Hot, Colored Tongues
I smiled at the metaphor. Hot colored tongues? That is not an image that normally flashes through the mind of a mother of three. But then again, I reminded myself, I was not a mother of three that night. That night, I would simply be an old roommate from the frenzied days of passion and ardor.
I sat sipping my Four Seasons at a tiny table in the corner-intentionally away from the blasted amplifiers screaming some repulsive techno beat-and squinted into the darkness for signs of um, what exactly was I expecting? An elegant woman in business suit, toting a briefcase in one hand and a cellphone in the other? After all, she had mentioned during that brief phone conversation that she would be coming from a business meeting.
“Oh God, I have a deal to close tonight. I wish I can tell you the details, but everything’s so hushed up. Hey wait, damn, my team’s here. I can’t talk. Meet me tonight at that bar in Midtown âÂ?¦oh deng, what’s its name again? Oh yeah, Flushed or something. I’ll see you there. Kiss Eric for me, will you? Bye, LuvâÂ?¦muah, muah, muah.”
And she was gone, flitting into the wind like the bubbles my 2-year-old is fond of blowing from a plastic makeshift ring. Ten years of silence, and suddenly this. A harried call one typical afternoon of cooking meals and hanging the wash. I had no idea she even knew my number. Soon after the wedding, there was a fury of e-mail exchanges, but even that soon became a task. There were more important things to take care of-the first pregnancy, the big move to the suburbs, and infinite others. I was too busy being a wife and a mother. While she, well, she was too busy living her dream.
She finally emerged from the haze of cigarette smoke, swaggering with the trademark Mia confidence. She did not disappoint me. Expensive business suit, check. Leather briefcase, check. Cellphone, check. And oh yeah, there’s the PDA. I should have known. A brand new Infiniti is probably parked beside my `96 Toyota outside.
“Oh darling,” she exclaimed when she finally found her way to my table. “Muah.” She always punctuates her kisses with that word, heaven knows why. TrÃ?©s chic, she used to call it, and probably still does.
I hugged her with all the longing of ten years.
I once wondered, as we parted after four years of sharing a studio-type apartment some five minutes away from campus, how I would get through life without Mia. She won my heart the moment she opened the door of her pad to me, a freshman from out of town, in nothing more than a strapless bra and high-cut panties. She pattered around the place, opening cupboards and closets, fussing over the gore in the bathroom, and shrugging at the general chaos of the kitchen.
“I had guests,” she said without apologizing.
I moved in the next day, leaving behind all traces of repression. For once in seventeen years, there was no Mom to rant about being a “proper young lady”, no Mom to yell at me if I didn’t act “refined” enough. There, in that tiny pad in Loyola Heights, I could finally be who and what I was. I knew without a doubt that I could behave like an animal, and Mia couldn’t care less. When it was time to say goodbye-time to face the world with shadows so like my Mom’s lurking in every corner-it was more than difficult to let go. But it had been ten years since, and I seem to have survived on my own.
“Oh, Mia! You look utterly lovely.” There was no way to describe the sheer elegance of the woman before me. Light, subdued make-up. Hair pulled back in a casual, carefree twist. Designer clothes that clung to her svelte figure. Hmmm, subtle, very subtle. Her style, which used to range from the flamboyant to the outrageous, had obviously mellowed. Was this the same woman who couldn’t go out of the house without baring some thighs and a lot of chest?
Yes, it was. “I wish I can say the same for you, dear. But God, whatever happened to your waist? And your chin, where on earth did it go?” Still as tactful as ever. I thought then that beneath the sophisticated clothes and impeccable make-up, she was still the same Mia. Mia who once taught me to discern between knights and empty armors-between reality and illusion-was now doing the same thing.
“Indeed, where on earth did your chin go?” she repeated for emphasis.
I had no answer to that. My husband dared to ask me that same question one morning, and I retaliated by eating more and growing even fatter. As a result, I had long since avoided mirrors, but Mia-oh-so-tactful Mia-was now pushing one to my face. Oh how I must look to her now, an aging overweight thirty-two year old in a long plain-cut beige dress. If she was Cleopatra, I was her asp. A fat, ugly asp.
“I assume, of course, despite your weight gain, that the sex is as good as it was ten years ago?” That one, I had an answer to, but it wasn’t something I was ready to share.
Oh, where would I begin, anyway? The cold, desolate nights in my bed, waiting for Eric to come home from the office? Or the colder and more desolate nights with him beside me, as he snored after one or two fierce thrusts? How will she react to this, I wondered. She who once listened night after night as I recounted, in full detail, infinite rendezvous in the backseats of cars, on top of coffee tables, on couches in a stranger’s living room, behind the bushes lining the track oval at school, and countless other insanities. Would she even believe that I’m now married to a cold fish?
I smiled in response and gulped down the last of my Four Seasons.
“What? No Alcohol?” Thank God she had the attention span of a gnat. While she was ordering a bottle of tequila and a plate of Calamares, I wondered if I should tell her I’m two weeks late and probably expecting. But a shot of Jose Cuervo was already before me, its tantalizing aroma wafting to my nose, begging me to ignore reason, and I convinced myself that one shot won’t do any harm.
“You, my dear, taught me to love tequila. God, Lainne, you have the tongue of a serpent. Every guy who saw you lick salt, gulp down a shot, and suck lemon absolutely fell in love with you.”
Hot colored tongues. So that’s where the analogy came from – shot after shot beneath the kaleidoscope of lights of whatever bar I happened to find myself in, and then, the onslaught of tongue on my already haywire senses. My tequila-drinking days had long been buried in the far recesses of my memory. Forcibly pushed into the background with all those long-forgotten scenes of drunken stupor and wanton abandon.
I gulped down my fifth shot as I listened to Mia’s endless babble about her career. I was too fixated on hot colored tongues-Paulo’s, Mike’s, Don’s, Mark’s, and nameless other men’s-to stay focused on the conversation.
Through the haze, I caught occasional phrases. New house in La Vista. Trip to Europe last month. A gorgeous lover in every city. But hot colored tongues were all I cared to talk about.
“Darling, know what, I haven’t had a sip of this since the first pregnancyâÂ?¦heck, way before that, even. Eric has this thing against women and drinking, you see.”
Seventh shot now. Yum, where was the friggin’ lemon?
“God, Mia, I really missed you.” I felt the warmth of seven shots course through my body. It was exactly the kind of warmth that had long been denied to my body-the enveloping warmth after that one, crucial surge of heat.
“Gimme one of those,” I said as I took one Marlboro from her pack. “Haven’t had one of these in a while, too. My husband will freak out if he sees me now.” I laughed as if I just cracked the funniest joke in the world.
Mia took one puff of her cigarette before answering. “Oh well, he’s not here now.”
Her smile was one I had never seen before, a forced twitch of the lips that somehow seemed to yearn for understanding. She was never one to resort to hidden meanings. When Mia wanted to say something, she usually comes right out with it, even if it means hurling the truth to your face.
“Why didn’t you ever ask me why I married Eric?”
Her open-mouthed gape told me I was dead drunk. Nothing ever shocks Mia. This woman who was staring at me with such transparent agitation was a delusion.
“I bet you assumed I was pregnant, huh?” The thought seemed unbelievably funny, and I bawled over with laughter. “Me, pregnant? Oh darling, I thought you knew me enough to know that I’m an expert in birth control. Had I gotten pregnant with the wrong man, I would have been hell bent on having an abortion.” That sounded even funnier, and I laughed even louder.
“So Eric is the right guy, huh?” Gone was the mirage. A composed, self-contained Mia sat before me.
One more shot, please. I concentrated on licking the salt and gulping down my nth shot. “We didn’t even sleep together till after the wedding. Eric was always adamant about tradition. He had to marry a virgin. Funny, huh? And my, he married one.”
“That stuff I told you? Those long passionate gropes in the dark? Those weren’t Eric’ hands I was talking about. There were always men eager to please me, Mia. The guy in the next apartment, my Philosophy teacher, your brother.” I laughed even harder. “Yes, your brother. I bet you didn’t know that.”
“Oh come on, of course I knew. I saw him sprawled on your bed one morning. I didn’t say anything ’cause I thought you were just having a little fun before you got hitched.” Mia was smiling the old Mia smile now-all teeth, all lips, all snicker. “After all, I’d do exactly the same.”
Oh yes, FUN. An alien word to me now. Much like tequila and hot colored tongues.
“You see, darling, that was the trouble. I was having too much fun. It had become an addiction-the sex, I mean. There were too many men. Pleasure had too many faces.” Mia must have ordered another Jose Cuervo, for a full bottle was now on the table, just an arm’s reach away.
“I can live with that,” she grinned.
Oh, I thought I could, too. But I had spent too many nights in the bathroom, showering till the wee hours of morning, rubbing the dirt off my skin till I turned red, and never once feeling clean. I wasn’t laughing anymore.
“I heard her voice reverberate across the tiles, you know. Her fury blaring in the bathroom. And I kept on washing myself, hoping the dirt will somehow come off. But it never did.” I looked at her, and I knew she understood. “I needed someone to make me feel clean again, Mia.”
Some of the smoke from the cigarette I was holding somehow got to my eyes. And irritated, allergic to the smoke, they began to water.
She might have hugged me, but I wasn’t sure. I only knew I was babbling some inane things about my life. I watched myself crying, half-sprawled on the table like some hysterical widow on the coffin of her dead husband. But there was no dead husband to mourn, only perhaps, lost youth? But even that had long been lost. So why exactly was I grieving?
“And you got want you want, darling. You needed someone to tame you, and you got Eric, plus three adorable sons. Of course I haven’t met them, but I’m sure they’re adorable.” But I noticed that already, her attention was elsewhere. She was blowing smoke in the general direction of the guys in the next table.
“I’m a wonderful Mom, dammit. And an obedient wife at that. I’m a candidate for woman of the month, for Christ’s sake.” The crying had stopped. My eyes must have adjusted to the wafting smoke. “Oh yes, Mia, I got all I ever wanted.”
“I know.” But the odd smile was back again. The slight twitching of the lips.
I went back to watching all the cleavage in full display. Neon lights continued to slide down extensive amounts of exposed flesh. Hot colored tongues sliding down the length of curves and mounds. I closed my eyes and for a moment, felt those same hot colored tongues on my body.
Later, as Mia drove me home from the bar, I felt neither grief nor loss. I knew I won’t be seeing her for probably ten more years, but this one brief night could make up for twenty moreâÂ?¦
Eric was snoring in his boxers when I entered our room. I sat watching him from my dresser chair, feeding on a luscious piece of fresh banana.
