Ninety-Six Girls

96 sketches.
28 May, 2012

66. Wash and Cut

The hairdresser hooked her wet fingers in Glenn’s surprised ears. Makes sense, he supposed, clean out the soap. But it put him on the back foot.

She talked about movies, holidays, her on-off boyfriend. Her bloodline was Persian-German.

Suits you, Glenn said, with instant regret.

Snick-snack went the scissors. He felt the warm promise of a breast close by his nape. Finally she brought her face down to his and tugged his sideburns. Just checking length, he told himself. Don’t look into her eyes.

It was all too stressful. Glenn never went back.

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27 May, 2012

65. Joints

Every Wednesday, Polly would skip school and visit a caravan overlooking a rowdy bay, where waves tussled endlessly with the rocks. Her grandmother would make tea, wincing as her arthritic hands worked the kettle. She should move, Polly would say, and grandmother would mutter something about salt air.

“Don’t tell your mother,” her grandmother would say, as she sent Polly on her way with a crumpled ten pound note.

Knowing she had to help somehow, one day Polly turned up and handed her grandmother a bag full of sticky green marijuana buds.

“Don’t tell my mother.”

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17 May, 2012

64. Eve at the Window

She thought she’d caught his eye. Impossible, of course, with the blinds all but closed. Standing there, naked, in the room across the street, he yawned and stretched. An absent hand wandered down to his crotch. Eve bit her lip.

It was distracting, living opposite a hotel. For months, nothing, but – oh! A woman came out of the bathroom. The man tugged at her towel and pulled her onto the bed.

Suddenly, Eve remembered the doll’s house she’d had as a child, the times she’d hid one naked Barbie doll under the bed. Alone, she blushed.

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13 May, 2012

63. Women Seeking Men

NAME:  Cassie

HAIR:  blonde

EYES:  cornflour blue

HEIGHT:  like rilly, rilly tall, 6′ 4″… blame my Dutch mama

BUILD:  Athletic

LIKES:  field hockey, beach walks, fine dining, curlin up with a good book, watching soccer (those shorts ;) ), and… Asian guys!!

SEEKS: OMG, how brazen, right? There’s just something about Asian guys, their intelligence, their humor, their smooth bods… not looking for anything serious, necessarily. Look, full disclosure: this gril likes to get nuaghtay!! Anything else is a plus. But you gotta bring it in theb edroom, you feel me? Gym freaks only pleaze.

STAR SIGN:  Scorpio

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7 May, 2012

62. Her Werds

Anka waits on balcony, hood drawn tight. Cold night air saps will to fight. Gut burns as if it is full of bright, hot diamonds. Cobalt light flashing, fading, finally stops. Unlocks only way out.

Anka grabs bag, shins down drain. Looks back, scans around, pays mind to any unusual sounds. Finds matt black can and sprays slogan tall as a man:

do not fall, cuz, stand tall

call for a halt to that suicidal fault

It was morbid inanity and glib profundity, but graffiti was Anka’s salvation. Words imparting sanctity, tagging a path to nirvana.

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4 April, 2012

61. Junior Minister

Remarkable, thought Rebecca. Her toddler son and the Prime Minister had the exact same propensity for tantrums. She took the spoon from his hand – her son’s, not the PM’s – and wiped a splat of lukewarm custard from the wall.

Despite her opposition to the National Security proposals, he (the PM, not her son) still trusted her. After the controversial bill was defeated in the House of Lords, she had reserves of public goodwill that the Cabinet sorely needed. From junior to minister within three years? Why not!

Fresh custard streaked the wall. God, she hated Sundays.

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2 April, 2012

60. Amarantha Malaga

Presently she knew the problem. There could be no sex between them while Bern’s horse still lived. Bern could never love her like he did his hoofed friend. Obsessed, he rode young Stormhoof through the night, while she wept, then slept, in solitude.

But how to proceed? Her schemes tended to the violent. Knives, poisons, lengths of cheese wire, these were her focus. Blinded by venom, she couldn’t see one self-evident solution to the problem of the whinnying gooseberry. Reversing the populist line, she merely needed first to open the door before the horse could bolt.

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28 March, 2012

59. In Their Dreams!

Lucy didn’t get why it wasn’t possible to walk to work without at least one wolf whistle or sleazy comment shouted from a passing builder’s van. It was bad on Fridays, because she had to dress up ready for the weekend and naturally that means heels.

The tube was almost worse, all those old bank managers in their cheapo suits sneaking a peek over their newspaper, thinking they’re so clever, like she couldn’t see them ogling, like they’d never seen a short skirt in their lives! She worked hard on her tan, why not show it off?

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22 March, 2012

58. Hey DJ

“Hey DJ,” hollered Marley, “have you got any Vaccines? The Kooks? Two Door Cinema Club?”

They got so bored of her requests that they let her spin instead. Mostly she played indie rock, bands reviving styles that revived the music her dad liked when he was young. For a laugh she’d drop some ancient, early nineties hip-hop.

In that sluggish seaside town a female DJ proved an unbearable draw. Marley always brought a train of girlfriends, and the lads, instead of fighting, would shuffle lumpenly in front of the booth, all of them hoping to score.

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21 March, 2012

57. Jennifer Lake

In my time I’ve succumbed to the odd obsession. As a solitary sort I could sometimes use a friendly voice of reason to keep that sort of thing in check.

Once, for almost three months, I believed myself in love with a girl I’d never met, had never in fact even seen.

I imagined her, frequently, as a vixenish bookworm, eyes bright and glasses lowered, wearing heels and a crisp pencil skirt.

All I knew was her name, written in the front of a second-hand book whose title I forget, her script elegant, achingly feminine.

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