Primal Scream (Box Set #1, Taboo Sex + AFF) (25 page)

hi Jack,

i think we both thought that exchanging our “nude photos” would turn out to be just a simple one-time thing. i mean, i guess it went on for quite a while, since we continued with it while i was at Adelaide.

i always liked looking at your photos. you once said that you hoped your pictures would do for me what they do for you, haha, and i suppose they do.

and i might still not really get why you decided not to go ahead with the one-night-stand thing…but i’m appreciative that you didn’t take advantage of me.

i still would like you to be my first sexual partner. it’s something i think about all the time. i really love you—in your confused, seemingly deluded and…riddling state, with your strange screen names and random emails, and song lyrics which i had to go and ‘hunt’ and decipher. that’s kinda like you though, lol, as in, how you’d do it…

i feel both lust and love for you. maybe somewhere along the way, you felt the same too?

dRea.

==========

She thought she got him cornered. She was expecting a reply. Not instantaneously, but after a few days, maybe.

A week passed, with no news. She began to get a little panicky, and frantic. She confided in her journal:

I suddenly feel like everything was a beautiful lie and dream which I just woke up from. Save me? what if it really all was just a dream of make-belief on my part, and just one big mistake…sigh…then…welcome to the real world, ha ha…

She asked Jack about it, when she next saw him online.

His reply had been swift, mean, and cruel, in its precision:

You’re reading too much into things. I don’t read into things.

Andrea found the second half of his response puzzling. What did his views have anything to do with whether she read into things, or not? It was almost as if they were both dependent upon others’ reactions for their self-image.

Their emails and chats turned monosyllabic and consisted of go-nowhere drivel, after the email Drea sent him.

She couldn’t understand Jack: his rudeness, his tension. No one could. He completely turned his back on her, and gave her the cold shoulder.

She continued being direct, at times, saying that she wasn’t forcing him to do anything. She just wanted to know if they had indeed shared anything, at one point, and wanted to try and understand why he was acting the way he was. They’d both been looking for a real love since forever. Wouldn’t it be a good thing, if they were both what they were looking for?

But he continued supplying no answers, as the answers.

So Drea continued writing, in a particularly long and illuminating journal entry:

But if you ask me, he is far too selfish. He’s mad. I need to get away before I self-destruct along with him. There is no reason why
you should
he deserves your time, attention, dedication, devotion, care, love, friendship…

The
fact
is right now, Jack is being a really completely selfish idiot + jerkass…that does not deserve something good…so…reserve that ‘somethigngood’ for someone who is wiling to get their hands/feet dirty along with you…then it’ll be something that’s shared in reality. YOU CAN’T save a self-destructive person.

THE FACT IS THAT I WAS DIRECT, SINCE HE WAS NOT BEING DIRECT. IMMEDIATELY AFTER I SAID THAT I LOVE HIM (AND REALLY MEANT IT)—HE BOLTS! HE DOES THE BEST VANISHING ACT YET. IS HE INSANE? DOES HE HAVE NO FEELINGS, OR NO CONSCIENCE?

He was the one who’d sent her a list of songs which said the things he couldn’t, or wouldn’t. The titles even chronologically matched up with some of his screen names she’d recorded down.

Which was why Drea hated him too—that he didn’t have the guts and balls to admit to himself, the baser, more instinctive drives of his being, which didn’t complement his other side which viewed love as something pure and untainted. He had a raw, sexual side, which ran contrary to the roses and nice words and gentlemanly behavior his public person was all about. It was a raw side that naturally was down with all sorts of filth. She had his self-taken BDSM-inspired portrait shots in her possession, to prove it. Drea saw and totally accepted this side of Jack. Why couldn’t he do the same?

The truth of the matter was that the game had ended for him. He toyed with her, curious at her reactions and responses, observing her like an entomologist would a captured insect. The whole crazy, dreamy fog they’d both lost themselves in, seemed to be nothing but a distant memory, to Jack. It was a difficult, confusing period of his life, that he’d survived, and moved on from. That was all that mattered to him.

He wasn’t aware that unlike himself, Drea could not switch or turn off the sexual side of her. It was a powerful force which took over all sense of logic and reason, when she was still under his spell.

Drea’s intuition was right—when Jack fell in love, he’d be overwhelmed with feelings of indecision and confusion. She misjudged how he could just as quickly fall out of love.

To Jack, even though he couldn’t comprehend it, viewing love in the abstract allowed him to avoid clutter of physical and emotional involvement. He’d kept alive their correspondence through letters or telephone more than in physical fact, as it required much less emotional responsibility. He liked remaining uncommitted and free, for he prized freedom. He’d dwell in his own mind, content to be a divine discontent.

Jack had given Drea constant, suffocating attention, until she wasn’t even aware that she’d become completely involved, which was the point where the demands of keeping up the love affair started to become too much for Jack. It would ultimately lead Drea to become part of the background. It was something the rational part of her knew had already happened, but something that the dreamer in her stubbornly refused to believe.

Drea felt Jack was shutting his own self into some kind of “safe place.” He was satisfied being locked in a box he could continue to hide himself in.

They were simultaneously at their best and worst, when in love with each other. It was an unhealthy relationship, but one Drea had trouble obliterating. It engaged so much of her—she’d given so much of herself into it—that to break away from it, almost seemed like she was breaking away from life itself.

Drea was troubled. Not because she was a 23 year-old virgin per se—but because she felt trapped, and somehow connected, to Jack. There was a basic, physical bond which she seemed unable to break. Everytime she wanted to jump into bed with someone, she’d think of Jack Chin—she still wanted him to be “her first sexual partner,” in real life, not only in her mind.

Wouldn’t he like that too?—never mind the things he did with anyone else?

Drea wanted to be exploring life, meeting and getting to know new people! Not stuck in a moment she kept hoping would “transform,” due to the belief she had in something that she and Jack shared, even if it had been just a sliver in time. He was the closest she’d ever considered to be a soul-mate, disturbing as that was. They were both sexually and mentally charged individuals. Why couldn’t she find a more stable and sane kind of match?

Jack was a perpetual burning fever, to her. She was constantly fixated with her fixation on him.

[June 2010]

Drea would be spending a precious seven days in Singapore.

She was trying to meet Jack during her trip. He insisted he wasn’t free, “for even 5 seconds,” over the weekend she’d be spending there. He had a camping trip to see to, for the rest of the week.

Drea just wanted to love and make love to him. She was too caught up in what she thought she saw, and wanted to keep seeing, in Jack, who she put on a pedestal. The unsatisfied drives and desires in her were threatening to consume and overwhelm her, and she didn’t know what to do with it, except yield to it, and this was the best (and only) way she knew how.

He saw her tender feelings and affection as neediness, and a pestilence to be avoided. She was always happy to talk to him, or be able to reach him, but he finally slipped, and let on as to why he wasn’t bothered in maintaining their interactions anymore.

During a seemingly methodical, by-now-increasingly-familiar go-nowhere type of chat, he said to Drea:

I wish you would just stop bothering/contacting me. I am in a relationship now, and am very happy with my new g/f.

The words were painful to read, but not as painful as continuing to live a nightmare in a continuous vicious cycle. She wasn’t jealous of or vindictive against Jack’s new girlfriend, just disappointed in Jack. Her disappointment made Drea wonder if she had been in a relationship with Jack. Even though it’d never really been official, the thoughts and feelings experienced were characteristic of a romantic/sexual relationship.

She wondered if Jack had a cruel/brutal streak, like physically and/or emotionally abusive people in relationships. No one could ask for perfection, after all.

Drea didn’t explode in a rage straight away. “Because I love the person” was a valid reason like any other, in her mind. It was a delicate balance, trying to process her thoughts and emotions, but not be overrun by them, acknowledging the agony she was in, to learn from it, but not to the point where she was in so deep she couldn’t get out of it. If she hadn’t already crossed the point of no return, that is.

She replied Jack, after a few minutes:

Congratulations—I didn’t know you had somebody else. What do I do? I still think of you sexually / everytime I think of something sexual, I link it to you. For some reason, I just can’t seem to be content…you’re stuck in my mind, as “the first sexual partner.”

She had no intention to patronize or manipulate him. She was really just being honest. She thought that was best, and she believed in karma, and that this policy of being honest, would serve her well, in the long term.

Jack replied, quickly:

Then that is something you have to handle yourself, bcos I have moved on and am very happy with my new life with my new girlfriend.

Drea was going to respond, but Jack continued typing:

Clearly you are irrational. Maybe you need to learn to be satisfied. I already said that it’s over. Which part of that don’t you understand?

It was midnight, on Andrea’s side, but she sat up straight, and very focused. She could feel all her senses on alert, like a murderer, just about to commit the crime.

Was this the same person, who’d sent her all those notes and emails from way back when?

She shifted her gaze down, to the black and white keys on her keyboard. She wondered if any tears would fall, which she would have to wipe away from the keyboard. But her cool Virgo mind wouldn’t allow it. It would be wasted emotion on a person that wasn’t worth her energy, sadness, or anger.

But a little tinge of melancholy came over her heart, quickly enough. She sat there, chewing on a dry patch of her lower lip, wishing for him to not exist. She couldn’t believe the amount of time and effort and energy she had put into understanding him…only for it to come down to this.

Fuck you, I hope you die
…she wanted to tell him straight.
You’re full of shit and not man enough for anything.

She could hear the woman in her, still alive, still violent, even if Jack wasn’t going to ever acknowledge her unsatiated desires.

For a moment, Drea realized that that could, perhaps, be her inner heart’s wish—to be treated as a woman, sexually…Jack was just someone she thought she wanted, because she thought she knew what he was like.

I wish you would just stop bothering/contacting me,
Jack had said.

Drea noticed that Jack had signed out of the online messenger. Logged off, or blocked her off. What difference would it make?

She gazed out her room window, at some of the stars lighting up the night sky.

Look how the stars shine for you

And all that you do

Lyrics from the song titled ‘The Color Yellow’.

I wish…Jack ceased to exist,
Drea said, when she logged off from her laptop. Drea was getting unsure of what it was she wanted now. She was tortured, tired, felt misused, and the sensible side of her was desperate to move on. She’d bled herself dry, long after Cayce Martin had, once ‘The Color Yellow’ song by ChillPlay was over.