Who’s the Daddy?

I remember when I first met you. It was on a dance-floor and of course I caught your eye, I wanted you to catch my eye. I always draw those needed admiring glances when I move through a crowd but whilst those were required and welcome, I was focussed on ensuring you noticed me. I knew that you would. It was just a question of time. It always is. I was stood near one of the bars.I always chose this bar as it was elevated allowing everyone to see me and allowing me to see everyone and it was from this vantage point that I observed you. I saw you enter the room, your tight as tight could be dress already turning heads and you smiled, winked and blew kisses as you walked down the steps onto the dance floor as if everybody in the club was there for you. You were confident alright but you were over confident and I could see straight through that. I kept watching you as you flirted with the men nearby, irrespective of whether they were with another lady and you seemed oblivious to the hateful stares you received from the handful of girlfriends or wives whose other halfs you flirted with. I was interested in you already. If I had a Spidey sense it would have been tingling.

Your lithe frame entered the dancefloor and you felt that the coloured lights and throaty bass were all there for you as you began to dance. You caught the eye of several men and one by one they tried to dance with you .I could see you smiling to yourself as you turned your back on those you deemed beneath you. Each of them was well-dressed and good-looking but you rejected them. You milled around the dance floor until you neared your target, a handsome chap but he was older than those you had rejected and he was your choice. You pulled the chosen one towards you and you began your dance with him. I could see the way that you were grinding against this man on the dance floor was provocative and suggestive. You maintained eye contact with him, as if letting him out of your sight would cause him to disappear. Your eyes burned with wanton desire and your undulating and writhing was most definitely sexual in nature. The sexual aggression flowed from you and this caught my interest. You appeared as a bright dot on my radar and I knew that I needed to learn more.

It was not long before this dance partner was cast aside and replaced by a tastier and more attractive prospect. Me. You draped your arms about my neck as we danced, ground your crotch into my thigh, turned and pushed your pert posterior into my crotch and it was clear you wanted to seduce me. I played along, reciprocating the movements, letting my hands glide across your body as I eventually steered you across to the bar area and sat beside you on a couch as I ordered us both a drink. This was the first time that I had seen you be still and it allowed me to appraise properly your appearance. Your hair, a dirty blonde colour was not cut but rather chopped short, sticking out in a variety of angles which gave the appearance of not caring but most likely had been carefully pulled and twisted into place before a generous layer of hair spray was applied. I reasoned that you wore your hair short because as a child you were denied the right to have it cut short. You always had to have it long and golden, like the hair of a princess. I bet your father would read you stories about Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Rapunzel as he stroked your hair, telling you how beautiful it was because it was long. I imagined that you wanted to cut it as you got older, the length being difficult to maintain but moreover too symbolic of the safe, suburban and middle-class upbringing you had received when you wanted to rebel. I bet you fought to have that hair cut even just by a few inches but you were forbidden from doing so and now this punkish, chopped and almost butchered hair style was the two-fingered salute you had given to your past. It screamed its story to me since I recognised it from a mile.

Your lipstick was bright red, your eyes framed by black mascara, eye liner and a battleship grey eye shadow. You were thin. Stick-like and I recognised such a frame. You stared at me as you sucked on the straw sliding it in and out of those pursed lips as you tried, without subtlety, to suggest what I might have coming my way. You were much younger than me. I would imagine at least fifteen years between us. Nowhere near illegality of course, that is not my penchant at all, but a sufficient age gap that was noticeable and of course something they would comment on, he would comment on, if they ever met me. If.

I saw the tattoos on your arms, great sleeves of floral designs and also similar on your thigh as your already short dress rode up as you sat on the sofa. I could see the design was intricate and extensive across your left thigh but it did not mask the line of scars completely. That neat and ordered row of incisions that had been made in your thigh, like notches on a bedpost. They brought you relief, temporary and momentary, but they also shamed you and thus you sought the ink in an attempt to mask those wounds in the same way that I knew this overt  confidence, flirtation and sexual aggression was just a mask as well. That light on my radar shone brighter and I could almost smell the fuel that I knew would flow from you freely and readily, just like the blood had flowed down your thigh. I held your gaze, those flinty eyes trying to burn into my mind but getting nowhere, a slight flicker of confusion and then they shifted into conveying that desire you oozed. You had no idea whose web you had flown into but I knew exactly what you were.

“What time is your daddy picking you up?” I asked my question near shouted to be heard over the music playing.

You coughed, the straw shooting from your mouth as you jerked your glass away.

“What? My dad? He’s not picking me up,” you protested. Your expression was not one of mild amusement but rather disdain and irritation. Just as I thought it would be.

“Of course not. Why would he do that when you are coming home with me?” I added with a wide smile. Your eyes widened and you copied my smile.

“I do love daddy issues,” I said quietly.

“What?” you asked unable to hear.

“I said, I nearly missed you,” I replied in a louder tone, “I was about to go home.”

“Well, it is a good job you didn’t,” you answered as you moved closer to me, pressing that fragile and broken frame against me, seeking the warmth, shield and protection that I offered you. You had found your new daddy. I had found a potent new victim.