Finish Me.

The secret was once hot and juicy inside a red and white paper bag now crumpled into a ball and thrown in the back seat. It was shoved beside the console making translucent oily splotches. It was being picked out of teeth by a tiny wooden spire controlled by nauseous regret. It wafted out of a car with the scent of hot fabric and vinyl every time the door swung open and slammed closed again.

It was packed away inside a neon colored thermal lunch-bag and floated above the parking lot dangling from a hand with short bloated fingers. It went into the community refrigerator and every time the bag came out and went back inside, it was lighter. The secret got heavier upon mixing with saliva, breaking down into less complex structures while shooting into mouth reactors that caused tiny explosions of joy, pleasure snapping and popping between ears.

Jingling money went into a slot on a machine with a clear glass window and the secret inched forward in a shiny bright wrapper, falling a few feet into a contraption where it landed with a crackling crash. It took flight through an escape hatch in the clutches of its defiler. It later got stuck to office doorknobs and keyboards and adding machines and made appearances during staff meetings while handing out documents.

It came to the doors of apartments and houses in flat square boxes and the gooey masses arrived in perfect rounds to deliver the secret on cardboard platters. Cut into various shapes and sizes, it was too hot for fingertips and burned delicate skin on roofs of mouths.

In every instance, the mechanical motion of jaw clamping and moist rapture mixed with salacious gurgling ...and the secret made itself known with a tiny voice whispering, “Finish me.”

Letting Go

Daddy never gave her no discipline. Daddy never gave her nothing to keep her there, to make her feel safe, to let her know that she was secure and protected in his house that he owned, not her mama. Daddy only gave her a ball of twine and a knife and said go for it honey I love you. Into the wild she went out with bushy tangled hair and a dirty mouth casting nets into every bay catching all the fishes she could, scaling them one by one and gouging out their eyes like $5 cubic zirconia studs.

Along came the man with the bowler hat and the walking stick and he said baby I’m gonna give you the world. I’m gonna knock you down and drag you back to my cave by those sweet silvery blond locks. I’m gonna toss you on your ass and hold you down until you surrender and beg me to give you the loving home you deserve. I’m gonna take care of everything, picking out one little thorn in your soul at a time.

She felt the sting of a strong hand smashing into her buttocks like a crash cymbal at the grand finale of a great symphony. Vibrations of the sharp cracking sound resonated through her backside up her spine to her ears and out in flickering sparks through the top of her head and she whimpered stretching her fingers like webs on the edge of the bed. Letting go with a moaning exhale, she felt it again. She was a bad girl wild child who needed to know her place in this world - right there, bent over and crumpled like a sleeping new born underneath his hot face as he thought baby I’m gonna make you come home.

Taking Hits

Dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin. All those. Mixing around, blending into long stares, sideways glances, meshed tongues, combined skins.

Neurotransmitters surging to the brain chemicalize the experience whether you've ingested a bottle of wine or not. You see that special person's face and all those little molecules create the miracle of euphoria. Engines fire on all pistons, lubricated by the flow of mojo juices and flirty words passed by ears in clever sentences.

The pinball machine score of the random miracle sets your sights on that certain someone and the whole world drifts away. Passion evolves into a mood. It focuses everything on one person, in one place, makes your heart pound, your hands sweat, and there is only one way to get what you want: lock eyes, make some conversation and hope to God she's into you.

Things go well and over time, the frying nerves are chewed, savored, swallowed and digested, and something new happens. Peace, stability and attachment creates companionship and lifelong commitment. You care for each other in good times and bad. All fantasies are exciting until...

Where can they go? What can happen to all those chemicals, all those firings and misfirings that sent you into the spiraling and tumbling madness of love? Do they end their squirtings into the hinges of the relationship? Why can things dry up and disappear? Resentments, fears, hesitations, all leading to the aloof desperation of trying to find someone else, someone new....and you never saw it coming.

Romance. It's a clever cocktail that can only stay full forever if the chemistry happens at the right places and the right times, directed by an equation only God can dictate. You can be a scientist and try to figure it out for the rest of your life, but you'll never know how it works. All you can do is live your life every day as if the Earth wants you to be something amazing. As if you're the greatest miracle that ever happened to the world. Because you are.