Dancing Queen

There, completed the story I'd left hanging last week. I started writing it in response to my inner critic who insists that I can't write stories nor dialogue. The seeds of the story come from the play I've been working on and also a newspaper article I read last week about public toilets. I've also incorporated the central theme of the short story series I'm also dreaming of writing. So much to do, so lazy!

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. I hope you will too. The second half pretty much wrote itself in one sitting this afternoon.


***


“Hello gorgeous.”

Jaime smiled at herself, gently teasing her hair into a studied casualness, as if the waves that framed her face had been genetically destined to worship at the glory of her forehead and cheekbones.

Makeup? Perfect. Thanks to the secret weapon that Wen had gifted her with last Christmas, shipped all the way from the US - MAC blusher in Pinch O’ Peach.

Fuck me, I look like I’ve just had sex on a sunny beach.

One last look at the mirror and she was bounding towards the door, grabbing her team scarf on her way out.

***


It had been hell getting into Bukit Jalil. A half hour spent crawling to the entrance of the National Hockey Stadium. Another fifteen minutes cruising the sprawling carpark, waiting for the sea of cars to miraculously part and reveal the ordinary man’s Holy Grail of Daily Life – a parking lot within ten feet of the exit/entrance.

But all that was forgotten now. It was worth it.

Three heart-stopping penalty corners later, here she was on her feet in the packed spectator stands, her favourite national player (What. A. Hunk) pounding across the pitch towards the D, three Pakistanis breathing down his neck in pursuit.

Crack!

The ball skimmed across the Astroturf, past a moving forest of rippling calf muscles in a single-minded charge at the goal. Jaime held her breath, willing the ball forwards with each beat of her heart (which apparently, had decided to keep her scarf company inside her mouth. The two of them had the beginnings of a conga line going in there).

“Ngmmmhhh…! ngggmmmmhhhh…! GOGOGOGOGNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

“MA HAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!”

Jaime watched in disbelief as the ball ricocheted off the visiting goalkeeper’s stick. That was just …impossible, that inhuman lunge he had somehow accomplished despite having small mattresses strapped on his chest and legs.

“Wah… miss, you really like hockey eh? Got balls, got stick, sure you like…heh. Eheheh..”

The man whose stink of pig grease had been bugging Jaime from the moment she had settled into the seat next to his was looking, no, leering, at her. He had somehow edged so close during the course of the game that his breath was practically inside her the instant she turned to face him. Like taking a swig of sewage.

“See our boys get fuck by the Pakis…very exciting, eh?”

Jaime could feel the eyes of the other men around being drawn to her and Sewer Breath. The weight of their attention blocked out the roar of the crowd. Was that someone making that goddamn sucking noise that men seem to imagine as approximating kissing? No wonder they don’t get any.

“Yeah, so hot man. I see you’re sweating…you also must be so hot from looking at the boys. At least they got balls and sticks. Where’re yours?”

The men around her laughed. Sewer Breath merely blinked in confusion, his scrap of brain struggling to cope with processing a “none of the above, dumbass” response.

GOAAAAAL!

The crowd roared as the home team finally equalised with a brilliantly executed flick. The moment with Sewer Breath was swept away by the sort-of Mexican wave the ecstatic crowd had started up.

Thanks for the distraction, Azlan, she thought, consoling herself by mentally caressing the star player’s sweaty pecs in worshipful gratitude. Mmmm. Almost worth missing the goal. Almost.

Jaime slipped away from her seat.

***


She stood in the corridor outside the stadium’s public toilets, feeling the growing irritation prickle into her hair.

Need to pee. Need to pee.

“Shit. I already went before I got here! What man…” she tcherk-ed and huffed in frustration.

The familiar anxiety crept up her throat. Lower down, her bladder was stretching, insistent, like the skin of a balloon being slowly inflated, inch by agonising inch, beyond its natural capacity.

Jaime had always had problems with public restrooms. She blamed her old school days. If it wasn’t the lingering stench, it was the popular kids who hunted in packs, crowding the sinks and cutting you down not only with their cruel taunts but also with mere sidelong looks and caustic sneers.

Deep breath.

It’ll be ok. Half time’s over, there won’t be many people inside.

She looked around. The corridor was deserted and there were no sounds from the sinks or hand-dryer inside the toilets. She paused outside the ladies’, her hesitation an instinctive habit that she’d had no success in ridding herself of.

Shaking her head, Jaime went in.

***


The run on the lady’s stockings snaked and laddered past her knee as she lifted the wriggling child up to the gushing tap. Water sprayed everywhere - onto the grimy mirror, the granite countertop, her darkening face - as the child slapped his hands about in glee.

“No boy, don’t splash all over the place…I said… don’t…no…BOY!!”

“I said… stoppit” she snapped, her cold voice promising dire repercussions once they got home.

The child froze as Medusa’s angry reflection in the mirror clamped onto him as tightly as her tentacle grip under his chubby arms.

“Faster faster wash. Hurry up”

Jaime pretended not to notice, sparing the boy the shame of scene-making. The cubicles behind them were vacant – goody. Just as she decided on the least dodgy, the disco opening of Abba’s Dancing Queen started blasting from her handbag.

Wow, signal even down here? No kidding, Maxis.

…you can dance, you can jive…

That piano trill never fails to elicit the urge to burst into a hand-on–hip-shoulder-shrugging-finger-pointing-pouty-lipped move, Jaime smiled to herself as she scrambled for her mobile.

It was Wendy. Her best friend who always seemed to know when Jaime was in the toilet and therefore decide that she desperately, simply must speak to her right at that very moment. No voice mail or sms nonsense for Wen.

Wen, whom Jaime had not heard from since she went into hiding from the psycho-stalker boyfriend of the month.

“HEY SLUT!!!” Jaime screeched. Wen squealed in response from inside the mobile.

Within the wall-wide mirror, the long-lost, modern sister of the Gorgons turned her ball-freezing gaze on Jaime. The purple-tinged light from the fluorescent tube on the ceiling bathed her in menacing shadow.

Jaime’s free hand went reflexively to her throat as she nodded a grovelling bow towards Medusa. Unimpressed, the lady dragged her silent, frozen son out the door, throwing one final glare at Jaime.

“I thought you lost your handphone?? Or was it that you’re disconnecting this number…cannot keep up lah”

Jaime peered at herself in the mirror, inspecting her make-up as Wen gushed about her latest Prince Charming who had saved her from Psycho-Stalker’s attentions by introducing his face to the counter-top behind which Prince Charming tended bar at Lickit, Wen’s favourite hunting ground.

“The game? My god woman… it’s bloody fantastic I tell you!

“I’m…oi, shut up…shut UP bitch…I’m almost tempted to start playing again, but you knowlah, how that’s going to mess up my nails…of course Azlan’s playing today...aiyiyi…” Jaime fanned herself, eyes closed.

More shrieks emit from Jaime’s mobile.

“Seriously. Oh. My. God.”

“Ya, ya, that’s why …


“Excuse me… sir.”


Sir.

The word cut Jaime harder than when Raj from school shoved her onto the boys’ changing room floor after PE, pushing his dick into Jaime’s face when she struggled to get on her feet. How she had hated PE.


Bloody pondan. Wearing your mummy’s panties ah?

Come on, show lah. Scared to show your cock is it?


“Wen…Wendy…I gotta go. Call you back.”

The name-tag labelled the man standing behind Jaime as “Raja”. Stadium security.

Her mouth went dry. She stepped back, almost recoiling, as her stomach heaved. The purply shadows were making her dizzy. Hate hate hate fluorescent lights. Jaime caught her reflection in the mirror. Her blusher need touching up. Shadows everywhere, under her eyes, her cheeks…her throat.

“Sir.” He cleared his throat again, as if the word was choking him. “You can’t use this toilet. For women only.”

Fucking bitch. Ratted me out. Fuck. Boy, your nosy bitch mommy’s a fucking cunt. Good luck to you.

Raja stretched out a huge, hairy arm. The curly grey fuzz look like mold against his dark skin.

She stepped back. “Please. Don’t.”

Jaime pushed past him and stumbled out into the corridor.

It seemed blindingly bright outside after the cold dinginess of the toilets. Someone was entering the men’s a few feet away. Further down, a pair of legs in ratty jeans casually ground a cigarette butt into the floor beneath the public phone booth. The motorcycle helmet that dangled from hips to which said legs were attached swayed in time as the rest of the hidden body rocked and leaned deep into the wall booth.

Nobody noticed her …yet it seemed like the whole world was watching, with attendant spotlights. Too bright, too bright…please don’t look at me. Far away, in the stadium, Jaime could make out the faint rumble of the crowd.

She’s a man. She’s a man. She’s a man, they cheered.

Dude looks like a lady (tair-nek, tair-nek…) sang Wen, in Jaime’s mind. It ain’t so funny now darling, Jaime shushed her.

She felt the weight between her legs – the burden of her shame - pulling her down. Down onto her knees, where she belonged.


Sewer Breath turned the corner into the corridor.

From the secret, safe place in her heart to which she had retreated, Jaime watched as he stared, first at her, then at Raja a second later, emerging from the ladies’ toilet behind her. A dumb look settled with much comfortable familiarity onto Sewer Breath's face.


“The men’s toilet is over there... sir.” One couldn't but admire the security guy's single-minded persistence.


Jaime closed her eyes, wishing he would stop saying it in italics. The stadium spotlights followed, flashing through the crimson-orange glow behind her eyelids. It made her dizzier.

Sewer Breath was now barely two feet away when she looked up. It wasn’t too much of a strain on Jaime’s imagination to picture his knuckles touching the ground. The nearer he approached, the further back on the evolutionary scale her mind placed him.

His gaze fell upon her, heavy with predatory violence, reeking of lustful revulsion. He dropped his hand down to cup his crotch as he grinned at her, jerking his head towards the men’s.

Raja stood like a rock behind Jaime.

Between a rock and a hard (no - soft, more like…) place, noted Queen Jaime from the safety of her secret place, far, far away from Jaime’s reality.


…you can dance, you can jive…


“...having the time of my life” continued Jaime in a whisper as she stirred from her trance-like daze and fished for her phone. A lifeline.

“Wen!!…hold on…bad signal…” thankyouthankyouthankyouiloveyou. Jaime forced her voice, her spine, her feet to work and hurried down the corridor.

Away. Far, far away from the sewage of her life.