Sexuality?

[lover_man]

Sexuality. Now there's a happy question. *grins*

Well, when I was human ... I liked women. I liked women real well. So pretty and fine, and with a smile on those beautiful faces, and some pride in those bright eyes, and some sauce in the swing of them hips ... yessir, I like women fine! *laughs* Women made for lovin', made for admirin'. Why else God put such beauty in the world, 'cept to be appreciated?

Women done cost me a thing or two, of course. Cost me some pain, some skin. Cost me my life, near enough. My old life, anyway. But that's the cost, starin' at the sun until it burns you, so I don't mind so much. *laughs* Worth it, wasn't it? Just for the look in them proud eyes, and the pout on those bitter lips.

Then the River Boys take me, and the Baron, and my dark maman, and things change a little. Man has to change, he touches something like that. Something tore lose in me, tore free, and when it all settle, I don't look at things like I used to. Don't see 'em the same way.

I gotta explain a little something, here. So's you understand. The tearing.

When Les Jeunes touch you, you start to rot. Inside. It hurts. It hurts like sweet hell, and then some. I'm dyin', and it's hurting so damn much, and I call the Baron because I don't want to die this way. Don't want to die like this. An' he listen, because he likes me, and he don't like Les Jeunes, and he call my dark maman to me. And she ... she changes me.

She come outta the swamp like something out of a dream, she does. If you ain't seen her, you don't know. She's ... she's like the swamp. All vivid and black and green, and she smells like rot and jasmine, and she smiles like she seen the answers to all the questions in the world. She comes up outta the swamp, and for a minute I forget I'm dying. I forget the Baron's there, looking at me, looking at her. There's only her.

Then she kisses me, and while I'm drowning in her, she breaks me open. She tore open my chest, and it was pain like nothing I ever felt before. There ain't words for it. She reached in and she pulled, and I could feel the pulling, feel me screaming, but she was swallowing it, and the world was white and black and green, and she tore me, and there was nothing except pain and pain and pain. I wasn't even afraid. There weren't time, weren't cause. No point being afraid when all you can do is die, the pain's that bad.

And then ... then there's something else. A different feeling. A pushing where there was pulling, but more than that. She's inside me. She's pushing her blood into me, pushing it right into my heart, and it pulses, and it's life, it's life so pure and rotten and green, pushing and demanding and flooding inside me, and there's nothin' like it. Nothin'. Sex doesn't even come close. Dying don't even come close. Nothin'. And I scream, and scream, and come like I never come before, because I got to, because there's all this life and it gotta go somewhere, and man! Man. Ain't nothin' touch that. Ain't nothing.

She changed me, then and there. More'n human to something else. She changed me. Made me a man in a way I never been before. Made me something new. And as she's lifting me up, smiling that smile of hers, shushing me like a babe ... I'm lookin' to the Baron, and he laughing at me. He laughing like he know what I'm feelin', like he know exactly what happened to me, and it's the funniest thing in all the world.

Later, when he come visit, I ask him. I ask my lady, too, but she don't talk so much, really. So I ask the Baron. And he tell me. He tell me that what I felt was life. What I felt was livin'. Pain and dying and loving and living, all at once and all together, and wasn't it the best thing ever? *laughs* That's what life is, he says. Pain, love, all of it, that's life, and when you feel it you got nothin' to fear, and if you don't then you dead and quiet as a babe while he take care of you, so what's to fear in all the world? When it's all just life and dying? So if you don't got to fear, then you just got to enjoy youself instead, right?

*grins* And then Baron Samedi done kissed me, and my dark maman come take me out back to show me who I belong to some more, while he laughing at us. *chuckles* I'm hopin' he kiss me again, next time he visit, you know?

So. Where was I in all that? Sexuality, yes? Well sir, it's like the Baron said. When you ain't got nothin' to fear, then you got everythin' to enjoy! And women are lovely as ever, and my dark maman makes the sun come up in my mornings, and the Baron can kiss like nobody's business, and dyin's like livin' in a red sun, and there's all the world to enjoy, mes petites!

So ... why you still sittin' here, huh?