Thursday, November 03, 2005

SLUTS (a short story)

The bar is caramelized night. The air walks in through the open door with all the other weary wanderers and begins to stew amongst the noisy heated bodies. It festers and grows stale with the stench of BO that cannot be squelched by the nefarious designs of perfumed skin. I feel the overwhelm of the onions around me and tears spring to life in my eyes. I can’t help it, so I turn away from the fire and tell Jonathan to give me another beer.

I see her staring at me, at the bar, a few paces to my right, halfway to the door, closer to escape. Right then I know that I will walk out that door with her. I can tell by the way she holds her head, the way her hand clutches at her drink, the way her want pours out of her skin and feeds through my nostrils just what she wants me to know about her. But I don’t look at her. I need to give her time, make sure it’s me she really wants, not just anyone.

I turn back to the sound jumping from the corner of the room. The music that swallowed the static of anticipation and filled it with ordinary punk rock. Music that is about as unoriginal as the Ramones sound today and completely lacking their bravado. It’s my roommate’s band, and I’ve already seen them play five times, four times too many. But he’s my roommate and I didn’t have anything better to do tonight.

I glance back in her direction and her eyes fill mine. She sends me a beer guzzling smile and the black electric that shivers between us makes me do just that. I suck down half my pint as my long-sleeve tee-shirt slides over the goosebumps that rise on my skin. I look at her again, just to make sure she’s still looking and now she knows that I know that she wants me and she also knows that I want her too.

It’s strange, but it’s that easy. I get up, pulling my languid soul away from where it rests on the bar and squirm my way down toward her. Everyone in the place is close; it’s crowded, especially at the bar. It’s easy to cop a cheap feel, but I don’t need to do that tonight, not that I’m above things of that nature. She doesn’t watch me because she knows where I’m headed, right there, that tiny spot right next to her.

She turns as I arrive opening her legs slightly so that I can squeeze in. I lean against the bar and stare into her eyes without saying a word as her leg closes again, pushing up against my thigh, pulling me into her web. The first touch says the same thing as the liquid smile that has never left her face. When can we leave? How long should we pretend? If I wore a watch then I would know that the time has already arrived, but then I don’t need a watch to tell me that.

We talk small while we pull at the rest of our drinks, say things that don’t matter, references that will never remain in our drunken brains. I’m sure she tells me her name but it swiftly fades away into the mist of others that sound just like it. Before we leave I want one more shot so that I might get a little bit drunker, that would be nice but not necessary. She takes my hand and I figure that I’m probably already drunk enough.

It’s cold outside, so cold your breath condenses in your face and drips onto the sidewalk. Immediately I notice the warmth of her hand in mine. I clutch at it so that it might cover over me like the jacket that I forgot to bring, to nuzzle inside me like an evening by the fire. The heat emanates from the club behind us like the breath of a dragon and the ground rumbles beneath our feet from the rhythm section of my roommate’s band. I wait for their pathetic roar to consume us and propel us into the blackness. I know nothing more could make my stride quicken so swiftly. I can hear him strumming the same three chords on his bass and I picture him on the couch back home, the familiarity of his crouched body, his fingers plucking at the empty strings.

She doesn’t live very far away so we walk. I notice crystals on the leaves of trees blending in with the scattered stars that peek through the foliage. The air is fresh and clean and after the club, so much more alive, purging our lungs of the stain of second hand smoke and sweat and desperation that comes with the territory in that bar. I’m grateful that I left the desire for another shot back in that place because the clarity that hits my mind exhilarates me like riding a flash of lightning across the sky. When I look at her I can see that she feels the same way. Her smile isn’t so tilted, so dreamy. The dream has climbed up into her eyes and they sparkle at me with promise.

It’s easy, so easy.

Her mouth on mine, speaking to me with a French accent, tasting the back of my throat where the sting of vomit resides. But our mouths flood fresh with the want, the desire climbs up like a voice in my belly and dives down into hers forcing the moan from her lips.

And we haven’t even reached her apartment yet.

Later, she fumbles with her keys under a dim light outside old architecture that I won’t remember in the morning. She glides the door open pulling at my heels. I feel like an ice skater sliding into the darkness of her room. She knows exactly where to go, her blindness not overwhelming her ability to live, to dance and shout at the heavens. She finds the couch in two seconds and tosses me down like a duffel bag, then she’s on top of me exposing me like dirty laundry, like all refinement can now be ignored.

It’s funny, this thing called want. How delicious it tastes when it lingers on your tongue, when it jumps on you quick like a black spider injecting its dangerous venom. It devours every part of your mind so that you become a single solid object of purpose, with only one emotion. Nothing else matters. Not the tenderness or cruelty of family. Not the terror that exists in nations far way. Not the socio-economic situation of the city that you live in. Not the responsibility of grades or papers that need to be written. Not the anguish of loss. None of it can pierce the thick hide where you reside in the very moment that want decides to pay you a visit. You become a slave to its glorious agenda. You are swallowed by its hideous rapture. You zombify and tranquilize and wake up like a stranger, usually in a foreign land and how you got there is a distant hazy memory.

I give in to it. My mind goes blank and I become living, seething, breathing moment. We are reality. Our bodies speaking through the ages, lost in our past, touching like we always have. We are down in the sweet of it, where flesh longs for more flesh, slipping and sliding and clutching and thrusting into everywhere each other. I don’t even know where we are, if we’re still on the same physical plane, still on planet Earth, if we’re still surfing on her sofa.

I hear the word sixty-nine in my brain. I don’t know if it came from her fast heated breath or if my subconscious is communicating telepathically, but she shifts and twists until I feel her heat on my mouth and my heat on hers. I feel her ecstatic soft liquid entity pulsating and begin to feel my pleasure begin its slow ride to the top of the mountain. We ride this slow carousel, rise and release, until I find myself diving down into the deep red behind my eyes hoping that I’m touching her in a dangerous place that makes her shudder like revulsion, the pleasure lapping through her body again and again until it slowly resides into panting inspiration.

I’m still as full as the smile on my face as I lift my head and grin at the drug in her eyes. She reaches between her legs and scrambles at me, pulling until I’m in a position that will satisfy both of us. I’m at the point of desire and she’s so warm and inviting. I thrust and dive trying to find the flint that will scorch both of us in a terrible burning wave, and it crushes down on us so that our lungs refuse the oxygen they crave and twist and dangle over the pit of oblivion.
Somehow we make it back. Here in her room. On her couch. Gasping for air. Beating madly at each other’s hearts. Born again. Naked as that day. Returned by the hand of God.

My eyes are adjusting to the darkness and I see the scatter on her floor with the way my head’s turned. I see her white panties lying on top of my dark tee shirt. The door is still slightly cracked open. I guess we forgot to shut it in the heat of passion. I don’t care if anyone saw us. All I want to do is hold this blessed being that knows me so well. That’s what we do. We don’t talk or look at each other or try to get comfortable. We are comfortable, with each other. We stay where we are, bodies mingling, gluing together as our sweat dries. We hold each other until our breath becomes even and our hearts beat together, her chest on mine, mine on hers

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