Chemical Messenger Pt. 02

July 1999

The traffic lights across from my window keep flicking green-yellow-red-green-yellow, a slow disco flooding the apartment. I don't remember the first time I noticed this little light show, but I see it every night, pacing around my living room, thinking about what to say, what to wear, how to fix my hair, how I should handle things.

Tonight might be fun, though.

It's drizzling outside. Steam lifts off the pavement. I look away from the lights and sink into the couch with the back half of a Pall Mall. Smoke curls out the end. The apartment's a hundred years old, there's no air-conditioning to speak of, and the smoke continues its lazy journey up the plaster walls uninterrupted. High ceilings, at least.

Three things rest on the opposite wall from me: a CD deck playing Mezzanine competing with the thumping of the street below, a wrapped baggie stuffed with pills, and—hung from a hanger on an old pipe going to the fireplace—a black sleeveless dress.

It's almost time, I think, getting up to switch tracks. I tousle my hair, recently razored into a short bob. I have to get to Neolithiq by 11:30 or else they'll charge cover for girls and search me more closely, which is just a big crashing bore. It also makes my job harder.

After I click Play I size up the dress I've chosen, a waxed linen sheath. I shrug off my cargo pants and tank top (no bra for this number), and lift the dress over my head. It's not exactly the most forgiving thing to slip on. Wiggling into it makes me look like one of those inflatable dancing figures from a used car lot, until I dimly remember a zipper exists in the back. Real smooth, Kate.

I stop fighting, unzip, and step into the dress. Wearing this would have been unthinkable a year ago. You've come a long way, baby. Maybe it's the spliff I smoked earlier, but as I zip up I can feel the micro-fine clicks of the zipper's teeth between the backs of my thighs, around my ass and curving up my spine and shoulder blades.

The zip ends just above the shaved nape of my neck, and I'm careful to not snag the ends of my hair. There. I turn around and look at the full length mirror, leaning against what used to be a plate rail.

The dress has a racerback bodice and an asymmetrical hemline, swooping from my left knee to several inches above it on the right, and tight enough to delineate the swell of my hips before they taper into my waist. Let's see pants do that.

Turning to the side to admire the slope of my breasts, I think, yeah, this is the one. I bought the dress a while ago, never quite finding an occasion where it would work until now. It's the perfect night.

I look good.

Sometimes, like tonight, the traffic glow is the brightest light in the room—I dislike too many lamps because I look out on Queen West where you can see everything anyway. No need to add to the show. Unless you want to, of course.

There's still time, i think. I peel the hem of the dress over my thighs, wondering who would get next to come between them. I marvel at the slight mound my pussy makes under the surface between my hipbones, my clit mere inches from my fingertips.

I'm buzzed now. Lying on the couch in front of the mirror, I slowly spread my knees. My underwear fits snug against the outlines of my outer and inner lips. Even just looking at it from my vantage point is arousing, feeling the breeze from the window as my fingertips absentmindedly stroke my inner thighs. That feeling, combined with thinking about Iain's cock—well, any cock, really; just cock—makes some wetness seep through, a lick of it through the gusset. I gently run a little finger through it and taste, closing my eyes as I appreciate the sticky saltiness it offers me, a spider's-web whip of moisture on my tongue.

My cunt's starting to swell at the thought of getting myself off. My clit's pulsing against the fabric. There's no way I can't finish now; I'd be a wreck later if I didn't. And I need my wits about me.

I pull the dampening underwear to my ankles, savouring the restricted movement of my legs. I reach back to my cunt, just teasing below the entrance where the wetness is brimming.

It's getting slick down there now. I slide my fingers up and down and around, spreading it around my lips, making a mess, and I moan as my fingers start slipping into the folds, making little wet noises.

I draw back and rest on my elbows, spreading my legs wide in front of the mirror, just to see what I look like, what I'd look like to a man about to fuck me when I'm like this, stroking this wet cunt, daring him. What a view.

Below the fuzzed dash of my pubic hair my lips and asshole are shaved, showing the glistening juices pretty well, catching the light. They're seeping down my ass, framing the curves of my buttocks, below my vulva that looks so ripe. My clit is aching, I need to finger that wet hole, just get in there and fuck it until it splashes me, and I can't take it anymore—with my middle finger I start teasing the base of my clit. It stiffens like a tiny cock, the hood sliding back, and I start moving the hood up and down and then in circles with my cunt-glazed fingers.

I tilt my head back, finding a groove, fingertips stroking my clit up and down. Sometimes I dip my finger into my cunt and lavish the wetness all over my clit, but my clit's so greedy that even this brief interruption of contact is agony. It's amazing how such a small part of you can take hold of your body—it takes hold as I hear the schlick of soaked inner cunt lips beneath my fingers, before I brush my clit again to bring me jolting back.

I could do this push-and-pull for ages, but instead I wiggle my hips up to slide a hand underneath, teasing the entrance to my cunt while the other hand steadily rubs my clit. It feels less like my own hand and more like someone else's, having it reaching from underneath, and its wetness feels wholly new.

I start to pump one finger, then two, into my cunt, letting it grip, trapping them in as it squeezes every time I touch my clit. I slow down my rhythm and feel how tight I can willfully contract. The sensation is exquisite. I use my clit like an on/off switch as the fingers stuffed into my cunt feel the ripple effects.

After a few delicious squeezes I settle back into a steady rhythm, moving only for the relentless demands of my clit and cunt, in that order. I'm a fuck machine, pumping and circling and pumping and circling. My legs strain deliciously against the underwear wrapped around my ankles.

I can't ward it off anymore so I just go for it. My hips start bucking, my back arched off the couch. I pull two fingers out. I wait a moment, then shove them in again, rubbing my clit really fast, running headlong into the orgasm. That does it. My thighs start shaking, and I throw my head back as the first throb of orgasm finally hits. Lips parted, I ride out the climax, giving my clit what it needs. My cunt keeps pulsing until I allow myself to slump back, my fingers pruned with wetness and a tingling spreading all the way down my legs.

"Holy shit," I say out loud, laughing as I gingerly get up from the couch to walk bow-legged to the kitchen. I tear off a paper towel and press it to my cunt, admiring how much fluid it absorbs.

Maybe I won't wear underwear tonight, I think. Maybe I'll just let this freshly masturbated pussy hang like ripe fruit just underneath this dress, so that someone could come up and feel the full effect of my careful ministrations and finally give it the cock it deserves.

I smooth down my dress and do a twirl in the mirror. As the fog in my head ebbs I feel a lot more confident to face tonight.

No underwear, though. Just in case.

I hit stop on on the CD player and select a thin leather moto jacket—a blazer, really—to shrug on, one with a necessary hidden pocket. Walking back to the kitchen, I fill a glass with ice and vodka and sink it while sitting on the counter, briefly contemplating toking up again. But I'm late.

I grab what I need, pull on some black boots and clomp down the stairs to the street. It's still raining. I hail a taxi—I'm not taking my chances with the streetcar; not tonight—and a few minutes later pull up to the front doors of the bar.

The bar in question is Neolithiq. The Lith caters to the few rivetheads in this city who didn't go in for neon dreadlocks and glow sticks. Slowly the goth and junglist crowds joined them as they outgrew the multi-tiered megaclubs further east on Richmond. Metal kids, though, always felt home at the Lith. This niche has served it well over the years, as has its location in the old carriageway behind the brick commercial blocks that haven't (yet) seen the wrecker's ball. I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

And tonight, it's where I'm meeting people for a very promising deal to go down.

Bits of glass and gravel crunch under my boots as I trudge up the laneway to the entrance. There's a lineup round the side, a mass of lank hair and black spaghetti straps and the widest "technical pants" ever, but I'm not worried about getting in. Not looking like this, anyway.

The bouncer is wearing a Birthday Massacre t-shirt and she checks my ID, scans my outfit from head to toe to head—nothing to pat down here, though I'm sure she'd like to—and nods me in.

I'm swallowed up in the darkness until my eyes adjust. It takes a while. The first things I see are red walls and the carpet scabbed with winter salt, an agreeable NIN B-side thudding my eardrums.

Weaving my way through the crowd, I see a lanky, long-haired guy in bondage pants and a Rick Owens jacket that looks like it's been machine-washed (a tragedy), leaning against the bar.

"Mark?" I yell.

He turns to me, sipping something carbonated, and swallows. "Are you Kate?" he yells back. I nod.

"Let's go somewhere quieter," he says, putting the glass down and beckoning me to follow him. We walk down the length of the bar, past the chain-link fence nailed to the wall, to the back corridor.

"You're highly recommended, by the way," Mark is saying as we descend the stairs. "I don't know how much you were told, but we've been looking for stuff this good for months."

"Supply isn't what it used to be," I say, feeling my jacket pocket for the pills' reassuring bulk. The music gets more muffled as we reach the bathrooms. "A lot of it now is just a waste of a perfectly good bathtub."

"You don't say."

Instead of turning left where you'd normally go, we turn right. We pass under an archway and into a tiny lounge lit by a lonely incandescent bulb, ringed with tattered couches and chairs. It's early, but there's people here already. A girl I recognize is picking at the wall's layers of paint with chipped fingernails while listening to some guy blather on. Others are smoking, despite the recent ban.

"I'll introduce you," Mark says, parting the waves of smoke. He takes me to a pair of punk kids sitting above a graveyard of empty pint glasses. "That's Bunny, that's Shera, and our other guy is upstairs getting drinks, but he'll be back soon."

"Cool. Are we okay to talk here?"

"You're the boss. No one pays attention here," he says, looking around.

We all settle down into the cushions. I didn't dress for a lot of sitting. The dress rides up, my thighs garish in the cold light, and I cross my legs at the ankle.

I shrug off my jacket. "Should we start?"

"I should wait for our last guy to—" he stares above my head, behind me, to the door. "Oh, never mind, he's here."

I can't see behind me. Mark and the punk kids make to stand up. Out of courtesy I rise and before I can turn, a voice speaks:

"What'd I miss?"

That low voice. Holy fucking shit.

I stand and turn around slowly, tilting my head up to face him.

"Not much, man," I hear Mark say. Kate, this is Iain."

Iain. I've mentally prepared myself for this moment but it stuns me anyway. He's taller than I remembered, leaning against the doorframe. The last time I saw those hazel eyes was after we fucked in his apartment, after a deal not too dissimilar to this one.. I can't help travelling down his body with my eyes, down that tight grey shirt and the tidiest of hips in ripped black jeans. A fucking beautiful man, among us mortals.

Iain's mouth is parted slightly and his eyes are fixed on my face, as if he's too afraid of what's before him to even look down. He has more restraint than I do.

"Fuckin' right he is!" Bunny jolts me back to the present as he jostles Iain's shoulder, nearly nocking the beers Iain has gripped by their necks in his strong, veined hands. Iain breaks my gaze only to make sure he lays them on the table without incident. I exhale.

The scene is small in the city; it's not implausible that we'd run into each other eventually. Sometimes I think I see him at shows or in the alley behind Dundas, but it's never him. He was almost hostile to me before we did it in his flat. I wonder how much he remembers.

"Kate and I have met," he says, turning to the others. "A while back, now."

"How do you know each other?" Shera asks, ruffling her ink-black fringe. She and Bunny knock back the beers.

"Pretty much like this, last year, although our roles were... slightly reversed," Iain says. Now I have something you want for a change, I think. I feel his eyes on me, sizing me up. I suddenly regret wearing this thing, and not wearing certain other things, especially because the heat beginning to pulse between my legs is getting harder and harder to ignore. I need a drink. I need a dart. Anything.

"Let's get to it," Mark says as he hunches forward. Iain's eyes eyes stare up at me from under their lashes. He and I knew quite a bit about not wasting time, once.

"Right," I say, digging out the baggie. I lay it close to us on the table, a clustre of neon-blue tablets in a bag in a bag in a bag. Shera's eyes widen. "These are some samples," I say. "We have other kinds too, if you want to combine the order, but these are the best. We can take full orders after that. You can deal with my boss for that part. I'm just the messenger," I smile.

Iain looks at Mark, who reaches out and pockets the baggie. Iain then gives me a stack of 20s and a promise to reach my boss when it's convenient. Our fingers touch as I take the stack. His eyes meet mine, and he holds both my gaze and my fingers for a millisecond longer than necessary. I feel a current pass between us.

He opens his mouth to speak, but then tears his eyes away from mine. He releases his grip on the money. I can feel him staring at me as i count it, finally travelling down my waist and thighs as we're sitting down. Is he blushing? Did I just see that?

I sit up straight, reach over, and stuff the money in my jacket's inner pocket. I tell Iain to not call during business hours. What I really want to say is he could rip off this dress and take me right here in the middle of a room full of people and I wouldn't fucking care.

People around us start to get up, lured by the first tensing riffs of live music above us. "You wanna stay for the show, Kate?" The Bunny kid asks me as I grab my jacket, smiling. "You look like you like to party."

Iain can't help but smile at this college kid's confidence. I can tell Bunny and Shera are anxious to drop a couple of those pills immediately.

"Who's playing tonight?" I ask.

"Cendre," Shera says. "Metal band from Laval."

I looked at Iain, who's been looking at me. His face is steady.

"Sure."

"Sweet," Mark says.

We make to head upstairs.

I make sure to walk ahead of Iain so he can get a good look at my ass making figure eights as I climb the narrow steps. It's turning me on, imagining him staring, and I feel my inner thighs rub up against my vulva with no underwear between them.

We gently push our way into the crowd and I lose the others fairly quickly. If they're yelling for me I can't tell; Neolithiq's known for its aggressive sound engineering and the band is taking full advantage. Lights start flicking red, then purple, then blue. I make a beeline for the bar, take out one of of the 20s, and neck a shot of tequilla.

Cendre's pretty good. I headbang softly with the crowd, looking up from under my dark bobbed hair to look for Iain. I can't see him through the smoke.

Suddenly I feel a hand on my waist and the excitement and fright runs down to my toes. I look up. It's Iain. Of course it is. He brings his head close to my neck, his stubble scratchy against me, and I smell a dude-elixir—of weed, tobacco, pomade—that sends sparks flying from my heart to my toes and back again.

A mosh pit starts ahead of us, at the stage. Iain's saying something into my ear but I can't hear what he's saying. Just feeling his lips at my ear is making me weak. We're swaying with the crowd now as the band starts building a slow riff in drop D.

I crane my neck to face him as he smooths his hands around my hips, appreciating the clinginess of the fabric there, swaying slowly to the riffs. We're in a crush of people and sweat. I say nothing but still keeping eye contact, I press my ass to his hips. He closes his eyes, tightening his grip on my waist as I move my ass back and forth over him. Iain kisses the nape and sides of my neck, carefully scraping his teeth over the delicate skin there. I feel his cock surge through all the layers of fabric. My pelvis feels like it's melting. Oh, fuck.

The room is so dark and the crowd so tight that I can barely move my hands to his without bumping anyone else, but I manage to grasp his left hand and bring it around my thigh. I know I'm wet, but sometimes you don't know exactly how wet you are until you or someone else feels it. Fuck appearances. Fuck reputation. I want this beautiful man to feel it.

Slowly, in time to the stretched-out thump of the bass drum, I move his hand all along my mound, His fingers curl underneath my dress. He presses himself into me, leaning me back, and takes his free hand and brings it up past my ribcage, between my breasts, in a smooth slope up my sternum to come to my neck. It's so thrilling to feel his hands on me. Thank god there's strobe lights.

I arch my neck and his fingers finally make it to my inner thigh, up to my cunt, slipping into the hot wetness. It's too loud to hear him groan but I feel his cheekbone bump the top of my head as he grips me harder, instantly pushing his hips into my ass. His cock throbs again—slowly, fully.

The band gets louder. I'm half-wild. He's playing with my cunt and I feel the backs of his thighs, pressing his cock into the cleft of my ass. All I want to do is fuck him. I grind on to his dick. He grinds back, matching me, every tiny movement a victory in this crowd. This is exactly the dirty little fuck movie that's been playing in my head for months and months, varying with my amusement and imagination, feeling his cock, his lips across my skin. How many people get this lucky? Impossible.

Suddenly, in perfect timing to the song's finale, he pulls out his slicked-up fingers and tilts my head back with his other hand, exposing my throat. He touches my lower lip, slathering it with my own juices. I suck his fingers. The music and lights shatter around us. I can feel his cock get harder. His hand feels the vibration of my throat as I moan.

This is going to get ugly if we continue. I take his hand, turning around to look at him, sweat at his brow, breathing heavily, totally turned on, staring at me with the best urgency.

"Come on." I tilt my chin, indicating toward the back of the Lith.

He nods, and winces as he quickly tucks his erection up to the waistband of his jeans. I wipe off the cunt juice lip gloss with the back of my hand. We thread our way through the crowd to the back, past the stage door, out to the alley.

We turn round the corner. A little-used fire escape underlines the second-floor windows, bolted to the brick. Iain looks at me, smiling from one corner of his mouth, reading my thoughts. He starts to climb up. This time I let Iain take the stairs first; partly because I'm a little afraid of heights, partly because I want to admire his taut ass in those scuffed black jeans.