Ravishing

First published in Word Riot, October 2012. 

I’d been into the scene for about three months—rolling and heavy drinking—and thought I was getting pretty good at it. I could be out of control and octopus-like, doing forty-five things at once: dancing, dreaming, scheming and drinking—but still sharp, still calm, and full of heavy slowness. Like honey dripping from the prongs of a fork. That's why people do drugs, if ever you were wondering.

            My friend Mark actually lives in the city—unlike the rest of us who are still in fucking Greenpoint, pretending it’s awesome. Manhattan is still 'New York,' New York. Don’t let my friends or me convince you we’re into living in Brooklyn. Mark always throws the best parties, and gets nice crowds; never too many of one type of person, and everyone is cool. The party was probably pretty good. I don’t remember. It was after some electro show that cost too much for what it was, but everyone was rolling so it didn’t matter. After the show, I fell into the cab door and smashed my head on the handle of one of those SUV cabs. It’s really easy to misjudge how high you have to step up with those kinds, even when you aren’t tripping balls. It hurt, and there was a little blood, so I thought I’d check the damage after around my fortieth drink.

            I stepped into the bathroom and latched onto the edges of Mark’s sink. My eye looked like a hardboiled egg smeared with ketchup. I wondered how I could see through the red—through so much blood. Red and white had fought and red had won. Was I going to need a glass eye? Maybe I could wear a patch. That could be sexy. And if it couldn’t be sexy it could be my thing. I could be the pirate who does E and drinks vodka instead of rum. I can even switch to rum. Settled. Get a patch. Switch to rum. I had just reached this conclusion when I realized I had been joined by the woman, as in the woman who made me think I could be into women. The one that lingered like a smell. All smells hang around if you don't move, if you slow down and let them invade your senses, scents will. She looked at my eye with what seemed like tenderness, and then we kissed. We kissed with the door open and then with the door closed. She touched me and it felt incredible—I was so high and something I wanted to have happen was happening. Get that? Get how great that is?

            I felt her through my clothes and was wrapped up in knowing that this would be beautiful. I fizzled in and out of our reflection in the mirror. Both of us in the same frame, like water trapped in a shadowbox. The two of us standing as beautiful silhouettes, looking back and forth in liquid. I was drunk and high. So our image zoomed in and out. Factor in her frame, which is tall and perfect like every model that walked the runway, to the framework. She wasn’t a real model. She had done some shots for a clothing company online, but those girls are still pretty attractive. So, picture a girl—a woman—picture someone with breasts who is pretty enough to be selling clothes online. Picture her kissing me—picture me too dizzy to turn around, so I had to just settle for watching her move through the mirror. I looked at her and my appearance at once, and I wanted my mascara to be fixed on my good eye and for her to touch me more. I didn’t mind the genesis of the shiner on my left eye as much as the messed up makeup of my right eye. I was settled on the patch and the rum. I squinted at her, saw what she was doing, but the indirectness of my watching her through the glass still let me be excited when I felt her hand on my back. This is when it got difficult. She whispered into my ear the vilest thing I've ever heard, and then applied it to me. I wasn’t even sure if I had heard her correctly. I tried to clarify.

            “You want to milk my bruise with your tongue?”

Maybe I wasn’t that into this. She had an accent that I had never noticed before and it suddenly made everything worse. Was it Russian? Was it wrong to assume she was an orphan? She sounded sad and foreign and it made her less desirable.

            She had become so confusing and frightening in such a short period of time that I didn't have the capacity to do anything but stand there. Embarrassed, I closed my eyes. I tried and failed not to think about what her salted tongue would feel like on my eyelid. I think she read my silence as satisfaction on my end. Her assumption was horribly unfortunate, and wrong. I was grabbed in a way that was more of a pinch but what she was doing to my ass—with both of her hands—was too big of a gesture to be called a pinch. She was lifting her dress and turning me around and I was too damn out of it to stop her, but not quite drunk enough to forget what she had said and have it be okay. I spoke.

            “Wait.”

And then I looked down and giggled at the ice cubes melting into the glass of Grey Goose that I was holding. At first, she paused, but then, after my hesitation, she resumed her attack. Vodka down. My thong also down, then off, then flushed away. That still seems weird. She scratched it to my ankles and threaded it past my heels without a snag. This was after she sat me on the toilet—as if I were really about to give her head. I think I laughed, before having my legs flipped up like a mallard to complete the removal. I was amused but not turned on. Then I was lifted off of the seat. She was so strong. She opened the lid and flushed it away. What. The. Hell. I didn't laugh after that, but she did.

            Her clothes were removed. Not slowly—not how I thought it should happen, if any of what happened should have happened. She stood there in a bra, heels, and underwear. She was gorgeous, but the toilet was running. I was processing the pipes, and the epic voyage that my thong was on. Thank god I wore a thong. If it had been a non-sexy underwear night out, would she have flushed at the risk of clogging poor Mark’s bathroom? I think yes. She would have flushed any type of underwear, because she was insane. Psycho. She spoke again.

            “Come.”

I came. I don’t know why. I had nothing better to do. I seemed to shuffle over, but I felt like I tried to make a sexy stride. An attempt was made to turn her on even though that clearly wasn’t necessary. We were in a bathroom, moreover a New York City apartment bathroom—how much distance did I have to strut? Her strength brought me as close as she really wanted and then, just as I started to feel okay again, she pushed me backwards.

            I ass-planted into the tub, my calves were resting on porcelain and my cunt staring at her. I could feel it taunting her. She feasted. I think that’s the best way of describing it. I didn’t have a bad time. Does it matter if the carrion enjoys being eaten by vultures? I was on the level of a dead carcass. My neck was on a shampoo bottle, and I was playing with the bar of soap that had fallen during my landing. I squeezed the soft soap into a ball and tried to resist getting sick. My dress was being ruined by her saliva and my cum. I shut my good eye, because the bad one hurt when I tried to close it. I was somewhat fine, and somewhat not. I came again, and thought about making a sound, but I still wasn’t ready to encourage this to continue. I grabbed the plastic shower curtain, which was chalky, wet, and disgusting. I pulled it past my one eyeline so I couldn’t see her anymore, and imagined Johnny Depp eating me out. Ahoy, Captain Jack. A pirate’s life for me. So much better. All better.