Please Use Rear Exit: Chapter 9 – Mirror, Mirror1

by Brandon Perkins

In the previous installment of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys. Unable to cut the ties completely, and with reminders in the form of text messages still causing his phone and his emotions to vibrate, Mikhail recalls his first breakup with Katya a year ago after temptation moved into the next cubicle at work. Meanwhile, Katya is similarly “enjoying” a night out with the girls. Though she’s putting lot of effort into her “over it” front, beneath the thin veneer, as with Mikhail, her mind’s in turmoil.

The scene in front of the mirror was absurd. Just wanting to touch up her mascara, Katya was finding reflective real estate hard to come by. Nipples were being forced back into tube tops as breasts were pushed together and back out. Faces ducked in close to the glass and everyone clucked away in the background. Spectacularly bedecked fingernails flicked at specs of makeup gone astray. Elbows flailed with more fury than the numerous turns of various lipsticks. A plethora of squinting and straining smiles dominated the mirror, turning the would-be reflection of harsh fluorescent lights into a pitch-black sea of narcissism. Katya couldn’t find a space to look at herself. The commotion upset her stomach more than it already was; acid churned into the swills of Smirnoff and tonic. She searched hopelessly for a sliver of space, if only to make sure that there wasn’t anything in her teeth or hair.

“You’ve done him right this far.”

“I did him damn right just by telling him my name, nevermind the seconds of my life I spent sucking that little prick of his.”

“No way, girl, I saw him, there’s no way it was that little.”

The young woman who spent those minutes sucking that “little prick” made a big motion of separating her thumb and forefinger as wide as she could, before bringing the distance closer and closer together, much to the delight of every squealing woman in the bathroom. Except for Katya. She didn’t squeal, she just brooded in the corner, waiting for her chance to give herself a quick glance.

“If I’m gonna suck a sucka off, I don’t mind him being small. Only whores want some big prick in the back of their throat. Especially in the club, girl-oh no, no thank you.”

“Theresa’s a whore like that.”

They moved their preposterous conversation from the bathroom into the club, without washing their hands, and Katya caught her turn at the sink. She scrubbed her plain fingernails with soap while thinking about what it meant to be a whore. The whole conversation made her absolutely indignant. Their trampishness washed over her with more aggression than the scalding hot water that poured from the tap. She had entirely too much pride to go to her knees in a club. Katya fancied herself a lady from an age of manners, an age long forgotten.

With the chaos around her oddly idled, she took a brief moment to look at her face. If she hadn’t known better, there wasn’t a shred of evidence from another day spent crying. The olive oil soaked cucumbers worked, just like that blog said they would. Her light green eyes looked refreshed, gleeful even. The freckles that beset her pale skin were youthful, not at all looking like pimples, as they did just a few hours prior. She smiled. It was forced, but it was the same smile she’d been forcing all night. It’d have to do. When she stepped away, the clamoring cuckold vigorously re-emerged and squabbled over mirror space, reinvigorating the knot in Katya’s stomach.

Mikhail was an asshole. He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t know what it meant to be with a real woman. Katya frowned and wished that she had made the smarmy face in the mirror, just for reassurance. She knew it was a cute smug, but could’ve used the visual confirmation. Mikhail was such an asshole. She knew he was out there, probably dancing. It was a deliberate affront for him to have so much fun right under her nose. She was just trying to move on with her life, while he was surely busy moving on some fake ass bitch that couldn’t even carry her bra strap (size 32A or not).

The paper towels, gently handed to her from yet another underpaid minority worker, were temporarily zen-like. Touched with aloe, perhaps, the brown recyclables were temperately soothing, cool to the touch. She looked down at the soft-green ruffles of a blouse that covered her most doubt-filled imperfections. Clapping her palm against the flat of her stomach, steering far from the roll of chub at her sides, just above her hips, she patted her tummy. Beneath the flare of her top, the action simultaneously instilled hesitation and conviction in her own attractiveness.

She moved to the bathroom’s entranceway, just outside the throbbing bass of Anything. Her trip to the restroom and its accompanying glance in the mirror was a calming oasis next to what lay ahead. It was a good time to call Mikhail. She felt level headed and in a place of relative quiet, despite all the clucking she witnessed at the mirror. Reaching into her Louis Vuitton purse, she pulled out her cell phone and hit #2 on the speed dial. It rang once and went straight to voicemail.

“In these days, a missed call is as good as a voicemail…but do you as you choose, please…beep!”

“After everything we shared, I can’t believe how this ended, I miss you,” Katya said, composed enough. But then it all quickly spilled downhill. “Pick up your phone, you fuckin’ asshole. How dare you? You think you’re the shit? You’re a big man, huh? You have a little prick and I spit at the idea of it in my mouth. Tasted like shit anyway, you fuckin’ faggot. You fuckin’ coward, I hate you. You were born a coward and you’ll die alone a coward. Why can’t you just pick up your phone. I miss you. I need to talk…”

“Katya!”

Something of a trance was broken. She whimpered loudly in the direction of her name, nothing discernible, and instinctively closed her phone. Lindsay angrily snapped her fingers in the doorway.

“Your song is on, girl! What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing,” Katya said. “Nothing.”

“Let me see your phone.”

“No, that’s stupid. I was just checking my voicemail.”

“Were you calling your messages a coward? Katya, come on now, you’re my girl, why are you still calling that dip-shit? He’s worthless, let’s just have fun.”

“Linds, I know…you’re right. I just thought I could talk to him like a human for once,” Katya said, slightly embarrassed, like a child caught cheating on a test. “I didn’t feel so angry and thought it’d be a good time to just get it over with.”

“That’s not angry? Before you started whining, I haven’t heard rage like that since church.”

“I know.”

“And get what over? What’s left? He hasn’t called or texted you back all week! Dip-shit broke up with you-obviously his bad-but he’s moved on. It’s time for you to do the same. You’re a sexy-ass bitch. Those lolita freckles and an ass that just don’t quit. And besides, you are a lady. A lady. You don’t sweat the contrarions, you fight off the pursuers with a spiked stick.”

“Thanks Linds, he’s just such an asshole. I can’t even believe I wasted my time. He told me I wasn’t, it’s just, well, I just believed him.”

Katya and Lindsay stepped out into Anything and the height of the club hardly mattered-it still felt crowded. This Friday night was rife with sin, overflowing with the type of actions that were talked about in the little girls’ room. The smell hung tangible in the air-some awful combination of pheromones and fruit-flavored body spray-and it stung Katya’s nostrils. She felt sorry for the barely-clad teenagers that surrounded her and was disgusted with the few eyeballing men that stood gawking with their mouths agape. Katya was disheartened by the entire scene, as she drastically tried to ignore the pornographic displays on the overhead screens and matching advertisements. After just a few steps, the flowing fabric of her blouse started to hug her skin. Everything was damp to the touch.

“Why is this fun, again?”

“Don’t be such a party pooper,” Lindsay shouted. “I have some guys -they’re so hot-and you should totally meet them.”

“I can barely hear you.”

The perspiration of others started to stain Katya’s clothes. She felt their excretions against her skin, but mustered all her perseverance to keep on keeping on. With each step through the disgraceful crowd, her clothes continued to absorb the liquids of everyone else. Thoughts of disease dominated her mind.

“It’s so crowded in here,” she said.

Lindsay didn’t hear a single word of Katya’s shout, not over the DJ’s choice of punch-in-the-face BPM. As quickly as the purveyor of songs dipped into techno trances, he dipped out to Top 40 hip-hop. And because of the extra emphasis of “tits in the air,” Katya absolutely knew that it was a man manning Anything’s turntables.

Over the overbearing presence of the club’s oversized speakers, she got turned around. Glowering at a couple virtually having intercourse beneath an obscenely rising miniskirt, Katya was lost in a moment of people watching. They were all so carefree. She couldn’t see the rhythm that they felt, but it existed nonetheless.

“Katya!”

Lindsay grabbed Katya’s hand, a full-on mission in her grip. They broke through small circles of small girls, stepping over their pile of tiny purses, hopping around the tiny flames of the worshipped handbags. They broke through the devious stares of boogeymen hovering outside the purse pow-wows. The deeper Katya and Lindsay got into Anything, the more it smelled like everything Katya imagined a boys’ locker would reek of: abused socks and forgotten perishables tucked way in the back of mildewing caverns. Katya tried to stop judging for a minute and let Lindsay lead her hand even further into the abyss.

Beneath the boom of an impossibly loud speaker, Lindsay halted their short procession. She yelled in Katya’s ear, with the sheepish whisper of a cadence, that these were the hot guys she had been talking about.

“This is Jerome and Raoul,” Lindsay screeched.

Katya still didn’t hear, but shook the hands of the two men with no shirts and shaved chests. They wore chiseled faces, those that were presented to her by a friend and Katya wanted to be polite. They all smiled and she tried to sway her hips in accordance to the soundtracked regiment sent down from above. She felt more sweat permeate her clothes and thought about how to keep the rippingly naked pectorals in front of her from making the stains worse. It was probably unavoidable.