Names

“I’ve been in relationships all my life. For once I don’t want to feel dependent on someone.” Oppressing, smothering, rabid kisses. Perverse, exotic exhibition, hoping their partner nervous, preferably neurotic, incited by their eagerness to demonstrate their erudite virtuoso. What’s that itch in my methodical, accessory brain of mine that insists on confabulating her past? She’s wealthier than I am. He’s exposing his refusal to expose his retarded emotions.
He is twenty-one, she twenty. He thinks about her reluctantly because he feels guilty if he doesn’t. He is in love with a sixteen year old, though dating a seventeen year old who has just left him a message on his computer that she no longer wants to be in a relationship but she still likes him and will always be there for him. The twenty year old gets up and leaves his apartment muttering repeatedly that “she has to go.” She had been in relationships all her life and she was getting too attached. He had suggested starting a relationship with her but she claimed things were advancing too quickly.
The sixteen year old is insecure. About her skin, about her breasts, about her ass, about her vagina, about her back, about her face.
Once the twenty year old walks out on him, he loves her. He chases her down the hallway to the elevator. He calls her too many times, threatening to do things to her he know he can’t do. He calls his best friend to call her and kindly tell her that if she doesn’t call him and apologize he will actually do those things he threatened to do. She calls him and apologizes and he tells her to get the fuck out of his life though she already is.
Memories of the sixteen year old in a bikini, eager to gain his attention while playing in a pool at his best friend’s house. The pool has a waterfall.
Once he checks his computer and reads the message the seventeen year old left him, he loves her. She no longer feels the same way she did about him after he dumped her twice in the same day for a twenty-two year old who was married.
Two days ago he sold his iPod for thirty dollars to a pair of strangers and traded a pair of Bose headphones to his heroin dealer for twenty dollars worth which amounted to fifty dollars worth of heroin altogether. When he arrived home he snorted thirty of it, spacing out the other two bags as the night progressed. He called all the girls and young women he knew and of those that picked up only the seventeen year old piqued his interest. She felt nothing. No matter how much he yelled at her, begged, or pleaded, she refused to feel anything. She also refused to admit what she wasn’t feeling. He then began to have unrequited phone sex with her.
She left his apartment because she also claimed that he was getting too attached and she wanted nothing serious, nor did she want to hurt him, therefore it would be more practical for her to hurt him now instead of in the future.
The twenty-one year old, having failed to keep in touch with his male chums over the years, was now alone. If only I had money for heroin I could overdose, he thought. If only I had a little more money than the required amount of money to overdose I could get high until I eventually overdosed, he thought. Despairing, he slept until he could no longer sleep.
Not knowing what to do with himself, he began to study neuroscience. He bought seasons of television shows and watched them as soon as he got out of bed and stopped when he felt tired enough to sleep. He read up to three pages of fiction novels a day. He thought about how every woman that leaves you is the most beautiful woman in the world, each one more beautiful than the last. There obviously wasn’t enough worlds for the amount of women that left him.
“You can’t play that card on someone who can count cards!” the homeless man rattled.
Am I the protagonist of my own life? the twenty-one year old brooded. He was beginning to brood more and more these days. He always struck the same exact pose while brooding, staring into the nothing endlessly. He brooded in the midst of crowds, shopping malls, parking lots, back alleys, in front of his drug dealer, in front of the mirror, while masturbating, next to pigeons. He could never quite pinpoint as to why pigeons weren’t afraid of him.
My conquest for instant gratification scared you away. Now I must wait for gratification that will never come to pass. Now, now, then, then, then. Why?

Twenty-one has limited himself to one near-death experience a day. As his past insignificant others know, self-medication is simply a euphemism for his obsession to:
1. Escape from reality.
2. Numb emotions.
3. Avenge himself by inflicting pain on himself to instill guilt in others.
4. Prove to said others that he no longer desires them.
5. Deceive himself into believing there are still insignificant others that care if he lives or dies.
Hypothetical insignificant others further psychoanalyze explanations for twenty-one’s behavior. Twenty-one is explicated, condensed, ordinary, and discarded. Twenty-one objects by proposing a sixth analysis of his obsession, explaining that the surmised five analyses are usurped by their lust to analyze his behavior incited by personal reasons.
As twenty unlatched her bra which twenty-one insisted upon, he tugged her pearl necklace territorially, then stopped in terror of snapping it off.
“Well ok. Basically for awhile there I was pretty low, drinking every day, getting into fights. Then I went on a crusade to find the truth.”
Personal reasons consisting of rationalizing why twenty and seventeen are still amorous concerning twenty-one after his puerile, histrionic antics. They naturally feel inclined to assuage those who reject pity out of their hankering for it. Twenty and seventeen resent his manipulative desire to wean pity out of them; he could at least be more discreet about it. Twenty wears prominent glasses though already has a beautiful face which questions as to why she doesn’t wear contacts.
“I can explain you. I know you.”
“But I don’t want you to know me, therefore I’m highly susceptible to change.”
“People don’t change.”
“That’s an opinion, a belief derived from your traumatically chic childhood.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Every emotion you feel and behavior you enact is a result of chemicals coddling in your brain.”
“Oh, you’re one of those. Always resorting to chemicals. Dopamine, GABA, serotonin, norepinephrine, dynorphin, Zoloft.”
“And you have a better explanation as to why you’re so reluctant to believe scientific proof that we’re merely the consummation of chemicals?”
Twenty smiles felinely, brushing back a tuft of hair that isn’t there. “If you couldn’t resort to your chemicals, the only one who you’d have left to blame is you.”
“That’s very intuitive of you to say coming from someone whose brain is composed of the chemicals under your sink.”
“There are no chemicals under my sink.”
A naked man with shaved armpits rides by, breaks next to twenty, fastidiously un-straddles himself from his bike, and standing regimented shrieks “THAT GIRL HAS NO SOUL.”

Philanderer’s anonymous. Twenty-one is now twenty-eight. Twenty-eight is not married, rather, in search of wives to philander with. It took him enough amphetamines to bring an elephant out of a coma to muster up the courage to attend this meeting.
Barty, raises his hand and stands up triumphantly; twenty-eight mulls over another bromide epiphany or revelation. Barty, obese and wearing a shirt with “Not Without My Swimmies” printed on it in blocky, bold letters, stands triumphantly. He smiles corpulently. Barty stands. The encircled philanderer’s gaze up at him, smiling. After five minutes he sits down, clasping his hands together and merrily wobbling his gut.
Suddenly a weasel bodied man with the facial features of a fancy rat, otherwise known as Rattus norvegicus, having retained the Agouti coloring of wild brown rats, indubitably applicable for the AFRMA (American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association), proclaims that he, pointing to his chest zealously, he alone knows the meaning of life. He then scampers out of the assembly hall where the anonymous meeting is taking place. The philanderers, all smiling, impulsively coquet, vamp, flirt, grope, fondle, and exchange numbers with each other.
Twenty-eight, morally constipated, rises and castigates the anonymous philanderers. “You promiscuous adulterers are fascinated with yourselves; you all believe that what you’re doing is wrong, to cheat on your husbands and wives, and you get satisfaction out of the fact that it’s wrong. But it isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping with multiple partners. Adultery is ordinary. It is happening more and more frequently in marriages, especially amongst suburban communities and the middle-class. If you’re cheating on your husband or wife because your concupiscence is insatiable, then go home and file for divorce.” Twenty-eight pauses, slightly out of breath and sweating with fervor. “There are better vices to indulge in, out there. Ones that don’t cause sexual anhedonia.” Twenty-eight swaggers a bit, detoxicated, and struts out of the assembly hall, reminiscing about twenty, lying on her back, glasses pinned back, softest skin, his hand sliding up her navel, her—
Paler than his skin, softest skin. Pops one-hundred milligrams of Valium. Long walk home. Late, all the witty people are out. Mind shelved like a book never finished. Seven years. Same people, different bodies. Never quite made it past sophomore year. A couple digits shy away from a six figure salary; enough to live alone, but not enough to feel comfortable inviting over guests. Nearly gets hit by a cab, walking desultorily, following some shadow of the past, leading him, goading him on and on, follow me, follow me if you want to get lost.
He remembers his heroin dealer. They were friends. He was a drug lord. Twenty-eight made up the street name “Heart”; soon after they met, Heart it was, just like Joe and David and John. Joe, the man, the boss, the kingpin who owned the entire block; children dealing drugs, snipers atop the brownstones, cops paid off. “I gotchu.” “Whatchu need?” Joe always warned Heart to be careful, even though he gave him extra bags when Heart bought in bulk. Sometimes Joe even spotted him when he was out of cash. One night he gave Joe a pair of $180 headphones, as a gift. Heart would show off his girlfriends to Joe and his crew. The only time Heart overdosed it was Joe who called him to see if he was alright. If Heart had stopped breathing he would have died—deaf, coughing up blood, barely conscious—but he heaved and heaved and forced himself to breathe. Heart and Joe would hang out together, talking about life, what it was like to be the man, what it was like to be alone. It was something they had in common, something they shared without saying anything.
Twenty-eight’s memories trailed off and he realized that he had no idea where he was. Next to a building where a couple was apparently letting the whole block know they were getting a divorce. Twenty-eight visualized a child, knees up against his chest, shivering in the bathtub, the water running to drown out the screaming. Twenty-eight popped another one-hundred milligrams of Valium and heard a goat bleat behind him. There was something…devilish about the bleat that momentarily delayed him from turning around. He could feel the goat’s infernal breath nearly burning the nape of his neck. He listened as the goat shuffled his hooves, most likely cloven-footed, and then began manically laughing in a guttural, diabolical manner. On second thought, twenty-eight found it more similar to a megalomaniac’s chuckle, low in timbre and sinister. Twenty-eight sighed, strung-out on Valium, and turned around.
Standing in front of him, at least five heads taller than he, was a goat standing on two legs. The goat had pair of varicose, membranous bat-like wings sprouting out of its upper back, probably out of its shoulder blades. His hooves were indeed cloven-footed, and stemming from its rear was a forked tail that cracked like a whip with a mind of its own. Its skin was marred and scarred, mutilated even, as pale as an albino. A chain made of some inexplicable material hung around its neck, seemingly alive. Its arms were so muscular that it was almost as if the muscles were about to break through its skin. And its eyes, its eyes were black, with red irises; its teeth were whetted, splintered daggers, not a space between them. He carried a weathered, crooked scythe in both of his jaundiced clawed hands; the scythe sheen mischievously, its blade welded of a demonically cold material that rippled upon its surface.
Twenty-eight had heard myths of the Jersey Devil before but they’d merely been regarded as stories to spook teenagers from driving drunk in the middle of the night. However, this creature also reminded him of the Grim Reaper himself, albeit bestial.
“Phenomenology lacks conclusive or supportive rationality let alone evidence to be taken seriously. It’s hogwash.” Twenty-eight peered at the devilish beast before him, bewildered yet relieved. Phenomenology was a philosophically porous argument. It was riddled with conspicuous gaps in its proclamations and assertions.
“I agree. Phenomenology is disproved by the simple fact that conscious acts can be not directed towards objectivity, therefore discrediting Husserl’s intentionality.”
Scraping his hoof, the Jersey Devil demanded an example of twenty-eight’s counterargument. “Well, I am conscious at this very moment, and I am choosing not to act as I have a myriad of actions to choose from that do not direct towards objectivity. Objectivity requires intentness on objects external to the mind as well as external reality. It also requires the state of being objective, e.g. dispassion, neutrality, open-mindedness. However, my first argument is that reality cannot be confined to the external, as the mind interprets and impacts the external, therefore implicating the internal; without the internal the external would be groundless and insubstantial. Secondly, if one refuses to act, it defeats the purpose of objectivity. One could claim that one’s refusal to act is an action in itself, but that action would be internalized, no longer neutral or open-minded, contradicting that all actions are directed towards objectivity. Disregarding the fact that one is not imposed to assume an objective state—another argument against phenomenology—, anyone can consciously act and defy a state of objectivity simply by performing an internal act that is biased. Furthermore, one could argue that reality itself is solipsism.”
“Impressive,” the Jersey Devil strokes his chin. “You see, lately I’ve been having somewhat of an…identity crisis.” Twenty-eight nods, prompting the beast to continue. “Mythology is obsolete due to obvious advances in various areas of knowledge. Creatures like myself are outmoded by technology and the incapacity to believe in paranormal phenomena. I could walk down the middle of a crowded avenue and they’d prove that I didn’t exist, merely a figment of their imagination.” The beast sighs and looks up into the starless night sky. “It’s nights like these I wonder if I even exist at all. My voraciousness to kill has subsided. I have become vestigial.” The creature hangs his head. “And don’t share this to anyone, not that they’d believe you, but I’ve become so forlorn that I’ve been contemplating suicide.”
Twenty-eight rummages in his pockets for his pharmacy of pills. “Here bud, take some of these. They’ll help you relax.”
“Thanks chief.” The beast sits down on a cement partition surrounding a flowerbed, cradling his head in his hands.
“You know, uh—”
“You can just call me Leeds. I was never named; Leeds is my last name.”
“Well you know Leeds, maybe you and I can wreck some havoc together. I’ve been thinking about starting over anyway, leaving this plebian life behind. Maybe we can instill fear into the hearts of the inhabitants of New Jersey again, and you can reclaim your rightful title.”
“You really think so?” Leeds grunts.
“Sure, why not. My whole life people have been trying to explain why I do the things I do. Psychoanalyses, medications, intrusive perverted thoughts; I’m tired, Leeds. I’m fuckin’ tired of people trying to figure me out. I used to believe chemicals were the black sheep astray in my mind, but if it’s as simple as that then why do so many people feel the same way we do. You can’t tell me all of us were born with a deficiency of neurotransmitters. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it one bit. Hell, I don’t know why I do the things I do. I regret the majority of them, and the guilt encumbers me each and every day.” Twenty-eight guzzles the rest of the Valium in his bottle.
“You know my father was the Devil.”
“No kidding?” Twenty-eight smirks giddily. “So much for chemicals. I always had faith in the metaphysical. Not much a fan of religion; I’ve had too many fantasies of sixteen year old girls. I suppose then that there’s a God too, huh.”
“Never met him myself, and I never met my father either. One day he skipped town and last I heard he was some rock star, Melvilus, or something.”
“Elvis?!” Twenty-eight springs up, laughing hysterically. “The King himself. The Devil. Who’d have thought.” Leeds grins, spinning his scythe and bleating. “Let’s go Leeds. Get out of here. I’m sure hotwiring a car isn’t much more difficult than hotwiring a uterus.”
“Hop on, and hold on.” Leeds kneels down so twenty-eight can mount his back.
“You sure?” Leeds cocks his head reassuringly. “Ah what the hell.”

Twenty-one is stooped over his toilet, wondering if his mother has noticed the lack of spoons in the utensil drawer. He reproaches himself for missing twenty; if only he could repress his overwhelming limerence. He grieves over his maladroit theatrics, burning his fingertips intentionally as the spoon melts. A textbook catches his eye as he’s about to mainline a cocktail of heroin and downers. He stares at it wistfully for awhile, then glances back at his syringe. Why would someone leave a textbook in his bathroom? Injecting himself near his crotch, he slumps over the toilet within seconds.
When the paramedics arrive, twenty-one had fallen off the toilet, his face resting on the cover of the textbook, his back arched and hiked over his knees.
“Hey, this was the textbook I used back when I was in pre-med. Go figure.”
“Kid’s dead. Might as well take it; it’s in good condition, you could sell it used.”
“Yeah, think I will.” The paramedic places the textbook in his emergency kit bag. “Kind of spooky, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“The way the kid was positioned. Face against the textbook. It’s almost as if he positioned himself to die that way.”