Bastard
The barman mutters something and puts a beer in front of me. I don’t hear his words but I know he’s giving me this beer out of pity. I give him a near-unnoticeable nod but I know he notices. I am pitiful and my head’s hung too low to give the man’s charity just appreciation. He don’t know why I’m low but he can tell how low. It’s low enough to make someone feel uncomfortable. A person crawling inside your skin simply with their presence. The only way to get past how pathetic they are is to give them something. I know his motivations. Plus, I ain’t that grateful anyway. A man this lonely doesn’t yearn a cold one. However, temping they appear, the illusion will only chill you, dull you instead of knocking you out, and once they warm, then they ain’t worth taking. What a man yearns in this situation is a harsher mistress. Something that hurts as it goes down. Something that feels wrong as it slithers, caresses, down you. The strength of a Russian brute or maybe the ugly of old Lady Absinthe. They are full of punishment with the pleasure they give. To get one of those would be neat. But that is something I won’t get unless I take it for myself. His generosity of spirit seems to be the generosity of a cheap beer. But I’m in no place where I can bear a grudge at his offering. His charitable action can still offer a cold comfort. It can fuel that journey – from that hell of a town we call Regret to the misty safety of Forget. Forget is where I want to get. This beer is going to get me there. Not alone but I’ve been pumping this vehicle with fuel for a couple of hours. This machine runs on alcohol tonight. Shit, it runs on it every night, though it’s not supposed to. That is why it is brown and crusty wherever it can get brown and crusty. That’s why it moves slow. It’s strong, that’s why it is still moving at all, but it is a thing to wonder, how much longer can it last with the wrong stuff in its tank? It does not matter. It ain’t being pumped with not a thing else. And I’ll take what anyone’s willing to give. You’ve got be a mug not to. If I’m depending on the kindness of strangers, then these clinking bottles are just the kind of kindness I need. And I must be an awful-sorry sight because I’m getting their good graces like the most hopeless of bums. The ones that look so sorry, their rags so much detritus, the ones that are sickened with so much shame they can’t speak to beg but it doesn’t matter because their body, in its muted, silent, static stillness screams ‘give to me’, so folks can’t help but give. And I take. When we can’t take the arms we want, we’ll take the alms we can get.
Her name was Cecile. She was not the best, she won’t be the last. Women come and go. The coming is good, real fucking good. The going is ugly, real fucking ugly. Cecile is a frail-looking thing, fine arms. She was slender but strong, her body didn’t look like it could take much but it took a whole lot. And it gave. Oh, how it gave! Not sure if I’m smiling or wincing at them memories. Her breasts are small and perfect, except for the occasional mark. Her skin, so white, the colour clinically so. As white as snow, the cliché goes, as white as a toilet bowl. Except the bruises on her belly, yellowed like piss stains. Her face would have been beautiful once but the filth creeps in and flows through the system. No face can swim amongst the filth and not get a bit of ugly. She can’t smile no more, she can only snarl through those once-rose-red-now-bruise-blue lips, through those cracked teeth. Her hair was as blonde and as dead as straw but, like hay packed tight, didn’t fall out easily from a fist. Her eyes are the green of a good bottle of absinthe. And then there was her down-there. I don’t know why I’m being coy about cunt but I’m not going to name that place. That place was where I lived, where I’d hide. It was definitely where I ate. She was the trough from which I fed, sucking and pushing my face into her filth. And I know that slop was no good but I am one greedy pig and I don’t know good to know any better. I’d lie there and bathe. In her juices. Her juices were my juices. Seriously. As natural as a cooking bird sits in its sweated fat. In that oven, a corpse still living, reacting, festering. I am the corpse; she is the juices; her sex is an oven. I loved that dirty place. But then it has to get ugly. There’s more than one lady in my life and Madam Vodka and sweet Miss Bourbon are happy to share but they rile me up so. And Madam Cocaine is no peach neither. No woman like it when those other intoxicants get involved. They want me to surrender to their filth, to say for their pussy I’ll live and die. But there are so many more intoxicants to try. They try to live with it but they never strong enough, not like my ladies that stay with me. You abuse Bourbon she’ll give you as good as she gets and she’ll always forgive you. A normal woman just can’t take that. You beat on a woman too hard and she won’t stay ugly with you for long. I had spent a bit too much time with my other women that night and they’d made me wild. Not good wild. Ugly wild. They got the cheer, the good wild, the fucking. There wasn’t much of that left for Cecile. But I still had plenty to give. Fists, boots. Grabbing at her straw-hair and throwing her around. Her screaming, scratching, me pounding. I went too far. Now she don’t want to know no more. And all I have to remember her by is the blood print on the wall. But these women, they know what they in for. When I say to a woman ‘once I fucked with you, you won’t walk for a month’, they know that is a threat as much as it is an invitation. And those that RSVP know well what filth they are agreeing to wallow in. They don’t know anything else. Remember those walls. Remember them pet names, bastard, punk, sonofabitch. Not ready to go home. More from my mistresses. Time I got myself a bottle. A flip of a coin, Gin. Time to lose myself in her filth, escape my own.
Did I leave?...Kicked out….I’m wet…what’s this cold wet on my head? What’s this hot down my leg?...Where am I? Just outside?...Hurrrgh. No! Gin! Don’t go yet…Now I’m on the floor. Me and the filth together, indistinguishable…Someone’s shouting. Don’t know who it is. It’s me. I’m calling Cecile though I mean Gin. I’m writhing on vomit wanting to shout after Gin…She made a mess of me…I’m up again…Feet slip, slip, slipslide…Somehow still upright, leaning on something…Who’s this walking before me?...It is Cecile. Has she forgiven me, missed me? Does she want some more…I hear her calling one those pet names…And I call to her…She comes closer, I wait…Wait for the embrace…She coming closer, she’s nearly here, closer, closer…She got me! She got me good!...I can feel the torrent down my face. A poetical man might say it were falling like tears but it ain’t like tears, it’s like piss. Pouring out. Hot, thick, red piss down my face. I’m alive now, she’s going to swing again. She was a strong one! I grab her arm, swing it into the post I’d used to stand, she screams, arm’s probably broken but she dropped the broken bottle, I kick it away. I could stop. But instinct, I’m seeing red. I punch her in the middle of the face. She’s down. Whimpering, unable to move. I got to get cleaned up.
