I’M A PLAYA DEL CARMEN, BITCH!
Fictional short story about Colombian dirty, panty silk, and women sailors.
“Do it!” My yell crunches my stomach and slides my elbows over the Cerveza covering the dance-floor table. “DO IT.” The glittered giant next to me looks to her, too. She looks down at us from the handrail dividing the elevated second dance floor from the grounded first. She’s standing on a rung, leaning over the couch below her. “DO IT.”
She glances to her girlfriends then aims down at the couch. The lights glare blue then pink then blue behind her. Her right foot steps on the top rail, slips, and pulls the rest of her over the bar. “Oh!” I go as she crashes in a man’s lap, missing the empty seat beside him.
Surprised he looks down at her hair-tossed face then at her hips. Gathered at her waist, her cocktail dress shows skin without panties, shaved, neat, and tucked in. Makes me think mmm. The rest of her: sloppy seconds. Her dress covered in dark tequila stains and scrunched where it should cling tight. The man goggles around, as if to say, “Look at this gift from God.” But before he can speak to her, she stands, glares at him as if he pulled her dress up, and tugs the purple fabric to hide her only prettiness. She walks away.
“Damn,” I yell to the bald giant with arms folded, “I was hoping she wouldn’t notice her dress.” He sniggers. I also want to tell him that I hate his fucking shirt, all glittered and graphic, fucking Ed Hardy, as if he got attacked by a rabid toddler with a bedazzler, making him resemble a Guido Mr. Clean. But I keep that part quiet; he’s twice my size and stands with biceps bundled over hidden fists. Fuck that, no fights tonight. All he does is stand and smile and shuffle alone anyway,like me.
I reach into the bucket on the high table and pelican out another ice cube. How the bucket got there? I have no clue. To whom it belongs? Shit same. But who gives a fuck? The water splinters melt great in the gums. WHEEEEEEEEEE. I hear another whistle and see the fat squat Mayan woman pass me again, blowing her orange whistle. WHEEEEEEEEEEEE. A couple shake their heads at her and she takes her bottle and whistles off to another group. WHEEEEEEE.
“So are you a part of the group that has this table?” asks the titan. He shouts like a drill sergeant for me to hear.
“What?” I yell back. He points to the beer leaning off my bottom lip.
“You’re drinking the beer from the bucket. Only people that reserved the table can do that.” He reaches across the arms of others huddled by us and plucks a Cerveza from the nearest ice tin. “I’m not. But who gives a fuck, right?” Glad I left his shirt alone. He grins, sweat dripping off the smile wrinkles by his eyes, knocks bottle necks with me, and walks off, leaving my bottle foaming from the clack. I should leave, too.
On the way to the bathroom two men, each leaning against the hallway in different locations, tap a nostril at me. I walk past and truck the bathroom door with my shoulder. “Lo siento, Amigo,” I say to the attendant who hopped away from the door swing.
“No problema,” he replies with an I’m-here-to-serve nod. I dig him.Clacking in my boots past him and past the shimmering sink he keeps, I grunt to the nearest urinal. Left hand unbuttons and labors at my fly, like a poor lover. Beer in right hand high as if I’m giving a best man toast, Easy, babe, patience. I’m chuckling. There we go. Thank God.Soon I notice the wooden plank above the urinal and rest my left forearm across it and Genius. Ahhhh. I swig the Cerveza mid-stream and imagine the invisible mini village that I’m saving below. Their huts burn with a blaze and only I the tall rain god can save their homes. “No worries. I’m here,” I say out loud and wiggle to dowse the entire village. “The great snake god Coocool-Khan is here to save you and he makes it RAINNNNN.” The attendant snickers but who gives a fuck?
“Here you go,” I tell the attendant and slip him a five, “Lincoln’s the best president.”
I stand huddled by the others at the bar, debating whether coming out was worth it at all. An hour ago I sat in the lobby of the family resort, writing away at some story, convincing myself I’d rather be alone than out. And I would have stayed in the lobby with the fat tourists in Hawaiian shirts — as if those shirts made sense in Cancun, but I suppose Hawaiians are really big Mexicans anyway so I can’t blame the idiots — if I hadn’t eyefucked that brunette. Cambio de luzes. That’s what they call it here. Cambio de luzes, when two passing cars on the highway flash their lights at each other, and when a woman looks at a man then blushes. Cambio de luzes.
So I left the notebook with the story on the table and followed her to the hotel bar, she walked alongside her dad and sister. “Bacardi and Coke,” I told the bartender and glanced aside. The girls ordered aqua girly drinks, queer things that tasted better than what I held, and when the bartender asked the dad for an order, he shook his head biting his tongue.
“What he’s having,” he finally said.
“Bacardi and Coke,” I repeated to him, “A drink from Puerto Rico.” The bartender handed him the drink and he lifted it to examine it through its bottom.
“Looks tasty, but one problem,” he said. “They give you this much Coke,” he held his thumb and finger spaced apart, “and this much rum,” he brought them closer. “The cheap bastards.”
After I chatted briefly with the daughters, I retreated to my notebook on the table. Pussy. So I surfed my drink back so it grilled my tonsils, ordered another, accepted the third the bartender slid to me with a wing-man eye-twinkle, and walked out to the pool where the three sat.With liquid motivation.
“Hey, I noticed you two are dressed to go out,” I said to the daughters. The prettier brunette was reading from a tablet and the other staring at the honeymoon light bouncing off the chlorine, bouncing off turned green. “I’m about to go to the bar CocoBongo. They say it’s famous. And I want to bring you along. I get to walk in a group to avoid getting raped, and you two’ll have more fun.” They chuckled and nodded. The dad shook my hand. And off I strolled toward the commercial street with two broad babes beside. Liquid motivation.
I immediately preferred the one who read and initially perked my interest. The other, glazed and gone, hung on my arm and pulled me toward the core of the Earth. Heavier than gravity. “Come on, we’re almost there,” I told her pulling her along. The prettier helped and told me this was typical.
“Let’s just go back,” said the drunk one.
“We’re hardly a hundred meters from the hotel,” replied her sister. She said “meters” because they vacationed from Europe. But the English sounded melodic and seduced, but only from her. The other can drown in this street water.
“I don’t care. Let’s go back to the hotel,” the drunk one was whispering to me then, “Take me back and we’ll go to my room. We have separate rooms.” But her sister and I dragged her over cobblestone and wounded up at CocoBongo.
“I’ll meet you guys here at four in the morning,” I told the pretty one. She struggled under the weight of her boneless sister. “I’m not about to pay seventy dollars to enter a club that I can’t even tell is full.” CocoBongo had solid walls and its balcony hovered lonely and empty of smokers. “I’ll come back and walk you guys back.” One broad isn’t worth one burden. So I walked through the crowds and between the disco lights that sunshined from both sidewalks, and came in here. A place unnamed with no walls and dance floors held by columns and a ten-dollar cover. No drinks included in the cover, but Bacardi swished inside me still anyway.
Man, what are you doing? Wall-flowering by the bar and sticking out like a boner. I should have never talked to those two. The dancing crowd makes me wait for an opening, and as I search for the exit, cigarette smoke fairies in front of me. Take one for the road?
“Hey, man. Can I bum a cigarette?” I ask you as you pull at a white stick with your lips. You look over and smile behind a fog of evaporated sweat. You rummage in your pocket and pull out the case, which lacks a flipping top and ejects cigarettes from a hole. “Whoa, old-fashioned Marlboro’s! I dig you!”
I bend down to light, and as I come back up ember-in-face, you reply, “Lond-uhn.”
“America.” Your face brightens brighter than the pink of the blue pink blue.
“I’ve been all over America. LA, New Y-ohk, Mi-ohmi. Lohve it.”
“AHHHH. The Tah-heels!” You grip back on the air excited, elbows bent, fists flexed, teeth gripped. “The UNC TAH-HEELS! Amazing team. No one follows college basketball in Lond-uhn, but I DO. AHHHH. Hansborough!”
“AHHH, yes! Jordan! The Michael Jordan!”
“He visits my town occasionally. I saw him at a restaurant.” Your hand slaps your forehead and you fall back, knocking a drink out of a girl’s grip. Seeing her drink spill makes my throat scratch and I thumb back to the bar. With two Dos Equis in hand I hand one to you. “For the cigarette.” You slap your forehead red again and pat me on the shoulder. “Wait.” And I turn to the bar, grab two limes, smear them in the bowl of salt, shoot one down my barrel, then shove the bigger slice down yours, the wedge crammed in the bottle neck reminding me of a flamingo with a lump in his throat. Your beer fizzes over your hand and you suck the foam till the beer floats half-empty, no half-full.
I spot her before she stands in front. “Meet my girlfriend,” you yell to me through two exhausting chimneys, one from your smoke one from mine. I watch you talk into her ear and she smiles at me. Her white dress isolates her in the clutter of purple cocktail skirts and her dry blond hair from the black matted with sweat. “Ah-nd, he knows Michael Jordan! HE’S BEST FRIENDS WITH THE MAN!”
The place hops! I hop. I feel my boots hop into the liquid hops on the ground. The beer sprays onto your ankles as you jump into it. The lights blare blue pink blue and her hair swishes yellow. Make the color green. Mix and make the color green! Above you large television sets show music videos to the songs that make us hop hop HOP and I look up to Pit Bull’s face. Classy fellow. I DIG him. WHEEEEEEEEEE, the whistle walks by. You pull her and kiss her and push her hair around and shove her to me and I twirl her go dancer go go and push her off to pull her back and twirl dancer and send her back into you and you kiss her again. WHEEEEEEEEE.
A pack of women wearing sailor hats swim through the crowd holding one another’s hands high above people they pass like the sail of their ship and float through the waves of this rum sea and swim the sailors swim and anchor beside us and sway in the blue pink blue. WHEEEEEE goes the siren of the sea. WHEEEEEEEEEE. Gorgeous! Thirty and mature and gorgeous! And sharp cheekbones on that one and the waist on that one and dig how her stomach wades as she swings those hips, rock the boat babe ROCK THE FUCKING BOATand when her hips wreck into mine splash me babe splash me I’m sinking and we’re all sinking. BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK.
And a man trots beside me to her in the white dress and speaks to her, eyeing her from her brown sandals to her golden streaks. She chats with him then recedes into you with an outstretched hand on your chest to present her man and her bashful loyalty makes me smile and it makes you shy because all you do is smile sly and shrug at him. As if you have no idea why she chose you. I wonder, too.
Then you interrupt my train and yell, “I’m headed to the toilet.”
“Okay, I’ll watch her. She won’t run off. I’ll watch her.” You smile and splat the cigarette box against my watery chest.
“Want another?” Macklemore sings above you.
“No!” but you shake your head and slip another between my lips and pat me on the shoulder then leave. Dig him.
And I imitate Egyptians with her. Heads on opposite sides, switching, switching, smiling, she giggling, me smiling, and the Egyptians are sinking! “How did you meet him?” I ask, but after the second try her hand remains cupped to her ear so fuck it and I sway again. Restless. With an outstretched forearm I bar a guy from walking into her and she yells a “thank you.” Me smiling.
“Have they clubs in London?” She nods. “Really? I don’t believe it. Looks like you’ve never danced in your life!” Her brow rises. Then DROPS with her top half. She’s sliding back up slow, ass out, back straight, palms skating on top foot on ankle on shin on white hills on white dress, and the dress follows the palms up. But it stops. Oh man, it stops and cascades over her honey thighs. And her brow bounces again and “Okay, I was wrong.”
After I stiff arm a few more, she expects the protection. With every other fatherly block she only smiles at me and turns with her fingers on the back of her head, pushing her hair back into a collection of yellow seaweed dangling from a magical boat, as she swings in my island. Her eyes looking at me from their corners, seductive and sad. As if I’ve kidnapped her and she’s forced to groove for me. No one will touch her. Then, as I stare at the ceiling twenty feet up and try to dive into it with every hop, someone walks into her.
“You got lazy!” she says wagging a finger like the stick of a metronome, slow in everything around it. I hate her with gritted scissor teeth. She detects the neck flex and walks up, dress against shirt and palms on bowling ball shoulders, and drapes her weight against me, boneless as she sways. I melt and mix with the liquor puddled below.
“Where’s your man?” Her shoulders shrug. I nod toward the bar, “Let’s find him.” She begins to walk into the woods of people until I grip her wrist. “In Mexico, the man leads.” So I plunge into the crowd like river water through boulders and drag her behind. I know she’s smiling. Near the end another guy breaks my hold on her by sliding in. So I shove him and wrap her in my glistening arm skin and march like that, her smiling, me smiling, until I spot her belonger. I pat you on the shoulder and hug you. The lost son has been found!
“Three shots!” to the bartender. What is it? Beer before liquor? Liquor then beer you’re in the clear? Fuck it. We’re all young with oil to burn and with to illuminate our dark way, so shake the head! WHO GIVES A FUCK?!
“Arriba!” I yell and hold the liquid trophy high. You copy. “Abajo!” then sink it down. SHIT and the tequila cooks on the floor. You both look up to catch me laughing. “Otro!” to the bartender, and I finish the tradition, group hug, but I damn near piss myself from your squeeze. “My turn for the toilet.”
The same men tap their nostrils at me as I shamble by. The village fire has returned and I save my mini people again and make the attendant smile again, chat to one of the nose-tappers, and return to you two with three vials. “We’ve never done this,” you say but I haven’t either. So we observe a couple nearby and copy them. YES. Yes to everything.
I reel back with a sneeze that could blow down the third piggy’s house of brick. But no sneeze. Just a huff and a puff and an itch. In the membrane. The sands of time in the membrane. And the blue pink blue color purple in front of you, and the Colombian dirty in the thoughts I think, and her nose crinks and I wink at you and you blink quick red in the blue pink blue. Sandman salt makes thoughts you think smoke high and your body sink too, all in the blue pink blue. “Let’s dance,” says she. Let’s dance on the brink.
So back in the crowd and twirl dancer twirl. Her white dress spins like pizza dough then collapses onto her knees as she stops and falls back into me. You smile as I catch her and guide her back to you. The women sailors return and the captain, a bride on her last single night out, swallows shots and bumps me with her extended elbow. “Sorry,” she yells and I walk in front of her, steal a glass from her friend’s hand, and tip it to the captain’s mouth.
“Go!” and she does. Even licks the rest off her lips. That lucky future husband! And with a slide my foot is between hers and our stomachs together and I sway with the drowning captain. She smiles with the tight tan cheek-skin and experienced hips of a woman in her early thirties and I feel my jeans press down against it, and her pressure against it feels oh God yes. Her spider-leg lashes blowing breezes onto my caffeine neck as she bats her eyes. I’ll plant one. But then her wrist drags away within a girlfriend’s grip and she’s taken away from me forever. Marooned.
“I have to use the toilet again.”
“Jesus, man. The liquor flies through you!”
“Shut up, you bloke!” You smile here at me. “And take another bluhdy cigarette.” I watch you disappear behind all the bobbing heads of the crowd and turn to your girlfriend again.
“Just you and me. Other guys keep checking you out. I’ll have to make you look unavailable,” I whisper into her ear from behind, and I hope she heard it in all the hip-hop around. She nods OK.
So I dance behind her, pressing her, grinding her, bending our outlines together. These handles. I love these handles, I think staring back up to the ceiling; it looks like the bottom of a swimming pool in all this blue light. My grip only leaves when I have to guide others around her. Nope. Nope. Don’t touch her.
Then HUMPH. I squeeze her by her thighs and push them against mine. HUMPH. Away then back into me. HUMPH and she reaches over herself and by my hair pulls my head close to her cheek. I don’t care if she feels it. Let her feel it. Damn it, let it compliment her. Here you go, dammit.
“I love how you keep them away. Feels protective,” I hear her say over her naked shoulder, a shoulder I press my lips against, and nostrils against to smell her deep inside me. Evaporate with your heat so I can breathe you in. Be my pretty genie in a bottle. Then I pull her fallen white strap back over her shoulder.
“Of course.” Then with all the surrounding swelter from the bright lights blaring blue pink blue, up my heels from the taut boot leather, against my forearms from her rubbed-hard waist, in my thighs from her loins, on my groin from her perky bouncy ass, and through my spine from my in-fever, I spin her around, and kiss her. With a hand cupped around her ear I feel her lips move against mine. WHHHEEEEEE goes the siren.
And I dance with a thigh between hers and never stop kissing, only pulling her by my cup-hold more and more. And when I need a breath, I pull her back by that grain that’s been draping before me the entire night.
“Oh,” she goes with the pull. “Oh,” she goes when I grip her throat. “Oh,” she goes when I kiss her neck. The condensation on it tastes better than anything I’ve drank. Then back to dancing clasping and clawing, with her facing me and legs split by my bent knee. WHEEEEEEEEEEE. And as I haul her hips up my thigh and drive them down it, she widens her stance. I feel jean slide against panty-silk and see her bite her bottom lip. Don’t draw blood.
But instinct digs my gut, so I hug her and kiss her cheek, then push her away, seconds before you return. You smile at me and pat my shoulder. “Want another cigarette?” I dig the man.
WHEEEEEEEEE. The squat Mayan woman, fat and sweaty in her face and in her cleavage. She looks me in the eyes and blows the whistle again. I yank around confused. “Give her money,” you say. So I give her a ten. WHEEEEE. WHEEEEEEEE. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. She pours a shot into a plastic green glass, leans me back by and pours it in. Swallow. WHEEEEEEE. Shakes my head and pulls my face into her porkfat tits. WHEEEEE goes the whistle as she shakes them, bending my nose between. HA HOLY SHIT. WHEEEEEE. She spins me, thrusts me over, and humps me from behind. WHEE. WHEE. WHEE. WHEE with every momentum. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. People cheer, she hi-fives me, and you two laugh.
“Here! Now do him!” You lean back with jazz hands. But BAM, English face in Mayan titters. “Wooooo!”
“Haha, how’d it go?” I ask you as she whistles WHEEEE away.
“I NEARLY BLUHDY SUFFOCATED!” I pat you on the back and push you back into your woman. She’s shaking her head. “She gets jealous when she sees me with other women!” you say with an arm around her waist. “She cuhn’t stuhned it!” She’s still shaking her head but blushing now.
“Especially when they’re more attractive, huh!” She stares hard at me.
Back to dancing. But now my blood’s sponged everything. All the drinks from the hotel, from the bar, from the Mayan love-lumps are swimming in my system. And the dance floor begins to tilt. Stay fucking still. I can’t dance with you tilting. And I sniffle my nose. Shit hits hard. I rub my eyes and nose bridge. Cocaine’s a hellafadrug. I fall into y’all. Y’all laugh and keep me straight. “Sorry. Haha, sorry. Not my fault. Fucking floor’s doing it on purpose.”
As you hold me, here comes THAT JERSEY SHORE MR. CLEAN from earlier. He grabs your girlfriend and tries to dance with her. She pushes him off and walks away but he grabs her wrist. “Dude, your girl,” I say to you. Do something.
“She’s with me,” you tell the bulk, but the clump of muscle meat laughs and keeps his hold on her. His shiny Ed Hardy shirt shoots off beams of blue. Her brows are raised. Adrenaline, Alert. And by God’s good-loving the floor has stopped moving. I walk past you and fumble to the man I shared a laugh with earlier. I curl my finger at the douche,Come hither dick, I look up a foot to him, Big tall dick. He leans over, head bobbing and dizzy drunk, “What?” he flops from his mouth.Ohhhh, nothiiiing.
Swing, hand sting, timber onto a table with shots — the drinks carbine-ing past me — splats on the floor, Cerveza splashes up in a cyclops’ silhouette. As I shake out my fingers, I check for his friends, Oh yeah he came alone, so only the stunned faces of other dances look back. WHOOOOOOOO. HANDS AND YELLS IN THE BLUE PINK BLUE. No one other than us knows what happened but they cheer anyway. Hands pat me on the back and beautiful older women wink in my face. They’ve been waiting for this. We’ve all been. WE’RE HUNGRY ANGRY. WE’RE ALL DRUNK MESSY HIGH-CRACKED. I turn and hug both of you. My family. You pull back to look at your best friend and smile. “WE DID IT.”
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Wet, cold, and stingy feels the floor against my side. Fuck! I touch my brow and tear my fingers away, “FAACK!” Before I can look around, I’m mopping all the tequila, sweat, piss, whatever else with my back. I high heel shanks my chin and I shriek, dragging on. At the club door, a tough-shouldered Cuban in black drops my ankles, grabs me by my sixty-dollar shirt, then pulls me up. A shirt button pops, but before I fall back down, he pulls me by the hair and throws me into the crowded street. Flashes pop bright around as vacationers snap photos. My fucking shirt.
“Holy shaht,” she says to me. The outside breeze blows into my gaping shirt cool. “Are you okay?” She touches my brow but I wince away. Her eyebrows are raised again. Then you appear from the club and she stands away from me.
“You crazy bloke. You look horrid,” you say and chuckle.
“Sorry you guys got kicked out.”
“Not at all. We came out to check on you. We’re done with dancing anyway. Too tired,” you say. Your eyes look red and your nostril, too.
“Gives us a chance to talk. I don’t even know your name.”
“Brown,” you say as you shake my hand. “And this beauty is Scarlette.”
I introduce myself then say, “You both have colorful names.” But y’all miss the joke. “You guys staying in Playa Del Carmen, too?”
“No. We’re in Cancun. We’ll have to take a cab,” you say. She nods and sits beside me on the curb. “Thirty dollars a fohking cab ride here. You?”
“Here in Playa Del Carmen. At the Gran Porte Real. Takes me a six-minute walk.” You nods and I nod, too. “Sit, Brown.” And you do at my other side with a groan. “Sore?”
“Sore and dizzy. My nose fohking hurts. Saw in the toilet that my nose bled some, too. Blohdy hell.”
“Believe it or noht,” here you turn toward me, “No. I myself got the shit kicked out of me once. Does your head still hurt? Yeah, thought so. Looks horrid. As I was saying, babe, Scarlette, I’m telling him the story about Greece. She liked the story, too, when I told it to her. As I was saying, Greece. Greece! FOHK!” You slap your forehead. “If you ever want to get laid, nearly die, truly live, and cry all in the same night. GREECE!”
“I went there with friends last summer. A graduation sort of thing. Hey, how old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-three. I guess y’all are eighteen, nineteen.”
“On the blohdy money, bloke. I’m eighteen. She’s nineteen. Got myself an older woman,” your brows bounce. “Anyway, GREECE. We arrived to a shaht hotel. And I mean, SHAHT. But whatever, we went to drink. And we did. The parties! Oh, bloke the parties. We didn’t even have to pay a cohver because they party in the streets. One bloke sort of sets up shop in the middle with DJ equipment and begins to play, others sort of just gather. And you know the economic state of that country, no? Total shat. But you’d think they were on top of the world with the parties they throw. No laws there, hardly. As I guzzled vodka, a kid, merely ten by his appearance, drank beside me, and faster, too. The crazy bloke! Do you like women? Like truly love and appreciate women, like a car collector? Cause you look like a man that enjoys his women. Well, the women here looked beautiful. Especially that one lady with the sailor hat that you had a swell time with. Pretty broad that was. Should have tried to make her. But in Greece?” Slap. “They hardly wear anything. I swear to you on the queen of my country at least six pairs of naked, bare, glistening, TATS bounced in my face that night. And such beautiful tats. Not like that whistle lady’s, but young round virgin TATS. They do it to tease you. Babe, don’t get jealous. I told you she’s the jealous type, hehe. And the cops there don’t give a shat what happens. Probably should, too, because fights break out everywhere. What you had in there, blohdy nice right hook there by the way bloke, let me see your hand, yikes, horrid, but what you had in there would be a common occurrence. And they don’t cheer in Greece like they did in there, they ignore it. They ignore the blow jobs given on the sidewalks, too. Nearly goht myself one, hehe. Babe, that was before I met you before. But bloke! I saw a man die! One bloke stabbed him in the back, right in the middle, blade must have gone through his fohking spine, painful looking I tell you I nearly threw up, but I saw him die, bloke! And no one came to help. My friends and I tried to drag the bloke out of the crowd but people kept trampling him and it took trouble and we noticed him dead anyway so we left him what could we do? I still wonder whether anyone ever scraped him off the street. Who? I saw him DIE.”
You’re shaking your head now, all spaced-like, perhaps you truly saw a man die or the coke still works, whatever. “How’d you two meet?” I ask Scarlette. Her head whips back a bit when I call her attention. She smacks her lips and looks at me with sleepy do-what-you-want eyes, but she’s probably still high, too.
“Eh, you tell it babe. You tell it better.”
“Yes, she can’t tell a fohking story, can’t stay on point. Right, babe? Yes. Well, bloke I used to be sexist. Like my friends and I hated women. We’d say shaht like, ‘Yeah I fingered a girl. Just some girl,’ you know, never saying the girl’s name. Just ‘some girl.’ Anyway I was dancing at this party with some friends, mostly standing and staring at all the broads and cussing at them in my head but picking which to fuck, when she walked up to me. Right, babe? She kept bothering me to dance and after a few times I said, ‘Oh blohdy hell, fine,’ and we did. Danced with her all night I did. And an older woman, too,” Bounce. “But she wouldn’t let me make her. Right, babe? Took forever mate. And now she still makes me work for it. I mean can’t get anything without working. But I love her.” Wonder if it’s the liquor, dust, or him speaking. Far from romantic, but honest. Most men can’t get either of the two.
“How about ju?” she asks from the other side. “Did you come alone or with someone?”
“Came alone. Wrote a book so I’m celebrating.”
“I want to read it. How many pages, what’s the title?”
“300.” And I tell her the title.
“Did you catch that, babe?” she asks you. “Remember the title. I want to read it when we get back home. Can’t wait. So, no woman?”
“WITH MICHAEL JORDAN!” You yell from the other side and faint against my shoulder.
“Met her in the mountains. I was drinking coffee in the snowboarding shack when she accidentally drank mine instead of hers. Called her a thief and went snowboarding with her. Finally discovered she had a boyfriend while we rode the lift, he was there, too, but he hated snow and stayed in their cabin watching TV. So for the rest of the week I either tried to push her off the lift, crash into her while snowboarding, or throw snowballs at her back. Then the week ended and I left.”
“Can’t say. Jesus my head hurts.”
“Come closer, doesn’t feel broken,” and with her fingers still on my brow, “Does it hurt much?”
“Showed up at her apartment with a cup of coffee in my hand, same type she drank from me the first time we met. Surprised the hell out of her.”
I have no clue why I did it, and I hope you never ask me. I hate myself, I love myself. I roll in the heat, it angers me so I heave it out. We’re all veins on foreheads.
I promise you, as I limped back to my hotel dividing the four a.m. air, blood dripping from brow onto boot, I promised not to dial what she slipped me. Then, Okay, we’ll just have breakfast and chat. Then, Stop it. Stop it. Finally, It’s okay, if she doesn’t love you.
Wastes the mood when a girl says another’s name in the Uhhghnn of it all. But whatever. Thanks for the cigarettes.
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