12. Vincible (L’Exo7, Ruoen)

We are easy to find. Go to places where happiness abides. There we feed. In the places where desire takes people looking to close the gap between want and have, we offer the final solution.

I sifted through the detritus, the plastic cups, opaquely red, wafting on the slow streams of half drunk work. watching for the slither of the snake. A certain unconcern and disinterest, in the middle of courtship. This is not a perfect, for humans also can show this perfunctory love making.  

I hitch a ride out of Paris, and drop down into Ruoen on Boulevard de Novembre. I walk through the night ‘til I find a cinderblock club with rock music blasting through the seams. Kids outside in leather, with parts of their heads shaved, trying hard to look like they don’t give a fuck about anything to one another.

The bouncer takes one look and jerks his thumb. Forever twenty one year olds get in free.

The whole room is zoomed in on the lead singer, who is leaning back, straining, putting a lot of human like passion into the mike.

“I am the wolf, I am the falcon, I prowl, I soar!

All that I want is just MORE MORE MORE.”

His neck chords vibrate and strain. His hair shags and sways and the whole club is rocking with him. They are so unhappy and he offers them meaning for a moment. They surge toward the stage, hands out.

The song ends. It is the end of the set, I see, as the drummer, who no-one had noticed before, stands up and looks for a place to stow his sticks. The crowd turns and congratulates each other. “Great show.”

“He wrecked it.”

“Like I’m high.”

“I wish getting high felt like that.”

The singer prepares to drop his gloried body, a stringy leather clad talon, into the reaching hands of the crowd. He stops for a moment, and swivels his eyes through the crowd, taking in the scene, calculating the haul. He all sees like the hawk in his circuits. His eye lights on me. A little start. Two hawks, one field.

He jumps into the crowd, shrugging off the grasping fans, brushing past the compliments. He arrives next to me.

He says, “This is my drink.”

I say, “I’m not thirsty.”

He says, “I’m going to suck ten of these dumb bitches dry. A couple dudes too.”

I give him a half smile. “Go ahead.”

“Don’t touch my bitches.”

I order a ginger ale. “See,” I said. “I’m not drinking.” He is getting all apey. He moves off, swings an arm around a blonde and grabs the hand of a brunette. He drags them toward the door.  

I walked out after him. He pushed one along, “You like this, bitch?”

She didn’t seem to mind the dismissive, not to mention abusive nature of his verbal foreplay and that put me in half a mind that he was right. I was ready to walk away and leave him to it. But then I remembered that the world conspired with him, spreading giant images of sexualized women on billboards, running them through their screens that they had everywhere.

Can you blame a sheep for walking down the corralled paths provided for it, following the merry tinkling of the bellwether? The sheep does not know where it goes, whether to shearing, or to slaughter, and so it goes. The primrose path of dalliance was the only one these dumb bitches knew, and being dumb and following the animal grinding of their loins and their conditioning was stronger than instinct.

Rockstar was only confirming what she had always been told.

The other said, “Don’t ignore me.”

He laughed, and lifted up his head, unsheathing canines an inch long. I grabbed his hair.

“You’re going to have to stay thirsty.”

“Bitch! These are mine!” He still thought I was stealing his drink.

One of the girls hit me over the head with her little denim purse.

I said, “You still don’t get it. I’m not thirsty.” I put my shank of crossbeam up through his heart. He looked

down on it, trying to figure out what was happening. I explained, “The second death.”

The girls looked at me all shocked. “You killed him,” one screamed. The other started sobbing.

Someone emerged from around the corner. I leapt for the roof. Talking to police was not my thing. I caught the edge of it with my fingers. I was about to pull myself up and get out when I felt an iron grasp close around my ankle. Then a snapping down and I spilled onto back onto the alley. The girls were running away. I looked up and saw a woman. Tall. Beautiful as ice flows, her curvature the paused undulation of a glacier. Wearing a white evening dress too. “You.” She said like the taste of puke was in her mouth.

“Me?”

“You cannot kill the thirst. It is universal. It is even in the humans. Heirarchy. The exploitation of desire. These things are natural and eternal. You see them in there, worshipping? They want to be drunk. Look at them. Hanging on him. Hitting you. It’s all they are good for.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I just looked at her. She looked to well put together to be behind this cut rate rock club.

She reached out, a sneer of distaste on her perfect face. A curving fingernail, long as the talon of a bird of prey, cut the air between us. I was paralyzed, watching. The fingernail grazed my hair, and that’s all I remember.