“Never have I ever,” I said, twiddling a scrap of paper in my fingers, “had an inappropriate sexual encounter with an animal.”
Nobody budged. Too thin of a line, I thought. But as I was raising my gin tonic minus ice and tonic, Nelly opposite me took a gulp. A sense of relief trickled down my spine with intrigue next in line.
“Story!” Decibels cut into my right ear from Luca’s open mouth. MDMA was kicking in, judging from his dilated pupils. Funny how on M some people go inward, others outward. Normally Luca is so self-effacing. On my part, my inwardness quadruples, turning me into some sort of God’s eye that lets nothing slip, which is probably why I recall this night in such detail.
Robin moseyed from the kitchen with a glass of red wine, the only alcohol she drank, and planted herself on my left on the wobbly three-legged stool that was usually allotted to an aloe vera plant, now hosting the host. She wore a black fishnet blouse with a black bra underneath, her night-out attire.
A song from The Other People Place’s sole album Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café was playing. I had put it on, my favorite pre-drinks album. You could put it on and leave your worries aside. It was that good.
“We should go soon,” Pablito said, turning in circles on a swivel chair, his long hair trailing behind him. Yesterday he had it done in ombré dark brown to Sarah Jessica Parker’s blond.
“Yeah.” Robin doubled down.
“But first: story!” Luca shouted again, his palms banging a percussion beat on the table. Things on the table rumbled, glass clanked.
Robin gave Luca a telling glance. I studied it from the side. I felt as if I could read her mind. M gave you those powers. Her eyes tried to communicate two things at once. First, he should take a chill pill—it was her house we were at, remember. And second, he shouldn’t coax Nelly into doing things she didn’t feel like doing because she was the freshest installment in this room and too precious to lose.
Gesloten Cirkel, the headliner we wanted to see, only played at two. It was almost midnight, technically speaking we weren’t in a rush.
“We have time,” I said. Robin’s eyes pierced through me.
Nelly’s pupils were as big as Luca’s now. I somewhat empathized with Robin’s incentive to shield Nelly. She looked a bit, how should I say it, fragile, brittle. There was this innocence about her. You didn’t want to say anything bad to her in case she was going to take it the wrong way. But as soon as she opened her mouth she became confident and expressive. Still, she kept you on your toes, kept you guessing whether what she was saying was for real or if she was just taking the piss, with that cunning smile on her face.
“I guess there’s no running away from it now,” she said and paused as if briefly considering ways out of sharing her primal adventures. But her demeanor—as if that was enough to access her brain—told me the MDMA had set its sails, giving a wide berth to commonsense, setting the stage for an imminent confession.
“Yeee, go for it,” Luca said, stretching his arms and pulling on his hoodie’s sleeves.
“You don’t have to,” Robin said, wide-eyed and adamant at dispelling our hopes to hear Nelly open up. “Let’s go, I want to dance.”
She always sensed when someone was about to compromise themselves. Some savior instinct in her would try to prevent it, each and every time.
But words can do only so much against M.
“I’m melting, guys,” Pablito said.
“I was very young, like eight or nine,” Nelly began. Her jaw kept moving, as if she was chewing the spaces between sentences. You could see she was starting to melt a bit as well. All of us were, except Robin.
Pablito, Luca, and I were all ears. Only Robin showed no interest, probably vexed by her failure to stop the story from unfolding and protect Nelly from blemishing her social image. She stood up from the stool and went to smoke a rollie on the balcony.
“My parents got me a Dalmatian.”
“They’re so cute,” Pablito squealed.
Luca started rolling a doobie. It’s nice to do things with your hands when you are on molly; I helped him with a tip, doobie rolling not being my forte. Robin allowed us to smoke inside, which was great. She never smoked herself but liked the smell.
“It was a big dog, his name was Scooby,” Nelly continued. “Like from that cartoon. I was so obsessed with dogs then—still am. I left my parents no choice but to get me one. My parents were fairly rich back then. Not filthy rich, but rich enough to buy a three-floor cottage in some suburban neighborhood where other well-off families were trying to pull off a picture-perfect lifestyle.
“It was summer, and school was over. I was new to the neighborhood, and had no friends. My parents were rarely around throughout my childhood so I had the freedom to do whatever excited my eight-year-old mind. And all the loneliness. There were no rules, no guardians to put me back on track when I veered. Thanks,” she said to Luca, who passed her a doobie. “Anyway, young and lost, with parents busy spending their recently acquired wealth left and right in the most nouveau riche way possible, buying stupid chandeliers and carpets from Morocco, Scooby and I had established a special bond.” Nelly exhaled and cleared her throat. She passed the joint to Pablito.
“Where was I?” she said.
“Parents wasting money, special bond with Scooby,” I said.
“Right. Usually near the pool on the grass, in the hideaway shadow beneath trees, away from the water reflecting the sun, Scooby and I had our little secret moments, very rich, eye-opening moments, and not in a sexual way.” She paused, looking for the right words.
Robin returned from the balcony.
“Should we go?” she said, “It’s quarter past twelve.”
Nobody bothered to answer. Even Pablito, our club lover, stayed put. Luca, feeling snuggly I assume, put on his hood and tied the drawstrings below his chin so tightly that only his face was visible. His head looked like a giant gray egg.
“It’s through my relationship with Scooby,” Nelly continued, “That I discovered agency, as weird as it sounds. It wasn’t a full-fledged concept or anything, but now that I think about it, that’s what it was about. Agency. My complete control over Scooby offered me a first glimpse at the power I possessed. That’s when I realized I had some latent ability to manipulate things and beings to my advantage, if you know what I mean. Scooby might not have been the best subject to exercise my powers on, but when you’re a kid… you know how it goes. The limits are fuzzy. Limits might not even exist, especially when there’s no one to tell you about them. They didn’t even get me a nanny, and an au pair wasn’t a thing yet. They went on partying, sniffing coke or some shit like that. I was living on instant noodles, basically.”
“Whoa,” Luca said.
“I feel you,” Pablito said.
“I’d do that to my little brother,” I chimed in. “I’d manipulate him into doing things he wasn’t supposed to do. Eating sand… was one thing.”
Why did I utter those words? What made me disclose my little story? I remember these exact questions zipping through my noggin. Nobody was safe from M, not even my inwardness.
Pablito passed the doobie to Robin; she passed it to me. I took a couple of numbing drags before passing it back to Luca, completing the doobie circle. Nelly sipped her gin tonic.
“You did it to your brother? To Ryan? Really?” Luca said with a doobie in his mouth. I ignored him. Luca and Ryan were good friends.
“I need to take a leak,” I said.
I went to the bathroom, where molly took me by surprise. Before tripping on molly I always had to take a big dump. Pooping was sensationally pleasant. My body shivered out of rapture. My ears, away from the voices, with the door blocking out frequencies and leaving only a tasty 4/4 kick and a rumbly bassline, tuned into the music. I probably could have stayed there longer if it wasn’t for the smell.
I washed my hands in the kitchen. Nelly’s voice rose and fell in sync with the music. Realizing the stakes on the table, I dried my hands on my pants (not the best idea when you wear beige chinos) and immediately transported myself back to the living room.
Anything sexual yet? I wanted to say, but feeling the vibe, I quietly returned to my spot instead. Robin’s shoulders slackened, her thin frame slumped forward. At last, she had given in to M. We had become a pack. Luca took over the baton from me, heading to the bathroom without a word, for his own moment of bliss. Nail filing consumed Pablito’s attention. Nelly’s jaw wholesomely followed the arpeggio pattern from “Let Me Be Me.” We all smiled at each other.
“Great track. Who’s this?” Nelly asked.
“The Other People Place,” I said. “James Stinson’s other alias, one half of Drexciya.”
“Very nice,” she said very nicely.
“I’m so high,” Pablito said. “I love you guys, it’s gonna be great tonight.”
Again smiles were exchanged.
“What did I miss?” Luca shouted from the kitchen, water running in the background.
“Nothing,” Robin said. “Should we go?”
Was this it? “Wait,” I said, looking Nelly in the eyes, “I want to hear the full story.”
“Me too,” Luca said, returning.
“Let’s get ready,” Robin said.
“Let’s finish what we started.” Luca stood his ground. “Nelly?”
Ballsy move, I thought. I couldn’t have done it, nor could Luca if he wasn’t on M. Not the cleverest of moves but ballsy nonetheless.
“It’s not up to you,” Robin said.
Foul air could have stopped everything in its tracks. But…
An undercurrent swept through us all, a draught of innocence and love, of candidness and honesty, of duty and responsibility for things that didn’t bind us when we were level-headed and not doped up. Molly lifted our personal inhibitions, making us more human, turning us into the people of tomorrow.
“It’s a safe space here, Nelly,” Pablito said. He lifted his languorous eyes from the nail he was filing. “Nobody’s going to judge you here.”
What a genius, our Pablito. His words touched the base—safe space—he couldn’t have said it any better. Nelly’s eyes moved as if she was tracking an object meant to hypnotize her. She was probably delving into memory, mentally sieving through her Scooby days, and I was right, for not long after Pablito’s magical words, she departed from the present into the labyrinths of the past.
“Scooby was maybe two then. Full of energy. We never neutered him,” Nelly said with a powerful voice, led by memory’s hand. “We were inseparable. Scooby loved people more than dogs. But he adored balls over everything else in the world. I could throw them for days and he’d never tire of fetching them. Sometimes I’d rub the ball against my genitals—why I don’t know. He’d go crazy about the scent. For some time the ball was what separated us. Like some middleman. Then, one day, I laid down with my elbows on the grass, my legs bent, feet firmly placed on the ground. I called him from the bushes where he was digging up these little mounds of soil that, my dad told me later, were mole burrows. His recall was drilled to perfection. He came and sat near me, expecting a treat for his obedience. Here, here, Scooby, I said, pointing at my pussy. I was wearing a short summerly skirt covered with sunflowers. I hiked up my skirt to expose my panties. He sniffed at them. I pulled my panties to the side, exposing myself. A couple more sniffs and his snout went right into it. He licked it voraciously, saliva dripping. I kept his head steady, pulling on his ears slightly. He couldn’t get enough of it, it seemed. And neither could I. He licked it as if he was drinking water from a bowl. After a while he started humping my leg. That’s when I kicked him away.
“Our adventures lasted for more than two weeks before I grew out of it and moved on, maybe out of boredom. Who knows? But that memory of being able to control another living being never left me. Flashbacks of luring him into making my afternoons exciting. How much pleasure it brought me. How intoxicating it was. The aftertaste only came later: perhaps these pleasures weren’t so innocent. But what had happened there and then wasn’t my fault only.” Nelly finished her drink. I didn’t even realize how the doobie reached her, I was so immersed. The doobie had gone out, and now it was just hanging there, between her index and middle fingers. The music also had stopped. She was so pretty.
“I haven’t even shared this story with my shrink. Or anyone else, for that matter. I can’t imagine the can of worms it would open; shrink-wise, I mean. No, no, I’m not up for that. She’d definitely cling to it, and I don’t feel there’s much need to scrutinize what happened. But I see it very clearly, on my own terms, with the insights and realizations I’ve accumulated, mulling over my childhood. My parents were always abhorrently distant, busy squandering the dough they’d earned running the bar that closed soon after, which ended my international school era as well, coincidentally. Not that that was a bad thing per se. I don’t think it was healthy to be surrounded by kids with sly politicians, multimillionaires, drug dealers, or attachés as parents. Not a nice hodge-podge, I assure you. My British accent is all I got from it, but I find it rather obnoxious to tell you the truth. In any case, their absence, my parents I mean, left me utterly on my own, completely alone to figure out what the world was like. And I don’t think autonomy at the age of eight or nine is what’s best for a child. Don’t you guys think?”
The question was rhetorical, or it had been interpreted by us in such a way because none of us said anything. She sent a glance, taking time to skim through each of us, her jaw dancing on its own now, her pupils exercising hegemony over irises.
“Sure, I was free to explore, but what did I do with that freedom? There was nobody around, no one to look up to and get a thumbs up from indicating that it was OK and that ‘Nelly, dear, go for it, don’t be scared, we’ve got your back, what you’re doing is only normal.’ You know what I mean? A child’s curiosity is boundless, and gone wild, it can make people do weird things. It had led me into that strange place with Scooby, poor dog.”
“Fuck,” Luca mumbled.
“If it weren’t for my parents absence, none of this would’ve happened.” Nelly motioned Luca to pass her a lighter. She lit the doobie. Her lower lip quivered.
Robin stood and went to hug her. I turned around from my chair and pressed the play button on YouTube. Claro Intelecto’s masterpiece Peace of Mind started to play. Pablito went to hug Nelly too. Luca followed suit. I joined.
“Thanks guys,” Nelly’s voice emerged from beneath all of us.
Was it really all because of poor parenthood and lack of presence? Haven’t we all done stupid shit when we were kids, in a group or on our own? Could we ever trust our memory? How about that summer when Ryan and I were at my grandma’s summerhouse. When we, residing in a hovel constructed from blankets and chairs for no other purpose than boredom, right in the middle of a tiny living room, had our moments of exploration? Inspecting our genitals—taking them into our mouths in turn, tasting them. How innocent and… wrong? Was it wrong?
Soon after we left for the club. There, one with the music, smiling, mouth gaping slightly, I saw her dancing. Nelly’s words stuck with me like an earworm. They’d pop up, haunt me, cast a reflective mood over me, separate me from the club and the music and my friends. But then, I’d catch her on the dancefloor again, dancing so freely and innocently, and it’d just make me awfully calm, seeing her.
In a whole other way, another way.
That sweet, rumbly way, you know.
