"Breakfast"

(A Gira-style attempt a la The Consumer)

I'm stooped, hesitating near her face as we stand outside the restrooms. Her young head is upturned, but her acne still visible in the dim corridor. Good. At the table, before taking my order, she'd borrowed some of my motel lotion for her ruddy waitress hands, shining in her simple story of liking all kinds of them from all kinds of places. It was morning and I was hungry, but suddenly all I needed was an appetizer when I looked up into her young moving mouth as she rubbed and gesticulated girlishly at the side of the peeling vinyl booth I was in. But before I could have enough coffee to plan that out, she'd hastened to get my order; I got to watch her ass as she left and, as she returned, to unobtrusively measure out the body, scan in the frontal personality.

But then, instead of feasting on her effervescence again, I could only look down at the table at my strawberry french toast, the white flesh-flab bread soaking in a pool of sickly sweet red, and whip-creamed on top. After a bite of it, I decided I'd be happier with her face, and I mumbled down another sip of the dishwater coffee. I was allowed to look ridiculous at my age, wasn't I? If I were still attractive and shared my lotion? What was she feeling? But maybe it would work...

Walking toward the back of the place, nervous as hell. I could be her father. But all I wanted was a kiss...

Catching her among the working-class diners and smokers, I managed to act like I needed showing where the men's room was, and she followed, though now looking bemused herself. If I couldn't get a kiss, a french one, I could love her acne instead. She would open to me. I was sure no one had ever loved her like that before, that intensely for however briefly. I had intentions; then I would get in my car and be gone, avoiding any trouble.

Now her face is before me, her own strawberries and cream, that pimply innocent sprout from sweet unblemished shoulders. I would suck each one dry, or into health, and send her off with unspoken but true well wishes. With a bit of my heart. She may be surprised, I knew, but I wasn't out to confuse the child. I was just hungry.

"Here it is," she says. "Is someone in there-?"

What did she mean? Would she join me? Over her shoulder I saw a rough-looking local at the counter. He flapped his newspaper. She would be due back.

"I think I just wanted to give you a kiss," I told her. Her arms went around me as she scooted into a corner. She inhaled my breath; I flossed her teeth with my tongue, then swirled it over her face as if I were playing with cooled pizza toppings when I was drunk. Each little pepperoni was shrinking...

There was blood from somewhere. My vision clouded with red, but there was no pain, only a swoon, a laxness in my legs and bowels. Hangover? She was straightening herself to go back, but I could tell from her eyes there was also concern there. And disappointment, I thought. As she prodded my back against the men's room door to swing it open, I felt saved from everything. The sink hit me, and with it the stink, but I was saved. Unless I stopped to look in the mirror. Which I didn't.