Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“Do you want to dance?”

“My feet are killing me,” she responds. “This douche-bag Mexi-goth wouldn't leave me alone, and he kept crushing my feet with these, like, Doc Martin boots. Who wears fucking Doc Martins out to a club?” I shrug. “To be honest, I was hoping for someone to just talk with.” I watch the people on the dance floor rubbing against each other with increasing carnality, sweat beginning to appear on the bodies that suffocate in air redolent with stale breath, booze, sex, and excessive recirculation. “I thought I knew more of Ilkay's friends,” she eventually says. “Speaking of which, where are all of your friends?”

“Out of town. The only two I've really gotten to know tonight are over there.” I point out Angelica and Teddy, a tangled mess of left feet, stiff joints, and whale-belly skin. There's a substantial ring around them. The black guys are trying their best not to laugh. The Puerto Ricans are mesmerized. “They seem nice.”

“The lush and yuppie?”

“Well, if you want to be cynical about it, yes, the lush and the yuppie.”

She laughs. She laughs a lot.

We talk for a while. Her hands keep finding their way to my shoulder or knee. My eyes keep falling down her dress. She eventually takes a sip from an empty bottle, which prompts the following: “Do you want to do a shot?”

“Sure,” I beam. “Howzabout a butt-fucking cowboy?”

“Won't Ilkay be jealous?”

Being that it's three in the morning, the place has cleared out somewhat. We are the passing shower's concluding drops. Table service has been discontinued, so most of the people for whom dancing is not a joy have either left or gone up to the bar. This is not to say that the area surrounding the bar is packed; most of the patrons are still dancing, thereby leaving both of the bartenders with relatively little to do for first time of the night. The faithful are nursing their drinks by this time; even the contingency of terminally drunk habitués still trying to abandon the last semblance of sobriety have slowed their pace.

Brandy presents the shooters with an almost demonic grin before I can even place an order. There are three of them. “L'chayim,” she toasts. I am familiar with the taste of the drink by now, so I only make a grimace as I take down her concoction. Vinati's face turns a shade of sour that portends trouble. Brandy looks to her own drained glass with something like a wince. She turns to me: “Is it better on the rocks?”

“I have to run to the restroom,” Vinati says as she begins for the undulating crowd, a sea that even Moses would have had difficulty parting. Suffice to say, she doesn't make it to the other side.

“Your girlfriend can't hold her shit,” Brandy proclaims proudly.

“Oh, she's not my girlfriend.”

“Well, in that case, the girl you were going to bone tonight can't hold her shit.”

“I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the cards.” A crowd of women encompasses Vinati. They whisk her off.

“Well, looks like the deck's being put away,” she says as her eyes point towards the exit sign that hangs above a parting velvet curtain. “You should go help her out. It'll prove your good intentions.”

“I don't want to look like I'm trying to take advantage of her.”

“What?” she yells above the music.

“I said I don't want to look like a sexual predator.”

“You?” incredulously.

“Yes, me.”

“No offense dude, but I've seen more than enough sexual predators in my time here; I can tell you're a good guy.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, I just want to tell you that opportunity is walking out the door right now. Sure, you're not going to score tonight….” She scratches her chin absentmindedly. “Do people still say that word? 'Score.' It sounds forced.”

“It's a bit archaic, in terms of slang.”

“Whatever. The point is if you don't stick your neck out, you're never going to get anywhere.”

“Yeah, but I'll be sure to keep my head.”

Caesura

“You have a mind of elf,” she says after taking down a large sip of dark beer.

“What?”

“I said, you remind me of myself.”

“How so?”

“You won't allow yourself to be vulnerable.”

“That's a pretty big assumption to make about someone you barely even know.”

She explains what she means, but the music pilfers her vowels and softer consonants. I ask her to repeat herself. “Look, there's no need to get all defensive about it,” she yells. “For some people it's easier to be alone than to be seriously involved with another person. It's certainly a lot easier than being rejected. You know, a dock is a chain.”

“What?”

“Like that Simon and Garfunkle song? The rock one.”

“Yeah. Rock. Island. Got it.”

Her attention then shifts. “What's up?” she asks as two impatient patrons grumble next to me.

“Yo', some bitch just puked on my shit,” a strong Jersey accent responds.

The following week was spent becoming better acquainted with the work of Coprolalia, rediscovering loneliness, and learning that an individual's tolerance for alcohol skyrockets over the course of a nine-day bender. Luckily, I have had the entire apartment to myself for almost three weeks now, as my roommate has been staying at his parents' place in Connecticut. He did not specify when he was to return, nor did he bother to sublet his room. Consequently, I never had to worry about waking anyone on my arrival home, though I did disrupt the sleep of one of the bodega cashiers down the block one morning around three or four when I purchased a twenty-two of some brand of malt liquor I'd never heard of. It was an odd color — like fluorescent apricot puree — that provoked a weird sense of disgust and curiosity, a sentiment that should be familiar to anyone who has flared their nostrils after hearing the ripping croak of a fart. There was a sense of novelty in buying it; drinking it, however, was an act of incorrigibility…or alcoholism, depending on your mood.

I typically awoke each morning before ten, though I never managed to leave my bed or wherever else I ended up sleeping before eleven. While awake, I had a hard time concentrating on anything besides sex, which must be typical if you've managed to have gone…let's see…almost four months without it. While sojourning at the edge of consciousness there was a reoccurring sensation of panic brought on by the belief that I had forgotten something: to take a test, to pick up roses for Connie, to pay for dinner, to call my parents, to wear pants for the entirety of the previous day.

During, and particularly at the end of, each semester of college, I had had the reoccurring dream that I was reading. The words were usually lifted from one of the passages I had finished directly before falling asleep. At times the tentacles of the television would provide some influence, but this was rare. So I would be reading. I would be going along, reading whatever was in front of me, and then I would suddenly notice that I couldn't understand what was printed on the page: the words themselves were known (I could read them, ruminate about them, put them into context), but the sentences of which they were part claimed no allegiance to even a rudimentary syntax. It seemed to be the semantics of madness.

I would refuse to accept that the book was poorly written; rather, it was my inability to understand what was being said. I would step back, embrace denial (no, embrace a lie because no one can embrace denial, as denial is the whitewashing of a truth that is too painful to accept, and by admitting that the white is there, well, that's how one overcomes denial — so it was just denial). Perhaps the text was written in code. Perhaps I was too dim to understand it. Maybe the words were simply homonyms that I had never come across. Was I becoming Déjérine's Monsieur C? Mybae it was one of tshoe tkrcis lkie the one wtih the out of oderr ltetres taht smoe ppoele can raed so lnog as the frsit and lsat lttrees are the smae. Carzy, huh?