Free The Angel of History by Alameddine Rabih Page A

him and massage his tired feet and trim his toenails and procure his happiness. He made me hungry for a little affection, so grateful for the little I received, you see, he was so fine, he was the prettiest man I’d ever been with, he was preening-peacock vain, how could I help myself, I did everything he asked. He used to take his two fingers and walk them through the air, let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages, I bet you remember that, thatwas his signal for me to go get more, and I would, cursing him all the way, traveling in heavy rain or in mother-of-pearl light, peregrinations at dusk, I did what he asked, his laws were not to be questioned, just like those of gravity and the IRS, and the rocks had better not be too small or he’d be pissed off.
    Upon my return he barely held out his hand, opened it like a corolla, and kept it steady until he got what he wanted. He lay back on my couch, his gaze, the look of a tiger holding its prey, this epitome of masculine languor, he lit the pipe, and I crawled between his legs, pulled down the zipper with a deep sigh, and as each of the teeth separated, I breathed in the mistral and the sirocco, his flesh recoiled at first, then yielded, and I licked my way down, from the golden hairs of his chest to the treasures of his crotch, and then he would lift my head, let me have my turn at the pipe, and I would fly, float with the winds, he knew just how and when to get me up in the diaphanous air, so high.
    I quickly had to learn to hold in the smoke while getting hit, because if I inhaled too much, took in more than what he thought I deserved, and it happened every time, every day, he slapped me so hard my brain rocked in its skull. I would crawl and fly, crawl and fly, cry and fly, until I crashed. He never held me, didn’t touch me, even though he knew I wanted him to, just a touch, gently run his hand across my back was all I wanted.
    If you saw us in the mornings, you’d think we were lovers. I’d make breakfast and we’d share the Sunday paper over coffee. Except for the bruises we looked normal. I wallowed in all the beating and begging and humiliation and sanguinolent whipping, cared about little, danced with Gog,frolicked with Magog. But he was so fine, this maleficent, pretty white boy, my Charon, he had no compassion but why should he be the only one in the world who did? He’d brought me back home. Then one day he too went out and left me, I don’t know why, just disappeared. I thought it was love. I searched the city and all her numbered stars, I looked for him in her bottomless pits and her abhorred deeps, over and over, for days and nights, with fading vigor, I peered into the nooks of Hades and did not find my love. I grieved and cried and keened and mourned, wailed for all the lost possibilities. I wept, howled, then left my kennel and went back to work.
The Bouncing Nun
    The pills came in threes, the trinity, Father the Haldol light green pill, Mother the mellow blue Stelazine, and Child the small white aspirin, the last because they were afraid I might drop dead of a heart attack. Put out your tongue, said the big black orderly, blacker than me with hair like gnarled wool, and above his head, on the eggshell-white wall, floated a pinkish cloud-shaped stain that locked my gaze, Look at me, the cloud whispered, look at me. The orderly placed the pills on my tongue and they disappeared like the host during Mass, I transmuted the body of my savior, and you whipped him, stoned and flogged him, and on a cross you hung Christ around your white necks.
    When I finally met my father in Beirut he took me to church to cleanse my soul of desert sand and Muslim sin, I was baptized at ten, had water and oil mix with my third eye, and then I had to go on my knees, waiting with my mouthopen for the host, for the priest with his dulcet tongue singing Aramaic to come at me with his wafer. I was so overwhelmed being in my father’s and His Father’s presence