Black Skirt
It's late again, and I'm kind of drunk again. I feel like I'm wearing one of those old, golden diving suits, the kind they got in Jules Vernes movies with huge sea monsters with tentacles and all that, and submarines that look Gothic with steps and senseless arches and huge windows like blind eyes--so that's what I feel like, the world is behind a big huge screen, a thick, heavy wall, and still Petri talks shit, he just keeps on talking and he lost me a long time ago and still keeps talking, talking away. I can already tell this is gonna be another bad night. And I hate myself for sounding so jaded, so terribly sorry for myself, sitting here and drinking like Bukowski or someone, staring in my glass and shaking it a little with the cigarette sticking out at an angle. I look over to the bar, where men with long legs sit on wooden stools, to see if the girl in the black skirt has noticed me, but she is talking to that guy, so I guess she hasn't. ". . . so therefore, health is all we got," Petri says, raises his glass to nod towards me and then Hugh, slams it on the table and takes a deep swallow. It's a ritual we got, that slamming thing. His Adam's apple is bulging out. I think, he's all meat and sinews and white soft stuff. I take a drink, too. Hugh is still nodding, and I resume my glass-looking routine. I figure it probably looks sophisticated, like Bogart, or at least it feels so comfortable to be staring down, it feels good up the back of my head, over my head and around the sides, even down my eyes, I wonder do they feel heavy, no, not at all, so why are they closed, I rip them up open and stare at Petri and the world flips back into something that's there. Over at the bar, the girl has swung her black skirt around, and the guy she was talking to before is now talking to someone else. She glances around the room. I can tell the smoke must be burning in her eyes, because she squints when she's looking in my direction, and I wonder if I ever might be jumping up and dancing like crazy if I was at a church where people jumped up and danced to the music, and then she is still looking at me. I swing my head back at Hugh, who is saying something like, "There has to be more," so I say, "What a bunch of preposterous bullshit," and Hugh waves his hand at me. I remember my hand, and take another drag of the cigarette. The first time Bogart appears in Casablanca, you see his hand signing a check "O.K. Rick." Then, the hand reaches for a cigarette and the camera follows the cigarette up to his mouth. And if you watch really closely, like single-frame-close, you can see that he bumps the cigarette against his lower lip before he puts it in his mouth. Why does he do that? you ask, well, because he was fucking drunk when they filmed it is why, I say, of course. I used to sign my checks for a while with "O.K. Rick," although that's not my name at all. So, I don't know what Petri said after that, but there was Paul What's-his-face playing on the P.A., "Running up that Hill," that duet with Kate Bush. So I tap my food and look up and the girl in the black skirt gets up for the bathroom and I think, hey, I can get up, too, and I do. It's a little odd, how the world does this thing, this wavy thing, but I got it under control. I nod at Hugh, who is trying to get the waiter's attention for more beer. Let me say this about Hugh--he's worse off then me, living in with his parents--I mean, Hugh wants to go out every night. I've known him for years, but I only went to his place once, the night we went to Berlin for breakfast. His brother ran around in red underwear and kept farting, and Hugh's room was the sorriest I've ever seen: there was nothing in there. There was a bed, and a closet, a desk, and the only thing on the wall was the licence plate of a scooter he used to own. It said, "3FTV." Everything in his room was white. If I had to live in a room like that, with my brother running around in red underwear, I'd go out every night, too. To get to the bathroom, I have to make it past three or four tables, with people sitting around them. Some of them are talking, and some are just sitting back, arms in front of their chests, legs propped up so white socks are showing. Some of them nod after they drink from their beer, although no one said anything, as if drinking beer in itself was worth a nod. A woman is running a quick hand over her forehead to brush brown hair out of her face, which seems very clear and concise. I notice I'm still holding that cigarette, so I drop it. Peter Gabriel. I think it's Peter Gabriel who sang that song. "Salisbury Hill." Is that what it's called? By the time I reach the bathrooms, the silver metal arm on top of the door has already shut the ladies bathroom door. I wonder if I needed more cigarettes, but Petri has all my money, and my keys, because this week is his turn to pay and drive. I decide I feel terribly tired so I wait around for the girl in the black skirt to come out again, but then this guy with the leather jacket comes up from behind me and asks me, am I waiting for the bathroom, so I say yeah. So why don't I go in, he says, I go hun, hm, go ahead. He gives me this weird look, like I was a freak, but I catch the wall it time and lean against it. When the girl's bathroom's door cracks, just a line of light in the corridor, I pull myself up, stand straight, try to lift my eyes just a little, not too much, I don't want to reveal the red in my eyes so it's the matter of doing it just to the right degree, just enough to show I'm not all fucked up and not so much as to give it all away, and I'm a little nervous after all when she opens the door further, more light, and she seems like a black cut-out against the white light from the toilet. But then I turn my head a little to the right as she walks by, gracefully, carried by that black skirt, the rest of her body joined to it in an odd way, moving against it, while it moves right, the upper half turns left, toward me, her face right in mine, almost touching, she's beautiful, and my head tilts back a little, slightly, I think, but it feels so heavy, and her body snaps back, unwinds toward the front, the door flying back shut and she whooshing by, by me, and she's gone, and then the other door opens and the guy in the leather jacket comes back out and he still looks at me as if I was a freak. I reach for the wall again, and it's still there: my eyes burn. Odd. I meant to say something, I think, but I didn't, so what's up with that, and I look at the cigarette machine again, but I still have some, so I get one out and shit, my lighter is outside, with Hugh and Petri. So, I straighten up again, like I did before, when the girl walked right past me, and I walk back outside into the bar, where the boys are still showing off their white socks, and slump back down with Hugh and Petri. My glass is still there, and I grab Hugh's lighter from next to his beer. "Jean Paul Satre my ass," Petri is saying, and I feel just a little bit more like I'm underwater.
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Updated Thursday, 04-Mar-2004 14:58:29 PST