TUESDAY: Flatline

BY DAVID MENEAR

Copyright is held by the author.

MUTTERING AND whispering her own bad poetry, she’d slink secretively along through the cold frozen night of Montreal’s Westmount the few blocks from the bar to my place, weaving in and out between the parked cars and ducking in behind trees and utility poles like a commando evading an enemy sniper. I’d left before her. No one at the bar was supposed to know we were meeting she insisted. Natalie wanted my drugs and booze and I wanted her insane enthusiastic sex. Hot young coke-whore meets horny older guy. Our needs were honest, delineated and always satisfied. I’d smack out a few fat lines on a mirror while she slowly struggled to undress fighting with her bra, so stoned, mystified like she’d never worn one of these harnesses before. A wild pony struggling to be free. I’d pour some shit red wine out for us glancing over at her perfect tiny tits. Natalie never shut up. It was like she was a tragic transcendental medium with a direct channel to another world or a worse place than this one. Always seeming to talk to herself, but I knew she wasn’t. It kept me away awhile. I’d let her be to recite her poetry — let her be where she needed to be. The mind was maybe wavering but her body was still gymnast-muscled and sexy. The random tattoos excited me: the fire-breathing dragon and Celtic symbols just above her wonderful ass and the humming birds and honeysuckles winding down her left arm from the strong round of her shoulder.

Fiddling with her dirty brown hair, pulling it back behind her tiny almost elfin ears and off of her little girl’s freckly and confused face, she always asked for more time bending over the kitchen island. I studied anatomy as she snorted up my blow. We did this two to three times a month but still every time she’d grind on herself for being such a pitiful “slut coke-whore”. Natalie’s pebble grey eyes, the colour of an empty prison cell with the lights off, would suddenly brighten, glowing with her private painful universe then suddenly flat-line waiting until the drug’s magic revived her and, twitching epileptic, she pushed her breath out as hard as a great-lake swimmer. I saw the confusion there in those eyes wanting to focus elsewhere maybe on a better life but forced to stop and stare straight at the twisted wreck of her wretched needs stronger than any virtue. I see myself there too: a distant shifting shadow in the audience near the back door of the “no-rules” fight reflected inside her eyes, tiny and searching everywhere for the exit.

Kissing her urgently I could almost smell the decay on her sweet breath. It was the sour stink of aging youth and fading beauty, mingling with the rot of abandoned relationships, family and friends; lost jobs, dead cats, and aborted babies. Natalie descended, sighing softly and patiently resigned to our little understanding, kneeling before me holding my half-limp dick between her thumb and index finger like it was an old cigar butt plucked out of a dirty ashtray she was about to smoke.

It was rare, but I liked it when she stayed with me for the night. Usually though, she’d just glare at me, scoop up her clothes and stomp off to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door. The water would run hard and the toilet would keep flushing. I recognized the scent of “Old Spice”, when she emerges all shiny again. I remembered now how tiny she was — 100 lbs and maybe 5’2”? “Thanksssss,” she offered quietly looking down at the floor while leaving my place and closing the door softly and maybe reluctantly with a gun-metal click.

An hour later I’d find her back at the bar working some other guy. It would make me crazy angry and jealous as if she was my cheating wife. How quickly I would miss the salty taste of her and the funky animal smell that was ours. But, when Natalie did stay, I’d run her a hot bath with lavender bubbles and send her off with a terry robe and a glass of wine. Proffering gifts for my wounded Goddess in the steamy mist, I’d come visit her after a short while, with the wine bottle and the last bags of blow. With a cold can of beer in hand, I would sit myself close beside her on the toilet seat next to the tub. Natalie was so beautiful then, absurdly innocent, glistening wet, babbling happy and fragile but unafraid. I’d dry her off with a big warm towel like she was a little kid and then we’d go off to my bed giggling and lie naked together in the quiet dark on our backs. We’d hold hands like stargazing lovers buzzing wide-eyed and exhausted talking about how we’d get it all back together again. Quit this shit. Two kites caught in a tree.