belly, beast i

“How much does an elephant weigh?” some Goth girl asks me, while I’m outside of Sliders, the bar tonight.

            My desire to have a cigarette was only one of the reasons why I retreated from the bar and into the elusive tranquility of the city street. The quality of the entire scene is another. This bar is an enormous let down.  All the beer is watery and cheap. Tastelessly cheap.  I’m told only after this kid from, I guess, my Psych class, Paul, has dragged me here that people only usually come to Sliders when they are lacking a fake ID. I’ve got a good one now, so it‘s all the more pointless.

            “What?” I ask the Goth girl, not sure I’ve heard.

            Lighting a clove cigarette with this tacky skull and crossbones lighter, she smiles through pale lips and dark eye makeup.

She says, “Enough to break the ice.”

            She laughs.

I don’t.

            “I don’t get it,” I tell her. Stress the seriousness.

            Not faltering at all, she says, “Sorry.” She fidgets with burning cigarette in her hand. “That was corny, I know.”

            “It was.” I’m not in the mood for this tonight. I check the watch that I’m not wearing and shift my weight to the opposite leg. “Very.”

            Goth girl is wearing black leather pants, so tight I swear I can almost see the marks on the inside of her upper thighs where she used to cut herself with small razor blades. Almost. There’s a stud pierced through her nose, just above her left nostril. Goth girl’s black hair with one blood-red streaked highlight is pulled back into a ponytail. A spider web’s sticks to the back of her neck, etched in tattoo ink.

            Seeing my eyes on her neck, she says, “You like tattoos?” But before I utter any kind of response, she informs me, “I have five tats.” She licks her lips, revealing a tongue ring. “And nine parts of my body pierced.”

            Honest, I start to count to nine in my head, but can only come up with eight.

            I laugh.

“Some girls try too hard,” I mumble quietly.

She doesn’t hear me.

            “Hi, I’m Becky!” she says with a forced enthusiasm. Becky sucks on her cigarette and moves closer, running her hand lightly against my shirt. Her milky, white arms remind me of spaghetti, except spaghetti doesn’t usually have self-inflicted cigarette burns on it.

            Becky’s wearing a strange black short sleeve shirt that is almost transparent, which I could be positive is made from a pair of pantyhose, revealing a bra of an even darker color.