LIKE MAKING LOVE TO LAVA

She's in my head. Shana is sucking banana nut crumbs from her fingers. We have just demolished half a bundt cake. This is the longest time I've ever been in her presence and we are actually talking. I watch her thick thumb sulk from her mouth as her pale cat eyes flutter, but only for a fraction of a second, onto my own. The contact is false. She is so closed. The crumbs disappear down her hungry, dark throat. Have you ever slipped on someone else's life and been frightened by the hypothetical fit?

I first met her in a pool hall. I was dressed in morbid black. She wore a white sweater and straddled a red vinyl swivel stool with her thighs poured into tight black Dickies and her hands shoved seductively, but not on purpose, between her legs.

"Hi," she said, sticking out a warm palm, "my name is Shana and these guys are extremely rude."

Then she gave me her first and only smile as if it were a quiz that I failed. Not that I cared.

Her hair was straight and flat, parted in the middle, the color of melted caramel only burnt. Her torn up eyes and too tan skin and evil smirking attitude were buried behind appealing tricks and she told Seth she had no place to live.

She asked him, "Can I crash at your pad?"

He looked sideways at me and raised his eyebrows, saw that I might be anxious for him and said, "Calm down Violet, I've already fucked her."
I laughed with false callousness, "And it looks like you will again."

Jack pulled me closer to him and whispered to Seth, "I seriously would not touch that if I were you. That chic is full of stale heroin."

Seth rolled his eyes, "Dude, you think I don't know that?"

"No, seriously," Jack said, "that¹s like making love to lava. You could shrivel up and fry."

I looked at Shana on her vinyl stool with her cock-eyed beauty and saw needles like a thorny halo around her head. I saw beauty askew and wondered how things in life can go so wrong.

The bundt cake half eaten and Shana talks about manipulation, "A few years ago, I would've only talked to you if I could get something out of you."
She tells me this without expression but slices me another piece of cake, not because she's cold but because she¹s never met warmth.

Her conversation gets cut short because Seth's dealer arrives. He is a sleazy ghetto bum who falls in love with every white girl he encounters. First it was I, now it¹s Shana. He likes how her tree trunk legs fold at the fetal position to reveal her denim rounded butt.

Shana and I go into the living room to lounge. She lies on the couch and I sit behind her in Seth's burnt orange dumpster chair. I can only see her legs from my perspective: the black lizard on her calf and the ink daisy bracelet around her ankle. We watch a little of "Exit to Eden" and I am so stoned that every scene makes me annoyingly horny. Shana laughs and I close my eyes. I start to tremble when I feel her junkie tunnel close down around me; the one that I enter whenever I am curiously inclined towards comprehending the fog of someone else¹s life.

Quick gray flash and I am her. In my head. Walking in her skin. Trying to comprehend her life. I am walking long legged in blue jeans, my face up against a softly bitter wind, my short, blunt hair flowing off my face in slow motion. My hands are in my pockets and my lips frown an ironic frown; my city experience bringing me down but sarcastically. I am 18 and in need of my vein candy so although life sucks so bad, it¹s simultaneously grand and the cold chill of industrial L.A. morning doesn¹t hit me so hard as I stroll down the pavement of my black and white life.

Ugh. Cold sweats and terror; that sick closeness of the past and the what-could-bes. It's horrifying to concentrate too much on my daily activities, which is where my angelic drug comes flying in. On heroin, I can dance for anyone and like it. The blood, the needles, the lap dances ten seconds away from bulging hard ons where I repeat over and over mentally that there's nothing wrong with nudity. That there is no reason to be scared considering some of the situations I've already been in and out of that I seem naturally and therefore safely a part of. Bit scared but maybe a little scarred because I will do ANYTHING for drug money. ANYTHING so far. The poke-flesh-soot-sniffle of crack and pop residing as my veins give way to escape and amnesia. I'll even share a needle if in tense anticipation of a drug.

And I am Shana at eight a.m. looking for my fix in Shadowland. It burns me right at that point in the pelvis that scares the living shit out of me with its tickle of pleasure spike pain. Just like my friends who like to be called "dark", who blush as if complimented; the lure is there. I open my eyes and resume watching the film with Shana's legs still idle on the couch.

On Easter Break, me and Monica went downtown to window shop. We bought matching Mossimo short sets for the summer. Mine was purple and hers was red. It was one of those mindless, clarifying moments when you realize you are merely living and that living feels good. I was drinking iced coffee and wearing grass perfume and acting all innocent like a playground misfit. Monica was talking about the sunny land of Big Wheels and orange Popsicle youth and we mutually bonded while we cherished the things of our pasts that we no longer knew.

We saw beautiful boys everywhere. At the coffee shop they appeared with androgynous demeanors, their legs crossed like girls, their baggy jeans dusting the concrete where their egos lie shriveled. Some of them wore dark eye makeup. Some of them were bleached white on top exposing a scattering of salt and peppered roots. They looked evil and innocent like men-children. Others were raw and scruffy with real goatees that grew uncultivated; their bare feet callused and bruised like Scott Weiland in his worst heroin nightmare bad trip. Some had long hair in elastic; as shiny and new as a young girl's unbroken libido. They were all my age with secrets to squelch. They were the new hippies with harsher childhoods addicted to some painful substance whether it is emotional or narcotic. They weren't afraid to bleed. They are an inspiration; like biting into a lemon so sour that it makes your tongue blister into cankers until your addicted to the tang.

And I sipped my coffee and thought a little about the silky fit everyone else's persona feels when I slather them on. I feed on their lives in rare snapshots like we all take at that ONE WILD PARTY that make us cringe in shame the next morning when the captions are filled with chemical efflorescence and a disillusioned template of accustomed scenery. Certain things have become blurred between good and bad between everyone's experiences and whether they ill really hold out a warm hand in a circumstance or not. It's so seductive; this smorgasbord of b-flick neurosis: this smashing festival of a young girl¹s ideals in the 1990's, hanging by threads from the cloud of the millennium.

We met Seth and Shana at Peabody's. Shana was sulky in an oversized tee shirt and an indigo gypsy skirt. On her feet were a pair of old school boy's VANS. I gave her a sip of my coffee and she started bitching about all the kids around who were trying to dress like hippies. She mentioned that if one of those gauzy skirted wanna bees so much as looked at her on accident, she would totally have to kick some female ass. She would not melt, even if we tried to thaw her. She eternally sulked as her big, bored linear grace stained that place in my mind where a full-bodied individuality should be.

Seth's dealer leaves. Shana's boyfriend comes over. He is so unlike her I want to throw ice water on them both. They do not match. She's reaching out for normality and peace of mind and he's reaching out for a wild fuck with too tan skin.

"What's she doing with him?" I ask Seth when we're finally alone at his pad. "He can't possibly understand her."

"She's getting to you." Seth says. "Who do you find her compatible with?"

"You."

"I know," he says, making an admission that was obvious, "and sometimes I worship the ground she walks on or the way she curls up and reads Dean Koontz. And sometimes I look at her and see an irreparable liar and conniving whore. I know what she's capable of."

I sit up on the couch, "So, in other words, she's exactly like you."

Seth laughs. "Don't go there. You're the only one who knows I'm a pig."

"I feel sad about her," I say and lean back on the couch to stare at the ceiling. I think of how my own lover Jack had oral sex with Shana long ago because he felt sorry for her and didn't want to reject her come-on. I think of that pity in terms of how I am feeling now. Seth is fortunate to be a pessimist; a skeptic of all shapes and forms no matter how innocent the smile. I don¹t know which mind frame is better.

"You analyze her Violet. I can't get past the dark skin," Seth says.

We both sigh and then realizing the impossibility of the conversation, Seth says, "Fuck it. I'm gonna kick her out this week. I'm not her free crash club. She's got a man. Let him take care of her."

He jumps up and turns the stereo on. He wants to play a tape for me. Of course it's death metal after that goose bump ridden conversation. Seth is sensory. Talking of Shana, sex and her erotic looks has given him a hard on and he intensifies it with music instead of deflating it with a SWANK and a jar of Vaseline.

He rewinds for awhile and then announces, "This is the tape that inspired me to form my band."

Glen Benton starts to howl and I close my eyes. Music is something I can feel in a variety of states. Right now I prefer my own little tunnel of black. I can imagine Glen, tall and livid, his black clothes taut around the bulges, veins popping on his wrists‹the upside down cross on his forehead like a macabre cattle branding. I can imagine his two guitarists who loom each over six feet tall with their lush rivers of long blonde hair and violent anti-Christian muscles. I imagine them pounding out the dark riffs of "Sacrificial Suicide" their twisted lyrics becoming their own personal Jesus, their form of creative outlet as opposed to murderous reality.

"Do you like this music?"

It's not Seth's voice. I open my eyes and see that Jerry has arrived. He is seated next to me on the couch studying my closed eyes without wanting to disturb me in that calm and subtle respect he doles out to his friends until they actively request his interaction. The tape is halfway over and I was so into the music that I didn't even hear him come in nor do I know how long he's been silently watching me think in private. He's wearing all black as usual, his ponytail knotted behind his neck, his silver wallet chain dangling from his pant¹s pocket.

"I like it and I don't" I reply.

"I don't agree with their beliefs," he says, "but I love the way they express themselves. I love that they have the guts and that they CAN. Do you hear how fast that bass is?"

I am fascinated at how our minds can all perceive the same things differently. I'm not a musician; I hear pure hate. I look towards the living room and see Seth standing with bent knees playing air guitar a thousand motions a second while the music booms shaky halos around him. His Chinese "Live For The Day" tattoo vibrates on a soft bicep. Each tic and change of rhythm is represented by a flawless, quick tilt of the head; the eyes closed in tight concentration and instinct. He is gone from this present; he perceives the song as the drummer within his blood. I see tunes like poetry or psychology. Jerry has become still, mouthing the words into shape and staring into my eyes every so often.

"What's music to you?" he asks.

"Content. Lyrics. Words that come from a pit of experience."

"Give me an example," he says, sitting up and ready to debate between talent and ingredients like a true guitarist.

"I love Trent Reznor," I say, "and how he presents what's taboo. He puts all of our sensitive subjects like religion, purity, rules, order, pain, orgasmic sex, watching as you slow down by that highway collision, all together. He throws them in our face and we get scared because we¹re taught to ignore the bad stuff. Things that may even excite us although we may not know why or how."

Like when I look at a porno and want to throw it away and hate it and go all ballistic and start preaching feminism. But then later, when I am alone, I might actually allow myself the ability to not stifle the excitement and eroticism that I felt compelled to hide earlier. Like bringing common human traits out into the open and confessing that we all equally wear them and even if we wish to avoid them, at least we don't have to beat ourselves up for their real and natural presence.

"Does Trent Reznor excite you or does he just create work that excites you?"

"Both." I answer immediately. "Have you seen the CLOSER video where he's licking that microphone in silhouette?"

Jerry laughs and yells at Seth, "Violet has the hots for Trent Reznor."

Seth stops dancing and sits down with us. "Violet has the hots for the dark side period."

I don't argue. Seth winks at me and then puts on KORN.

This world today exhilarates and traumatizes me simultaneously. A boy-child man is screaming about his father fucking him, about his mother watching blindly, about salvation and forgiveness. We¹ve been fed so much illicit sensory provocation throughout our lives that we end up looking at all sides of everything instead of good versus bad. It works. It makes sense. We understand and maybe our world will someday be a better place now that all things are laid upon the table, out from under the bed. We make decisions by which we are, not by what we have seen or done. Our minds aren't corrupted by pure exposure alone and we treat others equally until personally burned. We are common and we see it.

The male sex today is so gloriously real and tragic and open and I've reached a plateau of indecision. I can¹t figure out if we¹re doomed or optimistic although I feel closer to my friends now then I have ever felt to anyone and it stems from open and brutal honesty. But is the honesty a painkiller, a numbing tool? Because along with my bliss towards our emerging mental nudity comes a sense of woe. I can't forget the movie KIDS; or the eerie caresses that come too early; the scene in "Killing Zoe" where the male character with AIDS is having anal sex in the hallway in front of everyone and shooting dirty needles into his arm because life has become a fucking free for all of self obliteration. Where did all this start? All this exotic disease, these young stoner punks, these poetic junkies, these angry and revengeful sexual beings, these premature adults including myself, who weren't supposed to be tasting semen at age twelve although in the long run it has made us kinder, gentler people?

I turn quickly to Jerry and I feel doomed. There is too much love in his eyes in light of the past. I have smiles for people who smile back as we sit on some verge stripped bare to our bones.

I look at Seth and recall our endless nights of conversation while passing the bong, of loading the CD player, of seeking out our own brothers and sisters who are quite capable of love and happy to receive it. I am not numb to bad things. I cry sincerely every time Seth talks of his cocaine ridden past and I hold out my hand when he is close to relapse. It is scary and I do feel fear but what¹s the use in ignorance?

I can't imagine a life without this fear. I can't imagine not knowing people like Shana, like me. I can't imagine everything always peachy keen like an "I Love Lucy" episode. Everything scares me. Jack scares me with his naïve insecurities and sexual past. Smut scares me. Seth scares me when he leaves for L.A. Pollution scares me. Fading away into obscurity as a species without ever trying to redeem our humanity scares me. What do these things remind me of? Nothing and that¹s where my fear resides. In that unknown place we are finding without history or guidelines. Where we are forming a new breed with fresh attitudes never seen in a generation before us. We are naked to hope and bloody with truth. Everyone's individual before NO judge.

I NEED to be aware. I NEED to know. I request and receive and educate. I have to. If I don¹t, I would be making love to lava. I could get too hot, shrivel up and fry.

Contributor: Kimberly Nichols