Yin-Yang

Yin
n: the dark negative feminine principle in the Chinese dualistic cosmology; “the interaction of yin and yang maintains the harmony of the universe.”

1. She was jogging before, but she no longer was. In a flash, she was overtaken by a man in sweats and thrown onto her back. He reeked of liquor and there were crumbs in his unshaven mass of a beard. His greasy long hair was starting to dread, though she had no time to observe this. He undid her pants with a knife, leaving a gash below her belly button, and once the baby blue cotton fabric was out of the way, the ragged vagabond moved his blade to her throat, muttering, “Nothing to live for.” She thought now of the mace attached to her lanyard. She could spray this piece of shit before he got out of hand, but he had a knife to her throat. One move and she’d be dead, and so she remembered what she’d heard once in a seminar on self-defense. They told her to lie back and take it if there was any risk of murder.
Spitting into his free hand and rubbing himself, he prepared for insertion. She could only think to thank him for at least not making a dry entry, but as it slid in, it worked as a siphon, sucking out her life, and like a mosquito, replacing it with poison. He brought down his mud-stained hand beside her face, and the scent of his dry saliva wafted past her nose. She gagged. It smelled rotting, bacterial, diseased. He was pumping now, and the saliva dried quickly. His penis didn’t feel right. Were there lumps, maybe, or was it just her brain playing tricks? The friction became more and more intense, rubbing away at her flesh. She felt herself start to bleed from her raw and broken skin. He was making noises now. It was almost over. He came, like acid in her uterus. It burned. He spat on her face and knocked her in the temple with the handle of his knife and walked away, leaving her there, a pathetic heap of flesh, raped of dignity, of peace, a body without soul.

2. Lions eating children. Just imagine that. Teeth gnawing, crushing the bodies of young American and English children in V-neck sweaters and corduroys. They scream for the mercy of their parents, who are too busy working overtime for the state government to get their 26-mile-to-the-gallon megavans down to the arena. Back in the dirt, there is blood spraying from a neck, a crimson fountain in the image of a less lucky Daniel, and chunks of soft flesh are lying uneaten near a pile of lion dung. At least those kids won’t lose their youthful idealism to commercialism, material goods, and The Man—or maybe they already have, thanks to the Power Rangers.

3. It would have been a beautiful day in the Capital Area Riverfront Park, had Connor not noticed the black homeless man urinating on the riverbank. “Fuckin’ shit. Look at that. You see that fuckin’…” A pause draws out the last syllable as the gears of his brain turn and creak, churning out the most degrading insult he can come up with: “Nigger bum pissing in the goddam river. Look at that shit. Motherfucker’s just pissin’ downstream, man. Doesn’t that homeless shit have somewhere else to pee? Behind a tree or some shit? Dammit, motherfucker, the fuckin’ water purification plant is down the river like a half a mile. I don’t want to be drinkin’ no fuckin’ bum piss. That shit’s nasty. We’re only drinking bottled water from now on. What the fuck? Shit’s nasty.”

4. A friend said this to me once: “I mean, no, this dude, I’m cool with him and all. I mean, really, he’s a great guy, you know, but he just didn’t pay up, and I’m all like, ‘Dude, you’d better pay up, man, ‘cuz like, I like you, but I’ll beat the shit out of you man. I need the money.’ And like, after a week, that dude just didn’t pay, so like, it sucked, but I had to go to his house man, and wait until he got back from, like, wherever the fuck he was, and I smashed his knees in with a baseball bat. Dude, it sucks, man. I got to get a real job.” He and I were in Victoria’s Secret, the perfume side, and he was stealing lotions for his girlfriend. He really loves her.

5. Sometimes you wake up and you just say, “Shit. There’s the sky. Let’s go.” It’s kind of automatic, you know? There’s no real charm to anything, but you aren’t really pissed off, either. That’s what grey is.

6. Right above Sergeant Pepperoni’s in Detroit, there is a venue known as the Magic Stick, and that’s where we were, rocking out to a set of Graham Coxon’s finest new tunes. Coxon was downing one Red Bull after another between songs and his solos grew more intense as the night went on. He no longer wore his trademark plastic bifocals he did in Blur. He looked naked without them, but if felt as if he’d finally opened himself up to us, the rock and roll community. In the crowd, there were a million stories. I, for example, was there with my ex-girlfriend (who I made up with, thanks to the glory of rock and roll), and we had met our old chemistry student teacher, Heather Christine Lemon, HCl, who made an even longer trek than us for a little bit of Coxon’s saintly glow. We were all dancing, on beat, unlike a couple members of the crowd, and when “People of the Earth” came on, certain drunken college students tried to start a mosh pit that didn’t quite catch on. Ultimately, it was the quintessential rock show and my own personal rock and roll rebirth.

7. These places exist in the world, in towns neither suburb nor city, where nature meets industry and culture meets barbarism. In parks and river trails shadowed by derelict power plants and town centers, the middle class walk their pets, ride their bikes, eat their sandwiches while wearing their ties, and they fall in love. They fall in love with the city, and they fall in love with each other. To have kissed under the corpse of the captains of industry and to make the promise of eternity, surrounded by steadfast ducks, determined always to return with each generation, one gains the sense of immortality that comes with being a human of this, the contemporary era. There is sickness, but not in Middle America.

8. He was nine when he first got his beautiful golden retriever. As he matured and gave in to masculine stereotypes of stolidity, he never ceased to make baby voices to his dog. It was amazing that an animal could love him so much that when it was reciprocated, every ounce of his body overflowed with the desire to simply jump and dance and sing and wrestle with his beautiful blonde puppy, even when she no longer was. There is nothing like the bond between a boy and his dog. Whoever came up with that old adage, “man’s best friend,” he thought, he deserves a lot more praise.

9. As we stood in the portal, looking at each other with longing as I prepared to take my leave into the pouring rain, the power went out. She asked me to help her light the candles in her room, so that she would not be in darkness, and so I escorted her back into the abyss of her apartment. As she bent over and lit a candle, I noticed, from the dim light, how her curves played in the shadow, flowing like a river against the rocky crag of the living room wall. As I watched her in the flickering dance of the flame, my appetite grew great, and another fire was lit ablaze. I approached her from behind and slid my hands around her, kissing her soft neck. She turned around and kissed me back, her lips feeling like silk and her tongue filling my body from the mouth down like hot cocoa. We fell upon the bed, and in what seems like a contradiction, we stripped each other quickly because we were both very chilly. Her body heat comforted and welcomed me, and we lay, kissing, chest-to-chest and legs interlocking. She crawled on top of me as the lightning flashed outside, momentarily bringing full light to her lush, honey-colored skin. She kissed me as she took me inside of her, and in overwhelming euphoria we made love. She protected me and I protected her as outside rain came down in sheets and Thor dominated the sky. Each second building on the next, we came to a climax in sync with the preeminent thunderclap. She collapsed on top of me, and with a long sigh, we lay, holding each other in perfect love, drifting off into sleep.

Yang
n: the bright positive masculine principle in the Chinese dualistic cosmology; “yin and yang together produce everything that comes into existence.”