It’s a Friday night and I really don’t know why I am here, in this nasty “club.” Multiple bodies are dancing around me and I can’t breathe. The lights keep flashing and plastic barbies dance on poles, but who am I to judge? I’m here just the same. Clothes really aren’t a factor.
The smoke that floats through the small building burns my eyes and lungs. I can’t really see that well, just blurry faces of men behind women– simulating sex. Pushing my way through the crowd I wonder if I’ll make it out alive. I see my friends in the sea of people and I don’t understand what they find so fun.
Something was not right with these people, the way they let go so freely. They get into groups of two (sometimes more) on wobbly legs because they’ve had too much to drink, and they throw up, only to kiss each other shortly after, calling it sexy. Sometimes I think about how awkward it must be to wake up in another bed with someone you met the night before, naked. I wonder if they still feel hot.
I finally get to the bar counter and sit on one of the old, rickety stools. My feet hurt from the high heels my friend made me wear and I want so badly to kick them off and rub my feet, but even if I am among animals, I refuse to act like one. So I keep my feet on the foot rod on the stool and tug my (friend’s) mini skirt down. I grieve that I do not have my jeans on, and wish that I had my sweater. I take my hand and run it through my hair, trying to push it out of my eyes, which is proving to be very difficult do to the sweat and mist that contaminated my hair. None of it being my own and I resist the urge to vomit.
I look up and across from me there is a mirror behind the liquor cabinets and even though my image is distorted I know I look rough. My eye make-up is slightly smeared, my whore red lipstick has faded (thankfully), and my hair is in all sorts of disarray. I want so badly to go home. Away from the drugs, the sex…
And the violence as a fight breaks out behind me. I don’t know who is fighting or why, just that there is fighting, I can see it in the reflection of the mirror in front of me and I resist the urge to turn around. If I don’t look, I won’t be in it, but as I subtly observe, I realize I am about to be put into a very painful situation.
The bar rings out with loud bang, a stool falls over, clanging to the ground and I am just short of catching myself as I hit my head on the edge of the counter and tumble down in a very undignified and very revealing heap. I close my eyes, bite my lip and try to count to three, willing the pain and the blood I feel flowing down my forehead to go away. Just go away.
But it doesn’t, and it’s like everything stopped. The music was no longer playing, the lights were only slightly flashing, and everyone had stilled. Silence over took and I couldn’t really move. I let out a moan of pain, opened my eyes and suddenly the world is in fast forward…
People are scrabbling to help me, the two guys are trying to get out of the club, but the bouncers have stopped them. Someone is calling the police and maybe an ambulance. Really, cracking my skull open is not that big of a deal. It’s a side effect of coming to this place. I try to fight off the hands that reach for me, as I struggle to get up, my friends…unsurprisingly, aren’t there to help me. I look around as I stand on shaky legs and see a good majority of the group passed out in the booths, and wickedly I hope they drank themselves to death.
With my hand pressed up against the gash that had decided to take up residence on the hairline of my skull, I feel someone’s warm and latex covered hand grip my wrist. I can’t see that well still, but I can see the sudden appearance and disappearance and repeat of a light. I try to pull my hand away but a voice stops me.
“Hey, heyyy!!! Relax! I just need to look at this. Seems pretty deep…Can you hear me?”
I assume, by that time, I looked pretty damn pitiful. Wild eyed, bloody, and barely focused. Even though I heard him, I couldn’t really answer, I was too worried about how much of me was covered, how much people had seen and how much I really just wanted to cry from embarrassment. A fun night indeed. I think, briefly (but not for the first time within the past 20 minutes) about how I really need new friends. Ones who are safe and like to play scrabble. I pull at my skirt once more.
“Ah, you don’t look like the type to be in here, ya know. Here, take this jacket.”
I feel something fall across my shoulders and it covers my arms, which gives me a bit of comfort. More comfort than I’ve had in the passed hour or so. I feel hands and cotton swabs and alcohol gently rub away all the blood, but I wince because really…a gash that deep is going to burn. I feel the breath of the guy blow onto the wound, trying to ease the burning. I feel like I’m 5 again and my mommy is trying to sooth a boo-boo. I also feel that perhaps that’s a bit unsanitary and wonder where he had his training.
“So, tell me, what’s a girl like you doing in a shitty place like this?”
My eyes are finally focusing and I’m able to see this man’s face. He’s in a paramedic uniform (surprise, surprise), messy, dark hair, scrawny, pale, brown eyed. Everything that screamed indie high school stereo-type and I wanted to half way slap him for it. I realized, though, that would be kind of childish and perhaps a bit psychotic. So I don’t and he continues to clean the gash.
“My so-called friends, brought me here…”
My answer seems to satisfy him as he gives off a smirk that says he knows more than he lets on. When he finishes cleaning the wound he decides that I should go to the hospital anyway, because it was really hard hit and from the looks of it, it might be a bit more than a gash. I agree to get into the ambulance only because my ride is passed out and really, I just want to leave. As I go to walk away, I slip slightly in my own blood and again, I resist the urge to vomit. The blood was extreme and I realized that it was probably the reason for my dizziness. The paramedic gripped my elbow tightly to steady me and I continued on to the ambulance.
The ride is silent, except for the sirens that wail all around me. I go to poke the gash, but a hand slaps my own away and I make a very unladylike grunt of disdain. I really don’t have the patience for this guy to keep touching me, even if I do think he is kind of cute.
I suddenly feel very sick to my stomach, the paramedic notices and quickly puts a bucket in front of me where I empty out the booze and food of the day, and I think I even see my breakfast from earlier in the morning. He gives a chuckle.
“Throwing up, now that’s hot,” he says sarcastically, while laughing at my expense.
We arrive at the hospital, he disappears as my doctor shows…They fix me up, four stitches in my forehead and I stand outside in the cold trying to figure out what to do next. A man stands beside me, but I can’t make him out. He breaks the silence, “Need a ride?” It’s my paramedic. I look over to him and suddenly I think that perhaps…I should have gone clubbing earlier.
Turns out, he likes scrabble.