Gin

The drink burned Tom’s throat, sliding down in forceful contingence as the sparkles flew past his eyes. Suddenly his head was heavy and his mouth was numb.

It took eight shots to put him here, and yet another six or seven would put him in the ditch outside, vomiting his guts out.

As he placed his hands carefully on the edge of the counter, he felt the sway of music behind his ears, and his gaze blearily followed the lights. They streaked across the floor in reds, oranges, and pinks, and the lurid bodies in the centre moved fluidly with them. Juniper, juniper, juniper, he thought bitterly, holding his hand out for another shot. The liquid in the tiny glass clung like oil to the edges. Tom had read earlier that gin had a mixture of juniper in it. As if he knew what the hell juniper was.

He threw back the latest shot, and sat forward coughing dryly.

The bartender gave him a withering look.

He returned the look with heavy interest. “Put a shot of lemon tonic in the next one, won’t you? The gin here tastes like motor oil.”

The bartender wasn’t listening; he had already turned to a group of women on the other end of the counter.

He broke into a litany of curses, calling on a number of deities and describing nearly impossible actions which the bartender should take. Swearing made his numb lips feel useful when he was pissed drunk. No, he was only tipsy so far. He had about five or six to go.

He looked around again. The club was looking much more interesting than it had a moment ago. Even the man near him seemed to emanate a friendly light. The man was about as young as he was with hair cut short and his entire lobe pierced with different jewels. He leaned closer to see if they were real. The man glanced at him and leaned away subtly. Perhaps not as friendly as first perceived.

Tom nodded his head to the music he didn’t know too well. It was the same song as all the other songs they played in these clubs; beat-driven, electronic, and repetitive. Some high-pitched voice vocalised in the background, and it almost seemed as if the dancers now whirled in time.

The atmosphere was not at all bad for a Monday night. It may have been the cold weather outside that brought the late clingers-on inside, heating up with drink, laughing, and action-like movements. Then, there were people like Tom: restless, bitter, and prepared to get systematically drunk.

And why? Why push his senses to their limit, to the point where the bar counter seemed a perfect place for his head to rest, as his eyelids drooped, and his mouth stopped being able to form the simplest of words. Except for gin; Tom found he could always pronounce Gin correctly.

You see, Gin was a person too; short for Ginseng. His mouth curled bitterly as he pictured those wide defenceless eyes under a shock of jet-black hair. He remembered the feel of that hair in his hands, laced lightly around his fingers. He remembered how that feeling of possessing Gin had made him so happy; wildly happy. Of course, Gin was a nickname for what Gin could do: heal; make things better. Tom didn’t like to think of Gin’s real name; he didn’t think it was necessary. He knew Gin as Gin and nothing more.

Gin was his angel, his tether to sanity against everything that was unbearable. He used to think Gin would save him from himself and make everything better. Gin was pure, you see; Gin was as clear as the drink he downed to clear his head. Gin was all made up of sharp features, familiar grey eyes, and the hood of the long coat down over angular shoulders.

When he met Gin, he was twenty-six. He wasn’t quite as far-gone as he was presently, but his trips to the bar were still nightly. That evening, he took a short-cut through the park, and like all short-cuts, they led to something.

Gin was seated neatly on a park bench, the streetlight making those clear features glow a pale gold. Gin’s boots were tucked neatly underneath that long cashmere coat. Grey eyes burned at him as he passed, and he looked in their direction in his passing. His mind wandered, and he didn’t notice his own staring until he saw he had stopped walking. Gin looked politely up at him.

Tom knew destiny was that little thread of intuition before one’s heart that tells him at certain moments to look this way, or that. It was the glint of promise that turns the head of a young man to rare opportunity. He knows that destiny is not all jovial either; at times one’s destiny is, in fact, to miss opportunity, to merely grasp at love’s fingertips, to die at an early age…

It was late at night, and Gin was a small thing. He felt silly thinking so, but he worried about Gin’s fate on a night like that, in a park like that.

Gin smiled.

His stance was awkward, and he felt stupid, but he smiled back carefully. “Should you be out this late?” he muttered.

Inexplicably, Gin began to weep. Sobs shuddered up and down Gin’s smaller figure, and Tom stepped back, completely blown away. He was never called to deal with other people’s emotions. No one felt comfortable breaking down around Tom due to his flippant, dislikeable nature; it was obvious that this young soul didn’t care who he was, or what he would do in response. Gin sat there, hands over eyes, weeping until those awful sobs subsided into hiccoughs and Tom found himself facing the undignified prospect of holding, patting, and soothing.

“Sorry,” Gin gasped, bringing to being the first intelligible words spoken. “I don’t-I never do things like that. It just…I’m cold; I want to go home, but I can’t.”

Tom felt a twinge of distaste. A runaway? “Where do you live?” he asked quietly. He was already surprised at himself. Tom didn’t often behave selflessly to someone of Gin’s nature. It was just-and Tom would often tell himself this much later- that Gin was Gin, and Gin could manipulate mountains and skies.

Before he could change his mind, they were walking and Gin began to talk.

Gin talked about trees, rain, parking meters, the trouble with people and their dogs, and something having to do with lemon meringue being just fine without the meringue. Tom listened with some bewilderment, thinking vaguely that he hadn’t anywhere better to be. He listened, realizing that he was pretending to be a nice person, when he knew, quite well, that he was not. His sneers, mocking, and sarcastic distaste fell away when Gin was talking.

The weather was still cold, however, and Tom was well aware that he had walked Gin to the urban side of town, yet he still didn’t know who Gin was nor why it was important to him that Gin keep talking.

Gin’s eyes moistened as their eyes met again. Tom had felt uncomfortable at the anonymity of the entire scenario. He said nothing, though, and that spurred this person to say what he would remember as the most honest thing anyone had ever said to him: “I’m rambling and I know the others hate that; what’s to stop you from hating it as well.” Here Gin had reached for his arm in some form of need. “I hope you’re different; tell me your name and we’ll own the night together, you and I. We’ll walk the streets, love mortals, and hate them all at once. I can see you’re not all monster even though your mind is shut up like a safe, I know. Your eyes are sweet. You look like the high and mighty of us, but I can see you’re lost just as I am.”

Gin had said that, and Tom had led the way to his flat, knowing he’d never felt anything for charity, and that it didn’t matter because Gin wasn’t dressed like a street-urchin. Gin wore, instead, a white dress shirt with a thin pinstriped tie, slacks of deep grey over black shoes.

He’d stationed Gin on the couch with several blankets and a pillow. However, when he came out of the shower, Gin was settled between his own covers blinking owlishly up at him. Tom had never been that way; of course his disposition had given room for some remarks in high school, which he took care to disprove. It had made him a little defensive.

Yet Gin was almost pretty on those sheets, with all that bare skin glowing with pearly luminescence. And that nacreous skin could be compared to many soft things relating to relief in Tom’s case. And the thought that Gin was willing like that...

In the morning, it was like he had been dreaming; Gin never existed. He had gotten himself utterly pissed, and he was feeling the after-effects with leftover hallucinations. Yet, his head was clear, and he could still taste the flavour of Gin’s mouth.

He had gone to work, normal as ever. He had answered phone calls, made it on time to his meetings, and, as usual, showed no sign of his “capers” the night before. Yet, when he arrived at home that evening, Gin was waiting at his door explaining that cheese cake and ice cream was the best thing to have after work, and that they simply must have some.

He had asked Gin what had happened, why there had been a necessity to leave. Gin, mid-scoop looked at him as if he was crazy. “Well, I had work, didn’t I?”

He didn’t want to sound whiny, and he didn’t want to think about what had brought about his needfulness, but he wanted to ask just exactly what Gin did. Gin’s business-like clothing wasn’t quite the dead give-away it should have been, and Tom was irritated.

There was no mistaking Gin’s femininity, the fragility in the way Gin spoke; the features that had Tom feeling confused and frustrated all the time. Yet, he didn’t expect that Gin would react so badly to his teasing.

Gin had been living with him two weeks by then, and he had recently discovered Gin’s ability to cook. Knife in hand, Gin was chopping vegetables with surprising speed. The subject matter, as usual, jumped from memory cards for cameras, liver and onions, mathematics in grade school, to the scarcity of pretty girls in this city.

Tom was only saying that he thought Gin was prettier than most girls he had seen when Gin had flown at him, and the knife formerly chopping a carrot was at his throat. Gin’s surprising strength had Tom against the counter, his heart slamming into his chest. Gin’s expression was fierce, the edge of the knife was cutting, and Gin’s arm over his stomach was unyielding. “Don’t fuck with me, Thomas!” And Gin’s voice was clear and sharp like the bones in that angular face.

It was only then that Tom decided that Gin was not a little crazy.

Whenever it was that Gin spoke, Tom was watching. The expressions on that face were bright, cheery, and careless. And Tom didn’t know nor care where he found this angel; he stopped caring that his relationship with this angel couldn’t be called a relationship mainly because what he knew about Gin really related to himself.

How if Gin weren’t there, he would have to talk to fill the silence; how he felt empowered by Gin’s unconscious helplessness, and that he no longer minded that people stared when he kissed Gin in public.

Then, after half a bloody year of living like husband and wife, Gin didn’t come back.

Gin had a key to his flat so he expected a cheery voice to call out a suggestion for dessert or he even thought he might find Gin sprawled under the coffee table, sketching vague nameless things. The flat was empty and Gin was gone.

He couldn’t breathe; his heart was constantly in his throat; he felt like tearing it out so he could breathe. He spent three days waiting, curled up on the living room floor, drinking carton after carton of orange juice since there was no Gin. His head ached, and no one called, no one rang at the door since he had no one outside of his Gin.

After those three days, his dead melancholy turned into irritation.

What was Gin thinking, leaving him like that? No words, nothing?

After the first week passed, he was angry.

How dare Gin think he could be used and thrown away like that? He had been serious!

A year passed, and Tom lived at the bars and clubs. His dark features had temerity against those crazy lights, and his mind often wandered back to those days with Gin.

No one was like Gin, and he found he could not find anyone to compare.

That was precisely why it was an unmistakeable sight when he saw Gin again.

It was a dark and earthy club with his sour smells, and the dim lights of dull yellow. Gin was with a young woman, locked in an unmistakeable embrace, and Tom staggered forward at the sight of those hands in someone else’s hair, those grey eyes widening in the boldness of another’s touch.

Their eyes met suddenly because Tom had already been looking, and Gin looked defenceless again. The girl with Gin turned and gave Tom a disdainful look, but Tom was way ahead of her in expressing what he felt.

He took three sharp steps forward and threw the girl away from Gin. Gin stood up in neither outrage nor surprise. The girl was shouting obscenities at him, but he could only look at Gin, his Gin. The reason he couldn’t go back to work because he wanted to come back home and see that expression, touch that nacreous skin. It was not Gin’s to decide when they were done. Gin couldn’t just do that to him.

He seized Gin’s arm, unsure what he intended to do thereafter, but at least he had gotten that far. Tom still remembers the feeling of his heart sinking when Gin was firm and pushed his hand away. Gin’s gaze was hard, and unfeeling; there had always been a difference in strength between the two of them.

“Where the hell did you go?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea how worried I was?”

“Leave me alone. I don’t want to be around you anymore,” was the answer, which was too much for Tom. All stoicism aside, he wanted to cause Gin as much hurt as he felt at the moment. His fingers only grazed Gin’s cheek as his blow was dodged.

There was no time for reaction before Gin was on top of him, punching, kicking, and hissing. His anger was greater, and the adrenaline rushed up his arms as he pushed Gin to the floor. His fingers curled around that horribly sculpture-like neck, and his grip tightened mercilessly. To this day, Tom often wonders how this fight had escalated into such a thing. He remembers Gin’s eyes staring up at him in defiance as his strength fought those struggles.

Right then, he had wanted Gin dead.

He didn’t kill Gin.

As his anger cooled, his fingers loosened, and Ginseng fled with that horrible whore in tow. Tom watched them slip away into the fog of cigarette smoke under cover of the dull yellow lights of the club. His head hurt as he wondered at destiny, and all its devices.

Gin had been a lot like the drink in his hand; heady, strong, hard to take in sometimes, and deliriously painful on withdrawal, Tom thought. He threw one more shot back, and saw that perhaps he could take in another three or four shots. He may have taken himself to oblivion, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep him from thinking.

He held his hand out for another shot, and, upon receiving it, drank a burning and bitter toast to Gin.