Hung HannahIt's usually the cutie-pies who get me: The smiling-with-tongues-leaking-out-of-their-teeth ones; the gap-toothed-and-sunny-eyed dollup of heat ones; the sweet ones. The sad-eyed and vulnerable, meek ones...
Though sometimes, a freak ends up having to do.
The manic comedian Robin Williams once described Maggie Thatcher, ex-British Prime Minister, as looking like she had a small turd under her nose. This invisible yet permanent affichement (like her handbag), was trotted across the globe in a proud mix of smiling and disapproval...Its look of perpetual offput was Hannah.
Hannah was freakish, to be sure. Knees bent like a horseman, she swayed like a willow...Invited me into her heightened regime: Crooked finger, then wagging it Mick Jagger-like, and then sshhh-shing it, crushing it up to our lips.
"Smell the finger!," I thought I heard her howl...Hannah didn't speak like me, though; freakish Hamburg Hannah only let on she spoke German. Plus, what's more, I never saw her smile. Finished with that years ago, she'd taken by the time we met to snarling disapprovingly at all things deemed offensive.
This was everything. My looks, my clothes, my snarling her way...Asses she'd grow transfixed on and then decide they wouldn't do...
"Right! That's the kind of bird you crave, 'ay?"
"...Crave?"
"You wanna shagger, don'ya? She with you?"
"No! I'm just hangin' out," I start.
"You reckon she fancies 'im?"
See Hannah: Dancing like a horseman willow...Licking on her hands and fingers, beating on her skirt to stay down.
"Tryin' all night, he has, that one. Why, 'e's about to cum in his trousers, I reckon..."
"Good for him, man! Think he'll hook up?"
"Who, 'im? That bloody tosser, never! Bloke's me 'usband, actually...And he's in pain right now, assure you! Right. Let'im get'is leg up, I say...End o'the day, he leaves when I do. When I say he does...Fuck off!"
Now she starts; bounds away from me...Then carries 'bloke' out of the club, next instant.
Hannah's left alone now with her heightened, altered dreams...She sits there snarling, like she farted; spilling wine all down herself. I ask this bird, who's flown, "You cool?"
She snarls at me, incoherent.
Money dudes attempt to move her. Plant in their Versace and their suede shoes, black and '80's-looking; rape her with their barroom brawling stares and knees spread wide, and perfumes...
I win, as she spins her ugly face and eyes back, snarls at me.
Sense the melting: Beast grows tamed...Snuffed, upturned face and nose (like someone farted) thaws like Spring a little. Eyes part like a theatre drape...a coma victim coming back...Begin to show some signs of Life and cognizance.
She wants me bad.
I dive into the seat the British guy had squinted in like Lennon...Failing, hawk-like overtures he'd made, they've left no stain on Hannah!
I alone possess the key...
I toss a stick of gum at her. She smiles, feeds it back to me...I take the wrapper off. She sneers, and makes herself disgusted, look disgusting once again.
But then the ice melts. We connect again. The shit drips off her face and pools like butter on a waffle, or the bottom of a movie tub of popcorn. And she's smiling! Mad beast being tamed...I reach out, cautiously, my hand to pet her.
She sniffs heinously again, disdainful.
Painfully butt-ugly.
I snatch back my hand, afraid she's gonna snarl, flare and chomp it off. She rolls her eyes, then head, and gives it over to the bar behind her: Country tourists from the States...amazingly bland stereotypes. There's two guys and a sister-looking, "just friends" type, just hanging.
Sudsy mustaches stain stupidly their upper lips ("Got Weissbier?")...And they stare and laugh, embarrassed, as they size the situation. Hamburg Hannah does her own sizing...She's open to potential (three new asses to transfix upon!). She stares, unfocused, lolls her head back; maybe hisses, "Naahh! Uh-uh!" Then turns it slowly back toward me...I shrug.
She grins (unfocused), tries to...
Keep connecting this way, we two, deep into the midnight.
It turns two AM. Now Hannah says she has to use the rest room. She stands up to pee (or tries to), hikes her skirt around her waist and pulls her drawers down, starts to squat...all single motion, just one hand; the other hand stays free and clings with tenter hooks around the glass of wine she spills, yet keeps refilling.
Snatch her up straight (wine glass crashes)...Drag her, with a chair or two, across the room to where the stairs go down and leak into the bowels of the rest rooms.
We descend, relieve ours.
As I'm waiting for her outside by the condom machine afterwards, occurs to me bread's limited...I've just about enough to get a taxi back to Steinerplatz, and hoof from there to where I'm staying.
Push and nose her up the stairs. She's falling backwards, spinning, Hannah, hoping hands will help her...She gets hung up on my neck at one point, humming I "smell soft".
"Don't move!" We finally reach the top and I run fast to get her things (her little purse and too great overcoat); run back to where I planted her...Bent knees and willow swaying, catch her beckon with a crooked finger, no one in particular.
"It's time to leave," say I. "Let's go." She brushes my erection with a fist and snarls disapproval. "I can't fuck," she slurs. "You, no..."
"No, no!," I say. "No fuck...Let's go."
Outside, the German, autumn night cracks chilling, like a Holocaust. A line of Berlin taxis waits like sharks in bleeding water...There's a pair of drunken Lederhosen dancing with a Girlfriend.
Hannah lies with booted feet up in the parking lot.
Look back at her...
© 2000, J. Glovsky(submitted as 'Flash Fiction' to
zoetrope.com4/23/03
-so far
50% read/review ratio
)
