Tangents Between God

By Regan Vasconcellos

Welcome to a promising work of modern literature that is filled from beginning to end with an exceedingly rich tapestry of experiences. Regan’s writing is mindful, deep and interactive, and he tells his unusual life stories with an eager vivacity and exuberance that keeps his readers constantly wide eyed in shock, nodding in agreement, and laughing out loud.
Tangents is an X-ray vision of his patchy relationship with God and his prodigal romantic encounters that often carry him dim witted to his knees, or to the precipice of suicide and existential despair. He explores each with humor, unapologetic candor, and a poetic precision that jolts readers to an awakening, and a recognition of the social and spiritual truth that is hardly addressed in the forefronts of life.

”I don’t think about art while I work, I try to think about life.” - Jean Michel Basquiat

Cover Art by Regan Vasconcellos

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329716384

Book preview

Tangents Between God

TANGENTS BETWEEN GOD

To Jean

Even after all this time

the sun has never once said to the Earth,

you owe me.

-Hafiz

People Who Bite

There are a lot of people out there feeling for something to get just so they can have something to give. Some people come into the world loaded. Some come in with amazing talent, like pure geniuses, and just change the world and impact people’s lives in amazing ways. Maybe some of those people had something in them before they came into the world, handed to them by some biased supreme being, implanted in their brain, or vibrating somewhere in their hearts, or swimming around in their gut. I don’t know, but these people have something and it’s the clear difference between them and the people going around their whole life feeling for something to get.

I would like to think I am one of those people with something to give, but I am not.  I am in fact one of those feeling around for something, and I keep picking stuff up and giving stuff out. This story is something I picked up along the way and I’ve got to give it out because I can’t really keep anything. If I try to keep stuff for myself I just get sick, and big and my body will start to swell and I’ll just get bloated, and I’ll start to smell and change colors, and things will start to change about me in my head, and my attitude, and mood, and I’ll not be able to explain it. I will, if I am lucky, end up in a hospital or a psycho ward, and if not, I’ll just explode or spontaneously combust. It’s the reason people combust I think. It’s the only logical reason. You’ve got to give something.

I got to writing this was because I was bored as hell, and I began to start feeling that thing, whatever it is that feels like a fire on a wick of a bomb, racing along the insides of my intestines toward a ghastly explosion, and to stop myself from exploding all over the place I figured I’d write this story. To tell the truth, I am not sure about this story, but I feel I have to get it out. Perhaps it’s crap and no more than three people will read it, including loved ones and my editor. If you are one of those three people and you have reached here, this part so far, feel free to stop immediately. There are probably many more books out there you would be better off reading and perhaps would learn something beneficial. Go read about the history of the KKK, or a biography of Mother Theresa, or something. Trust me, you will be spared absolute confusion and unexplained rants fit only for mad men, drunks, and saints. You are in your own hands now, and you and only you will take full responsibility for the things you read here. It is entirely your fault for the things you will suffer due to your own sick, jaded, perverse, and I don’t know what, curiosity. I don’t want to hear anything about it after all these warnings.

It came from the other room in the hostel I was staying while in Nicaragua. The sounds only came from Dan, a Canadian who sported an afro. He looked like a black version of Michael Angelo’s David. Anyway, Dan was the only one making any kind of sound. I could hear nothing from the little Asian he was with no matter how much I strained my ear. Some people are squealers, some are yellers, some people bite their lips, some people grunt and breathe hard, and some scratch and pull and squeeze. I particularly like people who bite their lip. These are the people who feel things, and concentrate upon it, even meditate upon it, and they do it without a word or a complaint. These are they who can appreciate pain in the pleasure, and feel pleasure in the pain. Anyway, that is just my preference. I like people who bite their lip, and this was probably what she was doing, and while lying there listening to her silence I remembered one girl who did it just right. She never bit the entire lip, never the upper lip, just the bottom right portion. It drove me wild seeing it, and that’s not even during sex. She did it when she was driving, or walking and thinking about something, like contemplating something in her head, something serious, or some important choice she had to make. It drove me wild just to think about her doing it, and it drove me wild to think about all the stupid choices she made even with all that biting. I wonder now if all the biting impaired proper thinking. She moved away from me for school and got hooked up with a guy I knew was going to cheat on her, tell her lies, and treat her like crap, and that is exactly what she told me had happened less than a year later when she called, when she dropped out of school and crushed her leg under a horse, and rolled over her car and totaled it and almost died. Anyway, this story is not about her or any of that. I am over all that. I really am. This story is not about that at all. Not even a little bit.  I am over that, much better now. I am not like that man I met at Barnes and Nobles while drinking coffee. A woman he dated for a bit left and married another guy, and five years later he’s still torn up about it. God, I don’t want to be that guy. Can you believe that! I have a hard time imagining it. Can’t believe it myself. Anyway, this story is about escaping all that.

Bottom of the Barrel

I boarded that plane and I was not looking back neither. I just had to get out of that army town. Not the army but the town I was living in. The army was fine and mad and fine and as mad as fine and mad can ever be. The army took care of me because we suited each other in that fine madness. Took care of me there with a tight noose, took care of their investment, with the tax payer’s dollar busting and blowing out in every horizon and behind every mountain and tree left to nothing but twigs. Taking care that every bullet and every bomb is sent with a responsible finger pulling it and sending it and it’s got to be so, so, so, so that you and you and me and we got to claim it, and claim it is what we got to do, no hiding behind any I don’t knows, because you know, because you were born with brains and common sense and so it got to go, and go go we got to go on pulling triggers and sending a real living hell, and that is what it’s all about, hell and hell unleashed by you, you licked that postage stamp and we walked through the streets and delivered every one with tight heavy boots, and me and you and we got to claim it and so it was and so it’s going to continue to be until we get to care about what we know about. So anyway, it wasn’t the Army at all that I had to get out of, but it was more that crazy army crap town, with people who see it up close and personal in the lives of the sacrificed who walk daily around and around and back and forth and back again in uncovered graves. They see it in the faces of their crazy husbands and busted up sons and torn up daughters, and knowing more than anybody knows what there is really to know, still go on collecting the stamps and drinking and eating and getting bloated and fat because they just don’t give a shit, because their conscience are warped or was never ever formed to begin with.    

The thing about the Army is that they take the cheapest real estate they can find, and they send their soldiers to train and live there and then suddenly all these cheap, and really low ambitious, and low self-esteem, and low IQ, and low every kind of people start coming around to make a living sucking whatever kind of dough they can out of the soldiers. The people were really something, I’ve got to tell you, and the name of the town—Killeen—was really something, too. I mean, that name just suited it perfectly. I felt like it was killeening me. I know that sounds cheesy and all that. The name I mean, and me saying that, but cheesy or whatever, it’s not the name, but the people that were killing. I just could not get over them. If there was any town that had all rednecks, stupid, obese, racist people, with tattoos all over their arms and legs, faces, and on the insides of their lips, it was this one. Trying to have an intelligent conversation there with anyone was practically impossible. People had no substance beyond the surface of the skin. Everything was purely physical. Being an army town, it had all these young men who were compelled to keep in shape because they were army guys and all. We had to be up in the morning so we could do pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and all other ups and downs you can think of. On top of that, we had to run two miles in the heat or cold or in whatever crappy weather there was. When all the yelling was said and done, we had all these obese lazy women with tattoos on their eye lids to go home to, who just sat on their asses and watched soap operas all day, or played video games, or fed their babies. I mean they were some lookers I got to tell you, and really intelligent too. I just got sick thinking about it. None of them looked in anyway appealing and the soldiers were with them out of pure desperation, because there was nothing else. If they had any standards there was no evidence of it. What drove me crazy was that these women had nothing, not a single quality that was worth anything. They could hardly speak at a third grade level, looked horrible, and yet felt super important. I swear, it drove me mad. It drove me mad that all these kids who were willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, only got the bottom of the barrel to dip from. The bottom of the barrel where all the rust and dead leaves, and dead bugs, and all kinds of dead shit that nobody wants collects. These soldiers only had that shit to drink from, and I can tell you for sure, if working in the army didn’t kill them, these people did.

I was lucky though, I had Gabby, the lip biter I was talking about earlier. She was a real catch compared to these women. She was a tall redhead with amazing boobs and a great personality. What I loved about her the most was that she loved the outdoors. On our first date she introduced me to this park with a hill we had to climb overlooking a lake. The scene was just breathtaking because the sky just seemed to go on forever and the clouds were so high, and hung there like Christmas decorations. It was just beautiful and peaceful and we sat there next to each other and just talked for what seemed like hours. Then we lay down and looked at the stars when they came out. I had her rest her head on my arms and things just started from there.  She was also homey and liked keeping things clean, that was important to me. She could also cook a couple meals and worked on top of going to school. She was no lazy obese person with tattoos all up in her grill.  She was too good for that place and was wise to get out of there. When she left she was gone for good, no looking back at anything, not even me. When she left me it was easy because she had already made it up in her mind a long time before. The act of packing and driving away was just a formality. She left like she had done it a thousand times in her mind before. She left and I could have just died. I was so depressed. The whole thing was depressing, but I didn’t blame her.

Bold Face Blackmail

I tried seeing other people and this started with Sally, a yoga teacher in her thirties. She had a great looking body and I saw her a couple times in the park running. About three months after Gabby and I officially broke it off, I called Sally up and asked when she was teaching. The next day I was in her class and she was touching me all over and fixing my postures and poses so I could get it just right.

You are so tense, she said, and knowing exactly where the conversation was leading I responded.

Yes, I need some kind of release. Soon I was at her studio lying on her massage table. She said to take off my clothes and right after she said that, she walked off into another room. I stood there for a while trying to figure out if I’d heard her right, and if I did hear her right, I was trying to figure out if she meant completely naked. I reasoned to myself that I was a man; I had been naked in the presence of women before, I was fine being naked, and to be fazed by it was just being completely childish. So I took everything off and laid on my stomach with only my butt covered. I began to have this erection that was so stiff and throbbing and my imagination just fueled fresh blood into it, and I could feel the pumping. I was actually enjoying the feeling, and I squeezed my butt cheeks together and pressed it into the leather just to feel it more. When she finally did come out she began to work on me starting with my exposed parts. By the time she got to my legs I was completely relaxed. There was no more tension anywhere.

Turn over, she said. I did it without any hesitation or reluctance. I was no longer erect and I was just enjoying the massage and beginning to think in my mind that she was the best masseuse I had ever had. I am not just saying this for the sake of saying it. I have had massages in S. Korea, Thailand, spas in the U.S. and Australia, and from professionals, and when I say hers was the best I am comparing hers to all the rest. I was feeling like a cloud just ready to sail away through one of the windows. Occasionally she would pass her hand over my groin area, and I could feel her brush by it, or nudge it as in an accidental manner while passing. I knew she deliberately did it, and she wanted me to know she did it deliberately, but not in a way that can be proven or pointed out. It could be seen as an accident in a perfect, innocent, clueless world.

I am not sure how we got to my apartment, or if it was the same day or not, or how long the time was between that first massage and lying together on my bed watching a movie. I don’t even remember the movie, but what I do remember was how disappointed I was by the whole thing, and I am not just talking about the movie. Anyway I was not ready to get into anything else. I was still missing Gabby and wanted only her.  Anyway Sally was in the process of getting a divorce from her husband, a black retired soldier.

He wouldn’t have sex with me unless I start going to church with him.

What?

Yea. Can you believe that?

Wow. So does he not have desires too? What does he do?  Just masturbates with you right there or something?

No, I don’t know. She said with a laugh looking at the ceiling. We sleep in separate rooms now.

Oh.

She bites her lip and looks like she is going to cry. I look away.

So why don’t you just give in, if you love him just go to church with him.

I did try, but I can’t anymore. I can’t fake that anymore.

I guess you are right. It’s like bold face blackmail.

What?

Blackmail, like um, like if you don’t believe in Jesus he is going to send you to hell. So you better believe or go to hell.

Yea, yea, I know, I mean ‘bold face.’ What’s ‘bold face’?

It’s a term my mom uses, kind of like if I am lying to her and she and I know that I am lying and I lie anyway. Like ‘presumptuousness.’

Oh! she laughs.

I am secretly happy she can laugh. She talks about her kids. One is eight and the other is seventeen and while she is talking, I can’t believe she would have kids with this freak. I can’t believe a lot of things but things that you can’t believe are sometimes not as bad as things that really happen. The world is filled with all kinds of people you would not believe unless you see them up close and personal, and all kinds of situations.

Has he always been religious? I want to let the conversation go because I don’t want to make her cry, but I am intrigued. I want to get to the bottom of it, to find that solution.

No, it’s only when he got out the army he started going.

So he changed on you.

She began biting her lips again and I could see that self-pity, woe is me look in the eye coming on.

It’s OK, most people when their kids are grown divorce anyway. They have had a lot of time to change, to become different people. They find that they have nothing in common with each other and decide to split once the kids are grown. Nothing is keeping them together anymore. Religious or irreligious

Yes, Mat is grown and he’s in college but Beth is still eight.

Oh.

A silence engulfed the room and I felt like I needed to do something about it. I thought that I should kiss her or make love to her or something out of sheer pity, but I