Chocolate/ Chocolat

Act I – The Dressing Room

I'm tired, but it's nothing a chocolate will not cure, I tell myself, and pop the little drug of instant contentment in my mouth. I wash my face, feel the cool spray of water from the basin, and the warm melting of the caramel at the back of my throat. It's strange to be so dual like this - completely fagged out to the dry marrow of my bones and yet so utterly raring to step out the door. That's where I want to be, so completely out on Page 3, so completely crass. It's so strangely chameleon-like of me: something that is not me wants to be a part of something else. And the part that is me, that part stays so outside of it all, observing, watching, hoping for a kill, hoping for some... contact to happen.

Spray of water, and I turn on the shower, feel the warm needles sting and surge, and watch the pool collect at my feet, the same water trickling down my body now configured in some strange way into a kind of effluent. It reminds me of worship. I scratch idly behind an ear and cup my hands to collect the flush of warm liquid below my neck. I feel my body responding in its own natural rhythm, parts creaking and wilting, aching and suffusing, drinking rapidly, trying to catch a glimpse of the succor that moisture promises. I wonder what people living in deserts do, how they live, and how they revel, and how they wash away their lethargy, their sins, their hopes - whether they have fluffy terry towels to calm their soothed tendons, and I laugh at myself, at my brand of strange idiocy reserved for my introspective moments.

It's funniest when you laugh at yourself, somebody once told me. Why do so few people remember that, I wonder.

I rub the bathroom mirror that has got all fogged up, and peer at myself. I do that a lot. People call me egoistic. I don't know what I stare for, but I do it anyway. It still looks blurry, despite my hand’s caress. It's hot and foggy here in the bathroom, and I feel an insane urge to giggle. They say, it's funniest when you laugh at yourself, but I don't see anything funny here at all. At one point of time, or so they tell me, there was something about me.

***

Act II – The Game

Drawing lines has always been easy for me, and I've always done it. I've been able to differentiate between love and pity, between work and profession, holiday and vacation, chocolate and chocolat, sex and love. You would hate me for it, to know how easily it all comes to me. I walk into a room and spy out the thing I want and I beckon, and it comes. Dressed in a black pinstriped shirt, open at the throat, exposing a tanned Adam's apple that I can taste even now, and can barely contain myself from biting into. They call me a vamp, at times, when they can think of nothing else. I can tell the difference, between the hate they centre on me and the envy they try to suppress. They want him as much as I do.

It's as simple as that. Simple as letting your hair down on a large velvet couch, reveling in the delectable decadence of life. This is where I can do and be anything at all. A masquerade. This, or the life before I strolled in through the door? Sometimes I lose the point. I'm only human – though they call me the vamp sometimes.

He's sitting next to me now, his dancing green eyes looking at my neck. I can tell that he wants me. It never takes too long.

I want love, I tell myself. Or I tell my alter ego in the mirror, the one who can't speak but makes these tired expressions through dumb eyes, dumb nose, dumb mouth, wide-eyed looks of pathos and mercy and pain that I can't feel. I crave love, and she knows that. She would help me find it, had I any idea about it myself. I thought I did, at one point of time. I know what’s not love. What’s not love is this -

He's lying on my bed, on his back, and I can hear him breathe. Ragged. He's tired. I can be a handful. Snigger. I'm proud of myself. I prod at his black pinstriped shirt on the floor with my toe, delicately. I wonder if I ripped it in my haste. Does he want me to take care of him, I wonder. Do I have to take him home every day, ask him how it was at the photo-shoot, treat him to some ice cream, pander to his ego, and tell him he fucks like the devil... and gift him a Rolex when it's time for him to leave. They wonder how I get them all, and sometimes I wonder the same. It's something inside me. Something the alter ego and I share, through our little portal, the mirror. It's not love, it never could be. But it's interesting, and she knows it. She wants me to see what’s happening to me, and I wonder if she knows more than she’s telling me. I need some more wine.

***

Act III – The Flashback

They say, I had love once. The mirror-girl whispers in my ears, whenever she has the chance, that they speak the truth. Maybe I've become too bitter to see that myself now. Bitter about why he left me and why I pushed him away. I can tell the difference, but I wonder why I still can't say what it was with him. Maybe that's a sign. That's what the mirror-girl would have me believe!

Hah! How stupid do you think I am?! Anymore stupid than he thought I was? Not likely.

Sometimes, the memories come flitting when I'm lying in bed, sipping my wine and sucking on a piece of mint. Standing at a shop window and waiting for him. Watching the yellow light of the floor spill out onto the sidewalk and touch my toes, and I wonder whether I've been touched by an angel. I wonder why he's late, but I'm glad he is. It gives me this time to think and pause and revel and feel. I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, it has to be, it can't get better than this - I must be in love, so this is how it feels, this, this, this strange mushrooming of a cloud I can't tell what is made of, or the strange colour that's dancing in front of my eyes -

Bitter pill to swallow. And I tell myself stories. I eat chocolate and I cry. That's a horrible thing to have to do. So I dress. And tell myself to forget about what might have been. The girl in the mirror is a bitch. She's not be believed. She's a liar and a trollop who sleeps around with anything that makes a pass at her. She's loose. O my god, she's loose.

He saw me with the boy in blue one night. It was a mistake. I fell. I wasn't supposed to fall, but I did. It was a mistake. Shouldn't he have caught me? Shouldn't he have let me go and have another chance? I fell. I thought it would be fine. Love is love and sex is sex. I tried to tell him. But even the alter ego turned traitor on me. I was alone, and he left.

Boy in blue was still grinning sheepishly. He wanted some more from me. I was a slut. If that was what I was, it would have been fine. I could deal with it. What I couldn't deal with, was all the strange conflicting views in the mirror when I shattered it: one alter ego had been bad enough, a thousand million were terrifying.

***

Act IV – The Hook

But a life such as mine is boring, compared to the ones around me. There's a wild thumping in the background, and a crescendo in my brain. I've lost track of the number of times I've burned my throat at this bar, watching the strange Bohemian fantasy unfold around me. My world is in shades of fiery reds and enthralling blues and deep dark cloaks of purple. Somebody calls me a bitch, and I raise my pitch of laughter a notch so that they can hear me laugh, and know that I heard them. It's not as if I care. It's not as if I'm listening. I'm in love. With a man who’s gone. Did I actually say that? Was it the truth, or was I dreaming? Did I say that or was I joshing? Was it the caramel or the champagne that made me say it? The alter ego isn't here, so I can't blame it on her today. I wonder if I should be heart broken. I wonder what made me say that. Maybe it was the fact that I'm sitting in a corner here, watching him dance with a stranger in the middle of the room.

I wonder if I'm jealous and think I probably am. That might explain the casual diffidence with which I'm treating the sluts behind me who called me a bitch. I'm in love with this man. I'm in love with this man who I cheated on. He doesn't even see me. I'm not sure whether I want him to see me.

He's holding his dance partner very close, an arm around a waist, a chin on a head, a pair of lips closed but not tight, a smile at the edges of his mouth, a smile that has still not made up its mind whether or not to appear. He's thinking about something, perhaps dreaming of something, and his body is turning while he’s dancing. It's strangely fantastic, a smorgasbord of strangeness all concentrated on this one moment, on this one man. I'm ignoring his partner, I'm even ignoring myself - we don't count. He's the star. The Star.

His eyes have opened, and he's seen me.

***

Act V – The Hang-over

Perhaps Dialogue should follow. My alter ego gazes back at me, wondering at the look of contemplation I'm giving it. I'm tired, bone-tired, and I'm not sure the wine is working.

Tall, lovely, shining, glittering crystal, fluted with all the most pleasing proportions man can ask for. It seems to be able to promise something, but maybe deliverance depends on you. It's like some horribly shriveled apple that rolled down from Eden - it has a promise, it whispers a dream to you, and you feel yourself charged up, ready for action. The curse is in that it promises the same to all and sundry, so you think you're equal to a task even when you're not. So you try and try and you fail and fail, and you curse the fates for ever conceiving a feature such as you, but in the haste of your vanity, you tend to forget that little piece of apple that promised you so much and haunted you so much.

Turn the tap, and watch the water stream down from the showerhead, sizzle and burn on the floor, marble tiles writhing in water agony, tender heart trying to feel what else is made of stone. My bath is a plea today, as much as it is a longing - help me, help me, help me to understand what it is he wants! Help me to understand what it is the bitch wants. I'm not sure I ever knew.

I'm trying to let the fear flow out of me, trying to let the exhaustion seep and collect into the pools of destitution at my feet before they drain away into the gutter. I rest against the wall and watch the water jump and sparkle on my skin and I trace a finger over the crevices of my body. It's a very silly thing I keep asking myself, over and over: Is the fear going? Is it gone? Is it gone? My own adult version of that silly little thing the child-me kept asking my parents on a trip – are we there yet? Are we there yet?

I don't know. The facts, put squarely before me, are thus –

I turn the tap off. I scrub my body, taking as much time as possible. I glance at the alter ego, but there's a silence there that none of us can breach. I hold my breath and walk out of the bathroom. There's my bed. There's the fluffy blue slippers I must slip my feet in, before strolling over to the bed. There's the man I love lying asleep, one hand trailing on the soft rug of the floor, looking like some new-age Cupid some new-age Medusa has seduced into her den.

I know I should be elated that he came. There's something in this that troubles me, though, and doesn't leave, even when the customary caramel is ingested. I don't know what he's doing here. I don't know why he made love to me tonight. Why he kissed me, with his tongue making me touch heavens of self-discovery. Why he walked over to me in the club when he caught sight of me. Why he laughed softly, into my ear, when I told him afterwards how I had always loved him.

I don't know. Whether it's still a game, even when the player has thrown in the towel.