The Circus Freak - and the boy who was afraid of clowns

Twenty-Third Chapter

RENATO WENT BACK HOME DISTRAUGHT. THE TALK WITH BERNARD had made him worry. It wasn’t fear. Renato would never allow himself to give in to such an inferior feeling. He recalled the last time he had felt real fear. He was thirteen. His mean drunk mother had made him sleep hugging his worst enemy. Renato was completely aware, now that he had become a wise grown man, that half of that fear was just the effect of his fruitful, childish mind, and the other half was the effect of the asthma medicine.

Not even he could be sure of his thoughts. Childish imagination? Perhaps. In the full reality of his dreams he had seen the immateriality of his experiences with mystic beings that inhabited the mind of little Renato and frightened the soul of grown Renato. Maybe drugs were just a canal that connected his body to his spirit, or stimulated his mind. Renato was intimate with drugs. He knew that it was not common for X users to have hallucinations or delusions. Ecstasy is the drug of plenitude, of the eternal moment, of overwhelming sensory experiences. He was sure it was the perfect drug because it didn't take you away from real life, it actually pushed you into an ocean of truths, of surrealistic sensations, without feeling sorry for you. While he felt pleasure in strangling, having rough sex, or thinking about his morbid fate, it was not because of ecstasy; that was the essence of his own personality.

When driving by the condo's watch tower, Renato saw that the gateman was awake. The short gateman couldn't miss the opportunity to stretch himself forward and try to see inside Renato's car, squinting his eyes in an attempt to see through the pickup’s dark windows. He waved at Renato compulsively with his little hand and short fingers with dirty, bitten nails. One of the few fun moments of his job was to see which girls Renato had managed to bring home. He felt like he could participate in each one of Renato's experiences by observing him and commenting on his love life with other residents.

Nosey gateman.

                        "Hi there, pal." Renato rolled his window down fully, showing that the passenger seat was empty. The gateman was disappointed. "Is there any mail for me?"

                        "There is just one of those you never open, sir," the gateman's sad face changed completely when he was trying to excitedly show intimacy with Renato through his mail. He was talking about the letters that came from France. One day, out of the blue, Renato told him he never opened these letters from overseas.

                        "It's from the same sender... the Jaciara person." the gateman had his body hanging from the tower, leaning over the counter, and his arm was forcefully inside the window of the Frontier, giving Renato his mail. He made it so he put it directly in Renato's hand.

Renato remained quiet. He was aware that the night gateman could be a future problem for him. The scene of the gateman being questioned by a cop, or even by the dealer that was looking for him came to his mind. The short gateman would tell it all, he would do it out of pleasure, every single detail of his routine, he would tell.

He climbed up the stairs, strongly smashing the letter within the fingers of his left hand, feeling the pulse of each finger's vessel. He remembered Natália's dead pale skin, the immortality fountain that poured out of her fist, he remembered going out at night, getting high and having sex, the vibrant thinking, the taste of totality.

He remembered the drug.

At 2 am, Renato walked around in his apartment, swinging sideways to the rhythm of trance music that was coming from the living room stereo system. He was no longer angry. The ashes of Jaciara's letter laid on the kitchen floor. Renato stroked his leather belt as if it was a woman's skin. The tips of his fingers were greatly sensitive now, thanks to ecstasy; his strong pulse made him fully aware of every single sound and color. A car honked three streets away and the sound penetrated Renato's ears, distorting the synthetic sound of trance.