Abyss ll

Making rhythmic, jerky movements, he wondered what he was doing here. With each thrust, a feeling of despair, of discouragement, overwhelmed him. How much he would give to be somewhere else right now, anywhere. Walking down the street, tightly enveloped in the night's chill. Or even smoking a cigarette while sitting on the windowsill, a mug of tea in hand. Finally, to fall asleep. There were many possibilities, each one seeming preferable to the situation he was currently in.

And he was stuck in the wet and discouragingly cavernous interior of Emilia, his cousin's ex-girlfriend. He didn't even want to consider how this had happened. At that moment, all he remembered was the pressure he'd felt when they'd walked through the door of his apartment. He sensed that she expected sex from this encounter. It was included in the package, like cream in coffee or ketchup on pizza. He just didn't know whether she was more pizza or ketchup. He felt like he was acting more like a hot dog, and the girl, whose ample hips were a bright spot in the half-light of the summer night, seemed to be consuming him with her body.

He couldn't find an answer to why he felt so objectified with her, and besides, it was difficult to think abstractly when all the blood had drained from his brain to fertilize his genitals. He no longer knew whether he was the hunter or the hunted. He knew how easy it was to lose sight of that subtle difference. The problem was, few people actually cared about her. Perhaps it was for the best, because the effect was the same, without the side effects of confusion, without unnecessary self-questioning, without unnecessary Hamletism.

He liked her, so he invited her over. They drank and talked for a while, sitting at his place, rounding out the successful party they'd met. But it wasn't until he entered her that he realized this situation was a massive, months-long déjà vu, only the taste of sweat and the sounds escaping her wide-open mouth different. "Eliza, if you knew my thoughts now," ran through his mind. No, Emilia... He doubted it. He wasn't sure, only that the first letter of her name was definitely E.

He thrust into her harder and harder, trying to give her more satisfaction than he could muster today.

She'd probably be told to pull him out before she came. Then he'd have to get a towel. And finally, she'd ask if he had anything to drink. Maybe they could go for a smoke. Yes, good idea.

She squeezed his thighs, and with her hand, her nails digging into his buttock, she pulled him closer. He really enjoyed sex; his last girlfriend had been the best witness to how much he'd loved this way of spending time. But now, the lack of not only feeling but also emotion, the emptiness in which he found himself making love to Emilia. Eliza. Never mind. He felt nothing, there was no closeness, he was deceived by the momentary pleasure of getting to know this, as it seemed to him, objectively interesting girl.

But in that moment, it wasn't about getting to know each other anymore. It was mutual exploitation. Mutual rape. Just like her initially tight core, now strangely unwelcoming.

He knew why he felt so awful. He couldn't blame this girl. There was no way she could make him feel the way he had the day before, when he'd received a text from his dearly missed partner, friend, lover.

He remembered that moment the day before. When he saw her name on his phone screen, he felt an invisible fist slam into his chest, forcing all the air out. Then only a knot in his stomach and a chill, felt through every square inch of skin. For a single, hopelessly indifferent "Hey, how are you?"

Emilia, yes, Emilia—she was good. Really good. Predatory and expressive, he just didn't know to what extent. He wished he had more time to explore those boundaries, and then break through them, revealing to her worlds she knew nothing about. Or perhaps allow herself to be shown such worlds.

He wondered what she thought of him. Did she think anything beyond the fact that here was an opportunity to get laid? Who was he to her? He couldn't shake the feeling that neither of them knew.

Between the successive thrusts of those last few, when the moans and rapid breathing of both people accumulated, multiplied, and filled the room, finally settling on the dirty windowpane in a thick mist, the answer fell upon him.

How could he expect to be someone to her when he was nothing to himself? Why should she know who this strange man was to her when he himself had lost his identity in an endless string of similar nights. Unsatisfying, or even bolstering a man's pride. Not sad, but not triumphant either. Simply bland.

Sex seemed to strip away identity. Sliding off her, hugging this previously unknown body and listening to their connected, greedy, alien breaths, he wondered why this was so. What was so inherent in this natural impulse to draw two people closer that, despite all its undeniable virtues and pleasures, it carried with it danger and disorientation?

Intimacy. Showing yourself, offering yourself to someone—these terms now floated in the darkness on the wind of their loud breathing. The moment you offer yourself to someone, you take a part of yourself, he thought. You tear out a fragment of your being and, holding it in your hand, your own self, dripping with blood and shame, you give it to someone, whether you want it or not.

You give it to someone with whom you have nothing in common, or to someone with whom you share closeness, whether it's sympathy, friendship, or attachment to love. You know this person, they know you and accept you, or you're completely indifferent to each other and, unable to recall your own names, you sign a contract for work, the subject of which is orgasm. If you're close, if there's any bond of respect or even affection between you, your entire intimate profession of faith is accepted, accepted, and honored as "you." It returns to you, more complete and confirmed. Heard. Enriched by the other person's acceptance, strengthened by the other person's "I."

If you sign a contract for work, you also can't eliminate this confession. Whatever the benefits, they are necessary costs. The sacrifice and unmasking of a part, a fragment of yourself.

However, a complete stranger is unable to accept this, just as you are unable to understand the gravity of their confession, to give them a sense of acceptance. Mutual intimacy, confessions and banners, cries too faintly audible or shouted too loudly, in entirely different languages. Sacrifices not accepted, made by chance, identity spread across skin and drying into a colorless scab, an unconscious loss of self. A

self drifting from mouth to mouth.

Lying beside her, he realized that with each night, he himself was becoming merely a compilation of his own memories, a scrapbook of lived experiences, a used handkerchief embroidered with his name.

Yet, paradoxically, his anxiety and confusion partially subsided when he realized this. Identity seemed to return through a newly found, albeit sketchy, self-awareness.

She was already asleep, her head against the boy's shoulder, her arm draped over his stomach, when he opened his eyes and smiled to himself, staring into the darkness. The night, as always, was capricious. Initially ready to reject and humiliate him, she now opened her cozy abyss to him anew, embracing the unknown woman in her arms.