As I walked off the plane and down the long hallways of La Guardia Airport, the familiar sadness I’d been experiencing washes over me once again, causing my eyes to water, but they only water. I didn’t shed a tear, because it won’t change anything. I lugged my large duffle bag full of clothes behind me as I walked up to an immigration officer and showed my passport.
“Is your trip business or pleasure ma’am?” he asked with a serious look on his face and a stern voice. I was not sure what to reply, it was not business really, but it wasn’t pleasure either.
“I guess pleasure,” I replied nonchalantly. Then I pass the officer a copy of my birth certificate to show him I was an American citizen.
“If you’re an American, you should be flying with an American passport,” he explained sternly. Shit, why did I show him that? Stupid.
“Well, I just found out I was an American,” I replied, rolling my eyes at the officer and then I immediately regretted my rude reaction.
“Alright ma’am, go ahead,” he replied curtly, stamping my passport and motioning me to move on. Clearly he wasn’t interested in my shit either.
Exiting through the sliding doors I was met with a faint breeze. Taxis drove by swiftly and everyone looked tense and rushed. I started to think that there was no place like home, but then I remembered that I don’t have a home anymore, I don’t even have a Toto. I quickly found a bus to Queens and fell back in an empty seat, placing my duffle bag on the floor beside me. It was a long drive giving me more time to think. That was maybe one of the worst parts of loneliness, all the time you had to think and mull things over. It made my situation that much worse and pushed me into the endless cycle I’d been in for the last two years.
That night my plan was to settle into the motel, and take a subway into Manhattan the next day to see if there was any real purpose to my trip, or if I was chasing a dream that would never pan out. I was so worked up that my patience was wearing down and I wanted to go to the Upper West Side now and find out, but dressed the way I was, in a pair of ripped blue jeans and a tight black top I figured, I should look a little classier for the meeting.
The bus finally arrived in Queens. Before I stepped off the bus I asked the driver if he’d heard of my motel, and he directed me two blocks down the road. When I entered the motel I was disappointedly taken aback. Yeah, it said it was two stars on the Internet, but this place looked like grunge city. My family home was nothing special, but it was always clean.
I got the key from the front desk and headed up a flight of steps to my room, which was a bitch since the heavy duffle bag weighed me down. The damn place didn’t even have an elevator. At the top of the stairs was a long hallway. As I carried the duffle bag behind me, the smell of mold and something really old that I couldn’t identify wafted up my nose causing my stomach to roll. I made it to room 212 and used my key to open the door. I didn’t even realize that motels still used keys. Any trips I took with my parents involved a hotel with a room card to slide through a door. I swung the door open and grabbed my duffle, hauling it inside and huffing from the exertion. There was a double bed in the middle of the room with an olive green blanket on top. The carpet was mustard yellow but it may just have been dirty. At least there was a window I told myself, trying to look at the glass as half full. Who was I kidding? The window was facing a brick wall and a flashing sign that shined brightly into the room. This place was a shit hole. Peeking into the bathroom, it looked just as bad. The toilet was a yellowy orange and the shower had the same tinge to it.
Maybe I should have never come; maybe this was a sign that it was a big mistake. I fell back onto the bed and cried my eyes out, I hadn’t cried for so long and I deserved to now. My heaves turned into whimpers, and then feeling spent I ceased to cry, a part of me felt vindicated and a part of me felt like my tears were pointless. Once I shed my last tear, I shoved off the bed and put on a pair of flip-flops. I needed a shower and there was no way I was going to walk into the cesspool of grossness barefoot. I showered as quickly as I could lathering the soap at a frantic pace so I could get out fast, at least there was hot water. Then I stepped out and put on my sexy lingerie and a slinky red dress that barely covered my behind.
I checked my phone… I should be receiving an email any minute about the next private get together. For the past two and a half years I’d made my way into Toronto to hit the sex clubs, since we didn’t have those kinds of clubs in Thunder Bay. After the night I was attacked, I went into a deep depression and I stopped going completely. Things at home spiraled into a black hole of oblivion, and I was drowning inside while no one knew or was there to help. Not my brother Joe, not my drunk father, no one. It was hard to describe those days now that I look back, but it was like I was living inside a bubble where reality didn’t feel real.
Then one day, maybe a month later, Nessa came pounding on my front door like a bat out of hell and shoved her face in mine and made me talk about it. She made me say how that night made me feel, she made me face my grim reality. She also revealed that she had been raped before. After the two of us bawled our eyes out, she forced my ass out for a night on the town in Thunder Bay. I was by no means cured. I knew I would carry the hurt that the nameless stranger caused me around in my heart forever, but I came back to the land of the living in a sense. I couldn’t see myself in a monogamous relationship, I couldn’t see myself doing much. The truth is, the sex clubs were packed with people and had security. They were safe and they made me feel all kinds of good, and I wanted those moments even more now than before.
The scene in Canada was different than New York. Back in Canada there were legal clubs where people walked around as they wished and fucked who they wanted. The places were monitored but only to a certain extent. There was no need for blood tests or criminal checks at the door. Maybe that is how I got myself into that much trouble years ago. Nessa looked into it when I told her my plans to come to New York, and she contacted a guy from Toronto who had a friend here in New York City. Apparently the scene here was underground. There were no legal sex clubs in the city, which sounded more promising because they were selective of their guest list and required a clean blood test for admission. I had gone for a blood test and sent them a picture of myself while I was still in Thunder Bay. I got the green light that I was put on the exclusive list of guests. Knowing that things were so closely looked after gave me the confidence to go by myself tonight. Since the night of my rape I haven’t left Nessa at a party, which in some ways can get awkward when we find ourselves getting off in near proximity to each other.
I slicked on some bright red lipstick and straightened my black shoulder length hair with a dryer. I brushed some black mascara along my lashes, making them fuller than they already were, and finally slipped on my red stiletto heels making a perfect touch to my sexy ensemble. Did I look like I walked the streets selling my body? Maybe. My outfit was a head turner, the only thing that gave me slight unease was whose heads I’d be turning on this end of town. I could get mugged and killed. As the thought entered my mind I shrugged it off, thinking that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I would be put out of my misery. I threw on my black overcoat and my phone beeped showing a message. I looked down to see an email from the anonymous sender about the party location. I grabbed my purse, hid my cash under the mattress and headed out the door into the brisk fall night.