The bottle sounded against the rim of my glass, a single clear ping, and then gurgled quietly as I poured. I took up the glass and brought it to my lips, tilting it back to let the clear brown liquid burn down my throat and in to my belly.

“What’s with you and whiskey?”

I turned to face Gregory and found him sitting on the bed wearing his boxers. He is young, just twenty-one, barely sentient by my standards. His hair is brown and short with golden highlights and he wears thin sideburns that cut over in to an angular fringe along his jaw, meeting a neat, severe goatee. His mouth is stern without being narrow, set in his angular jaw below his fine, straight nose. His hazel eyes are likewise quite intense; dominating his face with his high forehead- in short he radiates the aura of Angry Young Man, yet his voice is surprisingly soft and resonant, and when he smiles all that angry intensity leaves him. It is quite becoming.

“Whatever do you mean?” I replied, grinning as I refilled my glass yet again.

“I’d be on my knees if I drank as much as you.”

There was a note of concern in his voice, not overarching concern, just that little bit. It was sweet, and it made me giggle a bit before I drained the glass again. Alcohol makes me giddy, not drunk, and anything less than a steady flow of liquor has no effect on me at all. But when it has me in its grip I can be quite… impulsive.

“It fuels my madness,” I laughed and strode over to the balcony, throwing open the sliding door and stretching out, my feet and hands at the corners of the doorway, letting the cool breeze of the autumn night slide over my skin, drinking in the sight of the harbor below. “I love this view.”

“Not bad from here, either… and I’ll bet the neighbors like it, too.” He came up behind me and slid his arms about me, drawing me tightly to him. It felt wonderful, his head resting atop mine, his body warm and firm behind me, his hands tracing lines of goose bumps up my belly and over my breasts. His timing was impeccable- the warm rush from the whiskey suffused my body and I let my arms fall, melting in to his grasp as I turned to face him. I licked his chest, letting the salty flavour of his skin and sweat mix with the smoky aftertaste of the Crown Royal.

“You taste so good,” I murmured as I lifted my face and then found his mouth with mine. He was surprised. Surprised at his powerful response, at my animal hunger, at how quickly a casual gesture escalated in to forty minutes of exertion, sweat and pleasure. Such is life with one such as I.

“No,” he said, seizing my wrist as I reached for my bottle, “every time you open that thing we wind up in the tangle again, and I’m starving.”

“I’ll call room service…”

“Oh. man, no more steak, no more lobster- I need real food… pizza. I know just the place.”

I let him shower first as I drained the last of the Crown Royal and called the desk to have the room serviced and the bar restocked. I love good hotels- twelve-thirty in the morning and they did not even blink. Of course, they knew me at this one. I slipped in to the shower while he was getting dressed and took it first at full hot for a minute, then warm for a quick wash, then dead cold to rinse. In and out in under five minutes. My wardrobe was limited, but a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and my jacket seemed just the thing for a pizza run.

Gregory watched me tuck a half-litre of Jim Beam inside my jacket and drop five one-hundred-dollar bills on the table. I saw the disapproval there, but I countered it with a grin, and we were off.

It turned out he not only knew where to get pizza at one in the morning, he also knew where to find his friends. That saddened me; because I knew that it was likely Gregory and I were now done. I seldom survive contact with the peers in situations like this, but I was well fueled, and quite mad.

An hour later I was deep in to the discussion of Marxist theory with a child who had no clue what Marx was all about, and thought that Stalin was simply misunderstood.

“Marxism can work,” he insisted, “if it is properly applied. The Soviets and Mao were too concerned with the maintenance of power to make an honest attempt at true Socialism.”

“That’s the problem, honey,” I replied, “you don’t seem to understand that it’s all about the power. Can’t make a Marxist Utopia without holding on to the reigns of power, and it becomes the center of everything.”

“That’s an old argument,” he rebuffed me, “in a modern society…”

“You can use technology to keep tabs on the untrue,” I interrupted him. I paused to drain a glass of Stoli on ice, then continued, “It’s like this, boy: you think that Marxism can work if they just give you and yours the chance to do it because this time you’ll do it right, but, not to be crude here, that’s the political equivalent of promising not to come in my mouth. You may mean it, you may be sincere, but once things get rolling and you taste the power, all the soft caresses and teasing will turn in to a fist behind my head. Only in this case the aftermath is not a funky aftertaste and a stain on my blouse, but a mountain of corpses and a population in chains. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and fuck you if you think we ought to try it again, capice?”

Gregory intervened at that point and I let him defuse the situation, but his friend gazed upon me with eyes alight with the fire of fresh hatred. Poor child, he had no idea whom he was dealing with. I have no real political persona, but I know balderdash when it is laid at my doorstep. We left his friends and he walked me back to the hotel, but when I reached the suite, I was alone…

Posted on October 13th, 2003 by Zsallia
Filed under: The Present