WARNING: Entries in this weblog may contain or refer to material of a restricted nature, in particular sexual relations between males.

Friday, April 25, 2003

onstage: Pere
now playing: ultra relax - shinohara tomoe

That is the most insanely genki song ever recorded. I personally love it. ^_^

Wrote a poem which might actually pass for song lyrics. I present:

SELFISH

And if I say I'm fine will that be a lie?
And if I even try will you throw up your hands
and roll your eyes
What the hell is wrong with me you say what
the hell is wrong

I don't want to live in my head anymore
the empty cobwebbed pathways of my brain
Where sheep have grazed all my thoughts away
I'm still walking them every day
So easy just to keep walking
So much easier safer than having to change

Escape is a weight around my ankles
Self pity is a bitch to play
The mirror is there for a reason
But it's useless if I never look away

I miss my Anggun cd...there's a songfic treasury if there ever was one. Ah well, I memorized a lot of the songs anyway.

we haven't snuggled since 03:18 p.m..

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

onstage: Pere
now playing: crash into me - dave matthews band

I love this music, but the lyrics are so...teenage. Teenage het, which is worse.

Archived the previous entries to make room for this one. Love Cats, chapter one! Is it crap, I wonder. I have no way of telling any more.

THE LOVE CATS
by Peregrine Vision

1 - Nothing But Mammals

"Be advised, Kipling, the hunters are on the rise; repeat, the hunters are on the rise, over." Gunnar's Slavic accent is slight, but all the more noticeable for that.

My hand twitches by itself, but I don't adjust the headset, as is my habit when I'm nervous. I keep it steady on the trackpad. The satellite camera hovers over a very lonely road somewhere in western Siberia.

Everything looks green, as is usual with satellite cameras. Something that looks like a white Lego block, but is actually a truck, rolls to a stop. Several little dots get out of it and swarm in twos and threes into the woods surrounding the road. The little dots have big guns.

"Roger that, Haydee. Has the patrol picked up the prowlers?"

"One-three-four degrees southwest of us." I slide my fingers over the trackpad. Something comes into view amid the green: it looks like a group of little white grubs, some smaller than the others. "Looks like an entire unit."

A family. A family of Amur tigers, the biggest and most gorgeous species of Siberian. And if I hadn't gotten a tip to watch this area, this family would be in component parts all headed for different places by the time I came home from school.

"Four full, one half, one free ride." A cub. You know: full price for adults, half fare for children, free ride for the baby. "Hunters closing, Haydee; I estimate three hundred yards. Over."

"Two hundred and eighty-six, Kipling. This is my job, you know."

I smile. Gunnar took care of me when I was a baby, and now I'm giving him orders. "Sorry."

"They're coming within range. Over and out."

The ensuing battle is thankfully short. There are gunshots, and screams. The family, startled by the noise, flees.

Through the camera I can see Gunnar advancing on one of the poachers still moving. Through the headset I hear the man scream something in Russian. I never learned Russian properly; the only words I can understand are "we", "them" and "live". Gunnar says something short in reply and shoots him in the head.

"Hunters standing down, Kipling. Repeat, hunters standing down." "What did he say?" "I'll tell you later. Haydee out." I sigh and put down my headset, logging out from the satellite link. Killing the poachers is extremist, not to mention a ticket to some terrible karma, but so far it's the only sure way we've found to stop the poaching altogether.

I turn toward the bed. Its occupant smirks at me, and rolls over, arms and legs in the air, in a sarcastic imitation of a good doggie. I smile and turn briefly back to the computer, dallying only long enough to release the CD in the second slot from its suspended animation. You don't play music when you're overseeing a terrorist operation. I always play nice smooth female singers afterward, though; the liquid sound soothes me and empties me at the same time.

It's great makeout music, too.

The cell phone rings, startling me. The one in the bed makes a disgruntled sound. On the line is Gunnar. "Hey, Kay." He pronounces it properly: kaigh. "You okay?"

"Sort of. I wish we didn't have to kill them." I could laugh at how that sounds. But Gunnar understands.

"You're soft, that's why. Objectively, it solves a number of problems: overpopulation, unemployment...and poaching, of course. I believe that was the point of the whole operation."

Not funny, Gunnar. "What did he say?"

"He said, 'Why do you let them live? We need to live too.'"

"What did...you say?"

"I said, 'There's less of them'. I have to go. Mail me and tell me how it's going with your boyfriend, with school, whatever. You're still my godson, you know."

"Okay." Gunnar hangs up without saying goodbye; he's just like that. I put the cellphone down and swing round in my chair to face the bed.

Said boyfriend, if you want to call him that, is draped over the end of the bed, where he's been watching the whole operation. Stripe lifts himself up on his elbows and bares his teeth at me. It's his equivalent of a beckoning finger.

"So you're done? About time. Come back here, pussycat."

I huff and roll my eyes, but I obey, getting up from the chair and going over to the double bed. "You're just as bad as he is. Worse. Those are your people we're trying to save."

Stripe's ice-blue eyes go cold; the slitted pupils narrow. "They're not my people," he growls, pulling me down onto the bed. "Nobody's my people. I'm my people."

As if to emphasize his point he lets go of me and gets up on all fours--and Changes. Not all the way, or even halfway. His favorite phase is Phase 2, the one that can be mistaken for human. A really punked-out, freak human, the kind that goes to death metal concerts and gets spots on Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Most animals have markings not only on their fur, but on the skin underneath the fur. It's a fact not many people know. Stripe in Phase 2 is pale but not fur-white, with the distinctive stripes on his skin, his ears dark and pointy but still in their "proper" place, his claws only longish, sharp nails. He's noticeably bulkier, though, and his teeth are jagged.

"Come here, pussycat," he says again, his voice deeper, rougher. He crawls over to snuggle his face against my neck. "C'mon, little catnip mousie. Stripe wants to play."

"Yeah, I'll bet." But his tongue is warm, and still wet-velvety like a human's, and his knee is nudging my thighs open.

I let him. I let him slide the bathrobe off my shoulders. I let him spread my legs. I let him take my wrists and spread my arms, too. I let him suckle at my skin till I feel the pores tingle with blood, passing through the thin-walled vessels, rising cell by tiny red cell to his conquering mouth.

That's how hickeys are made. You suck until the blood breaks its channels and comes up to meet you. The skin doesn't bleed, but it colors; in little red speckles at first, then a dark blue bruise spreading under the transparent epidermis. You can taste the blood by then.

Stripe loves it. My body is full of little colored marks, the newer ones blue and purple with a dark red edge, the older ones greenish with a mustard edging. Some of them itch; the darker ones sting. Stripe goes over them with his tongue, enjoying the little sounds that I make when he does. He plays me like an instrument.

And I let him.

The edge of a tooth scrapes against a tender spot. My back jerks into an arch.

"Hss! Stripe..."

"Now," he purrs, and you haven't heard someone purr till you've heard Stripe do it, "did that hurt, pussycat, or did you like it?" He licks his teeth, grinning up at me. "Or both?"

Tears fill my eyes. He smiles an incredibly evil smile at this and he comes up to kiss me. It's an animal kiss, his tongue caressing my open mouth before diving inside.

"Turn over."

I obey, biting my lip. I press my cheek against the pillows and shut my eyes tight. I'm not scared; at least I can say, whatever else he's done to me, I've never been scared. I'm just...it feels so...

His thighs imprison mine; his fingers tighten on my wrists, the nails digging into my skin. "Mmm." He transfers my left hand to his own; his freed right hand slides downward along my ribs. He can hold both my wrists in one hand.

His teeth rest against my neck; his grip is firm but not cruel. This is how most predators hold their mates still for penetration. His finger slides into me. The shrill little squeal that comes from my throat, like a piglet or a dying rabbit, shames me.

Stripe lets go of my neck, but only to pant, "Still wet, huh? Still some lube left..." His teeth press into my skin again, and then--

I sob into the sheets. It hurts, even with the lube, and yes, I still want it. Stripe's breath is harsh in my ear. He thrusts hard, and my sobs turn to moans, my moans to gasps and then screams. And still he holds me down, as if I'd run away. He releases my neck, but still grips my wrists, his weight holding me against the bed, shoving me hard against it over and over. As if he had to force me to take him in me, as if I don't beg for it with my whole body, with everything I've got; as if I weren't happy just to be fucked, to be played. To be his.

That's what makes me cry. That's what hurts, that he rapes me even when I don't have to be raped, that he wants to steal what I'd freely give him.

When I come I cry his name, and the tears don't slow until he comes too, with a long, low, satisfied growl.

It won't be enough. In a little while he'll want more, and then more after that, and when I can't give it anymore he'll go off again, who knows where, and someone else will scream as he makes them come, although I'm the only one he holds down with his teeth or shows his other Phases to. The others think he's just a control freak. I'm the only one who knows what he is.

It just makes me more ashamed, knowing that as tiny and pathetic that consolation is, I still treasure it.

He's already asleep beside me, his nose in my hair. I turn carefully and snuggle into his chest, savoring his warmth, his smell, the slow rhythm of his breathing. I draw his arms around me, snuggle closer and shut my eyes.

When I wake up, he'll be gone. But by morning he'll be back. He always comes back. Not even he knows why. But I do.

It's the tiger that comes back. The tiger gets protective after sex. The tiger likes to be cuddled, and petted, and loved. The tiger thinks I'm its mate, and tigers mate for life.

Admittedly it's the tiger that has the unquenchable sex drive, but it's the human that leaves without a word, that fucks other people without a thought and then returns without apology.

The tiger only hurts me, and it doesn't even mean to. It's the human that breaks me.

* * *

I used to wonder why keepers insist on giving their big cats all these outlandish names. Ayesha, Kim Nargo, Jenner...it all seemed overdone to me. Then I actually met the big cats. Up close, I mean.

Tosca nuzzles at my hand through the wire fence, greeting me in her usual friendly way. Alarmed, I look around quickly, in case one of the other keepers is watching. Alex, the senior keeper in charge of me, is coaxing Joachim into the little holding pen that they stay in while we clean their habitat.

Tosca and Joachim are orange Bengalis, the tiger that Kipling based Shere Khan on. They're more slender than Amur tigers, needing much less fur. Also they're a deeper orange, in certain light almost reddish. Like all tigers, they're gorgeous. Like all the tigers in this particular zoo, they know me personally.

Alex and the supervisor, Howard Bauer, are impressed with my natural rapport with the tigers. I can't tell them it's because they know me as Stripe's mate.

Tigers don't have as rigid a social structure as, say, lions, or wolves. But if there were ever an official alpha male at the zoo, Stripe would be it...even if he doesn't actually live there. This is the result of a long story, and I can't tell it right now, but you'll probably hear it later, if I have time. In short, all the animals in this zoo know Stripe, and they know me.

Am I proud of this? Am I ashamed? I don't know. It certainly makes my job easier though. And more fun, I'll admit.

Tosca follows Joachim willingly. The two prowl round their cage, watching us with curious yellow eyes as Alex and I collect their droppings and put them in large buckets. Then we sweep out the concrete areas, like the stairs and the gully below the viewing rail. just before we leave we make a quick check to see if there are bare patches of grass or pulled-up plants that need to be replanted.

We're just finishing up when Tosca makes a funny grunting sound. Joachim, who's decided to lie down, lifts his head.

"Good morning!" The British accent is a dead giveaway. Alex grins at me as we're putting away the cleaning supplies. He's an aboriginal dark, so his grin is very white. You can't help but grin back.

"Hey, Peter," he says, turning to the person outside the gate. "We've just done making the beds and cleaning the bathroom."

"And a lovely job you've done of it, too," says Dr. Gentle. No, I'm serious. That's really his last name. "Are the lord and lady of the house ready for their monthly checkup?"

"Looks like it," I say, locking the gate behind me. "Morning, Doctor. You're pretty early today."

Dr. Peter Gentle is a naturalist who transferred from Oxford to look after Tosca and Joachim. He says he'd miss them more than England if he'd let them go. He's tall and a bit thin, with brown hair that never looks combed and darkish eyes behind his glasses. He always has this little smile, like life is so funny.

He looks surprised to see me. "Kay?" Like Gunnar, he pronounces my name the European way. "You're working with the tigers already?"

I give him my best eager smile. "I know, it's so cool!"

For a moment he looks nonplussed, and then relaxes and smiles back. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" He turns to the tigers. "Just the routine check today. They're doing uncommonly well."

We answer his questions, and watch him take notes. Then we open the gate to the pen, and the "lord and lady" stalk back out into the habitat.

"Well, that's done." Dr. Gentle tucks his pen and notebook back into his pocket.

"What happened to the Palm Pilot?" I ask him. Last month he'd gotten a brand new PDA with a color screen and a silver stylus. I'd like one, but I think I'd probably overload it.

He makes a face. "It got rained on. So much for the Age of Technology."

That sounds just like him. I know he once got a special award for something, and he's supposed to be unusually young for a Ph.D., and he's actually quite handsome, but Dr. Gentle can be such a dork. It's hilarious.

"Stop sniggering!"

Alex and I try to obey. Dr. Gentle looks indignant. "It could happen to anybody!"

"Yeah," says Alex, "but it happened to you." Which just sets me off again.

My wristwatch beeps. Oh damn--almost eleven. I have a lunch appointment with a guy who's working on preserving a certain stretch of Amazon (that's the river, not the online bookstore), and all his legal efforts have failed. That's why he's meeting with me.

"Alex, I'm done for the day, right?"

"Sure, kid." He winks at me.

....................

That's all I have. Yes, I strongly suspect it is crap. It's obvious that I know next to nothing about covert ops. To add to that, someone might shut this blog down just 'cos it has the word "terrorism" in it.

Jane-chan, where are you? I need feedback here.

. . .

Big update on YOWIE!. Strips 8 to 10 up, and comments added to previous strips. Next week: LoEPGB! Whatever that means.

we haven't snuggled since 10:53 a.m..