P
Pia
Guest
It's been tooooo long.... lots of reasons. I think after the whole episode with the girl from Ireland and the stories she told I got a bit depressed about posting... and I've been soooo busy...
Anyway, the easiest way back is to start where I left off.... So I'm re-posting and pushing on with my little old story... and I hope there'll be more...
Hope you like it. Kisses.
The Girl from Westheimer @ Chimney Rock
I remember the drive back in the bus. My head against the window. Strip malls and tattoo parlours and taco shops. Numb.
My room, a jumble of Moroccan throws and half-used tea lights, ochre sun through the dusty window, a tangle of power lines draped in Morning Glory, still in the absent breeze.
Lying on the bed, staring at the star-shaped lamp, trying to comprehend what he’d said. Six months. Three before it really starts to kick-in; a faint reassurance. They could do things that would make it easier. Palliatives. They could run a course of drugs, if my insurance would stretch. It might give me another couple, but at the cost of the three he’d promised me. My choice. That’s what he said. Go away and have a think.
Trying to think with an empty mind. Turning over nothingness, willing the ends to meet. My canvas, half-finished. A swoop of crimson over lapis. Half-used tubes, rolled up like toothpaste. Lying there, waiting for an answer.
Two days before. Dinner with friends near Galleria, and the usual chat. Girlfriends, projects, summer plans. Empty lies. Margarita tears and lipstick kisses.
Remembering dreams. Old days on the farm. Days in high school, before I headed south. The girl with pony-tails on the exercise beam, her legs wrapped around. An upside-down smile and her vest round her baby-bra. Friday nights in the cold, cheering for the boys, sneaked Buds and hands on my waist behind the icy bleachers.
Remembering dreams. Talking with Jo in my room. What we’d be and how we’d be famous and magazines and turn-ons. Crossing our legs together, pulling off our shirts. A smuggled bottle of Jack and a shared glass and stories.
Boxes of tissues and a sore head and spilt coffee grounds on the floor. I’d called my baby sister, hoping that she wouldn’t answer. Listening to the ring tone, listening to her news. She’d got her place at Columbia, aced the tests and interviews. Law school and a holiday on the Big Island to chill and celebrate her bachelors. I wanted to tell her, but the words were wrong and I hated her and hated myself and said the right thing and put the phone down and screamed into my pillow.
The cool of my shower and a pair of jeans and the drowsy heat of a Westheimer sunset. Shadows as I waited for the bus to Montrose, kicking my trainers and fingering the piercings under my T. I guess I was hoping to lose myself, find someone with no name to lean my head against on the back patio, smoke a joint and drink some shots and slide me into the next day. The shutters on the purple wall were rolled up and the usual crowd of hipsters and poison girls were chilling. A babe wandered out of Houston Ink, pushing dark blonde hair from her eyes, glancing up and biting her lip with a smile, her hand scratching her belly under a pale blue shirt. I bought her a Shiner, clinking the bottles, feeling my sweat on her arms.
We went to her place afterwards and spent the night together. We smoked a few joints and drank some more and sat with each other on her matress and laughed and pulled at each others clothes and lost ourselves in each moment until we could hardly breathe.
It was late when we woke, Saturday morning and already bright and hot. We made coffee and talked and she asked me what I did. I told her that I painted, and that I worked sometimes in a club in Montrose, to make ends meet. I told her that some nights I would work, some weeks I wouldn’t work at all. It all depended on what Shannon wanted and who the clients were. She looked at me with that tilted-head gaze that says ‘ I’m not really sure that I get this but I’m sort of intruiged...’ and so I told her about the things I did there and the men, and sometimes women, who’d come, and how they’d drink from the glasses that I gave them and how they’d speak to Shannon and how she’d whisper to me. I told her everything that I had never told anyone before. I asked her what she thought and although she didn’t answer I knew that somehow she wanted to hear about my life and that made me feel happy.
I guess we must have sat talking for a couple of hours or maybe more. Although it was me talking and her listening, and sometimes nervously asking a question. We sat close to each other and she laid her head on my lap and let my fingers trace the outline of her eyebrows and the curve of her ears and the dimples in her cheeks. And the longer we sat together, the more I was swallowed by an infinite sadness and tenderness.
‘Go away and have a think’ he’d said. I thought all afternoon, back in my room, standing in front of the easel in the heat, an angry brush in my fingers pressed against the nakedness of my breast. I thought about her and about my sister and about my choices. I thought about my paints and the oil smeared over my belly and the death inside me.
I showered and phoned the club and Shannon said I could work that night if I wanted. And then, with a frightened touch, I phoned her and asked her to come, my breath praying that she would say yes.
It was Wendesday when I saw her next. We met at Flo’s between Bering and Augusta and ordered hot chocolate and almond croissants. It wasn’t so easy to talk at first, after that Sunday night. I told her that I was so glad that she had come but I struggled to find the words to ask her the questions I wanted to ask. I wanted to hear how it had felt for her, seeing me there, waiting for her. I wanted to hear how it felt as she sat on the chaise-longue with her crystal glass of champagne. I wanted so much to tell her how I felt, how my mouth became dry with anticipation. I sipped silently from the foamy cup and wiped a buttery crumb from my lip. And all the while my hidden future sat stealthily still in the depths of my mind.
We sat quiet for a while. She fingered her spoon and parted her lips and I thought she was going to speak, but she looked down at the table, at her hands.
‘Tell me.’ I asked.
She bit on her lip, not a hard bite, a bite that says ‘I’m thinking’.
‘The thing is’, she said, ‘I was scared. At least at the start. I didn’t think I could watch, but then I wasn’t scared. I sort of... liked it. It felt strange, I mean I’m not sure I even really know you that much yet, but it was...’. She paused. I looked up at her wanting her to say the words I wanted to hear. ‘I thought it was strangely beautiful. And I think I wanted to be where you were and I didn’t know that I would feel like that and that somehow troubled me’. I reached out across the table, between the coffee cups and the twisted paper sugar wrappers and held her hand and looked into her eyes.
‘It’s ok’, I said ‘I’m glad you were there, that it was you... It could be you, if you wanted’. I dug my nails into the back of her hand until she winced, slightly, and I smiled at her and said no more.
It turned cloudy that afternoon, the sort of heavy rolling Texas clouds that creep up from Galveston and reach into the sky and pile onto each other and promise a storm that sometimes comes, but sometimes doesn’t. I sat on the floor in front of my easel and wanted to paint but I couldn’t. I touched myself and I thought of the thing inside me and looked at the calendar on the bent hook on the wall and I coudn’t paint and I couldn’t cry.
Later on, a few hours later, I made myself a sandwich, tuna I think it was, and a cup of ginger tea, and I phoned her and asked her if she’d come tonight. I knew she would. I felt my stomach tingle as she answered and said yes.
My back cried as she wiped the sponge over me, the bubbles tinged a faint pink where my broken skin had sweated blood. I lay back in the bath’s soft steam, letting a stream of bubbles rise above me as she slid herself between me; slowly letting the water rise gently around us, kissing me with open lips.
‘You were beautiful,’ she said, ‘you are beautiful.’
I didn’t see her again for a few days. Nothing days. A bit of painting and a bit of crying. And his words kept creeping back into my mind. “Go away and have a think.” I curled up in a blanket and walked around and made coffee and kicked a tin of bruses over the floor and decided that I had thought and that I wouldn’t change my mind. I phoned him and told him and he was quiet for a while and then told me what could be done, like he’d told me before, and asked me again if I was really sure and I said to him that I was.
That night I went to the club. I wanted to lose myself somehow. I spoke to Shannon and asked her what the deal was. The club was quiet, but it often is. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t punters around in the shadows who will pay for a show. She pulled me close and pointed to a guy at one of the back tables.
“Go speak to him,” she said “take him a glass of Merlot. Then see what he wants.”
I went over. I remember him so well in that dark corner by the heavy velvet curtains. May was on the stage, moving slowly to the slow music, drifting through the cigarette smoke from the tables at the front. I sat with him.
“Do you like her?” I asked. I’d always thought May was cute. Small and tight and Asiatic. An oval face framed in a black bob. She was half-naked, her legs in long black boots, her cunt shaved and painted, like her lips. She rocked her hips and lay on her belly and lifted herself and pulled on her nipples and took a cat from the rack and slashed it across herself and threw her head back and gasped and slashed it again.
“She’s pretty.” That’s all he said. Then he sipped on his Merlot.
“Am I pretty?” I asked him, and I slid my breasts out from my bustier and rolled my nipples in front of his eyes until they grew hard. “What would you like me to do?” I asked.
He touched me and pulled me close to him and whispered in my ear. And I kissed him and said yes. Why not, I thought. It would pay and it was nothing special for me. I might even like it.
We went to one of the rooms at the back. Shannon had sent Abi in too. She was used to a show like this one. He sat in a chair at the back while she tied me to the frame, my arms over my head. She asked if he’d like to strip me but he shook his head. He was a watcher.
I guess we were done in half an hour. The usual. Performance. I liked it when Abi ran the whip over me, over my breasts, over my legs. I liked it when she hit me with a crack, in my crack. I like it there. I liked it when she teased a drop of blood from my thigh and kissed it off. I liked it when my head flew back and my hair grew damp with sweat. I liked it all and I looked at him and he liked it too. And at the end, when it was over and I was hanging and gasping deeply he came to me and kissed me on the lips and grabbed me hard and kissed me again on my ear and pushed the hair from my eyes and whispered something and I said to call me. Shannon would give him my number. And he left and I stayed there, hanging on the frame, my toes dusting the floor. I like to hang there like that sometimes, to feel my skin burning and the throb inside of me. Twenty minutes, then Abi let me down and I showered and dressed. It was late, but I thought I might go to the bar in Montrose and have a Shiner and hang out for a while. It would be cool to chill out and feel the welts throbbing against my jeans and my t-shirt and no-one else knowing.
Anyway, the easiest way back is to start where I left off.... So I'm re-posting and pushing on with my little old story... and I hope there'll be more...
Hope you like it. Kisses.
The Girl from Westheimer @ Chimney Rock
I remember the drive back in the bus. My head against the window. Strip malls and tattoo parlours and taco shops. Numb.
My room, a jumble of Moroccan throws and half-used tea lights, ochre sun through the dusty window, a tangle of power lines draped in Morning Glory, still in the absent breeze.
Lying on the bed, staring at the star-shaped lamp, trying to comprehend what he’d said. Six months. Three before it really starts to kick-in; a faint reassurance. They could do things that would make it easier. Palliatives. They could run a course of drugs, if my insurance would stretch. It might give me another couple, but at the cost of the three he’d promised me. My choice. That’s what he said. Go away and have a think.
Trying to think with an empty mind. Turning over nothingness, willing the ends to meet. My canvas, half-finished. A swoop of crimson over lapis. Half-used tubes, rolled up like toothpaste. Lying there, waiting for an answer.
Two days before. Dinner with friends near Galleria, and the usual chat. Girlfriends, projects, summer plans. Empty lies. Margarita tears and lipstick kisses.
Remembering dreams. Old days on the farm. Days in high school, before I headed south. The girl with pony-tails on the exercise beam, her legs wrapped around. An upside-down smile and her vest round her baby-bra. Friday nights in the cold, cheering for the boys, sneaked Buds and hands on my waist behind the icy bleachers.
Remembering dreams. Talking with Jo in my room. What we’d be and how we’d be famous and magazines and turn-ons. Crossing our legs together, pulling off our shirts. A smuggled bottle of Jack and a shared glass and stories.
Boxes of tissues and a sore head and spilt coffee grounds on the floor. I’d called my baby sister, hoping that she wouldn’t answer. Listening to the ring tone, listening to her news. She’d got her place at Columbia, aced the tests and interviews. Law school and a holiday on the Big Island to chill and celebrate her bachelors. I wanted to tell her, but the words were wrong and I hated her and hated myself and said the right thing and put the phone down and screamed into my pillow.
The cool of my shower and a pair of jeans and the drowsy heat of a Westheimer sunset. Shadows as I waited for the bus to Montrose, kicking my trainers and fingering the piercings under my T. I guess I was hoping to lose myself, find someone with no name to lean my head against on the back patio, smoke a joint and drink some shots and slide me into the next day. The shutters on the purple wall were rolled up and the usual crowd of hipsters and poison girls were chilling. A babe wandered out of Houston Ink, pushing dark blonde hair from her eyes, glancing up and biting her lip with a smile, her hand scratching her belly under a pale blue shirt. I bought her a Shiner, clinking the bottles, feeling my sweat on her arms.
We went to her place afterwards and spent the night together. We smoked a few joints and drank some more and sat with each other on her matress and laughed and pulled at each others clothes and lost ourselves in each moment until we could hardly breathe.
It was late when we woke, Saturday morning and already bright and hot. We made coffee and talked and she asked me what I did. I told her that I painted, and that I worked sometimes in a club in Montrose, to make ends meet. I told her that some nights I would work, some weeks I wouldn’t work at all. It all depended on what Shannon wanted and who the clients were. She looked at me with that tilted-head gaze that says ‘ I’m not really sure that I get this but I’m sort of intruiged...’ and so I told her about the things I did there and the men, and sometimes women, who’d come, and how they’d drink from the glasses that I gave them and how they’d speak to Shannon and how she’d whisper to me. I told her everything that I had never told anyone before. I asked her what she thought and although she didn’t answer I knew that somehow she wanted to hear about my life and that made me feel happy.
I guess we must have sat talking for a couple of hours or maybe more. Although it was me talking and her listening, and sometimes nervously asking a question. We sat close to each other and she laid her head on my lap and let my fingers trace the outline of her eyebrows and the curve of her ears and the dimples in her cheeks. And the longer we sat together, the more I was swallowed by an infinite sadness and tenderness.
‘Go away and have a think’ he’d said. I thought all afternoon, back in my room, standing in front of the easel in the heat, an angry brush in my fingers pressed against the nakedness of my breast. I thought about her and about my sister and about my choices. I thought about my paints and the oil smeared over my belly and the death inside me.
I showered and phoned the club and Shannon said I could work that night if I wanted. And then, with a frightened touch, I phoned her and asked her to come, my breath praying that she would say yes.
It was Wendesday when I saw her next. We met at Flo’s between Bering and Augusta and ordered hot chocolate and almond croissants. It wasn’t so easy to talk at first, after that Sunday night. I told her that I was so glad that she had come but I struggled to find the words to ask her the questions I wanted to ask. I wanted to hear how it had felt for her, seeing me there, waiting for her. I wanted to hear how it felt as she sat on the chaise-longue with her crystal glass of champagne. I wanted so much to tell her how I felt, how my mouth became dry with anticipation. I sipped silently from the foamy cup and wiped a buttery crumb from my lip. And all the while my hidden future sat stealthily still in the depths of my mind.
We sat quiet for a while. She fingered her spoon and parted her lips and I thought she was going to speak, but she looked down at the table, at her hands.
‘Tell me.’ I asked.
She bit on her lip, not a hard bite, a bite that says ‘I’m thinking’.
‘The thing is’, she said, ‘I was scared. At least at the start. I didn’t think I could watch, but then I wasn’t scared. I sort of... liked it. It felt strange, I mean I’m not sure I even really know you that much yet, but it was...’. She paused. I looked up at her wanting her to say the words I wanted to hear. ‘I thought it was strangely beautiful. And I think I wanted to be where you were and I didn’t know that I would feel like that and that somehow troubled me’. I reached out across the table, between the coffee cups and the twisted paper sugar wrappers and held her hand and looked into her eyes.
‘It’s ok’, I said ‘I’m glad you were there, that it was you... It could be you, if you wanted’. I dug my nails into the back of her hand until she winced, slightly, and I smiled at her and said no more.
It turned cloudy that afternoon, the sort of heavy rolling Texas clouds that creep up from Galveston and reach into the sky and pile onto each other and promise a storm that sometimes comes, but sometimes doesn’t. I sat on the floor in front of my easel and wanted to paint but I couldn’t. I touched myself and I thought of the thing inside me and looked at the calendar on the bent hook on the wall and I coudn’t paint and I couldn’t cry.
Later on, a few hours later, I made myself a sandwich, tuna I think it was, and a cup of ginger tea, and I phoned her and asked her if she’d come tonight. I knew she would. I felt my stomach tingle as she answered and said yes.
My back cried as she wiped the sponge over me, the bubbles tinged a faint pink where my broken skin had sweated blood. I lay back in the bath’s soft steam, letting a stream of bubbles rise above me as she slid herself between me; slowly letting the water rise gently around us, kissing me with open lips.
‘You were beautiful,’ she said, ‘you are beautiful.’
I didn’t see her again for a few days. Nothing days. A bit of painting and a bit of crying. And his words kept creeping back into my mind. “Go away and have a think.” I curled up in a blanket and walked around and made coffee and kicked a tin of bruses over the floor and decided that I had thought and that I wouldn’t change my mind. I phoned him and told him and he was quiet for a while and then told me what could be done, like he’d told me before, and asked me again if I was really sure and I said to him that I was.
That night I went to the club. I wanted to lose myself somehow. I spoke to Shannon and asked her what the deal was. The club was quiet, but it often is. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t punters around in the shadows who will pay for a show. She pulled me close and pointed to a guy at one of the back tables.
“Go speak to him,” she said “take him a glass of Merlot. Then see what he wants.”
I went over. I remember him so well in that dark corner by the heavy velvet curtains. May was on the stage, moving slowly to the slow music, drifting through the cigarette smoke from the tables at the front. I sat with him.
“Do you like her?” I asked. I’d always thought May was cute. Small and tight and Asiatic. An oval face framed in a black bob. She was half-naked, her legs in long black boots, her cunt shaved and painted, like her lips. She rocked her hips and lay on her belly and lifted herself and pulled on her nipples and took a cat from the rack and slashed it across herself and threw her head back and gasped and slashed it again.
“She’s pretty.” That’s all he said. Then he sipped on his Merlot.
“Am I pretty?” I asked him, and I slid my breasts out from my bustier and rolled my nipples in front of his eyes until they grew hard. “What would you like me to do?” I asked.
He touched me and pulled me close to him and whispered in my ear. And I kissed him and said yes. Why not, I thought. It would pay and it was nothing special for me. I might even like it.
We went to one of the rooms at the back. Shannon had sent Abi in too. She was used to a show like this one. He sat in a chair at the back while she tied me to the frame, my arms over my head. She asked if he’d like to strip me but he shook his head. He was a watcher.
I guess we were done in half an hour. The usual. Performance. I liked it when Abi ran the whip over me, over my breasts, over my legs. I liked it when she hit me with a crack, in my crack. I like it there. I liked it when she teased a drop of blood from my thigh and kissed it off. I liked it when my head flew back and my hair grew damp with sweat. I liked it all and I looked at him and he liked it too. And at the end, when it was over and I was hanging and gasping deeply he came to me and kissed me on the lips and grabbed me hard and kissed me again on my ear and pushed the hair from my eyes and whispered something and I said to call me. Shannon would give him my number. And he left and I stayed there, hanging on the frame, my toes dusting the floor. I like to hang there like that sometimes, to feel my skin burning and the throb inside of me. Twenty minutes, then Abi let me down and I showered and dressed. It was late, but I thought I might go to the bar in Montrose and have a Shiner and hang out for a while. It would be cool to chill out and feel the welts throbbing against my jeans and my t-shirt and no-one else knowing.
