Three ways was the morning.
Three lovers, in three ways.
We knew when she landed,
Three days she'd stay.
My head. Bells ringing? Church bells? Tinnitus?
Memories flooded, none of them coherent. My mind was randomly flipping through the past, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. I lied still for a long time, trying not to think. I focused on breathing. In and out, in and out. Every time a thought formed bells clanged and tram wheels screeched. I tried to block it out. Slowing down my mind, though, was like trying to stop a hurricane with an umbrella. If only I had spent more time in meditation throughout life.
Time passed and the storm abated just enough to manage simple thoughts and keep the others from racing out of control. I asked myself simple questions: Where am I? What time is it? What day is it? I had no answers and the more questions I asked the more I realized I was going to have to open my eyes and, frightening as it was, possibly stand up.
I was on a bed, that much was certain. It was relatively soft and comfortable. My arm was dangling over the side. I could tell I was naked, but partially covered by a sheet. I was cold, but it was a welcome discomfort compared to the throbbing in my head. I could hear myself breathing, but it sounded odd, as if there were inhalations and exhalations occurring simultaneously. I chalked it up to a side effect of the nausea.
I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes even as I sat up in the bed. I turned so that my legs were dangling over the side. I held myself steady with my hands planted on the mattress and tried to lift my head up straight. My head started spinning and I lost my equilibrium, but managed to stay upright. I breathed slowly and considered opening my eyes again. No, not yet. Definitely not.
It was more difficult to breathe while sitting so I had to focus on slow, deep inhalations. Exhaling took care of itself, but each time I took a breath there were shooting pains in my head and deafening thuds in my ears.
As I sat there, though, memories began to come back, this time more coherently. At first they were from the previous night—or what seemed like it had been the previous night—but then I felt a powerful sorrow and an image of S. appeared to me, her hair long and dark, flowing down to the middle of her back, her naked body walking away from me as I lied on a bed in a hotel room in Antibes long ago. There were tan lines on her ass and I remembered that we had been sun-bathing on the beach earlier. Her image drifted as she walked toward the bathroom. I had the same mesmerizing view of the sea I had had while fucking her. The doors to the balcony were open and it was almost impossible to tell exactly where the sea met the sky. I could smell the sea mist, breathe the lightness of the air, and feel the cool breeze on my skin. All at once, S. was below me again and I looked down at her, into her eyes, and told her that I wanted to sear the moment into my memory so that I would never forget it.
It was a virgin memory, the first time I had remembered that afternoon since it had happened. I was only out of the memory for a moment, though. S. rolled me over onto my back. As she was riding me I could tell she was looking out at the sea as well. She smiled then slapped my chest with both hands as she looked down at me. “Was that what you were looking at when you were fucking me?” I laughed and as I did she raised her head back up to gaze out the window again.
Damn, I loved her that moment. There was love and then there was love. I experienced both with her, the commitment over the long haul filled with affection, respect, admiration, and care combined with the breathtaking experiences that endured through memory. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted them to disappear or not, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t erase them even if I tried.
A crisp memory that may have been a composite of many memories pushed through. It was a Sunday morning in our thirty-seventh-floor condo in Chicago. The sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows and flooded the kitchen with golden light. We were wearing robes and drinking coffee at the kitchen bar while reading different sections of The New York Times. S. was purring, cozy and relaxed. I watched her over my paper and she looked up at me, her eyes smiling, then leaned over the top of the paper to kiss me before sliding back to her seat to continue reading, leaving both of us sighing contentedly.
I wasn’t prepared for these memories, neither their vividness nor the emotions that accompanied them. I had done everything I could imagine to put that life behind me, but it wouldn’t let go. The pain of loss was fresh again. Physical. Tears flowed, but they were gentle. My mind became quiet and my breathing had become easy. The headache was milder now and the ringing in my ears was gone.
I opened my eyes. I was in the bedroom of my apartment. The room was dark, the curtains closed. Even so, I could tell it was morning. It took some time to adjust my vision, disoriented as I was. The nausea returned and I felt like shit once again, the shitty feeling of some type of hangover. At least the pain of loss had been sweet; this was hell, nothing redeeming at all about it. If shit could feel, this was what it would feel like, a nauseating headache that gave off a mean stank, a fetid putrescence that held my nose to it, like a bully, to make me inhale it until I gagged. I was self-loathing wrapped in a blanket of humiliation stuck head first into a dead skunk’s asshole.
I stood up in an effort to stop the madness. I paused as I walked around the bed toward the door. There were two women asleep in my bed. I tried to jog my memory, but I had no recollection of meeting either of them let alone inviting them back to my apartment. Hell, I couldn’t remember anything that happened the previous night. Yet, there they were, partially covered by a sheet and a blanket, but otherwise naked. For a couple of minutes I just stood there looking at them in wonder.
A few raw images, almost like scenes from a movie, passed through my mind’s eye, but they were disjointed. They were probably related to my life, maybe even to the day before, but I wasn't sure. None of the images, memories or not, explained how these women wound up in my bed. I scratched my head, turned toward the door, turned back again, and said, “Huh. How ‘bout that?”
I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth—my mouth had been drier than a corpse’s cooch—then took a hot shower. As I toweled off, I noticed the pain and nausea were a little more tolerable. I wondered how long that would last, but I took advantage to retrieve a pair of boxers and a t-shirt from my dresser then went to the kitchen to gulp down two glasses of water. I started the coffeemaker then noticed the bottles of liquor on the counter. A quarter of a bottle of vodka and whiskey, a half a bottle of rum, the remnants of limes that had been sliced, a shaker, and a couple of empty mixers. When I went to the living room to sit on the couch next to the window, I noticed a couple empty glasses and a couple less than half full of liquid. That explained the brutal headache, at least in part.
I also noticed a metal tray with a small, scattered mound of white powder. I took a closer look. Definitely cocaine. There was a single-edge razor blade so I picked it up and diced up a line. There were a rolled bills that were partially unraveled on the table, but I didn’t trust them. I got up to look for my wallet, but I couldn’t find it in the living room so I went back into the bedroom. I saw a pair of pants that looked like mine, but no wallet. I left the bedroom and saw my coat hanging on the rack, checked the inside pocket, and found my wallet. There were a few bills, but only the ten Euro bill was crisp enough. I put the wallet back, rolled the bill as I walked back to the table, my nausea creeping back from all the activity, and kneeled down to snort the line.
That helped immensely. My pipe was also on the table and a plastic tube with a couple buds in it. I figured that would do for later. I chopped another line and snorted it. I actually felt good. Nothing beats a hangover like coke. Pot comes in a distant second and, well, there really isn’t a third except, I guess, coffee. I looked at what was left of the coke, maybe two or three halfway decent lines left. I figured the women in the other room would need them so I backed off. A pack of Marlboro Reds, not my brand, were on the coffee table. I fished one out, lit it up with a neon-green lighter, and sat on the couch to puff away in silence. The Reds were harsh on my throat, but the nicotine felt good. The smoke filling the room bugged me, though, so I opened the window a bit.
The apartment was cold as it was, but with the window open it was freezing. I wrapped myself in the blanket that was draped over the couch after I finished the stog. Even with the coke I noticed I still felt groggy. Pleasurably relaxed, really. My mind went to the morning, waking up in bed in pain and confusion, the vivid memories of love lost, the inexplicable presence of naked women in bed, and the discovery of alcohol and cocaine. I still couldn’t remember the previous night or even what day it was.
The only memory that came back to me was going to Schuim and leaving with a bunch of people I didn’t know to go to a party filled with more people I didn’t know. I had done shrooms before I left my apartment that night. Maybe. I lost track of the fashion patrol group at the party. I had talked with a woman and her boyfriend for a long time. We were drinking and then I left with them to hit another party somewhere outside of city center. I couldn’t remember where. Totally different crowd, seemed like no one spoke English. At least not with me. I left at the same time a couple other guys left and we went somewhere, another party, I had no idea where I was. I was drunk and the shrooms had worn off. Beyond that, I couldn’t remember what happened next. I must have crashed at someone’s place.
I vividly remembered talking with a woman one night, though. We were leaning against the railing of a bridge overlooking a canal. It was really quiet, but bitterly cold. I gave her my jacket and froze my ass off. But we talked for a long time and it was the only genuine connection I remembered making. She was really wonderful. I couldn’t remember what we talked about, it seemed like a little bit of everything. What surprised me was how similar our interests were. She was a painter, I remembered that. Or she painted. She may have worked somewhere. What stood out was her dyed black hair, the thick black eyeliner, the lush black eyelashes, and the lipstick: the top lip was red and the bottom was black. I had never seen that before. It was bizarre. I may have been on ecstasy, too. Maybe we both were. That would explain the feeling of intimacy between us.
I went to the kitchen for more coffee. The blow and the caffeine were doing their thing and I gradually felt more human. I went back to the couch and lit up another Red. The memory of the woman continued as I sat back and closed my eyes. She had a colorful personality and a Dutch lilt to her English. We had been with a group of people and lost track of them after we left … a jazz club. That was where I met her and her friends. I don’t know how I arrived at the club or if I had gone with other people, but I remembered talking with her during a break between bands. It seems we left to go to a party and … then she and I were on a bridge. I think it even started to drizzle at one point and we just looked out at the water, at the shimmering night lights. It was a moment of sweetness, that much I could feel.
I could see her face, the contours of her profile as she spoke while looking out at the water. Her body language, her expressions, her words, they all rang true. I was enthralled by her authenticity. Maybe there was something in that exchange with her, however long it lasted, wherever it went from there, that woke the memories with S. It seemed plausible. An intimate interaction with a genuine woman? Possible.
A naked woman walked out of the bedroom and paused briefly. Her eyes were slits. She turned one way then the other before walking out of sight into the bathroom. It was odd watching an unknown nude woman walking out of my bedroom. She had looked as overwhelmed by pain and nausea as I had earlier. Within a minute I heard the shower running.
I fished out another cigarette. My throat said no, but my body was too amped up from the coke and the coffee. I went back and forth about whether I should do another line. My sense of generosity won out even though I kept thinking, “I don’t even know them. Just do it, fuck them.” Maintaining principles was excruciating. I couldn’t justify it even if they wouldn’t have shown me the same respect. Something about the internal makeup of my constitution, the hardwiring of my ethics, just wouldn’t let me. But, damn, that powder looked so very good.
Fortunately, the other woman walked out of the bedroom, relieving me of the temptation. She was wearing one of my sweatshirts. It hung down just enough to cover her crotch. She walked into the living room rubbing a hand through her mussy black hair. I loved that look, a woman straight out of bed with wildly disheveled shoulder-length thick dark hair wearing nothing but an oversized sweatshirt. Her legs were nice, too. Thin but athletic.
She sat on the edge of the other couch in front of the cocaine tray then looked over at me. Her eyes were only half opened. Her face was contorted with pain and she kept rubbing her forehead. She nodded at the coke and I said, “Of course.” She took one of the bills on the table and began re-rolling it. I went to the kitchen and poured her a cup of coffee. She was preparing a line for herself when I returned. I placed the cup to the side of the tray. She looked up with a smile then went back to work chopping up a damn big line, probably about three quarters of what was left. I noted that it was a lot easier to stick to principles after a couple lines and a hangover that had lost its anger. She was still on some rung of hell preserved for pleasure-seeking degenerates. That poor woman in the shower, though. It was going to be tougher on her.
When she finished her line she sat up straight and pulled her hair back tight with her hands then stretched her arms toward the ceiling. Her hair looked even wilder now and her eyes were wide open. It even appeared that the redness around them was gone. Miracle drug. She looked back at me, relaxed and smiling. A completely different demeanor.
She thanked me for the coffee in Dutch. And apparently the coke, too. I said, “No problem, but I thought the blow was yours.” She furrowed her brow and nodded her head before sipping her coffee. Was it the other woman’s? Was it mine? Had I bought a gram or eight-ball at some point over the previous days? I tried to remember, but I drew a blank. My thought was too muddled to be directed that coherently. It was possible I had lost access to such memories. Maybe I had blacked out. Wouldn’t have been the first time.
I wanted to ask her what her name was and how we had met, but I knew that was a bad idea. Still, it was driving me nuts not to know what had transpired the nights and days before. I played it safe. “Say, um, what day is it?” The woman put down her coffee and said, “Zondag.” Huh. I was pretty sure I had gone out on a Thursday. So … two full days and nights missing? Three-day bender. Well, at least I had a sense of time again.
The woman walking out of the bathroom was wrapped in a towel. I had forgotten she was in there. I didn’t even hear the water stop running. And, oddly enough, I hadn’t paid much attention to her when she walked into the bathroom in the first place. She was definitely walking more upright. In fact, she looked like an entirely different woman. Her short hair was either bleached or she was a natural white-blonde. I didn’t get a good enough look before she disappeared into the bedroom.
The woman on the couch said something in Dutch and stood up. The only thing I caught was badkamer and I watched her walk away, the bottoms of her ass cheeks peeking out from beneath the sweatshirt. I was getting turned on. Damn, I fucked these women? How could I forget something like that? Then I had a flash of panic: Did I wear condoms?! I got up and walked to the bedroom. The blonde was buttoning up her shirt. It seemed as if she felt awkward. Hell, maybe she didn’t remember anything, either. I tried to be nonchalant, but I was inwardly panicking. I looked on the floor on the other side of the bed, but all I saw was a pile of clothes, not just mine but presumably the dark-haired woman’s as well. I said, “Don’t mind me,” as I knelt down to inspect. I picked up a few articles of clothing and then saw what I needed to see, two used condoms. Thank god.
Unfortunately, though, cum had leaked onto the dark-haired woman’s sweater. It was thin, black cashmere. Shit. I stood up and walked into the other room, figuring I would cross that bridge when necessary. Fuck, though, that wasn’t going to help her mood. I walked to the kitchen and poured the rest of the coffee into a mug. It was only half a cup so I made another pot.
By the time I finished, Blondie was sitting on the couch in front of the coke tray. As I brought her coffee into the living room she asked if I had more yayo. “Me? I thought that was your coke.” She laughed at me and shook her head no. Oh. “I don’t know if I do or not.” I thought for a second. Maybe I bought some cola over the past couple of days. If I did and I still had some left it would have been in a pants pocket, my wallet, or my jacket packet. “I don’t remember. Let me check.” I walked over to my jacket and fished through all the pockets. No luck. Not in my wallet, either. I went back into the bedroom and checked my pants. Sure enough, a little baggie with a surprising amount of powder. There was way more than a gram in there, a gram and a half, maybe even more. Clearly I had bought an eight-ball. Actually, given the size of the baggie, it may have even been a quarter ounce. No, that couldn’t be. Fuck, I was going to have to check my bank account and credit card balance.
I walked back into the other room as the dark-haired woman came out of the bathroom. She was beautiful. I was stunned at how beautiful she was. Blondie was nice, but this woman, damn, she was something else. After she passed me to go into the bedroom, I regained my composure and walked over to the table. I knelt down and tapped out maybe about a quarter gram, probably a little more, onto the tray. Blondie smiled and said, “Bedankt, I really need this right now.” I nodded my head, “Yeah, I had a couple lines to wake up. But I gotta be honest, when I first saw the coke on the tray I thought it was yours or hers. I don’t remember getting any blow at all.”
I laughed and she followed. She said, “Well, you already had it when we met you at the party.” She laughed again, truly amused now. “You invited us to join you for a few lines and we went back to one of the bedrooms. You were generous, there were a few people in the room already and you dumped out like two grams.” I asked her what happened after that. “You don’t remember?” I said, “I don’t know. It’s all kind of foggy. I think it’s all the booze I drank. Refresh my memory.” She chopped up the coke as she spoke. “Well, we all hung out for a while, everybody chattering away like crazy. You kept making me laugh because you said, ‘I can barely understand Dutch when it’s slow—you guys are going a million miles an hour!’ It was so funny, but I started speaking English with you more and, you know, we had a great time. You were so cool with everyone.”
Wow, that was nice. “You seem really great, too. Thanks for speaking English. I always feel like an ass for needing that, especially since I spend so much time with Dutch folk. But, hey, you know. I do my best.” She finished rolling a bill then bent over and snorted a line, switched nostrils, and then did another. “Well, I think everyone is willing to speak whatever language you want when you dump out that much coke.” I fell onto my back laughing. “That’s what we, in America, call ‘winning friends and influencing people.’” I sat back up and looked at her, admiringly. I liked this woman. She had a vibe about her.
Blondie was resting her back against the couch and she was sitting cross-legged on the cushion holding the coffee mug in both hands, sipping and sighing. I took the opportunity to chop up a single line, leaving at least enough for another nice line. I found the bill I had used earlier, rerolled it, and gave each nostril a treat. I repositioned myself out of the kneeling position to the same cross-legged pose she had taken on the couch, though I was still on the floor. She ran a hand down my chest as she leaned forward to put down her coffee mug then asked if she could have a cigarette. “Sure. I don’t think they’re mine. I don’t usually smoke Reds.” She said she didn’t either. They were either the dark-haired beauty's or I had purchased them accidentally … or maybe because they were out of other brands.
She got up and moved to the other couch. As she lit up she asked if she could close the window. “Yeah, it’s cold, but could you wait until after your smoke? It’s just that it gets a bit much for me when the smoke fills the room. You can put the blanket around you if you’d like.” She did just that and I got up to grab the pack. There were only four cigs left, but I pulled out another and lit up. I moved the ash tray closer to Blondie and moved over to that couch to sit next to her, closer to the ashtray. But, yeah, closer to her, too.
I hadn’t noticed it, but the dark-haired woman was back in the bathroom. When she walked out her face was a mixture of frustration and annoyance. She held up her sweater and looked at me. “I don’t know what to do with this! I think it’s ruined.” I finished my cig and walked over to her. She was wearing just a bra and a skirt. Incredible perky breasts. “Never mind that,” I thought, “focus on the sweater not what belongs under the sweater.” I read the label with washing instructions. “Dry clean only.” Shit. I said, “Hold on, let me check online. Maybe there are ways out of this problem. There’s more coke on the table and more coffee in the kitchen. And I’ll whip up some breakfast after we get this figured out.”
The sweater-less wonder went over to the couch to sit next to Blondie. She pulled a smoke from the pack and lit up. Then she got up again to close the window. I almost said something, but I thought better of it. The two of them chatted in Dutch, sometimes in an animated way that made me worried that I was—pardon the pun—“in Dutch.”
Nevertheless, I got my laptop running and did a search for treating cashmere sweaters. “Hey, it says hand washing is okay. You have to use Woolite or baby shampoo, though. I think I have Woolite.” I went to the kitchen and looked under the sink. Sure enough, the Dutch equivalent which is what I had been using for my laundry. I walked back to the living room with the bottle and said, “Okay, so some water and very little detergent to wash out a stain then place the sweater on a towel and let it dry. Just have to make sure the sweater isn’t creased or wrinkled then it should be fine.” The dark-haired one asked, “How long will that take?” I shrugged my shoulders. “However long it takes to dry, I guess.” She sighed, stood up, and we walked back to the bathroom together. There wasn’t a lot of space around the sink so I ran some water over the, um, stained area then dabbed a little detergent, gently massaged it with my thumbs and then rinsed it out. I pressed a towel against the wettest area to soak up some of the water then I grabbed another towel, laid it down in the area of the living room near the glass-encased figurines, and carefully laid the sweater on top.
Blondie, still on the couch, said something in Dutch and the dark-haired woman answered back in a curt tone. Then Blondie spoke in English. “Hey, he’s going out of his way to help and he's got coke. Be cool, do another line.” The dark-haired one turned to me and apologized for being petulant. “It’s okay, I understand. I’d probably be upset, too. I didn’t do it on purpose.” Of course, I couldn’t remember having sex. I wanted to have sex now, but it looked like that door was closed. Throw a used condom on someone’s sweater and, yeah, that kills the mood. Blondie, on the other hand? If only I could get the dark-haired filly to leave, but that damned sweater was going to take a long time to dry.
I asked the women if they wanted breakfast. A sort of so-so response. I looked in the fridge. There were half a dozen eggs, but they were a week past their expiration date. Shit. I had English muffins, jam, and butter. I had orange juice that still hadn’t spoiled. I apologized for not having something more substantial, but I asked them if what I had was okay. They seemed pleased enough so I got started.
As I prepared the food and the drinks, I finally had a chance to think again. The chatter in the other room was in Dutch and at this point the tone was friendly, even excited at times, the latter I attributed to the coke. I wondered at what a strange day this was, to wake up as I had with so much nausea, so many magical but sad memories, and the shock of two women I didn’t know and couldn’t remember in my bed. On top of that, I had lost days and nights in a haze of booze and other drugs, somehow got hold of a quantity of Bolivian marching powder, and then generously spread it around. The coke, at least, explained why the girls were here, but when did they get here? How much booze did we drink? Did we party here the day before and on through the night? Most importantly, what the hell were their names?
