Ramblings of a Queer Gremlin

Cocktails and Cocks

You wake up and squint against the darkness, running a painful hand through your hair. Must have been a rough night, or day. Whatever. 

How'd you get here? 

You open your eyes and it's not your room. Not your time. Not even your planet. 

You taste blood.

The sky outside the window frame is pitch black. Not a star in the sky. As though they ran away when they heard you were coming. 

You wonder where the light is and it flickers on as though you communicated with it unconsciously, a cool ultra-violet glow simmering through your atoms. 

There is a copy of Stephen Hawking's, A Brief History of Time on the nightstand.  Your hands are covered in dry, crusty blood. 

That's not your book and hopefully not your blood. You scratch your ass and realise you're naked. Your long legs are unshaven.

You scan the stark hotel room and notice the blood stains shining bright. You're in a crime scene. You're in a dream or you're on drugs or you have amnesia and you have to get out of there. Now. Someone is going to take your DNA and frame you 

Frame you for what?  A red dress hanging over the chair arm. It's a sexy scrap of a thing that you would never wear in your real life. 

In real life, you're always in pants with lots of pockets, a leather gun holster, and a t-shirt that shows off your muscles. 

You scan the room for any item of clothing that is more androgynous, tearing open the cupboards and finding nothing but spare pillows and blankets. 

You nose out the half-empty bottle of Jack and two glasses. Lipstick on the rim of one. You rub your lips and find the same colour on the back of your hand. 

You rub some liquor across the rim of the bottle and drink it straight. You don't cough. It is like drinking water, and you smile at yourself. 

You're a mobster. 

You don't cough when you drink. 

There was a strange wailing sound coming from the next room.

Now you can't tell if it's an electric guitar shredding Megadeth or the wail of an unholy banshee.

Same thing sometimes.

You're lured to the door, to the shore of the lake beyond the hinges, and you wrestle with the decision of walking through. Walking out of one place — the room — and into another. The past.

Across the threshold of the old wrap-around porch, you tiptoe onto the sharp grass cutting your feet.

Your soles. Your soul.

You tumble into the in-between like you have a dozen times before.

You look up.

You have nothing to lose and so you follow the sound of the Guitar Banshee, now slightly aroused and curious as to where this high-pitched frequency is going to lead you. Into a sandy ocean, into a wind-whipped test of faith, through another battle until you end up in the oasis of the self.

You see yourself reflected.

And you follow the screeching woman along the sand and up to the base of the steep cliff.

The wind whips your hair around your face, nose cold, you snuggle into the collar of your coat, and you breathe in the salt air.

There are bones below you. Above you. Anemones and fragments of prehistory you can only cobble together with furry eyebrows knitted.

You scratch at the black soil, it collects under your nails, you push your face into it and that is where you start your journey.

On your knees.

And you're lucky you haven't had your throat slit yet. 

You push to your feet and wipe your face. You're in hell. In the sun. 

In the mood for some devilish behaviour. Like Beetlejuice in the attic. Don't summon him unless you're ready to deal with the consequences. 

Cocktails and Cocks. It sounds like a bar that you should have opened in your twenties. You know the artists' dream we all had? Yeah, you should have done that. 

Knock back another drink and get your head on straight. You have to get out and see what they're doing tonight. 

You want to wear your boots and your belt. 

I want you to, too.