Nail Polish Lust

He paints his nails once a week, a different color every time. A lot of thought goes into choosing the latest shade. Sometimes he\'s depressed so he chooses blue, sometimes he\'s angry and it\'s red that is splashed on the surface of his nails, and sometimes he chooses black just because black is a very beautiful shade of everything. Once he even painted them pink, a delicate baby shade of pink called Burnished Rose Frost, it was his first time and the only polish in the apartment was his mother\'s favorite shade. Afterwards he bought his own…but he still kept the pink polish and looked at it every time he chose a new color.

This time he chooses black, and a bottle of blue sparkles to put over the top of it because he feels happy. He hasn\'t worn this color in a long time.

He likes to know there\'s symbolism in the color he\'s wearing that week. He likes to know that other people could understand something about him if they bothered to try. No one ever tries. He\'s resigned himself to that.

But his disappointment in his fellow humans fades away as he concentrates on putting the polish on evenly. Some weeks he thinks the key to the perfect nail is to glop a lot of polish on the little brush so that there\'s extra to fill in the uneven spots, some weeks the thinks it\'s better to apply it thinly and put on two coats. It always looks the same in the end but he likes to think he has a method.

He has to be careful because if it comes out uneven he\'ll have to redo it. He hates seeing the brush lines when he holds his nails up to the light. It\'s something he learned from his father, if it isn\'t perfect it isn\'t worth it. He doesn\'t think his father meant it to be applied to nail polish but he\'ll never know. He rarely sees his father and speaks with him even less now that they won\'t allow him to be home when they have dinner parties to please the boss. Like tonight.

They give him money and call him a cab to send him off to his friend Jimmy\'s house. His parents know that he\'s been friends with Jimmy since the first grade, Jimmy was two years older and saved him from having his lunch money taken by the class bully. His parents don\'t know that Jimmy doesn\'t speak to him anymore because one late late night in the whirl of laughter and chocolate and bad horror movies something inside of him cracked. He kissed his best friend on the lips, slipped his tongue inside his partially open mouth to taste heaven and chocolate on Jimmy\'s teeth and tongue and left the house an half hour later with a black eye and a broken heart. His nails stayed blue for months.

Now he tells the cab driver to take him to Rivers street instead, where he uses his fake Id to sneak into dark noisy clubs where men grope each other in corners, and dance pressed against one another like they\'ll die if they don\'t feel another hard body against their own and no one cares. Sometimes he dances and sometimes he gropes but most times he lets one of them take him to a back room and fuck him until he screams and can\'t remember Jimmy\'s name. His soon-forgotten lover\'s don\'t know the pretty goth boy they\'re fucking has a name, or a home, or is in love with his ex-best friend. They don\'t care. And when they come inside of him he never sees them again and he tries to convince himself that he doesn\'t care either.

But he does.

The smell of nail polish annoys his mother so he sits on his window sill with his hand hanging out into space, sometimes he lets droplets of polish fall from his brush and wonders if the people in the street below their apartment notice the splotches of blue or black or green that appear on their clothes. No one ever yells at him so he thinks they don\'t notice until much much later.

The smell of the polish is soothing; he has been doing this for years. At first he had to play loud harsh music when he painted his nails to complete the act of rebellion he was performing. Eventually he didn\'t bother to play Manson or Nine Inch Nails anymore because his parents never noticed. Just like they never noticed the new candy colored slick shade his nails were when he ventured out for breakfast the next day.

He wishes for the days when he did play music because he still had a best friend to love from afar, and he still believed that deep down his parents cared. Now he understands and the bitterness of knowing chokes him sometimes. He pretends it\'s fumes from the nail polish but he knows better deep down inside.

When he\'s finished he puts the bottle away with care and curls up in his window to watch the paint dry. He\'s learned over the years that when the polish is wet it\'s very important not to move for precisely one hour or it will smear. He\'s also learned that when the polish is wet things will always happen to make you need to move anyway. The phone will ring, or his parents will yell for him though they ignore him any other time, or he\'ll imagine he sees Jimmy hurrying past the apartment in the light blue sweater he bought him for his birthday one year. When he rushes down the endless stairs to the street he never sees the sweater, or the boy with the messy brown hair and soulful blue eyes that belongs in it.

But he does see the smear of ruined polish that forces him back to his room to start again.

When the polish dries he admires it for a moment then he dresses for his night out, in black black black, boots and leather pants, and thin shirt with zippers in odd places, and long trenchcoat. With a spot of red because he couldn\'t resist the shiny red collar at the store with the huge steel D-ring at the front. No one has ever attached a leash to it, and he isn\'t sure he ever wants anyone to but he likes the idea that they could. He likes to see the dark flash in the eyes of some of the men at the clubs when they see it, because he knows they\'re imagining tying him down and other things he doesn\'t really understand. He\'s curious and maybe one day he\'ll let one of them take him to the room in the back, but for now he satisfies himself with the men that only want to fuck and leave.

Once dressed he applies the makeup, thick eyeliner for his eyes that makes them look wider, makes the brown almost black. Shimmery shadow for the lids, a touch of mascara he stole from his mother on his lashes so they\'re longer thicker, black lipstick on his lips. Then he steps back and looks at himself, blue-black dyed hair falling into huge lined eyes, pouty lips shiny and black, skin naturally pale.

It will all be gone by morning, the lipstick kissed away or smeared at the base of a stranger\'s cock, the eyeshadow and liner sweated away on the dance floor. But he looks good now, and that\'s enough for him. The only thing missing from the look is metal; he has no piercings because that\'s the only thing his parents won\'t stand for.

He doesn\'t quite understand the difference between a small silver hoop through his lip and the huge black lion tattoo on his arm but apparently there is one. At least that\'s what his father had told him one time over that day\'s issue of the Times that had hid his stern aging face. His voice had been gruff, \"I don\'t want to see any weird holes in your face boy.\" And then he had trailed off muttering about crazy kids.

He obeys the rule because he\'s afraid even if he showed up to dinner with his whole face hidden by metal hoops they\'d never notice and he likes the illusion that they would. Sometimes he thinks if he died that his parents would never be able to identify his body, he doesn\'t think they\'ve ever looked at him long enough to recognize him. He\'s a stranger living in their home. Maybe it\'s best that way.

If they cared he couldn\'t get fucked tonight, and he needs to be touched so bad it burns. He needs to be loved, but after Jimmy he knows that will never happen so he settles for a fuck instead.

***

He\'s had a hard day, no it was beyond hard, it was hellish, it was…something. He\'s never been good with words, he just knows he needs a drink or five. Anything to forget having to tell a teary-eyed woman that her husband was dead, anything to forget the dead husband\'s body floating in the river, bloated and unnatural. The smell. The feel. Maybe he\'d need an entire bottle.

He wanted the quiet little bar down the street from his apartment, with the dim smoky light and the bartender that knew his name and always had a shot of whiskey laid out for him before he could take his coat off. Instead he was on Rivers street staring at an endless line of clubs, music blaring out into the street, lines of kids that all looked the same wrapped around the buildings dressed as clowns hoping to get into one of these places.

It made him feel old and out of place, but he needed a drink and he needed to forget and this place wasn\'t likely to remind him of old Mrs. Allen whose son died in a war and husband died taking their springer spaniel for a walkie in the park.

With the images snapping at his heels he forced himself out of his little junkpile car that was too small and too old but all he could afford, and down Rivers street looking for a club that didn\'t make him clench his teeth too hard. He ended up in a goth bar of all places, the only reason he knew what the hell a goth was, was through his little sister\'s brat. His nephew was fascinated by the whole idea of dressing up like a vampire gone wrong, at least he had been until he\'d been threatened with military school if he so much as glanced at black hair dye.

He was very very out of place. Very. About the only thing he had in common with these men was his sexual preference, except he was trying to pretend he wouldn\'t rather have a man\'s hard body in his bed than a woman\'s soft one. He couldn\'t keep his job any other way.

The freaks in the bar were eyeing him hostilely, but the butt of his gun showing outside of his dress coat combined with the working shmoe\'s getup of loosened striped tie and white dress shirt labeled him a cop. It was enough to keep the vultures circling and muttering insults without ever crossing that line that meant he\'d have to act.

The bartender brought him a bottle of whiskey and he carried it to a dark corner, a glare cleared the men twined around one another against the wall out. They walked away, grumbling, to find some other place for their fun. He settled into near peace watching the crowd, ignoring the throbbing music that made him want to find another warm body to thrust into. It\'d been so long since Frank.

Not that he\'d touch any of these weirdoes. He didn\'t get it, he really didn\'t understand the appeal of the makeup and the girly feminine frippery they tried to pretend was masculine just because it was all black. He didn\'t understand the piercings and the tattoos and the black lipstick….

But suddenly he did.

At least on that kid, the one leaning against the bar looking like sex and wet heat and other things that melted his brain and made his body stand to attention. The stray thought still flit through his head that the kid would look better in real clothes without the ridiculous makeup. Maybe in nothing but the leather pants. That was followed by the thought that the kid was just that. A kid. He couldn\'t be more than seventeen and definitely out of range for a thirty one year old cop.

But then he doubted whoever he ended up with for the night--and it was a certainty the kid was going to end up with _someone_ looking around the room like he\'d spread for a smile--would be any better suited than he was. In fact you could almost say it was his duty to take the kid, at least he\'d treat him right….

A wry smile flit across his face, gone almost as soon as it appeared, and he downed another shot that burned like fire down his throat. He was sick, plain and simple. Sick and lonely and forgetting the fact that pretty goth boys didn\'t want to be held down by homicide detectives any more than homicide detectives wanted to take boys dressed as clowns to bed. Just because that was a fact didn\'t make it true, at least not on his side of things.

Promising himself he would ignore the kid, he concentrated on the liquor, on the hard chair digging into his ass that was too fashionable to be comfortable, on the tabletop covered in liquid rings from other glasses that had rested on it. He didn\'t look up until he felt a presence in front of him, and at first he let his eyes fix on the leather pant leg, black leather with laces up the sides, he could see creamy skin between the laces.

With a resigned sigh he tilted his head back and met the kid\'s eyes, a thrill ran through him at the slow sexy smile spreading black glossy lips, but he didn\'t let it show on his face. \"What do you want?\" His voice a low dangerous growl.