Beauty and the Pole
when Gina was on
stage, even the steel
pole got a hard-on. every
pair of eyes in
the smoky room was fixated
on her body swirling around the cold
steel, her brilliant (fake) breasts embracing the
pole, making the
onlookers wish it was their cock.
I was the only
one that never looked; I knew how
her tits felt around my cock. fucking
amazing. I just swilled
Four Roses (the joint’s owner brought it just
for me) and scribbled poems on cocktail
napkins. the other patrons would give up a
kidney to have Gina go home
with them. she would go
home with me, for free – well, she did
drink most of my tequila, but I’m a
bourbon guy so it was a
fair deal. those
years were
funny; I was mourning
the loss of true
love, yet found an effulgent
replacement in the arms of
a heavy-drinking stripper (she
loathed the term exotic dancer, made her feel like
she should be from India or the jungles of Bolivia). well,
I
lost her, too, and now I
drink alone, too broke to
go to new strip joints and find
new refulgent pair of tits to embrace
my withering cock.
Marking the Territory
we spent a week
locked inside my new apartment.
she wanted to fuck on every piece of furniture,
every surface, on the floor and against
the walls, even in the shower and on the toilet.
“I just want to make sure you have a memory of
me everywhere you look,” she had claimed. for a week,
we simply fucked, drank, then fucked some
more. until not an inch of the apartment was not soaked
with her memory, if not our juices. “why did you want to
do that? other than having a fun time?” I asked as we drank
some coke-coated margaritas. “just in case something
bad happens; I wouldn’t want you to
forget me.” “you know we’re never gonna
separate, right?” I asked, like the naïve motherfucker
I was back then. “as I said, just in case,” she said, like
a drunk, sexy prophet. without a word, I just thrust my
tongue down her
throat and we fucked
for the fifth time, on the foldout blue
couch. after the week during
which she ensured I’d see, smell, and sense
her everywhere in the
apartment, we returned to the bar and the dark alleys of junk and coke.
a couple of months later, she was gone; taken away
by the spike. she sure
made sure I could never
sit in that apartment without
seeing her whispering ghost. I stayed there
for seven years, because I could not
leave her behind. I wonder if the
new tenant was ever
haunted by the debaucheries and insanities that
took place between those four haunted walls.
Prophetic Drunk
“I’m sorry, George,” she said, one week before
she died. “for what?” I asked, half-numb from the
fifth of bourbon that swam in my bloodstream. “I don’t know,” she
said. she had just shot junk. I wrung the needle from her loose
grip and shot, too. I was hoping for
death. I only got a hangover enhanced by the fucking sickness. five days
later, she did a pregnancy test; positive. we rushed to
an abortion clinic. after the operation, we went back to my
apartment. she put a big chunk of brown heroin in
the spoon, heated it up, shot it. I was too dazed and confused to see
what she was doing.
overdose. I shot after
her, I chased butterflies in the dragon-infested meadows for
hours while her head rested on
my shoulder. once I came
to, I realized she
was gone. “I’m sorry, George,” she had said just a week before. did
she know? I hope she
didn’t; I just know I’ll be seeing her in my
dreams tonight, again.
©2023 George Gad Economou All rights reserved.
George Gad Economou holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and resides in Athens, Greece, doing freelance work whenever he can while searching for a new place to go. His novella, Letters to S., was published in Storylandia Issue 30 and his short stories and poems have appeared in literary magazines, such as Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Chamber Magazine, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine. His first poetry collection, Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds, was published by Adelaide Books in 2021.