Hunger

von Marcus Krug

If it is in your nature you cannot win. And she had the craving in her veins.

As soon as she let go of the piece of rope that she had noosed around his neck, tied tight and choked him, he flung his huge hand uncontrollably from out of the dark into her face. Not a dislocated jaw again, she hoped. No, this time it felt different, something broke.

She knew what she was in for. So, no complaints there. Not from her. Since she went to the group meetings several nights during the week, she had met others with more extravagant needs. There was that fellow who only could come when his balls were banded tightly. The first time they were shagging, his shiny purple ball bag almost dropped off, because the rubber band was tied too tightly. Before he eventually came – in apparently quite painful spasms – he handed her a rusty razor blade and begged her to cut his balls and his cock off. The ecstatic combination of pleasure and pain had numbed his wits and senses and so he believed by making the cut things would last forever.

The one she was riding like a horse right underneath her, lying on his back – virtually dead – was not any different. Either the rope or a plastic bag were his accessories of choice. Asphyxiophilia. The lack of oxygen kicked him through the stages up to the redeeming climax. It is actually pretty easy, deprive your brain of oxygen and it induces a lucid, semi-hallucinogenic state called hypoxia. Combine this with an orgasm and you will get a rush that is no less powerful than cocaine, and highly addictive on top of it.

The force bottled-up by the rope – then suddenly released – let him kick and beat around in inadvertently violent eruptions, not paying any kind of attention to his surroundings in his struggle back into oxygenic life.

One of her front teeth and the bridge of her nose had given in to the force coming from the dark side. The blood running down the back of her mouth and then down her throat tasted like the sweetest honey. What if love is a bear that feeds you honey with its claws?

It was long ago when she fell in love for the first (and maybe the last) time, which of course involved sex. At least this part has proven to be highly rewarding to her. And naturally reinforcing, as well. What followed next were somewhat excessive activations of the so called reward-reinforcement mechanisms, which led inevitably to the development of compulsive sexual behaviour. That is a rather clinical observation, coming from some guy in the SAA group, to be honest.

Naturally speaking, sleeping around is a comparatively effective relationship killer. Because she also called a significant bit of narcissism her own that energetically demanded its share of affection and affirmation. This can be bought through sexual interaction quite efficiently, though. She could not help but get involved with her male friends and the friends of friends and so on. So it was just a matter of time until she was ousted by her friends and the people around her.

Every one of us has an appetite for something. Until we get what we want, we are starving. What followed in her case were lots of co-dependent relationships. Rather dysfunctional in nature. She more or less got what she wanted and in return had to give what the others asked for.

The compulsive need for affirmation and sex has brought in its wake an expansion of her hunting grounds. And since society rather cheers for openly virile men, women who live their life actively are frowned upon, to put it mildly. Losing job after job and being on the dole for what felt like an eternity, made her reality a very dark place to live in.

First it was just alcohol. Then later, this kind of escape behaviour did not suffice any longer, she slumped into drugs of every kind to fade out reality.

Without the opportunity of sufficient funding of her basic human needs, she got a couple of times involved in drug-related crimes of more or less serious nature. Although, there was rarely money left for food, after a hit and run or a break and enter, though, there was always money for a celebration of some sorts.

Carelessness or the state of permanent midnight she had manoeuvred herself into, got her caught at some stage. Part of her sentence stipulated the attendance of so called self-help groups. But the groups she was forced to be present at had the opposite effect on her. In AA she found people for occasional drinking binges. NA helped her to a steady supply of narcotics. And SAA with their twelve step plan to your next score … of course, you only went there if you were in for a lay.

That is what he did and that is how she met him, the man with the huge bear claws.

“Go and get yourself a towel from the bathroom, but do not bleed on the tiles.” he said, still lying on the bed, holding his hurting punch hand.

“Okay.” was her very thin and rather powerless response. Scuffling her feet, she went into the dark bathroom and turned on the lights and then the water. In the mirror, she had a look at her bony self – even paler than before, she looked, like a laboratory rat doped up on Valium with her red rimmed and bloodshot eyes.

“What the hell are you doing? Turn the fucking water off and get out of there!” he shouted over the noise of the running water. When she came obediently out of the bathroom, he had turned on the lights in the bedroom, still lying on the bed.

“Get your stuff and leave, will you? I call you later, okay?!” he said and added quickly, “Here are twenty bucks. You are getting skinnier every time we meet. Get yourself something to eat. You look hungry.”