There Must Be Good Honest Sins
She’s unsmudging the mascara on her face and the poltergeist is dangling from the ceiling in the bathroom mirror. It’s being very well-behaved this evening, all things considered. Never can be sure with this bitch. The cubicle behind her flushes and she skirts out, lipstick print still on her teeth, from the tiny single sink and its mirror. The poltergeist clatters across the florescent light above, reaches for the top of the door, propped open by the endless queue as she pushes through. No one looks up. The floor opens and swallows her. She had a drink, somewhere, or maybe she’d finished it before she went for a piss. Maybe the poltergeist slapped it to the floor when she put it down. Days gone by girls would fix each other’s mascara in club bathrooms, fix each other, pints deep, gin deep, but she’s never actually experienced this. Was this particular bathroom too small? Is it another impression left by the American nostalgia machine, churning out universal personal histories like red solo cups? Have things changed? She’s not been a girl long enough to know. The days gone by girls remain sun-blushed in their vain fantasies. And the door just says ‘stalls’. Clear plastic cups litter the high blocks segmenting the floor, empty and sticky and cold, refilling themselves with melting ice, she’ll have to go back to the bar and scramble through the crowd, the people, stop dancing and get another drink. Or go outside and press someone for a smoke. She’d been draped over a t-boy in a leather harness who smelled like a bonfire. The lights flash blue and pink and yellow as the body of the poltergeist slithers over them, grasps for the plastic cups with flat brown inches left, tips them. Nice sticky floor under her chunky heels. It reaches for her shoulder as she turns, unready. Her backless one-piece leaves her puncture-wound bruises on display, but everyone’s purple as the lights cross and spin, and the one-piece clings to her tits and thighs and flares out at her shins. She’s hot. Poltergeist or fucking not. Sweat collecting at the small of her back, collected by wandering hands, she gets to the bar, and there’s always a shitty smudged mirror behind the bars in these places. She doesn’t see herself. She sees the unhinged maw of the poltergeist and watches its throat rattle as it howls at her. The noise is lost to the bass. Ice-chill threads down her palm all the way up to her elbow as she wraps her hand around the little cup of vodka and lemonade. The pinpoint claws of the poltergeist sneak into her skin and she gasps down the cheap shit vodka and the cheap shit lemonade but the blood is not permitted to bother her. She’s on the floor. She will remain on the floor. It’s almost loud enough in here, but she wants to turn the base up. Wants to feel the ringing in her ears, or the promise of it. Skin glitters, she’s whipped with sprays of ragged, half-shaved hair, and between these reckless bodies there’s a harness she recognises. She gets her hands on his hips this time, cuts straight to the chase, digs her fingers into his fat hips and suppresses the urge to lick his t-bone scars. His hands run over her shoulders and he doesn’t seem to notice that one comes away sticky with blood. The poltergeist runs a finger over her scalp, its gangled body stretched from the ceiling, needle-tooth grin submerged in the murk. Already the boy’s tongue is in her mouth. She’s half-hard. He tastes like rollies and she roams her hands over his jeans and lands on the pouch of tobacco in his front pocket.
#
Outside, the poltergeist sits on the railings around the smoking area and chitters like a monkey. The ice has melted but her vodka lemonade doesn’t taste any worse.
“You ever use it as a packer?”
He laughs as he takes back the baccy, swaps it for his light. “No.”
“I think it could work.”
“It would be so inconvenient.”
“At the club? It would be fucking hot.”
Again, he laughs.
“I’d be on my knees to help you put it back.”
“Forward,” he says. It’s a compliment. A cloud of smoke escapes them both.
“No, it’s not,” she says. She pulls on her fag, on the cigarette, deep and focused, showing off. “I want to suck your cock. That’s forward.”
“Alright, yeah, that’s forward.” He’s drinking beer. She wants to take it off him. She wants to take a slow, deliberate sip and hand it back. She wants to chug it and vomit on his platforms. She wants to throw it in his face. She wants to shower in it. She wants him to throw it in her face. She wants him to chug it then piss it on her. Clattering from behind her distils into a mental image of the poltergeist, its weird tangled shape on the railings. She could finish her drink and drag him into an alley and get arrested. There’s always a secret stall in the bathroom labelled ‘urinals’, there’s less of a queue, they’d work out the logistics inside but she could almost certainly fuck him in there. She doesn’t even need to cum, she just wants to work out how to make him cum, and she’d have to do it before they got kicked out, then they could exchange numbers and never speak to each other again. Behind her, the poltergeist scratches the railing and the sound exists now in her spine. She needs the bass back. She needs the bodies. She needs the floor to eat her. He’s asking her where she’s based. If she’s lived there long. Her accent — where is she from originally? Does she get back there much?
“No.”
She finishes her fag and steps back towards the club door, one finger hooked around his wrist like a talon, or a claw. As she moves past him-
“What the fuck is that?”
The music thuds through the door as she drags him back, the poltergeist drags itself along the tarmac under the cloudless and starless night sky.
#
She’s on a bus. Top deck, right at the front. She reeks of sweat but not like the t-boy, not like his bottled boy smell, she could have climbed into his armpit and slept there, slept off the hangover. It’ll bloom from the front, right between her eyebrows, and it won’t have been worth it. A few stray moments. Nice bit of skin-on-skin. In the seat to her left, the poltergeist perches, feet on the upholstery, hands dangling to the floor between its legs. It watches the sparse traffic, the pool of drivers and dancers and drunks outside the kebab shop, the tents on the roundabout, the ghosts in the windows. Deep, deep, deep within the pit of her, the tobacco smoke still burns and burns her insides away. For all her crying, she can’t put it out. The poltergeist climbs into her lap like a young cat, claws out, rumbling in its throat the same pitch as the bus engine. It rubs its head against her sore chest. Wraps its arms about her. And though these aren’t the arms she longs for, she embraces it as it burrows under her skin.
Kit McGuire is a writer and actor based in London. As a gay trans creative, they’re compelled by how visibly queer bodies navigate and are navigated in public spaces, and the idiosyncrasies of queer time. Their work includes fiction, poetry, and essays, and has previously been published and produced by Olit, SCAB, Queerlings, and elsewhere.