Friday, June 24, 2011

After party (Excerpt from a larger work)


“Do you come here often?” He giggled.
“No, only when I’m horny.” She said.

18 years of practicing instruments and writing thoughts, revising thoughts, crying thoughts, and naught, led her to this after-party. She was here because that day she acted and sang until her veins popped from her outstretched throat. She was a beautiful girl. Chloe, the beautiful girl. She was the mulatto girl from Newark. She says so with an upstate New York accent. Smurnov, looks deep into his cup as he imagines licking her strong jaw, gripping her weak little hand, massaging her cheeks with his cheeks. He makes love to his cup of wine with his eyes, but the love is all hers, even if she never knows it.

“So you're 18?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then you're just right, aren't you?”
“Um, yeah, I suppose. I'm not sure what you mean.”

He lets the silence become stale then basks in it. Their pupils dance across the room, in feigned awkwardness. They are actors, performers of the couch, and each knows it. A hand from one reaches toward some imaginary object on the marble table. A hand from the other straightens a shirt sleeve. Where to look? They pretend to ask themselves while letting the air become dense with anticipation. Now the air will breathe.

“I'm going to take your hand now, you know. You're going to spread your lips to opposite ends of your face. You're going to smile, understand?”
After a moment of giggling she finally spits out her part of their play.
“Yes!”
“Yes. Do we escape or do we let the audience follow my tongue through you mouth? Everyone is watching. They're saying I’m a pedophile, a creep searching for a high school piece of ass. I don't much care, but I think its important you know, so you can laugh with me.”
“I'm never sure how to respond to what you say. I'm not sure I should keep speaking to you.”
“Would you like me to leave?”
“I'm...not sure.”

Their corneas show the same amount of white to one another and he lets his mouth go agape and his tongue peak out so she can see the liquid lingering on the pinkish-red top. Smurnov thinks himself a master at putting imagery into the heads of others. What he doesn't know is that she sees none of this, and that at the very moment he describes himself as a pedophile she becomes enamored, intrigued and reminded of her abusive father. Her father stood at a height of five-foot-nine, with a long black beard and mustache, and an always present look of wearied gentility. None of her repressed memories come to the fore, but she experiences a tingling in her lower back, where her father hit her with all his might on a summer day when she was eight years old and resisting. On that day he massaged and bit that spot of pain, smiling lovingly at each pained withdrawal. But she doesn't remember this, she feels this. She begins to search for the source of the feeling and Smurnov realizes he has lost her attention.

Smurnov begins to rub his head. The pressure feels good, so he continues to push his fingers into his skull, and finally looks up at Chloe pensively.

“Put your fingers on my face.”

A long while follows, but ultimately Chloe moves her hands to his face and closes her eyes, opens her mouth and lets the noise of the room disappear as their skins connect and combine to give mutual pleasure that is more intimate than either has experienced. Chloe begins to moan, first softly then with more power and force, then with a trembling vigor. Smurnov follows suit and begins to rise while raising Chloe with him. The room becomes quiet outside of the moans and a bit of slow jazz playing in the background, kitsch jazz. All the pale faces become serious and steady, as if each is taking a mental video of the event for future judgment. The host, a doctor in his 50s, rises, shaking, and thrusts a finger into the air, nearly saying something, only to lower it, mid-word. Wa—There is no social handbook to abide by in these situations. There is no correct action, and inaction is alluring. So the background watchers watch, as their names suggest, and one by one each eventually leave. As the background leaves they wag their heads from side to side at each other, making sure to wear saddened and disgusted faces the entire way. Moments more and only the host and the two remained in the nearly quiet room.

Rick, the host, finally coughs, something he had been working up the courage to do for a very long while. Upon hearing this, the two recognize their call to leave, to let this moment die, so that later they can later think about it. Her hand gently releases pressure from Smurnov's face, leaving a longing in each cell under each cell in his face and in her hands. The two separate without a word with their attentions on their lonely cells. Smurnov goes to his bus stop and Chloe to the house's bathroom, where she would sit on the toilet and cry as she remembers some of her dear old childhood memories, and waits for her mother to pick her up.  

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