As I walked across the parking lot the rain fell on my shaven head and down across my darkened features. I stalked towards the club. My ears were assailed by peels of laughter. I gazed over my shoulder to see two girls' heads covered by a coat running in the rain. One was clothed in a white button-down shirt and plaid skirt. A naughty school girl's uniform, one of the standard costumes worn to a fetish ball. I wondered to my self if she really was a naughty girl, if she had in the total package, including the white cotton panties or even, underneath her swaying skirt, clad only in air. For a moment I felt the familiar stirring of lust rising in the pit of my stomach. I just laughed it off. I don't come to these things to find playmates; I come here just to feel normal, if only for a few hours.
At the door I bypass all the people standing in line, clad in everything from full body harnesses and smiles to full medieval garb. Some of them are here to play in public, others to see and be seen; and still others to gawk at the freaks. It crosses my mind how many of the later will leave with a new religion.
I walk straight up to the doorman who is explaining to a suburban couple out to walk on the wild side in the dark, dirty, mean city that no way they are getting in here without fetish gear on. I incline my head to him he is an old friend from my hazy, crazy days of drugs and all-night parties. He turns away from them for a second and looks at me. "Hey, man long time no see!"
"Yeah, haven't seen you since the Limp show." I give him a hug and a friendly slap on the back. "How's it look in there?"
"It's jumping! Go on in." He waves me past the couple.
"All right. I will catch up with you later then." I slap him on the arm, and slide inside, where I'm enveloped in the music, something with a dark, driving back beat and a rhythmic, almost sexy, tempo.
I hear the man asking my friend why I'm allowed in with out a costume and they aren't.
His answer is at once surprising and angering. "He's black. I don't think there are many people inside with a fetish for an overweight couple still stinking of the burbs. Now go, get a costume or get gone!" I let it slide off me. It is true after all, and I have known him for many years. I guess it's good to have friends in low places.
I hand my coat to the girl behind the counter. She is dressed as a pony girl she has a smile that lights up the cramped cloak room. I slide a five in her jar.
"Thanks! And I hope you enjoy the Ball!"
"I'm sure I will," I say as I turn the corner to see the crowd of flesh, leather, lace and lust.
This is always a strange time for me when I enter a club. I search the crowd for a familiar face, be it friend or foe. In all my years in the "alt" scene I have had few problems because of my race but the ones I have had were all bad. Fortune favors the prepared. I let my feet lead me to the bar and wait in line for my turn, as the tension of the day begins to easy out of my body. I order a whisky-and-sour, a hard drink for any bartender to screw up.
As I make my rounds of the club, silently slipping past the sweaty and, in some cases, sweet smelling bodies. I drink in the world around me. In these dark places I can relax a bit; most of the time people are more than willing to let me be. If I am noted at all it is only because I stand out, the only black face in a sea of white skin. I often wondered if it's because the people here have their own secrets or maybe things have changed, maybe people have left racism to die the death it so richly deserved. But then the couple from the door pass into my vision both wearing collars bought from one of the many vendors here at the Ball and I remember the reason I could so easily walk in with out even that much. And for a moment, I can't seem to blend into the crowd. I'm reminded of how I stand apart from the mass around me. I begin to step back trying to place my back against the wall 'til the feeling passes.
I stumble into a few people. Gone for the moment is the grace I have cultivated over years of moving through an abundance of people, be it at a club or a show. But I take no notice of them as I mumble my excuses.
I back right into a couple petting heavily on the arm of a couch. That is just what I need to relieve myself of the feeling of being behind enemy lines, to bring me back the realization that here I am home. I raise my drink to my lips and drink in the sour lemon tang and let the bite of the whisky wrap me in its embrace. I look at the face of a woman, her eyes heavily lidded, mouth slightly parted, a sheen of sweat covering her forehead. She rubs her partner's back up and down slowly. In my mind's eye, it's this woman and me who lay in the darkness. her creamy white hand caressing the ebony smoothness that is the skin of my back. Head thrown back, hair flowing, moans escaping her mouth as my lips taste her skin.
For a moment I'm lost in my mind's eye as the chaos of where my body is falls away. Flashes cross the screen in my mind, the top of her head nestled between my thighs as my hands grip her hair. Hair falls across her back, sweat pools in the curve of her spine. She lies beneath my arms. My hands grip her shoulders as I drive myself into her, grunts forced from between my lips as I lead us both head-long into that most exquisite of places.
My reverie is broken as I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head in a flash to look at the owner of the hand, only to stare into the eyes of someone I would never have expected to see in a place like this. And in those eyes I see the look that put a gulf between us that it seemed nothing could span, not even love. It was a look of fear. It was a look with which I have become familiar. I see it almost every day. Coming around the corner, when the elevator doors open, any time I startle anyone, they don't see me a man like any other, just passing, like the hundreds they have passed that day, and how can they? All they see is a six foot; shaven headed, black man, earrings studding his ears, coal dark eyes hovering over a perpetual scowl. In short how can they see me past the thing that stands out amongst all the other things I am? How can they see the man past the buck?
The look fades with a practiced speed to be replaced with one of joy. "My God it is you!"
Her mouth wears the smile I remember; eyes of the deepest green, so green I can even see the color here in this dark smokey club. Her rosy cheeks are flecked with small red freckles and dimples to die for shine with blush. Her long dyed-black hair is splayed over her shoulders and down her back.
We embrace then she presses her cheek to my chest. I hope she can't hear my heart pounding. I fold her in my arms, remembering how she felt, and the slow swell of her hips. The smell of her perfume wafting in my nose makes me heady. How her mere presence used to send my spirit soaring.
God how I miss her.
We stay like that for a moment, longer than a hug for a friend not seen in a while. And just before she let go, I felt as well as heard her sigh. In that moment I realize that she too, has missed me.
We make small talk, both ignoring the stinking body that lay in the middle of the floor between us. I slide between the mass of humanity around us and get a seat not far from where we were. She went off to powder her nose and get us a couple of drinks.
I am once again alone; I can't seem to focus on anything. My mind keeps slipping back to the last time I laid eyes on Laura.
She and I were leaving a restaurant after a wonderful romantic dinner, my head swimming with wine and the excellence of her company. Her hand in mine, we were passing another couple as obviously in love as we were.
I stopped, letting go of her hand to open the door them and wish them a good day. It started with a look, moved on to an accusation, then came the words.
"No, I wasn't staring at his woman's ass. No I didn't care who he was." I told him what my name was and that it wasn't pronounced nigger.
Finally came the insult that took away any chance I had of walking away from this without a fight. He insulted Laura, my escort for the evening, and the woman I loved.
No warning, no mercy, no escape.
When it was all over, I straightened my jacket, bowed to the lady friend of my vanquished enemy, and turned to my own companion. And the hit I took then was worse than any I took in that or any fight. It was the look.
With her hand held limply in mine we walked to the car. We drove in silence and she left me alone in the car without our traditional good night kiss.
After that night she seemed to be too busy with one of her two jobs to see me. That lasted for a week or so till I finally got up the courage to suggest that maybe we were better off friends.
Friends.
To this day I wonder what hurt worse, the look of fear or the fact that we both let it dig a hole between us.
I down the drink that I am swirling unconsciously in my hand in a single gulp. It was watery, though still a bit cold, and the warmth I felt from it was different than it had only a few moments ago. Instead of sour it was bitter.
I see her weaving through the crowd heading straight for me, hips a-sway, short black leather mini so tightly covering her hips it looked painted on. Her red lacy bra barely contains her breasts, leaving her shoulders bare in the colored lights of the club, giving way to her swan-like neck. So different from the neo-conservative dress she wore when we dated so long ago. And for the first time I noticed her collar, scrolled across it in shiny letters was the word bitch. This Laura was so different in every way from the woman I knew maybe she had grown in the intervening months since we last saw each other. But then I remember the look.
It is still good to see her.
She plops down next to me on the couch as we toast to our past. The pleasantries continue. Then she asks me a question that I guess has been burning in her mind for some time, though not the one I had expected.
"So hon, what are you doing here?" she asks a bit tentatively.
I throw back my head and laugh. "I've been in 'the life' on and off for a few years now, I came out tonight to relax."
I can see confusion in her eyes. How could I come here to relax with all the sex hanging in the air, pressed in so tightly with the bodies and loud music? But she just accepts it and I let it stand.
"Well, that said, mind if I ask you a question?" Her voice is hesitant, almost unheard against the backdrop of the conversations and driving music.
"Have I ever minded? No? Then why start now? Go right ahead."
"Why didn't you ever tell me about this side of you? Or were you going to let it be a surprise?"
