Body Count: A Memoir

Body Count

By: John Castro

0

         We were supposed to go out for ice cream. His pickup idled a block away from my house, but everyone could hear the low rumbling. My father didn't stop to look out the window as I walked out and headed in the opposite direction of my friend's house. He didn't stop to question the honesty of my pathetic excuse, told through a bitten lip and a raised brow. He took it all at face value, let me go in hopes I was living up to an expectation we both knew I could never really aspire to.
         I left. I walked down until a man with a beer gut poking his steering wheel and a Detroit Tigers hat covering his eyes gestured me over with a flick of his finger. I climbed in and greeted him nervously, him doing the same. He jostled me on the shoulder. A large hand came down on my knee. He revved the truck, stirred it awake, and pulled out onto the main road. His hand moved almost in tandem with his breathing as it traveled up and up and up and my heart quickened and a thousand thoughts raced through my head and the smoke from his cigarette choked the air out of my lungs and my eyes widened as the hand kept going and the passerby remained ignorant as he reached the top and he felt something stir in his grip.

"Nice."

He gave it a shake. The cigarette went out his window and died in a pile of tobacco and spit. The man swept his eyes across my body as if I were a slab of prey bundled up and awaiting my fate. His hand moved to please me and to loosen the nerves holding my shoulders up to my ears. It didn't work. His Chevy maneuvered itself into a far-off corner of a carpool lot situated off the highway and overlooking the steady stream of commuters. There were only a few other cars parked in scattered spaces around the lot, all of them empty. I shivered as I removed my shoes and climbed into the backseat. It was July.

"First time, right?"

         I nodded, and he grinned.

"I'll be gentle, cutie."

         With that, he joined me in the back with a surprising swiftness I didn't expect from a man his age. His lips tasted like char. His hands moved too fast. He peeled away my clothes as if I were a new toy--freshly made, never used. My head went back as he tipped me and spilled me all over the polyester seats. I asked him if he had protection. He said no. I asked him if he had lubricant. He said no. I did not say no.
                   We were supposed to go out for ice cream.

1

You blew it. You took something you'd never had before and grinded it into the sides of walk in freezer, rammed it against the door until it screamed under you. All at once, your insides melted, and your brain shorted out. The one emotion you didn't know you were capable of feeling swelled up like a balloon in your chest and leaked out every orifice. Leaked out until it was gone and down some stranger's throat in an impulse of weakness.
You left that freezer without him and went about your shift as if your chest didn't ache and your eyes didn't threaten to burst. Your hands moved through the motions of your job, his with a calmness you still envy.
You blew it. You broke yourself just as quickly as you fell in love. The man you just betrayed 200 miles away can probably sense something is wrong, as if your greedy mouth accidentally flipped a switch to a lighthouse beam projecting your shame into the Ohio snow for him to see. Do you feel guilty? Does it hurt yet? Or are you in too much shock to fully comprehend the brevity of your evil stupidity?
Feel it overwhelm you and choke on it--because that's the only thing you're good at doing right? Choking? You're making sandwiches, that's cute. You're greeting the customers, that's rich. How quaint of you to work with that man after what you two performed moments ago, and with such lighthearted conversation floating between you two like waves lapping against the shore of your fucking lighthouse.
You know he doesn't care how you feel, even as he watches your breath hitch and your face redden in an attempt to hold back tears. It's tragic, really. You spent five months building your first love up, five months and countless minutes spent riding a dingy greyhound bus at four in the morning from the slums of Detroit to the bustle of Columbus. All the lackluster sex you endured where the only time he finished came in the form of a tired wrist and a prayer.
Hope you enjoyed those five minutes. Five minutes so easily ruined five months but look at the bright side: you can hide it, or at least you can try, but you won't because you can't keep your slutty mouth shut, whether it be for secrets or for your coworker's phallus. Now it's sinking in. That's right. Let it claw the landscape of your throat. Let it slip out of those fat, rubbery lips as you kindly repeat an old man's order and take his cash. Let it slip out of your plastic grin when you go to act cordial with that rat with the twisted mouth and the subpar tail. Grab your phone and text your future ex of your dramatic betrayal and beg for forgiveness you know will never come. Done and done.

3

         I met him on the brim of my first semester of university. I looked at him from afar as he approached me in that music hall, rose-tinted glasses shielding his eyes and bleached hair hiding dark roots. He greeted me nervously, shifted on his feet, his voice an awkward murmur in the crowd of music students shooting glances in our direction. His eyes were the warmest shade of brown. I tried not to be creepy but ended up drowning in them anyway.
We went out to eat. He bored me with small talk, and I embarrassed him with my youthful exuberance and lack of verbal filter. We had the most insignificant of age gaps at 5 years, but it loomed overhead as an approaching storm front we were too blind to apprehend. He was too different from me, too self-absorbed, too caught up in the spiral of his past to care about a soul outside his own. But I was desperate, and he was hungry. He ate me up.
The apartment had a cozy level of filth to it that I found reassuring and alarming at the same time, clothes on the floor and a bong cast aside on a bookshelf of music. We took to one side of the stained couch and stared at each other before our bodies clashed and his tongue made its way down my throat. We didn't speak as I stripped him down and travelled down his trail of stomach hair with shaking fingers. We didn't have sex, but after he dropped me off at my class, it was the only thing I wanted. I sniffed the musk on my fingers for an hour, getting high off the sweat and fantasizing until the smell faded and my mind cleared.
The next day came and brought more of him with it. We walked in the door and immediately changed into our birthday suits on his tiny, twin bed. We still didn't have sex. I became obsessive, barraging his phone with messages and over analyzing every detail, every shroud of doubt I had about his loyalty to me. After three days, I had melted into a puddle of desperation with my body open and mouth agape for him. He spun me around his fingers and avoided all mention of romance as if the topic of love was tabooer than that of sex.
When I finally loosened myself up, when he caressed me in the darkness of his room, I fell into him. Waves of it pulsed in me, feeling safe in the arms of this man who cared little for my feelings and too much for the pressure he was applying between my hips.
I snuck off with him and felt dangerous lying to my mother. Months went by, and I showered him with gifts. My wallet ached, and my stomach felt empty with confusion and vague answers. I brought up the possibility of a relationship for several months before he succumbed. He never told me he loved me, instead retreating within himself, a turtle receding into its hard shell, only to be beckoned out with food.
The obsessive behavior made it hard for me to do anything else. My friends worried for me, my mother worried for me, but he did not. He took me into his mouth and chewed as slowly as he could, making sure all my bones were broken and my blood was drained. We fought. He pulled away. His aggression came in the form of mental attacks and seeds of doubt forced into my skin. After a week of being his boyfriend, I was asked to give him space. I was asked to leave him alone. I never asked anything of him. I called his phone after two weeks of radio silence and left my resignation from his life in the form of a recorded message.

4

         Angels of porn looked down at me from the large television screens overhead as whatshisname drove his fingers into me. The screens cast a harsh white glow upon the lounge. My legs were propped up on a black rubber mat as I looked up into the face of a man I knew I would never see again, but chose to give myself to anyway. Fully dressed and with a face of cold marble, he methodically worked himself deeper into my naked form and let his free hand wander.
I didn't need to look up to see them. They came one by one out of silent curiosity, gathering around the two of us and reaching to pleasure themselves through dirtied jeans and business pants. I tried not to think about my two newly knighted exes married in there happy house with their happy daughter, their happy sex toy left out on the corner. I let myself moan because that's what I knew how to do, and that's what I knew would make them want me and pay attention to me and please me and spend time with me and ravage me in all the ways my naive little brain divined in my dreamscape of fulfillment.
The man whose name I never learned licked his lips and it left a sheen of spit around badly shaven skin. He grunted as he felt himself reach my spot. He stroked it. I clenched my teeth and whispered dirty things. He reciprocated, and I had soon accumulated a crowd of closeted middle-aged men watching this man play with my innards as if they were intellectuals viewing an open-heart surgery.
I did not feel vulnerable being the only naked body amongst a herd of fully clothed animals. I felt scared, excited, turned on, confused--wanted. I relaxed, and his digit slipped deeper still. I thought of my mother sitting at home while her son put out for the denizens of Club Tabu, tucked quietly behind a sex shop. I thought of the men eyeing every exposed morsel of disgusting flesh and salivating. I thought of these things as I released, and the men's breaths all caught in their throats in a chorus of shock and pure hormonal torture.
He chuckled and took a scoop for himself, lathering it on his lips and sucking it off his fingers. The others shifted to allow him free movement. He reached over. tore off some alcohol wipes and tossed them onto my body.

"Here," he murmured. "Clean yourself up."

As he exited the room, the air stiffened. At least a dozen eyes fell on me. I leaned up against the wall and slowly wiped the sweat and fluid from my bare chest. They glowered, their hands still attached to their crotches, eyes almost unblinking. Whatshisname returned with a towel and ushered for me to clothe myself. I nodded. I fought with my clothes and moved to leave. A man with a goatee not unlike my father's winked at me from the doorway.

"Thanks for the show."

9

I lost control because the feeling filled me up. It took my mind off things, off people, off pain. The days clogged up as I got backed up in sweat, in breath, in saliva. People I talked to once became my lovers faster than I could see them get undressed. Sometimes they wouldn't get undressed. February and March were a frozen hell, but the heat of skin on skin seared the hole in my chest and lit the membranes of my hands. My grades slipped. My friends slipped. My body slipped in between new men and old, my mind's catalog of penises growing like mold. Two weeks of empty passion and unprotected bodies smothered my weak form until it caught up to me, a fire within contracted from the fire outside.
         His car waited at the end of my drive, the night sky suffocated under a thick winter overcast. His twin headlights jutted out through the trees like handsome yellow eyes following my figure as I slinked out the front door and latched it with the softest and most delicate of hands. I waved at him. He blinked back at me, adjusted himself in his seat, and settled his hand between his legs. My stepfather would know I had left, but he wouldn't care. My mother would be asleep.
         The snow crunched under my shoes, and I cringed in fear of my stepfather rushing out in a fit of sleep-deprived hysteria to assault an assumed intruder. He unlocked the door and spit out a wad of fat gum as I climbed in and gave him a smile. His pants were already pulled down before I could put my seatbelt on. My head went down; his eyes rolled up.
His right hand rested on the nape of my neck as he eased up on the brake and rolled off down our country road. He growled as I applied pressure and he tried to shove my head further. I gagged. Spit shot out of my mouth and dribbled down my chin. Tears rushed to mingle with the juice as it trickled into his skin and made a nasty mixture on his lap.

"Deeper," he moaned.

         I shook my head, and he shot a glare down at me. He pulled onto the highway. The lights flit in between the hard edges of his face and the back of my head bobbing like a buoy out on rough waters.

"I said deeper," he said.

         His hand came down, my throat squeezed, and the bile came up all at once in a stream of vomit across his lap. My mouth froze, every nerve ending singed from the acid tickling away at my throat.

"Did you just throw up?"

         I sat up. He glanced down at his lap. His face paled and the reflection off the fluorescent lights gave him a ghostly sheen. His hand shot back and retrieved a towel from the backseat.

"I'm sorry--" I started.

"Shut up," he shouted. "Clean it off."

I quickly scrubbed at it, the smell making my stomach gurgle and threaten to shoot up more fluid. He felt it. His hand caressed his lap for a second, and I dreaded hearing him speak, because I knew the command he would give me.

"Keep sucking it, come on."

His hand grabbed my head and he forced himself into my quivering mouth. I let myself cry, but not because of the foul vomit filling up my nose and mouth, but at my pathetic submission to such a demand. I had become a slave for the lust I seeked. We pulled into a truck stop, and he had his way with me in one of the stalls. His nose glued to a bottle of poppers and his body to the inside of mine.
His body relished in mine long after he dropped me off at home without bothering to kiss me goodnight. A burning relish infecting my insides and leaking out of me in an oozing puss. I told my mother. She called me a whore. I don't remember breaking in front of her, letting myself convulse and shrink down into a fetus. I wanted her to sympathize. I wanted her to understand. The empty pain and the empty guilt burrowed itself into my sex-addicted veins.
I recalled 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. My body deteriorated, and my mind lost its hold on what I loved to do and who I cared about. Death looked appealing. It made sweet love to me in my dreams and pleasured me better than any man I knew could. The infection oozed out of me and my affection for life followed suit.
I groveled to myself. I begged my legs to cease their bloodlust and close. I begged my hands to calm their desperate reach. I stopped. All at once, the storm eased up and the clouds parted for a moment. I tried, and somehow, I rose again. My legs zipped up. The images of their heat faded until I could only recall faces and regrets. Oh, how I regretted it.

21

You had a nice break, took some time to yourself. You had that little boyfriend of yours over the summer, and played the shy, innocent, inexperienced child you're so good at masquerading as to the new ones. What was it--Bryan, Bob, Blake? He treated you better than anyone you'd ever experienced before by simply being a normal person. The sex was good, but you knew you could do better. For once, the sex was just that. Isn't it sad it took you this long to find someone normal? Or does it just seem like that because you've become sane?
But now, the new academic year is upon you and you're thirsty again. You're thirsty and the maws of the greedy have fallen open to accept you into your rightful place as the designated slut. He's gone now and you're alone. You're so free now, and with your own room on campus, you're open to the public like a new fairground attraction. And boy, do you draw them in.
You will accumulate more grease than the oil lubricating the gears on a Ferris wheel and your body is no longer a summer temple, but a back alley on the brink of Autumn. You will spend the next month reclaiming your former glory as an unpaid prostitute and wallow in self-denial until your friends stop liking you and you stop liking you. This time your mother isn't there to call you a whore, so I guess you'll have to do it yourself. But you've changed. You've grown, right? There are a lot of things you're telling yourself as you fit another one, fueled by the adrenaline that comes with knowing your roommate can come in at any moment.
Relapse. That's what they call it, a relapse in your "road to recovery," your "path to reformation." You've gone so long without feeling the constant intake of their sweat inside of you that you couldn't help but engorge yourself with it. The body count rose a couple a week as you played it off as something healthy, something normal. You tell the doctor your second wave of infection is a coincidence and a slight inconvenience. You tell the ex you gave it to it was a bizarre occurrence with no real source. But you knew.
You're so pathetic, so sad, so depressed in your selfish angst you have no clue what to do with yourself. Yet, it's not all bad. Remember? It's not all bad. See, when you die, at least the disease will die with you. And then you won't have to hurt anyone anymore or make your mother ashamed to have risen such a directionless wench. So do it. Or don't. It's up to you whether wallowing in yourself is any better than death.
The meds come and you feel better. They nourish you and you feel better. They lift your chest and you feel better. You love to write, you love to laugh with people who love you with every ounce of blood pumping through their hearts. You accept it into you, the love pouring into every orifice and putting a plug in your hormonal streak. You abstain. You enjoy life. You get better with a group of people you can be around without judgement of your body count, without judgement of who you are. You go almost two months without sex, and when you do finally have sex, it is not looked down upon.
You're not a terrible person, nor are you a dumb one. You're just too much for your own good. You're a writer, a friend, a brother, a son, a dancer, a lover, and a human being. You still enjoy ice cream, and you enjoy yourself. You love yourself.

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