What’s innocent about having your hand down her pants? Tight, fingers struggling past a waistband, feeling the push of her stomach against your snaking movement. Skin and fat gripping against you. Searching for some clue of a future where you knew what you were doing. Where you knew what all this meant.
She was always different. No care in the world about wearing jeans to the disco one month, then a short skirt like all the rest the next.
“Where are you?” Dean says.
“What?”
His face twists around a shard of pure pissed-offness. “It’s your round,” he yells over the music. “This place, fuck!”
“What’s wrong with it?” I say. The music is shite. The lights roving purple, yellow, gaudy. There’s a smoke machine belching clouds of chemicals that smell like piss. Some arsehole’s in the smoking area with a guitar singing an ode to solitary living in the dustbowl like it’s the story of a biotech student’s life. Of course they all sing along living that life but it has to be Dean who says it. Admits it. I’m not going to be the one saying all this is past it. It was his idea coming here.
“There’s some fine looking things, though.”
“Aye,” I say. Maybe she did care. Maybe she felt out of place in jeans among blonde hair and arse-skimming, reflective skirts.
Do I have any more clue now than I did then?
“It’s your fucking round,” he shouts.
“Fuck off,” I say. I stand from the raised, cushioned benches bolted to the steaming wall. I sidle through bodies. My knees feel weak, at odds with my strength because I don’t feel weak. I’m shaking. Sweating. I drank too much last night. Not enough today. My knees feel weak because they’re at odds with the beat of the music. My lower leg carries outwards and somehow I propel myself forward to the mass of bodies piling against a bar calling drinks in plastic glasses.
A girl is talking to a gay lad. He must be gay, with his hands dancing, and she’s definitely young. Her skirt is as tiny as her and she’s sipping her clear drink through a straw. She looks happy, which is what makes her most young. Her eyelashes are fluttering. Her head is tilted and she’s listening to him. That’s strange in this day and age, listening to someone. Hearing them and not blustering, screaming down your own path, on your night, escaping from the daytime in school, college or call centre. Escaping to where only you matter.
She looks at me. Rolls her eyes. Good for her.
The push around me is a fucking pain. I put a bit of heft into my shoulders, just squaring my arms so I get some space. There’s no way I’m carrying two pints back to the table. They’ll taste rank anyway. In warm glasses still wet from the washer, condensation clinging to their inners.
“Two double Jamesons,” I say. He looks cherubic, spiked blond hair, artful tattoos, coloured choker around his neck. No wonder they’re all smiling at him. His head rolls back in the upwards nod as he hands me my glasses and I hand him my money.
I take a drink of my double and I can already taste the ice melting into the whiskey. The plastic seeping into it. It’s probably watered down, but what difference would that make to Jameson. Pure shite. I’m not Jimmy fucking McNulty.
Dean’s standing next to someone. She has her hand on his elbow and he’s that cheeky smile on his face. I knock back his whiskey. Scumbag.
###
I lean against the wall. Light the fag I’ve bummed from someone on too good a ride to care about handing over a Marlboro Light from a battered box. Squeezed out in a struggle with too tight jeans.
The good ol’ boy at the age of only twenty three, I’d guess, is shouting into the microphone glued to his face. “C’mon!” he roars. “Let’s get this going!” Thumping his hand against the body of his guitar. The crowd has pushed around him so now there’s only a few groups of people back where I am, in their own small world, ignoring the scrawny wailer who’s the life of the night and probably has a china cup of weak tea on his rider. The cloud of fag smoke is thin but enough to scratch my eyes.
She smoked Benson. They came in a gold box and I told her it was because she was royalty. She told me purple was the colour of royalty. A Silk Cut would be good now.
The young gay lad from the bar is standing off me but into me. “She gave you some look,” he says. I laugh. He comes closer.
“She’s too young,” I say.
“That’s never stopped me.” I bet it hasn’t.
“You’re what, eighteen, nineteen?”
“I mean older men.” He takes a drag. I look at the writing around the butt to see what he’s smoking. Fucking Silk Cut Purple.
“So what’s the line on this?” I say. “I was checking her out, or at least you think so. You were checking me out. She saw you checking me out, got annoyed at me, and not you, and now there’s your thing for older lads.” He laughs. Blows smoke at me and keeps a smile on his face.
The pillock with the guitar is getting everyone clapping. I laugh again, see this young lad passing a look over me like I’m untapped, raw potential. This kid has me laughing a lot. Funny guy. “I’m not even that old,” I protest. “Just older.”
“Then why wouldn’t you?” he asks. I think of what was going through my mind as I stood waiting at the bar. Seeing her. Mostly heat went through me. Not heat for her but the rising steaming vapour that comes from running on empty and you’re about to collapse.
“She just reminded me of someone,” I say.
“Who?” the young lad says. The single worded question with so much, a rising lilted tone as he asks. All sly curiosity.
“Well, not someone. Sometime.” I shift on my feet. The floor isn’t sticky here which is a fucking shock. It is gravelly, or saw-dusty. Drinks spilling everywhere. “I was thinking about…” I was thinking about a teenage disco. And this place, despite me holding a double whiskey bought with money I earned, me all grown up and still half a child. My wages earned, not a twenty I robbed from my sister’s ever dwindling communion money. These two places, exactly the fucking same but everything so different.
“Does he think we’re in Kentucky?” He almost throws his glass at the singer with the guitar such is the venom of his statement, hand propelling forward, ice rattling, drink splashing before he brings it to his mouth. “Come on,” he says. “I want you to meet someone.” He grabs my wrist.
###
He stands next to her, red hair, purple top like royalty. She’s a big girl. He whispers something in her ear. I don’t know where this is going and I’m standing like a fish with no legs and the table edge poking my arse. It’s screwed to the ground so I can’t move it.
I push past it, inveigle my way into something, these people with their hushed and telling words, shared beneath each other. Sure, why not? What else is there on a night in a cheap room with lush red curtains soaking up the smell of BO, booze and expensive perfume worn by the same cheap people. It’s a cheap club, I guess they’re not cheap people. Just people.
“Him?” she says. Her mouth curls in acceptance and she nods to the young lad. He’s a good bit younger than her.
“Are you studying here?” I ask. I have to say something.
“Kind of,” she says.
“What’s ‘kind of?’” I ask.
“I’m doing a PhD. Don’t ask me in what.”
“Fair enough,” I say.
His head is shaking side to side along with the beat. He’s using the straw in his drink now too. His shoulders are shaking the other way to the same beat. He sighs, but it’s more of a guffaw.
“So,” he says with a too-cute smile. “Eimear here was just talking about how old she feels.” He puts real emphasis on the ‘o’ in old. Drawing it out. Dragging it between us.
“Do you have a thing for older men too?” I ask. She’s definitely a big girl. Bigger than the statement I just made. She rolls her eyes at him. I’m not even there.
“Let’s dance,” she says. She grabs his hand, not suddenly, not violently demanding. Caring, sharing herself with a lust for living with another. Maybe just with herself. Contended with her place. He motions that he’s finishing his drink. She’s already dancing on the spot. I feel it. I’d dance with her, in the teenage disco. This isn’t like that now. I’m not too sure what the difference is between here, Moonshine, three floors, four rooms, six bars, and a sports hall in the cricket club charging €10 for mostly unsupervised teenage kicks.
The whiskey feels like it’s bringing on heartburn but I drink anyway. I sit down in the chair behind me.
“Come on,” she says to me. “You are a dancer, aren’t you?” She looks me up and down. Nods. “Yeah. You’re a dancer.” I squeeze out through the tables but she doesn’t move from in front of me. “You don’t need this.” She takes my glass and sets it on the table. Before I have a chance to object she’s already halfway to the dancefloor. Flowing through the smoke and bodies twisting, smooth and energetic, out of her path. I look at the table. I leave my drink.
###
There’s a scream to the music. It’s not singing. It’s not a song. It’s a relentless scream, unbridled, unheard by anyone around me. I don’t know how to move to this. I look to where my coat is, where Dean was but he’s not there any more. No sign of drinks on the table. The girl he was with isn’t there either. I’m on my own.
I feel my neck and back prickle with the heat. Beneath my hair my scalp is tingling from sweat. Not mine. The sweat dripping from the ceiling makes me feel dirty. I rub my arm, like there’s a grit of dead, filthy skin being shed. I scrape at it.
She looks at me. Wide open eyes, asking. Telling me what I need to do. I smile and sway. But it’s not a sway it’s a rhythm. There’s meaning to it. My arms raise level to my chest.
The dirt on my arms, back, chest, scalp, arse and neck is gone. Now there’s pure sweat. Salt. I move. She smiles at me. He cheers. Not for me. For her, maybe. Maybe for himself. Probably for the world we’re in. It’s a great fucking world. I move. I’m moving.
I smile back once the song stops. Another comes on. The DJ can’t mix but who gives a fuck. It rides up around me. I lean into her ear. “Who’s this?” I ask, pointing to the ceiling as though music descends from the heavens.
She turns her mouth to me. “Destiny’s Child. You should remember them.” I remember the name but I’d forgotten the point.
She takes my hand and raises it up into the air, ducking beneath it with her hair swirling around her, like part of her, in a cascade down her back. She plucks a few strands from her mouth. I wipe the sweat from my brow and fight against my heavy breathing. I’m not going to stop. Not now.
She twirls the young lad around. He’s pirouetting. Someone knocks into him. Pushes into him and now some giant cunt with a greasy, hippy mop is trying to be big in front of this small kid who’s only dancing.
I move in front of him. I know this guy. I know this type. “He’s only having fun,” I say. The muscled, man-bun prick laughs and turns around. I can see his eyes roll up and down me before he turns, sizing me up and deciding if I mean anything to him. I obviously don’t so I move towards him, legs no longer weak. I feel everything in me. I hold back from pushing him. Not fucking worth it. I turn to apologise to the young kid. He’s gone. She’s gone.
I close my eyes, raise my arms and my body grinds to the beat. I am the beat. I’m not going to stop. I won’t stop. I won’t let it stop. Don’t stop.
###
The night is cool against my skin and despite a trail of chip bags, empty bottles and discarded fag boxes the streets have been washed with rain. I’m not hungry. Normally there’d be a hunger. For a burger, fired out quick fast and horsed into as girls tumble over heels. Gangs of half cut heads yell slurred words. Taxis tear past a rows of stuck out arms.
I sit on a curb. My arse is wet but I don’t care. I make a rollie and light up as the night winds around me. Back then it was a sneaked fag. Me and her after the night had ended, hoping whatever parent was coming to pick us up would arrive late enough for us to sit and smoke and find our bearings. To share the last of the night. The last of what was us.
I take a drag. I pull out my phone and plug in the green headphone cord as I tuck the earpiece plastic back behind my ears. Someone’s shouting down the street. Calling out someone for whatever slight grievance makes for anger at 3am. ‘Destiny’s Child,’ I remember. The sound of what I remember starts to channel right into my mind.
I stand and begin to walk slowly up the hill, tapping my pocket for my keys. I’m going home.
I’m home.
Where’s home?