A band by the name of Dr. Hook has a simply wonderful album called ‘Sloppy Seconds’ – ingenious name, fellas, quite nice – with a song called ‘The Queen of the Silver Dollar’.  Well, I wanted to write a story incorporating bits and pieces of that song, along with the basic gist of what happened in it, but this is what came up.  Absolutely nothing like the story the song tells, I’d recommend reading this anyway, because I wrote it and my word is that of God!   …or not.  Ah well, read, revel, review!

Silver Dollar Queen

It’s been years since I’ve been a child.  Years since I was small enough to sit on my mother’s lap or for my father to give me a piggyback ride.  It’s been years since I was ever called Charlotte Montgomery.  Funny how you never really think about days gone by as they are passing, or of what we must sacrifice to gain something else …I believe it’s called opportunity costs, but no matter.  I think it’s damn funny sometimes when I roll out of bed and look in the mirror and can’t recognize who I’ve become.  Whatever happened to the bright and happy little girl in pigtails and pink?  Whatever happened to the high school-heartbreaker wearing the quarterback’s football jacket junior year and dancing the night away with the valedictorian at the prom?  Whatever happened to the sweet and charming girl with such a promising future and the optimistic outlook on life?  Sometimes, I’ll stare at my reflection in the mirror forever, asking myself those questions, and lately I’ve even known the answer.

            She grew up.

            She dried the tears on her face, wiped away the streaks of mascara and threw away the ripped satin gown.  She got sick of the screaming and fighting, sick of dodging flying dishes and of listening to her sister throwing up the meals in the bathroom while everyone else was sleeping.  She grew tired of watching her brother drift farther away, staying out until morning and running with the ‘bad’ crowd, tired of playing innocent and ignorant when her mother’s little boyfriends dropped by after her father slammed the door and left for the bar for the night.  She swallowed her pride, swallowed her hopes, her dreams, her ambitions, and she gave it all up to get away and to begin anew.  She left that skinned-knee, giggly girl and the memories, bittersweet and good alike, she left Charlotte in that country town and grew up.

            In the morning, after I crawl from the tangled sheets and the warmth of a strange man in my bed, when I stagger to the bathroom to shower away the filth I’ve gathered from another night making bad decisions and praying that there won’t be a price to pay for this once-upon-a-time lover, I get lost in the past and trying to rediscover myself.  But the golden-blond plaits that once hung to my navel have been cut to just past my chin, and those baby-blue eyes that used to shine with promise seem darkened, shadowed and afraid.  The thin, small girl in the mirror seems a pale reflection of the cheery child I was, a ghost of the sixteen-year-old hottie broken by a man as old as my dad.  But no, that was Charlotte, that was Charlotte who was raped after the senior prom by some drunken vagabond prowling the streets.  That was Charlotte whose mother shoved her away and whose father ridiculed her, Charlotte who cried alone in the night and ran at last, ran to escape the things she could not change.  That was Charlotte …and she was Charlie now.

            That’s me all right, Charlie, barely out of my twenties and still where I was at seventeen.  It was laughable, ironic, scarcely within my ability to believe.  Surely the girl most envied throughout junior high and high school couldn’t be the confused and lost woman standing naked before the mirror in a cheap motel.  And those weren’t my humble breasts being fondled the night before, fondled with about as much care and love as they had been that first time, when my head had ached and my body was bruised, blood in my mouth and tears in my eyes, when that bastard had taken something from me in a desperate, painful act of lust.  Up until then, I hadn’t known what innocence was, hell, I hadn’t even fully understood sex.  Yeah, they gave us all those talks, and of course everyone else was doing it, but not Charlotte, not me.  Bastard.

            Jaded is a pretty word, shattered is too, abused seems flighty, something that only happened to me a few times in that way, and raped is just a disgusting term, something dirty and gross, something unreal and impossible.  And a part of my past nonetheless.  Charlotte was a wuss, a prissy girl, a baby, but Charlie, she’s tough.  Charlie is an independent woman, fully able to take care of herself; Charlie doesn’t need some pathetic excuse for a man to protect her from all things ugly in the world.  Charlie’s strength is, I suppose, why I’m finally able to acknowledge that Charlotte and Charlie are one in the same.  I really am growing up, but in the process, I feel like I’m loosing everything I was, I feel like a kite with no string being buffeted in the air and heading for a tree.  Why can’t I grow up without becoming a stranger to myself?  No one else has, why am I the one singled out?  Self-pity is another thing I don’t particularly like, self-pity or self-deprecation or self-abuse.  Who needs to do that to themselves when there are plenty of lowlife assholes in this world to do it for them?  Then again, I could also ask, who needs to sell out her body to sleazy jerks she’ll likely never see again, just for a few measly bucks to live another day?

            Me, Charlie, that’s who.

            Charlie, the big strong girl who doesn’t need anyone.  Charlie, the tough girl who is completely alone, and completely afraid, and completely foolish.  Charlie is the girl with a broken childhood and a picture-perfect life on the outside.  I guess that’s why people admire pictures so much.  When you’re looking at a picture, you’re safe, separated from the people inside by a pane of glass, so you can see the good and you don’t have to even wonder about what the bad is like.  With pictures, there is no yelling, no new man to wake up to every morning, no haunting images reflected in the glass of the bathroom mirror.  See, I like pictures, because I can look at them all day and come up with wonderful scenarios to play through my mind, worlds where families are whole and happy, worlds where sex is a beautiful thing shared between lovers, and where love exists …where happiness exists, where strangers don’t stare you in the face every time you look in the mirror.  That’s why I hate pictures too, because those fantastic places are beyond my reach, high above the clouds and far out past the sun and stars, too far beyond my grasp, and, sometimes, too far for my eyes to see.  Daydreams are things easily broken by the daily grind, and those castles in the sky have always had the drawbridge pulled up, locking me out.

            The water in the tap is always either scalding hot or freezing cold, never capable of being just right.  I like the cold water better when I splash it in my face because it wakes me up in the morning and lets me laugh at the face that is my own, but it’s the hot water that cleanses my body of the feel of the hands of horny men with cash, and lets me push the silly murmurings they whisper into my ears away.  All men are the same, grubby and greedy bastards only looking to satisfy the ‘big’ man in their pants, never mind if there’s a wife and kids waiting at home for daddy to return from ‘working late’.  But hey, they pay before getting any action, and I don’t care whose name they scream, sex has never filled me with ecstasy, not the first time, or this time, and the last time probably won’t either.

            No one should have to make a living like this …but I figure as long as there are men who aren’t being satisfied at home, there will be girls like me, going anywhere with a bed with different boys each night, queens in their own regard.  All these jesters crowding around, begging and fawning for a favor from the queen, thinking dirty thoughts about the queen’s dress in a heap on the floor and fighting amongst themselves to see which one gets to bring the silver dollar queen home.  Frankly, I’d rather be a peasant in rags and tags, I’d rather be slaving under a corporate big shot ogling my goods from afar rather than squeezing and pinching after paying the price.  I feel so sorry for Charlie sometimes, so sorry for Charlotte; so sorry for me, but only when I’ve got to face myself in the morning and wonder where the blissful child has capered off to while the jesters flock and bow.