See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

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Razzmatazz was not the hottest nightclub in the grotty little California town, but it was jumping. In a way, being second rate was a good thing.  These weren’t all coked-up children of privilege and gymbunny starfuckers; they were people who came to get high or get laid, or some combination of the two.  Less bullshit, more flavors of decadence to choose from.  The night was young and the walls weren’t sweating yet.

Josefina was there to dance, but her skin jumped with anxiety, her eyes wheeled in their sockets.  Despite her youth, those eyes always seemed tired.  Physiognomy, or a result of constant stress?  A feeling of disjunction followed her through the world – that she did not belong in reality.  She had to loosen up, and the only way that had ever worked was ecstasy.  The pills were already dissolving in her stomach.  She imagined she could feel them, that her stomach itself was a glass bottle of hydrochloric acid, a hand dangling from her esophagus giving it a little swirl.  The pills fizzed like the product in an antacid commercial, losing their cartoon dinosaur shapes.

Noise laid a comforting hand on her thigh.  The woman had naturally blonde hair, long and fairly straight, but wore no makeup, hadn’t dressed up at all.  She was still in a stained Del Taco t-shirt and khakis from work, unflattering to her rubenesque figure.  Without darkened lashes, her eyes looked tiny, with a reptilian glint, and without lipstick, the big but thin-lipped mouth looked like that of an albino ape.  Noise always bore a faint smile, deriving a crass amusement from the world of vice.  This was largely vicarious, as she never developed much taste for drugs and only got a laid a few times a year.  Mostly she was a chain smoker, always with a cigarette behind one ear.  “Hey Josie, you feeling it yet?”

“No, no.  I can’t.”  Josefina didn’t look at her, but Noise wasn’t offended – used to her ways.

Peace lay a comforting hand on her other thigh.  He was big round Cayuse man that had moved south from Oregon as a child, and joined one of the ambiguous brown people cliques at Josefina’s junior high.  He was a calming presence in her life.  Whatever his delinquency or foolishness, it was taken at a casual pace, arousing no anger from anyone who heard his soft, resonant voice.  Like Josefina, he had very long hair – mostly straight, but frizzed from a trace of natural curl.  Josie’s hair was dark and her skin light, while Peace’s skin was a shade darker and his hair lighter, like God turned down the contrast on him.  He wore an illegible death metal t-shirt, an open hoodie, and absurdly loose-fitting blue jeans.  Nobody would mistake him for a law-abiding citizen, yet he also did not provoke suspicion.  One could imagine no harm coming from his thick hands, even as he used them to feed MDMA to his friend.  “You’ll get there, Josie.  Clark and Mister Dougie don’t sell no bunk.”

“Thank you, Peace.  I can feel something, but I’m not there yet.”  She almost confessed that she felt a bit ill, but knew that would get her friends pouring bottled water down her throat, and she wasn’t ready to hydrate yet.

“They better not,” Noise cackled.  “I wanna see Josie go crazy.”

“I’m always crazy, Noise.”

“You know what I mean, girl!  Shit.  And what is this crap they’re spinning?”

“Morcheeba,” said Peace. “It’s ’90s stoner stuff.”

“How do you even know that?  I don’t care.  It’s putting my ass to sleep.”

“Go burn one?,” he offered.

“No.  I don’t wanna miss it when Josie gets up.”  She was clearly considering it, turning the lighter over in one hand, again and again.

“I’ll wait ’til you get back,” Josefina said.

“Liar.”

Whoever was working the lights was not feeling creative.  They’d left bands of different colors over the floor in discrete regions, spotlights staring straight down.  People changed colors as they crossed the floor, as bored with the music as Noise.  The closest color to the stoners was a wall of De Palma red.  They sat on one of the few benches at the back of the floor, under a looming maze of blue-grey geometric chunks – sculpted foam meant to quell noise complaints.

Josefina contemplated the bodies, ignoring eyes.  What did she want from them?  She felt like a vampire choosing its victims – but an incompetent one that would usually end the night thirsty.  Ladies and gentlemen and some other kinds of creatures in the mix, all dressed like myriad species of gangsters and sluts, the fashion not precisely mapping to assigned genders.  Their movements spoke of relationships – this woman connected to that woman and that man and his friends, that man connected to the bar staff and bouncers, and so on.

Nobody was alone – she would have to inveigle her way into another clique if she wanted to dance.  Peace would only dance with somebody he was courting and didn’t want to mess up their friendship, and Noise’s idea of dance was to grab a guy’s ass and stand there like a fire hydrant.  But Josefina would not go completely neglected that night, having slut gear under the hoodie, ready to go.  She was wearing a black bikini under her clothes, and would probably get away with stripping down to nothing but that, as the club heated up and the bouncers lost track of the chaos.

Her attention kept coming back to a drug dealer – a possibly older man, white, and wolfish – like a less interesting cousin to Christian Bale, dressed like Mac Miller.  He had come alone, though some people in the crowd knew him, and glanced by him for product, or to make a nominal amount of nice, to stay in his good graces.  In her experience, a man alone was a dangerous wild card, but this one was a professional, never jerked an elbow in anger, and seemed well-liked.  Further, he subtly moved his body to the music, with no thought to how he looked without a partner.  Unselfconscious, in a way that promised a good dance.  Still, would he want to be interrupted at work?

The drug hit and her head lolled dramatically.

“You should drink some of this,” Peace offered.

“HaHA!  It’s happening.  Get up, girl, get up!”

Josefina waved off the water, and stood up slowly, carefully.  Noise got a hand around her ass and pushed her into the crowd.  She crashed through a couple, pulling them apart, and caught angry looks.  But it was official.  She was dancing.

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