ready to fall, erupture 10

ready to fall
I am dressed in a beetle-like shell--sleek shiny shorts, boots, halter, all black patent leather. It's a little sticky waiting on the L train platform at 8th Avenue, but certainly safer than walking across town at 6 am on a Sunday morning dressed like this. The train pulls in, bringing stale breezes and air conditioning, and the welcome relief of a hard plastic seat. After teetering in these spiky heels all night as the door mistress at Reddi Whip I feel like a used condom--limp, discarded, dirty. I plunk my sorry ass down and let my legs splay across the aisle.
A cute perky little thing gets on the train as it waits in the station. Pigtails, plaid skirt, purple doc martens and a Hell Kitty--Hello Kitty with horns--baby t. Little Badtz Maru backpack, clear, in which I can see a Hello Kitty Nokia. She's a walking ad for Sanrio. She sits across from me and gives me a little smile. We sit. We wait. The L train stays in this 8th Avenue station for a while. I think about my night. Cute silver-haired boy flirted with me, but later I saw him making time with Howie the bartender. Maybe he just wanted free drinks. I had to keep a group of yuppie types out, using the fetish dress code ploy. Spanked a couple of people on the way in for fun. The cute boy I sat behind in Lit in high school showed up being led around by a very scary looking bald guy.
Kitty leans across the aisle, a conspiratorial look on her round young face.
"Do you work in the fashion industry?"
"Me? Naw, I work at a fetish club."
"Oh!," she giggles, "What's that like?"
"It's, uh, interesting, I guess. After a while it's like any other job..."
"Are you, you know..." she searches for words, clearly embarrassed.
"A dom? No, I'm the door bitch. You know, guest list and stuff. Keeping the kids and tourists out."
Visibly relieved, she gets up and sits next to me as a few more people get on the train. She sort of bounces as she sits down.
"Do people like have sex there?"
"Some sex, but they're not supposed to. Mostly it's a social thing, meeting other subs and doms, exchanging digits, stuff like that..."
"I always wanted to go to one, but I'm sort of scared..."
"Just wear the doc martens, you'll have some guy trying to worship your feet..."
She laughs. The train starts.
I feel real uncomfortable with a strange person sitting next to me when we've just been talking and suddenly we're not talking, but I can't think of anything to say to her. So I say,
"Who do you like better? Badtz or Kitty?"
"Oh, Badtz fer sure. He's such a cutie. You know, he acts all tough and cranky, but deep down you know he only wants to be loved. Badtz is troubled. I love troubled people. They're so much more complex."
"Kitty is definitely not complex."
"Oh no. But sometimes I think of her blandness as being the Buddha-nature..."
The train pulls into Union Square. She rummages through Badtz and hands me a small pamphlet that looks suspiciously like a religious tract.
"I'm part of a bible study group? We meet on Tuesdays? You should come by... It's not a high pressure thing, we just read and discuss the bible, it's all people like you and me. It's cool! You should come by!" The doors open and we wave to each other as she skips off the train, plaid skirt leaping up behind her.

Tuesday morning, well, late morning, well, afternoon really, when I'm walking out to get breakfast at Kiev I notice the pamphlet that Hello Kitty gave me. It's got some drawing of Winnie the Pooh on the front holding a balloon. Inside is some religious bullshit, and on the back is stamped the address and time of a weekly meeting. I shove it in my back pocket and go out for food.

Later that afternoon I find myself on 2nd Street, the street where the meeting is. I walk up four flights to apt 418. The door is open, and I hear a lot of giggling and chattering. I peak in and see Kitty.
"Oh! Hi! I was hoping you'd come!" She runs over to the door and sort of drags me in. Today she's wearing white pleather hot pants and a bright orange paisley halter top. Her hair is in pigtails. Everyone else in the room pretty much looks like her--cute, fashionable, perky... Except for the perkiness, I can see why she thought I'd fit in. She introduces me to some people, somehow remembering or knowing my name is Melanie. I don't remember telling her my name. Someone thrusts a paper cup of red wine in my hand. 7 pm July light streams through the diaphanous curtains which blow in and out of the huge north-facing windows. There is some music playing somewhere, is it an Elvis gospel song? I smell something that smells like finger paints.
Kitty motions us all to sit in a circle. There are about 23 of us. "Before we start," she says, "I'm gonna pass around this pipe and I want you all to say something you're thankful for. Then you can take a toke, or not..." The other girls giggle, as if no one never doesn't take a toke.
"I'm thankful for the summer," says Kitty and pulls on the pipe and holds in the smoke as she passes it on to the next cute girl.
"I'm thankful for ... lemon italian ices from Ralph's..."
And it goes on like this for some time. I realize that maybe I drank too much wine. My mouth is dry and fuzzy and I have to use a bathroom. I don't want to be here. This whole thing is beginning to freak me out a bit. As the pipe goes around I get the feeling that this is some sort of Jim Jones or Manson scenario and next we'll be drawing swatiskas on each other's heads with Lancome eye pencils because there's no way none of these girls has anything cheaper than a $12 eyeliner in her little fashionable purse, and they're all thankful for such trivial things, like kittens and chocolate and long sweet kisses on rainy summer Sundays that there's no way this thing can be real, and I wonder if I try to go if someone will stop me, and I wonder if someone's going to kill me, if I've been set up to be some sort of sacrifice, and my head starts pounding and my fucking twat feels itchy because it's summer and I'm sweaty and I'm getting my period tomorrow I hope and someone who's thankful for Hard Candy nail polish, or her tattoo artist or something hands me the pipe and I take a toke because now people are smoking before they talk and I take a long drag and I hold it and as I let out the stale smoke I say as I begin to rise I'm thankful I have legs because I have to walk to the bathroom and people laugh and the light through the translucent curtains is turning that delicious sunset pink that reminds me of this candy this hard candy that came in ribbons, it was called ribbon candy, my grandmother had it around every christmas and I think I should have said I'm thankful for ribbon candy even though I didn't really like it, but the color was so beautiful and my legs are beginning to unfold beneath me and I'm almost straightening up when suddenly the floor drops and I feel myself falling.

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