the hooker-bender blues

Because it was Christmas eve I dressed late, steadily, strapping my clothes on as if to battle, took a full bottle of hard liquor, some dope and coke and a fat roll of cash, then walked with the cadence of death's drums to Vivian street, to be cruel, again, to hookers.

I chose the first girl quick, took her to the brothel's good room, the fantasy room, a dimmed and plastic hell, her a Pacific-islander/Filipino mix with lips/hips/skin to bankrupt a man, then sent her back downstairs to get another girl; her choice.

She chose well; a tall and dark-skinned woman, athletic, nice mover, small everything. I opened their champagne, told them my real name, and we started; spa, rub, no fuck, body-slide, shower,spa, no fuck, finished the hour, kept 'em both, did it all again, no fuck.

Third hour I changed one girl out, did some coke off the Filipino's back, spa, then they pretend-fucked each other, more liquor, no fuck, end of hour four, kept 'em both, did it all again, shower, spa, coke back, liquor, dope, no fuck.

Hour five, drunk now, the room becoming a universe, the girls messy too, more laying on the bed, talk/yell/sing, party, rub, no fuck, hour six, new girl, now there are three of them, body slide, pretending to fuck, pussy, tits, legs, everywhere,
everything, more lines, more liquor, no fuck, time grinding to an ending, darkness lunging from the bottle. Here it comes. Let it come.

Hour seven, four girls, party-party, no clothes allowed, coke, liquor, rub, dance, floor dressed with g-strings and spilled drinks, more towels, more champagne, legs, tits, pussy all over, no fuck, and then a creation instant, the meat end, what I
came for, for this perfect/brilliant/terrible time, utterly emptily alone in a room full of drunk hookers, all here for the money, for the cold comforts of cash, for anything but me. I could have been in almost any city, in almost any time, the
solitude true and honest, my death a certainty, here in the room with me, walking in hand, me stopped to nothing, beyond mortal, beyond peace or the need for it, staring at the dark brown swirling carpet, itself the very ugliest level of hell, a hearth for the engines of un-love. One of the women stops, her mask of a working-girl slipping an inch. She steps in to me, asks "are you OK?" and for that second, for that almost-nothing, for that seamless step in a meaningless life, I was human, 'cos one of us cared for the other, 'cos a stranger cared for me, and it was a light, a beacon, a burning hope, then just another idea, a flash of words, a burst, a whimper and now gone, sunk, buried into that floor, and no more. I nodded, said "yeah?", got up and dressed slow, the girls helping me, while I watched my body in the wall mirrors, watched the addition of the layers of disguise that hide in my clothes and my big-money shoes, then I walked back out into my life, the sun coming up over the city. Only the bottle came with me.

After that, staggering, drunk, coke-wired tired, thoughtless, needing to sink, I homed in on, sat down amongst the glue-sniffers, in a brick-floored alley, their minds long-gone, chasing a beauty they won't make it back from, laughing/living/leaving their life that whispers of graveyard grass and smells like piss and shit. I eased my legs out to sit like them, smiled a smile that a madman would recognize...or envy...or die wearing....or whatever, then one last belt of hard liquor, and passed out to the songs of bar-bins being emptied, anonymous, stone quiet,unneeded/unknown/invisible, and in love, again, with what I take from hookers.