Nightmare on K Street

Not that I could forget, save perhaps by blow to the head, I’m almost forced to remember on account of it being raised in conversation, or by being near-touched upon tangentially; one early morning after hitting the booze during a trip to Melbourne.

Oh, it was going to be great. The night started out with my being called (perhaps erroneously) a “writer”, and I seemed to be able to endure the standard rate at which alcohol was being imbibed. In fact, I didn’t even feel drunk by the time another (it would later be revealed) was having a spew.

I felt the first itch of an urge to write just as the friend I was staying with was set upon by a young lady. A young lady who’d informed us that she’d “just finished school”. Which is to say she was old enough to drink, and what-not, only it made me feel a bit old.

My friend and I had been discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponty (as being the only redeemable phenomenologist), folk-theories of aesthetics, and shit, all day. I was primed to write, and the late-night action seemed to light a fuse.

Soon after, my friend and his newly graduated accomplice, ducked out for a bit of what-not, back at the place where I’d been sleeping. I went on drinking in order to give them a little more time alone, plus extra drinking for extra time, in case it was needed. It’s always good to increase your margin of error in these matters.

Anyway, perhaps I was at least a little drunk.

Eventually, thanks to a friend, I got back to the house, sneaking in and locking the door behind me, in the dark then tip-toeing over creaking floorboards, towards my mattress on the lounge-room floor, dropping my pants, and crawling in. My mate, still awake, in turn tiptoed to the lounge room to make sure I was who I was, which I was, so all was good.

Then everyone more or less committed to nodding off.

Some time later, it occurred to me that I couldn’t sleep. I’d had a good night on the piss, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about writing – people had got me all excited about it; “writer”, “Maurice Merleau-Ponty”, “shit”. Four thirty in the morning is usually a good time for this kind of inspiration.

I got it into my silly head (which is why I entertain the suggestion of my own drunkenness), that it would be like “that Hitchens anecdote” – the one where he drinks his pals under the table, only for them to wake up to find him finishing another essay. It was going to be like that.

Then there was movement…

A foot stepped down on the corner of my mattress and I opened my eyes to make out part of a black silhouette hovering above in the darkness. Footsteps tracked the side of my improvised bedding, stumbling into the kitchen, the silhouette gaining only enough outline to identify the owner; the young lady who’d come home with my friend earlier in the night.

I told myself that as soon as she’d finished I-didn’t-want-to-know-what in the bathroom, and made it back to bed, I’d get up and start writing. Sure… It was going to be like that.

After a wrong turn into the pantry, the silhouette stumbled back across the edge of my mattress, thankfully managing not to step on my balls or face in the process. I was about to emerge from my failed slumber and head for my laptop when it happened.

I still had my eyes closed, hands pinned beneath my head, when somehow a pair of arms interlocked with mine, and a face nuzzled between my shoulder and jaw. Teeth grinded – her teeth – which to my mind, instantly conjured imagery of The Walking Dead – her mouth only millimetres from my neck, gnashing.

I could have screamed I guess, but that doesn’t come naturally to me. Maybe it should.

No, what I tried to do, with some success, was to slowly untangle myself from her arms, crawling further down along my bed, as she lay “above” me at a one-eighty degree angle. After about an hour of this manoeuvring, I was finally free to get up and get away. But…

I needed a little breather before I got up. I closed my eyes, only to re-open them to the first rays of morning’s light. I looked “up” to see legs cycling as if she was dreaming the Tour de France, before noticing that in fact, she was naked. What if during my escape, she woke up to find me standing over her like that?

Shitballs…

Slowly, I searched from my mattress-fortress for my mobile phone amidst my travel baggage. I’d SMS my friend in his bedroom, and maybe give him a ring to wake him up. I needed to be rescued out of this situation.

The search for my phone lead me at last to the insides of a Woolworths plastic bag, which crunched and crackled with each tentative movement. This took some time to do stealthily, yet eventually, I was to discover the bag did not in fact contain anything other than unwashed underwear…

I closed my eyes in disappointment only to open them right as the bag was lifted away by Miss Naked, who stood briefly above my head. Swiftly, she placed the bag to one side, and then slid down under the sheets next to me – it was all I could do to roll aside, making sure my arms weren’t pinned again.

I should mention, that in recounting these details later in the day, it was at this point in the story that I was informed she was likely covered in copious amounts of cum. So there she was – pressing against my back, the pair of us forming some kind of salty shortbread cream biscuit. Yuck!

It’s on precisely this kind of occasion (perhaps I’m wrong – I haven’t had many more), that you adopt a certain kind of scepticism towards the eagerness of women, despite what they may say or initiate of their own accord, to do kinky things with your sperm; pearl necklaces, jizzing across the small of the back, swallowing, etc. I feel as if my experience involved some degree of unconscious retribution.

Please feel free to shudder – your sympathy will make me feel less lonely.

There I was, wondering what it would look like to be found in this position, at this stage my desire for essay writing having shriveled to resemble the level of interest displayed by the average, sub-zero, ninety-year-old penis. I had to escape.

About another hour was spent, wiggling, re-positioning, and lifting myself away from my unwanted bed-partner. This may seem an inordinate amount of time to spend on such a task, but one has to consider the constraints upon one’s stealth presented by empty spirit bottles, atop Ikea bookshelves, atop flexible floorboards.

The last few inches was the easiest, my visitor turning over to roll me out in a single, fluid motion, my hands and feet landing on the small gap between bed and bookshelf. Slowly I crawled towards the lounge room door, grabbing my pants and wallet on the way – I was free!

After quickly pulling on my strides and popping on shoes, I made my way to my mate’s bedroom and quietly knocked on the door.

“Whaaa..t?”

Squeezing my head and shoulders into the room, I told him he was missing something. His eyebrows furrowed, in a substitute shrug, so I pointed at the other side of his bed, where, lifting his bed-sheets, he would discover a certain absence before rolling his eyes and crashing his head back down in frustration.

At last, a course of action would be decided upon; my friend would go back to sleep, while I went out to get some early breakfast before sneaking back in to crash on the lounge. He’d take care of any awkwardness should it arise.

All in all, the rest of the morning didn’t pan out too awkwardly, although I’m not entirely sure Miss Naked remembered who she’d fucked that night. I didn’t get a word of my essay down.

Still, it all could have gone a lot worse, escalating beyond all buggery with recriminations all round. I’ll settle for my losses and call it a cautionary tale.

~ Bruce