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It was a sea of limbs, of grabbing arms and reaching fingers hooked like claws. Some got him around the neck, pulled him in, pressed their wet- hot lips against the pulse at the curve of his neck. Some wrapped themselves around his hips like wraiths draped in nothing but shimmering gauze and designer denim.
Jónsi pushed them away and ignored them. He shielded himself from the desperate claws and teeth. He fought his way through the jungle.
Somewhere was the way out. Somewhere. *he* was waiting. He was waiting with a flippant grin and a half-smoked cigarette. He would be the anti-everything that surrounded him in this tiny, cramped club.
The walls were painted black and the lights gyrated yellow and blue and pink and orange. Even the floor beneath his feet thrummed with throaty bass from the music that looped endlessly.
Jónsi wished he had given up this life when it finally got old to his young, exuberant mind. He wished he had the will enough not to come out here night after night once he realized these stale little clubs were dead ends. By now, everyone knew what Jónsi was looking for, and everyone but Jónsi himself knew that he'd never find it.
He was here. He was here. He would be here. Where was he?
"Jónsi!" someone called. It was Petrína, in a strappy black dress and bright red lipstick. She had a blue martini glass in her hand, but the toothpick and olive were both missing.
Jónsi nodded his hello to her.
"You always look so scared," she shouted to him over the thrum of the music.
Jónsi pretended not to hear her. He leaned his ear closer to her mouth. "What?"
"You look so fucked up, I said."
He shrugged helplessly and mouthed, "I can't hear you."
Petrína grinned like a cat and watched him carefully. "Liar," she shouted. "You can hear me just fine. Liar."
She turned away from him, bored by his bland indifference, and talked to the bartender. Jónsi studied the slope of her shoulders in the neon light, tracing the line of her collarbone north until he realized he was staring rather blatantly at the bartender she was talking to. The bartender politely pretended not to notice. Jónsi cursed, looked away, and was reminded of how stupid and awkward his presence was. He had been clubbing since he was 17 years old and yet he had never found any scene he fit into. His clothes were too tacky to be a raver and his elbows too gawky to be a pimp. His shoes were too dirty to be a dancer. His hair was too neat to be a junkie. He was too articulate to be a rocker.
Jónsi just wasn't. He wasn't anything. The only thing he succeeded at being was nothing. Which was fine with him.
"You're looking spaced out again," Petrína told him.
Before he could remember that Petrína was an annoying bitch that should be ignored at all costs, Jónsi had mumbled, "Spaced out?"
Petrína giggled with glee at this acknowledgment from Jónsi. "Yeah. You know. How long has it been since you last fucked someone?"
Jónsi didn't think it was a particularly relevant fact, but if and when Jónsi went home with someone it was almost always him who got fucked, rather than he doing the fucking. He would have liked to be, just once, the one who left in the morning with his shirt on backwards. He would have liked to be, just once, the one who said, "I'll call," but never did.
But it was always the other way around.
Jónsi was always the one who was left with a cold empty bed. He waited by the phone. He scrubbed the smell of sex and smoke out of his bed sheets and slept alone for as many nights as it took before he forgot the pain of a stranger's rejection and then he'd go out clubbing again. More often than not he'd go home alone.
"Jónsi? Hello?"
Petrína waved her refilled martini glass under his nose. He picked out the alcohol-soaked olive and captured the fleshy, sour bead in his teeth and swallowed it.
"That was my olive, asshole," she muttered.
Jónsi dropped the empty toothpick back into her glass and backed away from the bar. "I'm going home."
Petrína smirked. "Right. See you tomorrow night, cutie."