Neon Nights by Behlor Santi

1.

The girl has duct tape over her areolas. She smiles at me and I smile back, as I try to shake to the beat of the song… radio free Europe, radio free Europe… I look cool, Afro-punkish, and I hate the girl’s smile. Could she notice that I hated myself?

2.

The man smells sweet and bitter, baby powder and cigarettes mixed together. He passes me a drink, a sparkle in his gray eyes. I sip the martini with gin. He starts to kiss my neck. He sucks on my skin, my flabby skin with black freckles and scars. I look at the girl again.

3.

My vinyl skirt clings to my thighs. I remember my mama, all buttery yellow, redheaded, and slim. She loved to call me a water buffalo, her tapir. The man feels up my legs. The girl approaches us; and I know that the night is just beginning.

4.

In the taxi, I taste the girl’s mouth. She’s sour, like a lemon before the tequila. The cab driver races down Bedford Avenue. In the darkness, the hip boutiques of Williamsburg look like ghosts. The man tells me to kiss him. I giggle, before tasting his bitter mouth. The girl belongs to the man. She wants a kiss too.

5.

The girl wakes up and guffaws. She has a deep voice, a lingering Southern accent with grits and hush puppies. The three of us crowd the futon. The man climbs out of bed; he’ll make breakfast, he proclaims. As he approaches the kitchen, his dick swings between his legs.

“Like pancakes?” the girl asks.

I nod. White silky bedsheets covers the futon. The girl and the man are white. I feel like a black hole in all this whiteness.

6.

My mother always said that God didn’t like ugly. I eat breakfast with the girl and her man. Morning light fills the kitchenette, as the man pours maple syrup on our pancakes. The girl puts whipped butter on her pancake. She looks old without her makeup.

“Enjoy the pancakes?” she asks. She’s so chipper.

I just eat the pancakes. I take in this sweet nourishment; this blessed food. The girl stares into her man’s eyes. His gray eyes continue to twinkle.

“Your boyfriend’s cute,” I tell the girl.

“Thanks,” the girl and the man answer. I forget to tell the man that he’s hot.

I nod again. It’s funny; the girl had put tape on her breasts. She made a statement at the club, and nobody would forget her. I study the girl and her man. In between bites of the pancakes, they kiss. It’s sad. I want a tape, something wide and strong to mask this whole experience, something to cover past, present, and future. After this couple kicks me out of their loft, I knew that I would walk alone in the streets. I would prepare for another night in Brooklyn, another night at the club, drinking, dancing, and singing along to an Interpol song. New York cares, they say. I care.

 

Behlor Santi: Behlor Santi's stories, poems, and articles have appeared in Small Spiral Notebook, Scrivener's Pen, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Unlikely Stories.org, Another Sun, Snow Monkey, Literary New York, New England Entertainment Digest, and WritersWeekly.com, among other venues. She was a runner-up in one of 3AM Magazine's flash-fiction contests, and Small Spiral Notebook nominated her story "Daniel Morgenstern's Life of Crime" for the second e-2-ink anthology, to be edited by Stuart Dybek. Always striving for bigger and better things, she currently lives in New York City, where she writes, reads, shops, and enjoys airing her pride and prejudices over hot cocoa.