John kept pushing and pushing, he couldn’t go in any further. I didn’t want the feeling of the tightness inside me. I wanted to break. John forced my knees open and whispered too loudly, ‘Open up, come on! Open up! Open up!’
One of my legs suddenly fell off the couch.
‘I’m inside you, babe. Come on, babe, come on!’
Bone into bone. The plug was a wall. The only fist I felt was my actual fist.
John lifted his hands to the side of my head, used his hard shining forehead to keep me flat down. My eyelids were grinding.
‘Good girl, shhh, good girl … ’
I needed to move side to side in my hips. It felt different when I did it, different better. I pushed my hips up into his body. I used my fists to hold myself up.
‘That’s it. That’s the way … ’
Something was stuck there inside me, like a log stuck in fire.
‘Yeah, baby, fuck, good girl, that’s the way … ’
It didn’t hurt more when I moved a bit faster. There was just something burning, a fever down there. John’s hands squeezed my ass, his hands spread me open, spreading until I was bigger, unstuck. Oh god, I was doing it. It! Really It! I was feeling him move faster in and faster out. I was trying to feel every in, every out, but I couldn’t keep up, it was going too fast. I didn’t even know if I was feeling him or feeling me. I shut my eyes, I tried to relax …
‘Yeah, fuck, you’re so hot.’
Something flew up inside me. I heard myself grunt. It flooded my insides, flooded my head and I floated, floated, just for a second … Then John’s head hit my chest and I was back in the room, back on the couch, knuckles under my bum as John trickled out of me, saying my name.
‘Mira! Mira!’ The men at the club called me by my real name.
I was doing my
trick: lying on the ground with my hands behind my shoulders, then pressing up, my back in an arch. I walked that way to the edge of the stage so that in front of their faces, my cunt touched the pole. It looked like a split-open flower they’d stepped on.
‘Oh yeah, baby! Go for it!’
I stood up red-faced and turned around slowly. I imagined their claps slapping right on my ass. I tried to smile backward over my shoulder, but I could only do it for a second. It was a baby’s smile, a dog’s smile.
I ran downstairs right after I finished. Lani and Coco were smoking in the hallway before they went on. A lot of the girls there never really liked me, so I couldn’t ask them for a puff, even though I wanted one. All I ever needed was one puff.
It was disgusting for us down in the basement. Paint was flaking off the ceiling and it smelled like piss because the pipes were too hot. Adi was down there getting ready. I looked at myself beside her in the mirror. My eyes were starting to run. Sometimes I thought I looked like a hot sexy bitch right after I danced – not some pig-breathed, nineteen-year-old thing. But if I kept staring and staring, I saw a smeary-eyed person whose head didn’t belong on her body, whose tits hung too low, whose legs were too big.
‘Look at me,’ I said.
Adi was looking at herself.
‘Look. I look disgusting.’
Adi rolled her eyes.
‘I look like an elephant.’
‘No.’ Adi laughed. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be grey and fat.’
So why was I always looking down when I danced? Why did my tits feel like elephants’ trunks?
Adi got up and came behind me. Her long skinny arms roped round my waist. She stared at us both in the mirror and said, ‘Up there, on your hands and knees, you put some kind of spell on them. Makes them go crazy!’
Adi could stop me from crying. Well, I wasn’t really crying. Adi whispered at my neck, ‘You look so good. Everyone sees.’
I sat down and watched Adi finish her makeup. Her straight white-blond hair was tied in two ponytails. She put baby-blue eyeshadow high on her lids. All of it seemed so easy for her. I thought she must’ve known how to do this stuff forever. Makeup made her look even more beautiful.