Self-Indulgence



Here I am browsing my newsfeed, checking my inbox, scrolling page after page and roundabout not doing a whole lot.

This happens on most mornings. Wake up juiced as hell. Tell yourself you’re gonna change the world. Get a few applications done. Maybe even write a story. That’s what I tell myself. What really happens on these mornings involves typing in website links to kill time, and all the act implies: Things that aren’t worthy of being written in a story. ‘Course, there’s a lot of things I don’t think are worth being written in a story. Hence, my art block (writer’s block is just a twig of it, I say).

Taking a sip of the honeywater on the dresser behind me, I think of all the schibberschnabber I could be doing while I’m not. Almost I choke on it because I’m clumsy like that. Then I throw on some respectable clothes and decide I need to get out of the house. I almost leave. . . . Doubleback and brush my teeth then throw on my backpack then find my comb and comb by beautiful hair. Then I’m out the door. I ride my scooter cross the street till I get to that little hill and descend the staircase to the street below. Cross the street again. It’s a Monday morning at 9:30 and I’m scootering, wearing a backpack; despite already being out of highschool, people are probably like, “What the hell’s that kid doing out of school?” Yok, yok, yok.

You might wonder where I’m going. I’m headed for Matthew Turner Park by the bay. Sometimes I rest on a bench there and read the hours away, letting the seabreeze buffet my face. Geese—sometimes seagulls—circle overhead. It’s very comforting. Last time I sat and read Tom Sawyer while the fisherman fished and the jetskiers rode, a break in the quiet. Tom Sawyer’s what I’ve brought today. People flash curious looks at me when they pass by, namely when I laugh at some ridiculous scene of child’s logic. Tom’s a genius, I think. Charging other children to whitewash the fence for me? I wish I’da come up with that idea. Of course, I don’t have a fence that needs to be whitewashed.

But how terribly childish I feel: The idea of leaving everything behind like Tom is tempting.

How easy it is to escape. The problem with me is that instead of escaping briefly I choose to as a lifestyle. It’s more productive than the clickety-click-scrolling I was doing back at the house, but not by much. The routine is continuous. I’m out here at Matthew Turner reading Tom Sawyer again. The only difference is I’m sitting on another bench. This may or may not be the same day. The jetskier and the fisherman are gone, replaced by a family of four: A mother and father and two kids who’ve decided to take a wade in the low tide. Next time I look up, that family’s gone. There’s a kiteflier on the western end of the beach. Next time I look up, he’s gone too. Next time I look up, everyone’s gone and the sky’s orange and the sun’s retreating. My tailbone’s hurting; I’ve been sitting beside this treestump so damn long. I don’t have a jacket. It’s colder. But I keep reading. Who knows how many chapters have gone by.

It’s nighttime for Tom Sawyer as it’s nighttime for me. Only reason I noticed: I couldn’t read the pages anymore. One particular cricket chirps. Check my phone, it’s 9:38 p.m. How long have I been out here? I wonder, eyes bagged. It couldn’t have been more than a couple hours . . . or twelve . . . or days. I feel thin. Thinner than any man should feel while still capable of breathing. My hands jump to my ribcage; its shape is distinct with each flex of my skin. My heart skips. Suddenly I seem so starved. Fatigued. Thank goodness my eyes are playing tricks on me; I look again and my body is normal, not thin. But I am hungry as hell.

The particular cricket quits its chirps. The coast is pleasant for a moment. The stars are twinkling. The wind does not stir. Then, there’s a rumble. An entire tree is freed from its roots by a powerful-yet-casual shove, creaking, crackling. It crashes behind me. THUD. I scramble on my hands and knees for cover, nearly sliding off the cliff I’ve positioned myself atop, heart going haywire. It occurs to me that the treetop drove like a dagger adjoining the trunk of the tree I’d rested on. I climb my way back up to the trunk of the tree, my shield, shakily. Billows of steam erupt from its either side, heating the bark like a pan in an oven. I yip! The throat of the particular beast I’m afraid of hums, vibrating the land. Behind my shield I recede. It snorts. Then it snarls. The dragon pokes its snout from the side of the stump, nostril twitching. Only one side of the snout is to be seen. I see it raise its lip, exposing rows of teeth. One backward fang.

Fuck. Sini found me.

“You can’t hide behind that stump forever, ya know,” my dragon counterpart sing-songs with a sneer.

“Leave me alone,” I murmur. My own stomach growls.

“Mmmmm-hm. And why would I do that? What’re you gonna do without me, Jonathan, hm?”

“Probably sit here and read.”

He exposes his whole head. That one purple eye drives into me. “Read, read, read,” Sini snarls. “Find a book, find a picture, watch a movie, by someone else that inspires you. That’s all you ever do. Then you tell me you’re juiced as hell, and that you’re gonna change the world. It never happens. You can’t wait to start feeling like you to start doing you. It’s the opposite. You gotta start doing you to start feeling like you. You need me. Indulge in me.”

“Shut up, shut up,” I panic. “I have writer’s block. We’ll talk about it later.”

This time it’s Sini’s stomach that growls. My spine is shaken and my body shivers. “No—we’re not gonna talk about it later because we’ll never talk about it later . . .” The dragon exposes his whole front-half. A claw pins me in place, suffocating me from its weight. I struggle to breathe. Sini snickers. “You can’t resist me. You have no control over me. You’re powerless. If you won’t indulge in me, I’ll force you to do it.”

He crouches over me, only adding to the pressure suffused over my chest. With the other claw he pulls me out, tossing me into the air.

For one moment the scene is paused: Branches of the high tree brushing against my back; the world and its dragon some twenty-feet below; an eagerly extended set of jaws, their saliva and spit frozen in streams and droplets beside me, twinkling moonlight; wings spanned, outstretched like the cloak of a prideful king; the dragon’s eyes closed, delightfully; the dragon’s smirk; his tongue lapping his cheek; . . . one claw is raised in the air from the throw, while the other clutches his belly as if the meal’s already been downed.

He enjoys my horrified reaction. But now I am dawdling too much for his impatient tastes. The dragon presses play, and in an instant I’m snapped up between his two jaws. My arms latch around his tongue like a train car on a railway pressing for breaks, when there are none. It flings me casually; my head skims the uvula before I can blink. There’s a sickening gulp—bulge and all of human ricocheting down his gullet—and I find myself splashing into a pool of stomach acid. Like a waterbed. His belly is the cushion. I’m rubbed over by paws. In addition to the soft rhythm of a heartbeat beside my head, there’s a tune hummed from deep in his throat, vibrating him and I. Purrs soothe me. . . . That is, until a gurgle stirs below me. I feel a bubble brush my back and shoulder before rising to pop. More bubbles do so. Sini stands on his hind legs and utters a blood-curdling belch to the world, that trembles so.

Still my mouth is agape. I think when I was in mid-air I’d opened it to tell him, Stop!, as if he would have. Being robbed of all my juris-diction of what I want to do, who I want to be (a reader of Tom Sawyer for the rest of the night) is scary at first. The dragon empathically feels my fear. “Can’t sit around reading for the rest of your life, now, can ya?”

I sigh. “No.”

“I’m everything you strive to be. Your art, your lifestyle, your persona,” so says Sini. “Now you can’t run from me. I’ll have a part of you. You’ll have a part of me. From here on out: We’re synonymous. Sin-onymous. Get it?” He chuckles at his own corny word-play.

“Fuck. I don’t know know if I’m ready for this.”

Sini sighs. I feel his smile as he lies on the ground, running his claws through dirt. Gradually the silence of the world and his own comfort me. Being part of him (or at least, having a part of each other); having a symbiotic relationship (or sin-biotic, he’s tempted to mention to me as I dwell); is an increasingly tempting idea. Before long, it becomes warmer in his stomach. Conscious slips away. No, becomes one. Even half-awake now the soft beats of his wings are like the waves of my arms. That black-and-purple tail swooshes behind me. It’s warmer now. The fluid of the stomach digests me till I cease to exist as a separate entity. It’s not his, it’s mine.

After everything stopped eating me up inside:

* * *

Half-past five in the morning I awaken, flexing my arms and wings, when a second belch follows a drawn-out yawn. I chuckle. I smile sheepishly at the bench ahead as I rub my belly. Could be a little pudgier, I think. Of course, I was starved for who knows how many days.

Before returning home I take flight and soar the bay, circling it from one land mass to another. Spanning my wings was all I needed; they ache from their lack of use, but are eager to serve again. Breaking the surface with a dive, I catch a couple cod and salmon in the dozen, spiraling on resurface, wings blossoming and exploding with droplets of water into the air. Now my belly is filled. But not enough.

I return home, scales speckling orange-yellow like the morning sun that rises, upon my descension to the welcome mat. Fiddle with keys. Open the door. How the door accommodates such a size is a mystery; but it involves lots of grunting and squeezing my dragony rump. Once I tip-toe through the living-room, careful not to destroy the glass table, I repeat the process of squeezing—into my room. Thank goodness the fire detector is out of juice; a flame bursts from my mouth and nostrils, smoking the room. This is the flame of passion. This is readiness. I’m about to get shit done.

Typety-type-tut-type, my fingers go. Gliding across the keyboard. No where else will you find a dragon hunched over a monitor, intently ticking away such as this. A story is written, being born into existence. It documents the hardships of art block, procrastination, and coming to terms with identity. Lots of it is bullhockey about Tom Sawyer and a vore fetish hidden in between an otherwise ordinary tale. On a different day I’d erase it all. Today I don’t. Today I like it. And today, my work is satisfactory. It’s too early in the day to stop here, I think. I should write more.