Paula Bomer - Inside Madeleine

“Stop! You’re hurting him!” Lise wailed.

“Dude,” Dylan said. “Not so rough.”

“Fuck you, you fucking eunuch!” I screamed at Dylan. “You’re just standing there, waiting for the staff to do everything!”

I dropped the carrier and looked about. Lise was holding Susie with the carrier in front of her and she was trying, and failing, to get the protesting cat in it.

“Come on, Susie, sweetie, that’s a good kitty,” she cooed.

I grabbed the cat like it was a sack of garbage and slammed it into the carrier, locking it.

“Let’s GO!” I screamed.

Dylan was holding Dave, and Lise held Susie. We opened the door and there was smoke everywhere. Collectively, we didn’t try the elevator. There were two sets of stairs and we went to the nearest one and opened the door. The smoke was white and thick and curled and moved. We ran down a flight, blinking, choking. Then we ran down another flight but the smoke was thicker and hurt our eyes, our lungs.

“Let’s try the other stairwell,” Dylan screamed over the fire alarm.

We exited on the nineteenth floor. The floor wasn’t as bad as the stairwell and the relief of it almost calmed us for one sweet moment. We ran to the other stairwell. This one was smokey, but not nearly as bad, not nearly. And so down we went, all the way to the ground floor and out and down the street, two blocks, until we were sitting on a bench in a tiny New York City Park, dusk just falling around us.

Silence. Relief. And for me? Shame, shame, shame. The fresh, pointed stab of living in the moment that shame can bring. Everything else fades away, no more boredom, no more doubt, no more worrying about the future, the past, and Ron, just a drenching in self pity and the now . In that moment, everything was about me and my wrongness. It’s a sort of baptism, when the floodgates of regret let loose.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was the right thing to say. For the first time, I noticed streaks of blood on my forearms; swollen and burning: cat scratches. The pain was a tonic for all my shame.

Lise sniffled and hugged her cat carrier. Dylan stared off into space. The stench of cat urine was comforting and mortal.

“I was scared,” I said. And it was then that I realized she had finally seen me, me, me , her doormat friend. Her tacky friend. The one who walked too close to her, who didn’t know what Crossroads or Sonic Youth was. I had finally made an impression on her. An ugly one, but an impression, nonetheless.

This was before I knew that we all live on this planet, driving in the cars of our own little minds, our own self-contained worlds. Yes, this was before I knew that, when I thought I mattered, when I thought that people saw me, deep into me, saw all my love and excitement at being alive, saw the very glistening, running-overness of my aliveness. But we only matter when we do something awful. Then, someone sees us and only then.

“Wow,” said Dylan. “That was intense.”

We were safe. Suddenly the sky darkened, like it does sometimes, and dusk was over. The lights in the tall buildings everywhere were pinpricks, little holes in the world, the holes of a safety net all around us. A time in my life was over and it had ended pretty badly. And yet, what a beautiful thing, to be young, to not yet even have discovered my own body (which hours under a bathtub spout eventually changed), to be at the mercy of others, to have so much ahead of myself, and to so easily disappoint another person.

HE WAS THE ONE TO GIVE HER HEAD WHEN SHE WAS ON THE RAG. He liked it, the saltiness, the nastiness of it. He grabbed her legs so hard it left bruises, because she claimed she didn’t want him to go down on her when she was bleeding. Yeah, right. Her pussy was so clean anyway, even when she bled. The shock of it. He tongued her asshole, too. Fresh as a daisy, this girl. Broad daylight, on the lumpy futon on the floor of his room in an apartment in Allston, Mass. Totally naked, their skin pale and visibly human — veins, pimples — lit by the sun streaming in, the bright, midday sunlight. Some torn sheets hanging in the windows, not providing much protection from the fierce light. As they move, dust rises in the streams of light, surrounding their glowing bodies. It was noon, maybe 2 P.M. They’d been having sex all morning. Hungover sex, “hangover helper,” he called it. She propped her head up on a pillow so she could watch his face in her cunt, the top of his forehead, his receding hairline, the dark, almost black strands of hair, his long, long hair, falling past his shoulders. Rock drummer hair. He’d look up at her. Pull his mouth away from her and she could see it, his mouth, dark where her blood streaked him. “I fucking love your pussy,” he says quietly, a finger inside of her.

They didn’t have much in common — he didn’t read and she wasn’t from the Boston area — but he changed her life the day he ate her out for an hour straight, moving the vibrator around inside of her, outside of her, and finally sticking a finger up her ass until she came. For the first time. A huge, huge blood curdling, screaming, flying across the room orgasm, that ended with her smacking her head against the wall. Did he levitate her? How’d she get so far off the ground, so high in the air? After that, he owned her. Not that he necessarily wanted to, but he did, and so that was that. And then she was terminally in his bedroom, naked, begging for it. Please, Curt, please. Don’t leave me. Don’t don’t . Taking her clothes off, wanting him so badly, falling to her knees. Her hands gently petting his head, God Curt, oh, oh , moving his head ever so slightly, as he eats her out for the ten millionth time.

Actually, it wasn’t always that way. At first he had to coax her. Come on, let me kiss you down there. She was barely nineteen and she’d blush. Oh don’t do that. That’s gross. Oh no it’s not. And she’d let him do it and she’d get so excited and yell stop, stop and pull him up and into her. Which was fine. He’d fuck her and he liked doing that. She was ten years younger than him and skinny and — ten years younger than him. Pale nipples on her pointy little tits and a long perfect stomach with the tiniest little bulge resting in her narrow hips. Her pink, little girl cunt, with youth fluffing it up and dripping out of it. You’re made for sex. You’re built for this. Your pussy should be in magazines. He’d roll onto his back and sit her on top of him and lean her back, with her knees stretched as far apart as they could go, and instinctively (or maybe someone had told her, but he doubted it, because every other guy she’d fucked before him was some young, dumb college jock who’d fuck her doggy style with the lights off), gently, saying, yeah, yeah, with her left forefinger and middle finger, she’d pull herself wide open for him. Wide open in the middle of the day. He liked it. Liked seeing all that.

Later, they’d go shoot pool down the street. Or he’d be playing and the bass player would pick them up and drive them to the club. She’d watch him play drums. Standing directly in front of the stage with her friend Katie. The two in nearly matching Betsey Johnson skintight minidresses. Her mouth slightly open, shiny pale lip gloss, moving awkwardly to the music. She was a horrible dancer. And afterwards, she would come right up to him. Stand next to him, step on his foot. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly, her brow anxiously furrowed. He just wanted to talk to his friends. And sometimes he had schmoozing to do — label people, a guitar player who may want to use him. His mother might be there. No matter, there’d Sonia be, right next to him. Her breath stinking of beer and cigarettes. She’d drink four beers during his set and smoke half a pack. Her arms folded nervously over her tiny chest. Her hair limp against her moonish face. Her mascara smeared. Okay, okay sometimes he’d be talking to a cute girl. No matter, Sonia wouldn’t freak out. Her face stuck in this weird nervous position. He noticed then her double chin, from the way she held her head smooshed back into her neck. She wasn’t fat, she was skinny, but she’d tense up and her chin would fold into itself. It was ugly. Her insecurity made her ugly. He hated her then.