Becoming Trash

I had heard of the Keller, a hard gay bar where the limits were pushed, where, in the dark of a backroom, no one existed, where everything was possible.

In the cloakroom of the entrance, I abandoned jacket, shirt, and T-shirt. Shirtless, in faded jeans, I grabbed a beer at the bar, and walked down the spiral staircase. I disappeared into the darkness. Absolute black, no light, no humanity. Everyone left her there, a few meters away, in the land of faces and voices. Here, nothing. Nothing except impulses, sensations, noises, breaths, moans, raw scents. Blows too, given and received, saliva exchanged, sweat licked, semen swallowed. Skins rubbed, hands clashed, sexes were found.

The four feet of pleasure: sound, smell, taste and touch. Perfect stability, balance on the stool of passions. No pollution of the intellect. Primal diving, direct connection with the animal that inhabits us. The view would be too much. To see would be to think. To see would be to interpret. To see would be to connect the pieces that separated from each other.

The darkness vibrated from the hips that pressed, breasts that were sucked, mouths that roamed each other, shocks of disarticulated bodies, slaps that resonated. The words were gone. Erased, absent. To say was to connect. Connect sensations together, present with past and potential future. To say was also to designate. To remain silent was to become a fetal again.

I felt that the wall I was leaning against was that of a uterus. One more step, and I would fall short of awareness and understanding. I wouldn't have been born, not yet. I would have regressed into the non-verbal, the unspoken, the unexpressed.

The disappearance of others as individuals allowed and encouraged mine. I was living the risk of my potential disjunction.

Just before the slide, just before the abandonment, just before falling on the floor, just before ceasing to be, by a survival reflex, I escaped.

Quickly, nervously, I climbed the stairs. Several times, stumbling on the steps, I almost fell. No one paid attention to my escape. At the end of the bar, the cloakroom. Quick, my shirt, my T-shirt, and my jacket. Quick, push the door.

Finally, the street and the light of the Parisian night. The rain stinged my face and ended up bringing me back to reality. It had nothing to wash, because nothing had happened. Still, I felt dirty. Not from what I had seen, but from what I had almost done. To have been so close to disappearing. One step away.

Despite the lateness of the hour, I decided to leave my car and walk home. I would pick it back tomorrow. Need to walk. I took my headphones from my pocket, plugged it into my iPhone and immersed myself in Pink Floyd's "Wish you were here."

But who the hell could I have wished for...

I did not return to the Keller. Too fragile. Too attracted. Too weak. I felt how much I was physically and mentally in danger. How easily I could go from voyeur to victim. How this fantasy was a potential and evil door. The one that should not be pushed. Definitely not.

But if I avoided this bar and the power of its attraction, it populated my nights with a recurring nightmare, during which, instead of fleeing and escaping, I slipped into the pit of the backroom. Each time, according to the same scenario, I became trash.

It all starts with hands that auscultate me, fingers that weigh my sex, teeth that bite me. Then a firm grip makes me bow my head and tell me to bend down. Irresistibly, my legs bend and my arms curl up. I'm getting smaller and smaller, more and more egged.

Lying on the ground, I am a mercilessly trampled ball. In an attempt to escape, I flattened myself on the ground, but someone unceremoniously grabbed my head and forced me to lick a pair of rangers. Under a hail of slaps, I execute, or rather my tongue executes. My flabby flesh fits into the hollows of the sole. A bitter taste rises from my taste buds. The pain is external to me, I see it. I'm an actor in a silent film. I play the situation without living it. I am inside a fiction.

They take me by the hair and straighten me up. Suddenly, I am thrown against a wall. My arms are bound by a rope and stretched upwards. I only touch the ground with my toes. Exposed, completely vulnerable and defenseless, I am a thing, a bag that swings, that is tossed around, a sexual punching bag. My head is empty, time has ceased to exist.

I’m at the bottom of a hole. Nowhere. Penetrations alternate with blows. Floods of urine inundate me regularly, washing away the sputum that smear me. Every piece of my body is sore, my skin is just dirt.

Later, much later, my consciousness resurfaces. Little by little, I recompose myself and re-emerge as a person. My integrity is replenished: these hands are my hands, these feet are my feet, this head is my head. I am reborn.

I find my jeans, and awkwardly, put them on and rebutton them. I follow the curvature of the wall to find my way and exit the backroom. Although dim, the ambient light dazzles me. I blink as I pull myself out of my grave.