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Archive name: messiah.txt (MF, drugs, mystical, rom)
Authors name: Tommy Ranks (foucault@paranoia.com)
Story title : Failed Messiahs

--------------------------------------------------------
This work is copyrighted to the author © 2002.  Please
don't remove the author information or make any changes
to this story.  All rights reserved. Thank you for your
consideration.
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Failed Messiahs (MF, cons, drugs, mystical, rom)
by Tommy Ranks (foucault@paranoia.com)

***

I used to be a queer-basher. Me and my friends used to 
walk by this gay bar and then we'd go talk to the whores 
who hung out by the bus station, and then we'd say 'yeah, 
we're going to go beat up a fag now' to try and impress 
them. They wouldn't be impressed, though, 'cause the 
homos were cool to them.

Of course that just made us even madder so we'd walk 
around until we found a guy who looked kind of fruity and 
beat him up. Sometimes if we got too close to the bar 
some of the guys would come out and chase us off and yell 
stuff like 'come back when you're big boys' and of course 
that would make us even madder than before so we'd start 
the whole thing over again.

"I ended up leaving my friends and going to college and 
not fitting in real well. I only had one friend, a girl I 
worked with in the cafeteria. We'd go in there in the 
evenings and clean up after everyone had left, and we'd 
talk about all kinds of things. Her name was Marsh -- she 
had a nice face, but wasn't really the kind of person I'd 
fuck so I didn't really think of her as a woman. I mean, 
I had this idea that all women should either look like 
models or like whores, see? But Marsh was cool, she was 
into pro sports and old Motown tunes, like me, so we 
always had something to talk about.

"We had a boss, but he usually left us alone and stayed 
in his office by the dish room. One day he didn't come in 
and the janitor gave us the keys so we could lock up when 
we were done. Me and Marsh had always wondered what the 
boss did in his office all the time, so we opened it up 
and went in. Turned out the guy had the whole cabinet 
full of booze! Single-malt whiskey and Kahlua were his 
thing, and Marsh and I decided to 'sample his wares' 
after we'd done picking up. 

We poured ourselves drinks and looked through the office 
-- he had a complete set of Hardy Boys books -- then we 
turned out all the lights and sat there in the dish-room 
drinking whiskies and kahluas mixed with soda. It was 
great being with her because like I say, I didn't really 
feel I had to make the moves on her or anything. We 
started talking about when we were kids, and I told her 
about my dad's store and the time we got held up, and she 
told me about the time she wrecked her mom's car, and I 
told her about how we used to beat up queers.

I don't know why it never occurred to me she might be 
queer herself, it's just not something you think about. 
She said it didn't really matter, she'd only ever been in 
love with another girl once, and that hadn't lasted long, 
but I felt kind of bad anyways. I started singing 'Tears 
of a Clown' to her real slow and she laughed, so that 
made it a bit better, and we got back to normal.

"About a month after that Marsh and I were watching a 
Cubs game after work and she decided she'd help me get a 
girlfriend. I'd made the mistake of telling her I'd only 
had one real girlfriend back in high school, and I'd lost 
her when I kept trying to get her to blow me during lunch 
hour.

Marsh started to get mad at me. She said that wasn't any 
way I should treat women. I said well since I couldn't 
find a woman who wanted to be like I wanted her to be, I 
guess I didn't need a girlfriend. Marsh said well can't 
you think of any other way to deal with women? Yeah, if 
they don't let you fuck them you marry them and get them 
to cook for you. I was only half-serious, but Marsh was 
pissed! 'Don,' she said, 'do you like guys?' Hell no I 
said. 'Then think about what makes a woman not a guy, and 
you'll know how to treat women.' And then she turned back 
to the Cubs game and wouldn't talk about it any more.

"I woke up the next morning and started whacking off like 
always. (My dorm roommate stayed at his girlfriend's 
place most of the time, so I had the room to myself.) 
That morning, though, I was having problems 
concentrating. I started wondering what I'd actually say 
while I was fucking a porn star. For some reason it 
seemed important to say something, even to a porn star, 
and I couldn't think of anything to say. So there I was 
with half a hard-on and I couldn't really jerk off right.

"I figured since I was up and blue-balled anyways I might 
as well make it to my morning class. I managed to pay 
attention to the first half of the Calc class and then I 
started daydreaming. I realized I was never going to make 
it as an Engineer. The guy was talking about all these 
lines that headed towards an axis but never quite got 
there, no matter how far they went. I thought that was 
depressing as hell.

It reminded me of this book I read when I was a kid, "The 
River of Time". The book started out with all these 
dinosaurs standing by a river, and then the dinosaurs 
disappeared and there were all these cavemen, and then 
the cavemen disappeared and there were Egyptians, then 
Romans, then Feudal Kings, then right towards the end was 
this little kid who was supposed to be me. And the river 
went right on out towards the end of the book, just like 
it'd come in.

"I went and got some breakfast by myself after class. I 
started reading the paper, which was something I almost 
never did, and it got to be too much for me -- this was 
when all those skyjackings were going on. It was around 
noon then, and I started walking around town. It was one 
of the first good days of spring, and there were quite a 
few people out. Folks would run into someone they knew, 
or walk along talking; there were some girls sitting out 
on the grass.

All of a sudden I realized it was a good day. I was glad 
to be there. Maybe it was spring, maybe it was that I'd 
just really woken up. I wished there was some girl with 
me, so I could tell her what I was thinking. I wanted to 
be able to look at her and tell her how small and 
powerless we were in the big picture. I wanted to look at 
her and to be woken up by how beautiful she was. I wanted 
to tell her and really mean it that the way felt for her 
was all that kept me from feeling like shit, and that if 
she would just give me even the slightest touch I would 
remember that forever, because she was a woman and it was 
my thing to love women.

"Over the next couple of days I got in the habit of 
thinking exactly what I would tell the next woman I had 
the chance to. I would tell them how much I appreciated 
the shape of her cheek just below the eye, the look of 
her neck where it meets the chest: those things that all 
women have but we take for granted. Every day since I 
have looked on women with love and appreciation. I've 
realized it's a full and wonderful world, to be rich with 
all these beautiful beings.

"That's what I have to tell you today. Always appreciate 
women. And you," he said to Alicia, "always appreciate 
men."

He smiled, and reached over for a stout from the fridge 
by the liquor-cabinet. His plain wooden chair creaked as 
he leaned over. Every time we visited, it seemed he got 
larger.

"Don. Don," I said.

"Hm?"

"Why are you always telling us shit like this?"

"Don't listen to him," Alicia told Don before he could 
answer. "I know what you're saying. After I started 
working with pastels I noticed the colors in nature more. 
Everything seemed brighter."

"Yeah, that's it," Don said, smiling again. He was 
balding on the top but kept his hair long. He was fat and 
he had a mustache, and he usually seemed happy. For some 
reason, he really pissed me off. "Well, what'll it be 
this time... a carton of hand-rolleds? A six-pack of 
Cranked-Cola?"

"Nah, get us a Hoffman," I said, "four hits."

"Four Hoffmen of the Apocalypse, coming right up," he 
said, and stepped through the curtain to his bedroom.

"You shouldn't be so rude to him," Alicia said.

"Why not? He won't do anything."

"Here you go," he said, coming back with a bottle of 
mineral water. "Let's make that fifty, shall we?"

"You're asking fifty bucks for four hits of acid and a 
bottle of water?" I said.

"Four hits, a bottle of the finest mineral water, *and* 
my words of wisdom. You really should pay attention, you 
know. I've been doing this for fifteen years now."

"Here you go," said Alicia, handing him a fold of cash. 
"I'll make sure he doesn't kill too many brain cells."

"You have plans?" he said.

"Yeah," she said. "We're heading out to the place my 
grandparents used to live, an hour out of town. A lot of 
memories."

Don was impressed by this kind of thing and he leaned 
back in his chair giving us his all-knowing grin . Alicia 
and I bid our farewells and got the hell out of there.

"They should have shot more of those hippies back in the 
60s," I said as we got into the car.

"Shut up. He knows what's he's doing more than you.
Plus, I think he's from the 70s."

"Huh. You fuck him?"

"I will not dignify that."

I didn't say anything 'cause I didn't want to piss her 
off more so I just drove. Halfway down the way the car 
started making noises again and I had to stop a couple 
times. After a while Alicia wasn't mad at me any more and 
she started telling me how everyone at the office was 
doing and I ended up telling her the story about Marco 
chasing this Dominos truck with the delivery van asking 
if he could have a freebie. She laughed and I looked over 
at her because she always looked good when she laughed. I 
was going to say something but then someone cut me off 
and a cop started following us.

"See, that's what's wrong with life," I said, "if it 
isn't someone getting in your face, it's the cops."

"He isn't going to bother you," Alicia said. "Probably 
just trying to intimidate us."

"Yeah, but why's he even doing that? He's supposed to be 
a servant of the people."

"No, he's supposed to be keeping public order."

"Yeah, but why's he doing that? For the good of the 
people."

"But think of it this way," Alicia said (and I knew she 
had her dick-biting smile on that said that she knew she 
was right and was about to prove it:) "there's this 
Mencius quote that says that a people suffering no 
conflict will get complacent and their kingdom will fall. 
But a people oppressed will always be strong from 
fighting back. See?"

I was thinking about what to say when the car started 
making noises again and the cop flashed his lights.

"Shit. Well, eat 'em if you got them," I said as I pulled 
over as slowly as possible.

"He doesn't have a dog. Probably won't search us."

"Fucked if I'm going to lose the car."

"This car? They probably wouldn't even bother 
confiscating it."

"Hell with that. I'm eating mine." I pulled out the 
joints I had in my front pocket, popped them in my mouth, 
and started chewing. I looked in the rear-view: the cop 
was still in the car, probably calling us in. The herb 
was bitter and I was glad to swallow it but there were 
bits still in my mouth. "Got something to drink?" I said.

"Just the water."

"Gimme it," I said, grabbing it.

"Don't drink it all," she said but I was chugging it to 
get the green stuff out of my mouth. The fizz of the 
water bit into my tongue and I felt it clearing the green 
mush down as I drank. Before I knew it I'd drunk three-
fourths of it.

"Don't drink it all!" Alicia said and pounded me on the 
shoulder. I looked in the rear-view: the cop was still in 
the car. I still had a mouthful of water, so I grabbed 
Alicia by the back of her head and drew her to me.

"MMPH!" she said in surprise as I put my mouth over hers 
and rushed the water into her. She swallowed most of it 
right away but then she choked. Coughing, she sprayed 
water and bits of herb on me.

The water droplets hit me and I felt free like a kid when 
I saw the expression on her face. I laughed and then she 
was laughing too.

"You spewed all over me," I said. "Why don't you go and 
clean it up?"

"Bastard," she said, but she leaned in close. Me and 
Alicia loved the taste of each other's skins. It was a 
chemical thing. She mouthed my shirt where it was wet, 
sucking the water from the cloth. She did this in several 
places, licking up the bits of green from me.

I loved the smell of her hair just below my face as she 
worked on me. With my right hand I unbuttoned the top 
buttons of my shirt so she could get to my chest and she 
ran she side of her face against me to clean up the 
moisture there. She'd just started to work on my neck 
when the cop knocked on the side of the car and started 
fucking with us. Alicia casually drank the rest of the 
mineral water from out of the bottle while I gave him my 
papers and after a ticket for having a bad muffler we 
were out of there.

"See, that wasn't so bad," Alicia said.

"Yeah it was. All the time I was talking to that cop I 
had a hard-on."

Alicia smiled and leaned in close and started telling me 
all the things she would have done to me if that cop 
hadn't been there, and then she started telling me what 
she would have wanted me to do to her. Her lips were 
inches away from my ear as she talked and to emphasize a 
point she'd flick her tongue over me and then she started 
running her hand down by my legs. I started losing 
concentration and she had to keep one hand on the 
steering wheel, and after a bit we decided to hell with 
it, we'd just find a motel somewhere while we waited for 
the acid to kick in.

"You want to have kids?" I said. We were sitting in the 
hallway right outside the motel room, facing the parking 
lot, smoking one of Alicia's spliffs. We were watching 
half a baseball team's worth of kids being herded into a 
van by a couple parents.

"I only known you a year, mister."

"Didn't say with me. Are you the kind of person who wants 
to have kids?"

"Sure, why not."

"Cause the world's coming to an end? Economic catastrophe 
in 5-10 years? Religious fundamentalism? Bigotry, 
intolerance, hatred, war? And that isn't even counting 
natural disasters. Not really a good place to have kids 
in."

"Yeah, but look at it this way: there's always been that 
kind of thing going on. The people before us had to deal 
with Stalinism, Nazism. Before that was the Depression. 
Before that they had rival gangs of cops fighting it out 
in the streets. And let's not even talk about lynching, 
incest, and wife-beating."

"Yeah but... Huh. Look at all the people who have 
families, though. They're all bigots."

"You're talking bigotry right there yourself. Look at 
those folks putting the kids in the car. You think they 
hate us?"

I looked at them: the man was standing protectively by 
the open van door, and his woman was saying something to 
him. The man was looking our way.

"You think he's going to narc on us?" I said.

"You know you really piss me off sometimes," Alicia said.
She passed me the spliff, stood, and ambled over to the 
van. The guy smiled and said something that might have 
been friendly, then Alicia said something, then the guy 
laughed and nodded. She came back.

"What you say?"

"Come on, let's go inside."

 "What did you say?" I said, slowly getting up.

 "I told him I hoped if I ever had kids I'd handle them 
as well as he did. Then I told him that one of the kids 
had dropped his cap by the back of the van."

I looked back, and sure enough the guy was by the back of 
the van, picking up a baseball cap. He waved my way and 
smiled. I waved back.

Alicia opened the door and stepped into the motel room. 
"Jesus said the poor will always be with us. You think he 
was just talking about money? People are always going to 
be living through bad times. Like the guy in Hamlet says, 
there isn't anything good or evil, you just think it that 
way. So now I'm going to take a shower and think it." Her 
back to me, she opened her shirt and threw it on the bed. 

As she stood in the bathroom doorway, she bent down to 
ease her jeans off. There she stood, her long black 
beautiful hair rolling down over her shoulders, just 
barely hiding her breasts; then her long sleek legs 
coming free. The short jagged scar on her left thigh she 
got when she was a kid brought back the memory of all the 
times I ran my mouth over her there. Her light brown skin 
tone, almost the same shade as mine, shone rich in the 
bathroom light. She stood, full and confident in her 
nudity.

"Back in a bit," she said. I was left in the room by 
myself with a dying spliff. I took another couple hits, 
then put it out. I looked out the window. The baseball 
kids were gone. I wondered what to do with the roach. 
Being the paranoid type, I ate it.

By the time Alicia came out the whole place was mine. I'd 
gotten my tape player out of the car, and had it halfway 
through Coltrane's "A Love Supreme". The music was 
clearer than I'd ever heard it before, and it was mixing 
well with the evening light. I'd done a hundred push-ups 
by the window, and my muscles were pumping like they had 
their own heartbeats.

Alicia came out cloaked in towels and I was feeling 
sweaty and romantic. "I want to be your Kubla Khan," I 
said. "This room shall be our measureless cavern, and you 
my Abyssinian maid. Come, let's drink the milk of 
Paradise."

Alicia tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't hold 
back from laughing. "What the hell brought this on?"

"I just realized that I'd never Al Greened you. But I 
couldn't think of any songs you might like, just some 
poems they made me memorize in high school."

"You are definitely tripping," Alicia said. "You should 
have seen the shower, I felt the water merging with me."

"Yeah. I can feel every muscle in my body. Except the 
main one. For some reason it's asleep. I feel more 
romantic than sexual. It's fucked up. You got to help 
me."

"I suppose it's my duty as your companion to calm your 
unusually active muscles, o noble Khan. Recline on this 
rich bedding, that I may soothe the worry of your 
efforts." She took her body towel off, leaving the one 
wrapping her hair. "And maybe after that I can get you to 
satisfy me (for once)."

I lay on my stomach, my shirt already off, wearing 
nothing but my boxers, promising myself I'd do my damnest 
this time.

"While I was in the shower I was thinking about what a 
paranoid unmotivated son of a bitch you were and how I 
could guide you from the mists of your confusion," Alicia 
said as she straddled my back. "I figured it was the 
least I could do since you introduced me to a steady 
supply."

The feel of her fingertips on my skin was abstract, like 
pennies sliding over the counter of a bar. "I was 
thinking about me being a paranoid unmotivated son of a 
bitch too," I said. "Except I was thinking that I was 
justified. We here in America supposedly have all the 
power and all the information in the world, but most of 
us aren't able to do shit with it. The people running 
this country only know how to hate, and every year they 
get closer to dying they get more hateful. And when they 
hate people, people hate them back. It's all so clear. 
There's nothing to do."

Her fingers moved the muscles of my back across the flesh 
and bone structure of my back, only I didn't feel that my 
back was a part of me. But her legs, on the side of my 
abdomen, and the warm furry spot between her legs, that 
was all real.

"Let me put it this way," she said. She paused for a 
moment, thinking, as the music stopped. The tape player 
clicked, then flipped to start playing side B, the drum-
solo. "Let's say your understanding of history is flawed. 
I'm going to explain to you the meaning of it all."

"OK." She started rearranging the flesh of my back again.

"Time began with the sudden explosion of joy, which is 
(as we all know) a male characteristic. After this came 
the slower, more enduring female joy, which is god. And 
god set forth through time in her joy."

"This better not be some feminist bullshit."

"Shut up." Her fingernails raked my back like spoons 
through ice-cream; the saxophone kicked in. "At moments 
through time god lay children but did not see them, so 
the children were not good. And the children began to 
cause sorrow and destruction."

"I thought god was-- AY!" Alicia pulled the back of my 
hair.

"God reached the end of time," Alicia said, holding my 
hair in her fists, "and saw what had gone wrong. And she 
was filled with sorrow. She turned back, and all through 
time she birthed new children to right the wrongs she had 
caused. She was, after all, a loving god."

Alicia turned me over. I looked at her face: every plane 
of it was smoother than I had seen before: her pupils 
were wide and beautiful. "And as she reached the 
beginning of time god grew old from giving forth life, 
and as she was about to die she saw her new self being 
born in an eternal cycle.

"And god spoke to herself, warning not to go out to the 
world, to be content at the birth of time, with the male 
joy (limited and selfish though it may be). And so it 
was. God, having created time, exiled herself from it and 
our world forever.

"So we are left with messiahs and failed messiahs, the 
children of god. They are among us and mix with us, and 
are of us. They are the legacy of god. Do you see?"

"Not really..."

Alicia put her hands behind my neck and pulled me up, 
straddling me again. I was still limp, and she hung my 
tool between us, and started caressing it with one hand, 
the other hand tracing a circle around my face.

"Most people think god is three and yet one," Alicia 
said. "Most people have no problem with that bit of 
counter-intuitive mathematics. I am only telling you that 
god gave us good and god gave us evil, and then left us. 
Why is that so hard to understand? We're talking about 
god, after all."

"Mmm... Okay."

Alicia ran her fingers over my lips. "The trials we 
suffer are by the failed children of god. But the 
strongest of the evil were born near the beginning of 
time, and the strongest of good at the end." She ran the 
back of her hand over the side of my face, and then over 
the my lips again. As if in slow motion, I kissed her 
hand, and its taste was rich with a texture I had never 
tasted before. "And we have only seen the strongest of 
evil, because we have not yet passed through time 
enough."

The room was quiet a moment more, then the saxophone tone 
filled the air along to Alicia's voice: "They set up 
their kingdoms and build walls and palaces and prisons, 
and there are always those to slave on the walls, and 
there are always those to fill the prisons, and the 
children of the slaves and the prisoners breed for those 
who have been born to fill the palaces. But even in the 
palaces there is little joy.

"And they create all kinds of idols, and each of these 
idols have believers, and the believers kill each other 
and spread their misery. And when the subjects of this 
misery ask each other why it is so, there is always an 
idol to die or to kill for. And the people of the world 
look on this and think it is good."

Suddenly I realized I was hard. "Hey, look," I said, 
pointing.

"I know. Pay attention." She started moving her hips in a 
slow up-and-down motion above my erection, just barely 
touching it. "We must keep faith in the children of god 
among us, for as time passes we reach the strongest of 
them. We must keep faith that we are of the children of 
god, each of us a messiah. And as that faith reaches its 
fullness we approach the end of time. And at that moment 
we will look forth across the ages and we will see even 
to the beginning, and there will be god, love, the truth: 
that which was with us all along."

"Wait a minute..." I said, forgetting that I had a hard-
on and a naked woman sitting in my lap. "If truth is with 
us, how come we can't figure it out now?"

"We do. Though not often enough, as I see it."

"Huh? What is truth, then?"

"Don't you know the Bhagavad-Gita? This is truth." She 
moved her hips and her hand and suddenly I was 
penetrating up inside her: then time blinked forward, and 
our bodies were moving together, and I took a deep breath 
and the air inside me lifted me up from the base of my 
spine to my brain and on and on. Alicia's hands were on 
either side of my face and she was looking up to the 
ceiling, lost in herself. Then she paused and stared at 
me.

"What are you thinking about?" she said.

I shook my head.

She smiled like a benevolent god. "That's right," she 
said, and she looked up to the ceiling again.

The next day we drove out through Indiana and sat at 
rest-stop restaurants watching the cars go by and the 
people come and go. Alicia and I talked about sports and 
the economy and censorship. We were driving through Fort 
Wayne and Alicia suddenly said, "How much money do you 
have on you?"

"Bout seventy dollars. What you need?"

"Give it to me. All of it."

"What for?"

"For last night."

I started laughing. "Fuck you."

"No, I'm serious."

"I'm serious too. This is my car, you pay gas, that's the 
deal."

"I've known you a year."

"I know."

"Someday you're going to give me that money."

I looked ahead without facing her. "Okay."

"Someday you will give me that money." She leaned back in 
her chair and closed her eyes. I glanced at her. She was 
beautiful. She would always be beautiful, even to the end 
of time.

- - -

Tommy Ranks -- foucault@paranoia.com
http://www.paranoia.com/~foucault

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Please keep this story, and all erotic stories out of
the hands of children. They should be outside playing
in the sunshine, not thinking about adult situations.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kristen's collection - Directory 18