Lucius Bod | Rogue Diary

Electricity and fibre optics were the means to an end. We met on the Internet through mutual friends and I never imagined I would grow to experience longing every time your avatar appeared on my monitor. Perhaps you could feel my hand touching the screen…

It is nine years later. Now, our conversations about hot sex and fetishes make my loins engorge with blood and a single tear falls on the polished wood floor between my naked feet. You have a way with words indeed, lover. I wake up after dreaming of you and the best in me is enamoured with your vision of happiness. I am only afraid of the distance. The possibility of meeting you and holding your hand causes anxiety in me because it hurts to touch.






© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Hernán Piñera/Flickr

 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

“Karlie,” he said, “there are things I must tell you, so you know me as your friend, and you can decide what to do.” I can’t say I was surprised when he told me he enjoyed sex with men and women. He told me about his past, between bites of his grilled chicken breasts with a mango-infused sauce on a bed of white rice and an amazing gazpacho. I swooned, although I had to confess the meaning of what he was telling me would come into my mind slowly. He cooked modestly, but with great sauces and I admired his resolve to make his home a welcoming place for our dates.

At first, a feeling of dread came over me when he asked if I was a jealous person. I dated several men before Lucius with mostly disappointing results, yet I felt there was a possibility to have a long-term relationship with him, much like what my parents had. He said: “I won’t ask you to be superhuman, my love, I just want you to accept me.” I asked him if he preferred one gender to the other. He went on to say: “I can be with a man or a woman.” My silence fell like lead. Was he implying that I would have to share him? I looked away for a moment, and when my eyes met his again my sadness was on the surface for him to see. He poured some Pinot Grigio for both of us and looked at me with tenderness. His “I am with you now” felt like Heaven; I was so blindly in love with him.

I’ve had relationships with women off and on throughout my life, starting with a girl crush I had on Amelia, a popular girl during my junior year in High School. What I did not enjoy were the moments when we would both become hysterical and catty, just utterly vicious with each other at random times. The boys seemed to be mostly push-button creatures, but I appreciated their consistent programming. My preference for the male stereotypes both charmed and annoyed me at times.

Lucius and I felt more and more empathy with each other as the conversation continued because he forced me to examine my past and see the real me. He was challenging me to go on this wild adventure with him into a sexual and intellectual realm I had never foreseen with another being. His honesty helped me to express many things I kept hidden, even from myself. Nothing made me doubt his love, as his actions showed. This new reality where I could have the freedom to indulge in my fantasies and he would be free to philander with my approval was both terrifying and alluring to my ego.

When the light of dawn came through the windows I was in his arms and he said softly: “White walls of rented flats and many jobs, but no career. Blank faces with secret identities surround us and somehow, we found each other.” I listened to his heartbeats. “Let’s have a life together.” I kissed him and nodded, knowing this was a demented troubadour’s dream. Sometime during the night it also became mine.

The morning sun found us walking to a bakery for some croissants and coffee. We said nothing else to each other and he held my hand. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland came to my mind in waves.



© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Ramón Peco/Flickr

 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

I drove past the house you finally lost during the Recession. The garden is now covered in the sepia tones of our past. How I hated our fights! You were such a bitch to me sometimes. Well, I hated the moments when we could not communicate with each other.

Asher became your fourth husband, but he also loved your "cruel pretty girl" demeanour. As you explained to your girl friend at the time: "who cares what his family thinks? Who's got the pussy?" You are a true philosophical juggernaut. I won't forget your last words of feminine wisdom: "When it comes to boyfriends and gifts, the more they give, the more I can receive." Genius.

This city feels so enormous, and I lower my head to look at the small space I own in it. I always admired the way in which you picked yourself up and dusted the dirt off you to start again, anywhere. Call me when you get to San Diego, I miss you.

Sometimes at night I walk to the beach and lie on my back near the sea to dream of good things about my life. I’m a vagabond soul filled with Internet folklore, and the thought of your kiss shines like the stars amidst dark moments.

During the day I hunt for food and fight my enemies with the anger of my early twenties intact. I’ve taken up smoking again and do so with macho style in my red ‘79 Camaro Z28. A glass of Shiraz at lunch was never happier than with me. Handsome bloke, I am.

At home, my sofa should not reek of tobacco, but there lies my body in the afternoon, holding a pillow and smoking cigarette number three next to a cut crystal ashtray on my coffee table. Life, I am yours. Where are you in this poorly decorated tableau? It’s just another day for me.

I've questioned my sanity so many times during our furtive meetings. You refuse to speak to me and yet you enjoy every moment I hold you in bed. Your existence is my one big shadow, my sugary poison. One day, I'll lose you and perhaps then I'll know how to stop my slender arms and legs from holding you, only to find a void at dawn. My sugary poison, my midnight lover. My Greg.







© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Arno/Flickr

 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

I love Pussy. Not many people know this, perhaps because I don’t post photos to flaunt it in my blog or upload it into the profile’s image albums. What an unexpected source of mirth and bewilderment in my life, this Pussy is.

When my close friends Claudio and Derek agreed to end their relationship both gave me their cat. She had a name, but I couldn’t think of calling her by it since we were now together. Without further ado, she became my Pussy.

As with all cats, she owns me. Already housebroken, she knows where everything is and what it stands for when she reaches for her bowls of water and food, claws the couches fiercely and runs through the hallway into the foyer to chase her toys.

“Meow!”

She likes to play after I give her catnip. I toss her toy a metre away from me and she runs back with it, to lay it at my feet. My feet have scratch marks from her, but I still refuse to clip her nails often.

Last Wednesday night I had a long conversation with my brilliant new friend Gunter, a hardcore Berliner who lives in Barcelona and works as an Art Director and Commercial Photographer for an advertising agency. His day had been stressful, and I could feel the heat from his anger through my headphones. We both decided to use an Internet phone service after we looked at our cellular phone bills. He was not using foul language for a change, and the aspersions were also witty, something I have always admired of him.

When we met he was just another photographer snapping shots at a runway show for a designer friend’s collection in Madrid. During one segment of it, he turned to me suddenly and whispered: “That model has a pack of cigarettes under her arm!” enunciated boldly with his accent, so I looked up to see a price tag the stylist had not removed. After nearly collapsing on the carpet with irrepressible laughter, I shook his hand and asked if we could go out for a drink to exchange more observations on the show. He gave a “Ja!” that thrilled me. I went back to New York, and he returned to Barcelona, but we formed a great bond with every phone call thereafter.

“Miau!”

I was multi-tasking, making storyboards for my friend Mario’s photoshoot in the morning and also on the phone with Gunter. As he ranted about an unprofessional actor on the set of the commercial he was working on, the cat jumped on my desk and sat in front of my monitor. Because I spend so much time in front of the computer every day, a male model friend advised sitting on a Swiss ball for some hours. I got up and dashed to the kitchen to refill her water bowl and sat down again.

My friend Gunter and I did our hefty amount of complaining about egos but we also acknowledged each other’s alpha dog characters in business and also in social situations. Mutual respect kept it all from becoming a brawl, choosing to experience and learn from what we both had to offer from our day.

­© Image: !fatima/Flickr

 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

Karlie,

Since our last argument, we have pushed and pulled words of beauty and hatred freely between us, darling. I miss coming home to you, but not tonight. Mother says “hello.” I will call you tomorrow afternoon.

Love,

Lucius

Another night, some drinks and too much talk about feelings again... My own were nowhere to be found in the conversation, and instead, I walked out of the flat Karlie and I shared. The expression “I’m going out for fresh air” took on an urgency that made me overlook the cliché. 

I had some time to think whilst I walked in silence for a few blocks. The night seemed inauspicious and gloomy, but it did not reflect my mood. Somehow, my frustration turned into a sarcastic smile that owed its appearance to Papa. I finally understood the man, but it was up to me to determine what to do about our similar conjugal woes.

Nothing magical or wonderful happened after my walk, but I knew it was up to me to challenge our views and transform our life together because I cared. If she wanted the same, she could do so as well but I could not wait. I went to bed for dreamless sleep. My side is always the left side, my dear.





© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Mini Malist/Flickr



 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

I felt so much for you and now, I cannot return to my life. I feel it, the enchanting blindness of looking at your face and never at the disdain you have shown me every time our conversations stop on the drive home, after visiting our friends.

There are no more films to watch with you on my shelves. Their sounds and images of captured lives used to fill the rooms completely and we joined them for fifty-two Sundays. Do you remember how we sat on my sofa, bored and hungry for popcorn? There must be a new place for me to see and feel again. I felt so much for you and now I understand why you’re leaving me: I have been in love only with myself and all I felt were my own feelings.

Simon knocked on my door and smiled when he looked at my notepad, freshly wet from wine on the coffee table. He started laughing and asked: “What are you writing, Lucius?” He gave me a small jewel box. As I opened it, he said: “Jamais deux sans toi. Never two without you.” I felt stupid a million times at that moment. “You are a silly man, Lucius.” Yes, I am.



© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Michael Epps
Model: Martin Angerbauer


 This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.