Journal Entry 026 / 0512 It had been a strange night already, but I don't know what possessed me then.Journal Entry 026 / 0512 It had been a strange night already, but I don't know what possessed me then. I walked briskly out of the castle and took a grav-slide down to the lagoon, I remember, and then summoned the SDisk. When the symbols on the command panel resolved into the word "destination" I ordered "Underground." The pad resolved into the glimmering white pentacle that manifests in water environments, and I stepped across the water onto the center. Since I was the only passenger, I immediately said "go." But also, in the back of my mind, there was the question, and as the teleporter activated, the desperate question came through clearly: "What am I doing... ...here?" The smell hit me first, but then it always hits first. Strong, pungent masculine sweat of a dozen species and leather combined with other, less definable (or more deniable) smells. The heat hits second. Rick uses full radiation-divestiture cooling units, and it doesn't help. The raw incandescent lightbulbs, the bodies and motion of what was probably over a hundred males moving in rhythm to music that was too damned loud, added to the heat that soaked through me where my skin was exposed. My face was flushed, and I knew it. What am I doing here? I walked forward into the dark and shadows and approached the bar. Horny, yes, but looking for something, too. But what? A specific species? A certain size? A master for a night, the weekend? What am I doing here? There was a time when doing this-- engaging in random, violent, wild sex with whatever mel struck my fancy-- was the high point of my every day. But I eventually grew tired of it, because something was missing, something I get out of my love for P'nyssa. And when the need for the violence, for the intense sensory overload, for the simple pleasure that cleansing pain can be, gets to be too much, I go to people I know, people I trust to handle me right. |