Shadow lover

where all the interesting stuff happens

It all happens in the shadows, you see. All the interesting stuff anyway. The odorous, the amorous; the rubbing of words, flesh and urgent looks.
 
I so hate the spotlight. All my blemishes on display. The passage of my eyes as they track the passing buffet of bodies, the sweat stains, the boredom, the vanity; all visible. Like an auction item on display being appraised, my questionable provenance under evaluation. And where do you hide all those dark thoughts and insincere comments about other people’s lives? They would see it all pass across the map of my face like tidal streams turning with the tide. No the shadows is the place for me. 

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
I met a Russian at The Club once. Hairy, with glossy beard and big rough hands. He pinned me into a corner with his massive horse-like legs keeping me corralled. His breath stank of cheap whiskey and his eyes were bright with mischief but dulled by the alcohol. He was big but he wasn’t quick. And despite finding myself ensnared in a rather inviting position I thought that he was too full of alcohol to behave anything other than feral. So, I dipped through the A-frame of his legs and left him, bemused in the darkness.

I met ‘smoking Josephine’ in the shadows. She’s a dancer with long nylon legs and red shoes with lofty talons. She was the perfect hight for anyone to talk to but had an aloofness about her that translated into ‘unapproachable’. She’d asked me for a light, so we smoked together for a while. She was from Detroit and hadn’t been in town long, ‘just trying to meet people’
‘in the shadows’ I questioned, ‘that’s an interesting place to start’ 
‘Well’ she said ‘from the shadows you get to see what’s going on in the spotlight, but can move around behind-the-scenes, if you know what I mean.’
I said that I knew exactly what she meant and that she was a woman after my own persuasion.
She wasn’t chatty which meant that I grilled her with questions, just trying to make conversation. She finally confided, with difficulty, that she and her daughter were living in a women’s shelter, waiting to be relocated. She spoke in the flat, resigned tones of someone displaced. She slowly spilled out words, shamefaced, explaining that she ‘went out at night to get a break from being a failure in broad daylight, in front of her daughter’ she paused, suspended, absent elsewhere, ‘and to have a few drinks, if someone else’s paying’. So I bought her a drink. I still see her sometimes in the shadows, by herself.

I know the doorman of course. They call him Billy, but that’s not his name. They call all the security guys Billy. He’s tall, with Guinness-black skin, hair kept close to the skull and startlingly green eyes - like a panther. He has hands the size of dinner-plates and the dexterity of a seamstress, as I discovered the night we shared a late night mixed grill after his shift. He ate delicately and solely with his hands, in a slow and considered manner. Every tearing of meat and purposeful gathering of food was felt resonant in my body, and by the time we’d finished eating he had pinched and massaged every inch of me. Afterwards I had little option but to put myself in his hands to be consumed, which delighted him tremendously. He took the same mindful, almost reverend, approach with me. His tongue washed me like I was both the dish to eat and the plate to lick, enjoying my salty flesh, sucking my fingers clean, muttering his satisfaction. His long, supple muscles popped into form as he picked me up effortlessly to quench his thirst, as though sucking seeds from a passion fruit, not drawing breath until his face drenched. Yes, he made quite the dessert out of me. I’m completely bewitched by him. I don’t know what he thinks about me though.

Here I am, at The Club.
‘Hi Billy’
He nods, and smiles through rice white teeth and liver coloured lips. Dark glasses paint him perfectly impenetrable and unpredictably dangerous - a soldier on guard. ‘I’ll come in and see you, later’ 
Oh good, I think; and into the shadows I go.

CROWDED HOUSE
I pass two guys tied together back-to-front by thin leather straps and buckles. Semi-constrained, there’s not quite enough reach for either to get to the parts that want to be touched, without some cooperation. Both are laughing and caressing each other with fervent urgency, obliviously conspicuous. Laser beams cut through dry ice rising along with the prolonged pause before drum-and-bass land like a thunderbolt, shattering the atmosphere into glitter-ball fragments along with the euphoria from the crowd.

There’s a woman sat at a square table offering popcorn and alcopops, unless you’re looking for something harder, in which case she slips her attention beneath the cloth to produce, like a magician, something to take you outside of time and into the symphony of cocktail shakers tumbling like maracas, into the zoo of moving parts on the mirrored dance-floor, the bass beat, the heat, sweat and pressure of the mass. She looks bored, all too familiar with the territory and not the slightest bit interested in your ‘thanks’ in her direction.

There are rows of coats hung-up on a wall of hooks and collections of bags piled together like a Designer-brand archipelago. Sofa’s with people draped, and strewn over every part of them, mostly drinking and talking, with others spilled puddle-like onto the floor - all moving lava-lamp-like under the neon flashing lights, liquid inside the thumping noise, under a veil of smoke and darkness. 

I make my way to the bar, order a beer taking a seat on a high-stool, and settle-in for the evening to watch the Shadow Lovers do what they do; and wait for Billy.

A knowing nod in Beth Kempton's direction - she knows what it's saying.
Go find your shadow/light self in her SoulCirle here on Substack..... it's anything you want it to be