The first show was still an hour away. We had bought plenty of drinks, each lined up in front of us like ammunitions of assault, with the leftover smaller bills stuck tightly in our left fists. Our smiles caked something molten in them, cracks in the crust of our moon pie faces. There were two underage boys with us, who passed because they were with us and we were well known.
The first body fell from too high of a place and we lowered our sights to contrary positions of pleasure. There was a smothering of hair and glass and a figure that moved to the right and then lower still. A swell in the sweat of the room meant that things were getting ready to roll, that we were ready, clutching skinny Benjamins like deals we fudge for and later deface.
Another body rose over to our table and whispered in our ears, the sound of which was a pampered ass in our eyes. Compliments of a whiskey marriage and hair dinged up and torn, screeching. A wiggle back together on a four-hour burner. This is how to fuck and ruin, one of the underage boys said to the other. This is what happens when you leave the jelly jar out in the sun.
A third body broke with veined linage across the strip of flooring that kept filthy until morning. Weighted cotton all sorted out since childhood and an abundance of glass bowls filled with smelling things. My hand against the promised bicep of big-bulbed sploshing gallons and leaden clean up later. Content to face the let downs, the bodies here hear everything and still they manage to smile.
We were not planning on staying for the second show, though we did, the underage boys by then drunk on sours and sticky sweets in their pants. They were twisting their friendship into bitter embraces of contempt and competition. They sat there perspiring and rising and shrinking into their seats. The older gentlemen all sat there, trying to keep the table steady with half-hearted erections and regret like private cutlery.
