My Aching Veins
Disc: Yeah, I own all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its trademark, copyrights... Just kidding.
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Kapeesh?
Time was the leaky faucet in the unused bathroom, dropping quiet molecules of water from its spout and hitting the enamel of the sink's base with a wet sounding plop. Time was dripping all over the floor and passing so slowly that your naked eye could definitely catch sight of it. I had lost track of the slowness of time weeks ago. It was way too easy, for me, to lose yourself in the complete calm and oblivion of contentness. And in the complete calm oblivion of Buffy Summers.
We used each other too often too count. Get homesick? Come to me. Feel lonely? Go to Buffy. Miss your family? Come to me. Lose your mind? Go to Buffy. Go to Buffy. Go to Buffy. Every thing I could find wrong with myself I could change and resolve in Buffy. She was my saviour, my passion, my Christ if I were his child. She was usually the voice that put me to sleep at night. Or sometimes the soothing hand that gave attention to my recently ailing body.
Too many times that week had I been head over toilet, emptying the contents of my stomach in an unwanted frenzy. I would sit, muscles pumping a strange concoction between battery acid and radioactive waste, gagging on the thumping insides of my trachea and praying to God to take me then and there. We didn't know what was wrong with me.
The day after I returned to a more orthodox, routine schedule at Stockton I was allowed the pleasure of a more effective shower than a two minute rainfall of water coming from the spout hanging over my head extracting water from its cracks and emptying into the drain in the center of the room.
Buffy led the both of us to the 'ultra-bathroom', keeping her eyes wide and open for an invisible monster she expected to attack. The bathroom was a stadium with a giant drain in the middle and rows of shower heads above. It wasn't particularly like every 20th century prison movie Hollywood actors and directors could make. Rape and molestation didn't happen; no one was afraid of an attack from behind or beside; and nobody had any trouble standing naked next to an inmate they had never seen, and probably never would see again.
My muscles were sore and burned like a raw nerve against a touch every time I moved. It was pain I could handle though. Clothes were shed like the shells of a molting crab and the water, a lukewarm chilling sort of temperature, turned on. As usual, there were two to three people sharing one shower head, and as expected, Buffy and I were left alone.
I felt like the legend I had dreamed of being, face painted in a beautiful mask of my accomplishments, the bruises and swollen parts of my face, dressed in the most elegant chiffons of delicate black silk, the blood that still caked and clung to my skin in clusters, and striding with all the stolen grace in the world down a catwalk surrounded by flashes of cameras and jealous twenty-somethings spitting out the words "Fabulous" and "Marvellous", the long walk from cell to bathroom with more than one jillion pairs of eyes scanning quickly over me, then back to their default positions, muttering beneath their breath the rumours they had heard.
My hands made the usual path over and under crevices of my own whining body, guiding a miniscule amount of soap over the most important spots. Normally, respect for your showering partner stood as expected, except in the occasional 20th century prison movies, and Buffy by and large had that respect. Though when I had finished with my own washing and deposited what remains of soap I still had into the drain, a pair of hands had snaked their way to my shoulders like a gentle hand. I could feel my body rejecting the feeling though, as if violated, spoiled. I wrenched myself away, knowing it was Buffy's used hands on me, expecting someone else. She wouldn't back away, wouldn't give up like a Slayer normally shouldn't, and drew me in closer.
I fell for the welcoming touch and left my body somewhere else, letting her pull me towards a satin like pillow I knew was her skin. Her hands ran like a sponge down my arms and I finally, fully, let go. I understood what she wanted, what she was trying to do, and didn't reject it.
She was washing me, pulling away gently the visible and invisible signs of any pain and sorrow, and regret, and guilt that had ever been caused by her, for her, for me, by me. Her hands were cleansing the skin of mine that I had so daftly destroyed, spoiled. A connection even stronger than the Slayer bond joined us as one and I think, for a few moments there, she forgave me.
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Every night after that was a new exploration of the physical contact we could make with each other. We discovered whole worlds beside our own inside each movement of the other, inside each particle of skin, on every word that fell off of our tongues. We could touch each other and feel heaven wrapped in the soft outer layers we held. I was enlightened, on a new level of consciousness, a new plane. I assume, by the quiet, animal noises that she made, Buffy was too.
We spoke in tongues during our time together, invited by primal instinct to a primitive world of touch and see. There were no limits, no boundaries, but somehow, the elephant never forgets what it's like inside its cage.
We went on for weeks like this, stumbling beside each other, forcing lopsided grins and pushing ourselves to find whatever limits existed between us. So far, we had found none.
October 19th, 2002, a Sunday, 6:17 pm was the exact moment in the endless, seamless, void of time that, in the midst of calamity I lost my mind.
Visitors weren't a usual thing for me, not anymore. Angel had quit his non-existent visits long, long ago. For Buffy, they were expected. It seemed unlawful that Dawn Summers didn't get a chance to see her sister before she melted away in the hands of government, correctional facilities, and me. So when the guard approached our homestead, clanging his knuckles against steel bars, proclaiming "Visitor!" as loud as he could, as if to provide torture to lonely inmates without even speaking to them, I feigned no surprise.
Buffy sent one last penetrating glance towards me, stood, and restricted herself from skipping down the hallways. I waited. I waited with mildly inspiring impatience, pacing back and forth between here and there, reading the numbers on the wall clock that stood opposite of my cage and devouring them.
The invisible monster strikes.
The axe she had been waiting for has apparently dropped.
When she returns, which, a bit unfortunate for my patience, is hours later, she is hunched, swallowed by herself, wide eyed and sounding as if she were reading a script, taking lines off of a tele-prompter.
6:15
"Did they finally come?" What sort of friends would they be, were they, visiting their best friend, who had often saved their sorry asses time and time again, only months after her incarceration?
6:16
"Yeah."
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6:17
"I'm leaving."
I was in a movie. I was anything but real. These thoughts, these words, these actions, all muffled and non-existent by Buffy's truthful stare, would have exploded out of me, had my mind not flipped over and detonated in a fit of silence. I stood, rooted, frozen solid by the chill that ran through my bones. What was real in this world? Pain and sorrow, yes, happiness, good for mankind, never.
I had officially lost myself.