You know that part in the movie when Mandy's talking (voice-over) and you see Curt on one side of the room and Brian on the other and they're looking at each other but they're in the middle of that orgy…and then Curt gets up and Brian follows him? That spoke volumes to me, so here's my little vignette snapshot of it. I know it's sappy, but I needed it… if it makes you feel better, remember what happens in the end. There, I'm about to cry again…
"It's funny how beautiful people look when they're walking out the door"
- Mandy Slade
Walk Out The Door
I loved him more than coke than heroine than all my make-up and glitter combined. He was my new high my new rush my new addiction. And like any drug, there were lows. The lows came when I'd wake up in the middle of the night and he wouldn't be there. I'd look around, lost in the dark, and then I'd hear it. The clink of needles on the table, and I knew he was shooting up again. Sneaking around at night while I slept, to soothe the monkey on his back. But in the beginning my highs outran my lows. I could always forget that two-am-clinking when he was safe in my room, mumbling 'love you' into my shoulder.
He got up, pushing naked protesting bodies off himself, stretched brazenly, half-nude, grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the mantelpiece. The whole time my eyes were riveted on him. The bodies whispering and licking and wriggling all over me were non-important. He locked his eyes on mine, message clear follow me. The bodies faded into my background as he walked out. I was hardly aware of anything but his face as he left the room, his silent siren call to me. Vaguely I realised Mandy was watching me, but all I could think was, he left this for me, he wants me alone, fuck free love and a writhing mass of coked-up bodies. Unaware of anything but the fierce pounding from my heart through to my groin, aware only that he was waiting for me that somehow he loved me… I didn't think about Mandy again.
I walked into our room. He was standing there, staring out the window. He turned around as he heard me approach and held out his palms, in some sort of offering. I mirrored him, touching my hands on his. I couldn't meet his eyes, but he understood. He kissed my forehead softly and pulled me onto the bed.
I think we made love for the first time that night. Everything before that was meaningless mindless fucking. But this. This was every fibre of me hyper-aware of him touching me kissing me licking me entering me knowing me. Later of course, later it fucked up. Later of course he looked at me as if he didn't know me. Later he left me for his heroin and his jealousy. But that was later. At the moment, nothing mattered but him and the way he worshipped me. Not as Maxwell Demon, not as a stage presence, but as me, Brian Slade. Me me me. We weren't ourselves in those moments; we were in-between, somehow strangely disconnected. Not in the jarring sense brought on with drugs, but a fluid segue into a different time a different space a different reality.
We fell asleep together. The last thing I remember was our breathing blending into each other, melding ironically, symbolically, fittingly into one. I woke up briefly, opening my eyes when I thought I heard the click of the door, but no one was there. I was then aware of Curt's nail-varnished hand on my bare back. Even during all our tossing and turning throughout the night, somehow our bodies had stayed together.
I smiled.