by Camille Roy
Then she pressed a blade against my throat, and I went blank. Breathing hard, bent over towards the floor, our bodies gently rocked together. No feeling, just silence and curiosity, a deeper level of attention.
She sprang away, shaking her hand out, laughing a little hysterically. I looked for the knife but all I saw was her right thumbnail, long and curved like a horn. It was yellowish, coated with clear nail polish. She held it up like she was exposing a secret.
—You’re playing with my head, I told her.
Nadine sat on the couch and hunched over, staring at her hand. It lay there like a little claw.
—The last time I did that, this guy was dragging me out of his car and into a cornfield. We were somewhere outside of Toledo. The fuckwad let me go after I stuck my thumbnail into his gut. It was dark, he couldn’t see what I had or didn’t have.
—That sucks, I said, sort of stupidly.
I stuck my thumbnail against my throat. It felt convincing. I was filled with admiration.
—You’re so streetwise, Nadine.
She just looked at me. Smells of belly sweat and fear. Real fear clears my mind, I try to remember that. I sat down next to her, and awkwardly, buddy-style, put my arm across her shoulders.
—Where did you sleep after that?
—I didn’t sleep. I sat until dawn under some bushes at the edge of the field, listening to the trucks.
Appearances were dazzling and indecipherable. I believed they hid real experience. So of course I still wanted to have sex, whatever that was. Choose me, out of all this blur. But don’t you need to remember pleasure in order to have had it? I remember Nadine curled up next to me, running her fingers across my stomach, breasts, neck. I think I remember that. The rest tumbles from my brain in a swirl of beforeand-after. Clothes on the floor. The bare branches of a birch tree pressed against the window. I raised my head and heard a scratching sound; it was the branches. I wanted Nadine to be blond all the way through, I really wanted that. Or maybe I just needed reality to finally arrive, and what could be more real than sex? At least it would make her my girlfriend.
Her lips were thin and difficult to get hold of. She wrapped her legs around my waist and rocked and twisted rapidly. Orgasm launched her away from me (like everything else she did). That was what I expected. But in fact afterwards I kept hearing a sweet far-off drone: it was Nadine telling me stories as she lightly ran her fingers across my shoulders, stomach, thighs. What was she saying? I felt almost drowned, like I was swimming against everything into a black sheet with stars.
5. Postcard
The card was waiting for me the next morning when I stumbled into the dorm and fished around groggily in my mailbox. I flipped through the announcements (class schedule changes, cafeteria menu) and found the card at the bottom. I knew it was from him; something about the odd finality of the picture. It showed a little boat in the middle of a lake in autumn at sunset, with the silhouette of a man and girl facing one another. The lake surface shimmered orange and yellow in circles around the boat. The scene conveyed a sinister peace, but something seemed about to happen, because neither could get off the boat without moving. I felt a shiver of hatred. It passed through me, like background radiation. I turned over the card and this is what was written on the back:
Who is the true bridegroom?
If he hollers let him go, bitch.
—W.S.
I made my way to my room and went to bed. Or, rather, I fell into bed, and kept falling. If I’d had thoughts, I’m sure they would have been dramatic ones, wild voices calling across the rocky embankments. But I just lay under my blanket and let the marbles fall out of my head. I pulled my knees to my chest and cried harshly.
There was a knock on the door. I looked up and it was Cheryl, with Sammy just behind her. Their faces wore an expression I didn’t recognize. I rejected it. I raised my head and screamed like a banshee,
—Get Out Get Out GET OUT GET OUT!!
The door clicked shut. I guess I slept. I opened my eyes and stared at nothing for awhile. Felt tender, sickening lassitude. Eventually I noticed the postcard lying face down on the floor. The postmark was unfamiliar. I picked it up and realized: it had been mailed from Brazil.
The stamp seemed to glimmer in the dreariness of my room. It was a rainforest parrot, tropical pink and green and yellow, styled as a paper cut-out. The lovely word Brazilia was stamped in tiny letters on the wings of this bird. Could it be… that my stalker had left the country?
I had to take this strange fact out into the world, which meant talking to Cheryl about it. I threw on some fresh clothes and set out to find her: I tried her room, then the Snack Closet, the Fresh Fried Cafe, all the vending machines. I trolled the halls and found Erik, feeding quarters into a Coke dispenser.
—You didn’t know? Maybe she couldn’t find you. Cheryl got an abortion yesterday. She’s probably at home or off somewhere with Sammy.
His soda clattered down to the opening.
I watched Erik pop open the Coke and gulp, gulp. I didn’t say anything, though my thoughts tumbled. Greasy, radiant shame.
Erik drained his Coke, tossed the can, and left, while I still stood there stupidly. Eventually I slunk back to my room and put the postcard in the drawer with all the others. I looked at it one more time and a thought occurred (which didn’t feel like mine): Now my collection is complete.
6. Dream life
Cheryl wouldn’t hold it against me, I knew it. She just wasn’t that kind. But I felt dazed. Was that unexpressed regret? I never did ask Cheryl about the abortion.
I never did, I never did…
It didn’t feel like a failure. Something just emptied out. My new condition, once it arrived, was oddly comfortable. Paralysis can be languid, even relaxing. Cheryl and I nodded when we crossed paths, which turned out to be surprisingly seldom. She moved in with Sammy that spring, somewhere off-campus. Then I never saw her.
I was the faithful one. I possessed a stubborn faith in my tumble after the elusive Nadine, and I would not stop. I wanted to fill my adulthood with adult-type experiences. What I got was screwy tortures and never enough sex. To be fair, Nadine threw her arms around me now and then and tried to give me—love, I guess.
In a lot of ways, I never bothered to relate to her. Whenever I made a joke, she looked at me sideways and a discouraging dead space opened up in our conversation. Nadine was too skittish and headlong to get the humor of any situation she wasn’t the center of. As my real friendships had fallen away, I mostly ended up having fantasy conversations with other people. Especially Cheryl.
Like when the picture of Alice and her fiancée arrived one day in the mail. They were posed so that Alice appeared to be shorter. What a stretch! Cheryl, I wanted to say, Remember the Texas Rangers who rescued Alice from her schizo mother? She’s marrying one, only toy-size. Alice is marrying Ed. Remember Ed? The one you used to call the tiniest Texan imaginable, the pocket-size Texan.
In the photo, Ed wore a cowboy hat and Alice was positioned as the loyal little woman at his side, absolutely clear-eyed and beaming, as if to say, this is not an acid trip.
I dropped that photo in the drawer with all the weirdo postcards.
I missed Cheryl so much it was annoying.
Dream life with Nadine. We were at the bar almost every night. One day I woke up and she was already dressed, smoking. Maybe she had never gone to bed. She looked tired and careless, slumped in the chair, in her jeans and cowboy boots, taking one drag after another as she stared levelly at me.
—I can’t deal with you anymore.
I felt agreeable. I think I went back to sleep. I still saw her everywhere, possibly more often than before. We shared the same shadow.
Nadine was just a girl in a pile of girls, swarming. She grinned like a drunk. Yet something true about her still seems so beautiful to me, perhaps it was the light behind her skin that spilled out at her elbows, her lips, under the arches of her feet. Or was it her deformity, the spine which kn
itted her back into a slight twist so that her tits protruded, high and separate? It’s a strange way to touch the world. Years later, I read something about the appeal of blonds—they bruise easily. I put that thought next to Nadine, as though I were putting a piece of her hair in a locket. But it’s nothing like the way I really feel.
It was an August day, hot and clear. I stuck out my thumb as cars zipped by. After they passed, I started walking down the tarmac road, through a county of red dirt and warped tiny pines. I was going to work. Eventually a dusty hatchback skidded to a halt at the shoulder. When I opened the door there was a shiny revolver on the passenger seat. The driver said, I’m an off-duty policeman, flashed a big goofy grin and stuck the gun into the glove compartment. That’s the way it started. I remember there was a light at the end but no tunnel.
Bright blue sky reflected in gun metal.
My sex life begins later, in a tiny loft above Sam’s Health Foods Store. The whites of Sam’s eyes were yellow as scrambled eggs, and his wiry hairs seemed about to spring off his head. Sam employed me and Max, his brother. Although Max was only twenty-two, he had a musty old man smell and hair grew out of his ears. Sam let me sleep in the store’s loft when I worked till closing. After I wiped the counters and dropped the day’s wad of cash in the bank slot across the street, I’d climb the ladder up to Max’s pile of porn.
Why are there so many body parts? I wondered as I fingered Max’s magazines. The only body in that hot crawl space was mine. I gently touched the women’s cunts, scalded pink cracks. On these nights, my mind rose out of my body and floated around the rafters, dry as dust. It’s that sexual specificity, like rocks in the brain. Do you know what I mean? I was eighteen and it was stunning. Fantasies lurched through my mind like drugs. Any feeling was appropriate because my head was empty. I started carrying a knife when I hitched rides to work. I’d sit in the back of the car and imagine playing their throats like violins. After I’m done with you, confession will be a relief. Lots of guys had ponytails then, which made it easier.
Twinkle little star, give me your revolver—that’s what I said to the off-duty policeman as I opened the glove compartment. I giggled when he threw me out.
There was a dyke story in one of Max’s porn magazines. It was my favorite, but not because I liked it exactly. Reading it by the light of my flashlight was like examining a photograph of dead relatives. On the first page there was a drawing of the author, Lisa V., grinning crazily as she rowed a small boat on a stormy ocean. The dizzy feeling of the picture had something to do with eating pussy, which was explained carefully, step by step, to the male audience. The story reminded me of Anita, only because it didn’t resemble anything we’d done together.
Anita was a small person and her moans sounded like soft hoots. She cracked out shaky orgasms that left me clutching her fingers. Hers was my first pussy and I enjoyed playing with it. I tried flicking her clit with my finger as I listened to her breathing. But sex with Anita was mild, like a survey. We did this-and-that—whatever she’d spent her marriage fantasizing about. Once I tongued her asshole, because she wanted me to. Then I felt nauseated. “Why’d you make me do that?” I said. She giggled and grabbed my tit. “You’ll do whatever I want you to do,” she said.
Anita had a husband, Mark, and me (before I left the state), but they kept me a secret. I was eighteen, and Anita was my first.
What’s with the body anyway, I said to Anita, and she said it has to do with space, occupation. Give it a try, she said, backing me into a corner. Put your legs and arms up—expect a circus. Is it possible to walk away if you don’t like it anymore? Anita’s legs were lights underwater. I stood as still as a butler; I didn’t know where I was. The husband, Mark, replaced me, but not before I’d tasted her cunt.
Mark and Anita picked me up in the cafe where I worked. It was pretty easy, I guess. They sat at a table in my section for several hours, swapping stories of payoffs, political vendettas, feuds between the police and fire departments, and I drifted by, listening. I noticed Mark first, actually. He had a cynical way of nibbling at a cigarette. Anita stabbed little pieces of cheese with a toothpick and drank white wine. When she looked up from her glass, she was usually staring at me. It turned out they were newspaper reporters. And they knew a good bar, etcetera.
It was a nearly empty jazz club. Anita danced by herself, spinning around the small dance floor with her arms swaying, while Mark and I leaned against the back wall, watching her.
Mark was neat and compact with dark hair. Anita had small perky tits. Even sitting back on the couch, after we got to their apartment, her nipples pointed up through the soft knit top she was wearing with jeans. Her torso was square atop long slim legs, and she had a big pillow of wavy auburn hair. But her face was distractingly broad, a fat person’s face. Mark took a hundred dollar bill out of his wallet, rolled it into a thin tube, and passed it around on a mirror with lines of cocaine.
Coolness at the back of my throat while I tried to fall asleep. Murmuring from Mark and Anita’s bedroom, then quiet. Dim streetlight bled through the curtain over the couch, where I was curled under a pinkish yellow blanket. Every time something happens, I adjust to a different kind of silence. Perhaps they had tense words as I was sliding gently out of consciousness, but I heard nothing. I woke with a start to hear Anita’s slow sobs, a low throbbing like a cello. Her cries were bleak beyond disclosure, though their door was open a crack. It flooded me with excitement, a sexual disturbance. As it went on and on, she began to sound like the rhythm of my breathing, and I fell asleep.
Nothing much happened for the next few weeks. The three of us hung around together and I spent more nights on their couch, while the point (which even I knew was sex) didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Not that I cared very much; I wanted experiences. Was I going to turn into a lesbian? Anyhow, I wondered where the sex was—Mark and Anita didn’t seem to be having any, at least while I was lying out there. Then, suddenly, they did. I heard every moan, because the door was open a crack, as I sat by the coffee table wiping the mirror clean with my finger and rubbing the leftover cocaine on my gums. Buzz.
Weeks later, Anita asked me what I thought. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Just tell me your impression. She was pushy like that. So, I told her I was amazed how much noise Mark had made, those moaning noises—it sounded so femme. She laughed at my inexperience. In the movies men don’t make noises like that when they’re screwing, I said.
The next time I spent a night on their couch, Anita began sobbing again. Then she stopped, and Mark came out in his bathrobe. He lit a cigarette and sat down in the chair across from the couch.
“I’m going away for two months,” he said, “I understand you are going to fuck my wife.” He jabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and sighed. “Anita’s had the hots for you from the start.”
Their door was open. I imagined her listening, curled in their bed, eyes open and face wet.
The next time I came around their place Mark was gone. Nothing changed except Anita seduced me and we started doing it all the time. What I mean is that the connection between us didn’t intensify. When she wanted sex, a glare would lurch out of her, a kind of cold pornographic light. It embarrassed me. Once afterward, she looked at me with an amused expression and asked, Are you a dyke yet? I mumbled something and she said, Well you choose your apples.
I was her idea, the fix for a wife with lesbian dreams. She never told me the details, but I could feel them pushing out at night, in the way that there’s a ghost town inside every city. It made her ferocious but not personal. She really thought I’d be grateful later. Adolescence is a form of brain death, she told me. Thanks, I said, and she laughed. Now she’s silent because she’s in the past, like someone dead.
Once she wanted me to tell her my sexual fantasies. Confession is good information, she said, stroking my clit with her finger. I shuddered, then recoiled. What could I say? My mouth was unconscious. I should have whispered, It feels like y
our nostalgia.
Anita was supposed to make me a dyke; that’s what I was waiting for. It sounds so stupid, she put out in almost every manner I could want. But I felt I was sticking around because I didn’t get it yet—was this lesbianism? I had wanted a different surprise; I kept waiting for her to give me one. I wish I could say I got fed up and left. But Anita actually told me it was time, once Mark got back. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but it was something along the lines of Don’t you have better things to do, now that you’re all grown up?
Anita hated writing journalism. She really thought of herself as a poet. Once, after reading her own article in the newspaper, she said, You can’t pummel vivid into a normal sentence. It’s hopeless as marriage. So, I wrote her a note before I left. “Thanks for everything,” it said, and then I tacked on a quote she’d found in some magazine. It was Gary Gilmore, interviewed by Norman Mailer. “You want to learn how to be an artist? Then learn how to eat pussy. That’s the only art you’ll ever need to learn.”
It’s scenic around here. People come to bathe in the desert springs. Red rock cliffs splinter like icebergs. Outside the store, a forest of pinyon pines grows as high as my knees, and the dust is a fine red sand. Sam’s customers are mostly tourists, they sit at the tables outside with their bags of carrot chips and herbal iced tea. The breeze smells like sage. I rinse the sponge and wipe the counter, then take a bite of organic cream cheese coconut cookie. It’s tender as clouds.
I’m still working my way through Max’s porn. I wonder if he knows. Nasty Max—he makes cracks about my hitchhiking. Then drive me to work, I say. I call him Trash Can behind his back, because of the junk he eats. Max says if I don’t watch my ass, the local psycho killer will pick me up. Who might that be, I ask, and he snickers.