Diana Racine 02 - Goddess of the Moon

disappeared . No, Edward Slater would have no trouble attracting women. Even now with the wear and tear . If he noticed her discomfort, he didn’t let on.
    “I doubt I would have pursued a career in the ministry. I loved God, but I loved other things too. Things that would have conflicted with the li fe of a preacher.”
    Again he stopped and studied her . She forced herself to sit still , eager to hear the rest of his story .
    “I began to think about teaching philosophy and decided to change majors when my whole world came crashing down. That disease. ” He stopped for a long moment, took a deep breath. “ It couldn’t be happening to me, I thought. There must be some mistake. Penile cancer is an old man’s disease, not the curse of a twenty-one - year old. My choices weren’t very appealing. I had the surgery. I lost weight, my hair fell out, and I was in tremendous pain, both physically and psychologically. I wanted to die, to disappear off the face of the earth.” H e sat statue still, the only movement a slight tic at the corner of his mouth . “So I did.”
    She tried to ignore the effect of his penetrating eyes , and for the first time questioned whether she should have come. “Where did you go? I mean, you had family. I’m sure they were concerned.”
    “All I could think of was that everyone knew I wasn’t a man anymore. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I started drinking to avoid facing reality , and before long was heavily into drugs. Heroin, crack, meth, anything I could get my hands on , a nd I’d do anything to get it. Fortunately, I had money ―a nice inheritance from an uncle. I doubt I could have sold my body to pay for my drugs , un less I sold myself as a freak. I don’t think I did,” he said almost apologetically, “but I’m not sure. Some time shifts are vague.
    A shiver spiraled down Diana’s spine. She had wanted to hear this, but now she’d become a reluctant voyeur into Slater’s life.
    “It’s astonishing how many people eagerly help you descend into that dark place called hell. My fall was precipitous. Not even my parents knew what happened , only t hat I ’ d disappeared. They searched for me, but I didn’t want to be found. Actually, half the time I had no idea where I was.”
    Diana listened, trying to picture the nightmare Slater related. She couldn’t. “Didn’t you seek help?”
    “For what? I’d lost my manhood. No doctor could restore that , and Isis wasn’t available .”
    “So you tried to kill yourself.”
    He nodded. “In the slowest possible way.”
    She thought she saw dampness in Slater’s eyes, but in the next moment his eyes were clear and cold and steady. “How long did this go on?”
    “Six very messy years, give or take. I weighed one thirty at the time. I’m six-two and weigh one eighty-five now, so you can imagine what I looked like. My total concentration revolved around getting the next fix. I don’t know how I managed to last as long as I did .”
    “Maybe you didn’t want to die as much as you thought.”
    Slater shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking much at all then , but I suppose the natural instinct for survival won out.”
    She couldn’t get her eyes off him. “And God?”
    “What God? God was no longer an option for me. Before my diagnosis, I thought He ruled the universe, and He let me down. At least that’s how I felt when I was lucid enough to feel.”
    “So what happened?”
    “The last I remembered I was in Mexico nursing a major heroin habit. I don’t how, but I wound up outside Tulsa at a shelter run by an old Osage Indian . He treated those from the reservation who suffered from alcoholism. There are a lot of them, you know. George tried to get them back on their feet , give them a place to recover.
    “He’d never seen anyone like me. I hadn’t had a fix in a while and was going through the stages of withdrawal. I’d been rolled, because I had no money left . Don’t think I’d eaten in days, but I managed to get my hands on some liquor to ward off coming down. I’d wet myself, a c ommon occurrence, I might add.”
    Slater showed no embarrassment. He was a man who’d come full circle, from wanting to die to help ing others survive.
    “While cleaning me up, George saw what he said caused him to throw up. When he got over the shock, he secured me to the bed and helped me get through the next few weeks. He enlisted the help of what we’d call a medicine man , or faith healer. He didn’t look