He has never-met a bad-Sofia.
Do you-want-children? What would you-name-your-daughter? She has known him for five minutes, maybe ten.
Sofia, he-thinks. Sofia is a-lovely, lyrical name.
Sasha canโt pronounce his name so she calls him you. In fact, she canโt even remember what he told her his name is to begin with. Her lipstick has receded to the outer edges of her lips – her words are framed in a thin silhouette of red.
Fiona tells the men in the dive bar that sheโs a virgin, and they think that sheโs lying. She has a stubby, tooth-scarred pencil in hand – she has insisted on drawing all of the-men clutching cocktail shakers and squeezing limes behind the bar.
I promise you I can draw. They-are-sceptical-at-first. Even though Iโm a virgin. Most virgins are incapable of producing profound art, she knows.
The man asks Sasha what her name is. Carrie, she says, shoving a lollipop into her mouth. Strawberries and Cream. My mother named me after the Stephen-King character. Female monstrosity personified, etc.
Fiona orders a Negroni and requests that her sketches are hung up-on the fridge behind the bar, where the fruit garnishes and juices for mixing-are kept.
The man is Russian, and has never read a Stephen-King novel. Neither has Sasha.
They stop shaking cocktails for a moment. They are pleasantly-surprised. The illustrations have character, they breathe, they speak of a-trained hand and a full heart. All this, despite the fact that Fiona, so to speak, has not yet been-defiled. But I have received head. She gestures with the borrowed pencil to her-drunken art. You can probably tell. The bartenders trap the drawings beneath chunky magnets. They make her a-Negroni-for free this time.
I want to ask you-a question, Sasha says. But first I need to go to the bathroom.
I will wait-for you here. His intonation is fascinating.
No, I want-you to come with me.
Fiona has-discovered that she is allowed to smoke indoors. Euphoria.
He-hesitates, and Sasha rolls her eyes. Donโt worry, I don’t need to take a shit. I just need to pee. A shrug, a final-gulp of tequila-heavy lemonade. Only if you want to, though.
Do your wives wait up for you to come home after work? Fiona asks, taking a-theatrically long drag of her cigarette.
They all mumble a variation-of the same answer: They are asleep.
There is no ash tray for her to-stub out the cigarette. She holds it fuming between her fingers, ash scattered over-chipped black nail polish. The men behind the bar barely seem real.
Sodden with tequila, legs-spread, dress hiked up to her abdomen, Sasha moves in gentle rotations on the cold, cracked-ceramic of the toilet seat. Liquid hits the water like pebbles, and she has never before felt such immense-relief. He is looking away respectfully, staring at himself in the mirror, combing his facial-hair with his fingers. There are three squares of toilet paper left.
You. Do you think you would be a good father?
Sasha has told Fiona-what itโs like. The violence of sex, the meat of it, the hunger. The rawness of it. A liminal space-of contradictions: a rough-hewn act, a thing of delicacy, a feat of power, a situation in which you have none. She has told Fiona of the time that she went down on a man who bought her three drinks – three! – in a club bathroom stall. Why? Because she wanted to see what it would be like.
How she didnโt kneel, she squatted, because she was wearing tight leather pants that made her look like Olivia Newton-John in Grease, and the floor was littered with soggy toilet paper. How she had teetered back and forth on the slightly raised heels that she had been wearing at the time. How outside the stall they had bellowed like cows, and the man had had to throw his weight against the door as she worked to prevent anyone from coming in for an urgent piss. How, to the side, underneath the bathroom door, disembodied hands strained to reach her. She had mimed swatting them away to Fiona over pancakes a few days later, drawing fingernails across palms to leave blood.
It was an exercise in power, Sasha said.
But would you do it again?
She hadnโt answered.
The stem of the lollipop is stained with lipstick. It slouches in the corner of her mouth as she washes her hands.
No. I do not think I would be a good father.
She shakes her hands dry, spraying him with flecks of water. But you want children anyway?
Fiona can only drink half of the complimentary Negroni. She drops her cigarette butt in amongst the swollen ice and bloody orange peel, swallowing the nausea of a delayed nicotine head-spin. Sex is just a myth, she says, and the bartenders merely wipe the counter down, because they have heard it all before.
Her lips are now gummy with hardened sugar. Her breath – sickly. Sashaโs nails skim the telling bulge in his jeans. As she leans in to press sugar to his neck, she unbuckles his belt with a deft flick of her damp fingers. Then she dries her hands across the cheap, sequined fabric of her skirt and reaches to open the bathroom door.
We all know that the moment before the kiss is the best part, Fiona says to Sasha. They weave in a grapevine alongside the river, taking the long way home.
Yes. Whatโs your point? Sasha says, feeling like a horse as she trots along in her boots.
I just bet itโs the same with sex. The river is shallow, swollen with dry leaves the colour of roasted tea. Fiona pulls off her false eyelashes, blinking, and scatters the spidery black clumps into the flora-choked water.
Itโs not. Fiona steps on something – either a twig, softened by the damp, or a dead rat. She hasnโt walked along this river since she was a virgin, whatever that means. The best part is the first thrust. Itโs all downhill from there.
Emily Wilson is a writer currently based on unceded Kaurna land. Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, her work engages with the surreal to consider the mundane, and to explore liminal experiences and dislocated identities. She is a regular contributor to Scarleteen Mag and The Note, and is employed as a local journalist at The Music. She has been published in print in Overland, Hobart Pulp, and more. You can read more of her work at slowbabes.substack.com.
