Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

I rewind the tape of us together, happy, and watch it again. There are hundreds of artifacts to unpack, recall: every inch, every move, every pose, every twitch. I zoom in on her lips, that peach fuzz, things she said. Now a close-up on her breathing, her head on my pillow: my eyes are open in the darkness, watching her.

My first court appearance occurs somewhere in an alternate universe where people bother with such things.

I sit on a wooden bench. A middle-aged woman with blond hair sits to the left of the judge’s bench, transcribing. She looks hefty, German; the hair is sculpted into an old-fashioned wave. Something from the forties, something that Hitler would probably find attractive. I imagine she’s wearing a garter belt over a massive pair of panties. See-through hose. Why can’t you be present for once , says Gloria’s voice in my head. I don’t need to be present, Gloria , I say back in my head.

My lawyer is a fat, sweaty guy named Thomas. He is supposed to be good. He was recommended by my entertainment lawyer. He could’ve recommended a rubber chicken and I’d have taken him up on it. Thomas has won many cases. You won’t win mine , I think when he tells me about the many cases he’s won.

As we leave the courtroom, I try to catch Hitler’s lover’s eye, but she’s absorbed in her little machine and doesn’t look up. I have thirty-five days before the next court date.

MY ZEGNA SHOES. MY NEW CHARCOAL VARVATOS SUIT. MY TIE.

No.

No tie.

A McQ T-shirt with an X-ray of a skull on it. Not my style, but I feel murderous. And this is as close as I can get to clubwear. I’m going to a place where all the women try to be Nines – they all have shiny hair and tanned, bouncy breasts. Inside, it will be neon blue or red-and-black, slick. There will be bar stools like stems, and perfect asses sitting on top like flowers. There will be long fingers holding olives on a pick. A curl of yellow garnish swimming in vodka. And fast, brutal club music like a speeding train. Like a train crash.

I open the safe behind my Keep Calm and Carry On poster. I pull out a small sandwich bag. I got it when I started dating Gloria. For guests.

No guests now. I don’t care for drugs. But it’s that kind of night. I’m bored. I want to die. I don’t want to die. I’m too bored to die. I want to go out to a bouncy place with bouncy breasts. I pour a tiny amount of the powder onto the surface of my Pedrera coffee table. I wipe the straw with Kleenex, look inside it to make sure it’s not clogged. It’s not. I break the powder and chop. I’m reminded of cooking.

I separate the powder into five lines. I snort. The bleach hits the back of my throat almost instantly.

I pace around, speeding and rewinding through my Em movie.

I snort another line. Pace. Snort. Repeat. Repeat.

I call a taxi. I ask the driver to stop at the first club with a big lineup and a velvet rope. We find one. I get out. I shake hands with the bouncer. He unclicks the rope, twenty dollars richer.

I’m patted up and down by a big, young Indian woman, a Four, looking for drugs or perhaps just wanting to pat me down – it seems her touching goes on a bit too long and there’s longing in it, too.

Inside the place, there’s a smell. This is an older club. Ghost of cigarette smoke. But fresh shampoo, and the rotting sweetness of alcohol. Cologne mixed with body odours, vanilla-cherry-chocolate Chap Stick. I cut through the crowd, my cocaine body big, smug.

I lock eyes with one of the bartenders. She’s got tattooed arms, too much makeup. A heap of black curls above her face. Out of a corner of my eye, I see a blond across the bar smile and look down.

I ask the bartender to send the blond a drink. I ignore the bartender’s pissed-off clinking bracelets as she scoops the tip.

Later on that night, I fuck the bartender in her loft. She rents the place with her ex -boyfriend, she says. Ex. The ex-boyfriend is away on a tour with his band. She wants to play me their record after I let it slip about what it is that I do, help records be born, but I pull her onto the bed and flip her over onto her back and start biting the insides of her thighs gently, insistently, like the little fuck-critter that I am. She murmurs something about how the record is shit anyway.

In the morning, she makes me poached eggs. They are barely edible but I’m hungry and hungover, so I eat what’s on the plate.

She doesn’t touch her food. She sits in the window overlooking a brick wall. She lights a cigarette. She starts talking about her mother, who’s a bitch.

“I completely forgot,” I say, wiping my mouth. The cigarette smoke makes me nauseous. Or maybe it’s the eggs. Either way.

“What?” She looks at me, startled. Without makeup, she looks prettier, younger. I don’t tell her this.

I kiss her in the doorway. Her cigarette mouth. She texts me later: How did it go at the bank? I don’t text her back.

I go fuck the blond from the bar in her cute uptown townhouse she shares with her boyfriend. The boyfriend is away on a business trip. He had asked her to marry him. She said she needed some time to think about it. She is thinking about it. She says, “I guess this is my last hurrah,” to my dick.

“Hurrah,” I say, and she giggles.

Jenny, Kayla or Kelly, Michelle, Tamika, Julia or July, Kathy with a K and Cathy with a C , Alicia, Lakshmi, another Jen, Mimi, Some Redhead, a Chinese girl, etcetera. For three weeks, I go from Thursday to Sunday: Varvatos suits, McQ shirts, clubs, clear drinks, pink drinks, amber drinks. Ice cubes. Hot, smooth hands, soft tongues, spit, eyelids, goosebumps, fumbling with the keys, unleashed breasts, legs thrown over my shoulders. Hair spilled all over pillows all over town.

I’m a fucking machine, fucking. Trying to out-fuck what’s in my head. My head is full of her : her twisting body like a small white wave in the darkness. Her phantom laughter. It cuts through all the noise. It cuts through the yelping and squealing and moaning and whimpering and grunting and slurping. Her ha ha ha .

“What’s wrong?” This one has plump lips, big lips. Her former lovers probably describe them as cock-sucking lips. I can’t confirm. My dick refuses to cooperate. I don’t care for it to cooperate. I’m exhausted. The dick is exhausted, too full of cocaine. Her breasts try to jump out of a too-small bra. I’m sure she knows that the bra is too small. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She sits back against the wall of pillows. So many pillows propped at the head of her bed. Why does she need so many pillows? Her hair is brown. Unravelling curls that must’ve taken an hour or more to sculpt. Club-ready hair.

“Are you okay?”

She doesn’t ask Is it me? the way a plain girl would. A plain girl gone pretty. A Four but a Seven. Someone got to her long before I did. Someone built her up, convinced her she could make all of her confused parts work. Make herself into a whole that would be coherent, attractive. I’ve nothing to give her. Besides, I don’t care to give anyone anything. There’s nothing left.

“Not really,” I say.

“Does this happen –”

“I’m afraid so,” I say.

“Oh, dude, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s not you.”

“I know that. Shit, that came out totally wrong. You’re great. Babe, you’re God’s gift to women,” she squeals. “Just look at you!”