SoMa Literary Review - Best Friend Clubs

Best Friend Clubs

By Lily Amirpour

The girl had black hair that was short but long enough to curl around her ear. She seemed tough. She spat and snarled as they dragged her off down by the riverbank. Where am I? There are trees and it’s almost a forest except that the city is close. I can smell it. I was up the hill a ways, but I could see the boys taking turns fucking her. Even with their narrow haunches between her thighs they hadn’t defeated her. Her fishnets were heroic and her smeared black eyeliner formed hoods over her eyes. I caught a glimpse of her pupils and they were laughing hysterically.

Her mother was there. She looked bland and placid as they molested her daughter. Maybe they would molest her too; the way they pulled on her sweater sleeves, tugging her between them like a new years popping party favor. She looked good for her age, desirable. I had to stop them. She’s someone’s mother. I say, and they calm and desist.

How could they do this in the daytime? How could they be so shameless? I had to leave, go back to the city where it’s sane and safe. I march up the hillside through damp soggy grass, mud sticking like glue to my feet. I pulled both feet with me up and out of the quiet places in the woods where people do things that are terrible and no one will ever know.

Back in the city things seem back to normal. The people on the streets look up to the wires in the sky when they should pay attention to oncoming cars. A woman looks like a tourist because of her camera and fanny pack. Mostly because of her sweatshirt that says Alcatraz . I was driving so fast around the corner and skid hard not to hit her. But she hit. My hood with her hands so hard it shook my bones.

At the next light the homeless man is impossible to ignore. I feel his presence and it traps me there waiting for the light to go green and free me from my inability to ignore him. So I look. Take in his dirty pants, so soiled and brown all I think of is filth and shit. His hands are the same way. His hair is the same way. His sign say something about God and Food and Help. I hate him for being here and confronting me in my luxury. This is the longest light. Will it ever turn green?

Beside me in the passenger seat there is a green apple. I decide to give him the apple. I had wanted to eat that apple, it was organic which meant it was even better that usual apples. I imagined it was so tart it would surely make squirts of juice pop out from the deep corners of my mouth, tiny euphoric ejaculations from the flavor. Now I will never know because I gave the filthy homeless man my apple. I gave him it and he stared at it like it was shit. He said thank you with dead eyes. How could I have made such a mistake?

The light is still red and I fear I will never leave this place and this man. Worse now because his filthy hand is around my apple. He asks me if I have any change to spare. He tells me he needs to buy bread and cheese and milk for his family-his family, his children, his wife, his dog is hungry too. I wonder how they look. I wonder if they are nearby? I wonder why he even has a dog. I wonder if he considered eating his dog. I shake my head sadly. No change. Sorry. Sorry? Why? Why should I be sorry? I am not responsible for this man’s circumstance. I didn’t put him here and cover him with filth.

He thinks I’m lying. He thinks it isn’t true about the change. He says Have a nice day, so I say You too. Yes have a nice day standing here in your own shit and piss being filthy. Have a nice day being dirty and poor. Have a nice time holding your sign that everyone tries to ignore.

The light turns green.

Parking is extra bad today. It is because of the rabbits, that’s what the sign says: Rabbit Alert High Today. I roll down the winding slope of the parking garage into lower levels. In subterranean caverns I store my car in a slot. On the way to the elevator I notice I’m alone, that it’s dark and spooky. I think this must be a place that many rapes happen. I laugh at myself, silly, rapes happen in broad daylight in the woods near the river.

Outside there are rabbits everywhere. People just don’t know what to do. People usually love rabbits-rabbits are typically considered cute. But in this case they seem like locust, like a rodent mob gone mad. So people are frantically trying to kill them. When one is killed, eight more appear, like the brooms in the movie Fantasia, except that was a cartoon and this is real. The rabbits are afraid too-you can clearly see the fear in their wide eyes. And they are hopping over each other in panic. I kill a few. They are so white and soft, pretty, but I kill some anyway. Some will get away.

444 Bryant Street

At the building I’m going to visit my friends are already there. They invite me in and I sit at the dining table. It’s still light out and you can see trees outside the window. It looks serene except I know that trees grow in forests where something bad happened. My friends are a couple named Suzy and Harold. They were married last year in a lovely grove in the city. Today they are fighting. She says she wants to leave him because she’s lost all the weight since she met him and knows that now she could find someone better.

They met after her first marriage when she was a crumpled vulnerable version of herself. Her husband had left her because she had become fat and lifeless. After he left she became even more lifeless and fat. That’s when she met Harold. Harold is fifty and manages a coffee shop. He also works at a liquor store. He’s a recovering alcoholic. When he met her he knew that she was wonderful. She loved that he knew this and began coming back to life.

During their wedding people whispered in shock about their age difference. How perverted it was and what mistake she was making. I argued that he was black and didn’t show his age easily because of it, but that only seemed to make it worse.

Now that she was thin she would find someone younger who would love her less and drive her to eat more after she realizes he’s bored with her and looking for someone more thin. These petty thoughts trivialize my mind and I hold myself responsible.

I notice the light outside the apartment is changing rapidly. It is becoming night and so everything seem sinister. I remember the police station is also on Bryant Street and that might deter the harmful advances of scary men.

The loud knock on the door drags me out of reverie.

It’s the girl with the black hair. Why was she here? Will she recognize me? I hoped she wouldn’t because I had grown to love her in a short time and that made me feel shy. She looked the same. Everyone greeted her with smiles and beers. We were all drinking out of red plastic cups of beer and the keg was cold and not yet kicked.

She threw off her jacket and spiraled down heavily next to me on the couch. She wanted to have a ménage et trois with the black man and his disillusioned wife. I was jealous and told her it was a bad idea. She was telling me about dirty sex and secret things and I was mesmerized until I felt as though a wave of fog washed over me. It looked like smoke was all around my face and I swatted at it until she said, it’s the psilocybin in your drink... I pushed past the ice in the bottom of my cup and there it was, wet and plump.

I felt afraid but trusted her. Eat it, she said. I reached into my cup and put the wet mushroom in my mouth. It squished and the juice tasted foul and moldy. I felt like throwing up and she encouraged me to swallow. Moments later I felt sure I had to leave. The room had become small and box-like. Suzy and Harold were giants. Their hands and feet were too big for the furniture and silverware. I watched then anxiously, waiting for things to start breaking.

Want to leave? Asked the girl I loved, and we held hands and walked outside.

Darker and quieter city streets greeted us. Looming.

Where’re we going? I said to her profile. She is the same height as me. Her chin is sharp and pointy; it makes her look clever.

I know a place, she says without looking at me.

When we pass the police station I feel safe until I remember the drugs in my bloodstream. She squeezes my arm. It’s ok; the place has been abandoned for years.

Where are the police? Where did they go? I asked her.

They gave up.

Why?

It dawned on me that the city was vulnerable if this was true. We were vulnerable too.

We’re in danger. I say out loud.

No. I’m the police now. You are too.

I feel nervous as we approach the place we’re going to. It’s a bar called Sally’s. The doors push in like a saloon. We can smoke here she says and smoke is already coming out of her nostrils.

Inside the bar there are large transvestites with deep voices rolling their eyes. She knows all of them and talks to them excitedly. I felt worried the girl with dark hair was growing bored of me. I hadn’t spoken much because she made me feel small. I wanted her to like me.

In the alley behind the bar she pricked my thumb with a needle. Best Friend Club, she said and pricked her thumb too. We pressed our thumbs together, rubbing blood. She licked hers, so I did too. It tasted like iron, metallic.

I looked up and saw the night between tall buildings. Across the street there is a smaller building with intricate stone carvings covering most of the facade. There were cherubs and angels. It looked Gothic and important, like a church, like another century when humans were something different.

That’s the Unified School District Building she says. All around it are tall plastic buildings that look like graphing paper. The Unified School District Building is surrounded by flat ugly buildings. And I notice the cars are ugly too. And so are the clothes on all the people. I wondered when everything had become so ugly.

She told me things used to be pretty. Men used to be pretty like women are. Music was important and poetry was used to secure a mate.

I immediately wrote her a poem. It contained all my love inside carefully chosen words. It described the force of her and her black hair. It said she was a black bird and I knew she could fly away from me if she wanted to.

She slapped my face and told me my poetry was boring, like good TV shows and sex with feelings. I nodded, I agreed.

What should we do with it? I asked her.

Let’s bury it someplace safe. She said.

And we did.

Also by Lily Amirpour on SoMa Literary Review:

Betty Paige Bangs & I Would Hurt a Fly

Lily Amirpour is an artist, musician, writer and drinker. She believes these four elements to be inextricably connected - thoughts and images transfer into words and pictures, which are often best expressed with music. Her work has appeared in the ‘zine Sailing to Bohemia. Lily’s band, FLUT, has been playing in Bay Area clubs for more then two years.