Sketchtasy

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  Maybe if we pretend this isn’t happening, it isn’t happening. Some woman opens her door and I don’t know what I’m looking for, but she closes the door anyway. Then some guy with greasy hair comes out of his house up ahead, rubbing his face like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, and then he starts screaming at us, something about his neighborhood and what the fuck.

  Actually it’s our neighborhood too, I say, and he says what, what did you just say? What?

  I say we live here, honey.

  And he spits on the ground, then rushes back inside and you can hear him going up the stairs in heavy shoes. We keep walking, and just after we pass his house there’s a loud noise behind us like maybe he dropped a brick out his window, or not a brick, something bigger, maybe a cinderblock. It kind of makes me jump but I’m still trying to act like I don’t notice, though Polly’s already turned. Alexa, she says, do you think he was trying to hit us? I’m looking at her and she’s biting her lip and we’re both holding onto the laundry cart and pushing from different sides because otherwise it starts to collapse.

  This is ridiculous, I say, but then I notice Polly’s about to cry so I reach over to touch her hand even though I know maybe that’s not the safest thing. But it’s not like anyone hasn’t spotted us spoiling their Italian-American homeland—they’re already angry about the Latinos on the other side of the square but we’re right next to them. So we push the laundry cart the rest of the way just like that, with my clammy hand on top of Polly’s sweaty hand, frosted blue fingernails on top of fuck-me fuchsia. At one point Polly starts to shake like she’s really going to cry, so I stop pushing and look over. Her face is all pink, glassy eyes and just a hint of dark eyeliner contrasting her reddish-blonde curls and freckles, and I notice the light is really beautiful right now.

  I need a cocktail, Polly says when we get inside and I say there’s Stoli in the freezer. Usually I don’t drink at home because it’s boring, but I guess if there’s a time for cocktails it’s now. I pour two screwdrivers and Polly snorts a line in her room. Do you want any coke, she says, her voice already different.

  No, I say, I have to take the car to the repair shop. Or maybe it’s too late. Are you okay?

  I’m okay now, she says, and suddenly I feel so sad that I don’t know how to speak. Polly comes into the dining room and wiggles her tongue, shakes her hips, and puts the mirror on the table with way too much white powder. I snort a line, and oh, yes, let it begin.

  I put on “Brighter Days.” Usually I don’t like the vocal diva drama, but this song is different, it’s Cajmere—yes, honey, those clanking beats rotating into the vocal shaking with the booming bass and they call this the new Chicago sound because it’s got that vocal but also it’s hard—Polly, if this is what they’re playing in Chicago, maybe we should move there.

  I sit down with the cocktails, and Polly lights a cigarette and looks at me in that way that means we’re here in this mood together, and I say what are we going to do on your birthday?

  The same thing we do every day.

  Should we go to P-town?

  Alexa, we are not going to make it to P-town.

  What about Revere Beach?

  Revere Beach—that’s on the Blue Line, we can make it to Revere. For sunset.

  Oh, that’s perfect—almost feels like my birthday.

  You didn’t tell me about your birthday.

  I’ll tell you next time.

  Alexa, you have a page.

  Should I call it?

  That’s up to you.

  The way this song takes a cheesy narrative about feeling so blue, that’s what the vocal keeps saying, feeling so blue, and then bringing it into something so blue it’s bluer than blue, but what does that make it? This cocktail, this conversation right now, our relationship, I mean we’re not talking about anything, but somehow we’re talking about everything. I don’t want to turn a trick right now.

  But, sure, I could use the money. He answers on one ring, says I have a sexy voice, wants to know if I do in-calls, tells me he lives right around the corner in Chelsea, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

  I get off the phone and Polly’s already doing another line. She hardly even shakes with the burn anymore, just looks at me when she’s done and it’s her eyes that are on fire, she wants to know if I think my trick will really show up.

  I don’t know—he said fifteen minutes, is Chelsea that close?

  You’re the one who’s good at geography. Do you want another line?

  Oh, yes—feel it, feel it, that’s what the music is telling me now—hold that note and shake it, break it, make it into everything I need. Polly, I hope this doesn’t ruin my mood. He did tell me I have a nice voice.

  You do have a nice voice. Tyler.

  Girl, don’t call me Tyler.

  I guess I better hide and do my makeup.

  Maybe I should change my pants. Oh, wait—this is the version of “Brighter Days” that I really like, let’s dance. Wait, was that a knock? Polly, was that a knock already?

  I rush to the living room, look outside, and sure enough some guy in a brown jacket who actually looks like he’s under forty. I open the door. Tyler, he says, and holds out his hand like we just met in the boardroom or at the golf course or—no, where do guys like this meet? The game, right, the game—we met at the game, score! He squeezes my hand way too tightly.

  He looks around, but there’s nothing to look at in the living room so he asks if I live alone, says he likes this music, what do you call it, do you ever go to Chaps? How come? I bet you’d be a big hit there.

  When we get to my room he grabs the back of my head and pushes his tongue all the way back. He tastes like cherry, no not cherry—raspberry?

  He lets go and starts to pull off my shirt. He’s wearing a lot of layers—one of those brown work jackets, a blue button-down work shirt, wifebeater, Dickies, work boots—actually he’s kind of dressed like some of the fags in San Francisco, or maybe he’s one of the guys some of the fags in San Francisco are dressed like. Hairy chest, slight tan line right around the wifebeater and his dick is already hard, he pushes me onto the bed. I’m worried I’m not going to get hard because of the coke, but as soon as he starts grinding against me I realize that won’t be a problem. Heavy, he says, squeezing my dick.

  Heavy? When I look him in the eyes again there’s nothing but desire and I wonder if he sees that too. Holding my head while I’m sucking his dick like he wants to make sure I don’t go anywhere, and I’m wondering why it can’t always be like this—sex, sex work, my life, the music, Boston, the bed, my skin, the air, sweat on his legs, leg hairs, a map, this map, my breathing, hope, close your eyes, eyelashes, pulse, the light, a game, my heartbeat, intimacy—and how can someone’s dick in my mouth feel like a hug, but also there’s the feeling right in my head, everywhere and nowhere, the weather, what, I even like the weather right now with this guy pumping my face yes the feeling of his hands squeezing my head until I’m starting to choke and right then he pulls my face up to his, so much spit between us and I can feel the places where his lips are chapped.

  Now he’s rubbing my thighs, yes, exactly like that, how is it that sometimes they know right away, and sometimes they never figure it out, no matter how many times you tell them? And then he’s behind me, holding my dick, precome on his finger and he sticks it in my mouth, kind of sweet I mean the taste but maybe he’s sweet too. I want to treat you good, he says—don’t worry, I’ll go slow. Which is what they all say. But I reach over for a condom anyway—it hurts way too much at first and just when I’m about to say let’s try something else he collapses on top of me and then somehow it doesn’t hurt anymore, the smell of his sweat mixed with Drakkar Noir I remember that smell from high school, somehow I thought the deodorant was sophisticated, that sleek black case.

  Hold me, I say, and he does, now just moving his dick slowly and he’s saying yeah, yeah, and pretty soon I’m saying yeah, yeah, and he pulls my head around we’re pressing tongue
s like we’re both trying to get to the other side a game I like and usually I can’t get fucked for nearly this long. Now it’s the song I always fast-forward, the one where suddenly it’s some straight guy saying whoop that pussy, whoop that pussy, which is kind of funny, now that I think about it, considering the situation, but I hope this guy doesn’t notice, no he doesn’t notice, probably wouldn’t matter if he did notice, he might be straight anyway, don’t think about that, there he goes again saying yeah, yeah, yeah, hands on my hips and I move them to my inner thighs, he’s jerking my dick but I’m going to come so I pull his hands away, he says what? And then he makes this noise that I can’t place, air going into the back of his throat and then coming out right into my ear and he’s panting, maybe he just came because he’s jerking me really fast and I don’t even feel myself coming until I open my eyes and look down at the puddle of white and yellow on the burgundy sheets and just like that he pulls out, just in time for it not to hurt, and when I lie down on my back he’s looking at the condom in his hands like it’s a mysterious fallen creature smelling faintly or maybe not that faintly of shit so I take it and drop it on the floor. He’s already pulling up his pants, counting out twenties. He hands me $220, a seventy-dollar tip, says can I see you again? I’ll let myself out.

  Okay, I say, even though I’m a little worried he’s going to run into Polly, but I lie back and close my eyes anyway, then open my eyes and look at all the dots on the ceiling, the indentations, the different textures of plaster, maybe water damage, mildew covered up, a few brown and green and black specks. I close my eyes again and feel my mouth fall open, still so much saliva, the smell of his sweat, my eyelashes flickering really fast and then I put on my robe and go in the bathroom to wash up.

  Now there’s the other song I hate on this album, the sample of a man’s voice saying, “I ain’t fucked all week. I ain’t fucked all week. I ain’t fucked all week.” I guess Cajmere’s trying to prove she’s a real man or something—you know, with all those faggots making house music about brighter days, he really has to make sure to distinguish himself, right? But still that rattling claptrap in front of and behind the vocals until the beats take over, except here comes another clever chorus and Polly says it first: I’m a horny motherfucker. And the album says it. And Polly says it. She’s talking about me, but I don’t even like sex most of the time.

  Polly says how was it? It was hot, I say, and Polly laughs and says aren’t they all? No, I’m serious—do you want to go to Bertucci’s?

  I don’t have any money. I’m getting ready for the block.

  It’s on me. He gave me a seventy-dollar tip.

  No wonder you thought he was hot.

  Then we’ll go to Luxor. Call Joey to see if she can get K. I’ll take a shower.

  How much do you want?

  I don’t know. Maybe forty. Consider it an early birthday gift.

  When I get out of the shower, Polly’s staring at a little mound of coke on her mirror. She says Joey can get us a gram of K for fifty.

  Perfect. Tell her I’ll give her a quarter then.

  She already requested that. As a service fee.

  Of course she did.

  This is all the coke left in the world—do you want half?

  Sure.

  I notice Polly’s using my razor blade, the big one with a fluorescent-pink handle I got in San Francisco to scrape paint off a window—I’m good at saving things, there’s always another purpose.

  But here’s what’s pathetic: I’m already starting to wonder whether that guy’s going to call again. Even though I know he’s not going to. Really I just need to have hot sex with someone I actually care about, but then Polly passes me the dollar bill and I do a line and yes, it’s a great day at the office. Coke and carrot juice and cocktails, let’s dance to the sound of sirens filtered through the elevator oh I love these beats, and it’s starting to get dark out. “U Got Me Up” comes on, and right when the vocal moves into the shakedown we’re both out on the checkered linoleum dance floor, drinks in hand and Polly wants to know if she should call a cab. We’re dancing close until we’re leaning on one another, falling into a kind of balance.

  HOW TO LIVE

  Melissa says ACT UP meetings keep shrinking, and everyone’s getting more desperate. There are these two guys who moved from Orlando and they’re totally irrational, they don’t want to prepare for anything—they’re scaring everyone away. Half the things they want to do don’t make any sense—everyone gets irrational when they’re dying but it’s not like Colin, she says, remember how Colin would say crazy things, but they actually made sense.

  And I tell her I still have some of Colin’s ashes. What are you going to do with them, she says, and I tell her my idea about throwing them on businessmen downtown, and she says: If I was here longer, we could do that together.

  I can’t believe Melissa’s actually here, I mean we went so long without talking that I thought I was never going to hear from her again. But it turned out she was just busy with activism, in jail a few times and dealing with all the legal stuff—now she’s in Boston on the way to her brother’s graduation in upstate New York. While she’s telling me about activism there’s a part of me that wishes I were in San Francisco, and a part of me that just feels so distant, I mean it feels like a whole other world.

  I tell Melissa I read somewhere that forty percent of gay men will be positive by the time they’re thirty-five, but here no one talks about AIDS except to tell you who to stay away from, and Melissa asks me what I think about the theory that HIV started with the hepatitis vaccine. And that’s when I get that panicking feeling like I’m about to have an incest flashback, and didn’t this happen before?

  Then I realize it’s 3:45 a.m. so we’re getting ready for bed but actually I’m still scared. I’m trying to figure out how to tell Melissa that I don’t want her to sleep with me, that in San Francisco it always made me so tense, that I wanted to share space in an intimate way but her body in my bed made me freeze. It was something about how she smelled like my mother, but I didn’t make that connection at first. I’m still worried that if I say something it’ll sound misogynist.

  Finally I manage to say it’s not about you it’s about me, it’s about my memories, how they’re stored in my body and I don’t know what to do exactly but would you mind staying in the other room?

  And Melissa looks sad, but only for a moment and then she’s angry in that way that makes her mouth and eyes move around like they’re trying to get off her face. But she’s not angry at me, she’s angry at my parents and what they’ve done. She holds out her hands in a shy gesture and then we hug for a while and when we’re done I say what about your parents, how are you doing with that? And she says I think I’m getting somewhere, I joined a group. And then we set up the guest room, and I leave a note for Polly since it’s after four but I guess she’s still on the block.

  The next day, Melissa wants to cook a big meal and invite people over, but who should we invite? I call Joey, even though she doesn’t eat. Do I have any other friends? Melissa and I go to Bread & Circus to get groceries, and then we’re sitting down for a snack from the salad bar and Melissa says you know, you seem calmer here.

  Really, I ask. And Melissa says really. And I say I don’t feel calmer.

  But then I’m thinking about it on the T, and I realize there are things I do here that I would never have done in San Francisco, like go to the park and sit by myself and look at the water. Or just spend time alone or with Polly in the house. Maybe I’m not so manic. Maybe sometimes my head feels clearer.

  We get back to the house and Melissa says it’s nice to see you here, I can tell you’re learning. I ask her what she thinks I’m learning. And she says: How to live.

  The next day Melissa’s getting ready to leave and she stops and looks at me and says I don’t know what I’m going to do when I see my father. And I say what do you mean, don’t you see him every day? And she says that’s what I mean. We hug for a really
long time, and after she leaves I’m sitting in the apartment wondering if I’ll ever have friends like that in Boston.

  I go with Polly to get cigarettes, and even before we turn the corner I hear one of the neighborhood kids yelling: It’s the gays. And then there’s a whole group of these kids following us, carrying sticks like they were waiting until we left the house and maybe we’re supposed to be scared but these kids are tiny, I mean the ringleader can’t be much older than ten. Of course she’s a tomboy with ratty hair, food on her lips and dirt all over her hands, and I want to say look in the mirror, honey, but instead I just smile and wave. So then she comes right up to us with her greasy face and says yuck, gays, you’re going to burn in hell.

  We go in the store, and when we come out the kids are still there. They follow us all the way to the bridge, and I make sure to smile the whole time like this is such great entertainment but lately it seems like Polly can’t bring herself to leave the house without a bump of coke and I hope these kids aren’t the reason.

  Joanna’s back at her mother’s house in Issaquah, trying to kick again. I go over to Bread & Circus and borrow the largest container of Rainbow Light multivitamins, a bunch of Emergen-C packets, B complex, digestive enzymes and a few other things that look like they might be helpful. And then a thirty-six-ounce container of Bragg Liquid Aminos, since Joanna loves those amino acids. And then when I’m walking out the door after spending thirty-five dollars, but I have at least $150 of supplements in my bag, I get that rush like yes, I love it here, and I go right over to the post office across the street and mail everything to Issaquah.

  Then Polly and I are getting ready for Quest, or not getting ready really, just waiting until it’s late enough, and then I get a trick, which turns into another trick, which turns into $350 and I’m worn the fuck out but I make it to Quest to meet Polly anyway, which is fine until we’re getting ready to go and I look in my purse and there’s nothing there. I mean there’s my face powder, my keys and nothing else. I’m so angry I’m shaking—outside I’m yelling I sold my ass for that money, I sold my ass—and everyone’s trying to pretend they don’t notice. These bitches think they can talk about you like you’re trash and then steal your money when you’re not looking. When we get home I’m still angry so I decide to make a flyer and hand it out next week—Polly thinks I’m joking, but honey, I’m going to make a flyer, and then we’ll hand it out next week, okay?