2- Rapé Ceremony

Alessio's kisses were violent, delicate, and passionate. The more I delve into my soul and mind, and purify my sexual energy, the easier it is for me to measure and regulate my sexual energy. Alessio seemed attractive and interesting to me, but why would I deeply kiss him? He would be gone in a couple of days, looking for easy sex, and my way of living with sexuality is completely different - why would I give him easy sex or try to seduce him with my kisses? I wasn't interested in doing that. So I simply kissed him, playing with his mouth.

The more I learn to know myself and understand the complexity and depth of my personality, the more my self-worth and self-esteem reside in that, in who I am. The less I try to cultivate superficiality in my life so that others admire me for that. I could have a bank account full of money, the best car, and travel the world. But my success is only what is on the tip of the iceberg, the way I built it is what reflects who I truly am. Discipline, confidence in myself, in my personality, and in what makes me authentic, my sensitive, loving, tender, spiritual side, all these things make me who I am. My triumphs, my failures, I don't give them away in a kiss, nor in casual conversation.

We continued kissing as we listened to the conversation between Mustafa from Turkey and Yoka, Luis's sister. Luis was cooking with Mustafa and preparing a dinner, filled with spices and delicious food. Luis used to be very hospitable to the tourists who came to Venezuela and always cooked for them. They exchanged conversations while cooking together. Yoka, Luis's older sister, is a lesbian, she's 38 years old, they also have another younger sister, Luisana, who is also a lesbian and is 25 years old. Luis is 35 years old and lives subleased in his uncle's house while using his home as a coach surfing spot. The good thing about receiving tourists is that they are generally people who have money and buy food for Luis because sometimes he doesn't have food, and his house becomes a very lonely place. In fact, Luis doesn't know if he will be able to pay the rent next month or if he will have to move to a smaller place, but tourists cannot see all these situations of precariousness and poverty. It's true magic how people choose to see and live the wonderful aspects of life and ignore other realities. I am a journalist and they say that journalists are an ocean of knowledge with a centimeter of depth. Alessio was definitely something like that, he could travel the world and learn many things and take the best of everything he experienced. But by spending a weekend in Mérida, you couldn't really get to know people, just their superficiality. Deep down, I knew that our differences were vast, so deeply kissing him wouldn't take me anywhere, but a part of me wanted to enchant him and feel desired by him and feel desired by him, so I kissed him this time with more depth. Perhaps it was dishonest not to kiss him completely and not wait until he knew everything about me, then at that moment I would truly feel desired by him and not just for my beauty and my physical body, but I knew that maybe that moment would never come. That we would never truly get to know each other. We continued kissing and both sat on the bed.

Then his intense honey-colored eyes looked at me with passion and deep desire. "Do you want to try the rapé?" Alessio asked me.

"Is rapé some kind of drug or what's going on?" I wanted to know murmuring, in a low voice.

"No, it's not a drug, it's a relaxing aphrodisiac," he assured me.

"Okay, I would like to try it," I whispered. I looked at him sweetly like a cat, then he approached me and gently touched my shoulders.

"Lie down with your back against the wall." Alexio said with his sparkling eyes on me.

"Does it matter if I've had alcohol?"

"No, it's okay, you can drink alcohol and take rapé, nothing happens," he told me. So I took a sip of cold beer and gently placed the bottle on the table inside the room. Alessio took me by the shoulders, with his knees on the bed, and reclined me against the bed wall. Then he leaned towards the table and took a pipe.

"This is a pipe to take rapé, do you know how it works?" he asked me.

"No, I have no idea," I admitted in a whisper, looking at him sweetly.

"Okay, you're going to place your nose here," he said, placing two holes in the pipe close to each other, like two sticks.

Sticks held together where I could breathe. "Then you will blow forcefully placing your mouth in the hole that is for blowing," He explained to me.

"So I'm going to do it first," He said. His Spanish was slow and deliberate, somewhat clumsy with the conjugations of prepositions, but I could understand him perfectly.

"Okay," I nodded sweetly, staring at him intently. Alessio placed the snuff pipe, which was decorated with purple fabric and handmade embroidery, in front of me, so I knew it was a handmade pipe. Then, sitting in front of me, he blew with the pipe and closed his eyes as he felt the snuff inhaling through his nose. He began to breathe slowly and told me:- Breathe slowly, breathing is everything - I felt the sweetness of his voice and his gaze became warm and intense. I did not really know why I agreed to try snuff, honestly, I was surprised because I was not very inclined to experiment with drugs or natural aphrodisiacs, I always felt at peace and connected to divinity without the need to consume many drugs. However, he had a strange way of seducing me and generating intimacy. I knew it because the way I approached him was intimate from the moment I had him close, there were no barriers or social protocols between us, only a huge aura of intimacy of wanting to merge my sensations into his sensations. It was strange and seductive. I did not feel fear, just curiosity, and I wanted to do well by taking snuff. So I nodded, less scared than I would have been, perhaps if Alessio had not been the one to initiate me in the snuff ceremony. Then I brought the pipe to my mouth and placed the two holes in my nose as he had asked me to and breathed deeply. At the moment of blowing, a dense powder flooded my nose and my eyes began to water as a relentless fire grew through my nose and down my throat, causing my breath to burn in live fire. A tear ran down my cheek and I took Alessio's arm, that was the gesture of the greatest intimacy, trust, and authenticity I had that night. My hand took his as if it wrapped his arm with a delicate bracelet created by the touch of my wrist.

"It hurts," I said with extreme fragility.

"Breathe through your mouth," He said. "Breathing is everything."