I would perform walking, talking and hunting for each other, all with over the top, Mae West-esque affectations.  We had fun doing it for a while, until one day she threw down our homemade bullwhip and said, “You are sick!  You are obsessed with sex!”…and I went and hid behind a tree and cried.  I was not like the other kids, and because I had trouble making friends, I thought she must be right.  Even at that young age, I’d been Catholic long enough to feel physical shame at the mere mention of the word “sex.”  Even though that was not involved in the game, sensuality was just as evil a deed.

As female-bodied beings, we are taught in society that if other women don’t cotton to you, you are doing something wrong.  And if you have an easier time making friends with boys, you are most likely a slut.  Well, I’ve never had an easy time making female friends, and I’ve bent over backwards debasing myself at different points in my life to maintain friendships with women just because I wanted to prove to myself that I was good.

Evaluating this memory against my current meditation brings me to this conclusion: my life revolves around sex, yes.  Sexuality in its many media has been my artistic topic of choice since I could draw and play dress-up.  I grant consent to that as the truth.  And I revoke my consent to internalizing all the shame that surrounds it.  I have the power to do this.  With that simple choice, I have the objective clarity to see that all the things I ever thought mental/spiritual flaws about myself are really all the things that are right about me.  By actually seeking my own consent, I set myself free.

I was recently with a lover who drove this home for me like a railroad spike.  I placed them naked in a chair with a blindfold on.  They easily consented to these things.  But every time I went to touch them, they jumped with a start.  “I think I do that because I’m trying to keep you at arm’s length, and myself from feeling good,” they confessed to me.  I wondered to myself if they will ever consent to their own pleasure in themselves, because until they do, I will always be far away.  I hope they do, because they deserve pleasure.

I wonder how actively seeking one’s own consent as a life philosophy may improve the lives of the people I love.  Rather than spending years debating the impact of events  and feelings, one might improve one’s quality of life by placing themselves in a position of power and saying, “Yes, this happened, I can’t change that, but I don’t consent to suffering as a result of it anymore.”  Or, “Yes, I feel self-conscious but I consent to these good feelings because I don’t want to waste this opportunity.”  Because as an argument of consent, all things irrational quickly become logical.  Though one may not feel powerful or worthy of power, if one is not actively consenting or non-consenting throughout their lives, then they are asleep.  And who really wants to say “yes” to sleepwalking through life?XO
Photo: JM Darling

This is a touchy subject.  Some people are insistent that you should seek to love yourself as you are, others that you should try sculpt yourself to fit some standard you consider idea and on and on.

For me, I’m viewing this as something I’m doing to build up my confidence as well as to polish the instrument I use in my trade.  I work every day with beautiful women of varying shapes and sizes.  All I can say is that I know what my problem areas are, the things that make me self-conscious in a scene and therefore, not as good of a performer.  There are also things that make me too self aware in real life.  I want to overcome these things on one hand so I look better, but also for the increased confidence that will come from achieving something I’ve set out to do.

I don’t have a hard and fast goal weight or anything.  I just want to be doing more physically to effect a body I find enjoyable and beautiful.

I was a ballerina and a soccer player as a child, and even now I run everyday and practice Bikram yoga five to six times a week.  Still I wouldn’t say that I have a good body.  I’ve never really had a good body (a testament to how much I love food).  A male performer once suggested I have body dysmorphia, but this isn’t about him.  His pallet is too broad to begin with.  He can get hard for anything.

I’ve always been more of a face.  

I’m endeavoring to change that.  So I joined a gym.  I’m going to start lifting weights, and you know, actually training my body.  I’m not really looking forward to this, or at least I wasn’t until last night.

I was at the gym and on a cardio machine, and I found myself pushing to work harder and longer, even though my normal tendency is to give up.
I went to the pool to swim laps and challenged myself to do double what I’d set out for.  It was a satisfying feeling.

I realize that for me, physical conditioning, is actually mental conditioning.  My real weakness is in training my mind to focus and complete things.  Even as I write this, I don’t want to be.  I’d rather watch youtube videos or write something, or read from a book.  It’s just my nature.

I think that this undertaking is going to help transform me in a different way.  I may, for the first time, become disciplined.

I figure between yoga, weights, cardio, jogging, and my pole classes, this body is going to start coming together in a way that will make me more confident.

When I started a 60 day challenge in my Bikram, (60 classes in 60 days), I wasn’t sure if I’d do it, and yet, lately, things have felt for me more important, they are weighted with a sense of urgency.  As if innately, my frazzled mind understands that this is indeed a time to work.
I passed the challenge, and it made me feel a sense of confidence.  I’d been able to complete something that was difficult, with no outside pressure or assistance in achieving that goal.

Something else changed for me too.

When I would start my classes I would hate to look at my body in the mirror.  I don’t really enjoy it at all.  Yet, but the end of class I would have compassion for myself and my plump legs and round tummy.

It’s about the small victories when it comes to the image of our bodies.

(for Clement Greenberg)

Love, JMD

Leanna and I have been shooting a lot recently. I have a thing for redheads… well honestly I have a thing for brunettes and blondes too but Leanna is infectious and a lot of fun to work with.

When she asked if I had read anything by Bukowski and if I would be into doing a shoot of her reading her copy of “Women” I was all for it.

“Where did all the women come from? The supply was endless. Each one of them was individual, different. Their pussies were different, their kisses were different, their breasts were different, but no man could drink them all, there were too many of them, crossing their legs, driving men mad. What a feast!”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

Leanna can be found here: leannabanana.com

(title quoted from the opening lyrics of “Big Sleep” by Simple Minds)

XO

alternate titles:

mutual gorging: optics, objects, and subjects

The Letter

Letter To Oral

The Liminal Slippage Between Taste and Touch

Show your appreciation for Otto’s work here on his Tumblr and Twitter:

@ottorotic

http://ottorotic.tumblr.com

Thanks,

JM Darling
@jmdarling
@Darling_House

Show your appreciation for Otto’s work here on his Tumblr and Twitter:

@ottorotic

http://ottorotic.tumblr.com

Thanks,

JM Darling
@jmdarling
@Darling_House

we get lost. at least it is beautiful and the light dapples on the trees and it reminds me a bit of India which makes me afraid but i get through it and then we are really lost and come upon abandoned homes painted pastel rust colors and everything has a layer of metaphorical cobweb on it and then we see a home with a tv playing from inside the large windows and knock on the door and minutes go by before we hear a voice and i can’t tell where it is coming from. a man with white hair and glasses and no shirt on, grey chest hair melting on reddish flesh appears and we exchange directions and a touch of pleasantries and then i notice the shot gun in his hand as he tells me not to worry about the shotgun in his hand. i am in a Rob Zombie movie and he laughs and five minutes later he is teaching me the ways of country driving, specifically backing up.

we have a shot and some pizza and forget about the drive. Mona’s boy brought tomahawks and blowdarts and knives to play with. we talk about how alligators will do anything for marshmallows and someone tells a story about shoving marbles up a guy’s ass and whipping them out and how he ended up at the proctologist the next day and they found one single grey marble jammed up there. it reminds me how i once made a series where i shoved different objects into my vagina and took self portraits. candy canes and candles and lollipops and sparklers and such. i kept finding things lodged up there over those few weeks. condoms and tissue paper and such. i didn’t share this memory but i should have and someone chimes in with a story about her friend Pepper who ran with Cuban strippers in Florida and Mona yells out”there must a candle in this mothafuckin house” and we continue to nourish ourselves with all sorts of cabin rental decadence. later someone finds snake skins and we figure out margaritas and math don’t mix and get acquainted with our topsheets for the evening.
Sade and Mona are laying an old hammock net onto a teepee of sticks that they just set up. the creek is as beautiful as i remember. each time i have been here i am in the throws of soul searching. this time it seems more serious or real. i’m more aware that change is challenging in this layered onion peel way i keep peeling back these layers or skins and its more intense more pungent each time usually when one finishes peeling or gets to the center of the onion, the flavor and oder are so extreme that one starts to tear up which could also be called crying. they threw whips in the bag mix next to the bugspray and turkey sandwiches. bodies over logs and lashings and squirting over flowers. i can’t actuallly visualize the onion, i don’t know if its red or yellow or white i can only inhale what was left of that last peel and i would like to her peel my skirt down and then use her foot to softly break my stance and push me down onto the log. the Talking Heads play and it matches the intensity of the sun. after cigarettes and peanut butter jelly sandwiches i think about the Earl of Sandwich and how epic his idea has become. last night i couldn’t stop eating Sun Chips and cookies. it was utter devastation on their part.i’m not sorry for them. Ryan lights the firepit with his cigarette and we lay under the sky and trees right above the creek’s fast waters and brownies and spliffs and lazy i stare up at the branches swaying above me and can’t help but close my eyes for a little while. everyone goes silent and listens to the music and the fire crackling and the marshmallows from the smores melt and thick white onto the firey wood. stories of colonoscopies and endoscopies ensue and i light another cigarette, promising myself i will quit tomorrow. everyone agrees it’s a sex in the woods kind of place.

i have a cigarette with my morning coffee and watch Axe rub body butter all over her back and her ass cheeks. the others have left now and she flips over she’s topless and spreads her legs and i look down between them to golden sparkly fabric that fits snug around her lips and the trees and the wind and silence again. we spend the day at an antique store and i talk to the shop keeper as she buys a new box to store memories from the past few days in. he is from South Africa an older man with matching breath that added a nice touch to his character which i don’t seem to mind at all. his voice is soothing and he rolls his r’s in a way that makes me scratch the back of my head and arms i could have listened to it for days on end. he invites us over for coffee and to see his box collection. his husband stands by quietly and the serenity of the situation takes me places. later, telescopes and Flash Gordon and firehouses happen and we spend the rest of the night horny and hungry for banana pudding on vanilla wafers. i stand in the kitchen and look at the four or five boxes of pudding mix and think to myself “there’s no way we’re going to get around to all this pudding” and Dear Prudence plays in a way that i have never heard it before.

It’s hard to describe the unique phenomenon to both be both an insider and outsider to this country at the same time. Growing up an “international” (Brit Dad, Filipino/Chinese/Russian mother) on a sailboat sailing to over 60 countries taught me to blend in real quick, especially if it meant I could be around pretty lasses on stable shore. I did visit the States in small pockets of time, a year here and there and did some schooling here too once.

I had a few years of schooling in the US. In Florida. I had a best friend, Kent, we’d romp around sandboxes and play Star Wars.  I was head over heels in love with his sister Heather a couple years older than me. The three of us would carouse in the pool, play Star Wars (I was always jockeying to be Han to her Lea but ended up an Ewok or whatever Chewbacca was) as well as racing through the steamy Flordian woods. She was dark haired and ivory skinned and would call me to join her up in a tree to eat an icicle. Roger shared his vast toy collection and got me in the Cub (Boy?) Scouts. I think. They don’t have this in Bay of Biscaye, just waves and death.

Heather however was blossoming quick, being a couple years older and caught the attention of a blonde blue eyed apple pie strapping boy. They were soon going “steady” and I was crushed. No one knew of course and it would only a given that Kent and I were asked to guard the house while they kissed on the roof. We’re all friends right? I immediately hated this.

I played my one and only game of baseball that summer (still don’t get it). One of the kids accidentally batted a ball through someone’s window and, without warning, the irate owner bolted out and immediately spanked the boy over his knee and left without warning. The whole incident happened so fast everyone was dumbfounded. I took the lead in righteous indignation, seeing an opportunity to posture:

Me: “If that was me, I’d take this bat and BASH him!!! (referring to the spank giving adult). “Like this!!”

And without thinking, I swiftly and deftly demonstrated by swinging down the baseball bat smack down onto Heather’s head.

I didn’t mean to do that…

All I remember is screams, some blood and then a posse of 6 boys pummeling the life out of me. Then blackout.

When I woke I was along on a bloody, empty baseball field Heather and Kent bringing me me to.

She knew I hadn’t meant to hurt her and lifted me to my knees. Turns out I was more hurt than she. Three of us hobbled home to her house where she lied and told her father she fell off her bike, I think.  I just remember those siblings getting in more trouble than me and that’s not too good, is it? sorry…

I sailed away for good at the end of summer but the flavors of sunny summer, free spirited youths and American innocence have always romanced me. I’ve come back as an adult to experience America. And a few American beauties.

Sovereign is a mercurial actress, easily morphing from the vampy vixen you all know her to be, but just as well into the most precious, open hearted, vulnerable beauty.

Click on the pictures to enlarge, they’re enjoyed better that way.

Happy Fourth of July, friends.

Drop dead gorgeous sex bomb porn star Katie St. Ives helps celebrate a Birthday-(let’s make it yours America) with a hot impromptu romp complete with all the accouterments of anything unforgettable in a sexy birthday celebration: Gas station champagne, balloons, leopard heels and (if you view through the end) some glorious bukake.

This is what America’s independence was fought for.

Scroll through and enjoy some surprises. Happy 4th.

When I Die in my Dreams, I Never Wake Up

I’m murdered from time to time in my dreams,
by a stranger in an all night laundromat,
I’m folding clothes in the flickering light
when I notice him casually walking in
through the only door out. There is something
between us, a familiarity in
the way he stares as I feed the machines
quarters and clothes, that makes me afraid when I
realize there are no windows in this room,
and we are stuck like that for a long time, both
knowing what we intend to do, but not
yet moving.

I used to jog through the streets of Manhattan every morning before dawn.  I passed by the eternal flame as I jogged through Battery Park. I would wander past the massive statues that surround the Native American Museum and circle back around to watch the sunrise over the Statue of Liberty.

There’s something about the quietude of the crepuscular hours , when the sky is a deep crystalline blue and the moon is fading to a pale pearl husk up there through the trees or above the glittering buildings.  Its so intoxicating, that despite the danger of it, I can’t resist my solitude.

The last day I was in New York I was coming home from my girlfriend’s house in Brooklyn.  It was 3:30 in the morning and I was worn out because we’d been making love all night.  I was the only one of the subway crossing over to Manhattan.  I liked being on the train at that time of day, watching my own reflection in the subway windows.  There was of course, always the momentary thrill of each stop, when the doors would open, wondering if a man was going to walk in…if he would be dangerous or mad.

I was walking through the turnstile to exit out into downtown Manhattan as a lone man was coming down the stairs off the streets.  There was nothing between us but the stretch of stinking concrete and piss.  It was like something out of Irreversible.  As he passed through the turnstile he reached out and grabbed my tit.  He grabbed me so hard it brought the strap of my dress down.

And I just kept walking.

It’s weird how life does that to you.

A few months later in California, I was jogging and was accosted by a man with a knife.  He chased me for a long time, even as I ran from door to door when everyone is still sleeping, pounding on windows and screaming for help.  It felt like being stranded in the midst of a black sea with nothing but a void full of monsters beneath me.

It was a kid who finally opened the door for me.  His mother was too startled to know what to do.

It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened.  A few years before that, a guy had tried to drag me off the bike trial into the bushes to do God knows what. He was brazen too, because it was the middle of the day and the path was full of people trying to enjoy the temperate weather of an autumn afternoon.  Him I fought, kicking and punching and spitting.  The cops laughed uncomfortably when they took the report.  They told me what I’d done was dangerous, that he could have really hurt me.

Still I go running every morning.

It’s not that these things don’t terrify me.  They do.  It’s just, I’m not willing to change my habits.  I don’t want to feel that I’m at war or something, that I’ve got to hide from the enemy… I often imagine that when I do die, it will probably be at the hands of some lunatic with a grudge against women in a dark parking lot or something.

I walk in the dark anyway.

My father always tells me the only thing I could ever do to make him ashamed is be afraid.

We were raised as wolves, and as wolves we shall remain.

Now, some iPhone erotica:

Fugue: a state or period of loss of awareness of one’s identity, often coupled with flight from one’s usual environment, associated with certain forms of hysteria

(pictorial ‘inspired’ by Catherine Robbe-Grillet)

Go to “Supplementaire” 8 (UK), for a very different variation of this story, entitled

“The Other Life” pp. 106-119, at:

http://issuu.com/supplementaire/docs/supp8_print?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage

Or Else,

Kencredible

Scar 13