Face of Life Peeled Back
The summer nights were circus-like—loud, bright, and just a little unreal. Lara laughed into the crimson dusk, the color blooming on her cheeks, and a hunger for agency, though neither she nor the others knew how quickly that glow would fade. Lara’s life was bent sideways when her mother started teaching Sunday school and her stepdad sold fireworks out of his trunk—he said you couldn’t trust anyone who didn’t flinch at the Fourth of July. She copped a squat for a breather, awaiting “the usual suspects” to gather in a reddish sandstone courtyard. Her elbows on her knees, not for heaven or praying, just for things to stop feeling off. By sixteen, she figured God was just another guy who never called back. Now, twenty-something, the same.
Near the Belvedere Hotel, where single-family rowhouses once stood, their iron gates and private courtyards are now memories erased by conversion. Apartments filled the bones of the old homes. Stairs spiraled towards solid wood doors and echoing foyers, beneath carved window arches, ornate cornices, and dark mahogany wood. Beauty remained, though dull. Buzzed on Ozzy’s and Resurrection beers, they flirted, watched, waited. This was Midtown, Baltimore, the place to be, or disappear, so they told themselves.
Wayne arrived at BWI with a two-liter bottle of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) taped to his torso. Risky, but not unprecedented. Lara and Drew’s apartment was the perfect setting for what he called an “L. bender.” Some buildings in Midtown made ideal hideouts—places so steeped in noise, poverty, and neglect that no one in uniform cared what drugs came or went. Domestic violence, though, still got a quick response.
Drew—Lara’s roommate, occasional lover, and a tatted chef at the local tavern—was a man of contradictions. A wannabe hunter and self-proclaimed expert on all thing’s deer, he often shifted into preacher mode, quoting Jesus between lines of evolutionary theory. His version of spiritual inquiry leaned toward Euthyphro-style questioning, always circling some deeper meaning he never quite landed. More often than not, he was high on ketamine, cornered in a rave pile by Saturday afternoons. Weekends were spent in war paint and worn hunting gear, like a soldier fighting a war no one else could see.
Lara Gerding saw the world differently, expansive, irreverent, unwilling to settle for tidy answers. Religion amused her more than it moved her. If an ancient god flowed fluffy fucks with glitter through all things, so be it—she preferred melancholy wonder wrapped in defiance. She wore a cheetah-print jacket like a banner, something that wanted to stay and roar. Her combat boots clicked beneath a long drawstring skirt she bought from Leroy’s cart outside Brewer’s Art. At least half her wardrobe came from Leroy, and she was proud to say it.
Tommy was deep in the mix, locked into the spin of the vinyl. Headphones hung half-on, half-off, his eyes swirling like he was tracking a marble through smoke. Silent in his Gong T-shirt and loose-legged denim, he was riding a slow comeback from the wreckage of Juice—the hardcore band that once shook the old bank building downtown.
His girlfriend, Anna, sat across the room, hands frozen in front of a broken mirror. Her pose—pure Alphonz Mukah theater—was poised, distorted, marked by blue-violet veins that pulsed beneath her skin like ink under glass. Lipstick half-smeared, chaos for clothing. Just another Burnt Sugar kind of party night.
Lara’s joy shimmered, radiant and expansive. Her body moved with a sleek, feminine autonomy she was only beginning to claim. Threads wove themselves in her vision like nails pulling light into kaleidoscopic webs on walls. This wasn’t her first kind of circus night—but it was her first time dipping a finger into Wayne’s two-liter bottle of “L,” flown in from San Francisco. She was coming on now. Her hand brushed a phantom window still etched into the center of a brick wall—flash-bright paint bleeding through the past. Wayne watched from the sunken living room, grinning as he saw the trip catch hold. Rainbow splash paint reflected in his eyes.
Was this life sewn together like a glossy magazine? Bound in pages of flash and meta-sin? Wayne imagined taking Lara to a midnight ragtime march on some forgotten Southern California beach, where Deadheads wandered into limbo since Jerry died.
Lara bent toward him like a crescent moon drawn by gravity—curved, luminous, already halfway gone.
Wayne says, “Hey, babe, it’s been a while.”
Lara goes, “Welcome back.”
Laughter folded across the terrace floor—soft, spiraling is within the glow of a cabana, strung with warm, acidic light. The group lounged on scattered cushions, gazing past one another toward the saturated cerulean sky, where stars dangled unanchored, drifting and shooting like nothing held onto them.
Voices bounced off old lungs, echoing up.
“Now, hush,” Tommy said into the mic, voice steady but distant. “Somewhere above and somewhere below.”
A pause. Then, grinning: “There she disappeared… rabbit in the hat.” Anna was gone. Or seemed to be. She stood before the mirror, a live wire of presence and absence—her Alphonz Mukha pose turning into something from an Alex Grey exhibit, her body haloed and pulsing. She traced the vivid blue veins along her arms with reverence, hypnotized by the soft electric beauty of her insides.
Snapping out of it, or maybe deeper into it, she muttered: “I can see my insides.”
Anna and Tommy went together like peas in a pod—synchronized even when unraveling.
Lara, meanwhile, swayed near the speakers, weaving more turquoise threads with the beat onto the walls. She moved as if pulled by tides only she could feel. On a past mescaline trip, she and Wayne had wandered a desert road in Nevada—a place where the face of life peeled back, and dance became friction and dust.
Unz… unz… unz… unz…
The beat pressed forward. Turning up the volume and singing along to ‘The music sounds better with you’ by Stardust.
Wayne stepped in behind her, sliding a hand to her waist, then tracing upward along her spine. Lara turned. In his eyes—dilated, shimmering, she saw hollow glass, swirling as if spun by heat. For a moment, it was unclear whether he was seeing her or being seen through.
Drew, on another kind of trip, went on a misogynistic rant in the kitchen, saying, to the beat, “I’m ma ma ma making – some tropical salsa – with some ready rock rice – after – a – la – la – la – la- Larahhh – aaahhh, you can suck – my dick.” He tore open the bag of rice and buried like communion at the bottom was an eight-ball of his precious blow — pure, glinting, the only god that ever answered.
“Have a beer, Drew.” Matt, the bartender, squeezed himself into the refrigerator and tossed Drew a cold one. The fridge door kept opening and closing, where the world paused, like it couldn’t decide if it should keep going or freeze right there.
“Popcorn buffet!” Drew shouted from the kitchen window. Then, louder sharp, cutting: “What the fuck, Lara!”
His gaze locked on the scene unfolding near the couch: Lara and Wayne, tangled on the floor in a haze of tequila and heat. Standing on her knees open. His hand grips her hip. Her skirt hiked up, and Wayne, silver Sharpie in hand, tagging her black panties with licks in between. She didn’t flinch. Still in her cheetah jacket, lips brushing Wayne’s as they sipped from the same bottle, Lara looks up—hazy but focused, the gaze of a drunk philosopher considering her following thesis.
Drew’s voice cracked, “Get your hands off her—she’s my future wife!” His eyes went wide, heart pulsing like a siren behind his ribs. He stormed across the room, fists clenched, breath ragged. Reaching Lara, he grabs her shoulders and shakes her hard—like she was something wild he’d tracked through the night and finally cornered.
“Slut!” Drew spat at Lara.
The room cracked open.
Adrenaline surged—months of coiled arguments, Drew’s god-talk and spiritual inquiry looped like a sermon on shuffle, jealousy, pacing nights, and Drew speaking Bible verses in his boxers.
Lara didn’t flinch. She stared him down, jaw tight. Wipes her face on her sleeve.
“We fucked twice on mushrooms,” she said, voice flat. “And I live here, that’s all. You think I enjoy listening to you march around quoting Leviticus like it’s sexy? It’s not even convenient staying with you. It’s just fucking co-dependency.”
“You’re lost, Lara. You need faith,” Drew snapped. “You’re empty.”
Lara goes, “I’d rather be empty than full of shit.”
BAM. Her fist slugged, fast connected with his jaw final. His head snapped sideways. She hit him again, just to be sure. The room went silent. Tommy froze behind the turntables, mouth slack. The record skipped, then stopped. Even the lights seemed to pause.
Furious and humiliated, Drew stormed into the bedroom and did what no one expected—he called the cops. The rage had overtaken him. He barely noticed the dispatcher confirming units were on route. Outside the room, the party roiled on—faces melting under blacklight, laughter turning liquid. Everyone was stealing face, and no one saw the turn coming.
Drew dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a ready rock bag of blow, tapping out a few dusty bumps with a house key. He snorted hard. It didn’t help.
But the sirens were already coming.
Wayne barked, “Tommy! Let’s roll!”, grabbing the bottle of “L.” The two vaulted over the balcony railing and dropped onto the fire escape, clattering down into the back alley like wild animals escaping a trap.
Lara made it to the bathroom just in time to hurl, collapsing against the toilet like it was a god she both feared and worshipped.
Out on the terrace, the four friends puddled in the cabana watched the distant red and blue lights creep closer, flashing across the plaster walls in slow strobe. No one spoke. They were already calculating their exits, tripping out the back door.
Knock… knock.
Drew wiped his nose, stashed what he could, and stepped into the foyer to crack open the door. A Baltimore Police officer stood there, jacket zipped high, notepad in one hand, pen tucked behind his ear. His other hand rested casually near—but not on—his holstered sidearm.
Officer speaks, “I’m following up on a report of an assault?”
Drew says, “She punched me, man!” holding his jaw and pointing at Lara.
Lara had just crawled out of the bathroom into the hallway, back against the wall, barefoot and flushed, fury beneath the glaze of whatever was still in her bloodstream.
The officer looked at her, flat-eyed, and asks, “Is that what happened?”
Lara without hesitation, “He fucking asked for it.”
The officer didn’t flinch. He lifted his radio, “Great. You’re both going downtown.” He spoke.
Drew’s voice cracks, “Why me? I didn’t do anything!”
“That’s what they all say,” the officer muttered. “You’re high as a kite.”
Lara pushed herself upright and stumbled toward the spiral staircase.
The female officer firmly grabs Lara, “You’re under arrest,” with an iron like grip, she twists Lara’s arms behind her back and locks the cuffs in place. The party ended—in a half-finished philosophical argument dragged off to central booking. A crash from high ideals to concrete floors. And to no one’s advantage.
Fucking Bunny Suit
In the fingerprinting station, Drew sat slumped on the bench, one side of his face sagging in a sulk, the other raising an eyebrow in disbelief.
“I didn’t think they’d actually arrest us,” he slurred, sliding off the bench with a soft flop.
“Get up! We’re tripping balls, you don’t think?” Lara snapped. “That’s your problem, jackass.”
Drew glances down at her bare feet. “Why don’t you have your shoes?”
“Fuck off,” Lara shot back, voice sharp.
The holding cell was cold and unforgiving—fluorescent lights overhead, humming like a dying generator. The cinder block walls were chipped, layers peeling back to reveal something that might’ve been asbestos long ago. The floor was a sticky concrete slab—flat, hard, damp, and too bright to be forgotten.
Lara curled her feet beneath the long skirt wrapped around her legs, seeking warmth from the unforgiving chill. Hunger gnawed quietly, but her style held fashionable even behind bars.
“Lara Gerding?!” the officer barked. Her gaze lingered cold and hard before she ordered her to stand for a mugshot. Then came the command no one wants to hear undress completely.
“Turn around. Drop your clothes. Hands on the wall.”
Lara tugged at her corded skirt, which slid down around her ankles. She peeled her top off, the last barrier falling away, stripped of every inch of dignity, she drops her tagged party panties.
“And cough.”
“Cough.”
“One more time—cough. Now, hand over your skirt. The drawstring’s a weapon by policy.” The officer tossed her a white gauze onesie—a footed medical suit, thin and weightless, snapped loosely up the front. The scent hit her first, sterile and biting, and she thought bitterly: a fucking bunny suit.
Don’t get drawn into that, she whispered to herself as she slipped inside the shroud.
Her hair, dark and straggly, tumbled down her back, the only thing left to keep her warm. The suit crinkled softly as she moved, like a hospital sheet rustling with each breath.
Keys jangled. Another barred door swung open.
Lara stepped inside the cell—raw, forgotten. A busted pipe dripped steadily into a growing puddle. The only furniture was a metal toilet, bolted to the ground, its seat lidless and cold. A woman sat there, silent, watching.
Muffled sobs echoed down the corridor. Lara had long since stopped screaming. Drunk and crouched low, she smelled metallic rust and dried blood—like shit. Her mind churned, a chaotic hum behind her eardrum: glitter, chaos, fade. How long would she be here, unapologetically trapped?
She didn’t turn her head fully but glanced sideways at the women around her—mostly Black, faces unreadable. The sobering reality pressed in. She became painfully aware of how she looked: a privileged white girl, cheeks flushed crimson like dusk, wrapped in a sterile onesie, stuck inside a jail cell. And it was really happening.
Lara had no idea if she’d get jumped, be accepted, ignored, or if there had been seen too many like her before. Shame, fear, hopelessness swelled inside, no words needed—her own thoughts shrank her further, made her smaller.
Slowly, numbness crept into her bones, pulling her away from herself.
The lights intermittently flickered over her shadows. One woman eyed her sideways, “Damn, girl. What’d they do, throw you in a straitjacket?”
Lara said, “Might as well have. My skirt has a drawstring — cop said I could hang myself with it, or choke someone.”
“I got arrested for stealing groceries at the Food Market, in my pajamas and slippers.” Just like that, tension eased. Lara breathed, down to something raw and honest.
“Just another gurrll in a jail cell,” — “You know judge isn’t seeing anybody ‘til Monday, right?”
“Shit, I know,” — “I got arrested for fucking!”
“Weekend lock-up is some bullshit.” — “Government closed the doors on us here with no toilet paper,” — “Why are you in here, gurll?”
Lara hesitated… — “assault, I hit a guy.”
laugh.
“Gurrll, for real? You in here for beating a man?”
“He had it coming.”
“Shit, don’t they all?”
“You’re probably going to walk though. Got somebody to come get you?”
Lara shrugged, “I think so, hope so. I’ll try calling my mother.”
“I was supposed to pick up my baby from my sister’s tonight.” — “She was already pissed at me.”
“I swear, keeping women inside just long enough to ensure everything outside worsens while in here,” grunting from the toilet.
“Isn’t no accident, it’s set up that way,” — “To hold us back in the world, lose our jobs, miss our kids, miss our rent. The whole system was built to keep us fucked up, knocked up, and locked up.”
Something heavy settled in Lara’s chest. Keys clattered in the distance, then the officer unlocked the cell.
“You two in, you two out,” she said, nodding toward Lara and another woman.
The new cell was smaller, even more cramped than the last. The air hung thick with sweat, sour and sickly—urine and last night’s trash lingering beneath it all.
Lara sat on the extended bench, facing her cellmate across the narrow space. The woman had the same straggly hair as Lara, but her hair was strawberry blonde, and she was flat-chested, with skin that was pale, waxy, and dull. Sharp cheekbones jutted beneath tired eyes. Her arms were a map of addiction—track marks tracing every line.
With a jittery, clacking jaw, “New gurrll,” she rasped. “What they’d get you for?” Lips licking.
Lara hesitated. “Hitting a guy, my roommate thinks he’s, my boyfriend. He’s a prick.”
The woman barked out, laughing. “Hell should’ve knocked him out. Maybe he wouldn’t have ratted on you?!” She shifted and tugged on her Motley Crue t-shirt sleeve, stretching it wide enough to slide her arm from beneath. That’s when Lara saw a flap of skin on the inside of the woman’s upper arm, barely held together. The woman revealed a sliced pocket of flesh carved into her, opened to a stash, caught Lara staring at the scar.
“No shame,” the woman grinned, showing her missing teeth. The ones still there were cracked, with orange tartar, and were turning brown, decaying. The woman lifted the skin flap with her bony fingers, revealing a tiny plastic bag containing a brown powder. “You want a taste?” She offered, tilting it towards Lara. “I have more. I bring it inside for the girls every couple of months. Here, licks the baggy, like cotton candy!”
Lara shook her head and said, “No, thanks. I’m good.”
The woman studied Lara briefly and squinted. “You don’t look too good.”
The woman squeezed the bag open. Then, she stuck her long pinky nail inside and sniffed the brown powder. She licked the inside with her tongue, treating it like a lifeline, just like a kitten suckling its mother’s milk. Her pupils constricted, and her body relaxed, numbing just enough to find a moment of peace.
Every detour has a reason, no doubt. Later, Lara—Lara missed her bed and watched out the window from her cot closest to the end of the militant row as the moon waxed for four more nights. Monday was a government holiday. Her hearing with the judge wasn’t until Wednesday. Some of those reasons aim to benefit the afflicted by protecting them from another tragedy, while others are designed to harm them—a never-ending trap that causes more harm than good.
Life is a maze of detours shaped by forces both protective and harmful. The in-between, fairness, is folded, stuck, buried, like an unfound treasure waiting to be unearthed. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, amor fati (love of fate) and suffering are essential to growth. Suffering and hardships are inevitable, but necessary for a meaningful life. That echo of fairness, Lara sobs for, comes from only the meaning of her suffering. Simone Wiel believed that suffering like Lara could strip her soul bare, yet she possessed an intrepid force to confront reality and God. It is through her afflictions that she will find compassion. Some healing and some harming always come along the way to grace.
Lara and Drew were separated by bars and gender. But their thoughts were in sync with parallel thinking.
Elephants In Sawdust
He’s going to give her some—not the whole of it, but a percentage of it. Last week’s arrest was a close shakedown. Lara had no better option than Hawaii with Wayne. He needed a partner. He wanted Lara.
Driving southwest to Tommy and Ryan’s place in West Virginia where Hare in the Moon would play—witches who read minds drink wine there. Inside a revolutionary-style house with a wraparound porch—a percussion of hollow, heavy, earthy beats drums. Dirt paths go miles through tall grass, over hills, and into the forest’s den.
Balloons pop, accompanied by the sporadic sound of a valve opening on a nitrous tank every few seconds. The canopy of trees protects the bubble, the laser, the LEDs, the strobe flash, and still again. An in-body to an out-of-body experience. The lyrics mix into the beat, “Ready to meet me?” and “Let’s fly away?”
Lara arrived with her bro Joe, Anna’s lover on the side. The cows were down in the pasture with chickens and roosters. The barn. The house built of bohemian bones, leather, plush pillows, soft blankets, and mattresses on the floor. Lara and Anna land in the same upstairs room. Wayne peeks in with a grin and drops his backpack beside Lara’s. Love wasn’t allowed for the sake of attachment, too sticky, but she was happy to lie horizontal with him intermittently at night.
Lara says, “Looks clear for the rest of the day.”
Wayne goes, “I disconnected the wires from the generator in case it rained, I’ll plug them back in.”
Anna takes advantage of any moment she can get away with Joe. She goes, “I’ll ask Joe for a ride to get some ice.” They have make-out sesh’s on the side that satisfy her thrills.
Sesh’s they’d have later in the tents that were placed around the trees. Rose-petaled paths with tiki lights installed. The balloon projection was under the light, and the cords were buried in the ground. Lanterns lined the porch edge, Turkish rugs, wooden tables, waxed candles, and mirrors. Fruit everywhere: apples, peaches, berries, and grapes. The chimney swept. Wood. The flame, on.
Lara asks, “You know when the Electric Co. is setting up?”
“They’re here,” Wayne says. “Back in the woods with Bunny. Come with me.”
Lara held onto a lightly laced water jug, and a deep purple chenille blanket. Standing leaning slightly to her left hip.
Wayne says, “I want you to come with me, Lara. I’m leaving for San Diego, then Hawaii, in about a month.”
“I know,” Lara said.
Wayne goes, “Don’t give up on me, Lara.”
“I don’t give up.” Lara promised.
Wayne spread the blanket on the ground. The Moon hare, a mythical figure in American folklore, by shadowed markings on the moon as a rabbit or a hare. Nordic women turn themselves into hares, if they choose, and turn back again—when they want. Becoming “hasenfrau” or “rabbitwomen”. It’s true, rabbits wash and bathe in moonlight.
Lara, unknowable, sensitive to the psyche and the sun, the moon, and the stars. Rabbits change sex every month according to the lunar cycles—in triangles: rebirth, new birth, and resurrection. Her laughter cackling over ghostly whispered messages and tones. Sounds of the animals stir, getting it good, getting hard. The owl goes silent, the bass, the drum, the melody. The beat.
Wayne says, “Lara, just close your eyes.” The night would be without time. He draws a line with his tongue, going down on her to trace a lick from her navel, between her thighs, and gives her head to pass the hour.
Time stretches like a telephone cord from the wall to the cellar. Outside a window where Anna, Nadra, and Naomi—go naked on the lake. Under the galaxy—Anna says, “There’s an infinite number of silver and gold stars shaping a phoenix in the sky, made of diamonds passing by.” This too shall pass, cliché, and the hay at the barn, two fat people making out like elephants in sawdust, where you go to lie beneath and joke for hours, heckling, fumbling with stories and words. I will write them down.
By day, Lara questions everything. How to eat the elephant in the room? Full of desire, lifted from pauses—inward and outward. Regrets on her mind, the strange interlude in jail. How to live, the meaning of life. Trust for Lara is knowing what she’s capable of, but she’s going to know that part of herself. Knowing what one’s capable of can take you closer to the truth. Answer: One bite at a time.
Wayne whispers in Lara’s ear, “Let’s go to bed.”
A dove flies into the house and lands on the mantel — another one followed. Lara glances down to ground her eyes as they zoom to dirt, an olive branch within her reach. She picks up the olive branch and says, “Trust the doves, the truth steps into sunlight.”
A fire behind her, shadows before. Lara, blinded at first—but soon, sees color, form, truth. Lara’s woke.
Wayne repeats, “Let’s go to bed Lara.”
His warm, tanned skin and waist-length, dreadlocked blonde hair made to wrap. A murmur from the foyer, echoing laughter and a blow of white dust. And another. One more. Lara zig zags and zig zags, powder, down to where everyone is relaxing in the parlor and passing trays while making one another feel lovely at home in another’s arms.
Anna sings “Time After Time”. Tommy follows behind her voice. She speaks on her trip, “Chills of euphoria!” Twirling in her salamander dress.
A mattress on the floor in the bedroom, close to a window, framing a Claude Monet view. Wayne reaches for a pipe. Lara, rests between his legs, intertwining their thighs. Lara’s jerking off his dick, with her feet. Tommy barges in.
Tommy exclaims while touching both index fingers to his thumbs and covers his eyes like goggles, “She’s been fucking the guy with glasses.” He knows Joe’s name but won’t say it, maybe never again.
Tommy asks Lara, “Anna’s been fucking the dude with the glasses!? Lara doesn’t answer, she’s still fucking Wayne’s dick with her feet.
Tommy shouts, “Lara!”
Lara responds, “As if… I… stop it, Tommy! Stop acting like you don’t know and getting someone else in the heat for your grief.”
“Well, I suppose I’ll leave you both here… and. When did this start up?!” Tommy asked. He looked stupidly, yes, stupidly into no thought, adding to his Captain-like attitude.
Lara says, “He could use a no complaint sticker.”
From the bedside, Lara, tightens her skirt and walks barefoot, tiptoeing across the room, out the door, and down the white rope trail on the railing.
Wayne goes, “Catch you later, babe.”
“I invited Drew,” Tommy confesses to Wayne, stretching for his pants.
“That chum needs to take his ready rock and hike up the road.” Wayne tilts his head from side to side as his shoulders shrug, takes a drag from the pipe, and then exhales through tighter lips. Looks down at his denim that had torn at the knees.
“I mean, he knows what’s going on between you and Lara, bro,” Tommy says, “Her getting locked up with him was not on the agenda, you know what I mean.”
“How much more do you want to hash through right now?” Wayne asked. “We are here. Have a good time, and throw it down, man. I’ll take anything he tries and make him eat his words.”
Tommy assures him, “I’ll take care of it. It’s my fault he’s here.”
Wayne goes, “Right on, bro. I’m glad to hear it.” exhales.
Lara stretched on the leather couch—fragmented prisms race crisscrossing lines between her and Ryan. She pulls a bone tapered filter from one of her dreads, rolls a J. Ryan sat down on the floor, removed his prosthetic leg, and leaned back. Lara taps his shoulder and passes the joint to him.
“This one’s laced,” she warns, smirking.
They share the silence.
“You ever live with someone just to survive?” Lara asked.
Ryan goes, “You are talking about Drew?”
“Duh…”
“Say it, Lara.”
“If I said it out loud, it’d change everything.”
Ryan already knew, he responds, “You’re going with Wayne.”
Lara goes, “I am.”
Ryan goes, “Cool. See? Easy.”
[Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash]
by 
Jessica Crowley Ambrose
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- The Story of Lara Gerding - March 15, 2026
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