Excerpt from Apology 10/28/94

10/28/94

I have finished my work at Filmspace and it is my last day in State College. Finally I will be free to begin my new life in New York City.

But everything is wrong. It seems that given two possible outcomes for any situation the negative one is always the one that happens. It has worked out that way so many times it defies the laws of chance. I am starting to wonder what I have done to deserve this run of bad luck. Questions that I thought I came to terms with years ago haunt me anew. The existence of morality? Good and Evil? Fate and determination? Past lives? All of these questions cloud my confused mind.

The recent weeks I have been in a dream state. A walking malaise. I have very little human contact. I work on editing the film on pharmacology during the night when no one is around. I work a few hours then pass out for a nap on the black leather couch in the back of the editing room. On and off, working and sleeping throughout the night, then I vacate before morning comes and the rest of the workers arrive.

For days I have been trying to seek help. Psychological help. Spiritual help. Any lind of help. Finally the darkness becomes too intense. I pick up the phone in the editing room and begin calling desperately, reaching out for anyone. Psychiatrists won’t speak to me because I have no money or insurance. I have called priests, preachers, gurus…yet I only reach answering machines or people who think I am crazy for actually asking metaphysical questions, for really thinking about the issues they are supposed to make their life’s work. Finally in desperation I call the suicide hotline. A recorded voice answers the phone, “This is the Pennsylvania suicide hotline. Many people consider suicide for a variety of reasons. If you are considering suicide here are a few things you should consider…”

An answering machine at the suicide hotline? I hang up the phone. It is laughable. Like a scene from a B grade movie. Gathering my strength I make the final dub of the edited film and lay down to sleep. This moment is the meridian between my new and old life and yet I find myself thinking of suicide.

The following morning I leave State college to begin my new life. I plan to visit Sasha on the way to New York. Our last evening together was both horrible and wonderful. The previous weekend I came to New York to audition for an off-Broadway show called the Blue Man Group. That evening Sasha and I were given free tickets to the show. As part of the audition we were assigned the task of going into the basement of the theater and talking into plastic tubes, the other ends of which emerged under the seats of the theater. We sere supposed to ad lib surreal conversations with the audience members who were waiting for the show to begin.

Once the show began we had a great time. We laughed and held each other throughout the performance. Afterward we went to a club where people slow danced to Latin music.

After our evening, as I drove back to her parent’s home she stripped naked as I drove. She said, “I want you inside of me.”

I slid my finger inside of her warm vagina as she masturbated. In the green haze from the dashboard lights I looked down over her lovely body. Her long hair flowing over my legs. The expression of passion on he face. Soon she shook with orgasm. As I watched her I was overcome with feelings of love. A love so deep and so intense that it shook me to the core. After her orgasm she began to cry quietly as her head rested on my lap.

“I’m so confused. Why do I have to be a woman? I feel like such an ugly person,” she said.

Her tears soon gave way to sobs, “I just don’t wanna lose my mother, I don’t wanna lose my mother..” she repeated between sobs. “I pray every night I’ll get in a car wreck and end it all.”

We pulled up in front of her parent’s upper middle class mansion. The neighborhood looked cold and sterile. We sat in front of the house and I held in her in my arms while she pulled herself together. She asked that we don’t speak for two weeks so that she has some time to regain her emotional balance.

She begged me to stay the night at her parent’s house so they don’t think there’s anything wrong between us. I refused and began the four hour drive back to State College with the night’s events weighing heavily on my mind.

After not speaking to her for a week, yesterday I got a message at Filmspace that her back was broken in a car accident. She is laid up in a brace, but can still move about a bit. When we spoke on the phone I said, “Do me a favor, don’t prey for anymore car wrecks.”

She was silent for a second. “I didn’t say that,” she replied indignantly. When I insisted that she did, she became hysterical. “I can’t talk to you anymore,” she blurted our and the phone line went dead.

On the drive to New York it is a warm and sunny autumn day. The nice weather help to protect my spirit from the hopelessness I feel inside.

When I arrive at Sasha’s house on the way to New York she lies in her bed propped up against the wall. A metal brace holds her from head to hips. Her hair is still matted against her forehead with dried blood. It is a ghastly site. Her beauty trapped in that mechanical metal contraption that looks like some kind of torture device.

She tells me it’s over. She needs a break from the pressure of the relationship so she can focus on healing.

I am broken, dead inside, but I feel so exhausted by the months of drama that I simply feel to beaten to protest. I bend down and kiss her hand reverently and say goodbye, never to enter her home again.

As the New York City skyline comes into view I realize it is the first day of my new life and I am homeless, jobless, for all practical purposes The Imperial Orgy is broken up. I feel humiliated. I have lost face to all. And most of all; I am taken by deep feelings of hopelessness that I have never known before.

As night falls and the chill of autumn begins to sting my skin, out of desperation I call Samantha. She and Dave Surreal are sharing and large apartment on Staten Island. I explain my desperate situation to her. As she chats cheerfully on the phone a P.J. Harvey song blares in the background. “You’re not rid of me, you’re not rid of me,” Harvey’s angry voice warns amid the distorted guitars. Is this a message? I am so confused that I can’t tell reality from superstition any longer. Samantha invites me to come and sleep on their basement floor. With nowhere else to turn I accept.

When I arrive at their house all is dark. Samantha greets me at the door wearing a green silk kimono. Inside at the dark house she hugs me and I realize she is naked under the now open kimono. With her leading the way we fall into a frenzied fuck on the hard living room floor.

My mind is so confused that this event feels like simply one more drama in a stream that takes me in its current. My body, as well as my soul have surrendered to the torrent of life. I am a whore to the amoral desires of fate and destiny. I have no will to fight it anymore.

Samantha is eager to please and uses her skills with a willful sense of purpose. She takes me in her mouth and rubs her lithe frame over my body. Finally she crawls atop me, my back pinned against the hard wooden floor. It seems she is eager to please, but in fact this is her moment of triumph. After all is said and done, she has vanquished her rival and conquered her pray. As I collapse after ejaculation her triumph is complete. I dissolve into nothingness, small like a raped widow or an abused child. She feels strong and contented.

As we thrashed about on the floor the one thing I couldn’t do is kiss her on the mouth. That is the one thing that would be too much of a lie for my soul to bear. It is my one oasis of purity that I won’t defile. Once I have known a kiss of deep, pure love, I just can’t pretend anymore. It is impossible. It is the one part of myself that protect as all else is surrendered to the cruel world that has taken me.

It is too later to fix a bed for me in the basement, so we fall sleep in her bed. I lay on my side looking out into the darkness of the unfamiliar room. Samantha lies behind me, her arm and leg draped over me. I feel a sense of smothered security. I feel like an errant child who went out into the world to find his dream and came back to mother with his tail between his legs. I feel grateful for her help in this hour of need, but I also feel disgraced and humiliated. I resent the price I will pay for accepting this help. Little do I know how this night will color my entire future for years to come.