(diaryland) November 20, 2009 - 10:06 a.m.

OK. I did it. I managed to write the sex scene. It's a lot more disappointingly PG than I thought it would be. There is a lot of swearing, though. And an educational bit about classical mythology. But that's cool. I'm just relieved I've finally written it.

Chapter the Fifteenth

I slept like a small, though adult-sized foetus shaped log. I slept the sleep of a million zillion stones, deep in the earth. I was in the beginning stages of a hard, serious sleep of biblical proportions. I probably only actually slept for about two hours, but by Jove, did I sleep the shit out of those two hours.

I probably needed to sleep for fifteen.

Then I woke up and had sex with the statue.

I don�t know; it just slowly swept into my house in that way it seemed to be able to do that may or may not have involved a key or godly mind control over locks, and then it slipped into the room with the stupidly huge bed, where I was. And then we had sex.

Usually, in all our other meetings, it would exchange thoughts with me with its mouth open slightly. This time it didn�t. Well, it wasn�t exactly like that either. It just touched me on the shoulder where I had touched it in the yard many days ago, and then I knew that it could tell that I felt like the loneliest person that had ever been and that ever would be, and I woke up, and that my loneliness was the greatest, most powerful force right at that very moment.

So I guess it took advantage of me. It was like a missionary who waits on a street corner for a broken person so that they can bring them along to their next touchy-feely religious event and then they start to feel like these people and the object of their worship are the only people who care. It was like a flower that has a putrid smell that wants to attract flies so that they dive in and never come out. It was there because it knew it could be there and that I would accept it.

But, whatever. We had sex. When it stood over the bed, looking calm, it looked more real than the last time. There was a peach tinge on the ends of its fingers. When it moved, it was lithe. Each visit it made to me in my sleep, it got less marbly and more humany. It was still freezing cold, and its hair was still chiselled curls, and its pupils were still deep holes, but its surface was kind of velvety. Trust me on that one, because I touched it. A lot.

But before that, it leant down. Its breath on my face felt like the air from a crypt. That was actually kind of refreshing, considering it was about twenty-eight degrees in my room. I was still crumpled in a little ball. I turned my head to look at it. I had to shut my eyes. It was just really fucking beautiful.

It went to the window an opened the curtain. The toy soldiers were still exiting the fountain at a rate of knots. The event, and the fountain was in silhouette. It looked unsettling with one statue missing but the scene reminded me of quiet chamber music if you mapped in a landscape.

A tear rolled down my cheek because I was sad. But also because something was with me. I didn�t really know why this statue was the only one that had come to life. I didn�t know if it woke me up at night because I was the only person that it knew. I didn�t know if it was because I technically owned it. The statue turned back and with great restraint like a rallentando, slowly sat on the bed. Being a statue, I thought that as soon as it sat down it was going to plough a hole all the way through my bed, not that I would have cared all that much, but it seemed as light as Apollo himself.

It blinked, and it took an eon.

One time, Apollo was in love with Hyacinthus. This was over two thousand years ago, if not the time before people even measured time. It took place in a world where gods still mingled with humans, and everything was pretty, and problems were routinely solved by turning either yourself, or someone else, into a deer, or the odd tree. It was full of sons and daughters of kings who the gods above had their eyes on. Hyacinthus was the son of a King and he was really the most beautiful earthly youth around. Zephyrus and Boreas loved him too and were jealous of Apollo, and each other.

Apollo was drawing closer to Hyacinthus. He was following him every day, and teaching him the ways of the world. One way, they were throwing the discus in a field, practicing their aim and their technique. Zephyrus and Boreas caught wind of this and went down to spy on them. They saw what was going on, fuming. As Apollo let go of the discus upon his turn, Boreas and Zephyrus influenced the arc of the disc so that it struck Hyacinthus on the head, slicing off part of the skull. Hyacinthus slumped into Apollo�s arms and began gushing blood, all over Apollo, and all over the grass. Apollo held him until he died.

The blood flowed in little streams between the grass and throughout the field and where it touched the earth, up sprang a new type of flower. It was named the Hyacinth in his honour. Hyacinthus would appear every year in this form, but Apollo moved on.

The sex I was having right now felt ancient and mystical and bitterly cold like a moon of Saturn. It was bloody good. I can�t describe it more than that. I learnt in a subject at uni named �The Fate of Art� that Hegel said that Greek art was the epitome of art for all time, and that everything after it was an inexorable, unavoidable slide into the grotesque. I was pretty much on his wavelength at this point in time. The last time I had had sexual relations was with this guy in my college who was also studying ballet and he was OK, I guess, but his leg muscles were so huge and his hair felt all funny so I felt kind of weird about it and we avoided each other in the reams of corridors throughout our building after that. The time before that was with a guy who worked at my local McDonald�s, and before that, nothing. I�d never had sex with an actual, stone god who knew what the hell it was doing before. The whole thing took about half an hour and I hardly moved.

We were silent. Then, when things were over, we were silent again. It lay next to me, and I fell asleep again, on my back, with my arms crossed behind my head. I may have been snoring. I wouldn�t put it past me. I could feel the statue in the periphery of my consciousness. It breathed the type of air that had been locked inside an ice cave on me periodically as it lay on its side.

The night wore on. The yard grew more shadowed. The rain of the toy soldiers began to ease, then stop completely. I did now know this.

When I dreamed, I dreamt about Vaughn Bourbon�s fingers.

When I woke up again for no apparent reason, the curtains were shut, but the statue was still there. I rolled onto my side. It put its hand on my waist and I shivered. I was still wearing thick socks for some stupid reason. I kicked them off, and tried to go to sleep again with this cold hand on me.

But, I couldn�t. I felt absolutely buggered, but the ease with which I�d fallen asleep the last two times eluded me. Thinking back, it was either the cold hand that slowly began to warm up under my influence, or the fact that the fountain was up to something again. I did know that the statue had shut the curtains, but I didn�t know that it had left the window open just a chink to let the magical air in again. I was so attuned to the ionic air of the fountain that sleep was out of the question now. All these thoughts were not on the surface of my mind. They were just things that I knew, somewhere in there, but the main part of my mind was shrouded in obtuseness. My heart started to beat faster again for no apparent reason. I think the air flowing into the room had control over that.

The statue remained calm and watchful. I wondered if it ever slept, of whether it thought of its entire history. I was facing away from it, but the holes in its eyes made for quite pointy staring.

There was the sound of a sudden breeze rustling in the garden; quite a strong one. I swallowed and listened harder.

Then, silence.

You would fit into an Amphoreus, the statue said. I would build one around you with the utmost care, and I�d leave it out to dry for a week and I�d carry you back to my home and no-one would ever know where you went nor where you came from. And then I would crack it with an arrow and you would emerge.

[I sighed, then answered]

Your home is my yard, and nobody knows where I�m from nor where I�m going anyway.

[Silence again]

The statue came up with some pretty fucked up things to say at times, not that it was saying them, strictly.

I wondered what it would be like to be slowly encased in clay by a marble god, and then left out to dry. I wasn�t one of those people who needed to have three square meals a day at rigorously strict times or else I�d faint with starvation, but it sounded pretty fucking wack. The end bit where I came out, presumably on Mount Olympus, where I could forget everything that had ever happened to me didn�t sound so bad, though.

Despite the pregnant air, my eyes began to droop again. That was the point at which I received a knock at the door. Not a normal kind of knock. More a knock of desperation. This is the only type of knock you can get in the middle of the night, I suppose.

�Dude, dude, open up, man!� came a fierce, frantic yell.

I slipped out from under the statue�s hand and ran into the corridor. It didn�t do anything. It just stayed there, calmly, on the bed.

Oh, shit, I thought. I was nude as. You couldn�t get more nude than what I was now. I wasn�t even wearing the statue anymore.

�Just a sec,� I shouted, exactly like a nude person who needs to answer the door does.

Of course, I knew it was Vaughn Bourbon. Especially when he chose to yell, �Fuck, fuck, fuck!� through my door in answer to my verbalisation about being nude.

I didn�t want to run into the bedroom again. It was too weird. So, I ran down the corridor with squeaky bare feet and found a jumper on the couch which doubly functioned as my wardrobe, and put it on. Because it was a normal-sized person�s jumper, it was a dress on me. Albeit a scratchy one.

By this time, I think Vaughn may have been bashing his head against my door. Jesus, have a little patience, I thought. I attempted to unearth some clean undies, a scare resource in my house.

�Come on, man � I wrote you an e-mail about this!� he yelled, all the way down the hall, all the way through the solid core door. I think his mouth must have been touching the door.

I ran over to the computer and wiggled the mouse. Ah, yes, indeed. There was an e-mail.

hey, i�ll be trying to jump through the fountain again at 3,16 tonite. i�ve changed somewhat. bring moist towelettes

He must have sent that at about one AM or something. It was hardly fair to complain about someone not getting an e-mail at one AM.

I didn't have moist towelettes.

�Just a sec!� I screeched and then purposely walked at a very leisurely pace down my long, stretchy corridor as punishment for being impatient. It was strange how time could fold back upon itself in my corridor. I guess I was a tad scared, since Vaughn had written that he had changed. What the fuck? If you�re all different, just leave that bit out, otherwise, people�s imaginations are going to run wild. They�re going to freak out. They�re going to think that Vaughn Bourbon, Pretender to the throne of France and Navarre may well have taken the form of the big black scary dog in the Neverending Story. They�re going to think the Vaughn Bourbon was mightily pissed off at someone for doing a half-arsed job trying to locate all his fingers. At least he again had the use of both ears, you know.

As I went past the bedroom, I looked straight ahead. I wondered what the statue was thinking.

My heart was pounding in my chest, more and more as I got closer to the door. My heart was usually found to be pounding in my chest, and very rarely in other spots, if ever, but it didn�t pound nearly as much as at this time.

I put my ear up to the door.

�Are you decent?� I asked.

�Bleurrrgh!� Yelled Vaughn.

I opened the door a crack.

Yeah, shit, he had changed.