Ame-no-Uzume

Dignan sparks a loosie and the left sandal slips off her toes. 

“Liz, babe?” a soft voice chirps somewhere above the pale, slender legs. My head on par with her waist, her legs spread as they dangle through dirty yellow bars. Through those khakis, her firecrotch is bare - I’d fork over five bucks on that. Her shorts, loose at the thighs, clasped at the waist by a flat nylon belt with plastic buckle. I flash her my best bitch face, like, babe, get that flip-flop yourself. She issues a husky laugh, like, whatever. Dignan blows herself a smooth stream. She’s about to shove the carton back in her pocket. No, Diggs reaches out her hand and waves the pack of Smokeshows. My hand springs, I snatch a slim white maggot. The tip, she reaches out hers and I bum a torch. A whip idles on the asphalt of a fleabag across the tarmac. Lucinda Willaims, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” floats through a cranked window. The chitter of crickets itching for a shag warms the dark. Warm, and clear as hell. The himmel above our heads - forever and full of stars and all. 

My knock-off Docs planted on a bed of woodchips, I throw a glance over my shoulders. The playground we loiter is up against a chain link. Right on the other side of the chain link is this community pool, squared off a tad smaller than an Olympic sized pool. Filled for the summer, there’s a tarp pulled over most nights. Tonight, though, what I see is small ripples of light on the open water. The front door to the community pool, there’s this shoe polish or some shit. Scrawled with black tar, maybe, whatever it is, thicker than paint, some hand has wandered, WHO IS JOHN GALT? Whenever I catch that graffito any place, I roll my eyes. Boys. Boys will always play the hits. The first rule of Fight Club, or How the cake is a lie. Contractually obliged lip service to consumerism… 

Shit happens. God is dead. Goodbye Blue Monday. Galt, Superman, or Tyler fucken Durden; Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first makes etc.   

“...Crickets are horny as hell,” she says. Dignan’s bare toe catches my cheek on the upswing. A second brush, slower, more deliberate this time. I swat her away. “Liz, babe, what’re we thinking?” How first we met, Dignan got frisky with me. “How your ass, my ass, how we’re Jay and Silent Bob, with tits,” I tell her. She cracks a smile, tongue stuck out.       

Both shut our traps. A comfortable smoke between us. With steady puffs, I wrack this pretty little head. How to shoot the shit? 

“Bitch, hit me.” 

“With what?” A thin wisp filters down to me. “The truth, or a fist?”    

“Crippling anxiety?” 

“That’s- I’m glad to hear that. Anxiety lets us know that we’re free, and anxiety is needed for the creative mind,” Diggs deadpans. “At least according to Kierkegaard.”  

“Diggs, baby, you can take your Dane,” me with my banter, “and stuff’im up your snatch.” 

“Well, yeah. That tends to be what the snatch is for. Where do you stuff boys?” This right here, this is our most idiot conversation we’ve had. Each moment is bliss. 

“Dare we break the fourth wall?” Dignan perks up. “Dare we have a dissertation on Plato’s Theory of Forms? Where do we fit? The top tier, that is, the ideal? Are we, you and me, the lowest rung of depiction? The written word?” I open my gob, prepped to be the clever bitch. “Show your work, babe.” She hops off and makes her way to the tire swing. Her toes as bare as the rest of her was bare when we met. Dignan plants her feet on the rubber. She grips the rope and the rope creaks. Slowly, I shag over and open with both barrels: “Written words, that is, how they’re read, the same over and over-” 

“Crimson and clover,” she winks. 

“That makes us looped through a sorta Nietzschean Recurrence, at least at every episode where we show up.” 

“Yeah, I had the same thought. So, what, it’s uh, more of uh, Slaughterhouse-Five sorta- where Billy Pilgrim hops around the vignettes of his life?” 

I shrug. “Not bad for eternity, as far as eternity goes. Unless you get ra-” 

I cut myself and suck my teeth. Fuck, with eight U’s. 

Dignan holds me steady under those brown eyes. With a smack, she’s back on the ground. 

She treats me to a bitchy little shrug that lets me know how much of a bitch I am. “How else does a girl find out whether she digs anal?” 

My eyes lock onto the clumps of sod at our feet. Her own feet crunch. Two slender fingers that form a pincer around my cheeks. She raises my face and pecks me on the lips. Another peck on the right cheek to let me know, forget it bitch. How she lets me know, babe, stay what you are. 

Sandals on hand, she sashays to the dark yellow shape of a monkey bar.  Dignan raises an arm, her fingertips brush a bar above her head. The smallest bunny hop and she tucks her legs. She dangles by one arm. With the other, Dignan’s fingers curl, hooked through her flip-flops. “Hills like white elephants, bitch. Long as the banter is tense, long as there’s a chick, and this chick is on the verge of tears, the reader will bring down the roof as he shills out praise.” What we talk when we talk serious, huh? 

Back on her feet, Dignan wriggles her spine and presents me with open palm. What, bitch? Should I make like a gypsy and read your palm? 

“Ein Kleine Nachtmusik, bitch.” I hardly touch my Spotify, so Dignan constantly tools around with the playlist. ‘Why make my own, when there’s yours?’ The cheek. Grab four songs on shuffle, and chances are Dignan hand-picked three of them. A quick fish in my pocket and she palms my phone. Neko Case. Scroll. Belle and Sebastian. Scroll. She bites her lip. Monster Movie? “4th and Pine.” 

My eyes held, how Dignan slowly sways her ass. “Kagura, babe.” I make as though I’m ready to drool. “Truly the entertainment of gods.”  

Slowly I squeeze another puff. The maggot becomes a roach. I snub out the cinders. “What you said there,” I scramble to pick up the thread. “How those words printed on a page, that’s what we are?”   

She clasped her hands behind her back and perked up on her toes. “And from the hills there echoed, All is empty, all is alike, all has been.” How Dignan drops that nugget of Nietzschean pessimism, with the same swagger as McConaughy’s L-I-V-I-N spiel.  

Chestnut-colored eyes flutter in my direction.  

“How the Hindus say? What’s written on the forehead will never fail?” 

“That’s how the Hindus tell it,” a small bell goes off. 

“Crazy, how right those guys were - where authors are a thing.” 

Her back to me, I let out a whistle. She throws her hips, then I see her face. Let us face each other, we Hyperboreans. I hold up two fingers, the peace sign with the back of the hand forward. She plunges a hand into khaki shorts and tosses me what’s left of the pack.  

Sometimes, cars round the bend and come up this way. Those same cars that then shoot off into the night. Dignan, all thighs and mesmerized, with her pert little dance. How the Japanese tell it, this must be the dance that brought back the dawn.