Beautiful Agony (A Tale Of Savage Love, Part I)

by DuBois, Dominique D.

What an arrogant bastard, I thought as I sat there half-stunned. I mean, obviously he wouldn’t call me if he thought I was dog-ugly, but most people had the common courtesy not to allude to that fact so blatantly. The generally acceptable thing to say would be something like, “Send me your photo and if I think we may be compatible, I’ll call you.” Or just ask for the photo and, if he didn’t like it, not bother to contact me again.

  But to be so blunt about the whole thing! Not just the photo part, but all of it. Then again, if I was going to be truthful with myself, his searing honesty had primarily been what had managed to hook me. Because regardless of the fact that he’d come across as somewhat condescending, he had somehow pierced through my own rather ambiguous ad, and honed into the heart of me. For I believed his words; that he could, in actuality, see what lay beneath the surface. And I also, strangely enough, believed that he just might be able to help me. Now, hand shaking, I moved the cursor over to the little .jpeg box and nervously clicked on his picture.

  Hardly able to even draw a complete breath, I found myself oddly denying the impulse to look right at him, and focusing in on his surroundings instead. I don’t know what my recalcitrant reluctance stemmed from – perhaps a fear that he wouldn’t be attractive to me? Or worse; terror that he would.

  He was standing in the midst of what looked to be the penthouse apartment of a luxury, high-rise building. It was extensive, and had a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline. First and foremost, it meant he lived nearby.

  But it was his taste in décor that I found most intriguing. Everything around him, all of his furnishings, were made of either glass, silver, or black leather. His carpet was white, and it seemed that there was not a spot of color anywhere. The walls, too, fell within these parameters. They held either abstract black and white art or simply nothing at all. I could see two paintings and the rest was just bare expanse of drywall. No family photos, no portraits of his beloved grandmother or favorite dog: nothing.

  I gazed at each insignificant detail for long seconds on end, yet finally, unavoidably, I’d seen it all. You could only study a screen-sized photo for so long without running out of things to note. Now, there was nothing else to do but look at him. So look, I did. Instantly, the spit shriveled in my mouth.

  The man, himself, was uniquely interesting; just certainly not “handsome” in the usual sense of the word. He was well built, had short-cropped dark hair, and what looked to be nearly colorless, crystal-gray eyes. They were so startling they made me uncomfortable just by the merits of him looking out at me via the pixelated surface of the digital photo, alone. How would I feel, then, when I was pinned and wriggling beneath his gaze for real?

  His jaw was very square, his cheeks angular, his nose long with a slight hook at the bridge, and his overall expression was blandly menacing, in a way I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Yet what caught my attention first and foremost was the large scar that ran from the very top of his left cheek, all the way down across the curve, finally ending at his upper lip where it clearly cleaved the surface. What had happened to him to mar him so badly?

  I was transfixed by it, hypnotized, mesmerized. I simply couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was an absolutely flawless illustration of what I’d longed for all these years: something external, something that marked me, something that showed others how damaged I was inside. Perhaps if I’d had similar scars to bear on my body, I wouldn’t have ended up with quite so many upon my soul.

  I studied that garishly-beautiful blemish for a long, long time. I imagined that for most people, they, too, also first saw the scar; the raised, puffy welt, so starkly brutal it was like a jag of lightning right across his face. Of course they would be engrossed by it for an entirely different reason – perhaps reacting with curiosity, revulsion, or even disgust. Me, on the other hand, I looked at it with only envy instead.

  The scar was quite startling; vivid white, which was particularly discordant against the backdrop of his otherwise deeply-tanned skin. I questioned for a moment why he’d sent this angle of himself, and not a more flattering one where I couldn’t see so much of his scar. But then again, perhaps when you had such a central disfigurement, right on your face where it was the first thing that any person who met you would ever see, it was easier to get it out of the way up front.

  Personally, the scar didn’t bother me at all (certainly not like his eyes did). You see, I found it a lot less threatening when people’s damage was easily visible, rather than buried deep inside, like mine. I did wonder, though, how in the hell he’d actually gotten it.

  As far as the rest of him went, he appeared tall, and lithely muscular. He certainly wasn’t a body-builder type, but he did have a well-defined and toned chest beneath his black t-shirt, and his arms looked like they were corded with languid steel. His was a runner’s body; someone who could go long distances, push himself to the ends of the earth and beyond, and yet never even get the slightest bit winded. Looking at him excited me in some un-nameable, irrefutable way.

  Maybe it was stupid, but something inside suddenly made me want to go along with exactly what he’d asked. At least partially. Everyone in the biz knew me as Ruby Sweet. So, I figured there was no harm in using my middle name for now. Once we’d actually met and if I decided to continue this venture further, then I would tell him my first name.

  Cropping just a head-shot of myself out from a photo of the most recent office-party mêlée (that a colleague had fortuitously posted on Facebook), I saved it and named it “Evelyn Sweet, 212-555-8686”. Then I attached it to my return email.

  The number happened to correlate to an anonymous, “pay-as-you go” cell, and it was not registered to me in any official database. Any woman dating in this day and age, really needed to have just such a thing when giving out her number to random strangers. Because face it, even if you met a guy in a bar and talked to him for hours, and felt like you’d known him since birth, he could be a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer, and there was no sense giving him the key to your identity right off the bat. With this number, I knew I could use it safely, and this guy, Adam, would never be able to track me down if I decided I did not want to meet with him in person again after our first public outing. Well, that was if he contacted me back.

  The photo I was providing did not have any indentifying factors in it either, and like I’d said earlier, the email address was brand new. I did feel a little uncomfortable giving him even half of my real name (as he’d demanded), but I didn’t really see how he could do anything with it. I wasn’t listed in any phone books, I had no public Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, and I pretty much remained anonymous in this city of millions. Besides, those rare times when I had met someone at a bar that I’d decided to go on a date with, dishing out my name was something I typically couldn’t get around.

  So, now that I had hit reply, pulled up a blank email, and attached my picture, what next? What in the hell did I say in response to those cutting, starkly-cruel words of his? He spoke like he already knew the inner depths of me, as if he’d already somehow mapped out the twisted and warped pathways of my secret-most psyche. But he was nothing more than a stranger who hadn’t even yet seen my face.

  Would he possibly think I was pretty? ‘If I like what I see, I’ll respond,’ he’d said. Was there really even anything here for him to like? I had a very edgy cut to my glossy, dark chestnut hair. It was shorter in the back than in the front, and on both sides of my face, it tapered at an angle towards my chin. Once it had been so short, the longest part had barely even met my jawline, and my stylist had trimmed the very back with an electric shaver. Recently, however, I’d let it grow back out, and it was now only an inch or two shy of brushing my shoulders. At work, I always kept it straight-ironed so severely, it was as flat and shiny as a sheet of glass. But at home, at play, when I went out in search of danger, I liked it tousled and gelled so heavily, it actually looked wet.

  My body was average, I suppose. Being only 5’2”, I always wore 4 or 5 inch stilettos to
work. I was extremely thin, severely svelte, but regardless of how little I ate or how methodically I starved myself, I never lost my heavily-rounded breasts. Overall, my figure was carved more by nature than by design, the bones beneath my fine skin leaving me with a defined waistline, curved hips with sharp-edges, and slim, tapered legs with tiny feet. While other women in my circle seemed to stay perpetually tan, I preferred to remain as pale as possible, religiously avoiding the sun like the Bubonic Plague. This left my skin soft as velvet, my face youthful and line-less even though I was nearly three decades old.

  I’d once been told I had the visage of an anime girl, with large, wide-set, heavily lashed eyes, and a very slender nose and pointy chin. Probably the most interesting thing about me was the color of my eyes. They were such a deep sky-blue that they appeared purple. Somewhere between lilacs and bluebells, I guess. I didn’t think they were anything special, but regardless, they always seemed to captivate my chosen prey.

  Men I used temporarily, for affection, for sex, for a diversion – but never really for any true length of time. No matter who I met or how much I liked him, there always remained this thick, impenetrable wall between us. It had gotten even more difficult over these past five or six years, though, which was why I’d only had one-night stands the last three times. And all of this made it even more difficult for me to say why it actually mattered to me so much all of a sudden, whether or not he responded back to me.

  Even so, after I’d opened myself up to possible disappointment and failure, after I’d sent him my picture and my plea, how long would I have to wait to find out if he ‘liked what he saw’? If he didn’t, would he simply remain silent? Or would he bother to personally tell me to go ahead and fuck off?

  My palms were sweating profusely, and I wiped them off on my slacks. What in the hell was wrong with me? Why was I letting him get to me so much? And just what was I going to say? ‘A word or two that is the real you.’ Ah, Jesus.

  Before I could stop myself, stomach churning, I went into an old, old file. Copying the words of the document, I hastily right-clicked and then posted them into the body of the email. It was a poem I had written years ago called Damage. I had never shown it to anyone else before in my entire life. It read:

  Burned out husk-

  still smolders.

  Shell-shocked flesh,

  hurts, blames, and

  screams…sometimes.

  Laughs. Loves. Lies.

  Why does it still sting

  when innocence dies?

  How can the same mistake

  Bite?

  Over and over;

  a poisonous snake,

  whose venom washes through me.

  Memories made dangerous

  and painful again,

  a collection of weeping scars.

  I push them out:

  a mottled, misshapen baby

  rotten inside.

  Rupturing,

  membranes spill

  the stuff of

  Lost Dreams,

  Haunting me,

  still.

  Quickly positioning my hands back over the keys, I typed, “This is me.” Then, before I could dismantle it further - pick apart my courage until nothing was even left - I hit send. Brow sweating now, too, I felt a wash of relief flood through me. It was done.

  Oh, God. It was done. Sour anxiety suddenly roiled heavily within my stomach. It could be hours, days, weeks, months, or never, before I ever heard back. And how could I have shown my innermost, private work to a complete stranger?

  Disgusted with myself, I pushed away from the desk and went into the kitchen. I opened the cabinet door and had just reached for the Jack when I heard the bell-sound from my computer. Oh shit; I had mail.

  Surely it wasn’t from him. Not yet, anyway. Still, I slammed the bottle down onto the countertop almost hard enough to shatter it and practically sprinted back into the other room. Before I had even made it all the way over to the desk, I could already see that the email was, indeed, from him.

  The subject line was completely blank, offering me no hint of what lay within. With a shaky hand, I clicked on it.

  “Meet me at Pudge and Druthers in one hour. Wear red.”

  Pudge and Druthers was a local bar on St. Mark’s Street – everybody knew it. But how had he known I’d be able to meet him there inside of an hour? Apparently he’d presumed that I lived in the heart of the Apple as well. Or at least that I’d have the sense to email him back right away if I couldn’t make it and needed another hour or two.

  I looked at my watch. I didn’t want to have to send that email requesting more time.

  ‘Wear red,’ he’d said.

  I had two choices here. Go and meet him, and address my fears head-on – because let’s face it, he would demand absolute honesty from me, and a complete baring of an inner-self that I’d always tried hard to hide. If nothing else, at the very least his email had absolutely indicated that. Or, I could delete the account I’d set up, forget this whole venture, and take the safe way out. Looking down at the fading scars near the bend of my elbow, I quickly made my decision.

  The clock was ticking.

  I made it to Pudge and Druthers with just over three minutes to spare. We were deep in the belly of winter, so outside it was already almost pitch, screaming-black.

  I wound through the congested restaurant side, pushing though the noisy throng and heading over towards the bar where I could only assume he would be. And I was right. Halfway across, I saw him there; waiting silently for me at the distant end. He wasn’t talking to anyone, but the women all around him were staring at him, quite obviously gawking at his face. Only suddenly, I didn’t think it had anything to do with his scar. Oh, it was quite noticeable, for certain. In fact, it literally shrieked out into the busy, bustling, dimly-lit room - demanding immediate attention. The white arc cleanly cleaved the right side of his face in two, creating a jarring countenance that undoubtedly elicited stares everywhere he went. But that wasn’t what stood out the most by far.

  No, what immediately gripped one’s innards and squeezed so compellingly (catching your breath in your throat and smushing your heart into a flattened pancake in the process), were his arresting eyes. As I’d surmised, they were even more intimidating in person than in his picture. Only I hadn’t any real gauge as to just how fixating they would truly be. They didn’t just see me: they saw through me. So strong and overwhelming was their immediate force, I practically had an out of body experience as he silently and steadily watched me weaving my way carefully across the room.

  From above, I saw myself swaying through the swelling morass of twenty-something, well-dressed, self-important professionals. I saw the men whose glances followed me, their eyes feasting, their heads turning while I removed my black, heavy woolen jacket and sashayed past. Beneath, I had on a red dress; shockingly-short, long-sleeved, tight. It also had a scooped, v-shaped top that dipped so low, you could actually see the bony staircase of my ribs between the two, bare swells of my ripe breasts. I was not wearing a bra.

  True to form, I had on lethal stilettos, red velvet with gold heels. The only jewelry I was wearing were two thin, large, solid-gold hoops in each ear. My hair was severely straight, like I wore it at work. And that excited me somehow, because I knew in my gut that the only reason I was out here, was strictly for play. Mixing the two personas was heady and dizzying, and the three shots of Jack I’d had before walking out the door and hailing a cab, certainly didn’t hurt any.

  I felt at once both self-conscious and sexy, and because of the way he was watching me, piercing me with those goddamn eyes, I was aware of every single sensation in my body; each pounding thud of my pulse, each individual goosebump along my skin, each swish of my dress against my silky, smooth thighs.

  He studied me intently, every single step of the way, until I was there beside him. Pushing a burgundy barstool out towards me with his foot, he said simply, “Sit.” Abruptly, I was no longer watching as if fr
om a cottony distance. I was thrust back into myself in one joltingly-vicious stab of glaring clarity, and suddenly, I was me and he was him and we were presently and undeniably there together.

  I was standing awkwardly and wordlessly, like an aberrant idiot, and he finally said “sit,” once again. This time, it was something less than polite.

  There had been no salutations, no ‘nice to meetcha’s, no ‘how do you do’s. Just a simple command that, this time, I instinctively followed. The stool was very tall, and I had to wedge my right heel against the metal railing around the bottom of it in order to thrust myself up high enough to reach the seat. Grabbing onto the slippery, polished bar for leverage, I finally swiveled around and slid my ass all the way back across the slick, red leather surface. When I was appropriately settled, I found myself simply faltering for a moment, oddly unsure of how to act now. Sluggishly seizing onto the realization that this was, in part, supposed to be a first date, I coyly crossed my legs; knowing damn well how that always drew men’s attention directly towards my shapely calves and thighs. But not with this one. Uh-uh. No dice.

  He kept staring into my eyes, un-blinking in his perusal. The bartender came over then and asked, “What can I get for you, Miss?”

  “She’ll have a Jack and Coke,” Bishop said, without asking me first.

  “How do you know what I like?” I asked, a little perturbed, but mostly curious. It dawned on me that this innocuous question was the very first thing I’d ever said to him in person. My initial words were supposed to be sexy, unique, original, engaging.

  “Because I can smell it on you,” he replied bluntly as the bartender walked away, “just like I can smell your saffron shampoo, your almond moisturizer, and your vanilla perfume. And your sweet, hot sex beneath those black satin panties of yours.”

  So, he had caught a glimpse down the hem of my dress as I’d crossed my legs then. He must have peripheral vision to die for. Then his words truly hit me and I blushed. I opened my mouth to say something but I had no idea what. I bit my bottom lip, tasting the oily, expensive, bright red lipstick I’d expertly touched up in the cab less than five minutes ago.