Remix of Heart, “Barracuda.”
The next dancer took her time and stripped out of a tuxedo, tiptoeing almost vaudevillian, and she shot a water pistol at the man closest to her. He wiped his mustachioed face with his hand and pretended to lick it. He shouted “It’s pussy juice!” and the men around him laughed. Everyone quickly got quiet again, or maybe their sounds faded into the music.
Pallas remarked to Junesong that this dancer vaguely resembled Kathleen Hanna, facially speaking. Junesong said that Kathleen Hanna had been a stripper once.
Junesong leaned back. Felt unusually relaxed.
The club’s soundtrack hushed to a distant swell like Junesong heard it underwater, like she was drowning or in a deprivation tank, only she was still in the same spot she’d been, in some fuller gravity, now seeing Pallas in stacked, motionless portraits, incarnations or lives that stretched like slices of time from now to the moment she’d sat down, to the moment they’d come in the door, to far beyond that, an infinite worm with her girlfriend’s face. Junesong reached her hands toward Pallas and they passed through, the fractions intangible like ghosts. Hot electric fear drilled through every tense nerve in her body and she felt like vomiting. Something shifted around in the back of her skull. Reservation or something else? Junesong felt nauseous, like, existentially. She closed her eyes, wanting to scream. Held them shut and imagined herself rising and after a moment did feel herself reemerging above the depth. Inhaled steadily and focused. Everything gradually returning to “normal” again. She boxed away the vision and its associated heaviness and set it all somewhere deep.
“You okay, baby?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just zoned out a bit.”
Remix of Led Zeppelin, “Whole Lotta Love.”
The next dance ended quick (a boring girl with implants too big for her frame and a body full of outdated tattoo trends, Pallas had noted) and the club remained quiet.
Lights changed violet, orange, flickering. The same silence held between sets until a woman emerged from behind the velveteen curtains, her nude body covered in geometric symbols, red paint. You could hear the sounds of drinks being swallowed, echoing gulps, snacks being eaten, whispers. The woman looked young, not far from being a girl. Maybe she was nineteen, maybe younger.
Pallas and Junesong slammed shots. Junesong tried to eat a carrot and it didn’t taste very good so she discreetly dropped it on the floor between them. Junesong did another shot to wash down the flavor. She lit a cigarette and offered it to Pallas. Pallas shook her head no and Junesong smoked it herself.
They stared, mesmerized, as a masked man emerged, also fully nude (aside from the mask, which was brown and leather and strapped tight around his head). He had the smallest cock either of them had ever seen. Pallas clicked her tongue at the sight and nodded up, unimpressed. She held up a fist and wiggled her thumb at Junesong. Junesong shook her head, unamused.
It continued to get smokier inside, like the cigarettes or the fog machine had gained sentience and were now intentionally shrouding the room, or it wasn’t actually the cigarettes or the fog machine but was instead a mist, something that had crept in from the outside, or something which had developed in the time they’d been sitting, or maybe had always been there, but had only just become noticeable. But perhaps the smoke had been summoned by the performances onstage, a harbinger . . .
Pallas rubbed at her eyes. The couple stood there on the stage and two rectangular lights lit the curtains behind them: film projectors. The p.a. upped with tribal chants and bass, drums in steady rhythm. The man’s eyes clearly visible through the leather mask, a deep blue. The hair that stuck out of various gaps in the brown mask was black, but the rest of his body was hairless. Something about him resembled a pig, but Pallas wasn’t sure what. He nodded at the young woman with the body paint.
Black and white film clips projecting across the curtains.
Erotic footage: art house close-ups of cocks and cunts and tits of all shapes, tones. Close-ups of mouths, high-heeled shoes, ankles. Slow panning across bodies being shaved with straight razors. Pallas asked what the fuck this was.
Junesong shrugged. “Looks like Andrew Blake or something. No idea.”
The footage on the right settled and filled with two naked young men, shaggy, dark haired identical twins, both with cocks bigger than the man in the leather mask. Like, alarmingly big. Almost disproportionate to their boyish frames. Junesong, remembering what it was like to sleep with a man, imagined the physical hurt and shuddered. On the left rectangle of footage were two nude women, both pale, one brown haired and tattooed heavily and rotund, the other blonde and frail. The blonde’s nipples were inverted, her tits small. The tattooed woman’s own breasts were large but had begun their gradual surrender to gravity. Neither groomed, full bush. The masked man and woman on the stage held each other, and she rubbed her hands gently over his mask, as though to assure him that he was no monster or that she loved him or both. Back on the screen with the young men, the both of them took turns stroking and sucking each other’s cocks, getting hard, like they were psyching each other up. Opposite, the two women kissed, and the brunette traced the blonde’s shoulders to the small of her back with a hand and pulled her in closer. Junesong slammed another shot. Pallas packed out a cigarette. Junesong stared. Pallas rolled her eyes and Junesong snickered. The woman with the geometric symbols painted on her body lowered to her knees and held the masked man’s limp cock in her mouth and worked it. The tribal chants heightened and the twin men leaned into each other and kissed. Junesong looked around and realized they were the only women in attendance who weren’t working there in some capacity. Pallas slammed a shot. The twins still working each other, passionlessly. The tattooed woman in the movie pressed the blonde’s breasts against her own, put her index finger in the blonde’s mouth and got it wet, took it out and rubbed the blonde’s clit with it, working her way in. The masked man was finally hard now, no change in size, his expression blank. It didn’t seem like he’d blinked yet. Junesong felt drunkenness hammering in waves. Pallas put her hand on Junesong’s leg. The drums heightened further, increasing tempo. Junesong went all eyes. Pallas took a shot and tried to catch up. One of the twins walked off screen and into the shadowed red space between the projectors and emerged into the left rectangle where the two women were.
Close-ups of the remaining twin alone in the frame’s neck and of the blonde’s neck, revealing the same serpentine birthmark just behind their left ears. The painted woman rose and gripped the metal pole at the end of the runway and bent over. The masked man guided himself in and fucked her from behind very slowly, removing his cock before thrusting it back in. He did this relentlessly. The twin on the screen with the two women moved between the two, kissing both of them. The blonde stroked him. The painted woman’s eyes welled like she was about to cry. The masked man held her up off the ground with his hands at her flank, fingers gripping, her toes raised inches from touching the platform, and he thrusted.
Close-up of the brunette’s mouth deep throat gagging the twin’s giant phlegm strand coated cock. Some men in the club’s audience had begun masturbating insouciant, no one seeming to notice, or if they did, to likewise care, excepting Junesong, who grew increasingly less still in her seat. Pallas not responding to her nudging. The left behind twin pantomimed motions in the opposite frame and the blonde corresponded to them. He gestured fellatio into his own mouth and she took turns blowing the other twin with the tattooed brunette. Pallas fully immersed, almost hypnotized by the show. Junesong gripped her hand. Motion slowing once more around her. Drums and chants, perhaps the swell of Junesong’s own amplified heart growing steadier over the noise in its blood’s sightless pulse, like thundering angry fists beating against a leviathan chest, drowning out the room. Connected flesh in motion, figures in light against the velvet, the serpent tattoos...
“Your nose is bleeding.”
“Huh?”
Junesong’s eyes itching from the smoke. Pallas he
ld a napkin under Junesong’s nose and helped her lean her head back. Held Junesong’s face with both hands, kissed her on the forehead.
“Let’s go home.”
They left money and slipped out of the booth, Pallas guiding them through the mist that had enveloped the room. Junesong glanced behind her, hand on the napkin under her nose, and saw the left behind twin beginning to mime violence, thrashing his closed fists in stabbing motions. Close-ups of a knife (wha?), the knife thrust in, gut up to sternum. Entrails and blood, soaked mouths and necks. Ink, grit, viscera, skin. The brunette being eaten and pulled apart, the painted girl’s neck snapped onstage, the crowd converging onto the stage, a real feeding frenzy. . . .
Junesong blinked rapidly, eyes darting up white. Felt hazy. Heard applause.
But no one paid them any mind except the doorman outside, telling them to take care. They ignored him and flagged a taxi, wherein its backseat Junesong felt the world’s velocity and the streetlights hurt her each time she glanced out the dusty windows.
“You can drop us here,” Pallas paid the driver and they got out.
“I’m ready to pass out.”
“Agreed.”
“Hold on.” Junesong stopped on the sidewalk. “Think we drank bomba. I feel sick.”
“I’m feeling fine. Little dizzy from sobering up, maybe.”
Junesong vomited and Pallas hopped backward to avoid it.
Junesong wiped her mouth. “Well, there’s that.”
Pallas pointed down an alleyway. “Let’s get you to bed. We’re close.”
Junesong retched again and stared at the ground, at what had come up: partially-digested meat, pita, dark liquid, what could have passed for blood. “Maybe that’s a good idea.” Looking at her girlfriend lighting a cigarette—septum ring, Lucky Strikes, red lipstick—details that comforted her for reasons she didn’t understand. Junesong spit, still tasting bitterness. “Water.”
An evening that felt somewhat nuclear, like everyone could be dead or savage, the sort of night full of the dread nostalgia of funerals or the freefall anxiety of war, Population: You. The cars were packed tightly all the way down the street and it was hard to find a place he could park. Every time someone seemed to be leaving their spot, they’d actually just pulled into it. He covered a large swath of area around Gazi, crossing odos Pireos dozens of times, felt like, and that had him hating the very idea of weekends. What’s the attraction of a packed crowd, anyway? Karras was usually alone, and he preferred it that way, but tonight, he really wanted a fucking drink and the company of others didn’t sound so bad—except the parking, and he was about ready to quit looking, except . . . there, a spot just a few blocks from the Kerameikos metro station opened up. He pulled in, exhaling the frustration that had been building.
Overpriced fucking bars, he was thinking. But always alive. The opposite of where he worked.
By the time he reached the square, he felt a little better about everything, so he stopped at a kiosk and eyed around. He asked the woman inside whether she had any condoms, but she didn’t look up from the book she was reading. The kiosks smelled like sugar and fresh tobacco. He asked again, knocking on the counter. The woman looked up.
“You’ll have to speak up.”
He repeated himself for the third time.
“I still can’t hear you.”
“Condoms.” He motioned a finger going in a hole with his hands.
The woman put a small box on the counter and he shook his head.
“Not those, the big kind.”
She shrugged and handed him a different box. Karras dropped her some coins and snuck a handful of candy into his pocket while she counted.
At Hoxton, he ordered a drink, shouting over the crowd and the music, but the bartender got it wrong. He nursed the lager he hadn’t asked for, noticing all the beautiful women there, hoping to pick someone up, maybe forget it all in a stranger’s bed. He wanted to meet a person he could connect with on level ground, someone he didn’t have to direct.
He overheard a person saying “We live in a cemetery.”
Lately he had become aware, more than ever, that he only had one real friend, whose time was probably up, who he didn’t see much anymore, as well as the momentary solace he found in the occasional prostitute. It’s because I’m a survivor was the reasoning he gave himself when he felt lonely. Some years before, in what seems like a summer longer ago than it was, he was seeing a woman. Her name was Lori Kaakvoël and she was from South Africa. While Kaakvoël was married to someone else the whole time they were together, she was still faithful in her way, always returning to him whenever her husband would go on his monthly trips to Bahrain for whatever business it was he had there (she’d never said; he’d never asked), and Karras felt that they understood each other well for as long as it had lasted. They met here, at this same bar, and he had picked her—no, he had to be honest—she’d picked him up, took him back to her place and fucked him like he’d never been fucked before, and as he lay there after, he had felt something he still lacked words for, something he hadn’t felt with anyone before and hadn’t since, something that kept him missing her often, even in the futility at their fling’s conclusion, when she’d decided to relocate with her husband to Hong Kong or somewhere like that, and had ceased returning any of his calls, and he’d often drive to her place and knock on the door and wait. And Kaakvoël would be there, at the other side of the door, and he could hear her weeping and he’d sit there, hand against the wood, wanting. But he never saw her face again. Then one day, the house was vacant, and she was gone forever. No goodbye, nothing clean about this break.
Karras stared around the bar, dreamily grinning at the thought of her. He ordered a shot of tequila and the bartender brought him vodka, and he knocked it back anyway. He ordered another, and another after that. Different shots arriving each time, like no one could get anything right. He drank them all. By the time he decided to settle on his beer, slowing down wasn’t much use because he was already shitfaced. A younger woman came up beside him and ordered, and Karras looked at his shoes, then back at her, swaying. He tried to speak, but she walked away before he could finish, not even dignifying his words with attention. He said “Fine, bitch, walk away,” waving his hand at her. Thought All of these people in here, they have no idea how much I’m burning inside. A group of foreigners approached soon after, Germans, judging by the accents. The women were gorgeous and looked like they were Erasmus age, blonde, with skin that reminded him of Kaakvoël’s (he could still see the fine hairs at the small of her back when he concentrated)... Karras wondered whether it was their first time in the country, whether he should attempt to talk to them, but the size of the men accompanying them quickly dissuaded him. Even so, he found that he understood some of their conversation. He’d studied the language in high school, when German was still something you learned. Now everyone just spoke English or French, it seemed.
“Should we go to Ios first?”
“What about Corfu?”
“Did you not look at the map? Corfu is on the other side of the country.”
“I want to go where the famous nude beaches are.”
Soon he started to tune them out, hoping to forget Kaakvoël, forget everything that led him to where he was now. But didn’t he have a good thing going here? The recession had been okay for him. He still had means where a lot of people didn’t. Most guys in this line of work, they never got to retire, they usually died or got locked up before that happened. Something like the bar could have been as good as it got. Lower risk, cleaner hands—though that didn’t make sleeping at night any easier. Their meeting earlier had been a reminder that he and Maniotis were both approaching their forties. Had they really known each other that long? Twenty fucking years. He still found it hard to believe they had served together. And when they got out, they volunteered to help the Serbs, coming home when the U.N. got involved. They never talked about that. When Karras scored low on his university placement, he dropped any a
mbition he had to be assimilated into the system. Maniotis, on the other hand, had reenlisted. Yet both roads still led them here.
“You’re in real trouble, man,” he was telling his friend’s imagined presence. “But I’ve no way to help you this time...” Then, instantly forgetting both Kaakvoël and Maniotis, Karras tilted his head, spotting a tall woman leaving the bar, scanning heels to ass. He mouthed “Goddamn” and sipped the last of his beer, and left, stumbling after her, until she got into a taxi, headed somewhere he’d never be, never noticing he was even trying to follow.
Varia dropped in and out, fevered.
He had moved into the bushes and was feline curled, using his left boot for a pillow. The punk show had ended, now it was just him and the cicadas.
Long Lost Dog of It Page 6