"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.

" -Maya Angelou

He was two sides of the same coin and absolutely nothing in between. The first time Celine looked at his face she saw her own regret, and was comforted by the wisdom that would prevent her from being drawn into the abyss of his black karma. Immediately she turned her attentions elsewhere, understanding fully his insatiable desire to destroy anything that was beautiful. Celine was indeed a beautiful woman, and he was in no regard what one would call handsome. A too elongated bald head capped off a face which told the gruesome story of an emotionally violent life. His small eyes were set close together and turned up over the bridge of his nose which gave him a pathetic kevin dillonish resemblence. He had a face only Tarantino could love. Small gray bags of skin hung from his eyes in deep V-shaped bruises and a slightly jagged vertical scar ran down his acne scarred cheek. The father who abandoned him when he was eight filled him with a displaced loathing for the mother who remained. He was dangerous like a wounded animal; tightly wound and ready to lash out violently and without regard for innocents or delicacy. It was curious, then, just how he convinced her to step up and flip his coin. She could see just as clearly as anyone that he was black of heart. Perhaps it was because she did not want to believe in evil. Women were drawn to him in remarkable numbers, and Celine was no exception. His animalistic masculinity accessed a timidity within them that craved the dichotomy of domination and protection. Our current evolutionary state still contains a twisted cavewoman slice that finds rape just ever so slightly sexually arousing and makes women want to be prey. His unsavory guise satisfied them with a monopoly in the pretty and delicate arena. It was of no consequence to him, once you had agreed to flip his coin, on which side it landed for you. When it landed white he became the man who showed up with a shovel to bury the body, he was the bloke you knew would always accept your collect call from jail. He was the guy who finished the job when the car only half killed your dog. He took you to have the abortion that your husband didn't know about. He held the pillow over your father's face when it was time to end the suffering and you simply could not bring yourself to do it. He could put a girl, paid or unpaid, on any man's arm.

In these acts there is Good. Surely God had an intention for these souls along with his saints in the ordering of his creatures. After all, even Satan has allies. He was certainly not the sort to be invited to brunch on a Sunday, or asked to be godfather. The moment we no longer need him, we hate him for ever having seen our wretchedness. Truth is, he only came up white for those desperate souls whose backs were against a wall. He occupied the frantic space between redemption and hell. His angel wings hung behind him in grimy, tattered pieces, but they were visible for those in need. Perhaps he is exactly what grace looks like when we greet it, casually on the street in a mere mortal. Cecille was not in true need of White when she met him, so for her the coin was always favored to land on the side that it did. ................................ He understood very well, from a lifetime study of women, exactly what motivated them, what satisfied them, and, most importantly, what kept their silence. He knew that he could cross quite far over an acceptable level of treatment and they would remain, mouths hanging wide open like baby birds for their next feeding. His Lair was small and unassuming, yet authentic enough to convince others of his having lived a rich life. It was cleverly decorated with what appeared to be trinkets and trophies from his third world travels. The books on his bedside table were not the sort that people actually read, but that made him appear as if he had read. A flurry of photographs on his dresser lent him an air of a history which included only him at varying greedy stages of his existence; shirtless at the beach, shirtless in his high school graduation day, shirtless on the power boat in Miami during his coke dealer days in the '80's when he was wanted by the FBI. He fucked like something between a porn star and a rapist. With a large cock and well defined body he was able to sexually overpower with a raw masculinity that was disarming. It was spooky how expression never crossed his face during the act. He stared through Cecile like he was watching some bland news show whose anchor was monotonous and plain. Sometimes he yawned. Other times he watched only himself in the large mirror which ran the length of his bed. When Cecile commented on the unsavory nature of its placement, he defended it angrily as feng shui. Often he left her with bruises; drilling away at her from behind like an animal unused to the delicacy of its partner. An arm muscled to the size of her thigh curled in a solid headlock around her neck, holding her helplessly immobile. During the act she was often frightened. It occured to her more than once that she was physically helpless in his grip. Even if she had the gall to voice dissention, it wouldnt matter.

When it was over she got up, fixed her addled hair, and put back on her Talbots outfits and stepped out his door with a freshly fucked face that was pleasantly rosy; the sweet little secret safe in her throat. She laughed and found it exhilarating. Sometimes it is only in these moments of stillness, between the out and in of breathe, when we pause for a few heartbeats that we can truly feel evil in our midst. Somehow it was that Cecille, once she caught her breathe again, forgot about the certain knowledge of his nefariousness. Exhilaration, terror, amnesia. During sex she had to employ every muscle in her athletic frame towards the act of bracing. It was this complete physical exhaustion that she mistook for a satisfying experience. The same method of relaxation is often employed by yoga instructors during the close of class: flex every muscle in your entire body, release, and breathe. It has a strangely calming effect. He was not a skilled lover. His kisses were drooly and hollow. His technique was hurried and rough. Cecille quickly discovered that her sexual needs were irrelevant to him. It was not because he did not know how to ignite a woman: it was because he did not care to. He hated everything that he fucked. On a few occasions she attempted to show him how to please her. He became furious and then petulant, throwing his arms up in exasperation. "You don't tell me what to do. I tell you. That's how this works." She naturally assumed he was joking. The light sides that he wanted to show her began displaying sparks of dark: and like blinking, she did not notice them at first. He farted without apology or acknowledgement. He wore no deodorants or perfumes. He stormed around the house naked with the front door wide open, performing casual tasks which a domesticated man would have considered galling when nude, like frying bacon. His large cock swung mightily about as Cecille watched hungrily and glowing from the bed. She found this indelicacy strangely charming: it reminded her of the un-self conscious manner of children with toileting and nudity. The crudeness exhibited in his shocking lack of modesty was tempered by his strict adherence to simple social proprieties learned from the mother he loathed. He always put on a freshly dry cleaned shirt when she arrived at his home, no matter the hour. He walked her to her car, gallantly opening the door and waiting outside his house until she drove away. He tucked pillows around her body as she slept to make her comfortable. She found the stark dichotomy of his soul refreshing. He never pretended to be anything other than what he was.

He called often, just to chat. He paid for everything, and took her to only the nicest restaurants and ordered the most expensive dishes. He doted on her in public, and treated her like she was the only woman in the known universe. At first she blushed and thrilled quietly at the complete attention with which he adorned her. Just as quickly, he could turn hostile. On a few occassions Celine politely asked him to curb his overly sexual public displays of affection. She did not feel that positions worthy of pornographic film were appropriate during dinner at a high end restaurant. "You're insecure." He spat and turned his body away. He was incapable of gracefully handling the aerodynamics of moving closer towards or further away from a human. Otherwise Cecile enjoyed his company immensely. He was bitingly funny, intelligent, well read and up to date on current events. He also unnerved her with a frightening psychological acuity: ripping away at her outer emotional layers with stunning speed to reveal the scars that she thought she had buried seamlessly. More than once in the course of normal conversation his observations caused Cecile, a normally very gregarious woman, to go completely silent and choke on the tears in her throat. It was not that he had said anything offensive, he was just exceedingly gifted in seeing straight to one's soul and reflecting back at them any rot that he found there. His particular brand of intelligence was dangerous, because one never knew whether it was being employed for health or harm. It is why locksmiths take an oath to never train a criminal in their craft: the power achieved in it can drive one to start picking the wrong sorts of locks. The advent of his movement into her life flooded her karmic pool to a level that she knew with grave certainty would forever alter her. She also knew that it would not be a pleasant metamorphosis. She had no illusions that she was the only one. He warned her that he had a reputation. Women spoke very ill of him and warned her away with unspecified shakes of the head. She felt it rude to stake a claim on him. Furthermore he was never going to be the sort of man that she would have as a husband. He would never be the sort of man that she would be seen in polite society with. er husbandand transformed the badness that she saw upon their first meeting into a private irony: an amusing secret society of which she was the sole member. The faces and bodies and individual dramas of his victims changed so often that it was useful to just call them all "sweetie." Using their proper names was reserved for sober moments, in phone calls, when he had time to practice. Their names would be sparingly ejected from his mouth with a formality and effort resembling a student practicing a foreign language. Often he scribbled their names down on scraps of paper which he read from as he spoke, so as not to forget. He found it easier to remember their names if he also used middle names along with it. He was often fucking several women with the same name at one time, and that was convenient: it only became inconvenient when they had the same last names.

The delicacy in living ones life in such a manner lies in the care needed to keep the right hand ignorant of what the left hand is doing. In maintaining the delicate balance of this dance our souls inevitably split; often in an irretrievable manner. We can live in denial about the harm we are causing others; the dead bodies that lay behind us like discarded wood...but the decay works its way in, and the love that we started out with in this world disappears completely, in the middle of a random dark night, without our knowledge. And one morning we awake; abandoned and confused about why we cannot merge our worlds back together. Cecille often wondered what it would be like to spend one's life blaming others for your transgressions and bad manners: smashing about the world with no conscience, leaving behind enemies whose hate for you filled the sky like stars: invisible streams of ill will which are eternally hurled towards you like karmic drone missiles. Never would he admit that he himself was broken in the places that cannot ever be put back together. He smashed himself with great force against the door that, had he taken the time to step back and pull it open, he could have gently walked through. Sometimes the subject of our greatest paradox is so easily dissolved: a door stopper is not a large object: it is only the physics of it that makes it insurmountable. His loneliness made him angry, and his anger made him lonely. The cycle of it fueled his destructive aggression and the onyx spaces became wider. She watched as the gleaming metal coin spun on its edge, swerving first towards white, then towards black, and back on itself again. Despite how much she was enjoying him, there was nowhere for them to go from here. When the coin finally became still, they both regarded the dull black face that was displayed and understood its meaning. There was no discussion to be had between them. He walked one way, and she the other. They hid in plain sight within the tiny community and tight social circles they shared, and she never spoke of him to a soul. Here and there she would hear his name and her ears would perk up, but her carefully controlled guise remained steely and aloof. And so Celine moved forward, filled with regret that she had allowed those beady eyes to outsmart her by daring her to toss a coin whose outcome she had always known.