sunburn

At the party. Seven shots to dull an ache from the sun. He was sunburnt. In the kitchen, she slapped his damaged face. Watching as her hand blanched in his skin, she apologized instantly. She had only wanted to prevent him from some careless racist outletting. How had the conversation moved so far from a full-figured syrup bottle? And for slapping a sunburnt man in public, she is awarded an odd flirtation. No more than a moment's silence between them and a spectator is introducing himself with "I don't mean to be forward, but who are you?" His undertone of desire not well masked by rum and coke, causes her pause baffled by a man who admires a violent woman. Her abused man explains her place, her relationship to blood and body. While the stranger convinced himself he'd made a sufficiently bold impression, he failed to see her following their host's bare feet. In her mind: What could that deformity be? Gout, she thought but would never mention it to him. He was a barefoot devotee and the state of disease even would not see him shod. Inwardly, she finds this irrationality adimirable.--- Energies moved around her directed by stale gingersnap cookies, orange vodka and powered lemonade pink. References to films were exchanged. Stories about- what else but- heterosexual sex were told. Hearing them hurt her. She couldn't laugh at faux pas, at dysfunction. In her fantasy, intimacy was for true lovers, private and compassionate. Everywhere around her it was violence, power plays, crudeness and meaningless amusement. In her past, it had been abuse. And so she can not so much as giggle at the party, at the boy fanatically telling some shocking tale of fellatio. The evening, as always, will come to a quiet close. The sunburnt man will be unable to don his shoes. One of her own will be stolen temporarily and thrown behind a television cabinet. All sorts out, all leave from the doors they entered in, in the attire they arrived in. Our host remains barefoot--- In the morning three types of eyes greet hers. Cardboard of pirates, plastic of green soldiers shouldering toothpick bayonettes, glass of strung-up troll dolls. There are too human eyes about the room, but these she chooses to avoid. Walks out on them for a morning pastry. Sips at tap water. Feels the lard and water resist one another. When she lives at home, she is clad in rose oil and silk at dawn. If she never got lonely, she could stay that way. Why does her company need smell of grain sweat, clay and immaturity? They are the most touchable. And touch can heal her.