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“I’m so tired” Narcisa said suddenly, out of breath. She lay down by a waterfall in the park.
“We’re supposed to go see Ana Lucia the Reike healer, remember?” Jonathan reminded her.
“I know Cigano but I’m just so…. tired…” She closed her eyes.
We sat there for a while without saying anything until Narcisa’s eyes popped open. “Pumpkin soup! Now! Go!”
And she sprinted back down towards the art school cafeteria. We followed behind her and sat down next to her at a small table. The old woman who’d witnessed her pushing the cat in the pool an hour earlier looked at us with a mix of trepidation and pity.
Narcisa ordered her pumpkin soup, and I ordered a tomato soup.
Jonathan ordered a cold soft drink.
We waited for the soup to come as Narcisa’s eyelids grew heavier. When it came she scarfed it down without conversation.
Then she belched loudly. “Tiiiii-red.” She repeated.
“I know, Princess, but Ana Lucia is expecting us at 4. Why don’t we go to Copacabana for a while and wait there?”
“Good. We go then.” She got up and left, disregarding the bill, naturally.
“Stupid cat,” she muttered as she walked by the fountain again.
We caught up to her and Jonathan started up the bike to give her a lift to the bottom of the hill, since at that point she had resided to half-dragging herself down it like a broken robot saying “Tiiiii-red Cigano… so so tiiii-red.”
She slept the whole taxi ride to the beach. We got out at the last kiosk before the little military fort separating Copacabana from Ipanema. Jonathan was already there, typing away on his Crackberry, eating an ice cream bar. 

Narcisa rubbed her eyes, looked at the ice cream bar, and then the feeding frenzy was on. She snatched the ice cream from him, quick as a gila monster, swallowing the whole thing in one bite and spitting out the stick. She then called over a boy who was selling empadas and ordered four guava and cheese flavored ones. When she was done with that she called over another boy who was selling “Globo” wafer biscuits, ravaged those, crumbs flying all over the place. Pigeons began to crowd around the mess.
“Get away!” She spat as more crumbs flew out of her mouth.
“You planning on eating any of that?” Jonathan laughed.
“I love you Cigano! You are the beautiful man.” She said as, squeezing his head, she kissed his cheek. “Now we must go to see the Ana Lucia!”
He looked at his watch and nodded. “Okay, yeah. Let’s go.”
Narcisa stomped at a few pigeons and yelled at a taxi that came to a screeching halt.
“Come Alessandra we have to go!”
I jumped in the cab. “See you there!” I yelled to Jonathan, not sure at this point if “there” was even where we were headed….

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

The sun was hot and high in the sky when I woke up in the early afternoon after the last dancing frantic joyful fuck with Narcisa at sunup. It had been some night. As I rode over to my post at the beach in the windy afternoon, my groggy mind wandered over last night’s events like a hungry bum searching for scraps over the fuzzy terrain of recent memory. Hope…
Narcisa and I spent the night sitting out on the veranda looking over the city as she recited some of her apocalyptic poetry for me. We even had a tape recorder going finally, like we’ve been talking about the last coupla weeks and she was really hamming it up… Hours and hours, practicing reading out loud, reciting her latest poems, talking, ranting, enchanting my soul deeper and deeper again and again, weaving her magical spells, singing obscure crazy songs that only she knows, dredged up from the tomb of the beautiful child who lives and dances feral and free behind her spun out searching eyes of fire and passion. There is life behind those eyes… Gloria A Deus!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Narcisa. She’s the only one for me, just for today, a holy gift from Heaven and Hell too, a one off, so beautiful to me it lingers between pain and passion and love and terror and a raging hatred bordering on the sublime. Narcisa, sprung like a living embodiment of the very spirit of poetry itself bubbling up out of deep nightmare depths of my own dark imagination. And I wish I had a camera, that any camera ever existed that could somehow possibly begin to capture the essence of all the emotion her very image speaks to my soul at such magical moments when the light is just right gleaming off her crazy genius bughouse alien eyes, her sleek catlike frame and long dirty brown hair that smells of life and death and danger and passion sex magic music dance joy sorrow movement light dark dispair standing here like a drunken kung fu ninja, an eternal acid eating idiot savant so crucial and perfect in every way.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

“Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.”

Henry Miller

One thing I know about Narcisa is her deadly fear of doctors, hospitals and a long-standing fervent hatred for anything in any way reminiscent of the dirty, noisy, violent state-run ‘clinics’ and fanatical, prison-like young Christian concentration camps that had traumatized her. Terrible administered hell holes that her ignorant old Born-Again failure of a mother had callously booted her into from an early age.
A convenient alternative to giving her children the kind of love and attention and protection and support all kids deserve but very few actually get from so-called parents.
There are few people on this earth or Hell below who I have more contempt for than Narcisa’s arrogant, hypocritical, insane old Bible-spewing cow of a mother. If it was up to me, violent, negligent, abusive parents like her would all be lined up and shot, which would also neatly take care of at least three quarters of the world’s overflowing population…
Narcisa has told me again and again over the years how she’d rather die than ever go to the hospital. And I must admit it really made for an impressive sort of gutter-punk bravado to hear her say it so valiantly. I even find it admirable, given her background. I could certainly sympathize and get where she’s coming from, despite the infuriatingly twisted rationale she seems to just automatically throw at every problem that comes her way. Let’s just hope she doesn’t plan on becoming deathly ill any time soon.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Today I asked Narcisa how it was possible that a being of such genius and supernatural vision and intellegence could’ve been born to live among such ignorant peasants. She looked at me and said, ‘Joni Shaw is not the ignorant peasant!”
I was flattered. But I told her I was actually referring to her family of origin, her ignorant, bible-spouting ass of a mother. That’s when she told me, “she used to be very e’smart, Cigano. When I was the little girl she wasn’t always these ways like now. Before the stabbing
attack, she was the intellectual, always read and seeking truth and the knowlege. She e’smoke the herb with poetry peoples an’ read all bout everything. She know all the grand mind peoples too, like Paulo Coelho an, Chico Xavier, an’ always travel to look for more the knowledges. Was only after she stab she changes, Cigano. Was then the clones doctors make her to take it all the crazy medicines for make it she same like thems. E’stupid robot peoples. Then she go with the clones peoples to e’stupid jesus church, an’ then she finish. She thinking an’ talking same like them. She terrify for these devil they tell her about it, so now she fucked up an’ crazy from take it all the crazy medicine and go the brainwashing in Jesus church.”
I shook my head. I will never fully decipher the crazy jigsaw puzzle of Narcisa. And still still still, I try as best I can to keep up with her alien intellegence, simply because it is there before me, beckoning me deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Narcisa: “There is peoples who are the real human bings who eat when they hungry an’ e’sleep when tired - most the human being no so e’smart like that. That is the clones peoples. They all go the lunch at mid day cuz that’s the custom, is the time to eat. They brush the teeth not cuz they wan’ it the clean teeths, only cuz it is something the clone peoples all do it, is for they training, Cigano. Brainwashing. But the worst of all it is the cripple peoples. They no good for nothing. How can somebody who loosed the arm or the leg be same mental capacity as one full body person? I believe it like the Bob Marley philosophy. I rather to dead than losed my foot, cuz without it, then I no more the whole person, like it the radio with out it the antennea. No serve for no thing, got it? An’ the Narcisa, I don’t have sentiment or morality, Cigano, so I cannot participate in the society of the clone peoples. But I wan’ to participate in the something. I just don’ to know what it is… “ 

I looked at her in awe as she sat there talking for hours of the secret sciences and mystical ancient codes, quantum mechanics. Greek philosophy and sacred mathematical formulas, extra terrestrial vibrational geometric linguistics and higher dimentional magick and alchemy. It was like she was reading the Ten Commandments to a geranium. It all went far far over my head, yet at the same time I intuitively strained to understand some little part of all that was being said, for the mere raw eloquence and esoteric power of her words, however incomprehensible…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

Waking up this morning was a traumatic moment of torture I’ll never forget, the fucking alarm drilling mercilessly into my fuzzy head like a sadistic dentist high on crack.
I cursed the day Narcisa was spawned from that nasty old hell hole an angry inch from her cunt bitch mother’s putrid stinking bung-hole. I moaned in despair as I rolled over and covered my head with the pillow. It was no use. I crawled across the bed like a wounded
bleeding old baboon and lowered myself down the loft bed ladder, hating every detail of existence with a screaming bloody vengence.
But Narcisa was awake. And, still burdened with all of her usual
hyperactive, attention-deficit impatience - which she still doesn’t
understand is a characteristic trait of the disease of addiction, a
corroding soul-sickness of the infantile ego mind of every untreated
drug addict - absolutely insisted I must also be awake at 9 am
sharp.

Anxiety. Impatience, hurry up Cigano, go go go! God forbid I should
get a full night’s sleep after catering to her every childish consumer dream, whim and demand all day long, every day of my goddamned life. And all that raging NEED and infantile impatience snapping furiously at the heels of a full, action-packed month of non-stop mind
fuck drama and systematic daily sleep deprivation. God forbid I should be allowed to sleep a full 6 hours wake up at noon like I’d begged her to let me do last night. God forbid. Narcisa knows I need to sleep between 6am and noon. And she’s always managed to expertly awaken me during those ungodly hours when I’m only good for one thing - sleep.
Narcisa has found a way to continue to torture me with sleep deprivation, even from afar, and without smoking crack. Remote mind control. Narcisa. Fuck.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

As the taxi bumped through Botafogo traffic, Narcisa began to smile brightly.
“Is SO good this day, Alessandra,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
She paused a beat, thinking with gleaming eyes.
“Is like this. I don’t expect I EVER gonna leave the house again. I CAN NOT to leave the house because I’m always e’scared of the peoples and the things are going to kill me, or rap-ed me, or arrest me. Or the extra terrestrial shit. Some crazy shit gonna happen to the Narcisa all the time, and all the things like this. You know? That shit man, I e’smoke, and then I become the crazy girl. Afraid of the shadow! No to ever leaving even my little room!” She said, waving her hands around, then she thought a second longer. “But now I am here, in the taxi cab. And the sun is so good on my face. And I’m HAPPY to be alive. I WANT to do thing with my life. I don’t want to smoke the crack right now…. Is crazy! And you are here, and we gonna go to my favorite place on the whole Rio. You gonna love the Parque Lage, man.”
She was silent the rest of the ride.
Upon arrival at the park gates, she descended the cab like a queen from a horse-drawn carriage. I  grabbed  my purse, payed the driver and clumsily followed behind, scratching the mosquito bites on my ankles, making “psst psst” noises at a nearby cat. The cat scurried over to Narcisa and me and a did a few laps of 8’s through my legs as Narcisa leaned down to pet it. This went on for a minute, until she grabbed me by the hand.
“Let’s go find Cigano,” she said and we walked up the cobblestone driveway to the building where the art school is.
Jonathan was waiting for us next to his bike, typing away on his ratty silver laptop.
As we greeted him, a couple more cats came around, weaving through our respective legs, until they too realized we had no food and went back into the big tropical brush to tend to their cat business. There were many cats. Beautiful cats, everywhere.
We walked through the big entry way of the colonial-style art college into a big courtyard with many rooms off of it where art was being displayed. Narcisa yelled at a plant.
“Why you looking on me like that!??!” She said to a leaf on which
someone had placed a sticker of their face. “This is the most e’steew-pid art exposition I ever see. Ruining the plants to make the shit art that no one even notice? Re-tarded!”
“Do you want some pastels?” Jonathan asked Narcisa, poking his head into the little art supply store.
“Yes, Cigano. Right now, and the psychedelic color only. I’m e’staying here with my friend Alessandra now. Go!”
I felt a slight surge of panic as Jonathan disappeared into the little store. We were alone now. Babysitting Narcisa. In public. I lit a cigarette and thought about all the stories I’d heard of Narcisa in public places. Crazy stuff.
Off crack now a full eight hours, Narcisa was a ticking time-bomb. I shrugged it off as she told me a story about Israel, half-ready for an overdue critical meltdown.

PAST RIO ADVENTURES

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

She finally got tired of smoking crack and juggling coke bottles.
Attention span of a hyperactive puppy. She put on her tried and true cosmic waif denim mini skirt and psychedelic hand painted tattered tank top. She donned her purple shades and slid up beside me, panting like a raped drooling Lolita.
“What’s the plan, cigano?” she half whispered, half croaked, looking like an evil pirate.
I knew that was my cue to take her up in the loft bed and fuck her back to life.
She asked me to put some jazz on and I did. As I delved into the world of her sweet little chicken pie, she asked me who was playing the saxophone. I distractedly mumbled “Coltrane,” as I tasted her crack-scorched tongue with mine.
She surprised me by saying “John Coltrane?”
I said yeah, lost in her insane universe of endless surprise, while she ran her long witchy fingers up and down my back, delicately playing me like Coltrane playing that saxophone.
Finally she said “Hurry up, Cigano.” And I did. It was easy as I drank the vile wine of her stinking breath.
But I could tell she only half wanted me to hurry up and finish.
Against her will, she was getting excited too.
I can always tell, even if she can’t. Weird.
But it was already too late, I was already working the roller coaster car up to the top of the big hill and then suddenly, wheeeeeeee, I’m coming and dying and screaming and drooling like a rabid rottweiler, into her mouth, her cunt, her soul, as she plays me like John Coltrane’s fucking saxophone… and she is fucking me to death, and Iam dying again and again in her arms, coming, coming, and she’s laughing now, giggling just like Lolita, and she’s got my heart curled up like a sleeping cat in her crack-tainted claws, and I do not fucking care.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.