I am restless. Uneasy. This party has gotten the better of me. Just like countless other social gatherings have done before it. I am just watching now, thinking. The conversation is better in my head anyways. Even if it is a bit one-sided.
I can’t tell if it is actually this grey in here or if it’s my eyes who are as dissatisfied with this spectacle as I am. It’s lackluster at best. The bright red cups in peoples hands, go darting past in every direction. It’s only too fitting that they still catch my eye. They’re the only bit of color in this place. The only color on these people.
I’ve always heard about diversity and its rewarding strengths. But all these people are just different shades of grey to me. Some greyer than others, of course. Varying lengths of dull grey hair. Varying styles of dark grey pants with light grey tops. Or vice versa. Light grey teeth of which thick grey air and smoke pours over and in. Thick grey air or dark grey liquor. Hot slanted words come out in turn. Over the tops of everyone’s heads or under the carpet, mouthfuls of empty headed dialogue. Empty hearted too. Still the bright red cups catch my eye.
I must have been sitting on this stool, in this corner, for hours. Some one is talking to me. I think. Sometimes I don’t even speak their language anymore. It comes and goes. I finally turn my head and find a dull faced girl with no twinkle in her eye and no rose leafed lips. Her mouth is open and her head is tilted to one side so that her hair sits on one shoulder but not the other. She must have asked me a question. I give her my name and that seems to appease her.
It’s plenty disorienting with all this noise. It can be depressing too. When all you see is moving mouths and exaggerated reactions. But I can’t hear a word of it. It is all noise to me. Without form or meaning. Loud and fast. It’s like trying to acclimate ones self to the interior of a large bee-hive. Eventually the best you can do is fake it and try to ignore all the god-damn buzzing.
She’s still talking. She’s pointing to her clothes and pauses again. I tell her she looks good but I’m color blind. She looks upset, like it’s a real bad disease and she should feel sorry for me. Hell. Maybe it is. And maybe she should be. I’ll never know. I ditch her some line about, “out of all the colorless grey figures here, she’s the brightest.”
She smiles and winks bearing teeth and waving eyelashes. People like to be special. It’s not all that bad I tell her. I can still see the color red. She pulls back her hair to reveal a small plastic heart earring in each lobe. I hear her as she explains she’s had these things since she was a kid. Tacky as they are she’s worn them ever since a third grade boy gave them to her in a Secret-Santa she rigged in a church basement on Sunday school afternoon.
There’s almost color in her cheeks as she’s talking. Traces of life on her dead grey face. See that boy died a week later when New Years Eve parents drove their station wagon off the road and into a tree. Too many hard eggnogs, left two remorseful parents and two dead kids. Third grader named Eli and a six month conceived fetus who was most likely going o be named Clair Danes Sanford, she probably would have weighed eight pounds six ounces. Not the measly two pounds two ounces that were lifeless and limp when extradited from her mothers womb.
This girl doesn’t really say all this. And even if she did I haven’t understood a single word she’s said. But she was talking to me and sometimes I have to lie for them. Most of them are already lying anyway. It’s necessary for mating, apparently. Trying to appear desirable, Feigning interests and agreeing blindly, all for copulating. But these girls don’t have the right stories for me. They pretend to be everything sought-after and I couldn’t be more repulsed. Even their scents lie to me. Deodorants, Antiperspirants. Perfumes. They’re all inhibitors. I can’t get a whiff of what’s really inside of them. Shampoos. Conditioners. Hairsprays. I don’t get a hint of what’s in there. But the party’s winding down and if I don’t make nice with this one I might end up alone on a stool much like this one watching Caroline fuck some guy in our bed.
What? Caroline?
She’s the reason I am here. My one and once true love. She drags me to these things. It is for she that I suffer the tired anxiety and rigid spine. It is for she that I trap some hussy to fuck along side her and her erogenous anybody. I see her now even as she sits across the top of some half drunk no name. Some grey schlep with grey eyes and moisture on his big forehead. She’s leaning over whispering in his ear, nibbling. She bites his lips, her golden curls brush his cheeks. Her white teeth draw red blood from his lips.
What? Caroline?
Yeah she’s in color. She’s in goddamn Technicolor. Two long blonde curls down the sides of her head the rest short and black, curls pressed to her skull with bobby pins. When she blinks her eyelids show green with thin black lines around the edges. Her eyes are almost all white with a thin ring of binary green. She’s got sixteen freckles on her face, eight on each cheek. They blush on and off like fluorescent lights. Thick red lips and noticeable shadows in the corners of her mouth. She’s got sea foam pearls and electric baby blue curves, and her slip is showing. You just have to love a girl in a slip. She’s barefoot and her toes curl.
The girl with the earrings is still here, still grey. She’s got her hands all over me. She doesn’t seem to notice where my eyes are. No one seems to notice where my mind is. She’s got a tongue ring. Its in my mouth and on my earlobe as she whispers. Something dirty I imagine. Even the vulgarities of sexual conquest from the mouth of a petite vixen sound like the monotone hiss of radio silence.
We could be mirrors. Earring girl and Caroline, me and that any-man. Except he’s twitching as her hand brushes the inside of his pant leg and he shifts his painfully erect member towards her. Earring girls hand brushes my inside pant leg. I feign a tortured sigh.
The strangest thing about Caroline. Her heart. It’s visible. Every thunderous fast twitch cardiac beat. Every powerful thump, as blood is drawn in and forced out making Foley worthy squishes underneath the boom of steady bass. At least it’s all visible to me. The soft red tissue with crimson arteries and blue oxygen depleted ventricles. Just under her chest as if in a sonogram I see it beating even now. Now it pulses with the excited rhythm. She has got the heart of a lion. Crouched in the tall grass of some African plain preparing to strike out in a murderous leap and sink its claws into the ripe hind end of an antelope followed by firmly planting her long white fangs into the creatures jugular.
Caroline’s eyes finally meet mine, she’s licking her fangs, err I mean teeth. It’s time to go. She blinks twice. Dual green eyelids signaling her intentions. Caroline. She gets up pulling any-man by the collar. Her fingers tucked under the shirt around his neck. He’s got wonderful bone structure. In the same way a box of pop tarts has wonderful bone structure. His face is a brick.
Our eyes are locked as she makes her way across the jungle to me. She’s still winking. I must not notice something. The girl with the earrings has her hand down my pants. I didn’t even know. I shift and carefully caressingly remove her hand and take it in my mine. Its time to go after all. Would she like to go with me? She would. We get up as Caroline passes us with her XY. We follow them to the car. I’m the only one supposedly sober enough to drive. Caroline’s golden curls get tucked behind her ears. I hate when she does that. The any man and earring girl are confused but go with it. I wonder if they’re guessing at what’s about to happen.
Caroline climbs in back, earring girls riding shotgun. Any mans got a bottle of something hot and stinging. It passes between the three of them. Shitty pop music is loud enough to prevent reasonable conversation. No need to talk, its all instinct from here on out. Earring girl’s breath is atrocious and she laughs for some reason.
The roads grey and driving when it’s this dark is dangerous for someone with my affliction. I don’t mean color blind eyes. I mean my borderline unstable chemical concoction of a mind. That dull grey void is so tempting. This thunderous machine could be a catalyst for death under my control. My thoughts don’t progress much further than imagining the regret of perishing with these two breathing corpses in here. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking we were friends. My thoughts don’t get any more dangerous than this by the time we find the motel parking lot.
Caroline whispers some more and her golden curl pops out from behind her ear to brush against nobody’s cheek. Her hand moves away from his crotch as he gets out of the car to head for the desk. I am only jealous of the rays of color that reflected onto his cheek when her hair touched it.
I keep the music up while he’s gone. No talking. Earring girl takes a few more drinks. Caroline puts her hand on my neck. My god. Or goddess rather. Sweet elation and unequalled pleasure. The illusion of time dissolves with her fingers. They’re just below the scruff of my hair. Her other hand finds the head of earring girl. She turns our heads in toward one another as if to induce a kiss. She lowers the bottle in time for our lips to meet. And she may as well be cold cuts. Dull formless unsculpted clay. But I kiss anyway. I don’t feel reassured. But Caroline’s hand is still at the back of my neck. And I’m still in her bondage.
The car door clicks and anybody’s back. He’s got one big metal room key. We break lips and get out of the car. Earring girl puts her arms around me in a half hug half grapple as we make our way to room number twenty three. I could go into the drab exterior interior of this place but if you’ve seen one sleazebag thirty dollar a night fuckstop you’ve seen them all. And it’s just all the more cynical grey to me. The neon red “vacancy” sign flickers in the back drop.
The door swings open and any man breaks the silence. “for the night, one room with one big bed, just like the lady said.” It annoys me that I even understood his stagnant speech. Caroline shuts the door and draws the shades.
With the lights out it’s dark. My eyes adjust and like a beacon in the void of grey Caroline and her brilliant beating heart lead any-cock to the bed. She’s got the sly smirk on her face where a little dimple forms on one side of her mouth. Her hearts steady but fast. Fast but steady. Mines a tremble.
Her eyes leave mine and she pushes Mr. one night on the bed, they roll to the far side, faces meld. Heavy petting starts. Earring girl looks shy all of a sudden. There’s an emotion I miss. Modest embarrassment. I take her hand and sit on the bed. She follows reluctantly. Her eyes dart to the writhe of tangled legs and flowing juices behind me. She lies across my lap and I muster the strength to suppress my moral blockades and kiss her with something she would later call passionate ferocity. But I would describe then as a convincing act and a sacrifice of personal respect.
You see, this girl with the earrings. She’s not even anyone to me. She doesn’t even exist. I am pretending to want to lie to her. I falsify myself simply to get her shirt off and her skirt down. Why? Because Caroline’s dress is off and her perfect nipples are showing wildly. But why do I do any of this? Why do I watch my one and once true love as she seduces and uses these recycled men in the grey darkness atop starchy motel sheets? And why do I fabricate myself for some absent minded cunt? Just to take her and sheepishly fuck beside my love Caroline? Why? I don’t fucking know. And if I did I could probably figure a way out of this and away from this. Away from the stale beer. Stale faces and rotten emotions.
I would feel my stomach turn and contract as if to vomit if my mind would only allow my body to act appropriately. But my mind would never let that happen. My parents were psychologists. They’ve got me trained. That my emotions are all chemical reactions. They can be diffused. I am in control. Emotions, feelings aren’t as powerful over me. They can all be rationalized. And I can be some goddamn robot free from mystery and fantasy because, I know what’s really going on when something hurts. I know how to deal with it.
That’s how I tolerate it. That’s how I lay there barely uttering so much as a sigh as some girl with earrings straddles my cock willed erect by sheer necessity and avoidance of social awkwardness. That’s how I know that tears are a coping method the body uses when under emotional stress. That’s how come my eyes are dry as I watch my goddess Caroline side by side the girl with the earrings thrusting and fucking her nameless cock. As I hear the Foley worthy sloshing between her legs. As she rocks back and forth over top some man with draft beer aspirations. As I see the sweat drip down her tits, shaped like fine brass horns as her shoulders tense as wave after wave of pleasure rocks her spine.
She doesn’t utter a word, she never does. The girl on my lap is squeaking like a chew toy. I play with her breasts only for the novelty of the show. Her eyes are fixed on my hairless chest, my hairless pubic region. I’m not the man she thought I'd be. I’m not the man I thought I’d be. Caroline’s eyes are on mine and I know she’s about to come. I can’t stand her face for long, not like this. I close my eyes and her Technicolor magnificence fades out. I still see her pounding heart. Even with my eyes closed. Still a percussive force as I try to block out what comes next. It’s Caroline. Her heart is deafening and her breath is heavy. She’s gasping. I can hear her kegel muscles relax and contract. I can feel her spine curve in rhythm. It’s beautiful. The sloppy slapping of earring girls thighs on my hips is almost ruining it. Caroline’s gasping harder. Her hands must be gripping hard at the flesh of any man because I can hear his awkward grunt. My eyes are closed. But I can still hear him. He’s a talker. He’s saying something atrocious. Why do I have to hear this? I’m thinking how thankful I am that I don’t comprehend it when it come in over the airwaves. “You’re a good fuck huh? Yeah you love my cock huh? Daddy’s fucking your tight little cunt. You’re begging for the cock you slut”
This vile albeit mundane fucker is a talker. He’s almost yelling. I open my eyes Caroline’s no longer visible. Any man here has got her on his knees and he’s thrusting hard. Too hard. He’s slapping her ass and going deep. Too deep. With violent penetration he’s screaming his deplorable head off. Caroline’s wincing and grabbing the sheets. Her brow is wrinkled and her eyes are close together. She’s biting her lip and there’s blood on her chin.
I sit up throwing the girl with the earrings naked in mid pelvic thrust off the bed and on to the floor. She sits there confused and suddenly aware of her vulnerabilities. As I wrap my fore arm around any-cocks throat and pull back choking him. Pulling him away from Caroline as she scrambles to her feet and stares into my face. Her eyes pierce mine and she shudders in the cold of the few seconds of this standoff.
She’s screaming for me to stop. I can quite make it out but her mouth is forming the same word over and over. Screaming for me to stop. I don’t even notice that it’s Caroline I can’t understand.
I release this brute. He scrambles away to the other side of the room. He looks deadly.
His face is red. He’s coughing and grasping at his neck where I choked him. He stands naked still erect and panting, chest rising and falling. I wait for him to start beating it. He starts screaming again. I’m back to not understanding him. A perk.
He lunges at me, hard on pointed in my direction. His cock’s smaller than mine. He grabs me and two naked men grapple. He’s choking me now. Tears are finally pouring out of my eyes, the first in a decade. He’s stronger than me. Stronger by a lot. Line backer comes to mind. Farm Tractor comes to mind. Truth is everyone in this room is probably stronger than me. And meaner too. This guy hasn’t even caught me on a good day. In fact he’s caught me on the worst fucking day of my life.
I wrap my hands around his rock hard cock. His weapon. My right hand down around his balls. My left at the base of his shaft. I pull as hard as I can. First up. Then down. Then out. I hear a tear like ripped packing peanuts. I hear his scream. I feel his cock separate. I pull his dick away from his body. Bursts of hot red blood explode out once filling his member to granite like hardness now hot and sticky on my hands all over his grey flesh. He collapses on the floor. I stand up breathing again. Caroline gets up.
She’s stunned but still screaming. I think. Finally it hits me. I don’t know what she’s saying. She’s speaking their language. I stare into her eyes. Grey. She’s still screaming, waving her arms. I wind up and release punching her, off center, but still in the teeth. I feel some of them move. The cocks still in my hand. I drop it. She’s on her side holding her mouth. The bloods the only color on her.
I kneel down. And turn her on her back. She struggles. I hit her again. She subsides. I move her arms. Her chest heaves up and down. Its nothing but tits. No heart. Not visible at least. I reel back. I stand. I’m crying my hands are trembling. I’m weeping. I’m wailing. Caroline forgets her bloody mouth, she’s awestruck at my emotional outburst. She’s never seen me so much as laugh. She sits up blood dripping. She tries to grasp my leg. To clutch it. I kick her. Hard. I find my pants.
Earring girl is still there staring confused. The survival instinct is all but fucked in this current stage of human evolution. I grab her head. She screams my hands slide down to her ears and I pull. Blood and pain. I put them in my pocket, two tacky plastic heart earrings.
I run barefoot shirtless through the parking lot. Half naked man in denim with blood down his face, bare feet lapping the asphalt. I reach the car. There’s nothing that it and ninety miles an hour can’t put behind us. The moons red, a sailors delight. The nights black. My hands are red-black with dried blood. The lights of the dash kick on and that’s when I notice it. Binary Green. The color. The lines of the road dotted yellow pounding ahead for miles. The fucking trees in the headlights. They’re white cherry blossoms. My excitement builds I’m racing away with my hands perspiring on the wheel. By the time I hit the state line the suns coming up. Grey as always. Grey light refracts no rainbows in the tears in my eyes.
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