chloe's night out.

Last night, for Mandy’s birthday, Chloe wore out her sluttiest outfit:

a thin strip of cloth propped just beneath her D-cup cleavage, tied tightly enough to squeeze her breasts together in a way that made them appear a few sizes bigger than they were. Denim booty shorts, folded under at the ends to allow for maximum cheek exposure. And fishnet stockings, with tears in strategic places.

She capped it off with the same pair of dirty white Converse she always wore, driving home the appearance that she was an artsy kind of girl who didn’t take herself too seriously — even though she didn’t do anything artistic and she did take herself too seriously.

Her belly button was exposed, so that all entry points of the flesh, if not visible, were at least made easily accessible — just the way God made her.

“Is it too revealing?” She asked with a faint Southern accent, self-conscious, on our way to the train.

“Nooooo,” Mandy said, her pitch higher than usual, “You look hot, girl.”

Chloe looked at me for approval.

“Guys will like it,” I said.

The heat of her eyes bore into me. Sweat mixed with her makeup in the summer evening heat, revealing the premature cracks and wrinkles around the eyes she clumsily tried to hide.

“I haven’t had sex in six months.” She lamented, “But I don’t want people to think I’m a slut.”

“Isn’t that what you’d want people to think if you were trying to get laid?” I said.

“Are you saying that I look like one or are you just being an asshole?”

Mandy, who was walking between us, shrunk herself in the crossfire.

“Probably both,” I said.

Her pink complexion turned red.

“How do you deal with him?” She turned to Mandy.

Mandy shrugged her shoulders, shriveling further into herself, like a child to an abusive parent, bracing for impact.

It had been a tense day. Specifically, three things could be attributed to that, and Chloe’s overall attitude.

One: she took the red-eye the night before, having missed her earlier departures. She cut her morning flight too close, oversleeping her alarm. Then, just as the afternoon one was boarding, remembered that her three cats would starve without enough food left out over the weekend. Ironically, she’d taken every precaution to ensure her trip went exactly to plan, creating an itinerary that accounted for every minute from departure to arrival and back. She was a meticulously organized person, but paradoxically undisciplined, hating any deviation from the internal blueprint she laid out in her mind. So when her evening flight got delayed due to weather, it throttled her. She had no tolerance for the spontaneity of external forces. Impulse was only allowed if it originated organically within her — as it often did.

Two: the sex thing. She’d been a pseudo-virgin for the past six months. For a girl like Chloe, there was no lower badge of dishonor. She didn’t put in the effort, but she shouldn’t have to, she said; guys should be fawning over her.

Three, and lastly: she’d been sober (for the fourth time) from meth. The irritability that came with withdrawal had parked itself in her and refused to leave. Even after months-to-years-long stints of sobriety, it became a newly developed but now permanent facet of her personality.

The friction between us was that of a sibling nature. Not just non-sexual, but anti.

“How long is this train going to take? God, it’s so hot down here. I hate New York already.”

“You haven’t even been here a full day,” I said.

“The lack of personal space, the attitude, the filth and stench. I’m over it! They don’t even have public restrooms for Christ’s sake. What happens if I have to pee?”

Mandy nodded in timid agreement.

“There are public restrooms,” I said.

“Where?”

I pointed to the far end of the subway tunnel, where an off-duty construction worker, with his back turned to us, pulled out his dick and started peeing into the black void.

“Disgusting!” Chloe said.

“Well, I don’t know what you expected. We’re not in Florida anymore.”

Her makeup was melting now with sweat. It could no longer hide the country-bred features of her face that were vaguely but undeniably Southern.

The few stops it took to get from Lower East Manhattan to Brooklyn felt like purgatory. Chloe’s body emanated a silent heat.

At the club, she grabbed several pieces of gum from Mandy’s purse, chewing on the clump with an exaggerated range of motion, so men knew that she also had a mouth and knew how to use it.

After two vodka cranberries and a shot, she strutted brazenly across the dancefloor, displaying herself for any potential suitors. Mandy and I watched from the bar, hunching over our drinks.

“Don’t you have any friends who’d be into her?” Mandy asked, biting her thumbnail.

“It’s your birthday today, babe. Don’t make Chloe a priority on your birthday. Let me handle it.” I said.

I knew that Chloe had a penchant for conservative men, or at least the aesthetic they represented — more accurately, the masculinity they possessed to dominate her in bed. I thought about my friends in New York, and about the country boy aesthetic that had come into fashion here. Mustaches. Fishing caps. Mullets. Cowboy boots. Canned beer. They could pass for conservative in the right contexts, but once they got her into bed, they’d undoubtedly fail to live up to expectation. I wondered if that even mattered, if she’d settle for it anyway.

“What about Caleb?” Mandy suggested.

“No, no. He’s too intellectual. That’d be a turn-off for her.”

We tracked Chloe as she performed her mating call across the dancefloor. Some of the more desperate men thought they’d spotted easy prey. She grinded on a few of them. I prayed that she would lower her standards for the night. That she’d fuck the first sane-seeming guy who showed her attention. There seemed to be a few promising prospects, as Mandy and I followed her into the Dionysian ritual—onto the dancefloor, to gather insight.

“What’s your name?” A bleached-mullet victim in sunglasses asked her, yelling over the artillery of neo-rave music.

“Chloe.”

“Chloe,” he repeated, and after a long pause: “Wouldn’t you like to know my name?”

“Maybe.” She cast a drunken wink.

“You wanna dance?”

“Don’t ask me. That’s unattractive. Just go for it, if you really want it.”

Sheepishly, he grabbed her by the waist.

“I don’t believe you now”, she said, removing his hand.

“You told me to—”

“Exactly! I had to tell you to, so it doesn’t count.”

“Um, can I buy you a drink then?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

She was committing too hard to playing the siren: teasing men with a little taste, then waltzing away, repeating the process with the next prospect. The problem was, she no longer embodied the pre-meth enchantment she once possessed. This was a harsher, less distinguished woman, in both body and spirit. Her old, reliable strategy no longer played out as charming, but disingenuous and with a tinge of hostility disguised as flirting. This brought with it its own sort of cruel charm, for the right suitor: mostly, men who found sexual gratification in being yelled at — being dominated by the feminine, which was an archetype that repelled her.

Chloe held the unconscious masculine belief that the opposite sex existed purely as vehicles for pleasure. If she sensed they did not possess the ability to take her against her will, their total value was nil. They were worthless sacks of meat held together loosely by skin.

Unknowingly, she enforced this standard even on her platonic friendships with the opposite sex, of which only gay men were exempt.

But as the night wore on unsuccessfully, with last-call fast approaching, I decided it was time to intervene.

Standing there in the middle of the dance floor, alone, clutching his beer like a shield, was my most vulnerable target. He nodded with pursed lips at every person who walked by, sometimes mouthing “hi”, or trying to clank glasses with strangers. He was clean-shaven, with a dominant jawline, sporting a financial-district fashion style. The type of person who may have been the man in his own environment, but who here, at a goth club in Brooklyn, was invisible. A weakness I planned on exploiting…for symbiotic purposes.

With my help, he’d get what he came here for. He’d get to sleep with the coveted art hoe. And, in turn, both Mandy and I could be relieved of Chloe’s oppression.

The window of opportunity was closing.

“Hey, man.” I said.

He looked at me as if I were hitting on him, but decided to entertain it anyway — either to flatter himself, or, at least, to not appear alone.

I held up my glass. He clanked with me hesitantly, gauging my sexuality and level of interest.

“Some pretty good ass here tonight, isn’t there?” I said.

He loosened his posture.

“Yeah. Yeah, there is. Damn straight.” He said, a foolish grin on his face.

I was spinning my web. He was my prey. Just a fly.

“Anyone who’s caught your eye?” I asked.

He pointed over near the bar: a young woman, black hair. Magnetic, but in an introverted sort of way — the kind that invited mediocre men (or so they thought) to come over and talk to her, as she waited patiently for their approach, so she could turn her pussy over to them on a silver platter.

“I don’t think you’re her type.” I said.

“Why not?”

“What about a nice blonde girl?”

“It’s the end of the night. Maybe I’ll just go over there and take my chances with her.” He said, nodding toward the girl at the bar.

“Just…wait here.” I said.

Worming my way through the dwindling crowd, I walked over to the girl at the bar, putting both hands on either side of her face, and started kissing her. After a few seconds, she pulled away.

“What the hell? Aggressive. But…I really like it.” Mandy said.

I looked over at the guy to make sure he was watching. Mandy was starting to get really turned on.

“Are you gonna spank me tonight for my birthday?” She whispered in my ear, grabbing me by the cock.

I was completely soft.

“Yeah, yeah of course,” I said, scanning the dance floor for Chloe — my mind fixed on the objective.

“You don’t even care,” she said, yanking her hand away, folding her arms.

“I have an idea,” I told her. “We’re gonna slingshot this guy over to Chloe.”

“Why not just tell him to go over there?”

“He likes you.”

“Oh. I get it. So I’m just a pawn. Thanks.”

“I’m doing this for us.”

‘Why not just tell him I’m your girlfriend, asshole.”

“That’d be too obvious.”

“Since when do men care about subtlety? You know how many men have stumbled up to me tonight with a carnal hunger in their eyes? Want to know?”

“Later,” I said. “Just look. If we can get Chloe sorted out for the night, imagine how great the rest of the weekend can be?” I said.

“She is starting to drive me mad. I regret inviting her to stay with us.”

“Right. But there’s only one thing we can do about it now.” I said. “And there’s our golden ticket,” I nodded toward the dancefloor, raising my glass as the jock stared on, dumbfounded.

He was beginning to cast a pathetic figure standing there alone, as people began to file out or toward the bar for last call.

Chloe was wasted, dancing with her eyes closed, caressing her own body as if it were another’s.

This was an easy shot. A no-brainer for both persons. A path to avoiding the coldness of a single-bodied mattress. This was my destiny. My life’s purpose. I was a saint. A martyr of the night. Chloe’s messiah. Her pussy was my pussy. This man’s dick was my dick. I’d become the missing link to their trinity, the trinity of flesh, gathering all elements of physical rapture, dispersing their bits of sexual healing across the night.

I’d even have let him sniff Mandy’s underwear, if only he’d take Chloe home, or even back to our place — if he had roommates. I’d even make him breakfast in the morning before sending him safely on his way.

If only he knew just how grossly horny Chloe was. How willing she was to compromise. How I heard her earlier say:

“Tonight, I’d be willing to fuck any guy who doesn’t give me the ick.”

These words became my gospel. I was like St. Peter, proselytizing her verse, hoping to accelerate her Second Coming.

If only I had told him:

“Listen, man, you’re in! Don’t say anything out of pocket. Don’t show her your personality just yet. Hell, tomorrow that won’t even matter. Just keep dancing and stroking her like that.”

If only men could learn to say the least…

But he opened his mouth too wide and too often, revealing too much at once, and when she got a whiff of this mutual desperation, it was over.

In the morning, she went off on a tangent about how I should keep my room cleaner. She stubbed her toe on the way out to get coffee. The table leg now lies broken on the sidewalk. Tossed through the window from the other side of the room.