By Damien Bell
I buried my face in her coconut scented body and bit her to wake her up. Cheap suntan lotion is my favorite aphrodisiac. She woke and lazily stretched one side of her body as I kissed her neck. My affections disregarded, she leaned her olive body over mine and grabbed a box of clove cigarettes on the floor.
�What time is it?� She groaned.
She�d definitely be angry if I told her.
�Let�s go to the beach.�
She didn�t answer at first but instead reached over me again and ashed her cigarette into the mangled coke can I�d fashioned into an ashtray. Aromatic smoke from the long black clove wove it�s way through the gears in her mind and slowly began to turn them. �Your car won�t make it.�
�It�s only got to get us there, I don�t want to come back.� This woke her up entirely. Her reflective amber eyes adjusted to the poor light and looked to my collection of posters and cheaply framed pictures on the far corner of the room. She couldn�t see them, neither could I, but we both knew what they were. Each of us had spent hours of many days ingraining the images into our minds. Just waiting and working for �One Day� when we would be there too. A clean world. Dolphins stream through glass windows above the open crayon box of coral reef�s below. Everything is life.
Sounds of the city surrounded us and bombarded up the stairs and through the rust yellow elevator shafts, but mostly though our window. It�s always there but sometimes you can�t hear it.
�We can�t.� She said, and then let her body fall back on to the mattress. �What time is it anyways?�
�I�m serious, we could make it, find a place to live, it�d be an adventure and we could��
�We�re not going to the fucking beach! Especially at this hour, go back to sleep.�
If a crystal shattered and time froze at that same moment I sometimes wonder if the reflection it held would disappear, or would each precious fragment carry it�s own image of the moment before impact. Perfect and clean. Perfect, only smaller now.
�If you go with me� I�ll marry you.�
Bass from giant amped speakers jarred the little slide lock on the bathroom stall. I sat down on the toilet without lifting the lid and pulled the mini-ziplock bag from my sock. The white powdered ketamine vacuumed up my nose and my sinuses shrieked in discontempt. I flushed the little baggie and walked back into the circus of lights, and pulsing rhythmic music. The night�s theme was paradise. Little aqua streamers hung from the black ceiling. Some of them had fallen or been pulled down. Along the walls stood plastic palm trees and tacked paper murals of dolphins dashing across the ocean waves. New girl saw me and stumbled across the floor into my arms.
�Enjoy�in yourself babe.� New girl asked as she bit my ear and pulled my head down to hers. I didn�t know how off kilter I was and I almost slammed us both into the floor. We sort of caught each other. New girl made quick nervous glances around the room and almost carried me to the safety of a bar stool. I remembered Mike. His advice of getting over one is to find another, quickly. �It�s a double positive man, you�ll feel better cause you got someone new and she�ll feel worse cause you got someone new.� New girl was saying something to me too. I couldn�t understand her and she tried to leave but I grabbed her arm. �I wanta go�to the beach.� I said. I couldn�t really focus on her or associate her with whatever she was to me. It all blurred. I remembered the feeling of reality and understanding, but at the moment it�s an echo shinking with every call. I don�t know who she is.
�What was that?� Now she�d become a stranger. A name or a body. Hair. I don�t know her.
�I wanna go to the ocean!�
�You�d drown there babe..� Her words were robotic and foreign. I watched her disappear into the crowd and the world changed. The bass was the tide and I watched dolphins cascade across the sea, their waving movements never seemed to gain them ground. Thoughts in my mind could not form words but the urge was still there. And as time passed and the world returned to me, it remained.
Alone and long traveled I stepped off the airplane onto the streets of Waikiki. The grimy world of what was had become my past was separated my miles of ocean. Even at night the streets were musical and filled with lights and flowers. I walked aimlessly knowing that any way I turned I would eventually hit the ocean. The longer I walked the less music I heard. Soon the festivities were only a drone left behind. I kept walking and thought about were I would sleep for the night. Across the street I saw a mime smearing white paint off of his sweated face. Two prostitutes approached me, one wearing faded overalls and the other a stained t-shirt and cutoffs.
�Double your trouble sugar?� The smaller one asked. The larger one towered above both of us and forced a toothy smile. I was convinced that if they really wanted money from me the larger one could probably just beat it out of me, but she wouldn�t get much.
�Not tonight ladies,� I kept walking and they followed. The smaller one told me a joke about a bunny rabbit crying from cotton balls. I felt sorry for them because it had to be hard for them to compete with the prettier prostitutes a few miles closer to the main strip. When they finally gave up on me I missed them. I thought of Old girl, our apartment in the city, the mattress on the floor, my homemade ashtray and her brown scented skin. From miles across oceans a black hand rose from the night sky and clutched me in it�s empty grip. The gentle wind rolling down the island mountains would not assuage my desperate breath that struggled for a full breath. I stood open jawed on the sand. And there, lapping at my feet was the ocean.
© Damien Bell