CW 26: Because The Night

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Enjoy.

Because The Night

For Dave Slusher. Thank you for your friendship and support.

“You are ripe for this experience,” Mark says, and looks at me like he is already taking off my clothes. Like he can see me naked. The boys at frat parties always blow this moment; they stare at my boobs, their mouths drop open a little, and I can practically see them riffling through their mental inventory of Playboy centerfolds. And that is why I have never said said yes. But Mark is not a frat boy. He’s a thirty-two-old doctoral student, and he has never stopped looking in my eyes the whole time he has been asking me and waiting for my answer.

“Come on, Cathy” he says. “What are you, afraid of a little moshing? We don’t have to mosh.” We don’t have to slam our bodies together in a pit full of sweaty safety-pinned headbangers. Okay, good. Because I like The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and Steve Miller, and I think what’s-his-name, Sid Vicious, is skinny and weird. And I don’t know if I want to go to a punk show tonight.

“I don’t really like punk music,” I say.

“You have no idea what you like.” He smiles as if he’s thinking But you will, and he will be the one to make me like it.

And I believe he could. That’s what makes it so scary. So exciting. In five weeks I’ll pack my dorm room and my dad will drive over from the Tri-Cities to bring me home for the summer, to get an office job or run the cash register in the A&P, to hang out with sorority sisters and nice boys my parents know. This man is not nice at all, and he wants to take me to the Paramount and put music in my brain that will get right up inside me so that he can get there too. So I don’t know if I want to go to a punk show tonight.

#

You can say yes or no, Cath, my mom always says. It’s up to you.

#

We stand and wait and drink our beer and we don’t say a word. Mark is beside me and a little behind, one arm draped loosely over my shoulder. It’s crowded and dark where we are, bright and hot on the empty stage, and then people begin whooping and clapping and stamping their feet whup whup whup whup whupwhupwhupAOOOOO as the band comes out.

And the singer is a woman. A pale skinny woman in dark skinny jeans and a British flag t-shirt. I didn’t know there were girl punk singers. I didn’t know a woman could open her mouth and say Well I don’t fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future and then turn her voice into a growl like a hand coming up inside me from my crotch to my stomach to my chest into my brain, that would make me wish I had said yes in my life to whatever could make me sing like that, I didn’t know I didn’t know, but now I do and the knowing makes me dizzy.

At some point I lean back against Mark. He plants himself to take my weight, and his free hand comes up under my shirt, and he says into my ear, “Do you want to go somewhere?”

I can say yes or no.

And so I say, “Fuck no,” and I stay for both sets. And then I let him take me home.