Fallen, in New York

Fallen, in New York

Foot after foot after hand

I walked in on all of it, all of her.  We never left the apartment, but.

“Yeah – I had dinner, I ordered a steak, you know, and it was like, something from like, a playground” (2:39am).

We did nothing with this comment really. What could we have done with that? She did as she was asked, “Whoa, did you have dinner?” (2:37am). Carbs help with that sort of drinking. Beer before liquor makes you sicker, though maybe she didn’t know that. The more I thought about it, the more Freudian and twisted it became. Something inside that synapse-limited mind of hers connected something with playgrounds and meat. We all just stood, the three of us, amazed, watching, picturing the image entrapped in her psychoanalytical babble. Could it have been a slip of the tongue? I didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt on this one – there was no way her degenerated mind could have come up with anything other than a direct connection. I thought steak, meat, man, dad, Elektra, the whole bit. Maybe playground, elementary school, needy, bullied, the bully, pulverized? Minds worked in strange ways, and if hers even worked, she must have made some connections. Playground is not the word to just jump out at the drunkest of blackout, and have her talk analogously about steak as a childhood passion. 

I put my bags down, engorged by New York City clothing, reeking of five hours in the airport. We all knew, thanks to her history lesson earlier, that she was the idiot of the family, just kidding, but she was serious about it. No, really, she tossed her hair back and chuckled only affirming her brilliance. Games, she loved games. Board games, soccer games, base ball games, mind games. You name it. So did I, and those two sitting at the dining room table. She teetered on those four-inch heels of hers, lunging from left to right, first to help me put my bags down then finding the kitchen island, and a 90-degree angle. Her groin was firmly pressed to the edge of the island, toes on point - obviously a new position for her – her left forearm bracing her heavy top weight and her right arm searching for one two or four airplane bottles of liquor.  They just sat around the apartment in decoration, the airplane bottles.

“It was some ko-bay place that tasted like ground beef redone” (2:44am).

She explained it was some ‘grand opening now’ restaurant bolstering the steak. The playground steak. Equipped with Lucy Shirley’s ID (claiming her height to be seven inches off the corporeal and weight to be sixty pounds too light) she began the night off right: Japanese beer in an Indian restaurant in Chinatown. We had our assumptions, but not until later did we piece a few episodes together to understand her international night. I couldn’t really do anything with the fact that she just said that she ate redone ground beef other than assume that she ate dog shit. No, no, no silly, not dog shit. It was ground beef, just redone.  Figure it out, and we meant to.

They didn’t, nor any of New York carded, or cared about her. She wore all the whore they needed – low cut red scoop neck (thanks, Armani), with black tights off the Benetton line and Prada endorsed heels. Her underaged self needed no explanation; she followed foot after foot after hand on her back directing her from bar to beer (to bed).

Prada would have been proud of, or disturbed by, the way she worked those shoes. Her pouch stuck out too much in the front – she said she was doing the “booty do” -  but the heels did the trick, countering any fat with an ass and a half. From the side, really, she looked like a good slalom run from Veil.  She strode from table to table in the vacant “Grand Opening” restaurant pooling the dresses’ fabric on the shelf above her crack, giving the owner a reason to have come to work that night. It was getting up from the toilet “slip up” that made her regret those heels. Even in the apartment, I never saw her catch the flat of the heel, gliding on the edges every step that she took.

 

“Shots. Booze. Lets take some shots” (2:49am).

We gazed at her. We gazed with full intention of gazing as she performed for us, swaying her streaked hair right, left, right.  She wanted this game to continue, she wasn’t giving up. I moved from the living room’s door way as she grabbed my elbow pit. Now one hand clutching new, refreshed convenience sized bottles, courtesy of the airport, cone hand on my arm, crotch to island, and two heels propping up her ass high amidst four empty mini-bottles.  Hi there, you keep on trucking, don’t be embarrassed, you’re fine, I can’t even tell that’s a bruise, you couldn’t have fallen, stop, you’re fine.  She jiggled as she laughed all over. She jiggled, as she got annoyed at our sobriety.

“Why won’t you guys do booze with me?” (2:52am).

Her voice must have dropped an octave or two to hit those ooo’s, as if her musical theatrics would entice us to give up our sobriety and mask the grammatical errors engraved into her speech. Hey, so you like the steak right?

I mean I love steak, steak cow connection can you follow? It was a nice move, but too dramatic. She had thrown my elbow pit and attached arm off as she swiveled toward the cabinet for more mini-bottles. My opportunity to end the game: through ignoring the targeted. I pulled out the couch to make up my bed, but this not-so-subtle hint was nothing of the sort in her mind. She had followed me, since the two at the dining room table were of no consequence to her at this point, sneaking with her loud heels. Reaching for the pillows set off to the back of the couch, she broke into my path, grabbed the remote perching close to my pant’s fly and started to wobble around the couch-bed. She was performing Britney Spears, and MTV was on in the background. 

 

 

This game had rules, limits, traditions and customs. We didn’t violate a single one.  We watched her plummet, rocket and eat rock bottom. It was better than redone playground steak. It, the proverbial it, didn’t matter all that much. Vague at least, descriptive at best, she now strode through the apartment embracing that microphone remote and more of the to be consumed little airplane bottles (now numbering seven), an orange, and a knife. Pockets were utilized for this maneuver. I left those of no consequence with the drunkard as she started to drain the orange.

Her wrist bore three bands, two for bars one for a club, she proclaimed loud enough for me to hear this from the bathroom.  Something about dancing, booze, playgrounds and her didn’t all quite mix. She went to dance, and to romp and frolic and enjoy her youthful sexuality. Although too much, she didn’t understand this too much, I assume. She had met someone is an understatement, as is drunk.

She vomited more than once. Boot and Rally. She had been to both the company Boots and had been to a Rally. But never knew what this meant. Her thighs, overworked for the night, displayed a couple of bruises a little too high up. Her explanation?  On the way back from the club, she found herself, caught in a crack on seventieth street and park and fallen over. Again.

 

 

 

“Dick, his name was Dick. I don’t know if that is short for something like” one more pause, maybe on the idea that she just said short and dick in the same sentence. “Richard or something, isn’t it? Right?” (3:06am).

She stumbled around, babbling about Dick, and long John and something about her heels, but mostly not focusing on the orange and knife that pendulumed in her right hand, the three parts vodka two parts orange’s juice and cell phone in her left. I’m also told about her desires with older men, with her eyes. She pawed after him, despite her twenty-year minority. Steak, man, meat.

She must have been tired, because she started to retrace old steps. Falling back onto the island, displaying that ally cat arch in her back. Her hair streaked across the top, dripping off the side of the island.  Two seconds and she drifted off. Two more and she was back on, but this time on the ground. She looked around, trying to fixate on something, giving her some judgment of spinning or not. She found the shell of the sweet pulpy orange.

 

“Like, what is that light?” Stares off onto the front door shoe lineup lead her to find some light resting within a shoe.   “Oh, your phone, I thought it was from my shoe. I THOUGHT MY SHOE WAS LIGHTING UP” (3:17am).

It was time for the game to end.

 

 

“I’m going to pee once tonight”  (3:16am)

The ADD kicked into high gear, giving us the green light to proceed. More, we nodded, more. She got back off the ground, and came down hard onto the counter top, allowing rest for her heels. It gave me no more pleasure then to see the smug smirk on a drunkard’s face, because I knew that she thought she was hot and desirable again. Pavlov would have been proud: she took a sip of the screw-me-driver and stuck that ass a little higher. Proceeded only by a finger wave in my direction, as if those of no consequence had become those who didn’t exist, she made her way for the door and we made our move. We followed, fifth graders on the prowl, and approached with a step or two. Our recess was drawing to a close.

 

Three of us and three steps closer, and I was leading. I had taken her passes and turned them in. I found my crotch against her thigh. First contact. I didn’t move and neither did she. His thigh grazed against her ass. Her forearm nuzzled in between drunkard’s arm and torso. A puzzle. A puzzle that was missing a few pieces.

“Like, what the fuck guys?” (3:21am).

No more games for fifth graders any more. She had graduated, and was making her own money these days, as the lady that she was. The Lady of tonight. The TV show Weeds soundtracked her way to the door; Prada’s design found their way together, hard. Four stumbles forward, to the top of the stairs.  Prada’s design gave out, harder. She found herself, and the airport mini-bottles, fallen, again.