Kali

[used bits and pieces of older prose to make a better story.. I think it is a better story]


I am sitting.

I am sitting in a cracked leather chair and a half-empty glass of Jack-coke rumbles and shakes on the low table in front of me. Kaylie is up on a platform near the speakers with some of her girl friends and Dave – her best friend. The sound emanating in the room is like a roaring chainsaw against granite accompanied by the rhythm of an accentuated bass drum. The carpeted floor, viscous from spilt alcohol, sticks to the bottom of my shoes as I watch two couples, who sit on each side of me, casually suck face. Both boys wear striped ties and both girls wearing low-cut dresses.

Everybody looks the same.

Kaylie is celebrating her birthday, already drunk and dancing, her loose top slipping and giving off glimpses of her red lace bra. Her cherry lips and dark piercing eyes entice the older men surrounding her, as they attempt grabs at her hands. She turns away every time. She bobs her head and shakes to the beat. She thinks everything is magical and spinning and infinite. She must in her state of euphoria.

I am sitting.

When things used to be good between us, it was momentary, somewhere in between the drunkenness – between the subtleties and lost glimpses of our glazed eyes. Now she dances up on a platform, her scantily-clad friends dance below her, yelling her name, telling her how great she is – how great she looks. She sees me and runs down, gives me a cigarette-tongued kiss and intertwines her hand into mine, but they just don’t seem to fit like they used to.

“Hey Kali,” I yell over the music.
“Don’t fucking call me that,” she spits.
I’d call her after the Hindu God of death at times; even tell her that she’ll be the death of me. I don’t know why.
“You having fun?”
“What? What’d you say?”
“I said…”
“Come dance!”
“...I’d rather not.”
“What!?”
“I said...”

She runs off, stumbling, and I am left behind. If it weren’t her birthday, I’d comment on how she’s making a fool of herself. She tells me I try to control her but I argue that I just want her to control herself. My reasons for loving her in the first place have come to famish us – her eccentricity’s have worn me thin. Now all I do is watch. I know it doesn’t make a difference to her – our relationship works best when we’re apart, it’s become a bad habit that seems impossible to break.

I am sitting.

Dave grabs Kaylie up on the platform and dances behind her, the stubble on his cheek caressing her freckled face. She rubs against him, her hips thrusting in time to the pounding music. Dave’s biceps wrap around Kaylie, the cuts of his muscles bulge in the flashing light, connecting to his broad shoulders. His blue eyes are sensual, voluminous. Something in the way he sways his hips makes it hard to look away, a sort of attraction followed by revulsion.

Katie jumps down from the platform and runs off to the bathroom, her girlfriends following her. Dave makes his way toward me, standing tall. I feel small in his presence.
“Hey, you’re Kaylie’s boyfriend right?”
“Yeah, Jake. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, man. You smoke?”
“No, not cigarettes.”
“Weed?”
“I ... yeah for sure.” I lie.

***

The alleyway behind the club is grimy, puddles a shaded grey under green industrial garbage containers. The smell is putrid, a mixture of piss and rotting vegetables.
We smoke a pinner and Dave inhales the last inch of the roach before cashing the joint. He lets the smoke out slowly through his sculpted nose, watching it disappear into the white glow of the moon. Everything begins to feel dim and hollow. Dave stretches out his arms above his head, his carved torso a giant in compared to my small frame. My body shakes in the cold, but he makes me feel secure.

“I don’t feel anything, is this normal? Hey, my shoulders feel heavy. Are you hungry?... Is this normal?” I ask him.
“Is this your first time, buddy?”
“No no no.”
His laugh booms over the echo of pounding music in the distance.
“Ah man, I’m so high,” he says, “I’ve been reading lately, like a lot philosophy and stuff. How nothing cannot be created from nothing, you know? Like how you have to consider the implications of the whole cause and effect principle, right? There has to be something… in order for there to be nothing... I mean something. You know what I’m saying?"
“Not a clue, bro.” Why did I use the word bro? I hate that word. Why do I even care?
“Philosophy! You know… the meaning of life! Existentialism, free will versus determinism.”

I have no idea what he is talking about, but he presents himself with a deep lion’s roar, an air of charming eloquence. I am dazed and Dave suddenly stretches his arms around my body, squeezing me close, and pushes his lips into mine. They are warm and soft, gliding calmly. He engulfs me. Frantically, I push him off.
There is a silence. He chuckles.

“I’m not fucking gay, Dave!”
The deepness of his laughter pulsates in my chest.
“Yeah, neither am I. That’s the great thing about it, isn’t it?”
He wraps me inside of him again, embracing, and this time I kiss him back. His breath is a musky taste of pot and mint. His hand descends toward my inner thigh, insistent.

***

I rush back inside, the cold clawing at my spine as I walk into the sweating humidity of the club. I look at myself in a mirror near the coat-check, and use my hand to comb back my dishevelled hair. My pale cheeks are scarlet from the frost and embarrassment. Yet, there is pride - a sense of fulfilment which I don’t understand.
Kaylie is sitting down in the club, her head bowed, face greenish.

“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel too good.”
“You drank too much didn’t you?”
“Don’t fucking patronize me...”
“...”
“You left me.”
“What?”
“You left me for all those fucking animals...” She points aimlessly. “You weren’t here to look over me, babe!”
“I...I’m sorry.”
“I drank too much... it’s my fucking birthday! Hey, do you think we still love each other?”
She is frail, sick. She leans onto me.
“You’re very drunk, Kay.”

She shoves her face into mine, her coarse cracked lips pushing hard. She intertwines her hand into mine, but they just don’t seem to fit like they used to.