The Long Distance Loneliness of the Heart Hunter : Jamison Spencer
WHEN I STEPPED out of the elevator, I checked the fingerprint smeared plaque hanging on the wall and made a left, then started counting off room numbers. The hallway turned right, and when I followed it I was brought face to face with some guy, some employee, room service, bellboy, security, whatever, some guy in a silly red uniform with gold tassels hanging from the shoulders, the kind of thing the usher of a 30’s movie palace would wear. Then I noticed the room number I was looking for. It was between us.
I paused for half a second, then kept going, past him and the room both. He didn’t look at me. I paused when he was out of sight and waited, listening to the hollow sounds of the hotel and letting him put some distance between us. After he was gone, and I mean totally, after I heard the elevator ding in the distance, I turned around and slowly approached the door. The tv was blaring inside, something with lots of explosions. It didn’t seem right. I worried I had the wrong room. Or the right one.
I stood there, going over options in my head, sure I would get ripped off, or robbed, or killed, imagining how each one would play out, all the grisly details. I decided to leave, but as I turned away, there was a laugh from inside the room. A real laugh. It sounded unforced and pure, like it was just as much a shock to whoever was on the other side of that door as it was to me. That did it. I knocked.
It’s never really made sense to me why people are so down on tax time. Everybody bitches and complains about having to fill out those forms. Why? They wait until the last possible second, and stress about the deadline, and get caught up in that national frenzy to get them in the mail. Not me. I do mine early. And why not? I already paid the taxes. That’s what they don’t get. Tax time isn’t about paying money. It’s all about the return.
Oh sure, if you’re some rich asshole (and to me rich pretty much means average- like say, if you own your own home- that’s rich to me), you probably owe lots of money when ol’ April rolls around, but really, why should I give a shit? For the rest of us, the working poor, the tax return is all about getting back the little pieces they’ve siphoned off your already measly paycheck all year. It’s money you needed back then, only now, they’re admitting it.
For me, the tax return is an almost holy thing. The one time out of the whole year when I get a big lump sum check that I don’t already owe to someone else. That’s when I make all my major purchases. Every year it’s something different, something special, expensive, something I could never buy for myself at any other time.
Last year, I took a trip. The best kind. Things had never been the same since Mom died, and I started feeling stuck, like nothing would change unless I did something drastic. I quit my job and piled in my car with no particular destination and a pocketful of cash, and I made it pretty far, almost two thousand miles before I fell in love with a cute blonde waitress and stopped moving.
She was looked unbelievable in a pair of blue jeans. Really unbelievable. I’m a sucker for little things like that. She told me no one had ever touched her the way I did. She told me lots of things. We were gonna get married, and I was gonna adopt her son and everything, even though he growled at me like a dog and once bit me, when I held his mother too close. She was long gone now.
Which sort of led me to this years purchase. I got sick of dating. Sick of being left. At a certain point, I threw up my hands and surrendered. I missed enough people. No more. But I was still human. I still had needs. Then, one night, my blonde waitress called to tell me she was getting married. That was it. I got on the internet.
Prostitution has been completely revolutionized by the whole internet phenomena. It took a lot of the danger and unpredictability out of things. That was good news for someone like me. Some guys are born for this kind of stuff. They know how it all works instinctively, right from the womb for all I know. They probably all had big brothers to teach them when they turned thirteen. I didn’t have any brothers. I didn’t even have a father.
So I did my research. I spent hours on line, searching for any information I could find. I read about how it works, how to act, what to expect. Better yet, I read about the girls, and saw pictures too. Nude pictures are standard practice. The girls blur out their faces, true. I mean we are talking about a crime here, even if it is a victimless one. So they blurred out their faces and flaunted their bodies, but even that was different, at least different from what I’m used to.
Girls flaunt their bodies. That’s just a fact. But they follow certain societal rules. They act like they don’t know they’re doing it. That’s their job. We act like we don’t notice. That’s ours. That’s how society keeps running with half naked girls walking the streets.
With these girls, it was different. It wasn’t about tight clothes, that outline and highlight the body beneath, or midriff baring t-shirts, or pants that ride low and flaunt thongs. No. With these girls it was something more substantial, less game playing. The pictures had an almost clinical feel to them. Just body parts. No shame.
Which was how she opened the door. No shame at all. The door opened up and there she was, in a sparkly blue evening gown that looked totally out of place on a girl opening a motel room door, smiling away at me. She didn’t seem ashamed or nervous or anything like that. That was me. She seemed curious and confident. Playful even. And beautiful. Holy shit was she beautiful.
To be honest, I didn’t expect much in the face department. Call me a pessimist, but when I saw the blurred faces on the photos I pretty much assumed the girls weren’t that cute. Hot bodies with average faces, like strippers, you know? Michelle though, she was something else. She was young and cute and friendly, and I started to panic a little. She looked like the kind of girl I would go for. That wasn’t what I wanted at all.
Michelle held open the door and I walked into the room, nothing special there, just a hotel room, without even a suitcase or pile of dirty clothes to give it any personality. The curtains were green (which surprised me, I must admit), and I found myself looking out across the parking lot to the abandoned shopping center next door, and the pay phone I had used to get up here. The tv was still blaring and there were still lots of explosions. I watched it for a minute, but didn’t recognize any of the actors. After a moment of hesitation, I sat on the bed.
“He told you to just give me one eighty, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
I took the money out of my right pocket and didn’t count it, because I already had, repeatedly. I layed it on the corner of the dresser and then sat back down on the bed. She smiled at me.
“This whole place is full of kids,” she said.
“What?”
“When I checked in, they were everywhere. Running up and down the halls, screaming at the top of their lungs.”
She went to the window and looked out.
“I wonder what’s going on,” I said. “Cub scout convention or something?”
“No telling.”
She took off her dress suddenly, with her back to me, still putting all her attention out the window. There was no ceremony, or drama, or special significance given to this action. She just pulled it off, slow and smooth, and then, standing there in a black thong and nothing else, neatly folded her dress and layed it on the second bed. After standing for a long moment in the window, broadcasting her body out to the night, she turned toward me and acknowledged my presence again.
As she turned around I took a long moment to drink her in, the sight of her, the smooth flawless skin and flat belly, the smile on her face, and the breasts, of course the breasts, bigger and rounder than they seemed covered, bigger than I expected, even bigger than I prefer. They were nice though. So perfectly round I wondered if they were fake.
Michelle walked to the bed wordlessly, smiling the whole way, and then lay beside me, taking a slow private moment to stretch languidly, her body fully arched like a cat in the hot window sun, before turning to me. I lay back awkwardly, hands behind my head, and she leaned in close, her face inches from mine. I tried to smile back at her, but it felt fake, even to me. Gradually, hers faded.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you nervous?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “First time. I mean, not first time, but first time like this. First time with a ... you know.”
“Yeah.” She nodded, but seemed less friendly. “I know.”
We lay there for a minute, not touching or talking. I couldn’t take my eyes off her skin, how smooth and perfect it looked. Pink, like a baby’s. I wanted to touch her, and I felt like I should be able to, but I didn’t want to do the wrong thing. I was still worried she wasn’t really a pro, that this was all some elaborate setup, and any minute the cops were gonna kick the door down. I wanted her to make the first move. Finally, she did.
“So, you gonna leave me feeling all uncomfortable? I’m the only one naked.”
“Oh yeah. No problem.”
I stripped quickly. For some reason I felt ashamed of my body. Isn’t that why you go to a pro? So you don’t have to worry about it? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole purpose of paying? How pathetic is that?
I took off everything but my boxers, and I started to take those off too, but I decided to wait since she was still wearing the thong. My clothes went in a pile on the floor. I lay back beside her on the bed and crossed my arms over my belly, trying to make it look casual, and not like I was hiding. Her eyes went to my left wrist, the scars. She ran her fingers over them and looked at me, probably hoping I would explain, but I didn’t. She traced the thickest all the way up my arm, and then moved her long fingers to my chest, over my heart, where there were no scars. Life doesn’t mark us the way we think it should. Sometimes we have to do that for ourselves.
She left her hand there for a minute, and I focused on the touch. There was another explosion from the tv and she started, then reached to the night stand for the remote. I watched a building explode silently. She replaced the remote and then turned back to me. Her hand stayed on her side of the bed.
When I first got off the highway, it only took me five minutes to find the Ramada Inn the guy on the phone directed me to. I didn’t go right to it, but stopped at the shopping center next door and looked for a phone. The shopping center was empty, the stores all boarded up. There were two phones but one was missing, the cord hanging down sad and frayed. The other one worked.
At first there was no answer and I started to worry that I had driven all this way for nothing (although part of me was relieved- don’t let me deny that), but after the fifth ring there was the hum of connection and then the same man’s voice as before, polite, wary, slightly middle-eastern sounding. I told him it was me again, and that I was in town.
“Good, good,” he said. There was a pause. “There is a problem. I can’t get in touch with Jenny.”
Crushing disappointment. But only for a second. Then there’s just determination, the will to do this, to see it through. I knew if I backed out now I’d never get this far again.
“I did hear from Michelle,” he continued hopefully.
I seized on that. Michelle. I remembered her from the website. She looked good enough. Not really my preferred body type maybe, but soft and warm, and that was enough for tonight.
“Michelle would be great,” I said, and when I heard myself say it, I knew I meant it.
“Ok. You know it’s two twenty?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
I fingered the money in my pocket, then turned and looked behind me to make sure no one was watching.
“Can you call me back in an hour?” he asked.
I frowned at the phone.
“An hour?”
“Yeah. I just need to set everything up.”
“Ok, no problem,” I said, and then I hung up the phone and stood there, blinking at the oncoming twilight and waiting for my stomach to settle down. When I felt a little better I walked back to my car, eyes scanning for trouble, police or otherwise. Now I had to find something to do for an hour, in some city I’d never even heard of. I saw a mall though, right when I got off the exit. I figured that was my best bet.
Inside, the mall was huge, with these great towering ceilings and all this open space above your head, the kind of size and grandeur they used to use for cathedrals. These days you only find that scale in temples to consumerism. The hallways sprawled out randomly in all directions, and I got the feeling they built the place in pieces, and added to it over the years. There was no sense of planning. I walked through aimlessly, taking it all in. Killing time.
I didn’t do any shopping, mostly cause I didn’t want anything. I know that sounds strange in our society, or anti-capitalist, or whatever, but it was true. I guess I’m easily satisfied. I’m not a coveter. I rarely want anything.
So anyway, I walked around, checking everything out. I was more interested in the people than what they had to sell. They were mall workers, same as you’d find anywhere, young and bored and impatient with their lives, ready to move on to the next phase. The whole adulthood thing. Or maybe they were just ready to get off work and go get fucked up with their friends.
Something about them was different, to me at least. Right down the road there was a hotel room with a girl in it, a girl waiting to have sex with me for money. I looked at this kid behind the counter of a Chik-Fil-A, picking his zits and flirting with the free sample girl, and I wondered, does he know. Do they all know? How can they be so casual with that going on right down the road? How crazy is that?
I bought a sandwich from the zit kid, and then spent a few minutes trying to eat it, before I finally got frustrated and pitched it in the trash. I was too excited to eat. It felt like the night before Christmas. Time had slowed to an agonizing crawl, and I found myself checking my watch so often that I was telling time with the second hand. Eventually, all the dials turned and the hands pointed at the right place. My hour was up.
I left the mall and drove back to the empty shopping center. When I called back from the same pay phone it rang and rang. I started to get pissed. I stood there with my teeth clenched in a sudden rage, knowing I had been screwed, that he had wasted my time and I wasn’t gonna get laid. Then I took a few deep breaths, counted to a hundred, and tried again. This time he answered right away.
“Hi,” I said, after an awkward pause. “You told me to call back in an hour?”
“Yeah. Hey.” He didn’t go on.
“So, uh, is everything cool?”
“Yeah, I talked to her. She’s just running a little late.”
In my head, I’m screaming, cause is this gonna happen or not, but on the outside I stayed calm.
“So, what do you want me to do? I mean, how late is she gonna be, or whatever?”
“Oh yeah, no, it’s cool. She should be getting there now. She just has to check in. Call me back in ten minutes and I’ll have the room number.”
Elation. Pure elation.
“Great. Yeah, that’s great. I’ll call you back.”
Then I stood in the parking lot and smoked two cigarettes in a row, one lit off the other. I took the money out of my pocket and counted it, cutting the two twenty out of the total. I put it, and what was left over, in separate pockets.
I stood there, and then, without planning on it, I picked up the phone and called the waitress. It was long distance, so I had to put in my calling card number and all that, which should have given me plenty of time to change my mind, but I didn’t. I wasn’t really expecting her to be home.
I wanted to leave a message. Really I wanted to hear her voice on the machine, the message she recorded while we were living together. I wanted to hear her sounding happy and satisfied. After the second ring, it was picked up, and I started scrambling to think of something to say, until I heard the hello. It was a man’s voice. I hung up.
The moon hung low and heavy above me. I stood there watching cars streak by, and listening to the sounds of the city at night. The hotel stood beside me, a tower of sameness, its symmetry only broken by the random placement of lit windows. It seemed to grin at me, gap-toothed, in some vaguely menacing way. Somewhere in there, a girl named Michelle was checking into a room so that she could have sex with me. I felt a warm nervous flutter inside and smiled.
Then I called back and set everything up. He was really apologetic this time, and even told me to discount it to one eighty for all my trouble. A bargain. I got the room number and hung up. I took the money out of my pocket and recounted it, then took a deep breath and headed into the hotel. I ducked my head as I walked past the front desk, avoiding the clerk’s eyes, then dove anonymously into an elevator. When the door closed, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in.
So we were laying there beside each other in our underwear, not touching, not at all, not at one single point along the whole length of our bodies, even though we were laying close and facing each other. There was a tangible inch of air between us, and I couldn’t make myself break through it. Minutes ticked by, and I found myself wondering if this time counted off my hour. Finally, she jumped to her feet and exhaled loudly.
She looked at me for a second, in a flat appraising way, and then climbed back up the bed on her hands and knees, between my legs. She worked her fingers under the waistband of my boxers and then yanked them off, so fast and smooth I almost couldn’t believe it was possible, like a party magician pulling out a tablecloth without breaking the dishes. I was suddenly extremely conscious of my nakedness, especially when she took me in her hands and lowered her head slowly, looking directly at it, examining me. Apparently I passed, because then she took me in her mouth and I instantly relaxed, closed my eyes, and arched my back.
I couldn’t believe she didn’t make me put on a condom. I mean, yeah, with girls I date I would never think of using a condom for a blow job, but still, a pro? I expected a pro to be super conscious of germs. Whatever. I was sure happy to be feeling the warmth of her mouth on me without one.
She was pretty good too. Not great. Not the best I’ve ever had, which maybe you would expect since she was the first pro I’d ever been with. It’s like any other skill. You have to really love what you’re doing to be the best. It takes passion to turn a craftsman into an artist.
But she was good enough, and I was digging it, don’t get me wrong. After a few minutes she stopped what she was doing and stood back up. I started to worry that I had done something wrong, but then she hooked her thumbs in the side strips of her thong and dropped it to the floor. She didn’t look at me. She calmly bent and picked up her underwear, folded them in half and laid them on top of the rest of her clothes. Then she returned to the bed, crawling back to the same place and resuming the same task, only this time she layed sideways, so her middle was level with my eyes. She opened her legs.
It was such a weird move, it took me a second to recognize it for what it was. A simple offer of goods. I guess we had finally crossed all her levels of testing, all her security checks. This was going to happen.
While I layed there, I allowed myself to really look at her, down there. It was so blatantly offered. It seemed like I was supposed to, you know? Not like I was being a perv or whatever.
She actually had a pretty thick patch of hair, which surprised me, cause I thought a pro would be groomed like a porn star. When I stretched my neck around to see closer, I realized the hair was only on the front, on the lowest part of her belly. Underneath, or between her legs, she had shaved, and you could see it, totally blatantly, just wrinkled skin on the outside, and inside, what? The secrets of man? What exactly is it that we expect to find in there? Something, something good enough to keep us all searching.
I stretched out my hand and touched her there, mostly because I suddenly realized I could. I ran my finger up and down clumsily a few times and then pushed it in. She felt tight, which seemed crazy. I mean obviously she had things bigger than my finger in there on a regular basis, but that’s how it felt. For some reason I remembered being fifteen, my first fumbling attempts at sex, with girls who always had to hurry home before curfew.
Then, without planning to do it all, I leaned forward and began licking her there. She responded by raising her leg higher and angling towards me, sliding into the pocket of my body, turning this into an official position. The 69. Wow. I had never done this before, not just with a prostitute, but with anyone. She smelled and tasted stronger than the girls I’d been with, and of course, in my head I’m freaking out, screaming at myself, don’t go down on the hooker, but to my body it’s no better or worse. Still female. Still good.
So we went at it like that for a while, facies buried in each other’s crotches, and then I started worrying about time again. Like how much had gone by, and how much was left, and all that. It wasn’t the money, I didn’t care about that, I would have happily paid her whatever I had. I just didn’t want to run out before the deed was done. I needed results. This one time, this one thing, out of the millions of crazy things I tried, this time, I needed success.
I pulled away from her and leaned back a bit, watching her as she kept at it. I leaned my head back and looked toward the night stand, trying to catch a glimpse of the clock, but she caught me, and misinterpreted my action.
“You ready?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“I saw you looking,” she said, and she nodded her head at the night stand, which, I now noticed, had condoms laying on it, in a pile, like the contents of a child’s emptied pocket.
I felt embarrassed. Caught having dirty thoughts. Which was, admittedly, a pretty stupid way to feel in this situation. I smiled at her to cover it up.
“Oh, uh. Well, yeah.”
She smiled back at me, and, for a second, I thought I saw a glimpse of something else in her eyes, amusement, or maybe ridicule. How pathetic do you have to be for a hooker to laugh at you?
She stood up from the bed and turned to the window again, her back to me. I watched her from where I lay, naked and still, lost in another private moment. I wondered what she saw out there in the darkness. I wondered if she even saw the night, or if she was looking right through it, looking at some person or place from her past, something that hurt her once. Someone that left.
It was only a minute before she turned back to me, but it felt longer. She calmly walked to the nightstand and picked up the condom, shed the wrapper, and put it on me, smooth and quick, easily. Then she was back on the bed, on her back, arms and legs open, waiting. This was for real. This was going to happen.
I climbed awkwardly on top of her, between her legs, but didn’t lower my weight. I just hung there in space, hovering, without actually touching. She smiled at me, but it felt empty. It no longer felt like she was in to this at all. She took me in her hand and guided me to her, then, with her left hand at my waist, she pulled my weight quickly down, and me inside. I was shocked by the feeling, not down there, with a condom on I’m not really feeling anything down there, but along the whole length of my body, every where her skin touched mine. Just the feel of skin on skin. Heaven.
And we were off. Slow and steady at first, and then, in no time, we were fully involved, sweaty, bodies sticking together, out of breath. She wasn’t doing that whole porn star fake moaning thing, which was a total relief. I hate that. I’d much rather listen to someone’s breathing. You can really tell that way. You can hear them get caught up in it.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was really having sex with this girl. It was crazy. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her, badly. All of a sudden, kissing her seemed more important, more hot and intimate than having sex, but I didn’t know if I was allowed.
I looked down at her, eyes closed, face turned to the side, forehead wrinkled, and I hovered there above her, thinking I might as well try. I began kissing her neck, following the crease to her throat. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I kissed all over her neck, shoulder, the side of her face, everywhere but her mouth, which seemed taboo. I zeroed in on the pulse in her throat, where the skin burned hot from the blood beneath. My lips buzzed with the steady beating of her heart.
But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth. I kept telling myself to just try, the worst she could do is say no and then, so what, no big deal, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I would lean in close and hang there, with my face over hers, until she sensed my presence and opened her eyes to look up at me. Each time, when our eyes met, I lost my nerve, and went back to her throat to try to come up with another approach.
And then it happened. The worst possible thing. I got so focused on the whole kissing thing, so worried, that downstairs I started to fade. At first I didn’t even notice, and she was kind enough to not point it out. I kept thrusting away with what I had left, which was rapidly becoming less and less. Then I started to suspect, because something didn’t feel right, but I still wasn’t sure. I reached down with my hand and felt at the place we came together, our junction, to see.
Then, once I checked, I knew, and once I knew I started worrying about it more and more, which of course made it worse and worse. It didn’t take long before it was unavoidable, and I had to pull out and face up to it. Michelle looked kind of pissed, although she was doing her best to hide it. A professional to the end.
What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you nervous?”
“Well, yeah. I am nervous. But it’s ok.”
She looked doubtful, but she nodded anyway, like sure, of course it’s ok. Then she leapt up and went into the bathroom, where I couldn’t see her, pausing only to slide the condom off of me and take it with her.
I wish I could say this was the first time this had happened, and I could say that, in fact I did say that every time it happened. But it wasn’t true. This had been going on for a while. I wanted to do something about it. All those Viagra commercials make it seem real easy, but try being twenty five and working up the courage to tell your doctor you can’t get it up. Then try getting him to believe you. Sixty year old men are having better sex than me. That really pisses me off.
I heard water running from the bathroom, and then, just as quick, it was cut off and she was coming back over to me with a white washcloth in her hand, proudly emblazoned with the red Ramada logo. I jumped when she wrapped it around me, so warm and wet and unexpected, and she mistook my surprised pleasure for disapproval.
“Sorry,” she said. “Rubber doesn’t really taste good.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, and then immediately regretted it.
She raised her eyebrows and gave one single soft snort. She finished washing me off and then, just as suddenly, took me back into her mouth. I closed my eyes involuntarily and then, when she sucked harder, pulling me all the way in, I arched my back and moaned. He was back in business.
This time I just went with the whole head thing, cause, to be honest, the no condom blow job felt a whole lot better than the condom clad sex. Especially when she did that hard sucking thing, which was amazing, and something new, something I had never felt before. I tried to focus on the pleasure, tried hard to finish, and I kept getting really close, but then she would calm down, and so would I. Frustrating.
Eventually she took her mouth off of me, and rose to her hands and knees, turning to face away from me, then lowering her face to the bed, her cheek to the sheet. She handed me a second condom and watched over her shoulder as I clumsily tore the wrapper away and slid it down the length of me, still hard, still strong, still hanging in there.
I entered her from behind, because that’s how she offered herself, but I felt a little weird about it. I've never been into that whole doggy style thing. It seemed pretty awkward and uncomfortable to me. Plus, I’ve never really felt that desire to degrade my partners that a lot of men seem to have. I don’t really get it.
But there she was, and I was trying to hurry while the little guy was still hanging in strong, so I took my assigned place and entered her with one searching upward slide and a single steady push. This time it was awkward from the beginning. He was still stiff, and I was still in there, but it didn’t feel right. I was on my knees, and I couldn’t find a comfortable position no matter how hard I tried. He kept popping out whenever I started to pick up speed.
Michelle lifted her head and looked back over her shoulder. There was a question in her eyes, and a hint of irritation too, but when she noticed me watching her it settled into a smile. The question stayed behind in the raised eyebrow, not much, the barest effort possible, but still noticeable.
“I think the other way’s better,” I said.
She kind of rolled her eyes, or, probably not, I doubt she really did that, but she did something that made me think she wanted to, then she stretched slowly and turned over, laying down on her back again. She reached over to the night stand and came back with a small tube of lubricant, which she applied to herself while I waited, and withered. I got him back in her though, and we went at it again.
I wasn’t even trying to enjoy it. I just wanted to make it to the end, and I was doing everything I could think of to get there, thinking of every girl I ever loved, or wanted to, while I pushed in and out of her, the shallowest of strokes possible, pure friction. Michelle bit her lip, eyes closed. I watched her face, at first wanting her to open her eyes, wanting her to acknowledge me, but then it changed and I found myself just wondering what she was thinking. Where she went in her head.
We were both sweating, and our bodies moved and slipped against each other, as she breathed in my ear, steady, shallow breaths. I kissed her neck and she opened her eyes. We watched each other, and neither of us spoke, even when I started to lose it, even when it got worse, even when it was so bad there was no ignoring it. Finally I stopped trying and pulled out.
Once I gave up, she dropped the detached act, and got concerned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s cool. Just, uh, not gonna happen. I don’t think.”
I couldn’t look at her. I lay there and stared at the ceiling. After a minute went by with no one saying anything, she hopped off the bed and began dressing. I took that as my cue, and reached to the floor for my pants. I watched her while we dressed, but she never looked my way. After she dropped her dress over her head, she stood in place and looked out the window, while I put on my shoes and socks and then stood there, waiting for some sort of sign that I should leave.
I took forty more dollars out of my pocket and layed it on the dresser. She turned towards the sound.
“This is for you. Uh, hey. Remember my name. I’ll call you again.”
She raised her eyebrow, almost imperceptibly.
“Ok.”
I hugged her, awkwardly, then opened the door and started down the hall. I could hear her laughter behind me, as I waited at the elevator and she returned to her movie. It sounded the same. Still pure. Still unforced.
By the time I reached the lobby, I was smiling again, although I must admit there were some bleak moments on the ride down. I left the bad parts behind me and walked through the lobby like someone confident, and alive. Like someone who just slept with a prostitute. The doorman looked at me, and I smiled right at him, didn’t flinch a bit.
Everything was cool as I got in the car and started out of the parking lot, but right before I pulled on to the highway, my throat started to close, and I had to pull over as the tears came. It was frightening. They came in these giant panicky waves, and I couldn’t remember ever crying as hard. The scariest thing was not knowing why. It felt like I might never stop, like I might be stuck on the side of the road crying all night. I lit a cigarette and then, when I couldn’t slow down enough to take a drag, I squeezed my hand into a fist, with the cigarette inside.
The pain was unbelievable, but somehow it allowed me to stop crying. After I was sure I was done, I opened my hand up and looked at the damage. It wasn’t too bad, a single runny blister in the center of my palm. I took a few deep breaths and then pulled on to the highway. I turned up the stereo, some jangly New York guitar band, and headed for home.
The cigarette was ruined, so I cracked the window and threw it out into the cool slice of air, then lit another. I took a few drags, then looked at it in my hand, turning it this way and that in the green glow from the dashboard, thinking of my night, thinking of my waitress, thinking of how nothing lasts. Then, as I drove, I began burning myself, a neat row of concentric circles down the inside of my left arm, to remind myself this was real, this was true, this happened.
Jamison Spencer was born in Richmond, Virginia. He spent his childhood wandering the south, then returned to Richmond for college. He is now living in Chicago, where he is an MFA student at Columbia College. He is a member of the bands The New Messengers and the carson mcullers, and a former member of the ballad of mops hacker, feel, and pompeii. He is a member of the rainy day collective.