Dynamics

She turned and looked me dead in the eyes


‘Hit me’, she spat, ‘go on, I dare you.’

I didn’t reply, my eyes brushing over her dishevelled appearance in response. She was bright-eyed and clammy, her hairline sweaty from the musty club we had just been in. One strap of her top as falling down her shoulder and her skirt was twisted.

‘You’re too soft. No wonder no one likes to go out with you’, she slurred. We were standing out the front of some overrated underground bar that she had been raving about for weeks now. The brisk evening breeze bit at my skin as I offered her my coat. Throwing it down into a dirty alley gutter she challenged me again. I walked over and picked it up. I wasn’t going to rise to her provocation.

It was the first time I had been out with Cynthia, and she was proving every one of the reasons for my hesitation right. I knew she was a heavy drinker, but I never understood the reasons why she always had unexplained bruises and cuts. Now I did.

‘Do it. I won’t feel it, I swear. I’m magic’, She guffawed.

‘No, you’re drunk.’

She swore at me as she turned to walk away, putting too much momentum into her heel spin and stumbling. I watched her as she straightened and began to slowly walk in the opposite direction.

I always hated going out with people from work. I think it had something to do with the safety of the one-dimensional character I saw. It was as if I ventured outside the work environment with them, I’d see another side to their personalities, and that would be the end, I’d know too much.

I figured there must be something about me, something that invited people to tell me their secrets, to talk and talk until all their problems were off their chests and they could breathe easily again. People would tell me about affairs, broken promises, old flings and new flings, which members of their family they hated, which ones they loved, sometimes a little too much. Cynthia had done the same, punctuated with frequent refills of her glass.

‘You know that guy I was seeing a few months back?’ She asked, ordering a scotch on the rocks. I nodded, racking my brains for any previous conversation which could have mentioned this particular guy. She took a massive gulp and I winced. Her father must have been a violent drunk, if she could down scotch like that.

‘Got me pregnant. Bastard.’ She muttered.

I surveyed her slightly hunched shoulders, like she was carrying the world on her back. I was no longer surprised by anything anyone told me these days. I was immune, even to the greatest horrors of humanity. My silence prompted her to elaborate.

‘All he wanted was a few good nights, I guess.’ She spat bitterly. ‘He said his wife was always too tired, what with their baby and all. Can you believe that? I was a dirty mistress. A dirty mistress, wrecking some lovely girl’s life, some innocent baby’s family’, she ran her fingers through the curls of her dirty blonde hair.

I wondered when it would be appropriate to leave. I was tired. Across the bar a young could sat laughing. I loved watching the dynamics between couples. These two were drawn to each other, each hanging onto what the other was saying, giving each world weight through their attentiveness. Cynthia continued to talk, and I only half-listened while observing these two. Being a closet sentimental, I appreciated the way their styles complemented each other, as if they unintentionally coordinated even their outfits according to their collective moods. I wondered how long they had spent together for such an intuitive awareness to develop. Everything they did was centred around the other, and even when they looked around, and eventually left, they were both so aware of the others presence.

I looked back to Cynthia. She was on her eighth drink, a heroic effort for 10pm, and she had already passed though the tumultuous dynamics of her family, her childhood pets and their untimely deaths at the hands of her brother and her sisters’ teenage mayhem. I had had enough. Standing up, I suggested we try somewhere else out, intending to walk her to a taxi and drive myself home.

Smiling and giggling goodbyes at the bartender, her composure turned suddenly as soon as we stepped out into the gutter, and I could feel the resentment prickling towards me, as if it were my fault she said so much. Like I had drawn it out of her through painful torture and extraction. Like now I would no longer be able to look at her the same way again. That was true, but I was so used to it by now that I could so easily disguise my disinterest.

She turned and I could see a glimmer of fear in her eyes. Deep down she was still a child, a child in a world that was and always had been a little too big for her to handle.