ANTICHRIS_

By Christopher Stoddard

My mind feels cloudy. When I’m riding my bike around the city, I feel as if I’m fighting through an extraordinary fog, a permanent, translucent film that’s invaded the air. I don’t know its origin, but as I grow older, it continues to thicken; it handicaps my vision like a senior citizen’s cataracts.

You know that scene in True Romance when James Gandolfini beats the shit out of Patricia Arquette, but before he does, he describes to her the way he felt the first time he murdered someone? He says he threw up afterward; and when he killed a second time, it still sucked, but was better, less intense, easier.

The fog adds a humid element to the weather, and while the outside temperature lowers, the moisture in the air acts as a cushion for the chilly late November. I find myself wearing either a lightweight jacket or a thin wool sweater over a button-down or tee. My eyes squint through the gray mist as I ride down Thompson on my way to work, thinking of you, and up Sullivan when returning home, my thoughts turned to him.

After the tables turn on Gandolfini—Arquette bonks him over the head with the top of a toilet-tank, sets him on fire and, at an extremely close range, shoots him multiple times until he’s beyond dead—Christian Slater arrives to find his young wife hysterically beating on the corpse. He apologizes repeatedly; he should have been there, not out ranting about Elvis to a random stranger and ordering milkshakes and chili-cheeseburgers.

When I carry my bike up the front steps to my apartment building, I feel on its metal frame a slight dampness inflicted by the fog, which has turned from gray to black. The sun’s gone down completely, and instead of the grim veil over SoHo lifting with the approach of a dark night, it ripens and becomes denser. I hear his voice. He says he’s standing in the lobby. I can only feel him. We fuck on the floor, and then he leaves because he says he can’t see inside my building. He uses the barely-visible moonlight to find his way home.

That’s the first time Arquette murders someone. Afterward, she doesn’t vomit like Gandolfini said he had done following his first kill. She just throws on a pair of oversized sunglasses to cover her swollen face, and makeup to mask her cuts and bruises. “I got hurt during a basketball game,” she lies to inquirers.

These nights spent with him feel like daydreams. Memories of you seem more real. The black fog presses against my bedroom window like a twelve-year-old boy gazing longingly into a Game Stop, and I fall asleep alone.

By Christopher Stoddard

Feral was on his way to retrieve his belongings that he’d left at your apartment. Your roommate had them at her studio, so there was no worry of him seeing you. He hoped he never did again. Alcohol that he’d consumed the night prior still coursed through his body like a lingering cold virus. The hangover was palpable, albeit dull. Dull as his feelings for you, which were whittled down to the sharpness of a spoon. The two of you had ended your relationship, officially, finally.

The rain came down sporadically; some of the drops were so light that he barely even felt them, while others, with the weight of thick syrup, plopped on his face and eyeglasses, startling him, taunting him. Suddenly, he was so angry. He wanted to kill the clouds. The fucking clouds.

As he turned down a side-street in Tribeca, something caught his eye. A tree was on fire. It stood against a Post No Bills-wall that had been painted a brilliant shade of blue. The sight of the tree halted him in his tracks, on his trip to collect the last connection the two of you still had—a shirt bought at a thrift store and an umbrella with a handle that had been chewed by his dog.

Usually, when something is burning, especially wood, it makes that crackling sound. But this tree burned silently. Other than Feral, no one passing by had taken any notice of it. He was so moved by the tree that he stood there for five more minutes, watching intently as the flames engulfed it, overtaking its magnificence, withering it away to nothing but ashes.

The rain came down harder. The pile of ashes on the street began to wash away. An old couple holding hands stepped in the mess and got some of it on their shoes. Eventually, there was nothing left. Feral, no longer mad at the sky, picked up his stuff from your roommate and returned to work.

By Christopher Stoddard

DEAR CAIN
I knew it was over the last time I swallowed your cum. It was the morning after the night we’d had dinner, a meal I’d paid for to make up for getting jealous the night before, when we were at some well known artist’s pizza party. At the party, we drank Jose Cuervo Tradicional tequila shots and chased them with mini cans of Budweiser. The artist had signed the bottles of tequila. You were flirting with some straight, tattooed intern who wore a T-shirt designed by Nom De Guerre that actually said Nom De Guerre on it in oversized text. Normally, I wouldn’t have cared. But the effect of the alcohol had released my green inhibitions, and I vented them onto you with evil stares and snide comments until you finally asked me to leave. The whole scene was embarrassing to say the least, and I went home defeated, hoping that you understood I was drunk.

DEAR ABEL
I met you on Halloween. You dressed up as some reality show chick. You said that no one got your costume, and I didn’t either until you explained it to me.

You recently finished grad school and are now completing a residency at some dental office in DUMBO. You’re 6’2”, with blond hair and blue eyes. Your body is perfect, toned from head to toe, you have broad shoulders, and your cock is big.

You live in SoHo in an oversized studio with an outdoor patio. We smoked weed and you fucked me. You came on my face. I licked some of it off while trying to jerk off to completion but was unable to finish because I was too drunk.

I wanted to feel guilty, but I was too inebriated and too ignored by Cain to care. He didn’t want to see me during Halloween weekend. That’s the main reason why I let you fuck me. And you’re so nice and from Omaha, Nebraska, and while you come from a wealthy family, you’re not superficial or pretentious, at least you didn’t seem so that night.

DEAR CAIN
So the night after the pizza party, I took you to dinner at an Italian restaurant. We sat across from Michelle Williams and next to where Sigourney Weaver had been dining less than an hour before we’d arrived. To my left and your right was a young actor we both recognized, but neither of us could remember in which film we’d seen him.

I thought that you had forgiven me for my childish behavior the night prior, but as we finished the second bottle of wine, you confessed that the incident had made you take multiple steps backward, and you made it very clear that you were no longer considering being in a committed relationship with me. Disappointed, I hung my head low. When you returned from the bathroom, you kissed me on the back of the neck and told me how cute I looked. It made me feel better and somewhat hopeful.

Back at my place, I showed you pictures and told you stories that were revealing and possibly incriminating, but I didn’t care because I was intoxicated. As the effect of the alcohol wore off, you said you just wanted to sleep, and so I said I guess I did, too. We didn’t have sex.

DEAR ABEL
The second time we fucked, Cain was in Louisiana, visiting friends and family during the weekend of some football game that people in the South seem to think of as a holiday.

Before he left, he’d returned my DVDs and books, including Sugar and Wrong. I didn’t want them back. I just wanted an excuse to see him again, but when I did see him, all he told me was that he was “sick of it.” I didn’t fully understand.

Two nights later, on the very night that he flew to Louisiana, you and I met at The Cabin Down Below on Avenue A and got drunk. Actually, you were already drunk when you arrived because you’d been drinking for free at a friend’s party earlier in the evening. I’d been at the gym and walking my dog, and seeing as I hadn’t eaten dinner, I became intoxicated quickly and paid our check hastily so we could go back to my place and fuck.

Shortly after we entered my bedroom, I grabbed a condom from the top drawer of my dresser. It was the last condom I owned, a prophylactic that Cain had left at my place a week or two earlier. When I tore open the wrapper, all I could think about was how much I missed him.

DEAR CAIN
The morning after the night we’d had dinner, when we awoke, we kissed briefly. I thought we’d fuck, but instead you just asked for a blowjob. As I sucking your cock, I heard the beeping sound from a truck reversing, a child yelling to his mother that she’d forgotten her cell phone, the rushing noise from cars speeding up the West Side Highway. It was the quietest sex I’d ever had with you, and it took you a long time to cum in my mouth and for me to swallow. I wondered if you’d been thinking of someone else.

Two Others Infinite Playlist:

DEAR CAIN
You Don’t Feel Like Home to Me – The Good Life
Tiny Vessels – Death Cab for Cutie
I Can’t – Radiohead
Cornerstone – Arctic Monkeys
Confidence – Deep Sea Diver
Slow Down Jo – Monsters of Folk
Crystallised – The xx
Islands – The xx
This Must Be The Place – Miles Fisher
Passionless, Pointless – PJ Harvey
Oh Well – Fiona Apple
Hair – PJ Harvey
Catherine – PJ Harvey
Missed – PJ Harvey
Dry – PJ Harvey
Rid of Me – PJ Harvey
Horses in My Dreams – PJ Harvey
Nude – Radiohead
Sulk – Radiohead
Jigsaw Falling Into Place – Radiohead
11th Dimension – Julian Casablancas
The Dancer – PJ Harvey
Threads – Portishead
Plastic – Portishead
Poison – Neva Dinova & Bright Eyes
Cardinal Song – The National
Ready, Able – Grizzly Bear
Album of the Year – The Good Life
Cruisers – Fluffy Lumbers
Your Bruise – Death Cab for Cutie
Difference is Time – Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band
Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear
Pink Love – Blonde Redhead
Creep – Radiohead
High and Dry – Radiohead
Black Star – Radiohead
Bulletproof…I Wish I Was – Radiohead
Crying Lightning – Arctic Monkeys
Joe’s Head – Kings of Leon
Tripped – Neva Dinova and Bright Eyes
The Calendar Hung Itself – Bright Eyes
You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. – Bright Eyes
Lua Song – Bright Eyes
Love Lust – King Charles
The Sound – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
Make War – Bright Eyes
I’m Your Man – Nick Cave
If You Leave Me – Nick Drake
All Yr Songs – Diamond Rings
Separate Ways – Teddy Thompson
Butterfly – Weezer
With You Forever – Pnau
Black & Gold – Ellie Goulding
Northern Sky – Nick Drake
Who’s Gonna Save My Soul – Gnarls Barkley
Skinny Love – Bon Iver
Re: Stacks – Bon Iver
Blood Bank – Bon Iver
I Want You (Live for Decades Rock Live!) – Fiona Apple
Vision of Division – The Strokes
Razorblade – The Strokes
About a Girl – Nirvana
Black Hearted Love – PJ Harvey & John Parish
Lucky You – The National
Basic Space – The xx
The Background – Third Eye Blind
New Age – Tori Amos
All I Need – Radiohead
Let the Distance Keep Us Together – Bright Eyes and Britt Daniels
Infinity – The xx
Home – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Or

DEAR ABEL
I Miss You (Double Rub Part One – Sunshine Mix) – Bjork