A Letter to Madame X

{an Introduction}

August 11, 1880. As though on the wisps of a billowy dream twas a clear starry night when we met the first time. I believe it was that risqué cafe on the outskirts of “Le Blvd de Desir” if such a place exists. However it's so real in the shadow of my memories. I was dressed in a top hat and tails, a man of distinction, hungry for praise, struggling for fame, and everything that comes with it. You were a woman of class and beauty. An aristocrats wife, bored with life, horny as a cat. You sauntered in seeking adventure in the steamy streets of the art district. The red lights outside the cafe reflecting off your ivory skin, so clean and undefiled; like a perfect, tempting statue carved by the hand of Michelangelo. I sit in the darkest corner of the bar sipping absinthe for “l’heure verte” is well at hand and I seek inspiration among the ruffians, riff-raff, and cosmopolitans, every now and then scribbling an idle idea or doodling a sketch into my notebook. As I reach for my pen, a darling thought dancing in my head, I spy you from across the room, your black eyes locked on mine…

February 20, 2002. Any club, in any city, I sit in a corner with friends, all of us tripping’ on E. The music elevates us to another world, anywhere but here ya know. Some girl I know rubs my bare chest and abs, lost in the rush of the touch that Ecstasy brings I lie on a couch adrift in space, periodically inhaling the Vicks and then holding my breath to the point I almost faint. Only the music I hear and the lights of the glow sticks I see, magnified by three and distorted by eight. Absorbed in the beat, I’m transported to another place, another time: a voyager of the mind, a pawn of fate, alone in the dark. And then I see you, across the room. You dance alone, Evian in hand. Casting a trance with the universal, liquid diction of movement. You see me watching you and stop for a moment and smile. A familiar smile that I can’t quite recall, but I swear I once loved. The knowing smile the walking dead share stating carnal desires, stating, no...screaming the knowing message we have nothing to lose but everything to gain, a night of passion, solace in sex only enhanced by Viagra and Ex, lost in each other's embrace. The smile of the lonely and disenchanted...