Blue Lips

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I was just like them, wasn’t I?

I never knew people had lips the colour of ice. I was always sheltered but never naïve, or at least I thought so. I was young, but only comparatively to the audience. The audience was a wild bunch, with more piercings than they had natural holes and dead, hazy eyes. Except for the kissing couples entwined with one another, few people hovered on the edges, but they had long dank trench coats and profit in their eyes and pockets.

The band was intense and everyone, well, but for the pair pashing in the wet mouldy corner, grinding against the pipes, I couldn’t tell their sex, were dancing erratically.

I was sitting at the bar, nursing my drink as the shaved bartender polished his table top, giving me lazy glances every now and then. He wasn’t good looking, I noticed absently, but he might pay for my drinks.

That shocked me a bit, my sheer bravado. But inwardly I knew that the bartender wouldn’t be parting my legs, I wasn’t that drunk, at least not yet.

A kohl eyed man offered me some drugs, I could tell, by experience with my Aunt Kathryn’s ‘garden’ that it was poor quality and over priced. Aunt Kathryn would have a fit, or, now that I thought of it and the garden, maybe she wouldn’t. She was mad, old Kathy, and easy to loathe.

It was the girls kissing that intrigued and shook me enough from religious upbringing, to sit up and walk away. Not away from the scene, no, I was to entangled now, but to the bathroom. So I could calm my reddened cheeks and frantic beat of the heart.

I didn’t look pretty, not like the other girls with their mid drift tops and short skirts. They had makeup on, not me, and the bright light made me look dead, to my eyes and the eyes of Uncle Alfred, who I attended the funeral of just three months ago.

The only makeup I had was the heavy red powder that covered my cheeks like a mask. I smiled and small narrow lines stretched around my eyes. In a toilet behind me I could hear a girl throwing up and another screaming.

Smiling harder, I kicked the door. The screaming stopped and a small girl, with a frown on her face and tattoos on her arms, walked out.

We stared at one another, I not sure what to say, she obviously overtaken by anger. She had a split lip and a sardonic expression soon took over her face.

“So, what’s a young thing like you doing in here?” She was older than her height seemed to indicate. Her voice was hoarse, but husky. She never seemed to blink, and her eyes were bloodshot and scary.

I didn’t know why I was here, or how I got here, only that I was here. I told her so, my voice soft and hesitant. I was shaking, not from nervous, or coming down from a high, but from…

The girl who was throwing up exited her stall and gave us a watery smile before washing her mouth and reapplied her lilac lipstick.

They were both angry, underneath their exterior. The screamer shoved me as she walked past.

But lilac lips pressed her mouth to my ear and whispered in a little girl voice murmured phrases I could never catch over the beat of the music.

She hugged me and gave me a sloppy kiss on the back of my neck, then stumbled out of the bathroom.

When I left, it was only after slapping myself till my hands were plastered with red rouge.

A guy groped me and leant against his arm, I shoved him away baring my teeth at him, showing him my crooked teeth. He was already gone.

And I was surrounded by all these unhappy, desperate people. Was I one of these people, I wonder? Was I being silly by drawing a line between myself and all these people?

We’re all the same, the band seemed to say, but it wasn’t. They weren’t here to say platitudes but play loud, hard music to get lost in. I was making up my own meaning to their words. I could hear a thing, but the whispers of a thousand people.

And I was just like them. I was.