by Sapphire
“You know what I mean.” He pouts. “Ballet class.”
“Hey, I don’t feel like going into it, but if you must know, Herd decided we should all take the same technique class.”
“That’s silly! Each one is different, everybody has—”
“Look, it’s just an experiment we’re doing for a couple of months.” I’m trying to sound blasé, but I ain’t coming to the ten o’clock class, and I ain’t going back to the eleven-thirty class or any of his other classes, ever. Never. We have a new girl, woman, I guess, coming today. Since that review in the Voice, a lot of people been calling to audition.
“You know, you so excited about that goddamned group. That’s because you think you is the goddamned best or some shit. Or maybe they is so bad you is the best, and they let you get away with every kind of shit, convince you you is some kind of creative genius. Well, you not! You got a long way, long, long way to go before you is a real dancer!”
“I thought you liked some of what I was doing!” I hear myself whining like a little kid. I hate that. I close my eyes. I don’t even hear what he says next; a wave of hate rolls through me so hot I could slit his throat and feel no pain, feel good, in fact. Old-ass faggot!
“Let me tell you one more thing—”
Before he can finish, I snatch the front of his neck with one hand. He can’t even scream.
“I don’t want to hear it!” I hiss. “And go get that other notebook before I wipe the floor with your faggot ass!”
I squeeze tighter like I’m gonna pull his pipes out of his throat.
“Get it!” I snarl, letting go and pushing him away from me onto the floor.
He’s on the floor, gasping for breath. I never seen him this scared before. I look him dead in the eye then look away. I was scared for a minute too; if I hurt him, it’s still like hurting myself. Every time I come in the building, a security camera takes my picture, every time I leave. Who cares about me? If I hurt him, I’m going to jail. Don’t nobody care about what he did to me.
“OK, OK, I get it. I was not meaning to steal it from you only, only . . .”
He scurries away and back like a squirrel. I lean over and look at the clock; I got no time to do anything now. I put the notebook in my backpack, take a ho’s bath, and head for the train.
I get off at Franklin Street and head for the Loft—because of Scott’s money our Loft, really—where we rehearse. I know Roman is being an old douchebag, but it bothers me, him insinuating I can’t dance or being in Herd is some kind of cop out. Fuck him, he’s just jealous because I’ve made some friends. Well, not friends—how can you be friends when you can’t even tell people your name?—but they’re something, associates. Kids like me in a way, even though they’re older, NYUers, downtownies, but fuck Roman! We’re dancing! Not like some of those old motherfuckers in his class at Stride, twenty-three, twenty-four years old, still just taking class, not auditioning or anything, talking about one day when they’re ready and all that shit. I mean, shit, when are you fucking ready! Leave it to bitches like Roman, and you’re never ready or you’re ready when he says you’re ready.
Herd, it’s five of us now since Rebecca and Bianca left: Scott, My Lai, Snake, Ricky, and me, and with the new bitch it’ll be six. I think Ricky is on his way out, we’ll see. With the new girl, if he does split, it’ll be three-two, three men and two girls. That’s good, too many girls changes things. Ricky’s bringing the new bitch in, so you know that whether she can dance or not, she’s cute. I never seen him with anybody ugly even though he’s only five-four and looks like he crawled out of a cave somewhere with all that hair. He hates me, I can feel it. I never did anything to him except dance better; I can’t help that. I ain’t going to saw off my legs so he won’t be threatened. My Lai says it’s the Mexican thing—he’s used to feeling superior to black. Hey, maybe he is, get on out there and go for it! What do I give a fuck about anybody being superior to me? He’s mad at himself, that’s what it is. Scott talks a good game, power sharing, blah-blah, but Scott’s not moving over. Plus, Ricky’s getting heavy, and it don’t look too good.
Next month is when I break out. I have to, Scott told me, take my turn at maintaining the Loft. I love it, I have to. If he only knew. That’s all I been thinking about 24/7. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, but the three months you’re assigned Loft duty you’re responsible for everything—shopping, security, cleaning, record keeping, everything. You may as well stay here, ’cause you’ll be over here 24/7.”
I can’t wait. That’s all I been thinking about, my own crib, even if it’s only temporary, and bitches, scoring some pussy. Yeah, leaving Roman, bagging some pussy, getting some kind of job. I’ve never even had a job before. It’s gonna be so cool to get in here. Three months rent-free, maybe longer ’cause no one else wants to do this shit. Maybe I’ll take the GED, see if I can get in a college dance program, Snake says he has friends who been at NYU for years on grant money. How they get that shit? Now’s the time to find out. Shit, I’ll be eighteen soon; nobody can touch me. I’m tired of hiding. Well, I’m not hiding, but what is it if nobody knows your name, where you live, who you live with? Everything’s been made up, my age, name, what else is there?
I glance at my watch. Nine-fifty, I’m on time.
When I walk in, everybody’s already there standing around, the new chick is awesome, tall, blond, goddamn!
“This is Arthur Stevens, or Crazy Horse as he’s also called. Arthur, this is Amy Ash,” Scott says.
“Hi, Arthur.”
“Hi.”
She doesn’t look no twenty-five to me. She looks really young.
“We were just telling Amy about Herd, how we got started and shit. My Lai was getting ready to break down the piece we’re going to be doing that’s evolving out of My Lai 4.” Snake.
Amy looks like she wants to ask a question but is trying to be cool.
Ricky, who is picking at his beefy toes, asks it for her. “What’s My Lai got to do with you?”
“It was like a war crime in Vietnam—” My Lai tries to explain.
“Yeah, like duh, I get that. What I’m asking is how does this have anything to do with us? You, even?” Ricky persists.
“Well, lemme finish, and maybe you’ll get it.”
Amy is looking at My Lai like she’s from another planet. My Lai could care less. That’s one of the things I found different from kids like My Lai and Scott, rich kids, they don’t give a fuck. Kids like me are walking around wondering what are people thinking, gonna think—shit, what are motherfuckers gonna do to me?
Scott looks excited. “Talk us through what you want to do and how. You were talking last night about being adopted. How does that figure into this?”
“Hmm, well, the shit I was saying about adoption, I mean, who fucking cares? Are you bored already or not with the adoptee trope? I mean, everything you pick up in Barnes & Noble is some goddamn half-breed or immigrant adoptee blues. They’re either grateful or resentful as hell. I was offering up the adoptee thing to you as part of a story. I want to go there to what this fucking country did, not just to me but to a nation, a race, why we ended up so poor, why our kids ended up on the adoption block in the first place. Why Vietnam? Why not Vietnam? Shit, I could be Vietnamese. That’s what my dad blamed his drinking and shit on, Vietnam. Not like he even went, dig that, he didn’t even go. He was affected . So then everything this asshole touches is affected, like forever. I want to use this.” She pulls a battered paperback out of her backpack. “I got this out of the dollar bin at the Strand, Bloods by Wallace Terry. And this.” She holds another book up. “My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh. I got it from the same place; it’s a blow-by-blow account of the massacre—”
“Massacre?” Amy scowls.
“Massacre, honey. Business as usual by the motherfuckers your mama and daddy pay taxes to.”
“I pay my own taxes,” Amy says.
“Do you
want to extract text directly from it? Can we use it?” Scott asks.
“Hell yeah, it was written in Vietnam times. This guy’s dead or in a nursing home for sure,” she says.
“Fossil,” Snake chimes.
“So lay it on us,” I say.
“Well, I think what I want to do is relive that day onstage. I don’t know yet. There’s text I definitely want to use. We can start by just playing around doing some improv with the video camera while I read from the text. It’ll give me an idea of how you guys feel the text. I see us dancing with some documentary footage behind us or even center stage. There’s been a lot, a shitload, of films, documentaries, and news archived about Vietnam.”
“So when did you change your name to My Lai?” Amy asks.
“Legally my name is still Nöel Wynne Desiré Orlinsky. At this stage of the game, I try to avoid any conflict that would interfere with my monthly EBT.”
“Come again?” Amy says.
“I don’t have time.” My Lai.
“That’s it for this. Here’s new rehearsal schedules,” My Lai announces.
WHEN I LEAVE, I feel like these notebooks are a dead baby I’m carrying in my backpack. Where to ditch it? Ditch the smell of roach shit, the old bitch sitting in that chair and a roach looking like it just crawled out of her head as it scuttles up the wall. Ditch the sound of her: Don’t leave, youze de only boy born alive to us. (Who the fuck is “us”?) Youze de seed.
I touch the line down the side of my face, it’s fading but ain’t never going to go all the way away. “Perfect face,” My Lai says, except for that. Roman says, “You more beautiful because of the scar, like those ancient Oriental painters who mess up a corner of they painting to show how perfect the rest is.” To me it looks like I got sliced in a street fight, but I didn’t get sliced in a street fight, I did it to myself. Well, I ain’t gonna do this to myself. These notebooks are some kind of indictment or . . . or judgment. They’re not normal. Scott, My Lai—what would they think?
Kill these lies, burn ’em! I can’t just start a fire on the street. I’m afraid if I put them in a trash can, someone will find them and trace them back to me. How? I don’t know, but the thought squeezes my stomach, makes me want to vomit—vomit Toosie in orange silk her young self and her old stinky self all muddled up in my mind. You beautiful, oh yez you is, not all big like you mama or pimple-face like yo’ weak daddy. Music is playing, I’m playing, doing big boy, smoking chiba, riding in cars, getting my dick sucked by girls who call it, like Toosie did, a “johnson,” then cutting, blood rain, Billie sings: I’ll never be the same. I want to go back to some place before this scar on my face, to something clean. I’ll never be the same there is such an ache in my heart. You is so beautiful, like art. You is a fine black boy, different; his tongue goes down the side of my face neck tits navel thighs, johnson it feels so good so why do I hate it uhh! Sometimes I do vomit. Hit Mickey D’s, the King, the Colonel, or Taco Bell and then upchuck, yuk! Nasty but better than being fat. I want to be muscle lean bone sleek. I want to vomit this shit. I can’t be what I want to be with this, this shit, filth: What dady do to me my lif not be what it shuld be cause mama an dady. My sun my lilte sun my lif his dady mine
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is broken-wigged bird
That cannot fly
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is broken-wigged bird
That cannot fly
Whoever she is, fills up ten pages copying that over and over, each time misspelling “winged.” It’s not until the ninth page she starts writing “winged” instead of “wigged.”
My mother? “My mother and father were married,” I say out loud. And, unfortunately, my mother got killed in a car accident, and my father got killed in the Gulf War. I’m a good person. I never hurt anybody. The sun is up. Shining. Central Park, the reservoir? Nah, too many people out there running and that fence, anybody see you throwing something over the fence into the water, they might shoot you. And some of these shits are written in pencil, and water won’t wash that away. Burn? Where? No, tear these shits in little pieces and throw them away. Let’s go to the park and get this over with. I have this fear like a nightmare: Roman is somehow there at 805 St Nicholas Avenue. The implants in his head are growing like geysers. He’s looking at Toosie, who’s standing there holding her coffeepot. “Now tell me everysing. Everysing.” He says. And she does. Then he gets in my face, “You wanna tell me this woulda been better than what I give you!” Come on, feet! The park, I know what I want to do, and I do it. Sitting on the grass, the notebooks stacked beside me, I start tearing them page by page into tiny bits. I shred them over my backpack, scooping any pieces that fall on the grass up and into the pack. By the time I’m through, my fingers hurt. I put on my stuffed backpack and start to run toward the 103rd Street subway station. There’s only two people, a professional-looking black guy and a white woman together. They could be police, but what am I gonna do? Litter, I never saw anybody get arrested for littering. They stiffen when I walk past them to the end of the platform, to the stinky hole where the train comes roaring out. My hands are full of bits of paper. The earth starts to rumble, the train is coming. COME ON, BITCH! I scream, and start throwing bits of paper into the black void. RUN OVER THAT, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! I scream at the approaching lights, reaching down into my pack, scooping handfuls of paper again and again up into the air over the steel tracks. As the train comes closer, they fly everywhere, down, up, back in my face. Ha! Maybe they’ll start a fire; they always say that, DON’T THROW PAPER ON THE TRACKS, IT COULD START A FIRE. Well, burn, baby, fuck it! The train roars past me, stops, and pulls out again. I turn my pack upside down over the tracks, watch the last bits of paper drift down onto the tracks. Free. I stand back and wait for the next train. Get on.
WHEN I GET HOME, Roman is like a puppy. I can’t even get in the door before he starts running his mouth.
“I was talking about you today.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Why you have that attitude? It was quite good. Alphonse, his boyfriend is going to Columbia and is writing a paper on Jean-Michel Pasquiat.”
“Basquiat.”
“OK, whatever. He asks me I ever heard of him. I go to the bookshelf, you has almost all his stuff. He say you is probably very smart young man. I say not probably, honey!”
“I’m really tired.”
“Too tired to listen? That don’t take no energy.” He pouts.
Roman has the Whitney Exhibition book on Basquiat open on the coffee table. One time, talking to Snake, I found out he had read the whole book too, not just Greg Tate’s essay but all the essays. My Lai and I read Story of O together. Roman had it sitting on his shelf, that and The Thief’s Journal—wild French stuff Roman never even read, one of the “boys” left it.
I wonder how much money he really has. I know he has a safety-deposit box where he keeps his stock certificates and bonds and jewelry. He told me. “I got to, some of the boys used to come here is bad. Come to rob you. You different from the other boys.” Not really. How did he get any fucking stocks and bonds anyway? Not teaching dance. Cash? Does he keep cash in the safety-deposit box? What’s a bond anyway?
But you know what, fuck it! Fuck his money, put it out your head, it’s the last thing tying you to this old douchebag. You’re gonna make money! Hell, what did My Lai say? “Shit, you are money!”
“He asks me—”
“What are you talking about?” I snap.
“Alphonse, my friend. What, you wasn’t listening? He asks me why you is not in school like his boyfriend if you so smart. I say I don’t know, but it’s a good idea. He says how old is he? I say twenty—”
“Why? I’m seventeen.”
“Well, you is been seventeen so long.”
He laughs. I laugh too, even though I half want to slap the shit out of him. But I don’t, number one, because I know he likes it and tw
o, because I’m tired of being mad.
“You want to go to college. It’s all around here, Columbia, City College, right here.”
“I know.”
I look at the coffee table. How fucking weird; he has the book open to pages 88–89, Acque Pericolose. The reproduction takes up both pages.
“Let’s go get some Chinese, OK,” he says.
“OK.”
We’re standing on Broadway near Ninety-eighth Street in front of Hunan Balcony when I feel someone’s eyes on me. I look up; it’s Amy, the new girl. I look away, try to act like I didn’t see her, like she didn’t see me. You saw someone that looked like me, you stupid ho. My stomach contracts. Shit, me pretending I didn’t see her don’t change she saw me standing with this antique fag! I feel like killing myself. That’s good and stupid, really stupid. Just because I’m walking down the street or standing on a corner with someone doesn’t mean I’m with them. Come on, gimme a break! I’m a dancer. He’s one of the best ballet teachers in the city. I’m a dancer, but hey, do I look like—Where is she? Let me explain. She’s gone, of course she is, why wouldn’t she be? The smell of sautéing garlic coming from the restaurant nauseates me.
“What’s wrong with you?” Roman asks.
“Nothing. I’m tired. I’m going home.”
“Going home? But you didn’t eat nothing yet.”
“I said I don’t feel good.”
“You don’t feel good?” he echoes.
I turn from him. Now, I think, now. They can’t put me in no group home or juvenile lockup. I’m a man, an artist, hanging out with people in their twenties! I head for the subway, the swish of his tight jeans and clip of his leather-heeled cowboy boots right behind me.
“What’s going on here!”
What’s going on here? Late in the day to be asking that shit. I run down the subway steps and lose the sound of his boots behind me on the subway stairs. All these selves are floating in my head as the train jolts out of the station, morphing into people with names like Arthur or J.J. I see myself doing weird shit, but I know I’m basically normal. That shit at St Ailanthus was some kind of Halloween psycho. But back then I thought I had been kicked out of some kind of paradise.