Part 22
Posted by Barbanne on June 11, 2002 at 15:41:23:
PART TWENTY TWO
GOING DOWN
The bus reached the big terminal in the city.
I got off with my back pack. My whole life up to now in a single back pack.
I was alone and lonely but my depressive destructiveness was driving me down and down.
Voices in my head kept telling me this was what I deserved, this was where I belonged.
At the bottom of the heap.
I had very little money and one change of clothes.
The wind was cold but I had nothing warm to wear anyway.
I made my way to the Cross and found myself a room in a back street "Hotel." A room with shared facilities.
The room was bare and cold and had a single bed with a sagging mattress and a suspiciously stained bedspread.
A bare forty watt bulb hung from the water stained ceiling.
The floor was uncovered scruffy varnished boards that hadn't been restained in fifty years.
It had cockroaches.
I threw my stuff down and flopped on the bed and lay there dry eyed and hating myself. Hating myself for ever having thought I deserved anything better than this.
I was running away.
Running away from people.
Running away from relationships.
It always happened this way.
It had to be.
A drug deal was going down in the corridor outside my room.
Somewhere further away a girl was moaning. Endlessly moaning.
I slept.
I got up and it was night.
I had nothing to eat. I wasn't hungry anyway.
I went down to the communal bathroom and used a cracked and stained toilet and then washed my hands under rust stained cold water.
I went out and got a job in a nudie bar.
Dancing.
Started straight away. Right there and then.
I danced badly but nobody cared. Nobody watched me anyway.
So long as I was naked I was doing my job.
Days drifted by and turned into a week.
I wasn't eating properly, couldn't be bothered. I was losing weight but the nudie bar guy liked that. I think he found skeletons sexy.
He told me I had to have sex with some of the patrons.
I said no.
He said on your bike then.
I agreed as long as they used condoms.
I would have had to find another place and I couldn't be bothered. My depression was robbing me of anything.
I was lying on my bed all day, sometimes sleeping and then getting up and finding I had to put on soiled knickers to go to the nudie bar, take them off, dance and then lie on my back while some bastard fucked me. Maybe I should have said bastards as there were always plenty.
I didn't make much. I wasn't very good.
What money I did make I spent on garish make up to wear while dancing and to turn myself into a complete whore when I took my "clients" back afterwards.
As a root I was a pretty good corpse.
Just lying there.
Eyes closed half the time while they grunted to fulfilment.
I gave most of my money away.
Gave it to the druggies and told them to go and have a good feed.
Didn't eat more than enough to do other than survive myself.
One night I passed out cold in the middle of my dance number.
The guy and the doorman dragged me off the stage and laid me out on a lounge in the back.
When I came to he asked me was I doing drugs. I said no and he believed me because anyone could tell I wasn't a druggie.
He told me to start looking after myself and sent me home.
I went back and lay on the bed.
I thought about killing myself.
I thought about it a lot.
I hated myself and wanted to make it worse.
I needed to be punished.
I was no good.
I lay on my narrow, uncomfortable and dirty bed, naked and with my hands folded over my tummy and pretended I was already dead. Really dead. It still turned me on to do that but it was comforting too.
Imagining just lying there lifeless, no more worries, no more troubles, no more self loathing.
Just dead!
A dead body.
A silent lifeless body without a soul.