Black Market Economics
By K.D. Battle
You didn’t plan on doing key bumps with her on a couch in the middle of an after-hours club, but hey, when in Waikiki and all that.
You also didn’t plan on going home to her apartment as the sun came up, shared with her three dozen roommates and drop-ins, and you certainly didn’t plan on having bad sex until you got bored of the dead-fish prone-bone bullshit. Was she napping? You definitely didn’t plan on getting a Mai Tai at 0800 when you left, then Starbucks. But hey, she was fun, had jugs the size of regulation footballs, and even wanted to see you again. Bad sex is like bad pizza: at least it’s sex, at least it’s pizza. Her name was Elise, and she was from Alaska, but everyone called her Felon. Felon with the melons.
You were getting deployed in two days, or maybe it was just the run-up for deployment. Either way, you were getting deployed, and your last weekend before eternal submergence was spent in a haze of debauchery, of Hotline Miami extravagance unbecoming of a young sailor. Mid-mocha, you remember that you snuck cocaine back to base two nights before, did a line in your barracks the night after. It wasn’t a big deal because it didn’t feel like a big deal because that’s what everyone did in Hawaii, or so you told yourself. But you couldn’t remember how you got from there to here; you had an Ecstasy hangover the day before, and that barracks bump brought you back to life.
“Why does this fucking guy look like he’s dressed for Sunday School?”
His name was Logan Selles, but on the boat everyone called him Seller. A fitting name for one of the biggest drug dealers on Oahu, but life likes those small coincidences and ironies, and this dude could start up a nuclear reactor as easily as he could cut and weigh and wheel and deal the drogas to the debutantes of Honolulu nightlife.
“He’s cool, Seller. We vetted him before deployment,” someone said in the background, probably Robbie Angel. Ah yes, after the run-up, before deployment.
“Well does he know that he looks like a fucking dork?”
You did not know that, and even spent a whole day combing through the Navy Exchange on base for clubbing clothes to impress your new debonair friends. You bought Italian dress shoes and everything, but at twenty-one, you barely knew how to clothe yourself for the jungle prowl that is Hawaiian nightlife. You didn’t like that Seller dude one bit, but there were rumors that he’d once gotten coke for the Engineering Master Chief of your boat, and that man was made of nightmares, so you kept your cool.
Later that night, after you’d already purchased your own blow, Seller found you, perhaps to bridge the gap, perhaps as a small token of brotherhood. Certainly not apology.
“What’s up alter-boy?” he said, purple lights among the dank of smoke and thrumming deep house. “This little pill is called a Red Nintendo, and it’s going to change your whole life.”
That Hi-Fi high felt like thrumming, tuning every fiber to herald a G-Major chord. It was an endless summer, the grinding calcium of teeth and that sexy smell of sweat. The soreness of smiling cheeks. It felt like dancing until you forgot who you were, ego helplessly locked outside of the pilot seat for a few precious hours, feet bleeding with the welcome pain of sensitive gums. You left that club and walked with an Angel along the beach, pitch black, lying in the infinite grains of damp sand, watching the midnight fishermen cast their lines and drive PVC piping deep into the earth to hold the rigs. Never saw them catch shit except a buzz.
You went back to the after-hours club the next night after ripping that resurrecting line in your barrack. Your roommate got too drunk, so you called him an Uber home, but before leaving, you saw a girl and the eye contact lingered. You decided to stay and say hi, flirt even, sharing the last of your illicit goods. And while you didn’t plan on doing key bumps with her on a couch in the middle of an after-hours club, you certainly didn’t mind it. But hey, when in Waikiki and all that.
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K.D. Battle seeks life outside the lines: he is a Navy submarine veteran, a composer, lyricist, and librettist of musical theatre, and a writing teacher with over half a decade of experience. His writing has been published or awarded in Writer’s Digest, Vita Poetica, and Proud to Be: Writing By American Warriors, Vol. 13. Battle lives with his wife, son, and dogs, and he invites you to live a life of kindness, grit, and curiosity.