I. Jitterbug

Stand clear, doors closing.

“Ya think Sting ever really thought about all the unspoken moves behind Every Breath You Take?”

I don’t look up. I try to focus on getting this quick sketch just right. Shading. Light. Blending. But you’re like that lone fly that gets in when you leave the sliding door open too long. Zoom! And it hides like a stain you don’t even notice until you do. And when you do it prickles like a bad case of OCD. And this fly, it’s buzzing out and around your head at the most inconvenient of times, nagging and nagging, avoiding each murderous swat with barrel rolls and dive bombs and zigzaggityfuckingzags.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continues. “The Police are 80s’ classics. The number of panties ruined with those smooth vocals prolly number in the thousands, but that song… #1 on the Billboards or not, ya think he considered bowel movements when writing it? What about the moves a girl makes when she’s crampin’ over from her period and screamin' bloody murder? Is he really watching every move? Sweet song for sickly sweet couples fucking in the backseat I guess, but it’s got that stalkery vibe going, ya’know?”

You're winking and blowing a gum balloon, cotton candy blue this time, when I finally look up. It expands and expands until, pop! It breaks over real shiny, fuckable lips. I'm talking Halle Berry in Monster's Ball. Not so much kissing as it is bruising. Liquid sex with mouths and fluid exchange and plenty of tongue to make even Granny Teague's ghost fan herself.

“Tell me I’m wrong?” Her green eyes twinkle and she twirls a lime green ear bud around a finger. She’s laid her line and desperately wants to hook a challenge from me.

“Fucking white people,” I mutter and continue sketching.

“Not a fan of The Police huh?” she quips, oblivious to my failing attempts to ignore her. “Me either, honestly. More of a Wham! girl if we’re being honest." A breathy sigh. "Who didn’t love George?” 

“At least one,” I mutter.

“Oh don’t be an ass, little jitterbug.”

“Stop,” I groan. “Please. This shit is worse than prison.”

“Wake me up,” you tease, voice cresting into song.

“Fucking disco-pop is torture. White people killed music while I was disappeared.”

“Ya know ya love it, tough guy. C’mon. I know you know the lyrics. Sing it with me. Trah-lah-lah.” You pull yourself up real straight, like a prim and proper white lady from Julliard or something and it looks ridiculous with your tomboy form and candy hair.

And I can’t look away. But. 

“No. No. N. O. Hell nah, if that’s more understandable, girl.”

“Oh come on, J-baby. I’d put money on you being a cute little choirboy with a fro. Snazzy church robes. Golden pipes. Bringin’ down the house. Praise the lord and what all.” Your grin is all Cheshire toothiness and sarcastic mirth.

I glare butterfly knives at you, but can’t help feeling a tug of… something… vaporizing the liquid melancholy into something like laughing gas, helium balloons, waking up something deep inside.

Doesn’t mean I’m not trying to drown out your bubble gum princess sing-a-long with your phone though. You’ve got the song blaring from its tiny speakers and you’re dancing between the seats. All thin arms and white legs and Oaktown’s greatest ass.

II. Head First Collisions with the Past

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

Gum bubble pops.

“You’re clingier my parole officer,” I say, not bothering to look up from my sketchbook.

“But your parole officer can’t shake it like I can, jitterbug.”

“Never seen no white girl shake it on beat before and not look like a spastic wet noodle. Drugs or no drugs.”

“Cuz you’ve had your eyes on little girls, not women. And you’ve never seen me dance before.” You waggle thin dark eyebrows, gyrate your ass a few turns in your seat. 

I laugh as I draw. “Not even a midget could get a decent squeeze outta those ping pong titties. What kinda woman are you?”

You give me the finger. “More than a limp-dicked boy like you could handle.”

“Free all night for test drives, bubbles.”

I don’t expect the arching eyebrow, tight frown and the absence of a snarky comeback. I’ve made it a point to never call you, blondie. Not even acknowledge it. It’s a name too tied to her and I think you realize that, but I can see that it disappoints you. 

You curl up into a seat opposite me, between a little old lady and a jittery teen that’s been eyeballing me for the last five stops. His leg’s been twitching up and down like a pojo-stick and he looks like he’s about to piss himself. Probably a dare: the awkward class nerd riding the BART with the drug dealing boogeyman for an hour. Get a kiss from the quarterback's cheer captain girlfriend if he survives. I remember those days, even if I dropped out early. Even if I was the one dolling out those empty bets to other desperate invisibles like me.

You’ve not said anything since our last dance of ripostes, which is a first. It's got me worried. You’re usually far more spritely, filling this moving cigar tin with rainbow bubbles and sarcasm and music you know I hate. I’m strangely disappointed. You and I, we been doing whatever this is for a few weeks now. Trading insults. Trading stories. Well, you have at least. But mostly, we’ve shared comfortable silence and a tub of double bubble. The weird connection of disturbed, morose felon and the strange white girl from the hood who reminds him of the girl he killed. A girl who’s lips you also tasted the night she died. Ain’t this just a fucked up world of coincidence and those six degrees of Bacon?

I can’t seem to escape you. And I’m not sure I want to. In that regard, I guess the stories told in C-Block are true: more addicting than sex on Slim’s magic coke. I been feelin' that high electrifyin' me for a few days now when you're around and we haven’t even fucked.

“Yet,” whispers a voice that churns my stomach deep down inside.

“Caution, approaching platform.”

Violet metallic eye shadow shades the corners of your eyes, making your green orbs shine bright. I stop drawing; wish I had my colors with me. But no, that’s a poorly developed thought. I’m already blurring the memory of a girl named Ana with whatever tune it is we been dancing along to that ain’t gonna go anywhere but down.

‘Another white devil gone n’ hooked you,” Granny Teague’s voice echoes in my mind. ‘Gonna eat your damn foolish soul, boy.’

Well, a man can’t escape all his vices, Granny. And maybe I don’t want to.

“Stand clear, doors opening.”

The nervous kid bolts off the train when I growl, “Boo!”

The little old lady follows slowly after, wood cane clicking against the floor, muttering something about pussyfooting white boys needing a bigger set of balls.

-

It’s just us now.

A girl blowing bubbles, a broke man trying to draw his way out of the hell he’s created.

“What was she like?”

This is the thirteenth time you’ve asked, each one carefully timed and worded to catch me off guard so I’ll divulge something. Anything.

“What’s it matter?”

“Just curious.” You tilt your head, pink strands of hair peaking out from a grey knit beanie with a Winnie the Pooh patch on the front. Despite all stories about you, little white girl with depraved sexual appetites, you still got that childlike glow I wish I hadn’t thrown away with needles and powders and arrogance. 

The train jerks suddenly and you shift, flat midriff tightening beneath a thin, knotted plaid shirt. Your belly button winks enticingly as it pinches and relaxes to the sway of your balancing act.

“Curiosity fucked the cat over. But it doesn’t matter anyway. She was just another dead body in the Dubs. Just more expensive than most.”

“That’s cold. Even for Oaktown.”

I ignore you, even if the voice inside me burns with rage and emptiness.

“Show me then,” you challenge. Not question.

“Show you what.”

White hands gesture. “What you’re sketching.”

“Don’t have to show you shit, girl.”

You snort. “Yea, yea. And she’s just another dead body,” you mimic, voice dropping low. “Just another bitch to scrape off the floor after the Twomps takes her, right? You’re full’a shit, J-baby. Show me.”

The pencil snaps between my fingers.

“I don’t owe you anything.” The words ring out hollow and you stare back defiantly with pistol eyes. 

“Show me.” Your voice is softer this time, fading out.

Show me.

‘Show me the goods, kid.’

‘I ain’t no kid, bitch.’

The man at the door laughs. ‘Yo, Quinton. You hear this little punk ass?’

‘Bigger set’a balls than you as a kid, Rashawn. You were a twitchy lil bitch.’

‘Fuck you, Q. We both know you pissed them tighty-whities the first time.’

‘Least I got to taste Camila after prom. In her daddy's Lexus too. That sweet and spicy Mexican cunt of hers was grade A tightness. Who’d you fuck? That beachball, Lanny? Hear she screamed like a banshee when you tried to stick her cuz yo’ pimply dick scared her.’

‘Fuck you, Rash.’

‘Can I drop this shit off already,’ I say. ‘Fuckin’ cold out here and I’m a black kid with a backpack full a dope in the middle of the night.’

‘Yea, yea,’ says Rashawn, a tatted doorman wearing a backwards Raider’s hat and an oversized tank top. He opens the bag, takes a long look, and nods. ‘We cool. Straight through to the back. Don’t touch shit along the way. Don’t open any doors and I don’t give no fuck what you hear. Follow the rules, get paid. Maybe you’ll even get a lil mouth action from the princess with a drop like this.’

The hulking pimply dick in the corner, Quinton, seems to get a real laugh outta that. “You know no first timer ain’t never gonna get a lick from her, Rash. Even with a drop like this. No one does. Not you. Not me. Not even CK. She belongs to, Jez. Now, blondie on the other hand.’ He leers real hard like he's conjuring up a dirty memory. "She can suck a golf ball through a hose and she's easy enough on the eyes. And more than willing to sup on some black snake.'

Rashawn joins in on the laughter. ‘You know that’s right. His virgin dick probably couldn’t handle her though. But fuck. Now you’ve got me dreamin’a that fine vanilla ass of hers. It's been too damn long.'

‘Bastards,’ I mumble, and shrug past them into the dimly lit entryway.

‘Remember what I said, lil bitch,’ Rashawn calls out. ‘Don’t be stickin’ that ugly face'a yours where it don’t belong.’

‘I heard you… shit.’

Music thumps in a room somewhere along the hallway. An expensive sounding base is bumpin’ hard, making the walls shiver and shake like the Eldorado’s frame when Ray wanted to make his presence known to the Dubs.

I’m almost at the end at the end of the line when I stop, frozen. Told ya. Never liked the end of places. Trapped in a corner. A half-drunk father figure with a belt and no way out. This is a different kind of frozen though. Knee weakening. 

There’s a light peeking out from a cracked doorway and a wave of cannabis smoke and something more sweetly pungent clubs me in the face.

‘Fuck, babydoll. I’ll never know why a rich little princess like you always comes here for dope. You prolly got servants or some shit can get you a little green. Even serve it up on some silver platter with a crystal bowl. But shiit, I ain’t never gonna complain, especially about the way you like to pay. CK loves that fine little high-class ass. Never seen a little white girl as blessed. Straight up Helen of fucking Troy.'

I push the door open a bit, curiosity tugging fierce. It takes awhile for my eyes to adjust, but what I see nukes stack of Hustler mags I stole a few weeks back. It's more biblically sinful than anything Granny Teague could imagine on God's creation.

Damn knew everyone knew Christoph Alexeev. And even more knew his daughter, Anastasia, a lilywhite teenager with golden blonde hair and a body already fit for the Victoria Secret runway. But with like, actual meat on her bones. Mouthwatering ass. Me n’ the other bastards of the Twomps always joked who'd take a greater number of bullets for a chance to fuck that golden princess pussy just once. See if that carpet matched the drapes. 

And there she was, kneeling behind an arched ass so dark it shines blue in the dim light.

There’s a loud snort, probably from a coke line, followed by a deep sigh. ‘Show me them tits, babydoll,’ the voice in a shadowed corner continues. ‘You know I love em.’

Anastasia’s grin is wicked one, the kind no one ever really forgets.

She makes a show of it, peeling off white cashmere to bare the most beautiful snow globes I’d ever seen in my life.

‘I remember, pervert,’ she tells the voice and spanks the round ass in front of her. ‘Don’t I, Jezebel?’ Then she bends down and spreads the round cheeks apart and drags a long red tongue across sleek, blue-tinted onyx skin.

I suck in a breathe of air and I had wonder if I inhaled some of the product floating in the air.

Jezebel was the black diamond of the Dubs: tatted with intricate white ink, pierced many times over, with a head full of sleek, silver streaked dreds. She was as crazy as she was sexy and damn near everyone wanted to fuck that hot, nasty piece of ass, even if it meant her hands around their necks as she choked the life outta em’ as their dicks shot deep inside. She was a goddamn jaguar that liked playing with its food.

And Anastasia Alexeev had her squealin’ and beggin’ like a feline in heat with just a few spanks and licks.

‘Stick that princess tongue up that slutty ass,’ Jezebel cries out, wriggling her body back and forth. ‘Nice and deep, doll. I’m fucking sick of these talentless fuucc…’

The young dope queen herself can’t even finish. She’s a sweaty, grunting pile of flesh as Anastasia slurps noisily. It's like marshmallows and chocolate. It's got me stiffer than Phoebe Cates' surprise flash. 

‘Fuck,’ the shadowed voice grunts. A jet of thick fluid materializes, splattering up Anastasia’s smooth white back. ‘Russia sure knows how to breed them dirty. You sure you don’t want some black cock up that tiny white pussy, Ana? Stretch you out like you never been stretched before. I can take you to a hell you’ve only ever read about, baby.’

Her answer is muffled, the door pulled shut.

‘I told you straight down you little shit,’ Rashawn growls, yanking me back and slamming me against the opposite wall. ‘That room ain’t never gonna be for you.'

A popped gum bubble brings me back.

“Where do you go?” you ask, eyebrow quirking curiously. “You just… disappear sometimes. Like, I dunno, shaking loose from reality. Thought I knew that feeling but…”

I shake off the memory.

“Where the fuck do you go?” you repeat, voice tinged with fascination and fear.

I look down, confused. And there it is. I can’t really describe what I’ve drawn. She’s in there, somewhere. Ana always is. Jezebel too maybe. Marshmallows and chocolate. Twisted dreams of a sexualized s'more. But the rest? You can’t really describe what doesn't really exist, that has no name. Can’t be defined with the limitations of human language.

I shrug. Ana wanted to know what it felt like. Wanted to get closer, fold herself into me to understand. Make me the happiest punk alive. Stupid girl loved too much. Loved the wrong man, no, kid, too much. No one needed to know where I went and how far I plunged. Love's like venom though. 

Granny Teague would have flooded me with a litany scripture as to what this drawing represented. That it whatever this was, was a product of the white little devils I preferred to surround myself with. Eating away at my soul with their poisonous little cunts.

A soft weight presses into my lap and the scent of pixie sticks and bubble gum fills my nostrils. You’ve climbed onto me without me realizing, hands resting on my barreled shoulders.

I flinch from the unexpected touch and try to dump you off onto the floor, much like the first time we met. “Fuck you doing, bubbles?” I hiss.

You don’t answer, just hold on tight, nails digging in, eyes boring into mine. I don’t put up much of a fight, just stare right back, trying to scare you off with my best attempt at the murderer’s sneer.

You’re a little white hood rat though. Not easily scared. You shrug it all off with a blown gum bubble. Then you do something I don’t expect, even given your reputation. You dig the gum out, stick it to the window behind me, and pull me in for a volcanic kiss that paralyzes me.

I lose myself for a fractional second that lasts an eternity, five years unfamiliar with the taste of warm feminine lips and the feel of a soft ass gyrating slowly against my groin… but only for that fractional second.

When your lips reach my neck, I yank your head back, sending your beanie flying off, and the monster inside me howling with disgruntled rage.

But I got no more patience for bullshit or her angular features staring back at me through you.

“I don’t need some cheap vanilla skank giving me no pity fuck,” I growl.

You glare, nonplussed, palms resting against my pecs, hips still grinding. “I don’t deal in pity fucks, J. Not my style.”

“That right?”

“Damn right, baby,” you sneer mockingly. “Miserable shit like you wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

“Fuck you.”

You tap my temples, giggling darkly. “That the best you got, jitterbug? No threats to fuck up this crazy white bitch? Stretch my little pussy out? Make me scream and beg. Hurt me a little?”

“Stop calling me that,” I growl.

You grind your ass harder against my rebellious, swelling cock. “Jitterbug, jitterbug, jitterbug. Maybe I like it rough. Maybe I wanna be stretched out. Feel you gushing inside me.”

Except it’s not you talking anymore, it’s her and… And I swear your body bubbles and melts into pink goo, till there she is where you should be, rubber hose wrapped around her arm, silver liquid dribbling at the corner of her mouth like lethal mercury.

I yank you, her, back into me, lips burning a million regrets against your mouth, your chin, your neck, in a desperate ploy to keep her here this time. The monster howls in delight when I yank your flimsy button-up apart and trail kisses down your chest, bite roughly at your small, hardened pink nipples. Squeals of pleasure fall from her lips and your small hands claw at my skull, pressing me hard against your small chest, like you want me to pull me inside you till I disappear.

She pulls impatiently at my shirt; desperate and failing at her task, she settles for bunching it around my pecs. A snorted gasp fills my ears. She stares down at the tapestry of scarred dark chocolate, marks she doesn’t recognize. Salty guilt burns in cerulean eyes.

It’s because these particular marks aren’t from when she knew me. They’re from surviving the hell I Peter Paned into. You do what you gotta do to survive prison. Take what you gotta take. Give up what you gotta give up. And yea, you slice yourself up with jagged lines so the real monsters don’t think of you as the pussy street artist you really are. Think twice before making you their bitch. And then you start fighting like the world’s cracking apart and you wanna go out with blood on your fists and fear in their eyes. Cuz being a devil is all you got left.

You press your lips against each scar, dancing your tongue over the longer, deeper ones. And me? I squeeze your squishy ass through cotton shorts already damp with the heady, creamy arousal I’ve secretly been craving more than the coke and the heroine and the art, because, in a way, she was a Monet, or a twisted Picasso. Rare. Undefinable. You are the eccentric, the modern odd, like Warhol. Whenever we got together, she was always the only canvas that ever mattered. She’d have me paint her with chocolate sauce and caramel with ropes of liquorices. And she’d take my spurting cock in hand and create abstract expressionism from her thighs to her wicked little mouth.

The memories splinter reality into fragmented pieces and I grip your ass harder. Your teeth latch onto my shoulder with pleasurable pain and I feel your pussy convulse beneath the swampy mess of your shorts.

“How do you want me?” she moans with your voice.

I pull back, entranced.

Everywhere. Right here and over there, across the cheap plastic seats. On the floor. Pressed up against the glass doors, exhibitionism defined. Turning you to sloppy wet goo in front of horrified crowds and aroused pervs. Fucking anywhere. Fuck if I don’t want to create the most decadent of art across your pale ass and flat stomach. Pump you full of cum until I discover the sorta facial expression that’d launch a billion erections into outer space. 

“On your fucking knees, blondie,” the monster in me growls, slipping up, keen to avoid any last second protests from either of us, sick of all the sappy, self-pitying bullshit.

“Yea, baby?” you giggle, sliding off my lap to the train floor.

“Now!” I grab a fist full of pink hair and pull your head to my groin.

She lifts my shirt and tongues my lower abs as you unbuckle and unzip, greedy for dark, forgotten, yet entirely new, flavors. The monster’s impatient though and pushes your teasing lips and fingers away to fish out a fleshy black monolith. The angry purple head slaps against your forehead and you waste no time trying to gobble it down, eyes tearing up when it hits the back of your throat.

I palm your head of pink tresses like a basketball, dribbling you up and down my cock while you gag and drool, eyes rolling up into their sockets. Your mouth is wet and hot and talented and it’s been an eternity since I felt anything like it. It’s sweet hellish paradise on earth and despite Granny Teague’s warnings and teachings and whippings, I’ll choose her hated white devil every time, cuz ain’t no way heaven could feel this good. Only sinner’s know how this all works.

I back off a bit, let her hands, long and elegant, join in on the fun, corkscrewing with randomized rhythm, alternating soft slow strokes with tight quick ones, tongue swirling around my purple crown like it’s a coke dusted tootsie pop.

My abs tighten and you pull off, robbing me of the experience of filling your dirty mouth with hot seed.

“Bitch.”

You wipe your mouth and smirk. “Wangster.”

I lift you up, light as a feather. Pull your crotch to my nose. Inhale deeply. It’s sugary candy and filthy arousal, bubble gum and sex. I squeeze your lush ass, lick at you over the cotton shorts till you’re wiggling and dancing against my tongue like a stripper on speed. I peel the shorts down, grin at the sloppy, barely there thong, and yank you back down, over my throbbing dick, grunting as the warm sticky panties drag over my shaft.

“Ready to rejoin the living?” she says with your mouth. “Or, I guess it’s the dead now, isn’t my sad graffiti-boy?”

Delirious, I nod.

“Caution, approaching platform.”

“Ignore it,” you purr. “Whoever gets on, maybe we’ll let them join the ritual rebirthing.”

The train jerks in a familiar way. My inner alarm goes off. I know this stop. The second to last stop. I’ve long committed it to memory. Even the monster knows it and screams in rage. True reality warps back with brutal clarity just as you gyrate your damp, panty clad snatch against my rigid erection.

Like one of your gum bubbles, she pops, leaving just you underneath. You raise your hips and look down on me with sizzling intensity, green eyes crackling with life. I know the look. And conflicting emotions spring up from that fact. I’ve got a knuckle-white grip on your peach perfect ass and it’d be so easy to pull that hot-pink triangle to the side and bury myself inside you. Scream. 

Fuck like the world is burning

Fuck like we’re suffocating

On hot scorching ash,

Till we’re crying out,

Mummified alive,

Fucking our way to

Death... or an orgasm

That’ll incinerate us.

But you’re not her anymore. 

You’re just you. And… fuck. I desperately want that to be enough.

“Stand clear, doors opening.”