Eighteen Months

Home > Other > Eighteen Months > Page 27
Eighteen Months Page 27

by Giulia Napoli


  We did go back to Romania’s one afternoon, to find out more about the teas, but they were closed. We left the island without talking to the sisters again.

  When we sadly bid farewell to Grand Cayman, it was 77 degrees. When we got off the Metrorail in River’s Edge that night, it was 18. Fortunately, there was one taxi waiting at the station and we took it to my house.

  I spent the next afternoon practicing with Phil, to get my dancing legs back, and I performed that night at the Jolly Roger. My vacation already seemed like a distant dream.

  **********

  Business was slower than average until later in March, when it began to pick up again. The tips weren’t as good, but I was still making an impressive amount of money, much of which I saved or invested. My life as a blind exotic dancer had become routine: each week was pretty much like the one before it. Rina and I usually stayed at her place from Wednesday evening until late Friday afternoon, and at my place from Friday night until Wednesday.

  One curious event happened a few weeks after we returned from Grand Cayman. I had my usual appointment for a trim with Kirsten, my hairdresser. My kinky-curls grew a bit more than a half inch a month, and I decided I wanted my little ‘fro kept close to my head. Rina liked it that way, and it was incredibly easy.

  I guess I’d made the transition from long-hair-lover to short-hair-lover. It was a good thing too. I couldn’t grow it out now without a lot of straightener and processing.

  I showed up for a trim and Kirsten asked, of course, “What the hell happened to your hair?”

  I explained the part of what had transpired at Romania’s regarding losing my blonde roots, being bald, and then having dark brown Afro hair start to grow in place of the hair I had before. Kirsten didn’t really believe me, I don’t think, but the evidence was right there in front of her. She had to accept my story.

  “Okay, okay,” she finally said, “I believe you. But now there’s a problem.”

  “Sorry, I guess you’ll lose the business to give me a perm,” I said.

  “Not only that, but I’m gonna lose your entire business.”

  “No you’re not. I love coming here.”

  “Alie, I don’t know how to cut and style Afro hair. That’s really a specialty. I think, instead, you should start going to Melody.”

  Melody was an African-American stylist who had a loft at the same location. All the hairdressers there were independent, and rented the space and business systems like credit card processing and scheduling. I’d met Melody and we’d become friendly. But I really liked Kirsten.

  “All you need to do is trim it,” I said. “How hard can it be?”

  “Not hard, but you have to practice. It requires a lot of finger manipulation skill to hold the wiry curls when you cut to get a quality look. Plus there’s the care of your hair which will be different now that the texture has changed. Eventually, you’ll want to change the style, and that requires a talented, experienced hairdresser like Melody.

  “Let me go get her. I’ll be right back.”

  She returned with Melody and we talked about my new hair. Melody was as shocked as Kirsten but, undeniably, the evidence was right in front of her. She had another person coming in ten minutes, but could trim me right after that customer. I said goodbye to Kirsten and went out to the common waiting area.

  When the time came, Melody knew exactly what to do with my hair. So I ended up with a new hairdresser.

  Under Phil’s tutelage, my dancing continued to improve even more. Everyone at the Jolly Roger was impressed with that, even that classic asshole, Roger Junior. I still did five shows but now all the dances in a given night were different, and in one or two of them each night, I was a blonde. I was glad I couldn’t see my hair when I wore the blonde wig. It would have brought back memories that would make me yearn for that innocent girl who’d moved to River’s Edge last summer.

  She was still there, I told myself, merely hard to find sometimes.

  I was laced up for the third dance every night, sometimes with a leather cord, sometimes with a flexible chain in white gold. In both cases, the laces were always closed with a small padlock, either up near my clit, or between my legs if I were laced from top to bottom.

  Dancing like that was somewhat disconcerting. Being laced made my pussy very tight and it tugged when I danced. Since all the rings on each side were joined together inside my body, a little tug on any one caused them all to pull on me. It was a strange sensation. Coupled to that was the lock dangling either near my clit or between my legs. In the first case, it could easily make me cum if I weren’t very careful. When the lock dangled between my legs, it was like a continuous pulling and a distracting jiggle all the time.

  The crowd loved it either way.

  I got my fix every day when I went to the Jolly Roger. After the Tuesday performances, Roger faithfully gave me two to take home. Rina usually shot me up on my days off.

  That worked well and I mostly forgot about being hooked on heroin, meaning that I didn’t dwell on it every day. I had the tea which I thought would work when the time came at the end of the year. I did get sexually high every day, of course, but that had simply become how I was in the evening. So I came to regard myself as a young woman who happened to have a big libido.

  Rina satisfied it with great skill. We were both young, after all.

  Every month or so, I felt a need for Rocco, whom I considered a close friend. He was always shy but happy to oblige me.

  One Friday night in April, I arrived at the Jolly Roger, only to find out from Marlene that Roger Junior had decided to take a long weekend away, and hadn’t bothered to get our fixes ready before he recklessly left town. No one knew where he kept his stash – more like our stash – let alone how to unlock it if they did. So Marlene, Crystal, Patti and I were SOL – shit out of luck.

  By the time my fourth dance ended, I was climbing the walls. The additional months of addiction had made me so dependent that even a day of missing a fix was bad. It was equally bad for the other three dancers.

  “Ah’m feewing awfuw,” Patti said as she lay on the sofa in the lounge. Her speech had never gotten much better after Roger had her tongue pierced. As I understood it, the customers liked her pierced tongue, though. Whenever she let it hang out of her mouth during her dance, the shouting and clapping doubled. Her tips were up too. I was glad of that. At least she’d benefitted a little from her ruined diction.

  She was supposed to dance again in fifteen minutes, and twice more after my last performance. I didn’t think she was gonna make it.

  I got through my last dance and Rina picked me up. I hadn’t been able to catch Rocco to see if there was anything he could do, and I didn’t want to hang around there and be miserable for another two hours until they closed. At home, I chain-smoked eight cigarettes while Rina tried to comfort me. I couldn’t sleep. By morning, I was considering using the tea to break my habit, even though that meant I wouldn’t have it to use when my sight returned. I was so miserable though, and now the pain was starting.

  Rina took me to the Jolly Roger right after lunch, when I could barely stand up. Crystal, Patti and Marlene were there already. In fact, they’d felt so bad they’d never gone home. They were lying around on couches and chairs. Patti was trying to say something but I couldn’t understand her garbled English.

  “Wocco wen foah zmahsh foah za foah ahf uz.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  “What is she saying?” I asked Marlene and Crystal. My head felt about to explode, and I ached all over. I have never felt so anxious, and I wanted to scream for it to stop.

  “Rocco went to get us some smack. Easy X too, but he didn’t know if he could find that. Aahh … please fuckin’ shoot me,” Marlene moaned.

  I chain-smoked four more cigarettes, double pumping every inhale. I was putting out the last one, with Rina putting cold compresses on my head, when Rocco returned.

  “Alie, how yous doin’?” He asked as he came in.
<
br />   “I’m dying, I’m pretty sure,” I said. “Did you get the smack and Easy X?”

  “I got smack – there’s tons of it around here, but couldn’t find no Easy X. I don’t know how Roger was mixin’ it anyways. For that matter, I don’t know how much to give any of yous. I’ll have to guess.”

  “I don’t care, give it to me!” Marlene shouted.

  “Can ya help me, Rina?” Rocco asked. She must have nodded because he said, “Take one of these spoons I put the junk in and heat it over your lighter. Then fill the syringe and hit Alie, then do it again with another syringe for Patti.

  I felt Rina tie a rubber hose around my upper arm. She tapped my inner elbow and said, “Got a good vein. I can do this. You sure you want the straight smack?”

  “Like nothin’ I’ve ever wanted before,” I gasped out. I didn’t even feel ashamed at that point. I needed this awful pain and distress to stop!

  It seemed like an hour but was only a minute later when I felt a needle slide into my arm. Then Rina released the rubber hose.

  GODDAMN! In an instant – actually, more like five or six seconds - the pain stopped and I felt so very, very, very wonderful!

  “Alie?” Rina said.

  “Aaahhhh. That is so sweet!” I exclaimed. Then I mellowed into a puddle.

  An hour and a half later I had come off the high. I felt one thousand times better. It was then, however, when the worries about what was happening to me kicked in. Up until now, the Easy X had moderated the heroin effects and addiction. Now, I feared what might happen to me in the few days until that bastard, Roger, got back on Tuesday. Would his cocktail even work for me anymore by then – after three or more doses of unmitigated heroin?

  What could I do?

  Honestly? I could do nothing but shoot up whenever the pain got so bad I couldn’t stand it.

  That turned out to be twice each day, until Roger got back.

  The four of us were waiting for him. Marlene and Crystal jumped him from behind as he entered his office. We beat him up pretty badly, according to what Rocco told me, but not so badly that he couldn’t make our cocktails. Rocco convinced him that it wouldn’t be in his best interest to take the beating out on us, and that he wanted the cocktail formula and access to wherever the stash was hidden, so this would never happen again.

  Roger realized that he’d screwed up. There were never repercussions from what we did to him.

  But there were repercussions from what we had to do to ourselves. I could no longer get through the day on the cocktail alone. By the time I woke up in the morning, I was starting to feel heroin withdrawal. If I didn’t do anything, I was incapacitated before lunch. That was the same for everyone except Crystal. She was okay with only the cocktail.

  So what could I do? I shot up. I got my fix of heroin alone every morning when I woke up. Rina thought we should carefully measure what I was injecting, and lower the amount every few days, to try to wean me off of it. I was willing to try, so that’s what we did. It didn’t work very well, probably because I was still getting a fix with the Easy X in the afternoon.

  We did get it down to about half what I’d started with when Roger left us high and dry. But the highs in the morning weren’t as high, and the buzz was only about half as long. If we went any lower, I couldn’t hack it.

  Crying, I told Rina I needed that morning high, and, since I couldn’t eliminate the morning do up entirely, I might as well go back to what I’d done that first weekend I had to take a heroin fix.

  She cried with me. I knew it would only be for another seven months or so, and tried to convince myself that I’d be alright then.

  But there I was. A heroin junkie. A blind, sweet young thing from a nice town in Connecticut, and a heroin junkie. What else is there to say?

  **********

  Late in May, Rina saw a job posting for an O&M, an Orientation and Mobility instructor, at the newly opening River’s Edge Handicapped Services Center. She got the job and started in mid-June, one day after the one-year anniversary of my move to River’s Edge. She gave up her apartment uptown and moved in with me permanently. That was all working out and we were both very happy. If there were any regrets, it was because both Rina and I had made friends at Uptown Disability Services, and enjoyed that part of town because of all the neat things going on in that very urban community.

  At least it was only a forty minute Metrorail ride away. We’d head down there to party from time to time.

  Wednesday of the following week was the first anniversary of me losing my sight. I decided that Rina and I should celebrate that occasion with total abandon. That was the day, after all, when we first met. Our one-year anniversary.

  After my morning fix and breakfast, I treated us both to a spa day at the Spa at the Ritz-Carlton – not in Grand Cayman, ha, ha – but the one in the River’s Edge Galleria. We started out with whole-body massages, and then got pampered from head to toe. Well, Rina did; I wouldn’t let them mess with my hair. Rina agreed to let them cut hers and I talked her into a new color, which seemed appropriate to me for the specific reason that I couldn’t see it. I got to pick the style so I made her short hair even shorter – little wisps of hair is the way I’d describe it. By the time they started on our brows, nails, and makeup, Rina was a carrot-top redhead. Her hair was the same color as the red wigs I wore when dancing. I’d brought one along to show the hairdresser, since the color Pat had described to me all those months ago, was the color I wanted for Rina.

  She was like totally nonplussed. I laughed until my sides hurt.

  We got home and changed and then I took her to an Italian restaurant in a mid-rise on the edge of a cliff, overlooking downtown. I couldn’t see the view, of course, but Rina said it was spectacular.

  Afterwards, we went dancing at a lesbian club downtown, then took Metrorail back out to River’s Edge and went to a gay and lesbian club there. We took a cab home about 2:00 in the morning.

  We made slow, easy love. I told Rina I was so glad to have been blinded so I could meet her. Had that not happened, we would have been two souls lost in a metro of three million, and there would have been no chance that our paths would have ever crossed.

  I don’t believe in fate. I think we make our own fate by exercising our free will. Each of us, individually, is responsible for our actions, and reap the benefits or punishments we’ve earned as a result. I do believe in luck, and taking advantage of happenstance. Shit happens, even to sweet young things – perhaps especially to them. That’s what had brought Rina and me together. Once we’d found each other, through the loss of my sight, we were able to make the absolute best of it for the two of us together.

  That night, special yet like so many others Rina and I had shared, was filled with warmth, togetherness, and love.

  It was pretty exciting too. I think something had snapped when she became the redheaded Rina with the super short hair that turned her into a real tiger in bed. The sex was, as Shawnte might have said, “Oh my!”

  I wish I could recapture those days of hope. I’d been working my way through my challenges, and I was gonna make it. With Rina. With a bright future for both of us. If only …

  **********

  Summer that year was hot and busy. Tourism was picking up in and around River’s Edge, and the Jolly Roger was packed more often than not.

  Roger Senior had stopped into the Jolly Roger to say hello, but I missed him. He’d apparently recovered fully, and Rocco thought that he wanted to get back into the business. Rocco was pretty sure Junior was keeping his father on the outside looking in. Since Junior was the majority shareholder, there wasn’t much Senior could do unless Roger Junior agreed. That hadn’t been an issue when a disinterested Roger Junior had lived out of town – out of the US actually – but it was different with him here.

  I asked Rocco if Roger Senior knew what Junior had done to me and the other three dancers. Rocco said he had told Roger, who had apparently had a huge argument with his son, to no avail.
/>   If it had gone differently, and Senior had convinced Junior to stop with the Easy X cocktail, I would have used the tea in a heartbeat to break my addiction. As it was, I’d wait until I could see again and then quit both the heroin and the Jolly Roger.

  Rina liked her new job. River’s Edge was very good to its disabled citizens, and the new Handicapped Services Center was strongly supported locally. Rina ended up heading the services for the visually impaired. I was so proud of her.

  Living together in the same place all the time was wonderful.

  I got home early one Tuesday night. There had been a storm and the power had gone out at the Jolly Roger after my second dance. Roger Junior was incensed. He hated missing any chance to make more money. He made us stick around for a half hour, and then, when the power didn’t come back on and there were no waiting customers anyway, he sent everyone home.

  Fortunately, the power was on at my house. A surprised Rina greeted me at the door with one of her excellent kisses.

  “Whatcha doin’?” I asked.

  “I see you’ve been taking diction lessons from Rocco and Roger.” We both laughed.

  “I was looking for some Earl Grey tea and I found the special teas that the sisters at Romania’s gave us. I was curious so I thought I’d read the instructions.”

  “Oh! So you want to have a rousing night by drinking the tea that cancels inhibitions?”

  “Maybe, though I don’t know many that either of us has. I was gonna look at the exchange tea because I didn’t know what it was about. Here, sit down and I’ll open it and read the instructions out loud.”

  I heard her rustling with the package. “Did you find anything?”

  “Yep. Here’s what it says, ‘This is the tea of exchange. When two people each drink a cup and then hold hands, this mystical tea allows them to know what it is like to see with each other’s eyes.’”

  “Ha! Well that won’t work! If you could see with my eyes, you’d see nothing!”

  “I think it’s a metaphor, not literal.”

  “Then what does it mean?”

 

‹ Prev