Writhe and Shine

From Writhe’s journal:

And then Anke walked into the club.

I was sitting at the bar, contemplating whether or not to order another drink or to just give up and head back to the hostel, when I look over my left shoulder. She was about 5 paces away and coming directly at me with a big smile on her face. The next thing I knew we were hugging. She gave me a few small kisses on my face and lips. She tasted like whiskey or bourbon or one of those hard alcohols that I’m not too familiar with. Her lips stuck to my skin slightly because of her lip gloss. She was warm. When she pulled away, everything was blurred except for her face. She said something, but it sounded like I was hearing it underwater. When I didn’t answer and she read the growing confusion on my face, she said it again. “Let us go to another place.”

I dumbly stood up just as the bartender got to me. I waved at him that I didn’t want to order any more and that I was leaving. Anke took me by the hand and lead me past a crowd of people toward the front door. We stopped in the middle of three guys who she started talking to in German. I didn’t understand a word of it as I was staring at the back of her head. She had let her hair grow out a bit since the last time I saw her. It was bleached blonde, down to her chin, and flared out a bit at the bottom. It reminded me of something I saw in the movies at one point, but couldn’t place the actress or film. She tugged my arm again and we were out the door and followed by the three guys. We all stuffed into a cab and were on our way through the darkness and flashing lights to some unknown destination. I didn’t care where we were going. Anke was next to me, sqeezed up against me, talking and laughing and joking with her friends and the cabbie. Pressed up against the cold window in the back seat, I felt her warmth on my other side. I felt like I was in school again, the exhilaration of just holding hands, the memory of a very recent kiss, the closeness of someone you’ve been thinking about for so long.

I hadn’t said much, mostly because the conversation was in German. The guys mainly ignored me and Anke hadn’t asked me anything, but she was holding my leg and running her thumb in wide circles, letting me know that she was paying attention to me in other ways. She leaned into me around the corners, glancing and smiling at me as we turned. I silently hoped this would be a long trip with a lot of left turns. Her perfume was sweet, like cotton candy. It made me hungry. It made me want to lick her neck and bury my teeth into the large muscle running down the side of her neck until she moaned. I looked at her neck and saw that it was bare and tempting and shiny from perspiration and a bit of body glitter. That’s when I noticed her pink, fuzzy, gorilla jacket, and thought that she must have looked really out of place at that last club. I caught one of the guys giving directions to the cab driver. Apparently, we were going to another club across town, one that catered to a livelier crowd, one that the driver had heard about and assured me that I would have a good time.

After we were dropped off, the five of us walked through a park, over a bridge, and inside the tower of that bridge. This place was big. I was taken on a quick tour. Three floors of dancing. Downstairs started off as metal, first floor was EBM, and the second floor was just some weird shit. There was a balcony looking out over the river, cold and drizzling. There were sub-levels, a coat room, and places to hang out with couches and tables. One room was painted with a very large black & white swirl pattern that gave me a bit of vertigo. Anke and I ended up downstairs after they started playing things like Peter Murphy and The Cure. We drank a bit more, and danced to several tracks. We slow-danced to a few more. The calluses on my hands caught on her skirt and tights. We made out. My lips felt waxy from her lip gloss. I nibbled on her neck, immediately regretting the decision because no matter how good perfume smells, it never tastes as good.

She laughed at me when I had to rinse my mouth out with beer. She had her legs crossed over mine on the couch when she said, “Let us go to my place.”