seventh circle ii

I see the girl I banged, a quarter hour ago in one of the bathroom stalls.

At the time, I walked in on her doing a fat line off the sink counter.

I’m not sure how exactly the intercourse began but it was some time after she offered me the rest of the line.

Standing with my jeans around my ankles, pressing the girl up against the filth-tiled wall of the bathroom, smearing makeup all over her face, our bodies drenched in perspiration.

She told me she loved me.  

My libido almost flat-lined then and there but her gyrations kept me going, barely.

“I fucking love you too.”

Afterwards, I tried to convince her that this was simply a one-time thing and all she wanted to know was when she could see me again.

People pound the bathroom door.

It only gives me a rhythm to follow.

She didn’t want to date me, she insisted. It was only a kind of pure sexual love she felt for me.

“Friends with benefits,” she said. 

We aren’t friends.

“People like me don’t have friends,” I told her.

She frowned but let me finish on her face. Her smeared makeup develops the consistency of paste. She’s unaware.

Clowns come to mind.

And then, she washes her face in the sink, saying, “But I am your new best friend.”

I pointed out we didn’t know each other’s name and she said she liked that about our relationship and

“Oh, my god, this water feels fucking amazing.”

She told me she wanted casual, no strings attached, hardcore meet-ups.

The color of her eyes, I don’t really remember. 

My experience with fuck-buddies, that’s what we’d be, has been that one of the two involved always ends up developing serious feelings for the other.

Once that happens, everything is ruined.

            “Well, it’s not me you have to worry about,” she told me. The girl chewed a piece of gum. I don’t remember what it tasted like, but it was in my mouth at some point.  I was in her’s.

          S m i l e .

“You think I’m going to end up falling for you?” I asked.

            Her face went wide-mouth and teeth.

She said, “Baby, I think you already have.”

            Now, I see her leaving, arms draped around a guy much taller and better looking than myself, and I’m considering whether or not I’ll ever get to take her up on that offer.

“Dude, she ate her tits,” Andy says with an excitement that worries me.

I drink another pitcher and listen to him ramble on a bit more before I head back to school.

            It’s dark when I stumble into my room, back from the mediocre bar, hardly remembering the hours prior. A small red light flashes on and off like the lone beckon of a lighthouse, spanning across the sea of darkness churning in my room. My roommate’s answering machine indicates a single new message. Everything’s spinning. I press the button, playing the news from a tiny speaker at the phone’s base.

            “Brittany?” a female voice asks while chomping down on what sounds like ice cubes. “Brit, if you’re there, pick up.” There’s a sigh that comes across the phone line. “Oh my God, Brittany, I just hooked up with a guy whose apartment smelled like turtles and urine. He tied me up and asked me to shit on his face!  I’m freaking out. Where the fuck are you?”

            I hear a little scream right before the message ends.

I delete it.