Mosquitoes in Sydney (A sketch)

Mosquitoes in Sydney


Mosquitoes bit, such the blood out of you, but really do not harm you, until you get malaria, then watch out!



Supremely casual she lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth, talking around it, the music inside the bar is real loud, you can hardly hear yourself talking.
“What is it you’re thinking?” she asked me.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Ok,” she says with a smirk, looks through the doorway into the nightclub from the hallway.
The girl next me, sees her girlfriend now, whom was at another club with her, she has arrived, and to her she says “You came back all this way back from ‘Barney’s?”
“Not enough guys there,” she tells the girl I’m talking to, a lovely dark eyed tanned girl with blond hair.
“You were not there very long,” she replies. (Her face averted from mine, she’s looking at the tall blond haired guy doing his thing with two girls on the dance floor. (Her girlfriend peremptory yet quiet.)
She now has a cigarette between her lips, the cigarette and her head bobbing with the music that is seeping out into the hallway. I tell myself, chasing her, is like her chasing that blond haired guy, whom is slain to the lusts of his accomplishments in the bullring there. She is insanely immersed in grief over this guy, he is her quest for the evening, her challenge, so I tell myself, and so it look to me.
I sense she likes my company, and I am comfortable to be with, so I’ve been told, but when the it comes down to the end of the night, she’ll be with him, if she has to hogtie him, or strip for him in front of everyone. And I thin she’ll do it. I saw that once happen in Germany. When a gal gets a fixation on a man, it doesn’t matter if he is surrounded by a hundred naked men, she will pick that one out every time, until the challenge is over, then, put him out to roost in some empty field in the cold.
“Thanks,” she told me for lighting her cigarette, “Where you from,” she asked, and I replied, “I’m on leave from Vietnam, the war….”
“Oh, yes,” she comments, “we have some of our boys over there also.”
“So you’ve evidently been following this guy all night, is that correct?”
“Yes, from one bar to the next, and I’ll end up with him one way or the other.” (She now puffs rapidly at the cigarette, staring into the crowed dance floor.)

In life I would find out, women like her had the determination, but not much sense, and in the long run, well, to be honest, they were not looking for anything for the long run, it was now or never. It didn’t matter what I knew, or what might have happened between us, because she didn’t want it, all she needed was an affidavit for him to be hers for the evening. So I was wasting my time. But everyone likes to keep a second, in place, they look good to others to have men standing around you with their tongues out, and I simply said, “It’s too late,” and started to walk away, my back to her, actually, it was an insult to her, and she knew it, for I did not look back. She was enjoying what I called Dead Reality, the best of all reason to make love, no commitment.
“That’s right!” I told myself, listen to the voice inside of you; it will tell you when to avoid the execution forth coming.

I did meet another girl that night, I got drunker than a skunk, and when she woke me up in the morning, she wanted me to take her to the park, and we did, and I then left her alone. She came to my hotel room a few days later, asked me why I did not call her. And I was honest, I said I had only a week in Sydney, and I wanted to do all I could, and I was then heading back to Vietnam, and who knows. And she understood.

5-25-2008