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I write stories here. I get them out, let them loose into the world, and this is done with purpose - to vent them. Up until now, you've mostly gotten the happy-fun Queenie, the stories about how I tore a swath of destruction across my own life for the better part of the last forty years. Sometimes, though, I've got something to let out that isn't so very pretty; this is one of those times.

Excuse the third-person shit. There are some things that, even after so many years, it's hard to put an "I" to.

***

Her head reeled as she closed the door behind them. Thank God - they were gone. Party, party, party, Mike and Elaine and Daphne and Julie and Nigel, fuck, Nigel who was just too creepy, leering knowingly down his thrice-broken nose – too much familiarity, we’re not friends, man - displaying far too many of his yellowed, British dentist-tended teeth. Rule Britannia, man, and light another cigarette. Whatever. Just cut us all out another line and quit looking at me like that.

She flipped off the kitchen light with an unsteady hand, and blew out the candles that had provided some ambience in the cheap walkup flat. She flipped plum-colored velvet cushions back onto the sofa where they belonged, emptied ashtrays stuffed with the remnants of what had once been Camels, Drums, and good old Marlboros. She knelt at the grate, almost slumping sideways in her drunkenness, striking a match to light the gas heater; a chill seeped into her room now that it was emptied of bodies to heat it. Bed-sitter, they called it in England, a gin-laced non-sequitur that floated into her brain out of nowhere. Association led her to Nigel’s braying accent again, and she shuddered involuntarily.

Inevitably, sickness was coming. She knew better than to drink gin; the bile was already beginning to rise in her throat as she made her way to the bathroom, and she silently thanked providence that her tongue was too numb to actually taste the puke as it came. As usual, the Tanqueray had acted as a veritable poison on her system, and she knew the drill; the tide of vomit was welcome to come, if it would rid her spinning head of the biohazard of those “natural botanicals”.

She began to shed clothing as quickly as possible, not wanting to get puke stains all over the dress she’d borrowed from Daphne, a narrow sheath of gunmetal gray-blue sequins. The satin pumps were slung in a corner, underwear just a crumpled afterthought on the bathroom floor. Naked, she dropped to her knees on the cracked antique tiles, studying the bowl of the toilet, her mouth tasting of copper. A faint odor of bleach rose to greet her cocaine-padded nostrils, and the smell alone was enough to bring the filth in her stomach up, and – please, God – out. Prayer answered, she began to gag and regurgitate. Over and over and over again her body was racked with spasms that she was powerless to control, the gin and the remnants of the tapas she’d eaten at the Spanish place earlier in the evening mingling in the toilet, their foul stench only urging her stomach muscles into wilder acrobatics. She slumped, so that her chin hung on the seat of the toilet, providing support to her limp frame as she spewed, gasped for breath, and spewed again. Spittle ran down her chin, and her body was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, sweat that smelled of alcohol and cocaine and self-loathing. Finally, she vomited a thin sheet of clear alcohol into the toilet, the sure sign that she might, after all, live.

Presently she felt a bit steadier. She tried to pull herself erect, having been here often enough to know that if she had anything left in her, standing up would bring it up again. Let’s get it over with, thought the girl, as she struggled to stand, bring it. At least her head was not whirling quite as violently as it had been before.

She reached across the small bathroom to the bathtub, spiraling the tap all the way to H, heating up water for a shower. She lolled on the toilet seat while waiting for the water temperature to reach an acceptable level, avoiding eye-contact with herself in the mirror. Clean-smelling steam began to rise, and when the water was as hot as she could stand, she stood up and stepped into its spray. It was glorious, beyond cleansing, rinsing away the horrible smell that was coming out of her skin. God, she hated gin. “I will never drink another martini, I will never drink another martini, I will never drink another martini…”, she chanted softly.

Soothed, she turned off the shower and dried her body with the towel that was hanging there on its hook, smelling of Downy, just like her mama used – familiar, comforting. As she watched the steam rise from her body, she felt the falling sensation that told her consciousness was fleeting. She was blacking out, and she knew it was a matter of minutes before she was down for the count. Like a vampire, she was always totally useless at dawn, her limbs arranged as for the coffin until late afternoon, because this was her life. Rise. Get stoned. Primp. Play music. Drink, snort, smoke, drink, snort, smoke, lather, rinse, repeat, go home alone.

Fruitless reflections, she thought to herself. In a hurry now – get it all done before darkness overtakes your vision - she snatched the toothbrush and began to drag it around the inside of her vomit-flavored mouth. Fresh and minty at last, and she was rinsing the toothbrush when she glanced in the mirror.

There was a man standing behind her.

Screams, terror at first, until she realized, after a moment, that the man was familiar. Nigel. Shit. She calmed herself, a bit, until anger rose in the place of the shock and fright. She was naked and brushing her teeth, for God’s sake. She was going to pass out cold, any minute. What the fuck was he doing here?

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked him, as small patches of black began to appear at the edges of her vision.

“Well, baby, I took the other kids home and thought I’d come back round here and have a bit of play with the nice little girl,” he brayed, sounding like Robin Leach on crystal meth. “Though we could uh….uh-huh-uh-huh….”. Nigel pumped his hips lasciviously, grinning at her, looking for all the world like Prince Charles' evil, druggie twin.

Another taste of bile, her gorge rising again at the look of him, the sight of his vulgar posturing. “No… Nigel, I’m sick, man. Another time. I promise. Go.” The girl could smell the stink on Nigel, the stink that she had just cleansed herself of. The smell of him wafted toward her on a tide of gas-heat, made her want to go back to the toilet and retch and retch and retch.

“You don’t look sick to me, baby. You look….goooooood,” his voice dripped grease as he sidled over to her. “You look like a healthy…little…baby…”

“Nigel…no. This is stupid. Don’t do this shit, man,” she said. He gripped her arm in a vise, dragging her over to her bed, to the brand-new down comforter that she had worked so hard, saved so long, to buy. He pushed her down onto the sheets, still smelling of Downy and mama’s house and safety, and, without prelude, jammed three fingers of his right hand deep into her vagina.

“Now, dearie…” Nigel began to loosen his belt with his left.

She bucked away from his hand, kicking at him, right arm flailing for the bedside table, the drawer where her little pistol lay ready. She’d fucking shoot him, she’d kill the bastard, she’d kill him and saw off his nuts with the butcher knife in the kitchen and feed them to the neighbors dog. Nigel leaned close to her – god, that smell – and her last clear memory is of her teeth sinking deep into his cheek, paired with a fervent wish of lasting damage.

When her head hit the pillow, she blacked out. A mercy. She only has small snatches of memory from that night, the occasional flicker of longing for the pistol, and the taste of sick in her mouth. She knows that she threw up on him at least once, and that he just kept on fucking her, and grinning. Other than that she remembers nothing. God is good: he was gone in the morning.

Posted by Queenie at October 26, 2005 09:15 PM | TrackBack