mischievously mental

Do you know this feeling of being in bed right before falling asleep and you are thinking of the most horrible thing that could happen to you? It’s a way of distracting yourself from an unpleasant sensation resting heavily on your chest. The cracks in the ceiling prop up your imagination and help it to defy the white numbness of a silent, speechless night. I relish these moments of floating ideas without any consequences, when I can simply follow the curves and convolutions of my thoughts without the pressure of having to transform them into anything usable or concrete or useful or… Somehow in this fascination for this world of ethereal ideas lies my biggest fear. To be diving in air literally trying to grab an idea here and there with, in the back of my mind, the reassurance that I will return to my mental nest with my new bountiful collection. Deep inside I know what the bitter realization is. There is no returning anywhere with anything. I should just accept that I can only toy with a bunch of alluring thoughts for a while and then be thrown back to where I am with nothing. Oh, I am probably not making any sense. Well, what I meant is that there is a certain fascination with mentally observing one’s life take certain shapes, which then disintegrate into smaller parts and later again aggregate into different forms. All in a very random, chaotic fashion. The pit I always fall into, however, is believing that all those mischievous exercises of the mind might actually become real. I am terrified by the thought that the next day I would wake up into another dull day, that the cracks in my ceiling are not the making of a genie hovering above my bed. They are just the consequence of an intricate physical phenomenon, aren’t they? © El Matador

Swing

Swing… Swing… a tear is finding its way. I have no time to weal. I am gaining momentum. Why don’t you fuck off? I am not waiting for a beep. My body is disintegrating. Catch this chunk if you can. Tonight, I am spitting on every inch of my bed. I am marking my territory. My brush is striking at a metronome’s rhythm. There is anger, fear, aggression, madness and so much more. I will be in all my states. Alone. Every state will last for a split of a second. You'd better catch up. I will leave you behind. Butterfly of the squealing guitars, I wanted to melt into that sound. Why don’t you fuck off? I will massage every inch of my bed. Long whispering of under-the-sheet stories. My body is itching, come and get me… © El Matador

Vertical Day

This morning my bed is obsessively vertical
Perfectly aligned with my spine
Supporting my spine, my entire body, my spine, entire body…
All condensed into one long Giacometti figurine
My feet are so far away
Let me wrap my snaky legs around your neck
The rest of the world is floating around
You're hovering in the asphyxiated air too
Let me pull you vehemently towards my lips
I extend my legs far, so far, to save you from oblivion
My hands are growing longer and longer to grab you
Together we can form a wide circle around the world
© El Matador

Cubbyhole (Part I)

The door of the cubbyhole was swiftly closed. I tried to convince myself that there was actually a separation line between the wild hunting ground of the Hammam and the flimsy intimacy of my cubbyhole.
After brushing my body against various kinds of flesh and looking into the eyes of a multitude of males then mentally scanning potential images of shagging, my choice finally landed on a tall man who was persistently staring at me.
He was confidently guarding his den. His large body was almost entirely blocking the cubbyhole’s entrance. I approached him hesitantly discovering gradually his features in the dim light. He pulled me towards him in an elegant move worthy of a dancer. For a second, I thought I heard tango rhythms fluffing up the air. I even saw myself carrying a rose in my mouth. My blood pressure dropped down smoothly when I learned that my prefect stranger was Spanish. It was like being transported from this perfectly functional room where every detail was conceived for the best time-efficient basic sexual encounter into my Spanish classroom. I started patching up sentences in Spanish to talk about the weather, my country, my job then slowly slipped into another darker territory. I asked him to talk dirty in Spanish. I looked at my sweaty face in the mirror as he embraced me and poured his tongue into my ears. We lied down and made out. Every time we moved, our sweaty bodies made squeaky sounds as they interacted with the cheap leather mattress. I felt like a porn star watching myself in the mirrors placed on every wall and the ceiling of the cubbyhole. Javier had this amazing talent of having the generic one night stand while showering his partner with fatherly affection. He was my perfect sugar daddy. I never saw Javier again. The last mental image I have of him is one by the lockers of the Hammam. He was saying goodbye like a sailor embracing his mistress before disappearing into the sea. He took my phone number as he wore his Speedo. I turned my back to him and went to look for my friends. With every step I made I hesitated for half a second. A question kept flashing in my head: Shall I make plans with Javier? But I never turned back and Javier never eventually called. © El Matador

A Gentlemen's Agreement

We were each lying along one edge of my bed. Between us, a narrow fault drawn roughly by the lines of our bodies quickly took shape. We both reverently respected the separation line adjusting our bodies’ boundaries from time to time only. As usual, I tried delicately to prevent the flesh of my buttocks from flooding beyond its normal confines. He puffed on his cigarette and caressed his shrinking uncut penis in a slow ritualistic movement.
We barely looked at each other. We were each fixating a point on the crimson curtain in front. I occasionally peeked at his prepuce to study how it covered vehemently the head of his penis. The scene of the aftermath was aesthetically set in a way that created perfect theatrical tension.
“I will make it up for you in the second round,” he said before sipping loudly from his whisky glass. His words provoked an annoying sensation of itching. I felt the solidified particles of sperm disintegrating as I scratched my belly. Somehow I was gained by a liberating urge to rebel against the whole status quo that had heavily established itself between us.
“Don’t be mad, there won’t be a second round. My feelings get always totally messed up after sex,” I said. He kept quiet. He was probably waiting for a more elaborate answer. “I understand,” he finally muttered.
Slowly, we were dragged into a mundane talk about his life, my life, his job, my job, his family, my family… We both showed veiled interest in each other’s stories. We were kind of determined to finish our “gentlemen’s agreement” as decently as possible.
I avoided looking at his ugly elongated face. He shunned my overly hairy legs.
Half an hour later, I found myself brushing alone the edge of my bed. It took me some time to re-seize control over its total surface. I finally managed to extend my entire body all over. One thing cut me off from regaining total serenity, the lingering smell of his cigarette… © El Matador

A crystalline moment

Almost ten years separate me from this crystalline moment. It was my first real “voyage”, far from everything that was familiar to me. I was feeling the eagerness of savoring every ripe moment of my youth that had been confined for long in a box of social conformism.
Two weeks had passed since my arrival to Paris. I was rambling aimlessly in the intimate corners of the city. With every step, I was attempting to pull myself away from the disappointment of my first night with a man. My brain cells were naturally rejecting the mediocre images of my first sexual encounter, the astonishment with which I reacted at the sight of his genital organ, the clumsiness with which I grabbed him, the tearful eyes with which I faced his breath… It was all emanating sensations of disgust and shame.
At the end, my wandering thoughts and body strangely led me to another man’s arms. My sight was timidly crossing his. His eyes were filled with promises of love. But I was convinced back then that the idea of a man loving another man could only exist in the realm of my fertile imagination. My puerile innocence was bouncing off the walls of the quaint Romanesque church colluding with the waves of the Soprano’s chant. I had no idea what to do, or if, anyhow, I had to do something. He was sitting on a chair few steps away form me. Throughout the concert, I got filled with all sorts of feelings. All possibilities of me and this man were valid, and yet irrational.
Everything that took place after that first look of desire seems trivially inevitable today. His dimly-lit room, the soft surface of his skin, his bulging penis, the pulse of his wrist, the small pearls of sweat around his neck. So many detached, incoherent images that haunt me everytime I think of this city.
Later, I found myself with him on a boat, secretly uncovering his face as he floated his sight between the cracks of the city. I recall noticing a tender look directed towards me. I remember getting filled instantly with a sensation of immense joy that lingered blissfully along the delicate waves of the river. It was at this moment that I felt my whole being carried into a light world. My body was gracefully detaching itself from its earlier existence. I was unaware then that the coming years would be overcrowded with confusion and chaos, but also interrupted with little love stories with no beginnings and no ends.
He did nothing, nothing but whisper few words that shook me violently. It was a revelation, the first real revelation, and certainly –now I can confirm it- the only one. “You are beautiful, my love”. These words slowly escaped his mouth and kept on resonating throughout the city for hours.
Later, I must have heard these words many times under various circumstances, said with numerous pitches and tones. Somehow though, they sounded outrageously frail, or even pathetic, I would say. © El Matador

Frida, Mon amour

Sometimes when I wake up, I am haunted by one vision. Frida Kahlo transfixed in her bed, swinging between an extended squealing of pain that emanates from every cell in her body and an elation that attempts to elevate her to the world of thoughts and images.
It is just days or maybe months after her accident. Her father had installed a mirror above her bed, for her not to feel lonely, he thought. The artist in her is being conceived and awaiting birth.
She is floating in the fuzziness of her own existence, trying to contain herself within defined boundaries but ends up escaping second after second through every pore in her distorted body. She’s like an amorphous being that expands pseudopodia in a frenzy in search for any palpable de-emotion. Every bit of her is worming its way towards new territories. Her thoughts are emitting their elements from a disintegrating core. It's another failed endeavor to be saved from the insanity of suffering.
Her eye is mesmerized by one still image fixed on the mirror above her bed. Her cruel crystal-clear motionless reality is spitting in her face everything about herself she was eager for and yet refused to see.
She is in an endless state of paralysis.
Quickly, every struggling whisper in her manages to defeat this reality and blows her up into tiny pieces floating in the emptiness of her room. Eventually, her particles lose their momentum and end up like dust impregnating restfully every inch in the room.
No matter how hard she tries to pull her existence together and wipe her particles away from substance around her, this one fixed vision lingers.
She screams, she shuts every tiny outlet in her, she blocks light from piercing her soul, she sinks into her bed sheets in pain. All in vain. Reality, the reality of helplessness, is so invisible, so slim and so persistent… © El Matador