Betsy, of course

She’s all eyes this one. Swirly ocean drops. They’re wide and lazy stoner smiles. Liner-ed lids like some priestess of the Magna Mater. Sparkles in the shadow. Mirror perfect.
Then it’s her fingers, eyes, back to fingers – although her tangerine fur does not pass my attention. Matte Black nails on the steering wheel, bitten to the quick. Eyes, Nails and the orange fluff and the morning light that spilts on her through the angle of the windscreen.
I’ve been waiting outside Machadinhos sucking on Camel Blues to sublimate my initial regression to a baby state after seeing the EVICTION notice on the door. Machadinhos is my club. It’s where I met Betsy, the girl who’s all eyes and is pulling up on the street in front of me.

Bets, you know her type. A goth never-outgrown. Her ear lobes are long and dangly and yes the left one is tattooed. You know her type – a mollusc on the underbelly of the fully-and-longly-lived life, at 14 (maybe earlier) she promised: never be a goth-given-up, so she’d stuck with it, from the safety-pin pricks and last quid spunked on hair dye, gigs on gigs of recycled Clash pastiche and the ceremonial strung-out-older-boyfriend dramas, to now, later in life, debt to pay-off, loans to pay-up, she laterally manoeuvres into real estate using her gift-born silver spoon no longer for the sticky-black, no, (her voice so dipped and raspy in cigarettes and screamo) but back into her mouth from where it was born and greatly approved by upper-management as Straight-Up No-Nonsense Real-Talk. Yet though her allegiances – however tenuous by her own conception – briefly turn corporate, still her earlobes dangle. I love her for it. Once stretched, those ears were once filled with a beautiful reflective black disc tugging her lobes open almost seven inches wide. The three-inch dangle of wrinkled ear lobe betrays her estate-agent-to-the-stars look. I imagine her driving The Wet-Heads and The Short-Dicks to their chapel-conversions, I picture her ear lobes and bet they flap in the wind as she speeds to impress, Black Flag My War B-Side sludgy through the old speakers of her logo-plastered Hyundai Hybrid, her lobes flapping and in fleshy morse code spell out sell-out sell-out.
But at least she’s real. I love her. She’s real and now speaking on the phone while batting her lashes at me as I wait on the street outside my club with the eviction notice on the door and my proverbial dick in my proverbial hand. Betsy will know what to do. I don’t want her to know I don’t know what to do so I wait in this not-knowing, knowing she’ll get out soon enough and take over and that’s another reason why I love her, her face, how it moves with purpose, curling lips to a Dirty Bloody Mary, to a fully-charged vape; then how it moves with no purpose at all, crinkly eye smiles, a giggle’s twitch on the flirt muscles, teasing a smirk or a smile. She’ll know what to do. She’ll know someone who knows someone. She’d have sucked him off in the disabled stools glory hole. Sold him coke for twice the price and a peck on the dick. She’s know people this way. She gets things done this way and who cares, my dick don’t work, so I watch instead. Call it gay, call her making my arse cum with her perfectly shaped knuckles gay. If gay is getting off on Betsy I’m a raging homo-fucking-sexual. They say correlation is not causation but ever since Betsy planted her bony elbows on the liquor sticky bar and threw her eyes at me and, over the sound of Mechanic Insanity, shouted ‘Who booked this shite?’ business has been best since we opened solstice of ’87.
She began moving white from the green room. At first she didn’t tell me and when I caught her she acted like a dozy princess on the playground selling sweets.
‘What? Like you don’t shift here too.’
I do. Not you.’
That night her corset was tied tight and pushed her tits up and she racked a line on her cleavage and how could I ever say no to that?
But now she works for WhiteStone estates. Crack-teethed bassists need a place to live. There’s money in this town, there’s musical genius spilling into the gutters, it flows out here like really why does it have to be that the only music that can make me forget my dick don’t work is raging over-drive and percussion headaches from bands who can’t shake the needle. Works for me though. Works for Machadinhos. Worked. I had something coming in recently, too, that thing I can’t say (why would anyone bug this shit-hole? said Betsy, of course) and my own lateral move from grindcore club owner to cocaine king-pin didn't exactly tickle my balls. For some reason, without the music, it’s just not the same.
Then I think of Betsy again and think about how easily it will be.
I wave at her. She’s still on the phone. I want her to get out the car now. Why is she just sitting there idling? She’s not smiling. She hangs up the phone and puts her hand back on the steering wheel, and again my eyes go Matte Black nails, orange fur, Camel Blue eyes.
‘Doll?’ I shout. She drives past me without looking, without turning her head and I see in her ear, the tattooed one, an earpiece. She never listened to music with headphones on. She said she only liked it when her whole body buzzed, when she could sit on the subwoofer and spray the front row. I used to say to her, 'who's my little slut?' and she'd reply 'Betsy, of course'. Now I'm thinking these exact words: She's too good to be true while the question of why she has an earpiece in sort of just lives in me, wordless, yet,

I hear the siren’s first. The yelp, and then the primary colours, and for a split second I think it’s an ambulance, and I hope whoever needs it is alright, but then of course, I know, the sirens yelp and wail and the colours are red and blue and the cars are police cars, and they're all driving together, from round both corners - yes, of course they were waiting, waiting for the signal from Betsy, of course.

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Pub: 05 May 2025 20:32 UTC

Edit: 05 May 2025 21:52 UTC

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