Being raped pisses you off. Wanted to take a piece of glass and cut the sky so Heaven could bleed. That's how I felt as I sat in a tub of warm bloody water.

It's a feeling of homelessness after you are violated. You don't feel like you can go back. Well, think about it, you're not the same. The violator took away innocence and your expressions changes. You don't see the world the same, once the world comes to see you as this raped victim they don't see you the same. Everything about you becomes a criterion for judgment. Some people assume you ask for it especially if you are not deemed attractive.

Regardless of the perpetrator's issues, you are the one that is judged and sentenced in people's viewpoint. There is always doubt, suspicion though people attempt to cloak it in their gestures, vocal tones, how they act around you, it eventual rears it's head from under the rock and then you know you are fallen in their eyes.

You had to do something to entice them. No matter what station you are in life, no matter what sex, no matter what persuasion in sexuality, no matter the color of skin, no matter the age, it is viewed as your fault. The victim is left to the healing from their madness while programs are designed to help, to assist, to move the violator into the throes of everyday society.

What about the victims? What silence is reflected in them from society's treatment that society does not want to look at about itself? I wonder about this as I am laying in the tub washing off the blood from his forced entry into my physical being. I said no. He thought no was a camouflage for yes.

What do I think of when I'm having sex with men?

I see an image of a woman running to a tree asking the tree for protection and the tree accepted her soul; and as the body is now empty, it becomes defiled by her pursuers.

I am in a bed, something non-human penetrates me; and I feel its seed entering me and growing like worms infesting one of my spiritual bodies.

I am a child in the basement under the stairs holding my bleeding ass; my father is attempting to coax me into the shower to wash his semen off me.

I am lying underneath a man accepting his rage; my skin is broken and bleeding. I am being raped by a god who wants to drink my light but still cannot access it so he cuts me between my leg and fashions a slit, a wound, a vagina for his seed to exit once it had taken a part of the light in me, hoping that he would dilute my power as I gave birth to a combination of the two of us. My ass he calls a back door, he fears because I am holding power so my front door is to release that power to him.

I think of the satyr, the goat man assaulting my small frame, he is too big for my fairy frame; I am afraid he'll split me in two, several of them take turns with me, and I don't know which one of these satyr's child I carry.

I remember a feeling of a net falling upon my embryo form coating me like a skin and it is my mother's memory of her being raped by her brother.

It is pain of penetration by a force I cannot hold in a form or an image and semen flows down my leg screaming.

It is faces lying between strangers' legs asking to drink my semen, my elixir of life and unborn thoughts are swallowed in strangers who hold now my sound.

I'm the dragon mother unleashing a destructive flame as I rage against my father/lover who denies me access to the Heavens and my anger has twisted me into this dark dragon form.

I am the one standing in shadows of bars getting intoxicated and become a whore in a man's touch, no longer the sacred hierodule.

I am the daughter who takes the dark nature of her mother and descends into the darkest waters of creation so that her Father will accept her again into his court.

I am the child hiding in the woods of an astral world from the beast nature of man that is pursuing me.

I am the duality in an intimate touch reflecting the opposite of anyone I lay with.

I am the hustler walking the streets reading eyes of older men to see who can pay.

I am an angel, an alien wanting to experience emotion in human form.

I am a Prime Creator expressing itself in all forms of creation and allowing those creations full expressions.

I am a Death Walker traveling through people's consciousness to heal their fragmentation - travel with some in transition - bring back their selves, fragments separated from them every time they go in denial and allow these fragmented selves to pass through me, cleanse them and help them to merge with their primary selves.

I am a whore of the Heavens who will do what I must do take back my light from false creators.

I am a myriad of dimensions coming into a single form as I experience sexual intimacy with man.

I am the one imprisoned in strangers' minds where he visits me to carry out his sexual fantasizes and then later, I stand in hot showers washing off the kisses, the semen, the shit, the blood from some man's defecation of a negative emotions.

I am androgynous - allowing all expressions within myself; and this is what I think when I am having sex.

Michael. "This club reminds me of feasting with the Dead, the wine drinking, the loud discordant sounds. Did you know these types of sounds can breakdown your immune system? It makes you available to become housing for the dead."

"I thought you were going to relax your mind tonight. Have some fun. Some drink. Some laugh. Some sex."

"Just was flashing on this feast to the dead. It's like we are inviting in memories of the dearly departed, gods who want to know flesh. That's why the war in heaven is within the mind of man."

Robert leans over and kisses Michael passionately, then pulls back and gives him a wicked smile. "My lips on your mouth might silence your rambling."

"Think about it Robert, are these dance clubs a prelude to walking through the underworld."

Robert kisses him again as Michael melts into his kisses, forgetting the bar, the emptiness in the eyes of the patron, the hollow shells walking around looking for a semblance of life.

Dance Studio. Tracy is taking a few dance steps, leaps and falls to the floor when she lands wrong. Michael rushes over to help her.

Tracy. "Use to look at myself in the mirror and wonder whose body am I looking out of?

"This is the body people settle for when it's 2:30 a.m., their liquored up and a fuck is definitely the question."

"Does it matter, as long as it's a warm body?"

"If I had the perfect body, I would not pass it around like popcorn."

"I took a knife to my nightmare."

"Dick is too important to cut off."

"You don't understand the power of the womb."

"No matter what slicing and dicing, and pills and shots you take, the world will see you as a castrated man in a dress."

"I thought I could do this again."

"You looked good."

"Even an ego has a feeding time."

Michael puts his arm around Tracy. They began to dance together.

"Michael's voice echoes in Tracy's hand. "Never stop dancing."

Michael takes a box from his knapsack, sits in front of Hannah, a little person. She gets a sour look on her face and pushes the box away.

"A real man would bring me candy," Hannah says with three ounces of attitude, eyes looking slightly to the left of him; then she twists her body to the right away from a full frontal view of Michael

"Can't memories be sweet?"

"What do you want?"

Michael pushes the box back in front of her.

She gives him a glaring look though her hands are caressing the box with the carved images of winged beings on it.

"I was once a beautiful angel. Jealousy set in because I was God's favorite. So I was kicked to the curb, broken into pieces, compacted to bite size pieces." She opens the box. "But I am still beautiful. Yeah, I am. She turns the box upside down and feathers fall out and tears stream down her face. "What do you want?"

"Come home."

I don't have a man to grace a smile on my face; my friends think of me as a spinster with nocturnal emissions. Little do they know that I have needs, needs are met, little discussion was planned or did I publish a news account of my activities. My mother had originally planned that I was the one to carry on the family name to glory not knowing it would end up in some stranger's mouth, wrapped in tissue or rubbed across my stomach in some design looking like a crop circle that made no sense.

My father would never say I was a chip off the old block because he was disturbed by the kind of wood I am made from.

It was a given that my birth was not planned and had to be a mechanical failure on someone's part. Or either someone went visiting across the track. Either way he looked around me and not at me as I was growing up. So I didn't count on him or a man for such creature comfort if you get my drift.

Women's ways were my daily staple. If I wasn't tugging my mother's apron string, I was burping a baby. I was finding my way into the ways of being a woman or my true calling in life was like women in some ways, looking for a man to bring them salvation, to rescue them from a dreary life. Most women complained about a man while taking him in and out of her life like he was thread holding her together at the seams. I never trusted a man much. My father did a lot of catting around. I did a lot of walking around the house with folded hands, watching the clock, tapping my foot wondering where he was sticking it today. Must be one of those nappy headed women on Hudson Street who never comb their heads until Saturday night when they paint their faces like warriors out for a kill.

Voices would rise and fall in our house, peel back my feelings until I found every way possible to protect myself from verbal onslaughts from my father and other male relatives. He was never there when she needed him or when he needed what every man needs. I would hear the bed springs squeaking at night, pull the covers over my head and wonder why they were doing it like that. It always seemed painful, inconvenient and messy.

In the morning she never said much but sang, "My God has seen me through the dark." Father would be sitting there in his best daddy pose like nothing ever happened. My brothers would play up to him. I'd look at him thinking, I'll never be like that; I'll never want a woman like that. Seems all that bumping and grinding was just another form of slavery to the dick and I wasn't having it. But I did. Had dick every way possible and always searching for a new experience.

I liked men before I understood that I wasn't suppose to be part of the package but somewhere along the way, the package got switched and repackaged and this is it. I noticed men with a longer look than I should as a child. I undress men so quickly as a child with my eyes. I couldn't wait for my body to fully develop so I could experience their flesh against mine. It never dawned on me that I was supposed to limit my desire to one individual. There were so many I figured it was like trying on clothes. Keep putting on a new outfit until you find one that compliments you very well. I tried to throw my stuff at any man that even half way looked at me at a club. I was at every tea dance and I am here to tell you tea was not being poured. Tea dances were afternoon meat markets were sweat, poppers, and hot, sticky sex was on the menu. The music pulsated and so did you. So you either get fucked in the ass or some other orifice. Needless to say, my ear had many orgasms and I took a lot of cold showers and my smile kept sagging like an aged breast that nursed too many babies and suckled too many hungry men.

I think being a prostitute would be an honorable profession. I'd get paid for what I liked. I would be choosy. I wouldn't give it up to the first dick that spoke to me. Being a prostitute meant I could be choosy on my terms. I wouldn't swing from a chandelier or make it with a duck but I could accommodate.

But my first experience with sex left a bad taste in my mouth and other parts. I thought is this what all the fuss is about. I took many showers. I bleed sometimes. I cried a lot. I wrote a lot of poems and hide more and more in dark corners of bars looking for a light that said exit here to the left. Men always looked at me like I was available for whatever they had in mind. My feelings were not part of their desires so I always pushed them into a back room in my mind. Liquor clouded their minds but didn't slow their hands. Smoke greased my hair. Their words were like thorns and I wore them like a crown. I martyred myself between so many sheets. Never sold my ass because I decided, I wasn't fucking wrinkles or doing freak scenes.

I wasn't going to be like my friends who'd drop their pants if a man even looked like he was breathing. Me, I was coy, I was shy; I kept my legs crossed like there was a traffic signal working me. My heart opened and my phone number was ready. I didn't want a man to know I was easy. Acting easy didn't appeal to me. I wanted to have style and grace on my face. Don't get drunk. Don't give too many ways to manipulate you. Don't be humiliated in public. I would be quiet. But I could take the wig off when I got home and be real between the sheets. They would do more screaming and clawing at the ceiling and I'd sit crossed legged at the end of the evening listening to some song on the radio watching them dress to leave thinking maybe I'd make a peanut butter sandwich and get a soda and see if there was a good sci‑fi movie on television.

They always dressed in semi‑darkness. Their smell would linger in the room. I'd open a window sometimes, roll away from the side of the bed where it was damp, lay a towel across the wet spots sometimes, curl up like a baby and try not to think about what I wasn't feeling. I wanted to feel them there in the morning and other mornings. I wanted to match my breathing with theirs while we slept. I wanted to feel like maybe I was full.

I was empty. I didn't drink enough of them to satisfy some thirst I couldn't name. I wander in the memories of those last few moments wondering was there a point to flesh meeting flesh that I overlooked.

Was a kiss shortchanged, a touch, did I lay in the right position, should I'd been more bottom, less top, more top, less bottom, sideways right maybe, left side maybe. Maybe I should be up against the wall screaming and clawing their back while listening to that song on the radio that just caught my attention.

They always dressed in semi‑darkness and that's how I always found them, in the dark. The light they ran from because they didn't want anyone to see what they were really like; maybe I felt the same way. So I walked silent with friends helping them to pick up pieces of their broken hearts and stealing shards of it to cultivate a memory of my own.

I always felt I needed to hide in someone else's story. My story was not to be known, not yet, I wouldn't reveal it in a kiss, so I was turned away and the more I loved someone's dirty draws, kissed the sweat between their big toe, I'd be a lowdown sweaty whore if that's what it took to get their attention and they'd make some excuse to wash me off their body, out of their life and I sit in a bathtub telling some God I'll never do it again. I'll never do it again and already be letting my hands wander across my body at the thought of the next man who was going to touch me.

So I dress again tonight not for me but some man a friend is going to introduce me. "It'll be a party." I hate parties. Too many people pretending they have something to say, you grunt between pauses in their boring stories. They usually already have a boyfriend, a fuck buddy or someone who understands them but they might be able to pencil you in for a quickie.

My friends have this idea where they will introduce me to the alphabet. Each man's first name must begin with the next letter after the last. So there has been Alvin, Barry, Conrad, Derrick, Edward, Fisher, Gary, Harold, Ivan, Jack, Kelly, Lawrence, Millbrae, Norton, Oscar, Paul, Quincy, Scott, Tyrone, Russell.

So what shirt should it be? Maybe it should be a tank top. I'm not exactly rippling but I do okay for a late thirty something type person. My face is clean. Not scared or battle worn from life. Youth still has its appeal there. My body is nothing to jump up and down about but I have a cute ass. It's tight, it's round and men just lose themselves over it and sometimes I think it is like a full moon and full of mystery. If I wear a shirt they'll say, "Oh he's nice, conservative, but nice, polite but subdued." If I wear a tank top they'll say, "Now, here's a ho ho ho in heat. Ms. Thing looks available." I am available but I don't like to advertise the product. I don't like tight jeans because I can't breathe between my legs and I hate to be all sweaty around the balls. Some men find this to be an aphrodisiac. I think it's time to have a bath. I'm standing here naked to the world, well my mirror and I'm thinking I'm firm. I still have a few good thrusts left in me. But why bother. They'll be too young, too old, in need of mental repair, looking at my bank account, or can't face responsibility and probably are sick, near death or giving me detail accounts of their sexual exploits.

My sister, meaning my gay friend asked me when I was going to give up the sainthood and find a man. I didn't tell him everything about me. The bitch is a judgment queen and I don't need to get all the lip service this child can render. Truth is I've been know to stretch my legs at the drop of hat but as far as he knows I walk with a limp.

So am I truly a basket case? Just rambling like a child without a friend. The sky is falling. I mean my face is falling. Will I catch it?

"My god will see me through the dark."

Michael and a Stranger in a bar are having a moment.

"You are distracted by my complexity," Michael stated.

"I like what's in front of me. That's all my body cares about."

"So then I'm not visible to your senses," Michael asked.

"The only sense I'm sensing is me doing you. Now, make some sense of that."

"You'd rather be a fool struggling in a dream, thinking he's awake."

"Women always want to talk and feel. Fucking is not a philosophical discourse. We don't need to have a dialogue that is based in antiquity. We just need to lick the sweat and get drunk off each other's body liquor."

"And the thread that connects me to my Beloved has been severed again," Michael says as he takes a long sip from his glass of wine.

The Stranger places his hand on Michael's knees and slowly massages his way up to his private parts. The Stranger takes money out of his pocket. "The things we do for that almighty dollar."

Michael removes the man's hand and pushes the money back to him.

"You're just another man lost in his experiences and expectations."

"The money is for your ass, your mouth, not conversation."

"I had this dream where I am a middle aged woman who has a lover who comes to me only at night. After many nights, many questions, and ecstatic lovemaking, I want to know this stranger who haunts my bed at night. So afterward we make love and I feel like I'm talking to the moon, I hear him sleep, instead of slumbering as I often do, I slipped out of bed quietly and turned on the light. It startled him. His luminosity was so brilliant I screamed out as my flesh burned and I crumbled to dust. From the dust I rose as a young man and I knew he was my Beloved. But because I would not listen to his heart, I wander still searching for glimpses of him, in all the men that I encountered." To himself, "That separate identity was rendered to ash. Just don't feel like you have a part of him inside of you.

Snake lays down another card as the bartender is serving him another drink.

"Still playing your games," the bartender inquired.

"There is always room for one more."

"I know what you're about. And you know the rules. I don't fraternize with the customers."

"I'm more than a customer."

"In here, this is my bar, so all you'll ever be to me is a customer. Your credentials don't fly with me. Just keep your game to yourself."

"Everybody plays with me eventually."

"I know your name, remember."

"Enough said for now," Snake says as he pulls his attention away from the bartender who just smiles as he walked away. "Even gods die," he mumbled under his breath. Snake remembered. "There was something hurting me. If I noticed it, it hurt me. If I reached out, it hurt me. I came to understand, it burns. I come to understand it is light. When I look at it, it seems farther than I sense. It seems to pull away when I approach it. What is this thing called Light? Why do I feel an uncomfortable feeling when I look at it, even when I contemplate it, it pulls away? There is another sensation; I understand it is called feelings, but it is cold. This attitude of consciousness directed at me made me feel unwanted. Strange feelings course through me. I name these sensations, anger, hunger, sexual desires, greed, and hate. This thing is called Light; and I can hear its voice trembling in me. And yet, I stood stagnate in these sensations."

Angrily, Snake lays down another card next to the one of Michael walking down a street. It was a picture of Ted.

Ted speaks from the card. "I had him also. I had most of them."

"But I had them all," Snake replied to Ted.

Ted continued. "Some of them were too drunk to remember. I've been in this war for ten years. I'm about to begin my final campaign. Michael's defenses can't stand too many more assaults. But, I keep telling myself, just one more before I forget what it's like."

"There's a devouring tendency in my love affairs."