Two cynics cross paths in a mad world and destroy each other in…
“Love is a Losing Game”
A Short Story
By Mauricio O. Rocha
Chapter 1: A Child named Tina
Tina was in her not-so-spacious studio apartment contemplating on which part of herself she wanted to bring to surface tonight. The moon was in its climatic phase- a silver waxing gibbous orb. It was a quarter to eleven. Old movie posters from Hollywood’s golden era like “Lolita” “La Dolce Vita” and “Some like It Hot” were tacked up on the neutral tan colored walls. The walls were scuffed and scratched, reminders and mementos from reckless nights past.
In the bathroom, candy colored prescription pills in orange tubes lined the shelves inside the mirror. The rehab her parents sent her to years ago was very forgiving.
“Is it going to be the blue-haired wonder or the barefoot neo-hippie tonight?” Tina asked herself .She decided to spice things up and go for the electric blue wig cut into a bob. She obviously decided on the former of the two choices. After placing it on her dome, lacing up the patent leather thigh-high boots, and smearing a ring of soot around her eyes, she was ready to hit the town. Well, after a couple of beverages of course.
She arrived to her comfort zone: a line-up of broken down baby dolls that she called her friends, which were all minimally dressed and all waiting for “the next big thing”. There was Melina- a petite teen brunette with a strong pension for lace. It gave her the essence of a little girl, and that equally matched her mentality.
“Hey Tina, what’s up doll?” Melina greeted.
“Not too much, just same ole’, same ole’. I’ll see you later” Tina said as she climbed into a car driven by a mysterious looking man.
After a debauched evening filled with adult antics, she had her suitor, Bob, drop her off in front of her apartment building around 3 a.m. After slipping Bob a kiss, she found her way to the door of her building, The Juliet, a nice pile of yellow bricks.
“Take care lover” Tina said.
“See you when I see you” and with those final words, Bob sped off in his jalopy and into the ominous night.
She would have not have found her apartment without clinging to the paisley plastered walls of the hallway for guidance.
After searching for 15 minutes to find her keys in her bottomless purse, she finally opened her door and flung herself on her black pleather sofa.
She had just enough energy left in her body to have a night cap, one last drink to send her into oblivion. Oh, how she loved that sweet nectar, that Smirnoff blueberry vodka, with such a passion. Soon reality faded to black and her subconscious grabbed the reigns of her cerebrum…
Tina walked up to a heavy set girl with a crazed smile and recently cropped hair. She was very familiar. She was young, around eight or nine.
“Why am I cursed with such lousy parents?”The young girl, Christina Winship, shouted after slamming the phone on the receiver. It was her mother on the line.
“Yeah, tell me about it. My ‘rents are not the greatest of people either.”
“Can you believe my mom? She thinks that she can come back now like everything will be fine. A lot has happened since she left,” Christina said.
“Like what?” Tina asked.
“When I was alone with Dad, he touched me in places I’m not supposed to let anyone touch,” as she said those last words her voice became a whisper and hot tears crept from the corners of her eyes, paving the way for more to come. Christina’s face switched from a relaxed flesh tone to rage red in seconds. Abruptly, she ran inside a brick house surrounded by a silver chain link fence.
“NOT AGAIN!” Tina screamed from her sleep. She rose from the couch in a mad panic, and ran to the bathroom in dire need of medication. She searched the cabinets for a solution, a way to silence the voices of the past, and she found it in pill form.
She gazed into the looking glass for a minute, a moment, an eternity. She pondered her recent dream for a moment and then drifted to the abstract. “I wonder if people can see right through me?” she thought out loud. She cupped her hands together under the faucet to build a flesh cup. Once the flesh cup was full of cold tap water, Tina amerced her face in it. She repeated this several times until she felt some clarity.
“What the fuck Tina? Why can’t you ever be normal?” Melina responded after hearing Tina’s story the next day over lunch at The Satire Lounge. “You know we all have demons, but this is ridiculous. Your issues make mine look like child’s play.”
“Thanks for the support Melina. You’re a fuckin’ lifesaver.” Tina said in a dry sarcastic tone.”You know, if I was ever suicidal again, I would never call you to talk me off the ledge.”
“Doll, if you were on the ledge, I’d be right next to you.”
Tina smiled and then proceeded to devour her B.L.T, mayo running from the corner of her mouth.
As Melina went on to talk about her usual day-to-day, Tina eyed her cell phone under the table. She had a child like way of amusing herself. A little unknown fact: Tina would snap photos of herself nude on her cell phone and glance at them when she got bored or send them off to random people. She had both nipples pierced. Viewing these photos forced her to crack a smirk and giggle.
Maybe that explains Tina’s soul—a child wrapped in pain. She tried hard to keep her demons at bay, but sometimes they broke free. And when they did, it was not pretty. But like her father, Buck, always said “Every woman is a different problem.” Granted ole’ Buck did enjoy himself some whiskey, always gazing at Tina with those Johnny Walker eyes, but regardless, Tina found some truth to her daddy’s statement. She found some of that truth in herself.
Tina had by far surpassed the threshold of a typical bipolar diagnosis: she had high-highs, where she would think “Wow, this is life!” She also had low-lows, where she would play Russian roulette alone with a fully loaded gun, but never found the courage inside herself to pull the trigger. And sometimes that saddened Tina.
School was a mishmash of nonsense. When she used to go, she rarely showed up to class and only completed assignments when the mood struck. She was a ‘Grade A’ slacker, is what the majority of the staff would say. And that is precisely why she dropped out at the age of 16 and ran away with a friend to New York. “Fuck ‘em” was her motto.
She never looked back.
Yet another little unknown factoid, well to those who haven’t experienced it: Tina loved sex. To be frank, Tina was on the verge of nymphomania. Her fascination with sex was deep rooted in her childhood when she had walked in on her parents doing the deed. Consequently, her life was spent reenacting their actions for monetary gain.
Boyfriends came and went like the traffic on Broadway; she often severed ties due to her increasing boredom. “Is there a match for me out there?” This thought often plagued her inner sanctum. It often chiseled away at it and left raw and red.
She walked through the city hiding her true feelings behind gobs of make-up and oversized glasses. They shielded her eyes- the windows to her soul. She went along with the flow of things, exaggerating reactions to situations, attempting to feel something real. But she never did. Tina was numb to the life surrounding her, and deep down she knew it.
Among other vices, Tina took the same Flintstones Chewable Vitamins her mom used to give to her when she was six, but only now she was eighteen.
“Why do you take those pills Tina?” her friends would ask.
“Never mind what I do. You should go get yourself checked out down at the free clinic” was her usual catty response.
