I've got a fever like a California wildfire. It spread so quickly I barely had time to declare myself a state of emergency before I was completely incapacitated. There's a revolution being waged inside my body and it's going guerilla on me. It comes in waves and in between it feels like death.

We've been on the road for days. We're in Massachusetts where they don't have any R's. It's wicked obnoxious. We picked up three random kids on our way up here who were actually trying to hitch on the Merit Parkway. Between the five of us we scraped together enough money to get two hotel rooms for the night. Normally we would've only gotten one and arm wrestled for the beds but since no one wants to catch the plague from me, we sprung for two. I had to use way more of our money than I should have but I don't give a shit. I was able to sell the last of those oxycodone pills I had the other day in the City. I sold them to some gutter punks while I was across from Tompkins Square Park waiting for her ass to cop a bag of dope with my money. I'm the breadwinner in this relationship. I deserve my own room to convalesce for the night.

The two hotel rooms are right next to each other. They didn't have any that connected with a door but it's just as well. Maybe I can actually get some sleep. Eve was hungry for vodka and there wasn't enough cash left over for Nyquil so I guess it's going to be the natural route to restless, fever-induced dreams for me tonight. I swear to God, if either of us develop one more expensive habit, we're never gonna eat again.

Her brazen voice begins to seep through the wall from the next room signaling the start of a race to another beautiful blackout. I snatch a pillow, wrap it around my head for earmuffs and smile. Thoughts of those random kids stuck in there with her for the night about to witness the most belligerently entertaining show on earth for the first time in their lives brings an empathetic smirk to my mouth. Then it fades and I wonder if she'll try to fuck any of them since I'm out of commission. I know she's cheated on other girlfriends but she swears she's never cheated on me. I'm the only one she's ever been in love with, she says, and she could never have done that if she had been in love with those other girls. It's logical but I still feel helpless and nauseous whenever I don't know where she is.

I'm feeling desperate now to fall asleep before I have to hear through osmosis, muffled versions of her drunken stories that, after a year with her, I could tell better any day:

So I ask the cop, 'Why you arrestin' my friends? What did they do, huh?' and the motherfuckin' po-po slams me up against his car and says, 'Listen, princess....

So I told the cop, 'I didn't mean to crack the frat boy's skull open with the trucks of my skateboard officer, but he called me a dirty bitch.' The motherfucker didn't wanna hear it. So he threw me in Maricopa County and tossed away the key....

With no Nyquil and no better options, I close my eyes and try to think of something nice. Something nice, something nice, puppies and kittens, puppies and kittens, puppies and kittens and rainbows. With the tense fever-fatigue in my muscles and the memory of where I've slept the past few nights in my spine, I feel myself starting to drift after a little while. Puppies and kittens and rainbows... Everything outside lingers, goes in and out for a moment, and is gone.

SLAM! My eyelids peel back and force me to wake up as the back of the door collides voraciously with the protective rubber nipple on the wall. The sound bounces around inside my head, banging into one side and then the next, over and over and over as the door bounces back, rejected. There's a tiny, pale hand on the door pushing it back open and then there's Eve. Florescent hotel security light is streaming through the doorway in long clean angles as if a divine visitor has appeared before me and a miracle is about to take place.

Eve is stumbling through the doorway. She stops all of a sudden as if she's just become aware of herself. She turns around quietly and carefully closes the door. Tiptoeing, exaggerating each step, like she's hunting for wabbit.

"Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing in here?" I bark at her.

"Heeeeeey, baaaaaby."

She's whispering loud enough she might as well be talking.

"How you feeeeeelin' ?"

I realize that it's one of those nights when she suddenly turns into syrup instead of an inferno after she's been drinking. You never know until after a few hours; it can always go either way.

"Evie get out of here. You're wasted and I feel like shit. I was finally asleep and you come up in here? Just go next door and leave me alone!"

"I jus wanted to see how you were bitch. Damn, don't get all shit-house-rat on me. Come on, jus let me lay down wit you. I jus wanna hold ya' for awhile."

"Seriously Eve, please just let me be. I don't want to be touched. I'm drenched in sweat and I feel gross. I think my fever broke while I was asleep. Just get out of here."

"Noooooo, I wanna hold you baaaby." Her words ooze out of her mouth, falling to the floor and making puddles around her feet.

She kicks off her leopard print furry slippers that are rarely seen without her feet stuffed inside them. She scored them in a free box at the shelter we were at a few months ago in Santa Cruz and she is convinced, not only that they double as shoes, but that they are suitable for every occasion. I'm not going to argue because I know where that gets me. She sits down on the side of the bed and it sinks in beneath her rendering me even more uncomfortable than I already was. She begins to stroke my hair out of my eyes with sticky fingers that smell like ashes. I smack her hand away from my forehead.

"I said don't fucking touch me. Get out of here Evie, I feel like shit!"

"I'll touch you if I want to fucking touch you! You're mine!"

She climbs on top of me, snatches my hands up in hers and throws them back behind my head. SMACK, they wail on the headboard and my knuckles start throbbing in response.

"Don't tell me not to touch you! You're always telling me not to touch you! You're my girlfriend, I get to touch you!"

She's got me pinned down by my arms and she smashes her mouth into mine. My mouth is open in struggle and our teeth crash into each other. I hear them ring out and they feel like they will fall from my face. She's kissing me violently. She wants to tear my face off. I'm trying to kick at her and throw her off me by thrusting my pelvis up into her but she's not going anywhere. She's got at least twenty pounds on me; she's stuck. The only light in the room are slits of florescent sliding through the spaces in the garish vertical blinds but she is so close I can see her clearly. Her face looks wild and empty while she keeps repeating herself over and over:

"I'm gonna touch you! I'm gonna touch you!"

I can't believe she is doing this. I told her don't ever pin me down or hold me down when you're on top, not even playing. You can't be rough with me. You just can't! She said she understood. She doesn't understand a goddamn thing!

"Get off me!" I scream into her face.

She's got one arm on my shoulder holding me in place and the other one shoved in between us with its hand tearing at my pants. She's so drunk she's forgotten how to unbutton pants for the time being. Lucky me.

"I swear to god Eve if you take off my pants I'll fucking kill you!"

She's laughing hysterically.

She grabs my pussy through my pants. I feel her start to rub it and flames begin to crackle in my belly. They start to grow and grow and I can feel them licking at my throat. I'm determined not to cry for fear that it might extinguish the fire. All of her weight is suddenly dropped back onto me and her face is right on top of mine. She can't even hold her head up anymore so she rests her forehead on mine. She's breathing so hot and heavy I swear I can smell the entire half-gallon of vodka. She starts kissing me again; smashing and sucking. She sucks the fire out of me from deep down in my throat and unleashes something fierce. I bite down as hard as I can and feel my teeth sink right through her bottom lip. I feel each layer of chewy flesh slice and separate as I break through to the next. Satisfaction ripples through me and I weigh next to nothing. She's screaming and dripping and screaming. It's wonderful.

She jumps to her knees and towers over me as I'm savoring the taste of what I've just done. A fist is up and she's swinging. It looks graceful as it moves closer and closer to me, a wrecking ball in slow motion. SLAM! Right in the ear...damn.

I can't hear a thing except a faint ringing inside my head but I've got more important things to consider for the time being. I throw her off me and she recovers quite nicely. I jump up and begin pushing her with all my might towards the door. There's lots of screaming but I can't really hear so it doesn't bother me. She's stronger than me but she's wasted and in shock and I'm wide fucking open. I get her near the door and push her onto the other bed in the room that's right next to the door. I turn to open the door and all of a sudden I'm smashed between the back of it and the wall with the nipple digging into my spine. She's on the front of the door pushing so hard against it I can feel every organ in my body trying to pop out through my skin. I put all my weight into it and she begins to stumble backward enough so I can take a stance and get some leverage. Giving it one last powerful push, the door shuts. I throw my side into it and fumble with the locks. Click. Click. Chain. I grab the ratty chair from the table by the window and tilt the back up so it lodges underneath the door's handle. I don't know if this really works or not but it seems like the right thing to do.

Breathless, I run to the night stand and pick up the phone. 9-1-oh shit. I gather myself and mentally calculate the jail time we would all do if the cops got here and searched the rooms. Possession, paraphernalia, intent to distribute, underage drinking, credit card theft. Whatever, I'm calling someone. If she gets back in here somehow she's going to kill me. I'd hate for her not to remember that in the morning when she sobers up. Hotel security. Sure, they won't call the cops, right? They'll just throw her out. Maybe she'll end up in the drunk tank for the night. Nothing new. Yeah. Ok. Dial-0 for front desk.

"Front desk, how can I help you?"

His voice sounds tired and uninterested already. I don't know what to say. I blank. I can hear wild, deep thuds as Eve throws her body into the door trying to break it down. Then I blurt it out before I think:

"My girlfriend just tried to rape me!!"

"Uh, what?"

"I'm in room 203. She's outside the door trying to get back in! She punched me and...just send security up here now!"

"Wait, ma'm I think I misunderstood you. Your what tried to what you?"

"My girlfriend, she tried to fucking! .... rape me."

He laughs uncontrollably as if I've just told him the funniest joke he's ever heard.

"Yeah right, ya' fucking dyke!" he yells. His laughter trails off, farther and farther out of reach until click and it's dead.