Revenge of the Decorated aRT school: Part Three

Whilst Kevin’s evening was set, Reena was experiencing a very different time; Kevin and Reena were polar opposites within the aRT Institution. One climbing to the peak of the scale of who’s who, the other, stuck invariably at the bottom.

Donnington Gardens: Reena thought to herself as she walked down the street, “Where has the day gone? Why does this street never open up? Will I ever kick in a window? And: am I a bisexual?” A Garden of questions Donnington Gardens, already: Bodies, outfits, bricks, traffic, traffic reflected in polished granite, glass, cops, bags, voices and horns, sliding doors, Reena Spaulings. The smog-loving gingko trees outlasting us all.

Reena made the decision that she did not want her day to end, so she made her way into town, towards the After Dark club; a small dingy place on the outside After Dark still looked like the small terraced house it had been way back when. Getting in was as simple as knowing whose name to mention at the door, “Debbie Mayfeild.” Crossing the dark entry and on through a low arched way, cut through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fire-places all round, you entered the main upstairs party room, dark, with such low beams above and such old wrinkled planks underneath that you would almost think you trod some old craft’s cockpits on a howling night. On one side stood a long low, shelfilike table covered with glasses and cracked open cases of beer. Projecting from the far angle of the room was a dark-looking den – the bar, behind which bustled a withered man selling the girls and boys their deliriums.

Distracted by a guy she once dated making out with a girl she also used to date, Reena stumbled in the entryway and scraped her face either on a rusty nail or on somebody’s long fingernails as they tried to break her fall. Then she lost her one twenty-pound note under some feet in the dark. On her hands and knees, she was trying to recover the money but lost an earring in the process. The twenty pounds weren’t so important but the earring was sentimental. She waited at the bar, dabbing her face with a paper napkin until it stopped bleeding. At least her drinks would be free tonight.

She noticed the place had been repainted in the style of certain late Francis Picabias. Depicted in muddy browns and mossy greens, sad and startled woman’s faces were superimposed with birds, guns, ships and bowls of fruit. A black vagina-shaped hole or eye was splitting the sky open in the background of one of the wall paintings. Reena stared at this last detail for a long time, and every so often a bright, but alas, deceptive idea would dart through her – It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale. – It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. – It’s the blasted heath. - It’s a hyperborean winter scene. – It’s the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded themselves back to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, all the rest would be plain. The place looked much better before when the only decoration to speak of was a winking, blinking, dusty, year-round Christmas tree. As always, she had to look around to find the way downstairs, down to the party behind the party beneath the party.

At the bottom of a long flight of concrete steps was a room of dressed masonary out of which several archways stretched, forming an al-Queda-like underground party-maze. In the hallways the music from the medium-sized rooms containing the bars and DJs was only a faint murmur and the speakers out here/there played a soundtrack consisting exclusively of the summery sounds of crickets. The central room was painting black and against the wall opposite the steps was a long row of cheap vinyl restaurant chairs whose tall backs had been transformed into gravestones, Sharpied with the names and life spans of various deceased ex-regulars: Lil’Nut 1971-1999, Tweetie 1968-2001, Kurt Kokain 1975-2003, Karin E. Glabb 1982-2004, Stubbs 1819-1929 etc. Sparsely lit and with a number of TV monitors showing videos ranging from amateur Mexican bull riding to a film of a Mick Jagger-in-the-early-seventies look-alike putting his dick through the window of a subway booth. There is no DJ in this room. He is upstairs, on the second floor, alone, named Sunny, in a brightly lit room, with beer cans. His bright music is being pumped down to this basement cave, two levels below the main floor.

After dodging a dancing Pris Hilton look-alike with no arms to pick up a few free drinks at the bar, Reena sat sown on a low bench in one of the narrow hallways, next to a group of French guys wearing home-customised jeans of the kind girls in dancehall videos used to wear, facing a video about a rowdy group of fashion models on a camping trip.

Tonight the party is in full effect. You know this immediately. A party like this one has a very simple graph to it. In about an hour, or two at the most, people will be vomiting, but now, in this particular room, this appendix, people are euphoric.

Smoke, perfumes and body oder. Girls, competing crazily for attention, drugs, jobs, beauty. Luck was on Reena’s side tonight.

As Reena crossed the room, laughing out loud, Maris Parings reached out and stabbed her bottom with a lit Marlboro Light.

            “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ow! Wow, bitch...!”

Maris wasn’t sure what had made her want to burn Reena. She tried to behave apologetically and fished an ice cube out of her glass.

            “Oh dear, I don’t know how that happened. Here…”

Reena let this thirty-something woman rub her down there with an ice cube.

            “I was watching you before. You’re having fun.”

Reena was out of words.

            “You’re kind of cute, but you don’t have a lot going on up there do you?” said Maris pointing at Reena’s messy hair.

Reena helped herself to one of the woman’s cigarettes and lit the wrong end of it.

            “I like your face.”

Reena was suddenly in the mood to befuckedintheass. Maris took Reena by the hand and led her to one of the quieter rooms, down the next corridor. She glared the few that were sat in the corner and slammed the door behind them. Reena was unsure of what she should do now. Still in her euphoric assfucking mood she decided to let Maris just take control and do whatever she wanted her too. Walking up to her slowly Maris ripped Reena’s outfit straight off her back. Not wearing any underwear Reena was now stood there naked, the lights dancing off her pale skin. It’s time for you to befuckedintheass Reena Spaulings. It’s time for you to scream this godforsaken place down to the ground.