There Is Blood In Our Sin, Pt. 2

            The wind howled, howled through every crack in every wall of the brick building.  It howled and blew pellets of ice against the windows.  Wrapped in a blanket, Jake put a pan of milk on to boil.  He sat cross-legged by his shelves of two by fours on cinderblocks where his record player sat beside several milk crates filled with records.  Through the windowsill above him the wind howled and creeped in, tickling his ears and his nose like the chill of a ghost.  Jake stopped when he came to “Funeral.”

            He lifted the lid and placed the record down.  When he shut the lid the arm came down, and when he turned on the hi-fi it crackled and popped before the music came out, quiet and solemn.  The howling wind soon became part of the background, an instrument in the music, adding tangible texture with its own pitch and tempo. 

Jake stood and walked over to the stove.  He poured himself a mug of hot milk then added cocoa, honey, and salt.  He sat down on the hardwood floor, leaned back against the couch, and wrapped the blanket tighter around him as he stirred the milk.

To fuck around.  Wouldn’t that be nice.  To find some girl willing to have sex just once.  And then to find another girl and then another.  Not a chance though.  Those were few and far between.  And they weren’t interested in him.  He wasn’t aggressive.  He didn’t know how to talk to them.  Hi, what’s your name?  Would you like to fuck?  No, you have to be coy, be sweet, but let them know that you want to fuck them and it’ll be worth their while. 

Jake took a sip of the hot chocolate milk.  The music sped up, became more anxious.  Why did he have to make the effort?  Because he was lonelier than them.  But was it loneliness?  Yes, at times.  He definitely envied Isaac and Kat now.  But then again winter was setting in.  The holidays.  A time for family and friends.  And significant others.  It would all be over though.  And then he wouldn’t care.  Wouldn’t want that other.  He would want more.  Every girl. 

To fuck around then.  He always got that feeling, even in a relationship.  The time would pass and one day another girl would touch him, bend over, show her ass, her cleavage.  And he would want to fuck her.  Not the other.  But he couldn’t just fuck around.  He’d want to fuck that girl until there was another.  He’d want her to be his until he was done.

Selfish.  Objectifying.  That’s why he couldn’t fuck around.  There was no respect.  And that in itself would destroy his being.  But what if he gave himself totally.  To the idea of fucking around.  One girl at a time, and no other times.  Could he force himself to forget each one?  That they were off fucking someone else?  What if one of them was actually the one?  The significant other.

Fuck it.  There was no significant other.  Time had told him that.  He had told himself that.  Another.  There were always others.  After time.

He stood and with the blanket draped over his shoulders walked to his north windows.  Beyond the glass where the wind was howling was the Downtown and its high-rise buildings – structures stretched into the sky built of brick, glass, mortar, and steel.  In the dark of the storm with its howling winds and pelting ice the buildings’ outlines were dim and marked by lights left on by cleaning crews and lights that topped each building tip.

The storm blew hard, howling around his building, howling around all of the buildings, driving the ice hard into everything.  Jake turned and walked back to his kitchen and opened a cupboard filled with bitters, liquors, and spirits.  He pulled out a bottle of bourbon and poured it in until all of the liquid in the mug was at the rim.  He stirred it and walked back to the windows where the cold was seeping in as a slight chill breeze.

There was nobody.  It would always be like this.  No matter the girl, no matter how much he liked her, thought about their children together, there would always be that moment when he would see the supple skin of another woman’s breasts or thighs and want them.  He wanted them all now.  To be surrounded by an endless field of fertile women.  Wrapped in their legs, their arms, their skin pressed against him, warm and inviting.  He wanted to be with them all at once in a cataclysmic orgy of nirvana.

Jake drank the hot chocolate milk, the bourbon giving it spice, warming his body.  He walked back to the kitchen and rinsed the mug out then filled it half-full with more bourbon.  The music had ended.  Only the crackle and pop of the hi-fi mixed with the howling wind and pelting ice were audible.  He went to his records and thumbed through them again until he came to “Either/Or.” 

As the first guitar began to strum he took a drink from the mug then sat on the floor.  The bourbon was beginning to warm his head.  He took another drink then lay down.  Jake closed his eyes and let the music and wind and pelting ice surround him.