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23. the next stripper was me
I lingered by my murder scene briefly. I latched onto Barbs first, because she was the one who interested me the most. She was the most intelligent and cunning of the lot. She had the biggest diamond ring. Yet she lacked some kind of confidence in herself that made her vulnerable. In this way she was greedy for attention and I was attentive. We were the perfect combination. I fitted her lifestyle like a glove. I would brush her long black waist-length hair and paint her nails purple or red. I tried to love her as a sister and feigned inferiority to keep her happy. But outside the building of our shaky relationship I was always getting stronger. I lived on the streets, picking up the little pieces on the ground that were me. One day she was hiding behind a curtain, in order to try to catch me. But I saw her polished shoes positioned beneath the folds. Even when I pretended to be a failure, she could sense my success and she grew to hate it. I had to be careful what I gave to her. But always I would gradually fall in love with her, and make the mistake of giving too much of myself, and she would turn on me, often viciously and without warning. In a similar way to Frazer, she secretly believed that people that gave of themselves were fuckwits. But so long as they gave she would take. She also believed that love was weak. I always ended up giving to her because she appeared so needy. But she didn't take to gifts well, just as she didn't take to giving well. One day I left her without warning, for although we had been like sisters, there was always this mistrust between us as that couldn't be reconciled. Being close to her was no easy task. It was like juggling a pan of boiling water on one's head and being handed a glass of wine whilst doing it. Barbs called me a chameleon. But she was an institution. She was a grey, inflexible solid building, whereas I slipped in and out like a bird in strong sunlight. Barbs said, 'you are hiding parts of yourself and revealing others'. The building had not acknowledged the presence of the bird. It would remain as a building. Whilst the bird and the weather moved all about it, it would just be a building prone to receiving this movement. It would only be capable of understanding the world through its closed windows. Barbs interpreted anything beyond her immediate surroundings. She had labelled me a chameleon, showing me the limitations of her knowledge. She believed that somehow there was this implied dishonesty each time I acted a certain way. She felt like crushing the object of her fear that was beyond her understanding. Meanwhile she would come up against the world constantly as if it were a brick wall. I saw her injure herself often. Imagine if you were the most vulnerable and closest you could be to anyone, for the first time in your life. That somehow, after all you had been through, you miraculously fell in love. For he was the person I was closest to, and the one whom I was in love with. Then when they were as close as they could possibly be to you, as if they were just about to kiss your lips, when they were that close to your open beating heart, just a centimetre from it, what if then they got their big black boots and stomped on it? Frazer represents the corruption of the world and I represent the newly-corrupted, and for now part of me feels that he has won. He is an enemy that I hide from, around the sides of buildings and by the city fountain. I step out of each doorway, checking the half-empty streets that I am about to walk down. I keep wanting to change my identity. But I realise that I should have changed my love for him into love for someone else more worthy. I fear that this final dirty work has been done and I may never love again. I see him as two-dimensional because I am angry. You can live a very angry life where everything is seen through anger if you want to. It's like saying, 'you're a cunt, you're a cunt, you're a cunt, you're a cunt, you're a cunt, you're a cunt', over and over again, when you don't like the word cunt, and the more you keep saying it, the more you can't get past it. It's like building a wall of hatred in front of you that you have to then climb in order to see your own life ahead. Often I go through life like every gift that I open turns to cardboard and it's all flat. If I am meant to feel then I can't. Yet on some precious days, this unexpected passion can come streaming into the world from nowhere. My daily mood swings are like riding a roller coaster through four seasons of weather in less than ten minutes. I felt I could no longer trust my perceptions regarding people. Everyone appeared to love and hate me at the same time, until I thought I was evil. In my own way I might have warned off every other good person who came along. When I told them that I was bad, rather than looking deeper, they believed me and went away. The one that stayed was the one I fell in love with. Whilst Frazer and I had been a team, we were also a disruptive nuisance together. A lot of our associates were pleased that we were now apart. Meanwhile I became everything Barbs wanted me to be, as I would be leaving shortly. She had the biggest diamond on her hand that I had ever seen. She was the forever wife of Nigel and it showed. Now with things happening quickly in the world, suddenly I was her closest friend. My trouble was that I let people abuse me. I let them take it too far and that is how I was eventually hit by Frazer. He said, 'It was your insolence. The way that you just sat there and watched me destroy the room, tear it apart thread by thread'. I could have left sooner, without being been hit, but I just froze in the headlights. Anyway if I had done that, I probably still would have been mucking around with him. I would never have come to this diamond landscape that I escaped into along her fingers. So I let him really whack me by staying, to teach me the most important lesson of all. That lesson was that he was my enemy, out to physically harm me. The greatest lesson was self-taught. It allowed me to finally flee from Frazer and the scene that had captivated us both. They are my enemies whether I wanted them or not. Barbs was vicious and overbearing. She had another go at me, as if Frazer had given her permission. She was the big hen, with a sharp beak, the pecking order and a target in mind. I stood up for myself ever so slightly, never posing a threat to her until she felt safe enough to batter me with abuse. I was receiving it like rain, like when one puts up a large umbrella. In her mind she was gaining control over me. In my mind I had already left. It's not as if I provoked the battering at all. It's just that I allowed them to do what they must ultimately do. I wanted to find out sooner than later what they would do, if I was ever that vulnerable, or if I ever got that close or caring or giving. So I faked it to test them. At first I was a stage they stomped across. Then one day they came back with the audience and the stage was gone. I have been good at disappearing. My weakness is that so many times I have come back. I do not consider myself particularly clever or manipulative. I'm just trying to live, surviving on my wits. I would prefer it if the world were sunny and wrapped its arms around me. That way I would never have to put up the umbrella. But since it doesn't my idea is to befriend Barbs. Then I must take the diamond and run. She has been dishonest with me all along, and so in return I will give her the same. The landscape that separated us was becoming a blizzard. My initial thoughts of casually leaving were turning into high-speed fleeing. My acceleration increased in order to achieve liftoff. The deciding factor began with an incident regarding Nigel. He wanted me to be the next stripper. There was an issue between him and Barbs and the hard-faced blonde that was working for them. Barbs was dark-haired, voluptuous and sinister, always in the background like a sofa. Yet all day Nigel was focused on the silver and gold bikini of the blonde. Her tassels and sequins that lined her top shook with the movement of her dance. Then he became tired of her. All his diamond rings became tired of her and would not shine in her presence. She walked out in a huff when he gave her the golden handshake. But she tried to hold in her emotion because she was still frightened of speaking back to him. She was pretty damn hard. But I saw her cry like a sea sponge taken from the sea. The reason for her going was that she knew that her shelf life with Nigel was expiring. So one day she pulled her cunt up nice and close to him and stretched it back with her fingers, as if more and more cunt could make up for her aging face in his eyes. His cigarette practically dropped out of his mouth, but he was a good manoeuvrer and it remained stuck to his lips. I felt his disgust and anger and something else happened. As she walked away with her tight little arse brown from the solarium, he unbuckled his belt and followed her. Just as I came around the corner, he was standing there with his trousers around his ankles. Barbs appeared at the same time as I did. We all knew that this tension must have been building up between him and the stripper. Now this tension would never be released. For rather than follow her into the gutter he would go back to his hard old couch. A man will rarely leave his comfortable furniture, in order to take a risk on one of those little pink chairs, with the plush cushion and narrow legs. So it was the stripper who walked off down the street, with her pointed face held high and tear filled eyes. The wife would take him back as she had always done. The rule here is never to fall in lust with five thousand dollars worth a night, when you can have a freebie if you keep your eyes shut. Nigel turned to me and asked me to be the next stripper. He offered me two hundred and fifty bucks for the first show because I was fresh. I would have to learn the movements, fit into the costumes and practice to the records. I thought, it's going to take hours, and the money wasn't worth it. I said to Barbs that my body was a bit out of shape and there might be complaints. But she had turned cold on me and offered no sympathy. 'It's your decision,' she said. 'If you don't wanna do it, there'll be another one in five minutes. They just walk in off the street.' That afternoon Nigel told me to think about it. I sat on a bench in the park and watched the dance of the dilapidated buildings, until they began to speak in me. Even though my only carpetbag of clothing was left back there on the expensive floor, I never went back that day. If I had gone back, I would have caught him fucking his wife along the silver zipper without even taking her blouse off, her falling away from him unconsciously, like a sea animal slipping from its shell. Her fragile coming in small shiverings, as if he had shafted or speared some creature, which lay spent at the end of his pole. |
