If things are going well then keep your head
down and be mindful of falling objects. At the moment when I feel
strongest, when I feel like I can conquer the world, I know that pain is
looking for me to knock me on my ass. I am not so big and strong.
I reached the point where I was afraid to feel good because that would
mean disaster was on the way. That had not yet sunk home to me at
the point where I take the story back up. No, reality would take
its time casting my world to the four winds.
After I told Susan about my fantasies, she
wanted to play with me as much as I wanted to be played with. This
is not a pornographic work. I refuse to go into any great detail
about the things we did. It’s open season on clinical terms, though,
so hold onto your pants. We engaged in both male and female domination
at different times; we played switch games. She helped me to perfect
my talents in the area of oral servitude. I learned a whole language
of cunnilingus. She assisted me into some tight situations where
I suffered teasing to the brink of insanity. I enjoyed all of our
games immensely. We went through a whole roster of sadomasochistic
activities, at least in my case. Susan never liked pain, but she
liked to watch me squirm. We played all sorts of humiliation games
that won’t work on me anymore. I grew out of embarrassment.
I am no longer ashamed of anything. I could only be tickled so much,
too, before my ticklishness broke open like a dam.
We went even deeper than that. The experienced
will know about the stage where the games stop being games. When
you get there you either have to go all the way, or chill out, rest for
a while. I never wanted to stop. Susan never went to the extremes
in which I dwelled. She liked a lot of normality. We never
fought about it. What I did do was badger her constantly. I
always suffered from a sexual addiction. After I did the things I
always wanted to do it got worse. She cured me of bugging her by
chaining me up and beating me unmercifully. It didn’t stop my cravings
(I liked it too much), but I no longer pressured her. We only played
when she wanted to play. What I had wanted to be was a submissive
in total control of the situation. What I got was a lesson in what
it meant to be under my partner’s control, a displeased partner at that.
It was a very humbling experience.
Please don’t get the idea that our sex life
revolved around such experiences. This was a small part of our sex
lives. I pouted a lot because of that, but generally we made love
in a less complicated fashion. We did it often. We were very
good together. We both knew how to punch each other’s buttons.
I have used these confessions to improve my honesty, and so I can change
the things about myself I don’t like. I talk a lot about my aberrant
behavior because that is the area where I can find a lot of things about
myself that need to be changed.
***
Early in our relationship we stayed in Susan’s
one room apartment in Spanish Town. The apartment was in The Hannie
at
the corner of North Eighth Street and Spanish Town Road. It was furnished
with large pieces of antique furniture. The bed was a gigantic four-poster.
We had a lot of fun in that apartment. After we started having sex
on a regular basis I went over from my own apartment and cleaned up for
her. Susan was not a tidy person. I threw out nine garbage
bags full of beer cans, paper and other assorted trash items. I even
killed the family of mice living under the refrigerator. From that
moment on I did all of the housework for Susan. I cooked for her
every day. I chose to devote all of that attention to her because
I loved her a lot. I managed to spoil her to death. I
had the capacity to make her feel like a queen, and I did so as often as
I could. It was my intention to make her covet my services so much
she would never leave me.
I never actually moved in with Susan.
I merely stayed with her all the time. I kept all of my belongings
in my apartment behind my father’s house on St. Phillip Street. My
father begged me to stay at home. His heart palpitated over fears
I would marry her. My father was my closest friend. He had
nothing but my best interests at heart, at least when he was clean.
Talking about him is very difficult for me. I cared so much about
him I don’t ever want to convey the wrong idea, but even the truth doesn’t
make sense anymore.
My dad was a genius with money. Everything
he invested in went up in value. Much of his investment money came
from the sale of drugs. He never became a rich man, though.
He was well off, but he had to struggle for the money he made. The
stress of the business took a heavy toll on his life. He showed me
an enormous amount of love and affection, but he was a bitter man.
He made himself miserable about his three failed marriages. All he
ever wanted was a family. All he ever got was me. I didn’t
do much more than provide him with someone to talk to. I was a lazy
bastard. A lot of what I did sped him along the road to his death.
My father and I did a lot of cocaine together.
The night before he died of a heart attack I got him some fine dope.
I saw the sale as a way to get high myself. I was too self-absorbed
to think about the fact it might kill him. For a long time I let
that knowledge eat me alive. These days I have to let that go.
He and I loved each other very much. We had some terrible fights,
but we always made things right in the end.
The last time my father and I fought it involved
Susan. He yelled at her and called her a coke whore. I lost
control and hit him hard. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I loved
her so much the instinct to protect her took over, and I lashed out.
He told me I caused him to have a heart attack when I did that. I
am more than sure I did. When we made up I wept. I never controlled
myself until it was too late to even worry about it anymore. If I
had not been able to embrace him, tell him I was sorry, and that I loved
him, then I would have killed myself when he died a few days later.
Ultimately I can not hold myself responsible
for his death. To do so would be to destroy myself in the worst possible
way. I must never allow myself to forget the truth. My dad
was just another person I loved who lost his life in the battle with substance
abuse, a battle in which I carried messages and gifts from the enemy.
He was a brilliant, educated man, but he could not stand up to the seven-headed
dragon or the devil. [For those of you who think I’m nuts: DeQuincy
called opiates “a seven-headed dragon” and as far as I know everyone calls
cocaine “the devil”.]
The love affair I had with Susan troubled
my dad a lot. He didn’t want me to make all of the mistakes he made,
which in his opinion was getting married. I would have done it no
matter what he thought about it. Because of his objections I got
married in secrecy. I didn’t tell him about it until three weeks
after the ceremony. He was aghast. After he realized there
was nothing he could do to change it he decided to give me his support.
Susan and I moved into my apartment first. Then he gave us his house
on Europe Street. Sometimes I wonder what turns history would have
taken if she and I had stayed in Spanish Town.
Things changed a lot when Susan and I moved.
We didn’t have to worry about the rent anymore. We had to coexist
in a small area with my father, which was not easy. The apartment was cramped
for one person. It was extremely small for a married couple.
My dad helped me install a window into the blind wall because, he said,
“women like to see outside.” Susan thought that was a trip.
Susan told me she couldn’t stand being afraid
he would knock. We spent a lot of time in the apartment paranoid
we would get a family visitor. Before a month went by my dad agreed
to give us the house on Europe Street. Things got a lot better for
us when we moved over there. Susan loved it. I couldn’t believe
my father’s kindness. It was just another example of how far he would
go to make me happy.
I worked hard to make it a nice place to live.
I cleaned, decorated and painted. By the time I finished I was very
proud of the house. Susan and I experienced the giddy happiness of
newlyweds with a promising future. We made all kinds of love.
It was too good. I should have known it could not last.
One afternoon I convinced Susan to allow me
to immobilize her for my pleasure. We were both enjoying ourselves
immensely. As I approached orgasm the phone rang. It was dad,
next door. He wanted me to go with him to beat somebody up (a lowlife
taking advantage of my mentally infirm grandmother). I told him I
was busy, to call back. He became furious. He stormed over
and beat on my front door. He screamed obscenities at Susan and moved
toward her. I hit him. The argument didn’t end until I called
the police. It doesn’t make me feel any better to find a justification
for doing that, but I was afraid of how serious the fight had become.
I was cut up and bruised when the cop arrived, so he took my side.
They did not arrest John Day. I did not press charges. I just
wanted to be left in peace.
I could not cope with our falling out.
Susan and I moved out of the house. It was a bad decision.
I wanted to give Susan the peace she deserved. None of it was her
fault, and she didn’t deserve to suffer because he and I could not get
along. I also wanted to give my father his space. I had good
intentions, no matter how misguided. I found out later he had been
withdrawing from opiates when the fight took place. That went a long
way to explaining his reactions. I forgave him a million times over.
Susan and I had only been married five months
when I scored him the dope that killed him. I stayed up all night
getting loaded on the same stuff in our new apartment near campus on Highland
Road. I had barely been asleep an hour when the phone started ringing.
I heard the voice on the other end tell me it was the Baton Rouge General
Hospital. They said I needed to come right over. I knew something
awful had happened. After I got there they took me to a consultation
room. A doctor told me my father was dead. The world came crashing
down all around me. I felt pain wash over me across a gulf of emptiness.
It tore me up like a paper doll. I had to get out of there.
I drove all the way back to my apartment before I completely lost control.
I wept uncontrollably for a couple of days. The inside of my head
felt like it had been beaten with a baseball bat. My problems were
only beginning. My father’s death was merely a catalyst for an even
greater disaster.
John’s death triggered addiction in me that
dwarfed my old behavior. Susan tried to comfort me. She tried
to ease my pain, but I was too wrapped up in self-pity to notice.
I put our relationship on hold while I attempted to extinguish conscious
thought. The first thing I did when I collected my thoughts was go
in his house and take an inventory. He had a large collection of
expensive and antique firearms. He had bank bags full of silver coins.
He had a large collection of gold coins and jewelry as well. He had
fine Indian jewelry, and a house full of antiques. He also had a
lot of cash in his safe. Under his bed I found a grocery bag full
of pharmacy bottles, each one containing twenty-four ounces of hydrocodone
cough syrup. I drank so much of it for the visitation I had to leave
the visitation early. None of John’s friends who attended the visitation
respected me in the slightest. I had a closed coffin service because
the sight of his dead body fucked me up. I didn’t even want to go.
Right after the funeral I got rid of all of the people around me.
I took the cash. I bought a bottle of Glenfiddich and one half ounce
of cocaine. After I started getting loaded I sent out for dilaudid
and syringes. A few hours later I had twenty of them and a bag full
of needles.
Susan hated cocaine with a passion.
She had done a good bit of it, so her opinion was based on experience.
She wanted to do dilaudid for the first time because she didn’t like that
other stuff. I couldn’t do it in front of her and not let her do
any. I did the horrible deed one more time. I crushed the pill
and poured the powder into the back of the syringe. I tied off her
arm and slipped the needle into one of her veins. In the couple of
seconds it took for the substance to reach her brain Susan rolled her eyes
back in her head.
“Oh my God!” She said, “Why didn’t you tell
me?” She wanted to do it all of the time after that, as I had feared
she would.
The only time I left the apartment was
to sell all of the coins to a dealer. I had to buy more coke and
dilaudid. I found out Susan was a freak for dilaudid. She would
do anything while she was on it. I wish I could issue a disclaimer
that my life was a nightmare while I was doing these things, but I can’t.
I didn’t suffer any consequences at all. I enjoyed every minute of
my life when I was on hydromorphone. I experienced pleasures that
normal people consider taboo and are scared to death of. I did such
a good job of forgetting my father’s death it had nothing to do with my
actions. My whole life revolved around kinky sex and opiates.
We shot up every few hours for a month or two. I did coke runs to
stay awake forever. When my friends came over they usually freaked
out and left. If they didn’t they would eventually get run off.
My arms were covered in tracks. One day we ran out and couldn’t get
anymore, which was good.
I had purchased a pharmacy bottle of valium
so we could detox off the dilaudid painlessly. I kept everything
in a state in which it could be flushed down the toilet because I was paranoid
out of my mind. I took the valium out of the bottle and wrapped them
in a paper towel. Then I put them on a shelf in the bathroom.
Susan didn’t know I had done that. When I woke up feeling withdrawal
I went looking for the valium. They were gone. Susan had cleaned
up the day before and put them in the trash, which had been picked up early
in the morning. I was furious, and I felt like a casualty.
I destroyed every piece of furniture I owned. I smashed it all into
little pieces. I scared the hell out of Susan. She packed her
bags to leave. That was how she got me to chill out. After
feeling like hell for two days I came back to my senses. We were
late on rent. The lights were about to get cut off. When I
turned the knob on the water faucet I found out the water was already cut
off. I decided to move us back into the house on Europe Street.
We vowed to have a life instead of doing dope
all the time. I sold some guns to buy all kinds of things.
We went shopping for nice clothes. I bought an expensive stereo.
I bought hundreds of compact discs. We went to New Orleans and came
back with all kinds of expensive bondage goodies. I bought Susan
lingerie and corsets, silk stockings and lacy bras. I bought her
fine makeup. She looked really hot.
“Our drug use”, “our conversations”, “our
sex life”, all of those terms are too one dimensional to convey the depth
of our intimacy. We went on a trip for our honeymoon in June of 1994.
We had sex in nine states. In six of those states we took the time
to get a hotel room. In the other three we made love in the car,
on the roof of the car, and so on. I had an orgasm on a monotonous
stretch of Kansas’s highways at seventy miles per hour. We had sex
in the snow outside of Santa Fe. It was cold, but we still worked
up a sweat. This was no run of the mill love affair. This was
an epic love adventure. The honeymoon was well worth the wait.
I had done what I considered to be the last
dope I would ever use. I wanted to put that behind me and continue
to build my relationship with Susan. I bought a computer. I
worked on poetry and erotic stories for hundreds of hours. Susan
and I grew closer than ever before. Our friendship grew stronger
to match our sexual attraction. In those moments life felt so good.
Then we decided to move back to Europe Street. By now I have come
to expect the nightmare twists of my life, but at the time I was totally
unprepared.