Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

We’ve never been to a hotel room with anyone. The guy in the wheelchair is already completely drunk, I guess he can’t hold his liquor though I’m not sure if it has something to do with his legs or whether it’s just because he’s so skinny. Baby-seat-guy is also pretty well oiled, and obviously we are too. The lift opens and we stagger down the hall to the last room.

Sophia Saturna, whispers Jameelah, I think this time we have to sleep with them.

Could be, I say.

Maybe it’s not all that bad, maybe it’s even better this way, I think, at least we’ll have it behind us, this whole stupid first time thing. And who knows, maybe today is the perfect day first and foremost because if there’s going to be blood it would fit the day to a tee, it would almost be poetic. Noura always says you should live your life so it reads like a poem. She never said it had to be a happy poem, just a poem.

Baby-seat-guy unlocks the door, puts his black bag down next to the desk facing the window and lowers the shades. Under the desk is a little refrigerator that the guy in the wheelchair opens.

Can you help me onto the bed, he says, his lap full of mini-bar schnapps bottles that tinkle onto the white sheets like marbles when we drop him onto one of the two beds. He pulls me to him and fumbles around with my breasts then lifts my t-shirt over my head and the sheets rustle, they’re stiff from being cleaned so often. But my bra, the one with the little bow that Jameelah gave me for my birthday, he can’t unhook.

Baby-seat-guy turns on the TV and ARD is showing a Terra X nature documentary. He zaps from one channel to the next, god dammit isn’t there a music channel, he says, but then he finds music videos on VIVA.

Now you’re going to dance real nice for us, says baby-seat-guy, I know you two love to dance, he laughs taking off his trousers and opening a beer.

Right, take your clothes off, says the guy in the wheelchair grinning like an idiot from the bed.

Jameelah smiles and takes off her top and starts shaking her hips to the rhythm of the music. I’ve never done a striptease before but like Rainer always says there’s a first time for everything so I strip, meaning I dance and while I’m dancing I undo my bra and toss it onto the bed and then at some point I take off my underwear and do the same thing, toss them on the bed. I just do it the way I imagine it’s supposed to be done. My hands, arms, knees, everything is in motion and my naked feet twist around on the carpeting until they start to get warm from the friction.

Keep cool, whispers Jameelah putting a hand on my shoulder, just keep dancing.

When I was younger, before Jessi arrived, I used to dance to Mama’s favourite music in the living room all the time. Sometimes I was allowed to put on Mama’s red leather skirt and she did up my hair with hairspray and put makeup on me and we got in the car and drove around to her friends’ places like a pair of vacuum cleaner salesmen and I sang ‘99 Red Balloons’ in front of them. She’s going to be a singer they said to Mama and laughed until they cried, I’m telling you she’s going to be on TV one day, but I just wanted to sing, I didn’t want to go on TV because Tarik told me the singers on TV don’t even sing they just move their mouths to the music and moving your mouth to your own music is shit.

When I think about it, sad poems are way better than happy poems anyway. And who knows, maybe it’s just the first verse of my life that’s not so happy, I mean nobody said it was impossible, I’m sure there are poems that start out not so happy but are happy by the end. Anything is possible and why should it be that nobody on earth ever hit on the idea, who knows maybe my life will even turn out to be a proper fairytale and fairytales always begin disastrously and end up happy.

Look, says the guy in the wheelchair pointing at me, she’s crying.

Everything okay, asks Jameelah looking at me with shock.

Yeah I say quietly, it’s just the song, it makes me sad.

Baby-seat-guy knocks back another miniature schnapps bottle.

What are you crying for, he says.

I’m not crying, I say, I have something in my eye.

Baby-seat-guy looks at me searchingly.

With you women you never know if you’re really crying or just acting.

Ah let her cry, says the guy in the wheelchair.

No, you’re going to go wash your face, says baby-seat-guy switching the channel back to the nature show, Terra X .

When I come out of the bathroom I see Jameelah lying in bed with baby-seat-guy. The guy in the wheelchair is waiting for me, his cowboy hat is sitting on the nightstand and he’s taken off his trousers and t-shirt. With his pale skin and long blond hair he looks like an albino slug. As I crawl toward him in bed I wonder if he can even get a hard-on. He presses me down onto the bed and starts to lick me all over and it leaves me cold. When he lets me go for a second I reach into Jameelah’s rucksack which is between the beds and search for a condom. I find a red one and put it in my mouth with the tip facing in. Wheelchair guy is ready, I can see his thing didn’t catch any friendly fire so I put the condom on it and he moans. Terra X is still on in the background, they’re talking about glaciers and perpetual ice. Polar bears don’t bury themselves in winter they lay down on icebergs and wait for the snow drifts to cover them and once they are totally covered they give birth to their offspring, says the man on TV.

It’s actually good that the guy in the wheelchair doesn’t have any legs because at least that way he can’t get on top of me, in fact he can barely move around at all, which is good. I close my eyes and imagine someone nice is sitting next to me on the edge of the bed and says go ahead you know how it works it’s not so bad and you know it’s just practice no different from frogs or corpses, listen that’s not a real person it’s just practice, I think to myself, this is all just a form of practice. I do it slowly so it doesn’t hurt but somehow it doesn’t hurt at all, even if I go faster it still doesn’t hurt, it just feels like something is wedged in there but maybe it’s because I’m drunk. I move back and forth and the guy thrusts as best he can using his upper body and the overall effect is kind of like when Mama used to let me ride that mechanical horse at Kaufland, the one you can ride for fifty cents a minute, though I have no idea whether that’s what it feels like to ride a real horse because I’ve never ridden a real horse and maybe I’m making this association only because people always talk about riding when they talk about fucking, Rainer does anyway, and Rainer is like everybody.

I take the cowboy hat from the nightstand and put it on. Wheelchair guy has his eyes closed, he moans, and in the background Terra X . They’re still talking about the North Pole and it occurs to me that I used to watch Terra X with Papa sometimes, I remember one episode about the rainforest where aboriginal boys about the same age as me and Jameelah had to wait in line. They had their hands in front of their balls like in a soccer game when there’s a free kick, except that they were all naked and instead of standing in front of a goal they were outside a little tent. Crying boys kept emerging from the tent with blood on their cocks.

Wheelchair guy moans again.

It wasn’t about soccer, it was about becoming an adult, at least that’s what the man on TV said. You could see the boys were scared shitless but the man on TV said boys waited their entire lives for this day because afterwards they’d finally be accepted as adults and as a result they weren’t scared, they were excited and proud. I’m not scared, excited or proud but when I close my eyes I see a purple spiral staircase. I’ll have to ask Jameelah what that means later, I think, she’s good at interpreting dreams. Wheelchair guy moans some more but then thankfully he stops and lets his head fall to the pillow as if he’s dead. I slowly disconnect myself. My thighs hurt a little like after gym. For a little while I lay there next to the guy and then he starts to snore quietly which makes me think of Nico, I wonder what he’s doing right now, probably working off the books somewhere, painting at a hotel or whatever. That’s what he usually does on Sunday, work off the books, because he can’t live on the money he makes from his apprenticeship.