“It's all so camp,” he said and shook his head.
I didn't answer. He asked me if I had a favorite.
“‘Sexual Healing,’” I said.
He liked that. I liked the way his pants hung loose around his hips and how he smelled like raspberries. He seemed very clean in his white T-shirt and new running shoes.
“Want to come over and sit with me?” he asked shyly. I nodded. He ordered me another drink and carried both of ours back to his table. He set them down, pulled out my chair and settled down in his own. I took a mouthful of bourbon. He closed his book — its plastic dustcover worried me — and leaned back in his chair, straightened his legs so the soles of his shoes brushed my bare ankle. He said his name was Jonathan. His expression was watchful and I wondered if I should have agreed to sit down.
“So why would you come to a place like this?” he asked.
I didn't like his tone and felt myself get angry, my voice rise as I explained myself. “Because homosexual men fascinate me. That they only want each other, that they consider the same sex mysterious.” I sipped my bourbon. The taste reminded me of desire. Jonathan sat up and leaned toward me, curved his open hand around his cheek and forehead, opened his eyes wider. “There's something wrong with me,” I told him. “It's hard for me to be with regular men. I don't know why, maybe it's just that I like the demeanor of gays better. I don't like sports bars or rock clubs or the steakhead heterosexuals I see on the street. Besides. . why does anyone go into the dragon's den?”
He smiled weakly, his mouth wet and slightly open. “We better go somewhere else,” he said in a low voice. “I can tell that you're a complicated girl.”
C h a p t e r S e v e n
IT WAS HALLOWEEN NIGHT AND THE STREET SOUNDED OF FIREcrackers and shouting. I lay languid in the tub, watching vapor rise off the hot water around me. Steam swirled up through the candlelight. I bought the candles at a store across the street that always smelled of sandalwood and musk. They sold bone crucifixes, colored saint beads and little statues of St. Francis. The Mexican lady had scented oils for love or winning money, one called Fiery Wall of Protection and a smaller bottle of pink liquid called Guardian, which she said attracted angels to watch over babies. When I was sick last year Bell had bought a special remedy, a mason jar of green liquid. He'd opened the bottle, dipped his fingers and run them lightly over my feverish skin. There was a sudden smell of mint. The elixir was first cool, then warm, like a winter kiss.
I soaped a washcloth, slid it into the ridge of my rear, pressing it just inside my anus, then rung it out and ran the bar of soap over it again until the material was thick with lather. Sliding the cloth into the folds of my pussy, soaping up the hair, I thought about douches and feminine sprays and the jokes high school boys used to make about women smelling like fish. What was it that made everyone so uncomfortable? Women worry that the scent reveals their sexuality and makes them vulnerable as dogs in heat. To men, the smell evoked the mysteries of the female body, which were cosmic but also threatening.
The cheap candles smelled of animal fat, dripping wax dark as ink on the porcelain tub. I let my hands, palms up, float to the top, the wrinkled tips breaking the surface. My hand had seemed separate when I jerked off the man from the gay bar last night. Each finger had a mind of its own and an eye in its tip. I watched the hand work on his cock, make an orifice out of fingers, squeeze down until he closed his eyes, imagining an ass as huge as the universe. Now the skin of my fingers was loose and gray as a cadaver. What could they be plotting? I wondered if the function of my body might be different from the function of my mind. I sensed the peace one found if they subverted either mind over body like a monk, or body over mind like a whore. You could hold both only if they were separated and severely so, like the right and left brain when the fissure is broken in surgery. I was trying by trusting my animal instincts over my intellectual ones.
Outside a man screamed something in Spanish. All good things are coming to an end, I thought, and though I knew it was true, I wasn't sure if I meant for me or for everyone. Divorce had given me the horrific sensation that the two sides of myself were at odds. I am the worst kind of person, attractive, overeducated, raised with middle-class delusions of grandeur. But it's not just me; family life in America sucks, because if you're even a bit smart, the pressure from your family to jump classes is excruciating. There's this insane idea that materialism creates status. Even if you make some headway, it's an internal jump. You're always middle-class, talking on your cellular phone with your color TV muted. We should never have cast ourselves like gods, on TV or in movies — it ruined our memories, made us long and lust, in love now only with the image of ourselves. And perfected others: the nicest guys I see are characters on TV.
I've mesmerized myself watching the water droplets loosen from the faucet. They catch light before joining their multiple selves. There is a bit of motion at the edge of my vision, it's the snake. I've seen it moving in the drapes, shifting in the blankets.
THE RAIN STOPPED AND WARM MEXICAN AIR BLEW INTO THE streets. A little girl passed painted up like a whore, but it was too late for little girls. Ahead, on the other side of the street, a group of skinheads came toward me, angry about something. Hands deep in their pockets, they jumped on one another like monkeys trying to copulate. Some wore hooded sweatshirts and hockey masks over their shaved heads. A few carried baseball bats or cartons of eggs. I saw the swastikas on their jackets and the familiar White Brotherhood logo. I was wearing an outfit of Madison's: red velvet bell-bottoms and a rhinestone-studded shirt and was worried they'd bother me. The tallest one, in a hockey mask, banged his bat against the brick wall. I turned, started to walk back the way I came when there was a sudden thud, then a burst like heavy rain. He'd shattered the window of the transvestite lingerie store. Tranced by the foam-filled bras and high heels as big as a strong man's work boot he reached in and took a garter studded with rhinestones. He looked like a monster holding a kitten. The skinheads were startled by the objects in the window which could so easily change them. A man came out from the next building in a ratty bathrobe, his eyes smeared with make-up.
“FAGGOT!” one screamed and they were suddenly on him. “Queer, butt blaster, fudge pirate!” They bashed his head against the hood of a parked car. The steely echo of the hood, absorbing the force of their fists on his body, made me shiver with nausea. It would have gone on forever but the police pulled up, lights flashing. One skinhead ran, then they all did.
“God damn,” the man said, reeling. He touched his head where blood was matting in his hair. Another man came out from the apartment building in stretch pants and high heels. He helped the man to the doorway of the shop and held him while he sobbed.
San Francisco confounded me. First it seemed utopian, with the blue skies, pervasive Mediterranean light, palm trees, organic vegetable stores that sold strawberry juice, the children in funky handmade sweaters. But all that was an overlay — misleading and cosmetic. Underneath was a history of decadence: the opium dens in Chinatown, the thousand whores who worked the gold rush, the voodoo and witchcraft shops. Even the fast-moving fog was nightmarish. There were leather monsters fucking dogs and each other in the alleyways of SoMa and the living dead haunting the Castro cafés. Sure, there were hippies gentle and peace-loving, but there was also the Manson family, the SLA and the Jim Jones Kool-Aid test. And California is the outpost of rigid conservatism. . the home of Nixon and Reagan. Satanists are in the hills, chanting Latin, drinking urine, forcing candles into the tops of rotten deer heads. And, of course, there was Hollywood, the mimetic desire capital of the world.