Dora: A Headcase (15 page)

The attractive older dude says, “Won’t you join us?”

The boygirl and the girlboy’s heads bob in agreement. They slide over on their shared red vinyl booth seat and make a spot for me. I don’t know why, but it seems like I fit in there.

I flash them a peace sign and sit down and sip my drink.

“I’m Otto,” the boygirl goes.

“I’m Sabina,” the girlboy goes.

I smile. I sip my drink. I rummage around in my Dora purse and pull out my purple sharpie and write on my drink napkin – wait – who am I again? Oh yeah. I write DORA. They all smile and nod. I look at attractive older dude. That’s when it dawns on me. I’ve SEEN him before. At the restaurant. He’s the guy who made Siggy faint dead away on the floor. UR JUNG I write under my DORA on the drink napkin. I hold it up at him.

“Have we met?” he says – smiling pretty much like a Cheshire cat.

I shake my head no and smile.

“Let’s get it on,” the girlboy yells, meaning let’s dance, so we do, all four of us move like a single organism out to the pulsing larger organism that is people dancing.

The dude can dance.

I don’t mean like a dude his age. I mean like a dancer. Like a real dancer. Like a dancer on stage. He moves like water. He embodies the bass of the music. He looks like desire. He’s fucking mesmerizing. His hips do things not even hip-hoppers achieve. He’s fast – he’s slow – he’s barely moving. His shoulders lose their bone structure. And he does this head shoulder chest hips thing that kind of makes you want to take your clothes off really fast. The smell of Patchouli and sweat and really great shampoo dizzy me. His hair, it’s perfect. He slips his arm around the boygirl he releases he slides his hands onto the girlboy’s hips releases he bump grinds me from behind with his hands locked around my abdomen I rock my head back he slips a pill
into my mouth I close my eyes I don’t care what it is it is good. Then the girlboy is behind me and up against me and the boygirl is in front of me pressing in until I’m a Dora sandwich and I hope it lasts a really, really long time. I’m creaming my jeans and my nips? Hard as ball bearings. I close my eyes. I feel someone tugging the belt loop of my skinny jeans and I let myself be led by the hip and spun and held close it smells like rain.

Obsidian.

We are more or less entwined, muscular and wet, moving in and out of each other inside sound and light. She is laughing. She throws her head back and her sheet of black hair cuts the air and the obsidian around her neck, I lick it, I suck it, I taste the salt of her. If I could choose when to die, I’d choose this moment, a little death inside the wordless bliss of her body.

Hours later, spent, baptized by sweat, I step outside for a cig.

Attractive older dude is standing with one foot against the building, finishing a joint. He looks over at me, smiles, offers me a toke. I hold my cig up indicating I’m good. He nods and exhales the maryjane way. I light up. Inhale. We both stare at the night sky. Seattle’s glow blots out the array of stars, but we both know they are up there. Life is good.

Then a fucking rat walks right in front of us, pauses to look up with its nasty little marble eyes and its shitty ass rodent tail, and scurries away.

I jump back a bit and my face twists all up. I mean gross.

“Au contraire,” Jung says, reading my mind. “Animal totems are primordial symbols of the collective unconscious.” He sucks his fatty and holds his breath, then continues. “Think of the aborigines, the Celts, the Egyptians, Chinese and Native American cultures… ” He points the joint down to the ground. “Our friend the rat? The rat totem indicates a pronounced drive for success. An almost uncanny ability to adapt. A cunningness … and the ability to defend oneself aggressively when necessary. Perhaps you need only to adjust your state of mind to see the rat’s relation to you.”

I point to myself and give him a what the fuck look.

Jung laughs. He wets the tip of his joint with his tongue and puts it in his pocket. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Well it wasn’t there for me, Dora.”

And then he walks back into the club. I watch his hair as he walks away.

I stare at the cig in my hand. Smoke curls up toward my face. So the guy is obviously sexually open, has no problem with recreational drugs, loves to dance, and digs animal ju ju. I take a big ass drag off my cig, then flick it. It bounces on the pavement and glows for a moment.

I just have one question.

Why the fuck couldn’t
this
dude have been my therapist?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED? I write. I press down super fucking hard with a red Crayola crayon on a napkin at Shari’s, and thrust the napkin pretty much into Ave Maria’s face.

“ Well I just mean I didn’t think it would do any harm,” Ave Maria goes.

I snatch the little napkin back and break the goddamn crayon trying to write an answer … I have to get a new napkin and crayon. The napkins and crayons and straws and silverware and shit are all at this mini station in the center of Shari’s restaurant. It’s exactly like the medicine cabinet deal in the ER. Maybe the whole world works like this – little substations in life. I grab a wad of napkins and a black Crayola and some Tabasco for good measure and go back to the table.

The orange gloom of Shari’s feels a little like we’re sitting in a bowl of puke. It’s two a.m. so there aren’t too many other customers – a table of goths across the restaurant – jeez did I ever look that dorkish? A couple of truckers on barstools, a gaggle of rotund nurses I sincerely hope I’ve never seen before. Cops don’t congregate until around 4:00 a.m.

Obsidian sucks on a banana milkshake and fondles a plateful of bacon. Little Teena downs steak and eggs. Ave Maria polishes off a plate of pancakes with whip cream and strawberries all over them. She’s got whip cream smeared on her chin. Yes it’s a perfect joke. But I’m in no mood.

“What’s the big deal?” Little Teena asks. “It’s just a few Facehooker friends and YouTuboners that are looking at it, and no one really knows what they’re looking at anyway, right? Plus it’s pretty dark. It’s not like there was proper lighting. I mean, the troll’s even in the shot a couple of times.” He whips out a cigarette and a lighter. Lights up.

A waitress waddles over and scowls at him and shakes her jowls. “Sir, you can’t do that in here. We’re a non-smoking establishment.” She points to a sign behind Little Teena’s head.

“Ah, fair lady,” Little Teena says, “so true.” He grabs my black crayon, sticks it in his mouth, and lights it. The waitress backs away like she’s a little frightened.

I snatch the black Crayola back, blow the flame out, and rub some of the melted black on my lips. Then I douse it in my glass of water. Smells like melted kid hope.

My head itches. My hair is coming back but I look … patchy. I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my hoodie – great. I’m so pissed I’m frothing a little. I suck spit back into my mouth and finish what I’m writing and shove the napkin over to Little Teena. It’s not FINISHED. Don’t you get it? It’s MINE.

“OK, OK,” Little Teena says, using the napkin to dab at his forehead.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Ave Maria sort of whimpersings at me. “This is the I’m sorry song.” She improvises a happy little tune. I look at her. She makes her eyes all big. She rests her head on her fists atop those goddamn pencil thin wrists. “So soooooooorrrrrrrrrry,” she sings. She pulls the hood of her hoodie up around her head and yanks the strings tight. In a neon pink hoodie with the hood pulled tight around her face, well, it’s pretty impossible to be mad at someone who looks like a bright pink singing penis with a girlish face. She blinks.

I write: your sorry song stinks and throw it at her.

The problem is this. Ave Maria told one of the teen misfits we let view the footage on the wall next to the troll statue that he could film it on his fucking iPhone. “I guess,” she said, out of
earshot, so I didn’t know it was even happening. Sometimes she just doesn’t think.

Well he filmed it all right, but the new G4 iPhones? Yeah. They have HD video recording and FaceTime video calling. So the guy pretty much filmed the whole rough cut and shot it off to god knows how many of his wanker little buddies … there’s no way to stop the transmission of images once they signal through the flames. I’m so pissed off I want to punch a hole in the crappy pumpkin color vinyl booth seats. Ave Maria bobs up and down a little. No way am I gonna laugh. I try for a Stop. Moving. Now. Face. I write: you’ve got cum on your chin and slide another napkin over to Ave Maria.

“Nuh uh!” she says, then wipes, then tastes it, then smiles.

“Anyone want the rest of my bacon?” Obsidian asks, holding a slab of swine up in the air.

I give her the you know I want the bacon, asshole look and she smiles and hands it over. Everyone else gives me what’s left of their bacon too. Everyone knows bacon is my favorite food. I chew and stew. The sound of my chewing is all anyone says for a bit. The chorus of short orders and grill sizzling is in the background. I half want to record.

“I was only trying to help,” Ave Maria says. “I thought if more people saw it,” she stabs a strawberry with her fork and chucks it over my head, “we could get you out of your fucked up dungeon household and back into the world – I was just trying to create … whadya call it?” She looks pleadingly at Little Teena.

“Buzz,” Little Teena says, lighting and smoking his straw. Burned plastic smell.

“Yeah! That. Buzz,” Ave Maria says. She shuts up and puts her neon pink head back on top of her wrists. “Don’t be hatin’ on me, Ida,” Ave Maria says. “Or I’ll cry. Like right here. In Shari’s. Really loud.”

I study her face. I think I know what that would sound like, given her high notes. Her eyes well up.

Goddamn it I quickly scrawl out on the paper placemat –
don’t fucking cry. My cell vibrates in my hoodie pocket just underneath my rib cut. I don’t care who it is. I’m with the only people besides Marlene that matter, so fuck it. It buzzes and buzzes against me. Maybe it’ll make my rib cut scab bleed. Whoever you are? Leave a message, punkass. I figure it’s Mrs. K. She can suck it.

“Look,” Little Teena says all fatherly, “that footage won’t last long on Facehooker because they’ll figure out there’s giant COCK going on sooner than later.”

Ave Maria is bobbing her head up and down maniacally. “Yeah,” she goes, “You can’t have vag or tits or cock on Facehooker.”

Little Teena douses his straw in his coffee. “I can figure out a way to hose the signal on YouTube, but it’ll take me at least a day. So will you get your panties out of a twist and calm down? By the time you finish your man movie, it will be a goddamn masterpiece. Check that big beautiful ego of yours, madame artiste.” He puts me in a faux head lock and nuggies me.

I wrestle free. Fuck. You. I write, then: I’m not wearing panties. Then I charley horse him.

“OW. That fucking hurt you know,” Little Teena says. Good thing I have blubber. I’m a higher mammal.”

“What about me,” Ave Maria goes, bopping up and down, “don’t I get one?” She’s smiling like a giddy little penis cartoon.

“You, my bulimic beanpole, have no blubber,” Little Teena says.

I give Ave Maria a good kick in the shin underneath the table.

“Thank you!” she sings five octaves higher than human.

Then we’re just who we are again. My cell buzzes my gut again. I whip it out of my hoodie pocket. Huh. No idea who that number belongs to. Must be Indians trying to sell me something. That could make decent soundscape though, so I hold my phone to my ear to listen to the voice mail.

“Gross. My thighs are stuck to the seats,” Ave Maria says. She’s wearing old school navy blue gym shorts and white tube socks. Before we get our check, we make a break for it out into
the parking lot, a fat waitress with sweat stains from her pits to her boobs chasing us and screaming, “You dirty little fuckers, get your asses back here!” But it’s not like she’s gonna, you know, chase us, and like I said, the cops don’t congregate before 4:00. Obsidian shoots her the bird and takes her T-shirt off and swings it around in the air and throws it in our wake. Briefly I’m stung by the beauty of her undershirt. Those Italian white ribbed stretchy kind. Did I think she’d be wearing a bra?

My voicemail kicks in as we run. “I have been trying to reach you. You have something of value that I am in a position to procure. I have a lucrative offer to make to you.” I don’t even listen to the rest. Must be a wrong number. Or Indians trying to sell me shit. Doesn’t even make any sense. I shove my cell back into my hoodie pocket. Whoever that is can wait.

We run. Together. Chaotic and mismatched. I may not be able to yell, but I can sure as shit run, and nothing beats the sound of docs on pavement. I flip on my H4n in my Dora purse. Clompclompclompclompclomp. Beautiful. My heart pounding. My rib cut stinging. I still have the crayon. I put the Crayola crayon in my mouth between my teeth. I forgive Ave Maria.

“To the cigarettes!” Little Teena yells, with his arm jammed forward and his lighter lit like we’re leading some kind of teen monster charge, a crass ample gay boy, an anorexic pink penis cartoon girl in tube socks, a bad ass Native American, and a raging mute – I bite therefore I am – through the black Crayola of night.

“YOUR FATHER WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOU.”

That’s what I wake up to after maybe two and a half hours of sleep. The voice of Mrs. K. through the crack of my bedroom door. For a second I think I’m dreaming, but nope, I have to pee and my rib cut hurts.

“I know you were not here last night,” Mrs. K. says in a low demon tone from the other side of my bedroom door.

Creepola.

“Don’t think I won’t tell him,” Mrs. K. says.

Who does she think she is, anyway? This is my home. Even though I wish it would blow up. But I see the angle. She’s staking her territory. Peeing on things and leaving her scent. Rearranging spoons, I bet. Clever twat.