The girl desired

Seen

I stand on the dance floor, at the edge of a group of loud drunk college people; a guy near my shoulder is shouting into the ear of a girl who is drunk enough to think she's bi. She's been eyeing me for as long as she has been able to maintain focus; I am perfectly still while this shouting guy is bobbing up and down on his toes hard enough to make his shouts of "WHEN I GOT THE CAR ... " sound like some demented yodel.

I was lonely and had been feeling like hiding in a crowd to celebrate finishing another short story; perhaps it would help me get over my "post-not-published" jitters. I tried closing my eyes and concentrating on the DJ's crap-rap but the car guy was too loud for me to stay motionless any longer.

I turned a little to try to edge by the bi-girl and get somewhere where I could just be still while the human atoms in the place vibrated around me. Over beside one of the posts holding up the upper balcony/VIP area I found a few square centimeters where I could set up house.  I leaned back against the simulated antique iron column, put my hands over my head and arched into a stretch.  Relaxing, I opened my eyes and there she was; my breath caught in my diaphragm and I began a slow cycle of hiccoughs.

She was moving like an out of control dance cyborg; not doing that stupid robot bullshit, but her motions were so fast that they were one continual blur; and they were amazingly smooth. Not like a trained dancer moves smoothly, but wildly out of control smooth.  I hadn't noticed her before; what the fuck HAD I even looked at in this place.  There was space around her; no one could have entered the bubble of energy she cleared around her. I saw a guy penetrate into her zone and I watched his mouth move while she vibrated in her universe; he got closer and reached a hand out to touch her shoulder, maybe figuring that at the speed she was moving she probably didn't notice how wonderful and hot he was.

Her hand shot out and hit his forearm like a pile driver.  His mouth shaped into a surprised grimace and I could see him mouth the word "BITCH" at her and, clutching his damage, shuffle off hunting for something easier to play his 3rd grade tricks on.  She rotated and spun and moved on in her circle of space; like my tongue moves in, well in nobody recently. That’s another cost to my life of sleepless scribbling for 24/7.

She was soaking wet. Her grey top: ‘is that the top I had drooled over from Urban Outfitters?’  Her movements, and the sweat soaking it, made it near to impossible to tell for sure, but yeah, I’d lusted over that particular top for weeks.  Her black skin tight jeans, riding so very, very low, showing quite a bit of her skin; almost as pale as my own.  Spring would probably put color on hers; mine never would tan, only burn.  Her hair was soaked too, and the perspiration was running off of her face. I could see her glisten from here. God, look at her, so wonderfully beautiful to me. My fetish for real noses with character tweaked me hard where I hadn't had anyone tweak me in weeks.

She was slowing now.  Fast or slow song she'd kept pace, driving the clots of cliques away from her space. Now, she was changing dimensions and shifting back into a presence on the floor.  She stopped and I could see her gasp for breath, standing with only her feet shuffling a bit; spent.  The exhaustion was signaled in gasps and a growing laxness. Her sadness at having no remaining energy was clear and written on her face as though I had woven it there myself.  She stared around her as though in a fugue and that's when I saw the eyes. ‘Fuck, those have to be contacts’ I thought; ‘Wow.’

Her face settles and she focuses hard, searching the room.  She sees something, stills a moment, and then shuffles towards a group at the bar behind me.  I watch her move; God, she's in agony.  It shows so clearly to me.  A group of guys she passes by make some remarks to her but she hears nothing. Focused only on her goal, she shuffles on.  One, of the party that she's approaching, a girl in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, rises from her stool with two purses and a jacket in her hands.

She approaches the standing girl, a slight smile on her lips, and I can lip read "Hey, thanks, ready to go", on her wonderful mouth, from here.  Having dated a deaf guy, back when I did guys, had helped with my 'crowd story background searches'.  I'd made friends with his mother, and maintained that friendship long after I'd decided that he and all other men were just not designed to scissor with.  She takes the jacket offered her and scrunches her face up. Shrugging she turns and heads toward the large doors at the front of the place.  Pulling her arms around herself with her purse and jacket clutched tight to her she fits herself carefully through the people In front of her. Walking away, I watch the movement in her wet shoulders and back.  God, she's beautiful.  Her friend hands turns and waves to the group at the bar; they wave back and i see "love you girl" mouthed at the girl I've been watching.

She raises her hand weakly and gestures, a tired smile issued, the two of them turn and she takes the arm of her friend who leads her toward the front exits.  As they pass the same group of males that'd mouthed their cum-on wit at her before I see one lean towards another and mouth "lezbo dykes".  I watch, as the two enter the crowd and they are lost to my sight.

Bridge

I had finished a piece and turned it over to an agent, knowing that the audience for my stuff had shrunk incredibly since the news had leaked out.  The row over who and what it was that had written the work were loud and angry and neatly divided the entire literary community that had, so far, swooned over my tales and my sorrows.  There were whispers in different shadows about who was real, and if so, who was it, and did she really, and why. Those voices were in every gossipy writers group. 

And so here I was again, in the club where it had neatly begun almost two years earlier, she was still in my mind, every day while I wandered and watched; but then mostly at night when my Macbook Air was charged and on a bar or in a booth, or just on my thighs.  I’d little hope of actually seeing her again, or, of anything approachable happening if I did.  I’m far too, well, to be honest, ‘shy me’ to expect that; but still, where the heart lingers, it hopes.  I picked the Gzhelka Vodka on ice up from the bar and downed its three ounces quickly.   The sliver of lemon peel glued itself to my outer bottom lip.  The vodka neatly peeled the film off my eyes and loosened my sinuses; I held back the urge to sneeze or cough or shout that always accompanied my vodka fueled efforts to numb myself.  The tall red headed girl with the triple lip piercings looked at me from behind the bar and said “Fuck, are you okay?”  My eyes welled up heavily and over ran; I hurried to mutter hoarsely “yeah fine thanks” and wipe my eyes.  The redhead reached under the counter and her long fingers, tipped with OPI black lacquered nails, reappeared holding a pink Kleenex in them.  “Here honey, give it time and you’ll feel better.” I nodded and tapped the rim of my glass for the third time since I’d sat down.

I have this thing about noses, and my own is no exception; I hate, absolutely hate, blowing my nose where others can see.  As a child in elementary school I had once done so, with the horribly humiliating result of having snot on my hair when I turned around.  Since the age of ten I had never cleared my sinuses within view of another human; so cautiously I looked around, found a close by little niche where I couldn’t be easily observed, and blew.  I wadded the Kleenex feeling quite awesome and full of Russian vodka bred strength, turned, and there the girl was, in the crowd. 

She, like most, is taller than I am; probably by as many as five inches or so, and in heels, she’d be even more a graceful giraffe to my more, hmmm, well, to me.  I love heels, and delight in wearing them, but suffer from that affliction that many people who attempt to ice skate, disastrously discover themselves victim to;  weak ankles.  So, outside of a bed, it’s flats, boots, flip flops, sandals, multipurpose exercise shoes, or Doc Martens steel toed short boots for me.  I think my feet had been happiest when I worked security and wore a pair of stupid and unattractive black crepe soled utility shoes for ten hours a day. Those cheap shoes had been the most comfortable I’d ever slid my webbed toes into.

I watched as she shed her Utility coat and revealed her ‘Heavy Red, Broken and Unbound’ grey strap hoodie. Oh fuck, I’d lusted over that item for months, and was still dieting in hopes of eventually fitting into it.  It was made for her, and she had her eyes shadowed to its same soot grey shade.  She had lovely eyes, a blue that had burned for entire ancient city-states; but it was her nose, and the shape of her face that stung my heart so.  I stood and watched as she began her ritual of motion to the music. I’m a better than adequate dancer, but this girl, she had danced in public before; it showed in her lack of self-concern, her abandonment to motion and sound.  I worked my way back to my bar stool in time to keep a guy with close cropped hair with the letters “SUXZ” carved into it on his occipital region, from claiming my seat.  ‘College rituals’ I thought as I pushed him away from my stool. “Sorry” he mumbled and immediately leaned on the shoulder of a burly jock sitting on the stool beside me.  I picked up my triple Gzhelka and slid around to watch the brunette in the crowd. I guessed that most dancers here had learned of her space requirements as there was no one within her spin or push range.  Sipping the vodka slowly and teasing the lemon peel with my tongue I considered my possibilities. Setting a course for one I put my glass back on the bar, pushed it at the bartender and said, “Toss this will you?” She nodded, and threw the drink back in one long gulp, “Thanks doll” she said.  I nodded and moved into the crowd.

The grey hoodie was tight on her, and I could see the strength in her movements through it.  She was about five inches taller than me, wearing a pair of ‘Shrekh Wild Divas’.  My eyes were focused on the dark shade of red on her luscious mouth.  She had her lips in a sort of tight grimace at the moment and her body seemed to burn while she reached, and moved, and twisted, and turned, and stretched her arms out in a grasp that suddenly met my tits full on.  Her eyes focused and she spun down quickly focusing suddenly on me being there, in her zone.  “Love the shoes”, I mumbled.  She laughed loudly, a strong full on laugh with no hesitation or shyness to it.  “Me too!” she shouted; and she began to let the music into her again.  I returned the courtesy and began a slow set of moves that a Romanian friend had taught me.  The Romanian girl had spent years perfecting an entire life’s worth of yoga and belly dancing moves and motions and I’d never had a hope of equaling her abilities; but the Romanian had paid a dear price for her ability, and I’d had no desire to lose that much of myself to something other than the loom I was constructing in my mind and its wonderful woven threads of words.

The brunette watched me as I began to move along with her, adding to her motion and not conflicting with it, suggesting with my hips and hands what might be possible, and my hair, unbraided, loose and flowing and moving my presence even closer to her.  She seemed suddenly open to the options I offered and her moves calmed and grew into mine; she was so fast at picking up what I could contribute to her dance.  I was jealous of that ability.  My Romanian friend and lover had spent months getting me to learn just twenty of the proper seducing motions. 

I was beginning to heat up, my light hoodie still zipped I felt the moisture under my arms and between my breasts tickle as it ran down me.  I stopped and looked at her and she suddenly was awkward, and slowed, unevenly, to look closely at me.  “I’ve seen you watch me here before.  I remember you.” I nod and try to become interesting. “Yes, can we?” and I motion toward a table.  “I know who you are, I’ve heard of you. You’re that writer that everyone talks about.” I feel my face, usually so pale and white, burn, and know that I look like some child caught with her mother’s wallet in her hand.  “Umm yeah, that’s what they say about me.”  She frowns, looks down at my Doc Martens, smiles, looks up and steps close. “No; it’s not going to happen this way.” She raises her hands to my shoulders, leans in close, and kisses me.  I feel the soft skin of her lips, I smell her hair, the odor of her body beneath the light sweet smell of a cologne or body wash or cream; the smell of tobacco and of some sweet spice odor.  My legs tremble and the desire she’s imparted sits heavily between my thighs.  I am so surprised. I haven’t closed my eyes and so I am wide eyed looking into her partially closed eyes, her irises are a corona blue edge to her expanded pupils, so deep and black and waiting for my open mouth to drink from.  Suddenly, she pushes me, hard, and I’m sent staggering backward.  I turn mid-stumble and am banging into some plaid skirted girl who yells and shoves me into the body of the huge halfback she’s dancing with.

My confusion rules; my mind is only on the brunette with that face and that mouth.  I’m turning to see where she is now when the halfback bellows and pulls his arm back to plant his fist in the middle of my skull.  I waste no time, all of this now is just a reflex learned in a shopping mall ten years or more ago when a three hundred pound crack head had withstood stun wand, fists, fingernails and my flailing feet and had hurled me onto a counter top.  I neatly kicked the halfback between the legs, dropping him like a sack of boiled potatoes to the dance floor where he proceeded to barf up an evening’s worth of cheese fries, chicken wings with an unidentifiable sauce, and what seemed to be pieces of pineapple from a boat drink.  His girlfriend dropped to her haunches beside him, avoiding the stream of vomit still launching from his gob, and calling “Bobby, Bobby baby.”

I looked around, the girl of my dreams was nowhere, vanished, gone.  I stood there stupidly while the bouncers from the back of the dance floor near the restrooms waded through the crowd toward me.  I began to move toward the front entrance scanning for her when a tall skinny black guy stepped into me. “No troubles babe, but you gotta go yeah. My name’s Smiley; you just call me George right? So, okay, you got all your stuff girl?” Still craning my head in circles trying to find her I nod mutely.  Smiley takes my arm. Fuck, he’s tall and skinny and got damn big hands. “Okay, yeah, I’m ready.” And off we go, the crowd parting like he’s Moses and saving them all from me.  “I know your face and name, read your first stuff, not sure about the poetry, but shit, that one that raised hell was fucking HOT!” I nod and sullenly allow him to lead me through the front entrance to the cold air outside.  “Thanks” I say.  “No prob Amanda, come back again, it’ll be fine.”  I stand in the lot for a while, cooling down and feeling like Dorothy in the first moments in Oz, before all the trouble begins, and with her salvation still so far down the road.

1:11 AM PST

I sit waiting at the bar. As usual, the place is quiet at this time of night, and day of the week; 'Sundays' I sighed. "Another Ice wine Cocktail?" the bartender inquired. 'Why are people always so mannerly and nice when there's a buck to be made' I wondered. "Yeah, sure, sugar me up Mister." I said. He didn't smile. I’m not surprised, for a girl I'm not a nice bit of fluff; and sitting here for 2 hours? I'm sure he is thinking, "crack ho" in his head. But I kept the tips coming, so he'd no complaints.

 I look up and into the mirror; 'Yeah, still there.' I light a smoke, watching my dried blood red nails handle the pack of Reds and the Zippo I carry to remember what 'real' men once were like in this world. Briefly I remember a face, a white open collared blouse, red blonde shortly cut hair, a tattoo of twelve bars of music scrolling up a smooth skinned bicep, and a girl’s voice saying "For a skirt you're tough sister." But those days are gone.  Now it's all, "Do ya wanna fuck baby?" or "Can I give you a lift?" or "What ya workin on, on that computer girl?" It’s always predictable, and never interesting. And the girls I long for are never much better to me; I suppose I’m not really the L-Word type they all would spread their thighs for. God, it all was so easy once; if you could dance the guys all formed a line to spin you around the floor; and if you wore red lipstick and had the right color of hair, the girls all wanted a bit of it too.

 I check my watch; God, another night like this; I might as well have gone to a twelve-step meeting; I might actually have gotten laid by someone.  I watch as the gold second hand drags slowly across the soft gold dusted face of the ancient Rolex that my father had worn so many decades before. It looks large for my wrist but I love the weight of it. My hand blindly searches the surface of the bar and finds my wine glass; I lift it slowly to my lips.

I hear the bell hung on the door to the bar and then a quick light breath of air from the street outside lays soft on my cheek.  I smell the wet of a rain soon to come on the wind and smile to myself remembering what a lover had said once about our skin feeling so different against each other with the cold rainwater and our goose bumps. I hear a woman laugh gently and I look up in the mirror. ‘God, I've seen her before’, I think. I had danced with her once, but she'd shoved me away. Christ, she's wearing my lipstick, and she's with some guy who looks like a true burner. Internally I roll my eyes, and realize, too late, that she's been watching me in the mirror as I actually roll them.

She and the burner park themselves at the bench and table against the wall just behind me and to my right. The burner comes to the bar and stands a couple feet away waiting for the bartender to look up. Customers at 1 AM are really of interest to him.  I've asked him why the studied indifference, and been told that he's always busy thinking about his prosthetic leg by this time of the day; told me his stump burns from ten hours of standing and all he wants is to go back to his rooming house and let the lady who runs the place wrap it in a cold towel and kiss his face. I'm wishing I had a stump right now, if that's what it takes. I tap the bar once with my Zippo and the bartender looks up with a pained expression, sees the burner and nods at me.

 "A scotch and soda for me, with ice in it; and an Ice wine with berries if you can." the burner says. He's not bad looking for a Hobbit, I can smell the reefer on him from the eight feet that separate us; can't tell in the mirror whether his girl has red eye or not. She's pulling a pipe out of her bag, loading it with tobacco; her hands are strong looking, a little thick fingered, and I’m already wondering at what they'd feel like on me. I remember her from the dance bar across town now.  My head is busy seeing all of the sliding moving hot wet skin that I’d danced with.  My heart is thumping hard remembering the kiss and the promise of her lips as she’d kissed me a “No”.  She's striking a match and putting the flame to the tobacco and in the  red yellow glow of the flame, and the smoke rising sinuously, I can see her eyes, they're large and blue, and no, there's no sign that she's done anything but tobacco tonight; for some reason I'm relieved by that.

I shake my head to try and separate its drumming needs from the someone sitting on the bench behind me, who’s not ever gonna slice through my loneliness. I stare at the wineglass in front of me, a slice of strawberry is slowly circling and the ice wine is so thick and sugary good that my tongue slides out and touches my upper lip and circles my mouth. I always remember a girl that I had truly awesomely, wonderingly, loved when I have Vin Glacé like this; how its sweet flavor was so close to the honey taste of her that had been on my lips and tongue. And Oregon; how the fuck did they create it in a state with so little sun?

 The bartender has set the drinks for her companion on the bar top and stands waiting.  The burner drops a fifty on the countertop and takes the glasses away, he looks at me strangely as he passes; probably wondering what the fuck I’m doing with an open Macbook Air on the bar top at 1:11 AM PST. I watch in the mirror as he walks carefully toward the booth and puts the drinks down; I can almost feel his sigh of relief that he didn't spill any. His girl is still looking at me. Her smoke is drifting around and I can smell it in my mouth now, an odd combination of cheap tobacco and some smooth candy or spice taste; some mix she's put together for herself; something to touch her and put her in a place she likes. I wonder if she remembers the shove she gave me; how I’d lurched into that guy and his bitch who were dancing behind me.  How he'd pulled his arm back in a fist and how I’d planted my boot between his legs. His girl had squatted down on the floor trying to comfort him while he'd puked his fried pickles on the floor. I'd turned and looked for the blue eyed girl who’s now smoking at the booth table, but she’d been gone by then; and I’d gotten a bum's rush by 'always smiling George' the tall skinny black bouncer.

I'm feeling uneasy and unhappy, and damn horny, and like crying, and hating everything except the sweet mix of ice wine, strawberry, and that girl's smoke in my mouth.

Closing

On the dark polished wood of the bar top the piece of paper glows, square and white.  Around it the grain of the wood flows deep beneath its finished glow, as if movements of currents under the lacquer, where the larger creatures would lurk; waiting for some disturbance on the surface to draw them, in their strength and speed, to shine scaled and silver; in a glistening display of their hunger. Taking what is their need. Near this abstract square shape, a pair of abandoned drops of condensation from my wine glass curve magic, signaling the illusion of the lacquer and the burl beneath. The white of my finger’s skin is not quite a match for the absolute of the paper.  My Sephora Caffeine Fix nails touch, and spin, the parchment. It is not note pad, not jotting tear away, not desktop or copy machine or typing bail. It is a fragment of fine heavy weight contoured water color stock, its surface a topographical map of some far off continent, some world once glimpsed but not explored.  Its edges are not sliced or cut by scissor steel. Instead they are rough edged and torn by hand, like sheet linen on a bed, twisted and kicked until so frayed that it serves only to drift some notice to me of how passionate the love making there had been.

 I watch my hand poised over the white of it, and then dropping to lift the frayed edge of the message. She had, in leaving the bar, paused so close I could feel the heat of her on my back and her wine sweetened breath on my cheek, a soft odor of strawberries, and tobacco, and some unknown spice that was now how I thought of her, in this moment, before knowing would come.  She had dropped the paper and it had settled quickly with only the slightest of sounds, a soft shuttling of the air beneath its contact with the surface shine of bar. I had turned to look, and had seen her back as the burner she’d entered with held the door wide for her; his eyes were flat and spoke nothing to me of intent or expectation.

The ink is black and the hand of the lettering firm and smooth, flowing across the contoured surface carefully and with speed, a clear feminine form to the lettering taught in some elementary class and practiced carefully day and night; her eye for appealing shape and control clear in each character’s precision.  The ink rises above the surface of the parchment, not the ink of some casual plume or commercial laundry marker, now so commonly grasped to dash off a grocer’s list or after thought, or university note home.  It is the ink of those who craft art, ink meant to stand out from the background, to become shape and not negative space. 

Its message is clarity, concise, and complete, and carries such power over me that my breath catches hard.  The bartender looks up at me and nods once, “On the tab will be fine, go.”  The single word that flows with such power on the paper, which puts motion to me, shines up “Waiting”.

She stands on the pavement, and her eyes are bright and open; blue, like tomorrow’s morning skies.  They shine wet and sharp with points of light from around her. Her pupils are dark, like those pools of night tide water I find when I wander her shores, touched by my toes to watch the ripples echo the moon lit clouds. The skin of the eyelid, among the thinnest and softest of the body and containing the most pigment of any flesh, is shadowed dark and colored deep grey running lighter on the upper lid.  Her hands have labored with softest brush to do this art.  My mouth will meet them and soft dust from them like the powders of a butterfly will coat my lips and I will taste it.  And her hair so soft and floating brown, high lit with strands of different golds, will coast and form around her on a linen pillow where my arms and hands will wander and clutch, and it will slide gossamer through my fingers.  And her arms are opening now, and I will fall into them and we will roll and toss together like the great ocean along the shore.  I will be held within them, now safe and carried and warmed, and lay upon her shoulder, its curve a sweet place my mouth will search and taste and curry favor in. And I am rushing to her and crashing white and bubbled and foaming to touch and wash upon her. Her teeth are bright and delicious and my mouth is with hers; our lipstick's flavor and color a match and joined together.  My tongue so pink and narrow at its tip is between her lips and her teeth are on it holding it in place while her own tongue caresses mine. Her hands are on me now, and later they will explore and caress and communicate her desire; mine clutch her, pulling her tight against me.  Our mammal skin, ours the only life so smooth and fragile and sensitive and needing the comfort of each other, fits together and shares our desire. And we embrace and breathe into each other and join, and in the morning will wake and laugh and know that we have mingled and are now one. We will share and show and lift and carry each other, our moments stretched out like her legs so long on the cream linen of her bed. Knowing the rush of time we will open and present ourselves and know each other in manners that intimacy, as a word, does not confine.  And her breath will quicken, and her body toss, and she will become me and I she.  Those instants will join us, and in evenings we will repeat this song. We run together now, moving faster, the sound of our steps echoing, and her door is open and we are inside each other, and the spice smell of her is in my mouth and her legs wrap tightly; and we fit together in perfect motion. Her chest is heaving, and my breasts are gripped tightly, and I am lost with her and around her and she is all that there is and now, and now, and now.  And we perspire, and we slide together and my hands are filled with longing and my lips are filled with throbbing and my legs part for her knee.  And she leans back and she cries out and I feel like all of heaven has opened and lays in waiting for my heart to clutch at and draw it into me.

And the flowers we will send and the letters left on table tops in the sun, and the clothing we will wear, and the places we will be, and the ocean’s roll and thunder, and the hooves upon the turf, and the leaves in wind and rain, and the sounds of sleeping children, and the taste of salt and berries, and the feel of you and me, are all that I desire, are all that I will ever be.  And as the sun rises, behind the mountains above us, and lights the ocean, shore, and city; as it lights your face and skin and eyes, settles in my chest and lights a place untouched by others; settles in and softly speaks, and whispers with my voice to you; moves air in patterns, like the foam, left on the beach, beside the sea.

Playlist Music for The Girl Desired

Seen – The Girl Desired

Into through guy shouting

Always ………………….. Birthday Massacre

Moving like a cyborg

Bliss………………………. Syntax

Slowing now

Linoleum ………………. Tweaker

Friends and leaving

Celebrate You………….Veruca Salt

Fly…………………………..Veruca Salt

Bridge Music - The Girl Desired

Sitting at the bar with a drink

Que Veux-Tu ……………….. Yelle

The girl dancing

Angel …………………………… Massive Attack

Shove and Run

Don’t Fake This…………….. Chevelle

Tossed

Every Time You Go………… Ellie Goulding

1:11 AM PST - The Girl Desired

Intro, Fini and Credits Theme

Fragile .............................. Sting

Closing - Girl Desired

Opening through final credits.

Help Yourself...........Death in Vegas