a cheerful little story about a gal with two black eyes
If you're ever looking for someone to rob, or a place to sleep or fuck or hide out, I'll let you know now that I leave my door unlocked. There's a sign on the door, not so much hung onto as carved into, that says "surprise me." I couldn't find it on a welcome mat so I did it myself. I was asleep on the couch so I missed her entrance.
She had heels on. They crunched through styrofoam containers, pizza crusts, and a half-completed jigsaw puzzle lying on the floor. These are the type of obstacles that are supposed to keep a girl in heels from ever entering my apartmert. When I opened my eyes I had a pair of tits on my head, arms draped over my shoulders, and the business end of a stun gun pointed at my chest.
"Wake up, Baby. You're gonna miss the sun."
"What other options do I have?" This was meant to be a flirt but it came out lazy.
"775,000 volts."
"What's that in amperes?" It took a second for her to figure out if amperes was a real term the way I used it, and another for her to fumble with the math. I pulled the gun loose from the strap around her arm, spun the chair around, pointed and clicked. She threw her hands in front of her face and braced herself for pain. When it didn't come, she was pissed.
"What the fuck? Lousy piece of shit doesn't even work!"
"Yeah it does. Probly, at least. See that strap around your arm? It's attatched to a disable pin. It turns off if it gets disconnected, so that rapists can't just yank it and use it on you."
"That's good, I was scared for a minute."
"Yeah, 700,000 sounds like a good shock."
"I could give two shits about the shock, I thought I was gonna pee myself."
"That only really happens when you're holding it in already."
"How do you know?"
"I used to buy em at the Swap Shop and take em apart, to see if I could build my own."
"Why?"
"Iunno. Sell em. Make em better. It's too much work for too little result. I'd rather make a potato gun any day of the week. Just bust through car windows and shit without burning off your eyebrows."
"I thought you thought it was just a toy."
"Sometimes they are."
"Why are you smiling?"
"There was this girl I was seeing who was always up for some weird shit, and I had just bought this keychain tazer, like half the wattage of that thing you got. She was a tough girl, remember Aimee?"
"Yeah, that big girl."
"Yeah, she was a lot like Aimee, but she had pink hair and she was way underaged."
"Yeah?"
"Well I convinced her to let me use the taser on her while we were fucking to see if I'd get shocked."
"No... Really? What happened?"
"We made a circuit."
"No."
"Yeah, she got shocked, I got shocked and it just kept running through us. My fingerprints are probably scorched into her wall still."
"What happened them?"
"I got hooked. She let me do it like two more times and she even got to use it on me but then out of nowhere she called me a psychopath and broke up with me at Denny's."
"So you liked it?"
"Yeah, it was like I had a lightning bug in my stomach or...like I swallowed Zeus. She'd lose all control for a few minutes and her body would do all this crazy involuntary shit. It would take up nearly all my mental energy to keep myself focused and in control. It was awesome. It would just take everything out of me, I'd be satisfied for weeks."
"You are a psycho."
"It takes two to..."
"Tango?"
"No, I hate that phrase. Ummm. Mmm. Fuck it, what are you doing here?"
"Well, we had a deal."
Abra really had it together. Not just the stilettos, she's just a really well put together woman. Mostly. She's a few years older than me, and regularly pulls in six figures at these crazy office jobs I couldn't even deliver shit to. Actually, she's had a lot of work where she could pull in seven but she never keeps a job that long. Most of 'em are pending litigation.
Her name is Abra, but none of us call her that. As long as I've known her, everyone who really knew her called her Raccoon. She came over because she thinks I'm a scumbag, and because she gets a kick out of me because, well, I guess for the same reasons she thinks that I'm a scumbag.
"Yeah, I'm not sure if I can deal. Could you pass me that beer?"
"Not if you have any fresh ones I can give you instead."
"Don't be all bourgie, I just opened that a couple hours ago to put me to sleep."
She picked up the can, smelled it and made a face. She was wearing a purple blazer, with purple sunglasses and a purple skirt. I hate the color purple but it wasn't straight on. It was one of those delicate royal purples that have names in crayon boxes and housepaint and eye makeup but nothing I can remember. Her shoes are the same color as her eyes, which are hidden. Ice blue. Iridescent.
When she took off her shades, I could see the rings around her eyes, a light grey-violet.
"Look, if you can drink this shit beer in that shit chair all afternoon and shock some fat bitch you're fucking with a taser, you can ball up your fist and hit me in the face."
"I've never hit a girl before."
"So? I've been like this as long as you've known me. Before even. You know I'm not gonna care, I won't even tell people it was you. I just need them the right color."
It was true. Hence the nickname. Legend is, she took to it with an abusive boyfriend in high school. He hit her and then broke down when he saw what he'd done. He cried and cursed himself and promised to make good in her eyes. She had him and she wouldn't let him forget it. Every couple weeks she'd find a way to blacken her eyes again, and he thought he'd done permanent damage. It tortured him. By the time he found out it was months later and he hit her again. He broke down all over again and she dumped him. He had his parents send him away after that, to some sort of private school or monastary or something.
"Look, Raccoon...shouldn't you let them heal a bit more?"
"I know what I'm doing."
"Fine, lemme get in the right mindset. Just hang out for a minute."
She sat on the couch next to me, and unbuttoned her jacket. Underneath was a tanktop and a pearl necklace. Her arms were slim and freckled. She had tattoos of stars across her shoulders. They were hot pink and jagged but formed actual constellations. The only one that was visible was the hunter. She pushed her glasses up onto her forehead and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
"So. Are you sure you want me to do this?"
"Why wouldn't I?" She asked as if I was an idiot for even thinking such a question.
"Because it's me. Punching you. In the face."
"Naw. It's cool."
If you haven't guessed, this is why she can't keep a job. Her credentials are stellar. When she goes to interviews she tones down the color coordination, but still uses subtle compliments to her bruises. The first thing she does, after one of those firm two-pump handshakes you're always hearing about, is apologize for her eyes. It was a skiing accident. She was wearing goggles and she hit a tree on an unfamiliar course. She tripped, fell flat on her face.
It always works. She's a beautiful woman with stellar credentials who takes time to go skiing when she's looking for a job, and even with two black eyes comes in all professional and ready to take on the world. [I]Who cares if she's a little clutzy on the slopes. It's snow! It's ice! Har har har. We'd better scoop her up before her eyes heal and she starts asking for more money. Har har.[/I]
That's the way she says it, but there's something else, something she only half realizes, which is how fucking intimidating she is with two black eyes and her shit together. She has never been sexually harassed at work. Not once. The way she looks, that's gotta be statistically impossible. She's sad about it sometimes. I don't think she realizes how castrating she is, abused and confident at the same time.
After six weeks or so, they'll start dropping hints. [I]How are things? You know, at home? We have an excellent counselor here, just so you know.[/I] When they ask if she needs help, she politely declines. When they ask if she's being abused, she'll tell them no. This throws them for a loop. You know that story "The Tell-tale Heart"? It's like that. They can't bear to look at her eyes any longer. To look at them is to suffer the pain she most certainly has had to suffer herself. They don't even realize that what they're looking at is not new and terrible but the compounded grief of a decade of self abuse.
It takes them a few more weeks, maybe even months before they're certain that her ski accident, as she described it to them, would have healed a few times over, and it's infuriating. She gets called into some boss' office. Not her boss, but a side boss, who is more level headed. He, and it's always a he, fires her. She has a counteroffer. To fire a girl for being punched is surely some kind of chauvinist discrimination. No one's sure what kind of discrimination, or even if there's a law against it but all agree that it doesn't look good. Three times out of four, they settle out of court. She asks for just enough money to make them feel lucky to be rid of her.
She goes on a trip.
"So how are we gonna do this?"
"I don't know, I don't like to lie down because I feel it more in my cheeks and skull. I can stand or be on my knees."
"Okay, get on your knees."
"I'd actually rather not in your apartment, I'm afraid I'll stick my knee in a pizza or something."
"Fine then stand."
I hop from one foot to another like a boxer swinging at the air.
"Be careful. I don't want a broken nose."
"Shit. I hadn't thought about that."
I drop my shoulders. I'm shaking. The last guy who did the hitting got the shit kicked out of him. He was her boyfriend for a couple months and Raccoon convinced him that it was better his fist than someone else's. The next guy she started seeing after they broke up asked her how she got her eyes blacked, and Raccoon told him that her ex-boyfriend did it, without any caveats or anything. She's can be a real bitch like that when she doesn't like you. She knew damn well that he was gonna get all knight-in-shining-armor on her. Hell, every guy she fucks is looking to save her. I'm gonna ask her outright.
"Hey Ratch? Abra?"
"Yeah?"
"Could you promise that you won't tell anybody I hit you if they're likely to hit me back?"
"Sure." This, she also found endlessly funny.
"Okay, I think I'm ready. Do you think you can insult me?"
"Yeah, sure. You're a pig."
"And?"
"And you're a fuckin pig. You're one of the smartest people you know and you know it, but you're too impotent to fucking do anything about it. You just rack up bills in this slum building with your door unlocked, hoping somebody with initiative will come in and blow you or blow your fucking head off or something. You're lazy, you're balding, and you have an odo-"
I hit her. Once with my right and twice with my left, because I didn't think I did it hard enough the first time and also, a little, because I really wanted to. She dropped to the floor and held her knees in her arms. Even as tears streamed down her pink cheeks, she swore, "I'm alright. I swear. This just happens."
I collapsed in my chair and finished off the rest of my beer. I went to the fridge and pulled out a couple more. I chugged one and put the other on her right eye. She slapped it out of my hands and it rolled under the couch.
"You idiot, it's supposed to swell. Don't, just don't touch me for a minute alright? Thank you."
I fell back into the recliner, pulled back the lever and looked at the ceiling.
She had heels on. They crunched through styrofoam containers, pizza crusts, and a half-completed jigsaw puzzle lying on the floor. These are the type of obstacles that are supposed to keep a girl in heels from ever entering my apartmert. When I opened my eyes I had a pair of tits on my head, arms draped over my shoulders, and the business end of a stun gun pointed at my chest.
"Wake up, Baby. You're gonna miss the sun."
"What other options do I have?" This was meant to be a flirt but it came out lazy.
"775,000 volts."
"What's that in amperes?" It took a second for her to figure out if amperes was a real term the way I used it, and another for her to fumble with the math. I pulled the gun loose from the strap around her arm, spun the chair around, pointed and clicked. She threw her hands in front of her face and braced herself for pain. When it didn't come, she was pissed.
"What the fuck? Lousy piece of shit doesn't even work!"
"Yeah it does. Probly, at least. See that strap around your arm? It's attatched to a disable pin. It turns off if it gets disconnected, so that rapists can't just yank it and use it on you."
"That's good, I was scared for a minute."
"Yeah, 700,000 sounds like a good shock."
"I could give two shits about the shock, I thought I was gonna pee myself."
"That only really happens when you're holding it in already."
"How do you know?"
"I used to buy em at the Swap Shop and take em apart, to see if I could build my own."
"Why?"
"Iunno. Sell em. Make em better. It's too much work for too little result. I'd rather make a potato gun any day of the week. Just bust through car windows and shit without burning off your eyebrows."
"I thought you thought it was just a toy."
"Sometimes they are."
"Why are you smiling?"
"There was this girl I was seeing who was always up for some weird shit, and I had just bought this keychain tazer, like half the wattage of that thing you got. She was a tough girl, remember Aimee?"
"Yeah, that big girl."
"Yeah, she was a lot like Aimee, but she had pink hair and she was way underaged."
"Yeah?"
"Well I convinced her to let me use the taser on her while we were fucking to see if I'd get shocked."
"No... Really? What happened?"
"We made a circuit."
"No."
"Yeah, she got shocked, I got shocked and it just kept running through us. My fingerprints are probably scorched into her wall still."
"What happened them?"
"I got hooked. She let me do it like two more times and she even got to use it on me but then out of nowhere she called me a psychopath and broke up with me at Denny's."
"So you liked it?"
"Yeah, it was like I had a lightning bug in my stomach or...like I swallowed Zeus. She'd lose all control for a few minutes and her body would do all this crazy involuntary shit. It would take up nearly all my mental energy to keep myself focused and in control. It was awesome. It would just take everything out of me, I'd be satisfied for weeks."
"You are a psycho."
"It takes two to..."
"Tango?"
"No, I hate that phrase. Ummm. Mmm. Fuck it, what are you doing here?"
"Well, we had a deal."
Abra really had it together. Not just the stilettos, she's just a really well put together woman. Mostly. She's a few years older than me, and regularly pulls in six figures at these crazy office jobs I couldn't even deliver shit to. Actually, she's had a lot of work where she could pull in seven but she never keeps a job that long. Most of 'em are pending litigation.
Her name is Abra, but none of us call her that. As long as I've known her, everyone who really knew her called her Raccoon. She came over because she thinks I'm a scumbag, and because she gets a kick out of me because, well, I guess for the same reasons she thinks that I'm a scumbag.
"Yeah, I'm not sure if I can deal. Could you pass me that beer?"
"Not if you have any fresh ones I can give you instead."
"Don't be all bourgie, I just opened that a couple hours ago to put me to sleep."
She picked up the can, smelled it and made a face. She was wearing a purple blazer, with purple sunglasses and a purple skirt. I hate the color purple but it wasn't straight on. It was one of those delicate royal purples that have names in crayon boxes and housepaint and eye makeup but nothing I can remember. Her shoes are the same color as her eyes, which are hidden. Ice blue. Iridescent.
When she took off her shades, I could see the rings around her eyes, a light grey-violet.
"Look, if you can drink this shit beer in that shit chair all afternoon and shock some fat bitch you're fucking with a taser, you can ball up your fist and hit me in the face."
"I've never hit a girl before."
"So? I've been like this as long as you've known me. Before even. You know I'm not gonna care, I won't even tell people it was you. I just need them the right color."
It was true. Hence the nickname. Legend is, she took to it with an abusive boyfriend in high school. He hit her and then broke down when he saw what he'd done. He cried and cursed himself and promised to make good in her eyes. She had him and she wouldn't let him forget it. Every couple weeks she'd find a way to blacken her eyes again, and he thought he'd done permanent damage. It tortured him. By the time he found out it was months later and he hit her again. He broke down all over again and she dumped him. He had his parents send him away after that, to some sort of private school or monastary or something.
"Look, Raccoon...shouldn't you let them heal a bit more?"
"I know what I'm doing."
"Fine, lemme get in the right mindset. Just hang out for a minute."
She sat on the couch next to me, and unbuttoned her jacket. Underneath was a tanktop and a pearl necklace. Her arms were slim and freckled. She had tattoos of stars across her shoulders. They were hot pink and jagged but formed actual constellations. The only one that was visible was the hunter. She pushed her glasses up onto her forehead and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
"So. Are you sure you want me to do this?"
"Why wouldn't I?" She asked as if I was an idiot for even thinking such a question.
"Because it's me. Punching you. In the face."
"Naw. It's cool."
If you haven't guessed, this is why she can't keep a job. Her credentials are stellar. When she goes to interviews she tones down the color coordination, but still uses subtle compliments to her bruises. The first thing she does, after one of those firm two-pump handshakes you're always hearing about, is apologize for her eyes. It was a skiing accident. She was wearing goggles and she hit a tree on an unfamiliar course. She tripped, fell flat on her face.
It always works. She's a beautiful woman with stellar credentials who takes time to go skiing when she's looking for a job, and even with two black eyes comes in all professional and ready to take on the world. [I]Who cares if she's a little clutzy on the slopes. It's snow! It's ice! Har har har. We'd better scoop her up before her eyes heal and she starts asking for more money. Har har.[/I]
That's the way she says it, but there's something else, something she only half realizes, which is how fucking intimidating she is with two black eyes and her shit together. She has never been sexually harassed at work. Not once. The way she looks, that's gotta be statistically impossible. She's sad about it sometimes. I don't think she realizes how castrating she is, abused and confident at the same time.
After six weeks or so, they'll start dropping hints. [I]How are things? You know, at home? We have an excellent counselor here, just so you know.[/I] When they ask if she needs help, she politely declines. When they ask if she's being abused, she'll tell them no. This throws them for a loop. You know that story "The Tell-tale Heart"? It's like that. They can't bear to look at her eyes any longer. To look at them is to suffer the pain she most certainly has had to suffer herself. They don't even realize that what they're looking at is not new and terrible but the compounded grief of a decade of self abuse.
It takes them a few more weeks, maybe even months before they're certain that her ski accident, as she described it to them, would have healed a few times over, and it's infuriating. She gets called into some boss' office. Not her boss, but a side boss, who is more level headed. He, and it's always a he, fires her. She has a counteroffer. To fire a girl for being punched is surely some kind of chauvinist discrimination. No one's sure what kind of discrimination, or even if there's a law against it but all agree that it doesn't look good. Three times out of four, they settle out of court. She asks for just enough money to make them feel lucky to be rid of her.
She goes on a trip.
"So how are we gonna do this?"
"I don't know, I don't like to lie down because I feel it more in my cheeks and skull. I can stand or be on my knees."
"Okay, get on your knees."
"I'd actually rather not in your apartment, I'm afraid I'll stick my knee in a pizza or something."
"Fine then stand."
I hop from one foot to another like a boxer swinging at the air.
"Be careful. I don't want a broken nose."
"Shit. I hadn't thought about that."
I drop my shoulders. I'm shaking. The last guy who did the hitting got the shit kicked out of him. He was her boyfriend for a couple months and Raccoon convinced him that it was better his fist than someone else's. The next guy she started seeing after they broke up asked her how she got her eyes blacked, and Raccoon told him that her ex-boyfriend did it, without any caveats or anything. She's can be a real bitch like that when she doesn't like you. She knew damn well that he was gonna get all knight-in-shining-armor on her. Hell, every guy she fucks is looking to save her. I'm gonna ask her outright.
"Hey Ratch? Abra?"
"Yeah?"
"Could you promise that you won't tell anybody I hit you if they're likely to hit me back?"
"Sure." This, she also found endlessly funny.
"Okay, I think I'm ready. Do you think you can insult me?"
"Yeah, sure. You're a pig."
"And?"
"And you're a fuckin pig. You're one of the smartest people you know and you know it, but you're too impotent to fucking do anything about it. You just rack up bills in this slum building with your door unlocked, hoping somebody with initiative will come in and blow you or blow your fucking head off or something. You're lazy, you're balding, and you have an odo-"
I hit her. Once with my right and twice with my left, because I didn't think I did it hard enough the first time and also, a little, because I really wanted to. She dropped to the floor and held her knees in her arms. Even as tears streamed down her pink cheeks, she swore, "I'm alright. I swear. This just happens."
I collapsed in my chair and finished off the rest of my beer. I went to the fridge and pulled out a couple more. I chugged one and put the other on her right eye. She slapped it out of my hands and it rolled under the couch.
"You idiot, it's supposed to swell. Don't, just don't touch me for a minute alright? Thank you."
I fell back into the recliner, pulled back the lever and looked at the ceiling.
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