An Inhuman Condition

She worked nights at the jazz club. The stars were glitter on her chest; her legs skewered the moon to garnish a Gibson. The boys called her Strawberry Martini, and you knew from the look of her she was trouble. Her hair was the red of revolutions – writhing in united uproar, curls whipping fury across her slate-blue eyes, lashing out at anything close. Her face was a pale and fragile kind; her smooth cheeks luring you to stroke them gently. Keen to kiss her lips, crimson and wet with little ripples and ripe, raspberry dimples, the smoking scarlet sent shivering twitches down your spine – a primitive warning of danger, an imminent sting and impending venom.

She danced a pole between the bars trapped in the seclusion of her burlesque seduction. They kept her back there like top-shelf liquor so expensive you could never afford a single sip. Stare and swoon all you like, there was no getting into the tigress’ cage. The real irony was in the wild freedom of her dance. We were the ones trapped, stuck under her spell. We swilled and smiled, hollered and hooted, leapt and lunged, longing for a sip of her attention. She was fluid stone, hot magma that kept on moving – too hot to touch and immune to outside intervention.

I always imagined what it would be like to talk to a dame like her. I figured it’d be like speaking another language, like I couldn’t say anything she would understand. The pretty ones were always like that, but Strawberry was flaming royalty compared to the rest. She never said anything anyway. Most of the guys figured she didn’t even speak English, and there were stories she was born in Poland or the Ukraine. If you asked one of the bartenders, he’d just tell you to enjoy the show. They kept her like a government secret and always had muscle around during her shows. They escorted her on and off the small, circular stage night after night until she was spent and they took her away.

She always left in the same car. The window glass was so thick you couldn’t even see the driver. The guy must have been connected to drive wheels like that, and he always sped off like they robbed the joint. And maybe they did. The mystery of Strawberry Martini left many a man preoccupied and penniless. She broke up more than a few relationships when a fella got too attached. And why wouldn’t she? One look at her made beautiful girls look plain. I’m sure the married guys weren’t thinking about their tired, calloused wives in the sack when they went home.

I think about the enigma of those days a lot now. The world’s moving faster; every story has to end in its right place like its not enough to just be beautiful and puzzling. A gal like Strawberry Martini would be in films or filth nowadays – either way you’d see everything and it wouldn’t be the same. Not like those nights spent watching her seduction through the smoke; maybe it was whiskey or a trick of the eye – but they haven’t made one like her since. For everything we’ve supposedly gained, we sure have lost plenty.