Women of the Dark Streets

by Radclyffe

  “So no elbows? No fishhooks? No brawls?”

  “Nope.” Josie flexed her swollen knee and grimaced when it popped. “Is the doctor running behind?”

  “Yes. You’re her last appointment of the day.”

  Josie flopped back on the table, her paper gown rustling. “I’ve got to get to the rink. We’re having a meeting before practice.”

  “Practice? With that knee, I’d say you’re off skates for at least a month.”

  Josie shot upright, her eyes flashing with fury. “What the fuck? No way!”

  I shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Where did you get your medical degree?”

  “Fine. Get a second opinion from the doctor, but I’ve seen a lot of knees and I know you need a rest.”

  “Shit. They’re gonna kill me.” Josie lay back again, staring despondently at the ceiling.

  “Surely not.”

  “We have a bout coming up.” Josie brushed her hand across the velvet nap of her head.

  “So…I used to skate when I was a kid.”

  “That’s a sweet story.”

  “I was pretty good,” I continued as I typed “skater” into the patient’s information.

  “How nice for you,” Josie replied woodenly.

  “Actually, I miss skating. Could I try out?”

  “I told you, we’re not recruiting and we’re not accepting fresh meat.”

  “Why?”

  Josie’s mouth twitched. “Just a rule. Very strictly enforced. Sorry.” She shrugged.

  “Can I come watch a practice?”

  “Nope, they’re closed.”

  “Can I just come skate?”

  Josie grinned. “Yes, you can skate session any time. Visit the website to get the deets.”

  Indignant, I said, “Well, how did you get on the team?”

  Josie laughed. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  I burned with rejection.

  “Hello, how are you today?” Dr. Mendez entered, smiling.

  After work, I looked up The Dustbowl Devils on the web. Their rink was downtown and public skating session was tonight. I put on jeans and a tee and drove to the rink. I paid at the window and went inside.

  “Can I help you?” a pale, thin, wasted young man behind the counter asked me.

  “A pair of skates, please. Size seven.”

  “Men’s size seven?” the man asked.

  “No…women’s.”

  “Then you’d take a five in skates…let’s see…” The man found a pair and handed them to me. I noticed his arm was speckled with track marks. He saw my gaze and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have fun.”

  “Um…do you know…Beelzebabe?” I had seen the photograph of the captain and I was as full of frenzied lust as a teenage boy. I tried carefully to appear casual but authoritative. I played with the skate laces.

  His eyes sharpened. “Yeah, why?”

  “She told me to meet her here tonight, that’s all.”

  The guy snorted. “Not likely.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she doesn’t interview fresh meat on Tuesdays. And the team is not accepting any newbies anyway.” He moved to take the skates back but I clasped them close.

  “She did tell me to meet her. Don’t you have a number to reach her?”

  “Don’t you?”

  My mouth twisted. I saw derby girls start to file in and drop their big duffel bags on the tables.

  “Listen, session is almost over. Don’t waste your money.” The man tugged on the skates and this time, I released them.

  “I really want to try out,” I muttered.

  “I hear ya. But they get lots of girls coming in, using every trick in the book to get on the team. It just won’t happen.”

  “Why not?” I asked while watching the derby girls suit up. They were a small group and they laughed easily with each other. The thumping music drowned out any possibility of eavesdropping. The session skaters wobbled by in endless circles.

  The roller girls all wore black and had hard bodies. Some were slim, some were curvy, but they all had a luminous beauty that was frightening in its intensity. Like walking into a viper’s nest of supermodels.

  “Listen,” the man said, “there’s another team in town. They’re always accepting girls. You can head over there and still make practice.” He tried to hand me a flyer. I waved it away.

  Just then, Josie came in swinging gracefully on crutches. She saw me and turned white. I raised a hand in greeting. She said something to the girl she was with and came over to me.

  “What the fuck? I tell you not to do this and you goddamn do it anyway?”

  “You’re supposed to rest that knee,” I said.

  “Seriously, get the fuck out.” Jose began tapping my ankles with one of her crutch tips. “Go on. Now.”

  “Stop it!” I cried, stumbling and hobbling toward the exit. Josie followed, hopping on one foot, poking, prodding, and hitting me the whole way. “Stop!”

  “This is not a joke. You have to leave.” At the door, Josie put her hand on my chest and shoved me backward outside.

  I stood on the sidewalk, my face flaming, my fists clenched. The derby girls appearing in twos and threes never even glanced at me as they entered the building. I crept to my car and sat with my bruised ego, watching the skaters arrive.

  Gradually, session skaters began leaving in familial groups. The rink’s thumping music stopped abruptly. A few derby girls skated out to the sidewalk for a last-minute tobacco fix. I watched them, my teeth clenched and my chest hurting. They smoked and laughed and gestured wildly. I didn’t smoke, but suddenly remembered my ex leaving a partial pack in the glove box. I reached for them and awkwardly lit one, not inhaling. I leaned back in the seat, trying for as much cool as a nursing nerd could achieve. The girls never even looked at me. Some shadowy movement down the sidewalk caught their eyes and they startled like a herd of deer. They dropped their butts and rolled skate wheels over them all in a synchronized flurry and skated quickly back inside.

  I looked in the direction the skaters had stared. From the darkness, a figure emerged and strode purposefully toward the rink doors. She was medium height with very short platinum curls tousled tight to her scalp with sexy wisps trailing down the nape of her neck. She wore black thigh-high platform boots, black booty shorts with the words “nom nom nom” emblazoned across her ass, and a tight black tank top. I could almost see her muscles rippling like a leopard’s. Her face was a Botticelli sculpture of classic beauty. At the door, the woman stopped. She turned. She looked right at me. I trembled and my bladder quivered under her powerful gaze. She pointed to the exit driveway. I started my car and drove home.

  The next day, I hated going to work as if everyone could see my embarrassment and shame over the foolish thing I had tried to do.

  “Hey, what’s with you?” Dr. Mendez asked me. “You’re so quiet. Not yourself.” Worry lines creased her forehead.

  “Huh?” I was jolted out of my reverie of self-pity.

  “Qué pasa, eh?” Dr. Mendez elbowed me.

  “Nothing.” I sighed, then covered it with a smile. “I just had a rough night, that’s all.”

  “What’s her name?” Dr. Mendez laughed.

  “Oh, I wish.”

  “’Fess up. Now that I’m pregnant, I have to live wildly through someone.” Dr. Mendez rubbed her swollen belly.

  “It’s too pathetic.” I groaned, covering my face with a patient’s folder.

  “You joined an online dating service?”

  “Don’t make me say it,” I cried.

  “You started a second job with Amway?”

  I rolled my eyes, the memory of my badgering Josie Morgan the same way in this very room turning my face scarlet. “Roller derby,” I shouted.

  “What?” Dr. Mendez stopped caressing her stomach. “Did you say roller derby?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Did you join a team?” Dr. Mendez crowed. “That’s great! I ha
d no idea you were so cool and edgy! Oh, my God, I know a derby girl! When is your first game? I’m bringing everyone from the office.”

  “No, you can’t,” I croaked, my throat dry, my eyes swollen with the effort of fighting irrational tears.

  “Why?” Dr. Mendez put her hand on my shoulder.

  “Doctor, your eight thirty is ready.” The voice crackled over the intercom.

  “Because they wouldn’t take me,” I answered, my voice thick.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. They aren’t accepting new skaters. Non-negotiable. I showed up for practice and they kicked me out.” I finally wept softly, not realizing until this moment how badly I wanted derby and how deeply it hurt.

  “Who are these women? You want me to make a call? I’m going to make a call. Don’t you fret,” Dr. Mendez said. “This is not how things are done in Puerto Rico.”

  “No, no, that’s okay.” I laughed with relief. Dr. Mendez claimed that in her native Puerto Rico, all it took to get what you wanted was a well-placed call to the proper connection.

  “You don’t want me to make a call? I’m ready to make the call, chica.”

  “No call.”

  “No call?”

  “No. Thanks, though.”

  Dr. Mendez shrugged and rose. “If you change your mind, let me know because I see you in roller derby. It’s so right. Stay here and take a minute.” She closed the door as she left.

  *

  The Dust Devils’ rejection just strengthened my resolve. I would get on that goddamn team or die trying. First, I laced up my junior high school skates and went to the running trail to see how they felt. The skates pinched multiple blisters onto my feet. My lower back ached like I’d been heavy lifting and my legs burned and quivered with the effort to keep my momentum going. I thought skating would be like effortless gliding. It wasn’t. By the end of an hour, my entire lower body was either throbbing or shaking. I staggered to a bench and sat down with a groan. Maybe I shouldn’t join derby after all. Maybe I couldn’t do it. They didn’t want me and I wasn’t fit enough, let it go already, I told myself, wiping sweat from my forehead. Just forget about it, my agonized feet advised.

  Just then, a skater wearing a black Dust Devils tank top blew by without a glance at me. I ground my teeth. Oh, I wanted this. No matter what. I took off my skates and limped back to the car. I drove to the rink across town that was home to the Other derby team.

  I walked in and went to the pro shop. A woman with choppy, multicolored hair and tattoo sleeves looked up from a bearing press. “Help you?”

  “Can I join your derby team?”

  The woman’s face lit up and she leaped over the counter. “Sure! We’d love to have you! When can you start? Practice is tonight. Do you need skates? Here’s a waiver for you to sign.”

  I took the sheet of paper. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.” I left, sulking all the way home. Apparently, I didn’t want to join any team that would have me as a member. I showered and headed for the rink I wanted to call home.

  I sat in my car and again watched the session skaters leave and the derby girls arrive. I waited for the one I really wanted to see. Maybe this was enough. Just sitting in a roller rink parking lot, filled with longing and watching the roller girls come and go would be all I’d get. I fumbled with another cigarette.

  Finally, She arrived. I watched her stride toward the door with feline grace. A shining silver curl covered one eye. I longed to tuck it into back into her hair and run my hands through her smooth, short curls. But her biceps and deltoids were carved like a bodybuilder’s. She terrified and aroused me simultaneously. I wanted to hide from her scorching gaze and be fucked by it. Again she stopped at the door and raised her nose as if sniffing the air. My heart thudded heavily in my chest like a stone in a drum. I flicked my butt out the window so she wouldn’t see me so easily. The woman turned, her sculpted face taking my breath away. She walked to the curb, pointed at me, and again directed me out of the lot.

  My sweaty hands had difficulty with my keys and the stick shift, but I finally left. Her poisonous green eyes almost glowed in the dark. She watched, still as a statue, until I turned the corner.

  This went on for three weeks. I decided I had nothing to lose, and the frightening thrill I got from her staring at me was the hottest action I had had in years. Each night, I parked a space closer. Each night, she walked closer to my car before banishing me.

  Her gaze became a drug. On the nights without derby practice, I couldn’t settle in to sleep. I fought the covers, snarled at my pillow, and kicked my sheets. On nights when I had her dangerous gaze on me, I slept deeply as if dead. I forgot about skating. I didn’t care about derby, I just wanted to do anything to have That Woman look at me. During the day, I was too afraid to have my fantasies go further, but at night, in my dreams, she showed me everything. More mornings than not, I woke up twitchy and blushing and could not calm down until I parked at the rink again.

  Dr. Mendez offered me Valium and then Xanax, but I liked being upset and unsettled. I could feel my blood in my veins, plumping my skin toward her, my fluids turning my body and pushing me to her, like tides to the moon. I could feel my heartbeat in my cunt. It was agony and I loved it. I was ready for derby.

  I skated early one evening before derby practice. I knew I would finally be invited in. I just knew it and I wanted to be ready. As I pushed myself, gasping, along the outdoor trail, I expected to be exhilarated and I felt nothing but cramps and aches in my whole body. My neck, my lower back, my hips, my knees, my ankles, and especially, my feet were clenched into throbbing knots. I tried to breathe and enjoy the sunset but I just wanted a hot bath and pain meds applied directly to my muscles.

  I collapsed onto a bench and gulped water. The liquid sloshed over my face and splashed my shirt and I didn’t care. I tried to remember Those Eyes and those close-cropped curls, but my closed, dry cunt had no memory. As I poked numbers on my cell phone, my chin dripped water and I didn’t wipe it off.

  “Hey, Lauren, come get me at the highway and the river. You’re right. This is too hard. I can’t do it.” I snapped the phone closed and bent over to undo the laces of my skates. Water dropped onto the pavement, but it was from my eyes. I sank into an exhausted stupor while I waited for my ride.

  When she finally arrived, I limped to her car and fell into the seat with a gusty sigh. We rode in silence for several minutes. Lauren drove past the parking lot where I had left my car.

  “Hey! I have to pick up my car! Turn around!” Then Lauren drove past the turn to my house. “Okay, bitch, where are you taking me?”

  “Derby.”

  “I’m not showered!”

  “Showered for derby? What’s going on?”

  “I don’t have the right clothes.”

  “Huh?” Lauren gave me the stink eye.

  “I’m tired!”

  “You’re going. You want this.”

  “Like hell. I’ll claw your eyes out first.”

  “Well, okay, but then we’re going to the rink. Listen, you have bored all of us for the last month about how important this is to you, so it’s time to shut up and skate.”

  “You don’t get it…” I moaned, imagining the humiliating rejection, the embarrassed explanation to Lauren about the treatment I had not only been enduring but also enjoying. I withdrew in a furious pout.

  “We’re here!” Lauren steered her car into a space with such casual negligence that I cringed. When I came alone, it took me full minutes to select a space, position the car, and park perfectly. Sometimes I agonized over my choice and ended up moving my car two or three times. I looked around and noted the lot was full. Jealousy soured my belly like poison.

  “Looks like a party! Come on!” Lauren grinned and jabbed me. She was out of the car and at the rink door before I could unbuckle my seat belt. I tried to yell at her to stop, but my voice had dried to a crust in my throat. My tongue was limp with panic. I moaned as I stood and hobbled a
fter her, walking very slowly because I expected Lauren to be dismissed and come hurtling out any second. My eyes dilated as I put my hand on the door and waited. Nothing. I pulled the door open. Women’s voices like harmonies swirled out. Suddenly, I was filled with a ferocious curiosity and possessiveness. How dare Lauren still be in there! This rink was mine. I had been shamed; I had put in the time; I had faced off against the captain night after night; I owned her in my heart by day and claimed her body at night; I was here first! I charged inside.

  “You’re late.” Josie was at a table and handed me a booklet without looking up. “Sign this waiver, get skates and pads from Annie, and you have to run ten laps for being tardy.”

  I stood, shocked into paralysis. Josie was busily scribbling in a notebook. She sensed my immobility and, still staring at her paper, she spoke harshly while continuing to write. “Look, what are you waiting for? You’ve got one shot. Move.” She glanced at me, her sentence unfinished. “Well, look who finally made it to Fight Club.” She smiled coldly and gestured to the rink. “Go. Hurry.”

  I dashed to the counter where a tall, willowy redhead was passing out skates and pads to throngs of clamoring women. There was a happy babble and nervous laughter. I shouldered my way into the crowd and found Lauren, flushed and excited, trying on helmets.

  “What the fuck?” I demanded, ready to punch Lauren, blaming her for not being thrown out.

  “It’s newbie night!” Lauren cried, as wiggly and gleeful as a Jell-o salad with colored marshmallows. “They only have them once a year! So what the hell, right?” She scooped up an armload of pads and a pair of skates and scurried to a bench.

  I looked at the rink, as if that would explain everything. The core team of skaters was out there, including Beelzebabe, skating with impossible speed, ease, and grace. I felt nauseated. I would never be able to do that. They looked like they were flying, dancing, soaring.

  I only knew their feet touched the ground because of the smooth whisper of their wheels whirring on the warm maple floor.

  “Is that her?” Lauren whispered, staring with her mouth open.

  “Yes.” My heart was full of razors.

  “God, is she a movie star?”