.stale coffee

sushi dinners are fun dinners

I hate her. I hate her. I hate hate hate hate everything about her.

She reeks of discontent, the smell of stale alcohol, the smell of flats with too many people living in them, mattresses stained with coffee and cum. She is a burning slash against the world, flittering and brightly vivacious. I hate her, because she makes me hate her. Her nails, long and neon-pink, dragging lazily down the curve of my hip, jutting and so sharp I could cut her palms with one jerk. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, hate hate hate hate hate hatehatehatehate.

She is a poison, leaking and acidic, corroding at the soft tissues in my veins, cutting up my belly so that my stomach juices filter through and blotch the colour out of my skin, so I am pale, so pale in comparison to her, so pale that I am just a ghost and she is a flesh-covered demon. She is a poison and I hate her so completely, so utterly, it makes my bones bend backwards, makes my ribs snap open so she can tear at my heart, lick her lips clean of my blood, chock me down with rough-and-tumble teeth.

I hate her, so, so much. So, so much I love her.

She finds me in the park, curled up on a bench with my fingers buried deep in my jumper to keep the cold from sinking in. I haven’t slept in three days, haven’t gone home because he will be there, smoking his pipe, watching the fizzing, static-diseased television, eyes like robotic monsters. He’ll stare and stare and eventually I’ll remember that once upon a time ago I loved him, he loved me, back when we were kids, but now he’s an addict and I am decaying.

“Wild white horse, why you looking so glum?” She purrs, sitting down next to me.

She is electric, bright on my eyes, burning visions into my skull. Her hair is black, streaked red and deadly, eyes coated in thick make-up, blue and red, neon, her clothes tight fitting and stylish, like she had rolled in paint and gone out clubbing. She smells soft, like flowers and stale coffee, like all the good, sensual things in the world. I see her, drugs and wildcats and bright colours, and I want to break her. So colourful. She doesn’t know anything.

She grabs my arm, pulls me against her, takes me home. That’s how we meet, and I look like a drizzled rat, drenched or drowning, sinking and swimming. She gives me her clothes, a tight-fitting pink t-shirt with letters spelling obscenities, spray on jeans, no socks, no bra. I keep my knickers on because she’s watching me undress and the heat in the room dries them quickly.

“I’ve seen you before, you know.” She says, her voice like velvet and scotch. “In the clubs, pretending you don’t care.” Her lips quirk up, cat-like, vicious. She’s beautiful.

“Yeah?” I mumble, pulling the t-shirt over my head. “Who’re you then?”

I’m waiting for the name, something exotic, something dangerous. She’s a wild-cat, desperate and throaty and I can feel the heat coming off her from across the room.

“Just call me Jet,” She says airily, layered eyes following the lines of my waist and hips. “Everyone else does.”

That’s it. I’m shot through the heart, dark and poisoned, she takes me in, gives me clothes, takes me out like I’m her pet and I love it.

I become entangled in her life.

I sleep in the same double bed as her, bundled up tight in her shorts and vests. Her room is a neon nightmare, the walls white except for the one furthest away - that’s pink, eye-scorching pink. There are posters, magazine cuttings and record covers everywhere, boys and girls lounging lethargically along her plaster, grinning and sneering, so many bands and musicians I’ve never even heard of. She collects things, weird little things you’d throw away normally. Broken records, plastic toys, Russian rolls with the paint chipped off. Things you find in garage sales or car boot throw-outs. Things you find in rubbish bins.

At night, when we’re lying in the dark and her breathing goes deep and wistful, I watch the moonlight glint like cold-eyes off of her weird collection, watch the paint glow like space-ships. Sometimes she kicks the sheets off her and I watch her flat-lined belly rise and fall as she dreams, her breasts flattening as she stretches out like a spoilt cat. Her ribs are like ripples under water, soft and jutting, cutting away the stilted air that hangs in her bedroom like wet fog.

I wake up alone, with the sunlight brushing its golden fingertips through my hair, in my eyes, burning me awake. Everything glows, everything is iridescent and beautiful and remarkable. I can hear music playing in the front room, something French and melodic, a man’s voice crooning through the thin plaster on the walls. Jet is a musical beast, she can’t work through life without a rhythm carrying her on its back. At first I thought this made her weak, that someone who boasts so much independence was dependent on something with no substance, with nothing to hold itself together with except abstract concepts and wavering, electric voices.

But then I remember how dependent I am on her, and I cringe in revulsion and forget about her being weak.

“Last night I dreamt of rabbits,” She says, slim wrist balancing a cigarette whilst her other hand scoops up the last of her coffee. She winces and I remember we are out of sugar. “They were eating our records and clothes and I didn’t mind. I just kept worrying that they’d get sick.”

“How nice of you,” I murmur. We are sat at the kitchen table, a tiny, rickety thing painted white, covered in newspapers and teapots and ashtrays; Jet’s nail polish pots litter my side and I start painting my nails electric blue out of boredom.

“They all went out of the window, then I woke up.”

She looks up at me, behind her fringe, behind her cutting-glass eyes. I can taste the scent of change in the air, liquidated and rolling, so thick it could solidify on my tongue and we could bend shapes out of it. “Let’s go out for the day,” She says, all sweet and vulgar. My heart trips. “To the zoo. Its summer, its nice. Let’s buy ice creams and walk through the park.”

This is her desperate quest for normality, this is her pushing her fingers into the rotten flesh of fruit, squeezing it of rancid juices and sucking them from her bony fingers, hoping it is still sweet, still succulent despite festering under time’s withered body. I push my hands out against the wooden table, watch my nails glitter like ice-rubies hidden deep in the Artic circle, my heart humming like a dying refrigerator. I nod mutely, watch her pale-thin face split into a grin, watch her stand up and tumble excitedly into the bedroom, to get ready.

“Get up, then!” she calls, voice like a bird cry. “Wear one of my dresses, they’ll look beautiful on you.”

Obedient little witch I am, I scrap the chair away and fumble awkwardly with the waistband of my shorts. Obedient little girl, following her mother’s outstretched arms.

I am weak.

The zoo is crowed, children and families and couples peering through the glass windows and gasping with awe as they catch a glimpse of a monkey hiding in the shadows of a tree. We smoke cigarettes on a bench, our spines arched like doorways to new worlds, our lips curled in derisive sneers, smoke curling from between our teeth like spirals of deceit. Parents look at us with eyes sparking disgust and desire and I watch Jet tug her dress up her thighs, inching it so that her milk-white flesh can soak up sun and stares.

“I like animals,” She says, dragging her teeth along her cigarette, sucking up the smoke. “I like these animals, trapped in cages and slowly building up their frustration for the time when their keepers go in to feed them.”

“They’re like us,” I say softly, my lungs burning, inflamed with tar and acids and summer sun. “Trapped in cages, but still wild.”

“I’ll never be trapped in a cage,” Her voice is defiant, as if daring me to say otherwise. I take another smoke and let my eyes fall on her long legs. “Me and you, we’re like wolves. We howl to our gods and we bite our lovers in bits.”

I nod absently and think about the lover I left behind. Is he still sitting on his yellowing sofa, smoking cigarettes and shooting up, watching Saturday cartoons until his mind rolls blank? Does he even know I’m gone? I left all my stuff, everything, have been gone for over three weeks. Has he called the police?

I don’t think I care.

“I left my things,” I whisper, chucking my cigarette into the bin next to me. “I left my things… at home.”

It’s the first time I’ve talked of home, because home is where the heart is and my heart is locked firmly in my breast and I am living with Jet, want to live with Jet forever. I’m happy. As happy as I can get.

“I thought you said you had no home?” Jet hums, stretching back and lazily eyeing a man across the way. He looks at her with smoulder-black eyes and I can feel a snarl ripple under my lungs. Jealousy.

“I don’t. Well, I had a place to live… I-”

“You don’t need to tell me about your past,” She sings, turning her head to me, her oil-bright eyes knocking the breath from me. “It doesn’t exist anymore. The past is just a concept, an illusion to make us think that we live in stable times.”

He doesn’t exist. My life doesn’t exist. I can understand that. “Did you leave anything special?”

“Just… just photos. Things I collected. Special things.” I frown into my hands and wait for her to tell me that I am pathetic for holding physical objects in such high regard, weak to be so materialistic about my life - memories, feelings, secrets, they do not exist anymore.

But she doesn’t. I look up and she is looking at me with some vague expression floating on her features, some long-lost feeling she has forgotten in her quest of self-realisation. She reaches forwards, fingers brushing the hair from my eyes. I hold my breath.

“I’ll get them for you.” She says, voice like cream on my skin. “And then I’ll give you a haircut.”

Something flowers in my chest, something bright and eager and fragile, like small bones in strong fingers. I look at Jet, with her crystalline eyes and devil-lips, look at her and smile. She peers curiously back at me, like she has never seen me before, like it is only us in the whole zoo and the animal calls and children’s laughter fades like old records scratching to a finish. “Lets get some ice-cream,” She murmurs, pulling her hand away and resting it on her bare thigh. “Come on.”

Obedient rat, I follow.

I wake up alone. The sheets are twisted around my legs, curled tight on my hips like a clingy lover, pushing my skin tight against fabric. I’m slick with sweat and I try fuzzily to remember my dream. It was vibrant and dizzying. I roll onto my belly, grin into my pillow and notice how cold it is.

There’s a light on in the hallway, so I know she is up. Jet has fits of insomnia and I often wake up in the early hours of the morning to loud, electric sounds pulsating through the walls like I have been swallowed by a large god and his stomach is digesting and dissolving me.

I get up, peel away the sheets that stick to me like a second skin. There’s no music, just silence, and the emptiness of our flat scares me. We’ve built ourselves up on noise - we are loud at night and loud in the morning. Jet is a concept wrapped in music, layered with a barbaric tongue and a constant need to confirm her existence. She would never sit in silence, let herself be lost in the moving world.

I find her in the bathroom, smoking cigarettes and lounging in the bath like a goddess bathing in milk or the blood of a thousand virgins. When I walk in her eyes flutter over me, butterflies on my skin, glassy and bright - she’s taken something, I think, something good, something nice. She doesn’t seem to mind me intruding, we have seen each other naked many times, living so closely together, it is hard not to.

She’s so pale, a ghost lost at sea, her skin like a porcelain figure standing in an art gallery. Her ribs protrude like water ripples, creating a soft-boned cage for her heart, a stand for her small breasts, a ledge for the dip of her belly. Her hips jut like knives, so sharp you could break your fingers on them just trailing their lines and points. Her black crow-feather hair splays around her, floating like reeds in the water, slick like wet fur or oil, gleaming the way all dark things do.

“Hello love,” She whispers, bringing her cigarette up to her lips, pulling back breath and letting ribbons of smoke unfurl from between her clacking teeth. “I got your things back.”

My heart jolts against my bones, spurting blood fast through the narrow tubes of my body, warming me like hot lava. I take back a stolen gulp of air and look down at my feet, at my toenails - Jet spent two hours painting them different colours whilst we watched violent gangster movies the night before. I remember the feel of her breath on my shins, how she had her back to the television, her spine arching forwards as I sat on the sofa and tried to concentrate on the guns and thugs.

“Thanks,” I murmur, moving forwards to sit on the loo.

“I’ll give you a haircut next,” She says, clipping her lips around her cigarette and using her free hands to grab at the bottle of shampoo sitting on the shelf. “Wash my hair?”

I shuffle forwards, my knees thumping against the bathtub, my shorts sliding higher up my thighs. She gives me the bottle, slick with water, the smell of coconuts rolling under my nose like a flirtatious sigh.

I wash her hair, like I’m a maid in olden times looking after some glamorous lady, her husband travelling around the world as a socialite, coming home smelling of cheap liquor and stale sex. I’d be the soft young maid, with kind eyes and swift hands, who helps her get out of bed in the morning when everything feels lonely and pointless.

I scrub her skull, careful not to scratch, watch her close her eyes and hum emptily. It echoes off the walls and I trace my finger down behind her ear, up the nap of her neck. She purrs.

“I always loved it when my mother washed my hair,” She says softly. “It was like diving head first into femininity, the first traces of being a woman.”

“Yeah,” I croak, grabbing the metal jug from the side of the bath, scooping up water. “Head back.” She obeys and I am careful to cup my hand on her head so that the water doesn’t fall into her eyes. The smell of steam and coconut is heady and delicious and I can feel the heat of the water lick at my cheeks and lips like a hungry tongue.

“You treat me like paper,” She hums, coy smile drifting over her lips. “As if I’ll fall apart if you’re rough.”

I don’t look at her, instead I reach for the conditioner. “I suppose that’s part of your charm, isn’t it?” Her hand reaches out of the water, dripping like a monster emerging from a lake. I freeze as she presses her palm to my cheek, wet and hot, fingers smudging against my lips. “My little tiger, burning on the outside, just a tender little kitten in.”

I finish washing her hair and go back to bed, my heart hammering under my ribs, thumping, pulpy with blood. She doesn’t follow, instead I am lulled asleep by jazz music and her clear, chiming voice singing along.

I look through the boxes of things she collected from my old home, my old home that no longer exists, but is rather a memory of a memory that I’ll soon stamp out of my brain. She got all my photo albums, even the one I had hidden under my mattress, the one full of photographs of my old lovers, all Polaroid pictures, taken when I was half-drunk on love and lust, dressed in underwear, where the light was dull and dark. I wonder if she tore the place to bits looking for things that interested her, or whether she asked him to help her. I hope not. I don’t want them together, ever, even in the slightest of moments.

She stole a few records, I notice, mildly amused. Some of them aren’t even mine, but she took them anyway. There’s a whole box of mix tapes and CD and vinyl, some of them I can’t stand anymore, because of the memories attached to them. She took some of my clothes, only a few, only the ones that suited her current fashion, the fashion she had insisted I be part of. The rest are lost.

I jump as Jet clamberers loudly into the kitchen, a Styrofoam cup steaming between her long piano fingers, nails the colour of cherries. She’s wearing a knee-length floral dress, belt pressed tightly around her skinny waist, beads and charms clacking merrily on her neck and wrists. She’s beautiful, as always, her lips painted red like she’s been sucking the juice out of strawberries.

“Love, I’m just going to the market for some food. We’re out of edible things, we might get rickets if we keep this up. Want this soup?” She steps over my things and starts fidgeting irritably with her sunglasses. “I got it from that café across the road. Its French onion, you like that, don’t you?”

I nod mutely and she passes it to me. “Anyway, yeah, I’m going out, is there anything you want? We’re out of peanut butter, which you seem to love, want me to get some?”

She’s talking fast, like the devil has hold of her tongue. I wonder how many pills she has taken today.

“Sushi,” I croak. “Can you get sushi, for dinner?”

She smiles big, Cheshire, exotic, and my heart does a funny little dance behind my ribs.

“’Course, love. I’ll be back later. Why don’t you put your stuff wherever you want it?”

I nod again, unsure where to look as she starts pulling at her belt. “Anyway, bye.” She leans forwards, presses a timid little kiss on the side of my mouth and trots elegantly out of the room.

The colour princess, I think. Where would I be without her?

Dead. Dying. Swallowing cum for three quid a pop, just to buy food.

I take a sip of my soup and stare blankly at the boxes on the floor.

I am shaking, I’m so angry.

He’s sitting on the sofa, his lips half-open, drool sliding like a fat slug down his chin. He’s breathing deeply, but he isn’t asleep. I know he isn’t, he’s just floating on a heroin cloud, softly and gently, better than sex he said. That’s why he hasn’t touched me in three weeks. Because his dick only reacts to a needle now, nothing else.

What makes me angry, so fucking angry I could take the knife from the kitchen and swiftly slit his throat, is that it isn’t just him anymore. I peer into the living room and there’s a whole gang of them, skeletal creatures that are slumped along my carpet, watching the television I paid for, smoking my cigarettes. They look like the undead, grotesque puppets held up by strings of drugs and lies, their eyes almost popping from their sunken sockets. The dips of their bellies look like gaping mouths and one of them as a baby perched neatly on the kitchen top, asleep in its little basket. A baby. A fucking baby, in my house, where in the next room junkies are shooting up. I wonder if its breast fed, in which case its probably a junkie too.

I’m so angry I hurry over to the kitchen sink and vomit up my breakfast.

This is it, I seethe, my knuckles turning white as I grab hold of the side, steadying myself as I take in heady breaths. This is fucking it, I can’t take anymore of this shit.

I grab a jumper off the radiator, go into our bedroom and take every last penny I can find, just so the dirty fucker has to sell his soul to get another hit. On my way out I pause besides the baby, look down at its calm, sleepy face. Poor thing, I think, poor little thing, you probably won’t know your parents in the future, when social services take you away.

“It’ll be for the best,” I tell it. “You’ll be safer.”

I leave and I know I’ll never come back.

“I think we should get a pet.”

I pause in trying to get my mochi cakes from their packet to my mouth using only chopsticks. My fingers wobble so bad that my sticky rice often gets flung across the table and it takes Jet five minutes before she can eat again without spitting it out laughing. Sushi dinners are fun dinners in our flat.

“What kind of pet?” I ask, wiping my mouth so that the sweet sauce smears along my lips. I try to lick it away, but its so sticky. Jet is watching me, curiously following my tongue as it trails over my skin.

“I was thinking…” she pauses and looks back at my eyes, not even bothering to hide her smirk. “I was thinking a dog. Or a cat.”

“What about a snake?”

“I don’t think we could afford the mice on our simple wages, love.”

She’s right, of course. After a few weeks of lounging like a listless fox around her flat whilst she went out to sell records on her tiny street store with a man that looks like a British, working-class version of Barry White I finally got a job. I work in a musty comic-book shop, selling comics I know nothing about to men twice my age. Its not that bad, I think, because the owner is a sweet girl with chubby cheeks that always fold like a hamster’s when she smiles. She lets me put on whatever I want, record wise, because now I have adapted to Jet’s life I am starting to embrace the world of music. Sometimes the customers see fit to try and start a conversation with me, about comics, normally, with a hesitant little smile and a blush, and its then that I feel myself withering away slowly. Normally I never notice when people flirt with me and Jet has to point it out (usually quite loudly, in front of them, with slit-eyes and a sweetly sneering mouth, her arm wrapping around me possessively) and I don’t know how to make them leave.

Now I pay rent and don’t feel like a total dosser, wearing her clothes, eating her food, listening to her records. Instead I pay half, buy my own clothes and buy both of us new records whenever I can. She likes it when I get her something she hasn’t heard of before, like it’s a present, or something.

“A cat would probably be better,” I say. “Coming and going as it pleases. A dog will want attention a lot.”

She eyes me with something akin to amusement, something deep and filthy and as black as her crow-feather hair. I wonder if she thinks the same of me, just some little creature she took in, trembling and underfed, a pet for her to play with, to treat like family.

She wouldn’t think that of me, would she?

“I like cats,” She says, her lips curling. “They’re a lot like you, don’t you think?” I blink at her, uncertain. “Stray cats, all quiet and defensive and alone. Then you befriend them and they’re like aloof loyal soldiers. You’re quite like that.”

“An aloof cat soldier.” I murmur, vaguely irritated. “How lovely.”

“Well, before I let you stay here you were quite a bitch to me.”

I look up sharply, my fingers coiling around my chopsticks. What is she talking about?

“I’d never met you before then.”

She smile gets wider, slightly twisted, slightly bitter. My heart begins thumping like a basketball, loud and rumbling, echoing straight to my guts, making them squirm.

“You did, love, once or twice, in the clubs. Amongst the Soho Sleaze.”

“Really?” my voice comes out a sharp squeak, all tender-bellied, like a baby tickled for the first time. “I… I don’t remember that. Was I nasty?”

“Quite,” Her tongue gleams as she runs it over her teeth, like a hungry fox spying a wounded rabbits shivering in the undergrowth. “In the worst way. You ignored me. I hate being ignored, especially by those I admire.”

I stare at her, my eyes narrowing. On my plate my sushi doesn’t look as appetising anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur, putting my chopsticks down and reaching for my glass of wine. “I don’t remember. I’m sure I didn’t mean it.”

“Its alright,” She laughs, “I got you to notice me in the end.” An awkward weight settles in my stomach, heavy and thick, like I’ve eaten too much cake and it has clogged my veins with icing and jam and sponge. I don’t know how to react, don’t know what to say. Life with Jet is a series of awkward moments, punctured by alcohol and drugs and music. Much like any life, I suppose. I sigh and rub my eyes. “I’ll get that cat, then.” Jet says, reaching over to nab a piece of my uneaten sushi. “You can name it, if you like.”

The first time I met her she had a silver coat on, like models from New York, or old noir films where the woman would have cherry-lips and smouldering eyes and a tiny leather clutch bag that held her cigarillos.

Just call me Jet.

I don’t even think that is her real name. No, of course it isn’t. Everything about her is constructed, fabricated, lie after lie after lie, intercepted only by her vague eyes and her multi-coloured pills. She likes knickers from posh shops, lined with lace and frills, perfume she can’t afford and books set in Europe. She’s a colour-wizard, she surrounds herself with broken, beautiful things, interesting things that can start conversation.

She is a liar. She constructs them like she’s building houses, brick by brick, pulling shapes out of the air and moulding them into something beautiful, tangible. They are layered and complex and often they are about nothing at all, just an excuse to use up the stale air in her lungs. She spits colour and grins emptily at the stars, waiting for someone to catch her in her game.

I know she is a liar because I’m part of her lies.

Like a drawing on newspaper, filled to the brim with words, but words that aren’t about me at all. I am folded and created, moulded like some clay bird, to fit everything Jet wants. My hair is now fashionable, my clothes are stylish and electric, my music taste has been crafted and now I can’t help but like what I am supposed to. Everything about me is a lie. I am so fabricated, so fictitious, sometimes I don’t even know if I am real or a bi-product of Jet’s overactive imagination.

Sometimes I think that we are perfect, just as we are. We buy food together, have fun and laugh and watch shit chick flicks on Sunday morning when we are both hung-over, the quilt covers pulled over us on the sofa as we nurse our broken heads. We are best friends, living together, sleeping in the same bed, sharing records and books and clothes. We’re pressed so tightly together I don’t know where I end and she begins.

But then I look at her sometimes and catch sight of a smirk, a suppressed, grotesque sneer that slides like grime along her lips. Her eyes glitter like foul oil, hiding all the dead creatures with thick, endless black, chocking and smothering everything inside her. I see this look, this cruel, fleeting stare that makes me think of cats burying their claws deep into mouse guts, or wolves chewing contently on bone. Possessive, cold and triumphant. I catch this and my insides shrivel into ice and dry sticks and I remember that she picked me up off the street, force-fed me her life, moulded me with her fingers.

We aren’t best friends, like the girls in films we watch. We don’t have a friendship like the one you’d envision as a child, warm and happy and bubblegum pink.

There is something, something awkward and filthy, just below the surface, like a thin layer of oil, bleeding the life out of the sea, destroying all natural things, and I am waiting for it to rise to the top and chock me as well.

a.n:

is barry white american? i'm pretty sure he is.
i wrote this to be a nice little love story but it turned out messed up anyway, because it seems i can't write unless there's some kind of fucked up element going on. it isn't girl-love. its obsession and friendship that buries itself so deep inside your bones it consumes you. i don't know if i should make them love each other in a sexual way, but maybe. who knows?
i think the friendship you have between girls is really interesting. a lot of the relationships i have with girls turn unhealthy, one way or another. its fun to write about, i suppose.

anyway. miss me? i missed you.