The undeniably integral composition of all animal life: Sex & violence.
posted by jeremy on September 17, 2002
Both of us from Ohio, growing up on the dirty edges of Industry & mono-crop Agriculture. She moved out here two years after I, to be with her boyfriend who was a friend of a friend of mine from Cincy. Molly & I had met before in that ancient decaying city, just barely. She was an old friend of two of my ex-girlfriends & we hadn't really taken to each other very much at all when we had roamed together those times; A foreshadowing of something important maybe. These incidents had been brief but loud argumentative encounters, products of fierce ego & alcohol.
Within 3 months of being out here, she broke up with the guy & sent him scurrying back to Cincinnati.... & I, literally, moved in: As a roommate. We didn't exactly engage each other the first two weeks that I lived in that house. We uneasily went about our routines, occasionally muttering hello to each other if our schedules allowed us. Looking back, I think we might have been intimidated, each by the other, that is until, one night, for some still-inexplicable reason, she drunkenly begged me to go to the Blonde Redhead show....
Mystified at her persistence, I went.
When a beautiful near-stranger begs you to do something fun, you simply do it.
The show was as good as they come. Kazu Makino was like a beautiful Elvis on speed in a latex cat-suit. I danced & danced & I couldn't help but watch Molly dance & laugh & dance....But eventually, some huge sweaty shirt-less jock boy began to annoy me with his circa-'92 moshing & slamming & soon 
enough, I snapped. Shoved him with considerable force to the floor & he was up in a fucking flash, knowing, somehow, who to pound.... I tensed up, preparing for evasive maneuvers & out of nowhere, Molly stepped between us. She looked him in the eye & waggled her haughty finger in a Ânaughty-naughty' motion & then she shoved him hard, back into the crowd....
Instantly, I was engulfed in a crazy-love. Tough girls have always found their way into my heart with little resistance. We left the show that night elated & laughing like hyenas & we bought beer & walked to Laurelhurst Park at dawn & slept in the grass till the joggers woke us with the pitter-patter of their little Nikes & then we staggered, still cackling, home to our separate beds.
The next night, we got drunk again & she cut my hair & during the process, she touched my face just so & we kissed & that was that. We didn't sleep alone again for the next seven months.
Our love was the love that beer built. We romped & roamed & drank. We explored the hell out of Portland. We rode everywhere. We poked into everything. Went wherever we shouldn't of. We mocked & joked & wrote & drew & read & sneered & screamed.
We would heckle the hipsters at shows, trying to shatter the boring nitrogen of their fragile cool.
We had ill-advised bike chases down crowded sidewalks, eliciting the cursing of hapless pedestrians like the snapping of leashed dogs.
We had the most amazing confrontation with a pack of police officers that I've ever been involved in. We actually managed to back down 6 cops with the sheer power of screaming our heads off. We had walked up just as these cops had somehow managed to pepper-spray some poor bastard outside of the Watertrough Saloon for the heinous crime of trying to talk to his friend who was sitting in the back of a police car. Molly & I couldn't just watch this. I started writing down badge numbers, witness names & phone numbers while telling, yelling, at the cops about the potential lethality of pepper spray. The cops got spooked & immediately tended to the guy; Washing his eyes out & checking his breathing, etc. They asked if we were journalists. " Maybe..." I told them. " ...wait till tomorrow & see."
Our sex was violent & depraved; Somewhere between rape & a rough form of tenderness. Molly was one of the only actual nymphomaniacs I've ever met. "Wake me if you ever want to fuck...." she told me at the beginning of our relationship... "I always want to..."
& even now, I can remember the exact color & texture of Molly's tattoo, the color & texture of the sky on the day she had it done.
A large octopus across her shoulder; The tentacles curling down her arm & up onto her neck. The artwork was beautiful: The cold blue of it across her white skin..... 
Everything was a sweet rowdy bliss for nearly half a year till a subtle change crept into the atmosphere of our inter-relation. A certain unhealthy possessiveness on Molly's behalf & a certain cold distancing on mine.... The more she clinged to me, the colder I became.... & thus, her insecurity increased: A hopeless vicious cycle. The nightmare fights began here...
It slowly came to light, the problem of our natures. Beneath all her toughness was a scared little girl who had never had enough love & beneath whatever I am? A person who once, when younger, felt too much & had learned to cut off, even destroy, his deepest emotions: An empath who has renounced empathy.
I can still remember her words, her sobs, " I need you... O god, you're all I've got here... you're all I have... " Her cries, like razor-wire, shredding my idiot heart.
Coldness. Something, as I said, I had had to learn. Implemented in my retorts to her accusations of whatever I had done to arouse her ire. Remarks designed to inflame the situation at hand. For my amusement. For my fucking amusement...
One beautiful summer evening, the moon brilliant in the sky; Molly angry as all of hell's drunken angels, screaming at me on the front porch of our house. My flippant responses pushing her somewhere I'd never seen or experienced: She suddenly became very calm & then I was on my knees, gagging. She'd punched me, with a smooth confidence, in the throat. To this day, I think if she had struck me any harder, I might now be dead of a collapsed trachea.
She sat down on the porch steps & calmly lit up a cigarette. I gagged on, trying to recover the ability to breathe. Eventually, days later it seemed, three minutes maybe, I stood up, walked over to her & as she looked up at me with her furious eyes.... I slapped her across her skull with all the force my adrenalin-choked body could muster. She didn't even make a sound.
"If you ever fucking hit me, I'll hit you right the fuck back!" I screamed & it seemed the entire street, the entire world was silent, listening to our animal violence....
Another night went beyond this. Another drunken fight over satan knows what... The way I looked at another girl.... Or maybe, once again, I hadn't shown enough affection to please her. Who knows? Molly's anger was unpredictable, boundless, insatiable, once triggered.
On this particular evening we fought like cranked-up wolverines, like rabid weasels & eventually, Molly stalked off into the humid evening. I laughed to myself at the ridiculousness of all of this & went to sleep, easily, in my cold-hearted way.
A sound. Something. Something was on me. Claws scratching at my face. Awake. Horror. A Banshee. A Fury. Molly. Molly scratching at my eyes. Naked, I reacted; Threw her with all my weight against the wall behind the bed. She hit hard enough to nearly dent the plaster. She yelped, then, literally... Roared, coming back at me, hitting me, fucking destroying me, & then I hit her, with a scared precision, hard, in the face. She collapsed to the bed & I grabbed her, holding her down. She fought & I begged her to stop. I cursed her. I begged & cursed. Eventually, her screams faded to tears, to sobs & then, I held her, not down, but to me, & together, we mourned what had just occurred within the lives of us.....
What should I say of this? This unretractable violence. These tangible & nearly bloody extensions of passion. That I was wrong? That Molly was wrong?
That we were wrong? That these things just happen? That these were the last options available to us to explain how we felt? Molly & I: Products of humanity, harsh love, the Midwest of America.... 
The regret I felt over all of this was terrible & immense. I soon ended it & that too, was a horrible thing. More screaming, coldness, & guilt, but she finally moved: Outwards from our broken affair....
Two, three, four, five weeks we went without a word to each other. Her new home was 40 blocks east of the old & there was no reason to see each other. I was happy without the weight of our love & our hate, even as she slowly developed a sense of what had glitched between us....
One day, while I was working at the Grind, Molly reappeared. She ordered coffee while simultaneously ignoring & glaring at me. A marvelous & strictly feminine skill. She stalked over to a table & sat down. I followed her. "I don't want to fucking talk to you." Her first words to me in over a month. "Then why are you in here, goof-ball?" I asked & then she smiled, smiled at me with those bright green eyes.
Our friendship re-blossomed: Nights watching terrible movies, drinking bottle after bottle of good beer, drunken ping-pong matches. I started spending the night once more. Such suddenly tender love: We never fought again. Our cold & jealous demons had evaporated. The weeks passed....
But soon enough she found a new lover; She flew off to Santiago, Chile with an adventurous & brilliant madman named Ezra.... & as for me, I moved on & moved in with a beautiful & kind gelfling of a girl. These new relationships worked happily for us & as I write this.... they continue to work.
I eventually wrote a book of poems for Molly. A series of exorcisms or just some dead-love songs, I can't really tell.
Simply some poems & among them, this one:
The shards are glittering brighter now.
The hate of it failed & we are as safe
as we are going to be.
Something tore thru us: A monstrous angel
of an undetermined origin.
Fierce, ugly, sad: It changed the essence of us.
I can still remember the drunken battles.
Your name is fire
& I am a heartless fool....
What happened did not need to
but it did, it did. What
can I say to explain
the parameters of such occurrences?
The horrible symbology of flesh
upon flesh: Striking. Loving. Dancing.
The constant war of it; Struggling
to push thru our skins, one to the other....
& the diametric opposition
of our fierce fierce pride
ended us....
Viral & violently expelled, the hearts
of us lapsed to their only recourse:
Death, decay & a rough & beautiful rebirth.
We are fine now. Things have moved on.
The strangling screaming passion of us is past.
We do as we need to. Say what we say.
I still love you & you, me,
& the shards of this will always....
