9/12/2023 0 Comments Sparkle tights assMy cigarette is dead and the empty beer can crinkles in my hand. The church girls are gone in an instant of cheap perfume and chattering footsteps, the tall girl’s soft, bare arm brushing past the sleeve of my shirt as she leaves me behind. The tall girl leans in and I smell soapy flowers and pineapple-scented lube. She clicks her tongue and says something back, but I can’t hear her. She knows I watch them across the pews, she knows I think about tearing her clothes off, she knows. Then she looks me in the eyes, staring right through me. The tall girl crosses her arms over her chest and lets out a laugh that sounds like a siren. I don’t know what I’m saying, but I hear myself ask, why are you dressed like that? I hear my voice speak up, feel my mouth move around palpable words. She looks soft, and my mind wanders to reaching at the low-cut chest of her gilded dress, ripping it open with one yank, and leaving her bare. Her eyes are alight in the glow of the street lamps. Her pink mouth frames lipstick stains on her teeth. She is the tallest of them, giving her an assumed command over the rest. They smell like soapy flowers and sugar and sex, letting off a cloud of cheap perfume as they sigh and sway on their long, bare legs. Their bright faces are darkened by sooty black makeup, acne scars erased and airbrushed away. Their short, frilly dresses are sequined, their hair is done up, and their high heels, closer to God, chatter on the concrete sidewalk. Gone are the smart dresses and small, flat shoes each church girl is glittering. I shake my head and they all sigh smugly. What are you doing out? Where are you going? Anything fun? Oh my God! they shriek, a chorus of the lord’s name in vain. The church girls are pursuing me, running in high heels through honking traffic to cross Pine Street. I do not pay attention until there is another shriek. I’m thinking about the church girls, imagining what smart dresses they will wear tomorrow morning, when I hear a loud shriek from across the busy street, echoing over the heads of partygoers, drunks like me, dog-walkers, lovers, and bicycle messengers. I’ve got an empty beer can in my right hand, and the last heat of a cigarette in the left. Lewis quote, followed by: Service At 10AM Sunday. I turn onto Pine Street and see that someone has changed the church marquee from a bible verse to a C.S. On this Saturday night in the city, I walk past the grocery store on Fifth Street, closed because it is late. Now, it is situational: I liked to think about wandering through a grocery aisle with the church girls and imagine what they picked off the shelves, like store brand over name brand, or organic strawberries over the normal ones. Their tight asses, hair floating down their bare backs. It started with crude thoughts: kissing them hard on their sweet mouths, shoving my tongue down their throat to shut up their clicking. I will see the church girls tomorrow morning. They are always in a jungle, or on a beach, among dilapidated tin-roofed shacks, and the sky is always blue, and I imagine that the air in these jungles and beaches is as still and languid and sour and thick as the air on this Saturday night in the city. The church girls are in the photos and smile grins of glee at me, their bobbing faces pale and ghostly among the large groups of black and brown African children. We all walk down the linoleum stairs to the church basement, the staircase lined with framed photos of mission trips to Africa. We are old enough that we don’t go to Sunday school, but we are the straggling members of the church’s young adult social group: the church girls, with their smart dresses and sunspots and bright faces, clicking tongues, hushed voices-and me. I slouch and pout at the dull scuffs on my shoes when we are told let us pray. I don’t believe in God, but I keep going to Sunday service to watch the church girls from across the pews in the church on Pine Street. I haven’t gotten a haircut in a year and it clumps in a frazzled halo around my sad face. I have scuffs on my black Oxfords, the same pair from my all-girls Christian high school. I have sweat running under my arms, melting into ugly, damp pools in the fabric of my wrinkled blouse. They have long hair to their asses and skin marked by sunspots and acne scars. I watch them from across the pews in the church on Pine Street. I watch them, the church girls, in smart dresses and small, flat shoes. The night air is languid and sour, so thick that you could take it in your mouth and chew it. The night air sits still like the church girls in their pew at Sunday service.
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