Last Night
there were three girls arranged in order of ascending height.
eariler, they had plopped down next to me on the subway as i was engrossed in an obscure treatise/epic poem on Castro, and when it became clear that their mere presence wasn’t enough to draw my attention, the shortest one promptly removed a long, thin needle from her technicolored handbag and drove it into my exposed leg (i was wearing cut-off tuxedo pants in order to beat the summertime heat). the needle vibrated, its tip burried an inch into my quadricep right above the knee.
how that swift and sudden and intense moment of violent pain had led me to where i was now - sipping red Hi-C & Malibu on a macrame covered futon - was beyond my grasp. but i didn’t feel like running - not yet…
though the first half hour of their act was seemingly unrehearsed - mostly comprised of giggling and playing chipmunks records at a slow RPM - eventually an agenda did emerge, though its protocols were so convoluted & opaque & vaugely malevolent that i quickly gave up trying to understand and instead decided i should focus on staying alive.
the first rite involved me taking off all of my clothes and donning a wine-red terrycloth bathrobe. no problem there, i like to be comfortable. especially when i’m dealing with snaggle-toothed jezebels who may or may not be witches. at first i had begun to undress in front of them, but they giggled and ushered me into a corner that had been curtained-off with velvet drapes. when i emerged ensconsed in the luxurious robe, i found that they had stripped down to their matching black bodices and arranged themselves in a line of ascending height. i was ordered to resume my position on the sagging smelling futon.
this was the first time that i really got a good look at each of them:
the shortest - or “scrappy” as i affectionately nicknamed her - was squat and ugly. she had a greasy round pan-asian face and lumpy breasts, and wore pancakes of whorish red makeup on her fat cheeks. i found her immensely attractive.
the lady of medium height - or “fillibuster surprise” - also seemingly of asian descent, was lean but with a curvy, feminine figure and gaunt, angular features. she wore immense plastic hoop earings of shocking pink and a matching rainbow of bangles on each of her wrists. did my memory deceive me or had she been wearing a large plastic garbage bag as a dress before?
the tallest girl - “the leader” - was at least 6’5” and pencil thin. she had a pointy face and a terse, pouty mouth below penetrating, malicious eyes. her non-existent breasts hardly annouced themselves at all through her tightly cinched bodice, so that she gave off the impression of a male high school basketball center in drag.
my mind raced - should i escape? or was this destiny? a potentially life-altering encounter with which i dare not meddle? after all hadn’t that gypsy on bleecker street predicted this event with alarming accuracy (the noted absence of miniature elephants nonwithstanding)?
but my anxious and troubled thoughts were interupted when “the leader” made a high pitched chirpping sound and a flock of well-trained swallows flew in and dimmed the lights with their eerily agile wings. i was given a plate of hummus which i was instructed not to eat but instead to balance on my head. i complied.
then the middle girl took my hand led me into another room - a fetid, airless closet in the back. she closed the door behind her and asked me to undo the buttons on the back of her bodice, which i did with great efficiency. she slipped out of the thing and stood before me stark naked and instructed me to sit with my back against the wall. again i complied. then she produced a leather bound volume of Proust from out of nowhere, which she read aloud from for the greater part of an hour while i sweated out the Hi-C & Malibu (which is known as - i didn’t realize - a “hemorrhaging reggae-revolutionary”) and faded in and out of consciouness. i did notice that she had excellent diction, and that my diction was standing at attention. she read: “people wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.” then she closed the book and swiftly exited without further explanation, leaving me alone with my now-stained bathrobe.
*****
she turned off the lights as she exited, but as far as i could tell she didn’t lock the door. i didn’t check. instead i sat in the closet of a room, in the dark, back against the wall, for a long time. like hours probably but i can’t be sure.
it had been so long since i had time to think
a wave of exhaustion swept over me. i wanted a cigarette but found myself unable to move from my position. the robe was heavy with my perspiration - so i shed it and sat on it, naked in the dark.
i listened to the sound of my own breath, my hands resting on my stomach. it was peaceful and strange. i got the feeling that i was a tiny little man trapped inside a huge unwieldy machine that was my body, and after a period i felt my body disappear. i expanded into the blackness, the heat, the stench of the room. i felt nothing - well not quite nothing. there was something in the nothing, but it was still nothing and not something. it’s hard to put into words.
the three women seemed very far away now - a universe away from me. all desire had run out from me - perhaps i had sweat it all into the robe. even my sense of irony, my appreciation for the absurd was gone. there was only blackness and it was silent and nothing.
i thought about smokey robinson songs, and i hummed “tracks of my tears”, and i figured out the solution to the crisis in the middle east, but i can’t remember it now.
i ate the hummus that i had been balancing on my head with my fingers. i held the paste in my mouth, tasting each granule of mashed chickpea as i slowly chewed, until it became a liquid and ran down my throat.
then it was time to leave. i groped for the door, twisted the knob - it was not locked.
in the adjacent room, the three jezebels were sprawled - aligned in order of height - on the macrame-covered futon, sleeping. the television was tuned to re-runs of “sex & the city,” which struck me as a little pedestrian, especially considering their elaborate lace nightgowns and the blood-filled iron chalices set out before them on the coffee table.
i let myself out. it was early morning and the sun was a bright red disc over the top of a factory silo.
i walked slowly in the morning air, whistling, free as a bird.
