Beautiful Midnight
Too aggressive, too strong-willed, too competitive, too independent, too slender, too much dark beauty, too girl next-door, too mysterious, too closed off, too sharp, too pained. Could you really be too much of anything? The simple answer here was ‘yes’. I know. Because I am all of these things. Some I hide well from prying eyes, some qualities people don’t want to see, some qualities I don’t care if people see. That nice, naïve, beautiful girl you’re looking for doesn’t exist here. Sometimes I have to wonder if she ever did, but then I find myself needing to ask someone who knew me all those years ago, 'did that person ever exist?' I immediately stop questioning it. They wouldn’t know.
***
Sleep hadn’t come. I didn’t expect it to and if I’m honest I didn’t want it to. Instead I laid in the small bed, big enough to only fit one person comfortably but was instead holding two naked bodies. My eyes closed and my breathing slow, letting the few hours before sunrise melt into the abyss of the previous dark of night. The hot breaths on the back of my neck coming from the boy who was laid out behind me, his arm hanging heavy on my hip were beginning to irritate me. I wanted to throw the arm off me and roll out of bed into a hot shower where I could remove the feeling of him from my skin. I didn’t want any part of this. But to move would cause further contact with the body behind me and I wanted that even less.
Lying motionless as I was, I could still feel the alcohol rushing through my system. I was still drunk from the night before, I would probably still be until just after lunch. Perfect. Just in time to make it to my first class and sit through another three hour droning lecture given by a professor who was attempting to keep his mid-twenty years functional and thereby foolishly trying to obtain a status of coolness among his students. The professor had recently entered into his sixties. It was a lost cause.
Even though the bed was small I had managed to maintain some semblance of personal space. That, however, was greatly intruded upon when the body at my back began to wake, shifting closer to press against my skin and irritate me further, his legs attempting to entwine with my own under the greasy bed sheets. That was all I could take. Without a word I slipped free from the grasp and the sheets, I tried to stay calm and slow so as not to appear as rushed and as frantic as my heart felt beating inside my chest.
“Where are you going, babe?”
The digital clock on the desk, with its glaring red numbers, informed us that it was almost seven AM.
“Nowhere.” I said this as I buttoned my jeans and located my t-shirt on the back of the desk chair.
His small laugh was still laced with sleep and booze. “You’re a funny one. Come back to bed, it’s cold.”
“I’ve got class.” Ignoring the fact that it didn’t start till 2:30pm and I’d probably end up not going anyway.
“Oh, come...”
This was the last thing I heard as I pulled the door behind me closed. The hallways of Hammond Hall were deserted at this hour, students always slept late, and those who didn’t weren’t living in this dorm.
Walking across campus I couldn’t help laughing a little at myself. Did I even remember what his name was? Had he even told me? Yes. But I hadn’t given mine. I laughed again, louder this time. It was becoming a small game I played with myself, ‘What was his name?’
***
I’ve done too much. Seen too much. I know I’ve already lost my soul. But do I really care? Honestly? Probably not.
***
***
The oscillating fan cooled drops of water on her flesh making her feel slightly cold. Much of the water had soaked into the bed-sheets beneath her. The sun was low on the horizon. Casting a dark orange haze over the city and through the window of her bedroom, making the walls appear to catch the glow of blazing flames.
Through the walls she could hear her roommate begin to giggle, her laughter coming in time to the ticking wall clock and getting louder with each release. Her roommate, Danni (Danielle), was getting high off coke or E or meth, whatever her boyfriend happened to bring around with him this time. God she wanted a cigarette.
She could hear the bed begin to creak, hear it getting louder through the shared wall. And then the headboard crashing against the far wall. That’s when her reverie and calmed state shattered. She didn’t care what she put on, didn’t care that the clothes she was throwing on were dirty, worn the past two days in a row, didn’t care that she hadn’t put on a bra or panties. All she cared about was getting out of the apartment as fast as she could, that she had clothes, and her wallet. But it was too late the moans of her roommate had begun.
She had made the mistake the first time Danni brought Rick over of staying in the apartment, smoking her cigarettes and painting the canvas in the corner. Danni’s screams had carried across the apartment and in her ears sounded like screams of pain. Cali shut down, the panic attacks came, and she was nearly sure her roommate was being raped in the next room until the screams suddenly stopped and Rick came out in his boxers to get a glass of water, Danni following soon after still nude and giving Cali the thumbs up.
Never again would she sit through that. She didn’t even know what morbid desire in her made her stay through the entire show the last time.
***
***
Of course I slept with him that night. He was my best friend. He knew my secrets and still hung around. It helped a little that everyone thought he was hot as hell. But having thought he knew my secrets, my fears, my pitfalls and shortcomings, I would have thought that the events of that early morning would never have seen the light of day. They did of course. They stalked us through the night, waiting for that moment between sleep when it became safe for them to come out. And they did. Those words that should never have been spoken, should never have been thought of in the first place. They crept from their dark hiding place in the corner of my apartment and when the moment was right, as we were caught, trapped and helpless between the throes of our passion and absolute release, the words crawled down our throats, became lodged there and called it home. He was first to release this trapped darkness, this thing that was meant to destroy.
“I love you, Cali.”
And that was all my darkness needed in order to free itself of my throat.
“I don’t.”
Perhaps it hadn’t been able to leave intact. Perhaps once it touched me I was infected with its sickness, tainted. I watched, his eyes closed and his head lowered to my chest. I could feel his warm breathing on my nipple, it wasn’t arousing this time. I could feel him soften and slip from the hold my body had kept on him. I felt cold. And slowly he rolled his weight away from me and over to sit on the edge of the bed. Like some horrible burning car wreck I couldn’t look away, everything was moving in slow motion, fuzzy and languid. I was sure that if I could force my body to move in that moment that my movements would be able to stir space and time, creating a beautifully sparkled covering for the nightmare that this really was. I didn’t move. I couldn’t, my body wouldn't obey my thoughts. As if in morbid fascination I watched him dress, watched as each piece of rumpled clothing was put back into place, no longer rumpled, no longer showing signs of what had just been. The early morning sun peaked through the break in the curtains. His lips were moving. I just couldn’t hear what was being said. I hope it wasn’t anything terribly important.
And that was it. I couldn’t tell, but I must have stayed there all day. I needed a cigarette bad. I needed a drink worse. I don’t think there was anything out there that could make me feel again.
For the next two years I had only seen Mike a handful of times. Glimpses really, from far across the quad as he was coming or going to class, or walking with friends. We never spoke again after that night.
***
***
“God, you’re so weird sometimes. Do you know that, Cali? You’re my best friend and I feel like I don’t even know you half the time.” Danni sounded like she was on the verge of crying. Or maybe it was anger. Most likely it was a half-assed attempt at both.
“Sorry.” I think it might have come out sounding like a question. That wasn’t what I meant, not really.
What she said though, it made me wonder. How could you be best friends with someone you didn’t know at all? I would almost think it was on par with taking to your bed the first stranger you ran into during a drunken midnight haze. But who was I to judge Danni’s morality. I was no better, of that I’m sure.
***
***
Sleep hadn’t come. I didn’t expect it to and if I’m honest I didn’t want it to. Instead I laid in the small bed, big enough to only fit one person comfortably but was instead holding two naked bodies. My eyes closed and my breathing slow, letting the few hours before sunrise melt into the abyss of the previous dark of night. The hot breaths on the back of my neck coming from the boy who was laid out behind me, his arm hanging heavy on my hip were beginning to irritate me. I wanted to throw the arm off me and roll out of bed into a hot shower where I could remove the feeling of him from my skin. I didn’t want any part of this. But to move would cause further contact with the body behind me and I wanted that even less.
Lying motionless as I was, I could still feel the alcohol rushing through my system. I was still drunk from the night before, I would probably still be until just after lunch. Perfect. Just in time to make it to my first class and sit through another three hour droning lecture given by a professor who was attempting to keep his mid-twenty years functional and thereby foolishly trying to obtain a status of coolness among his students. The professor had recently entered into his sixties. It was a lost cause.
Even though the bed was small I had managed to maintain some semblance of personal space. That, however, was greatly intruded upon when the body at my back began to wake, shifting closer to press against my skin and irritate me further, his legs attempting to entwine with my own under the greasy bed sheets. That was all I could take. Without a word I slipped free from the grasp and the sheets, I tried to stay calm and slow so as not to appear as rushed and as frantic as my heart felt beating inside my chest.
“Where are you going, babe?”
The digital clock on the desk, with its glaring red numbers, informed us that it was almost seven AM.
“Nowhere.” I said this as I buttoned my jeans and located my t-shirt on the back of the desk chair.
His small laugh was still laced with sleep and booze. “You’re a funny one. Come back to bed, it’s cold.”
“I’ve got class.” Ignoring the fact that it didn’t start till 2:30pm and I’d probably end up not going anyway.
“Oh, come...”
This was the last thing I heard as I pulled the door behind me closed. The hallways of Hammond Hall were deserted at this hour, students always slept late, and those who didn’t weren’t living in this dorm.
Walking across campus I couldn’t help laughing a little at myself. Did I even remember what his name was? Had he even told me? Yes. But I hadn’t given mine. I laughed again, louder this time. It was becoming a small game I played with myself, ‘What was his name?’
***
I’ve done too much. Seen too much. I know I’ve already lost my soul. But do I really care? Honestly? Probably not.
***
***
The oscillating fan cooled drops of water on her flesh making her feel slightly cold. Much of the water had soaked into the bed-sheets beneath her. The sun was low on the horizon. Casting a dark orange haze over the city and through the window of her bedroom, making the walls appear to catch the glow of blazing flames.
Through the walls she could hear her roommate begin to giggle, her laughter coming in time to the ticking wall clock and getting louder with each release. Her roommate, Danni (Danielle), was getting high off coke or E or meth, whatever her boyfriend happened to bring around with him this time. God she wanted a cigarette.
She could hear the bed begin to creak, hear it getting louder through the shared wall. And then the headboard crashing against the far wall. That’s when her reverie and calmed state shattered. She didn’t care what she put on, didn’t care that the clothes she was throwing on were dirty, worn the past two days in a row, didn’t care that she hadn’t put on a bra or panties. All she cared about was getting out of the apartment as fast as she could, that she had clothes, and her wallet. But it was too late the moans of her roommate had begun.
She had made the mistake the first time Danni brought Rick over of staying in the apartment, smoking her cigarettes and painting the canvas in the corner. Danni’s screams had carried across the apartment and in her ears sounded like screams of pain. Cali shut down, the panic attacks came, and she was nearly sure her roommate was being raped in the next room until the screams suddenly stopped and Rick came out in his boxers to get a glass of water, Danni following soon after still nude and giving Cali the thumbs up.
Never again would she sit through that. She didn’t even know what morbid desire in her made her stay through the entire show the last time.
***
***
Of course I slept with him that night. He was my best friend. He knew my secrets and still hung around. It helped a little that everyone thought he was hot as hell. But having thought he knew my secrets, my fears, my pitfalls and shortcomings, I would have thought that the events of that early morning would never have seen the light of day. They did of course. They stalked us through the night, waiting for that moment between sleep when it became safe for them to come out. And they did. Those words that should never have been spoken, should never have been thought of in the first place. They crept from their dark hiding place in the corner of my apartment and when the moment was right, as we were caught, trapped and helpless between the throes of our passion and absolute release, the words crawled down our throats, became lodged there and called it home. He was first to release this trapped darkness, this thing that was meant to destroy.
“I love you, Cali.”
And that was all my darkness needed in order to free itself of my throat.
“I don’t.”
Perhaps it hadn’t been able to leave intact. Perhaps once it touched me I was infected with its sickness, tainted. I watched, his eyes closed and his head lowered to my chest. I could feel his warm breathing on my nipple, it wasn’t arousing this time. I could feel him soften and slip from the hold my body had kept on him. I felt cold. And slowly he rolled his weight away from me and over to sit on the edge of the bed. Like some horrible burning car wreck I couldn’t look away, everything was moving in slow motion, fuzzy and languid. I was sure that if I could force my body to move in that moment that my movements would be able to stir space and time, creating a beautifully sparkled covering for the nightmare that this really was. I didn’t move. I couldn’t, my body wouldn't obey my thoughts. As if in morbid fascination I watched him dress, watched as each piece of rumpled clothing was put back into place, no longer rumpled, no longer showing signs of what had just been. The early morning sun peaked through the break in the curtains. His lips were moving. I just couldn’t hear what was being said. I hope it wasn’t anything terribly important.
And that was it. I couldn’t tell, but I must have stayed there all day. I needed a cigarette bad. I needed a drink worse. I don’t think there was anything out there that could make me feel again.
For the next two years I had only seen Mike a handful of times. Glimpses really, from far across the quad as he was coming or going to class, or walking with friends. We never spoke again after that night.
***
***
“God, you’re so weird sometimes. Do you know that, Cali? You’re my best friend and I feel like I don’t even know you half the time.” Danni sounded like she was on the verge of crying. Or maybe it was anger. Most likely it was a half-assed attempt at both.
“Sorry.” I think it might have come out sounding like a question. That wasn’t what I meant, not really.
What she said though, it made me wonder. How could you be best friends with someone you didn’t know at all? I would almost think it was on par with taking to your bed the first stranger you ran into during a drunken midnight haze. But who was I to judge Danni’s morality. I was no better, of that I’m sure.
***
Comments