50. Pitaya
The purple blood of the dragon fruit; its disembowelled pulp is an offering for the orgy of gods.
The courtship of Shakti and Shiva; they say, creation is the love-play of these divine two; the universe, their supreme shit. Planets roll and spill out from beads of sweat during intercourse, and the yin-yang blend of saliva sparks the stars. In the nether region is dark matter. Moist and sore, ever spewing new life, these fountains spurt and splash; what’s made is formed from frolic and frivolity. Fun! The ultimate essence. Required while baking cake; also needed when fleshing out existence. And the entire history of spacetime, cause and effect, fate, karma, all these in various guises and names, merely run along the contours of this deistic copulation - what you do tomorrow is already tattooed on her inner thighs; when you die, predestined on his palm lines.
Legend has it that the pitaya, otherwise dragon fruit, was at the tail end of dragon fire. Charred meat; when the beast was slain, we ate its flesh. Such tasty grade-A dragon chops our forefathers desired. Now what’s left of the world of mythological heritage is this scaly dessert which we continue to devour.
RZ is planting dragons. He believes each fruit is an inseminated egg that will hatch to become the mythic creature. He’s got a big fertile field ploughed for this cultivation. A cactus, from which the delicious fruit comes, according to him, is the spine of the leviathan. Seedlings that burst forth will ripen and fill up the plant to eventually become the fearsome creature.
I know this `cause somehow it was the last thing that crossed my mind. Before Jimmy jacked up the livewire. You can say half my brain was on a field trip to RZ’s farm, while the other part attended my own funeral.
No one could separate my boy and I. We were seared tight like a baby in its womb; and fire has a funny way of rearranging reality. Flames throw new meaning to the word unity. We are so selfish alone, and our scope pathetically limited. But when your skin is smelted to another, your perspective broadens, and you become less egocentric. I guess you can say the word is ‘joined.’ Joined to something bigger, joined to the universe. Joined to the lovers beyond.
Shakti and Shiva, two in a room full of naked majesties. Scantily outfitted courtesans sashay between to meet any intimate need. Be it oils for massage, lubes for penetration, aromatic candles for therapy, dim romantic lighting casting long shadows in the chamber, the maidservants of pleasure appease the royal deities for cosmic balance. The gods don’t care; they continue fucking and making worlds from secretions expelled off their unified mass. It is the humble act and dutiful nature of the slave girls that nurse and nurture infant universes, amassing the sex-charged liquids into vials, and afterwards, by manipulating the ethereal spectrum of fire, extricate each unique and individual scent composed from the copulating divinities. Each dimension, each heaven, each earth and sphere of creation is priceless perfume of finest bliss, able to attract the deepest loyalty, the maddest love from mortal beings, setting alight hearts combusting in blue flames, and commanding irrational behaviour from all smitten to absolute sacrifice. These dames, they daub it on, and descending onto corporeal planes walk amongst men with the pheromones of gods sweetened by feminine sweat and the odour of perfect breasts.
Jimmy says I can be an angel if I want to, hostess of a divine harem, keeper of celestial glands, seducer of humans. But first I gotta rot away. Jimmy’s voice is coming from everywhere; he says, until my entire fleshly faculties perish, I will not know my dreams.
As his familiar accent fade, the dragon fruit is offered in the eternal love-shag as a type of aphrodisiac; its original aroma, reminiscent of the breath of a primordial fire breather. A potent brew, hot air encircles as mist upon the depths before creation.
It was also available at my father’s wake. Cut and sliced for mourners to partake. At first, the church had wanted a coffin for me side-by-side, but due to the manner of my demise, (adhered permanently to Jimmy), they could not find a casket our size. Then a deacon said it was abominable for a villain to share my father’s funeral, and since it was an unfortunate event that they could not separate my remains from my killer’s, a photo of me would suffice. Put to the vote, the assembly unanimously agreed, for reason of not blemishing the good name and memory of my father, their pastor, I was to be unceremoniously cremated (with Jimmy) in all regret and thrown into the sea, becoming fish food forever with a murderer.
Quite poetic, huh? Of course no one knew I was the one who pulled the trigger. Justice is served...I guess.
Dragon fruit was also served at my minimalist memorial. But none of the congregation showed up; as if Jimmy’s dead spirit could soil their fragile souls. The service was subbed out, cheap and bare, unrecorded in history. In the months to come it was even forgotten that my dad had a daughter. He was just a middle-aged bachelor married to god.
Speak of denial, which is a good thing, `cos the less people remember you, the freer you are to roam; no moron magnetizing you with masqueraded memories, or worse, conjuring you to possess the physical body of a medium or move some stupid token on an Ouija board.
So, when Jimmy plugged in, our sockets came out. My skewed view could appreciate Jimmy’s eyeballs dangling by the nerves. He said I was his mirror image. I was kissing him when the current came. Our Frenching tongues transformed to chewing-gum, incandescently flavoured.
How romantic is this, our very own suicide putting Romeo and Juliet to shame.
And therefore, Jimmy was right. Barbequed to crisp, and witnessed by the authorities, I could feel beyond pleasure and pain, beyond death. How the old man envied when they brought us out of his basement. Dark stares at my black legs splayed; one jolted and torn outward, with the other twisted at the knee for ankle to touch buttock. Hands walk the Egyptian. Jimmy jumps the, fried, starfish.
Together, it seems we are doing an impossibly coordinated modern breakdance routine. Our embedded pubis is now just an ochre-white lily. Out of the ashen ground of our cadavers the flower blooms. Not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed as one of these. Some of the cops fell to the ground, calling it a miracle. Even Detective Lingam wept. We were waltzing in the molecular structure of Lilium.
In Lily’s hall is an elaborate ball which dwarfs the grandest gala of fairytales. Chromosomes tower high in a cosmopolitan city, governed by the genetic ID for all microscopic cells to function according to the divine purpose of multiplication; perfect beyond any metropolis of man. If only you could die and be present inside her world of proteins performing nature's tasks of mitosis and meiosis, DNA duplication, you would fathom that scriptural saying. There in the streets of her beauty is equal to drooling awed at the centre of a galaxy.
The glory in a single strand of Lily’s hair, the emphasis and sophistication that goes into each trivial blossom that is here today and in the furnace tomorrow, puts to shame our human grandeur and pursuit for material luxury. Ironic then, such tedious detail and complexity is rendered for something so temporal; and so much more if we consider the wondrous workings and functions of man’s own physical shell – a surplus of wisdom invested to make a being so selfish and stupid.
And Jimmy says, consider this, it is easy for you to accept the vastness of space, but what about the vastnesses in between? Alive, you are suckered by size. Goliath welcomed into a house suited for midgets; even doctrinally you’re not spared – a rich, fat fool facing the eye of a needle. But being dead is liberating, `cos you can be there...in spaces in between. Consider this; there are civilizations everywhere, all with their unique chronology. Just as in our own rational human universe, in the petals of Lily is her own Big Bang. Her inimitable Genesis. And since everything is subjective and mind-blowing, Jimmy says, being dead allows us to write and record our own story.