Johnny Ruin

by Dan Dalton

  I remember my notebook, snatch it from my back pocket. The cover is damp but the pages, the words, aren’t damaged. I’m only wearing a T-shirt. Fuck. I tuck it under my arm. Wallet, Jon says. I blink at him. Got a rubber, don’t you. I catch on, pull out my wallet, find the condom I keep there. I wind my notebook into a tight column, tear open the condom packet with my teeth, rolling the thin film over the paper, tip to hilt, before pinching the end and tying it in a knot. Never used that much condom before, I say. Didn’t realise they cover so much notebook. Jon grins as I push the latex-wrapped notebook into my back pocket. Not the worst thing you’ve done with a condom, either.

  We don’t rush to find another awning. There’s no need. The temperature is steady. Twenty-two degrees. Besides, I love the rain. There’s a word for that. I think it’s made up. But then, they all are.

  We used to go clothes shopping together. We’d buy things for her. Dresses, shoes. Lingerie. I’d sit, wait patiently, overheat. She’d model things for me. I’m not even a foot guy, but her feet in anything pointy, heely, made me salivate. It was foreplay, imagining hitching up that dress, that skirt. We’d both get so turned on. Most times we’d go straight home, where I’d strip her slowly from the new wares. Sometimes she’d keep them on. The latter tended to make returns difficult.

  Here, through a window, I watch her trying on a dress she isn’t sure about, one I chose. I knew she’d look stunning in it. She does. She poses for me, turning, pouting, laughing. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her pale limbs, long and lithe, pull curious poses. My very own model. Her very own adoring fan. My smile fades as the curtain closes and I’m left looking at my reflection. I’m already walking away. There’s more to see.

  In a window a little further down the block she’s making me breakfast in one of my Bon Jovi T-shirts and not much else. It was my birthday. Underneath the T-shirt is a pair of lace knickers, my favourites. She can see me in her periphery, hovering, lingering, unable to look away. This is all for me. She’d asked me what I wanted for my thirty-first. This is the result. When she’s satisfied she’s got my attention, she drops a spoon, makes a show of picking it up. She wipes her mouth with the bottom of the T-shirt, showing me her knickers. Through the fabric I get a glimpse of her cunt, where her labia meet at the top, a dark patch of hair perched above. She knows this drives me crazy. She pulls the shirt up far enough to flash me her tits, then drops it, teasing. The grin on her face reserved just for me. She notices Jon, standing behind me. He’s also staring.

  He says: Aren’t you supposed to be fixing yourself.

  I say: Aren’t you supposed to be fetching a car.

  He says: Aren’t you supposed to be listening.

  We turn to each other. I’m listening. In my periphery I can see she’s pouting. We need to leave, he says, we’re only here to get to the next place. He leans back against the glass, puts one foot against it, tips the rain from the brim of his hat. Shit. You spend way too much time here as it is. I tell him maybe I’m here to work on that. To figure it out. He shakes his head. You’re not going to fix yourself standing here, staring at her funfair. You know where we need to be, and it ain’t Disneyland. I nod like I’m listening but what I’m actually doing is walking to the next window.

  She’s in the bathtub, pale, water-draped, pristine skin dancing in candlelight. Wet hair falls over her shoulders and chest, finding her nipples red, raised. Her pubic bone crests slightly. Her hip bones stand sharp, inviting my hands, my teeth. Her torso sits up on her elbows, head falling back towards me. Her eyes are closed. Her lips are parted slightly, just enough to kill me. My hands start at her neck, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. I move down the whole length, working the soap to a lather. I’m clumsy, unused to washing more than my own close crop. I haven’t used enough shampoo, but she is patient as I reach for more. I take a cup and carefully pour water from her hairline down the length, then wring the hair to rinse fully before starting over with conditioner. The scene smells like my pillows after she spends the night.

  Even now I can smell her there, on my pillows.

  Even though the scent is long gone.

  I lay her head back on the tub, and she lowers herself into the water, resting her hands on her thighs. Starting just above her ears, I bridge my fingertips and draw them up to her crown, scraping lightly over her scalp. She moans, rolls her shoulders, tilting her head as I move. I let my fingers interlock then pull them apart, moving them in slow circles. I start small, digging deep then softly scraping, massaging then scratching. Her breathing is deep, each circle eliciting a groan. The firmer my fingers, the harder I scratch, the deeper her sigh. The water sloshes as she writhes, her thighs tensing together and hips rocking upward as I work her slowly, every scrape of my nails over her scalp prompting a fuckkkk, a moan, a shudder. As I finish, her eyes still closed, she whispers six words that echo through me: You make me feel so good.

  In reality, out there, back then, it didn’t quite play out like this. I did a poor job, blamed the angle, the bathtub. She ended up doing it herself. I prefer to remember it this way.

  I rinse her hair three times, then a fourth when she says it’s not done yet. She stands and steps out of the bath, where I wrap her in a warm towel. She kisses me, rests her head on my chest. We stay like that a moment until I feel her shiver. Shall we find you some warm clothes, I say. She sniffs and nods, the way a child might. We exit, pursued by a stare. A minute later, the scene resets. Jon and I watch as she strips and gets into the bath, wetting her hair before calling me in.

  The ticker trails above us: Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Show me. Sho—

  Rain patters the window. Beads of water drip from my hair, run down my forehead. Rinse and repeat. Something hurts that much, Jon says, best thing is to stop doing it. I wipe my brow. Maybe I like the pain. He turns away and faces the street. Maybe you like it too much, he says. Through the glass I watch her lips, waiting. Just a minute, I say. I want to hear it one more time.

  Her: You make me feel so good.

  Come on, he says. We’ve already been here too long. Places to be, champ. But I’m not listening. I’m stumbling, lust drunk, lost in her. I step off the pavement into the road. The electric hum grows louder. Street lights surge and shatter, throwing yellow sparks over the water-logged asphalt, like it’s raining fire. And then there is only her. She steps towards me from every direction. She’s on every billboard, in every window. Her curves, her groans, her whispers. Stop this, Jon says. But I can’t. I don’t want to. She’s in summer dresses. In lingerie. In my Bon Jovi T-shirt and nothing else. She’s in a bath towel. She’s naked. Rain soaked. I follow the curve of her hips, the tussock of hair above her cunt. Then higher: her tits, her neck, her lips, her eyes, her hair. Sophia. I’m hers and she knows. I turn again to find her in jeans, a T-shirt. I feel the sharp sting of her hand across my cheek. I told you, she says, I don’t want you thinking of me like this.

  Jon’s laughter rises above the ringing in my ears, my face burning where her hand kissed it.

  Seven

  Nevada / Lust, Part II

  The first time we kissed she pressed her body into mine, my hand sliding from her hips to her lower back, around her arse, between her legs, until my fingers could feel the heat through her knickers. She pressed her hips forward, her pubic bone pushing against my cock. Then I remembered we were standing in a busy club. Every second with her I was carried away.

  From that first kiss we existed only in a bubble, our entire world extending outward three feet in every direction, wrapped around us like a duvet.

  Later, when it’s over, she’ll say something that haunts me still: It never would have lasted.

  Wait, I say. Wait. It sounds more pathetic the second time. She’s already leaving, all of her. The Sophia who slapped me, the one in the jeans and T-shirt, leading a revolution away from me. A revolt. Revolting. They’re all dressed now, dressed like her. I can’t turn it off, I say. She stops. Then we can’t be frie
nds. I ask her where she’s going, then: Don’t leave.

  On a video billboard she’s in a changing room, showing me a dress she’s trying on. She’s hitched it up so the hem is above her hips. She isn’t wearing knickers. A picture she sent me once. She looks up, shakes her head. I’m not going to stick around and play love interest, she says. Fuck that. She turns a corner. It’s been a year since we last kissed. Last fucked. We’re not friends. We can’t be friends for a lot of reasons. One is that I can’t turn this off. Another is that she’s with someone else. That went well, Jon says, chewing a toothpick he pulled out of thin air.

  On another screen, Sophia is masturbating in a bathroom stall. We were at a restaurant, drunk, horny. She got up to go to the bathroom and I asked her to send me something. I got this video. She’s leaning against the wall, her skirt hitched up, hand in her knickers. She asked me to delete it when she broke things off. She asked me to delete everything I had. Pictures, videos. And I did. I didn’t need them. On the screen above, her legs tense and she rubs her clit harder, whispering. Fuck, I’m gonna come. I can’t delete memories. They play on a continuous loop in my head. On screen she adjusts her skirt, blows a kiss into camera, and the video begins again.

  Jon says: Where are you going.

  I say: After her, obviously.

  Jon says: She said not to.

  I say: Didn’t stop me before.

  Jon says: That’s not strictly true.

  I always liked the pain of mouth ulcers, probing them with my tongue till they bled.

  I lean back against the glass, see things from his point of view. The road is a river, heavy rain flows into the gutter, over the kerb. American streets with their small drains, adverse camber. Good for flooding pavements, little else. Jon sighs. We could always swim out of here.

  Ahead, a raised track winds between buildings. You know how to get to Magic Mountain, I say. You take the train. I can’t see any trains from here, but an absence of trains doesn’t mean one isn’t coming. Keep the faith, as they say.

  You wait long enough by a train track, you tend to find a train.

  We follow the track. Still the rain falls. Still the water rises, surface black as the sky above it. Reflected neon flickers as raindrops break the surface, warping the inverted words. A city drowning in sin. A sewer swimming in itself. Literally. Jon is bracing himself against a wall, writing his name in piss on the stone. He holds his dick in one hand and lifts his flask to his lips with the other. Not the water cycle you learned about in school. He goes to the bathroom more than any human or non-corporeal travelling companion I’ve ever met.

  He walks backward as he pisses, attempting to outrun the expanding pool of urine floating on the rainwater. He steps back off the kerb and flails to catch himself, overcompensating and almost ending up with a face full of piss. Think you’ve had enough to drink there, I say, moving away from him. Certainly not, he says, buttoning his fly. He pushes his flask into his back pocket, accepting that pissing in water he’s standing in was probably a bad idea.

  The track is directly above us, but stairs prove elusive. I turn a corner into a side street. It’s darker here. Most of the street lights are out and the ones that aren’t flicker on and off. Mostly off. Track’s that-a-way, Jon says. I don’t look where he points. Yes, I say. It is.

  We should’ve been long gone by now.

  I told you. I say. I need to find her.

  This storm ain’t a coincidence.

  We don’t leave without her.

  And if she don’t want to.

  Up ahead I’m twenty-three, fucking a girl I don’t know over the bonnet of my car. Her knickers are round her knees. I’m pulling her ponytail and she keeps saying, Harder, harder. I can’t go any harder. I’m tempted to ask her to pipe down so I can concentrate. The strobing effect of the street light turns the scene into a zoetrope, our staccato thrusts rendered like nineteenth-century porn.

  In a window across the street I’m seventeen going down on a girl for the first time and getting it all incredibly wrong. She’s good enough to humour me, lets me stumble around her labia for a long while until I ask her if she came and she can’t help but laugh.

  We walk past my thirty-two-year-old self apologising to a date for not being able to get a hard-on. I offer to go down on her again but she tells me that it’s okay. She puts a hand on my shoulder. From across the street I watch myself shrink. What I should have done is laughed about it. What you should have done, Jon says, is used a finger as a splint. Just until the blood starts pumping. I walk away. What, he says. Don’t say you’ve never thumbed-in a semi.

  The thing with pain is it lets you know you exist. Sometimes pushing your tongue into an open wound in your mouth is the only way to be sure.

  You think maybe it’s time to retire this place, Jon says. It’s not good for you. The water is knee deep. I wade on. It’s not healthy, you know. Dwelling on this stuff. We walk by a dark window where I can just about make out my form, pressed to the wall, wanking to the sound of someone else fucking. I know, I know, I say. I just need to find her. He stops. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, he says, nodding at the space behind me.

  They shuffle from the shadows, sloshing in knee deep water. Dozens of her. A hundred, maybe, in various states of dress. They inch closer, calling out to me. They tear at their own clothing, claw at mine. Jon pulls me towards him, we back up against the building behind us. What’s the matter, they say. Don’t you want me. Their mouths all curl in a grin, the one she reserves for me.

  We need an exit, Jon says, making a half jump for a second-storey window ledge. No dice. A Sophia dressed as a nurse grabs my T-shirt and pulls me in for a kiss, and for a moment I let her as another grabs my hair and pulls hard enough to rip some out.

  I push away nurse Sophia as another hand reaches for my belt. There’s a hand on my arse, I feel my notebook start to leave my back pocket, snatch it back. I have hands up my shirt, fingers in my mouth. Make me feel good, she says, pulling my hand between her legs. Come on, buddy, exit, Jon says, wrestling his hat away from one of her. My T-shirt rips. Lust will tear us apart.

  There is no exit, I say, doing my best to rebuckle my belt, stop my jeans sliding off. There’s always an exit, Jon says. As he does, the double doors behind us swing open. Sophia, the Sophia who slapped me, grabs both of us, pulls us inside.

  I got married at twenty-five. Partly a visa thing. Seemed like a good idea at the time. We loved each other. We just didn’t like each other very much. As stories go, it was a hatchet job of a love plot, rushed, clichéd. I thought I could fix it later. I couldn’t. By twenty-eight, it had collapsed at the end of the first act.

  By thirty I was adrift, stumbling between beds, bottles. Enter Sophia. She was a revelation. Newly single, not looking for anything. We found each other at a time when we didn’t know what we needed, and made that thing each other. The thing with bubbles is that they tend to burst.

  It’s good to give your character some kind of disability to overcome. In my book, years of substance abuse has left Johnny Electric all but impotent.

  I can’t remember a girl who’s got me hard since her.

  Those doors won’t hold for long, she says. I ask how she knows, but she’s already taken off running. Because you don’t want them to, she says. We’re in the kind of service corridor you get behind the scenes in a mall, all concrete floors, white walls.

  The fists of a hundred memories bear down on the doors behind us. Why are you helping, I say, wheezing. Jon and I are struggling with the pace. I’m not, she says, you’re helping me. She pushes out of another set of double doors on to a train platform.

  We’re a storey above the city streets. She closes the door, drags a metal bench in front of it. I help. I like to feel useful. You really want to be useful, she says. You can conjure a train. I’ve been waiting a year for one to show up.

  Across from the street we can see into a row of windows. Some I used to see from the overground train. One I u
sed to live opposite. In each, people are undressing. Women, men. Strangers, giving glimpses of underwear, of bare skin. She speaks without looking at me. You fetishise your memories. I watch as they all close curtains, blinds. Don’t all writers, I say.

  A man at the other end of the platform now. I can’t see who it is. His face shifts like the carpet of my childhood bedroom, unable to place itself. He stares me down. Her boyfriend, maybe. The one she’s seeing now. The one she was seeing before we met. It’s hard to tell. He could be anyone. An identikit, photofit, simulacrum of a man I’ve wronged. There are others with him. Other wrongs. Other regrets. They charge at us, shouting. The Sophias batter the double doors behind us. We stand, start down the platform. Call a train, she says, but I don’t know how. We’re being hunted by my mistakes. My legs are leaden. I’m usually faster than this.

  Jon is panting. Anytime you want to deal with this, you have my full support, he says. Sophia is at the end of the platform. I catch up with her. We look over the rail. A forty-foot drop into the rising water below. No distance left to run. There, she says, pointing to a fire escape.

  She hits the rungs, not waiting for us. I make room for Jon to go next, but he pushes me towards the ladder. Anytime now, he says. As the mob reach the middle of the platform the double doors slam open and a hundred Sophias spill out, swarming my wrongs. Jon hauls himself on to the ladder. What’s the collective noun for that.