Tiamat was at the dance last night

I saw the girl with the blue ponytails again a couple of days later at a gas station on the edge of town. The sky was grey and the lights inside were sterile.

I tried to ignore her… …I only stopped there for some peanuts, after all… …she was hard to ignore, though, she was beautiful… …and I couldn’t decide between honey or barbecue peanuts… …because she was skinny and tall and walked graciously… …sweet or salty… …like a deer you’d find by chance wandering through the forest… …neither appealed to me much more than the other… …actually, her walk wasn’t graceful at all… …all I knew was that I needed the protein… …it was more like skipping than walking… …the peanuts’ coating was only sugar for the pill… …in fact, it kind of looked like she was dancing when she walked… …it didn’t make a difference to me… …but she did it with abandon and style… …but maybe I didn’t even want peanuts… …and maybe that way she danced was what I meant by grace.

“Hi,” I heard a sweet, salty voice whisper into my ear.

I whirled around, one bag of peanuts in each hand. The girl with the blue ponytails stretched back and smiled, a very wide smile, her hands behind her back.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said and giggled.

“Don’t worry about it.”

I was self-conscious about the bags of peanuts.

“I think we met before,” she said.

I put my hands down against my sides.

“I think we did, yeah. I don’t remember where, though.”

“Yeah, at Rothko’s. How’s your friend?”

I remembered the scene at Rothko’s Boogie with vivid detail. They pumped the alcohol and pills out of Malvina’s stomach and now she was resting. Nothing else happened. We didn’t really talk about it. I didn’t like to talk about it.

“She’s fine now,” I lied.

“Good, I’m glad. That must have been quite a scare.”

She caressed both ponytails and giggled again. She had long, colorful fingernails.

“Listen, I just met you and I don’t really feel like talking about that, okay?”

“The wound’s still too fresh?”

“That’s exactly it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and it seemed like a genuine apology. “I outstep my boundaries a lot, it’s a bad habit of mine.”

“Don’t worry about it, I can relate.”

She said her name was Tiamat. We said “nice to meet you again” and “see you later” (we probably would see each other later, it was a small town) and she twirled around and walked towards the cashier. I looked back down at the two bags of peanuts in my hands. Neither really appealed to me, so I just put them both back.

·

I felt terribly sick when I woke up in Xing’s apartment the following morning. The grey sunlight that slid through the living room’s only window punched my eyes. I must have stayed rolled up on that sofa for an hour opening and closing my eyes and trying to force myself to get up, maybe longer. I worried about Malvina as I did my best not to puke all over the white carpet.

I blamed Tiamat, the Babylonian goddess of salt water and the primordial manifestation of chaos. I blamed Tiamat, even if I didn’t know that was her name yet. Our rituals of dance, drugs and debauchery were a flirtation with Tiamat and her salty lips, dripping with honey.

Xing walked into the room with a tray and two bowls of cereal, her hair tied in a bun. I thanked her and tried my best to swallow the oats and almonds and milk. Everything disgusted me. She told me she phoned Malvina’s dad a few minutes earlier. Then she told me everything she knew, one long stream of words.

Malvina was okay, that was all that mattered. The words didn’t matter, we were just scared. Xing and I hugged each other and pretended we would take it easy from here on out. All we had to do was take it easy. Even then, all I wanted to do was dance.

I had a shower and puked up the cereal. I slid down the tiled wall behind me until my ass kissed the floor, wrapped my arms around my legs and bawled in silence. The water felt beautiful on my skin.

·

I was totally wired: the bright, white lights of The Bungalow tore my flesh apart.

I had to keep my eyes closed and wait with my fists clenched for the nausea to subside. I opened my eyes again. There was a sandwich on a plate with only one bite in it on the table in front of me. I looked up. Xing’s makeup drooled down her face and she quivered and lisped, sad about God knows what new magnificent tragedy. I was glad Malvina was listening because I had nothing to say, absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation. I was burnt out, the lights still stung my eyes.

I was amazed no one reacted to my suffering, the world just kept on spinning. I suppose my pain wasn’t as much of a spectacle as Xing’s. Her plate was empty. Though I didn’t see her at my side, I imagined Malvina nodding her beautiful blonde head enthusiastically at every word from Xing’s mouth, congratulating her for her pain in the dead hours before dawn. It was the night’s climax and she was putting on such a wonderful show. I wish I could have been there to experience it. I closed my eyes again.

Twenty minutes to half an hour must have gone by like this, open and close, open and close, another wave of nausea and disgust, Xing’s quivering lips, open and close, Xing whimpers, Malvina reassures her that everything’s going to be alright. What did she have to be so sad about anyways? I closed my eyes again.

When I opened them for the umpteenth time I saw that beautiful gazelle skipping across the ivory cookbook. A lock of my eye in superstitious voodoo, I lost my heart in that magic dance. I was cured of my pain and realized the night’s climax was forever to be fulfilled.

Then I passed out.

·

The red, blue and yellow lights swirled up and around our bodies as we swayed in and out of the music. I was lost in an eternal engagement with rhythm and sound and forgot where I was standing. The lights formed patterns on the high walls rising way up above our bodies: stars and stripes, hexagons and heptagons, dodecahedrons and rhombicuboctahedrons; all flashed and flourished on these expansive walls.

Two streams of baby blue flashed down in the dancefloor way below. I saw Tiamat dancing by herself in the middle of the crowd of youthful bodies. Even though she was down here with the rest of us, I felt like she soared above our restless corpses, up into the sky with the ever-changing geometries of color and sound.

I tried to reach out to her, even though I knew that the very act was pointless, that as soon as I tried, all this effervescent beauty would be lost. But I stopped dancing anyways and walked out towards her. Immediately the music stopped. The angels stopped dancing, all of them except for Tiamat, and they stared down at me for my weakness. The lights dimmed. I felt the high walls lurch up and away from me. Tiamat continued dancing, but she seemed to be farther and farther away. Their stares meant nothing to me, I only cared about her.

I rushed forward, refusing to believe it was all ruined.

I felt the ground give out from under me and I fell and I fell, and for a few moments I could still see Tiamat’s ageless body dancing eons above and beyond me.

·

“I think your friend’s passed out,” said the girl with the blue ponytails.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Take a look.”

I saw Malvina lying face up in the middle of the dancefloor surrounded by Rothko Boogie’s usual batch of studs and freaks. I was drunk and felt myself rushing towards her. The amphetamine crazed youth between me and my friend stepped aside; the green, orange and purple lights swirled up and around our bodies; the electronic music thumped on incessantly above our heads. I knelt and lifted Malvina’s limp body off of the glimmering tiles beneath our feet. Foam bubbled on her lips.

“Malvina,” I yelled to her face as I shook her. “Somebody help her!”

“Oh my God, what’s happening to her?” Xing screeched into my ear.

“I don’t know!”

I saw Tiamat in the gathering crowd of faces. She commiserated our pain, but was too detached to truly participate in it. I didn’t know who or what she was, but when I watched her walk away I felt abandoned by the world. Malvina’s limp body convulsed in my arms, Xing wept by my side, dozens of faces watched, and some of them may have even worried, but I was truly alone.

·

We met again at a gay bar on the edge of town and drank wine out of plastic cups:

Tiamat: You don’t look so good.

Narrator: Hey, cut me some slack, it’s been a rough week.

Tiamat: Was it fun, at least?

Narrator: It was fine.

Tiamat: Good, I’m glad.

Narrator: How about you? What have you been up to?

Tiamat: Oh, you know, I’ve been around.

Narrator: You couldn’t have come up with a vaguer answer if you tried.

Tiamat: I tried my best, trust me.

Narrator: You seem to be in great shape.

Tiamat: I’ve been dancing, I’ve had nothing to worry about.

Narrator: I like to pretend that’s the case for me too.

Tiamat: What’s that?

Narrator: That I have nothing to worry about.

Tiamat: Maybe you just haven’t been dancing enough.

She giggled and smiled. I had nothing left to say, so I got up and danced. Tiamat took a big sip out of her plastic cup. I swore for a moment that she wouldn’t join me, that she’d just look at me and smile and drink wine and smile. The thought terrified me. I kept on dancing regardless.

But finally she got up and wiggled her body across the dancefloor to my side.

We melted together and everything was alright for a while.