Sketchtasy

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  And my father says it again.

  I wanted to invite them to Boston, I wanted to spend a day together first, do something relaxing, appreciate anything of value that we might have together.

  My mother says are you there?

  Maybe I can just hang up, hang up and pretend we got disconnected. Instead I say hold on, and then I go in the bathroom and look in the mirror: Who are you? Who the fuck are you? I’m shaking. I don’t know what to do. I have it all in my head, it’s all there, I could confront him now.

  I sit on the toilet because suddenly I have to shit. I think about leaving this apartment, and never coming back. I think about rushing into the other room and smashing the phone with a hammer. I think about doing a bump of coke.

  A bump of coke—that’s so completely wrong it’s perfect.

  Oh, yes, little tiny diamonds, bring me home: “I am ready. I am ready. I am ready” is speeding up in my head until it’s just the drumroll and I’m six feet off the floor. But I’m on the phone. I’m on the phone again, telling my parents I decided to go to therapy in order to get ready to confront my father.

  Confront—my father doesn’t want me to use the word confront. He says it again, it’s like a script they’ve agreed upon, no deviating from the script: Karla thinks you believe something sexual happened between us.

  Confront—what was I saying about confront? I’m trying to stay focused. I say I never understood until my first relationship, my first relationship with another boy, in San Francisco, when there were places he would touch and I would completely shut off. Anywhere near my neck. Down my belly. I just thought oh, he’s having fun, and I don’t want to spoil it.

  My mother says she’s worried about my hustling. They’re worried about my hustling.

  I’m not talking about hustling, I’m talking about my life. I’m talking about when I was a kid and whenever you would invite your friends over they were impressed because I knew the capital of Madagascar, they liked it when I would name the different kinds of cheeses or when Dad told them I was reading the same books he was, like that biography of Stalin, remember that? They thought I was so smart—what do you want to be when you grow up, doctor or lawyer? And there was that time Dad was driving me home from school, and I was telling him about my day, and he just kept nodding his head and I knew he wasn’t paying attention. So I said: I’m just going to open the door right here and lie down in the middle of traffic. And he said okay, that sounds good. That sounds good. He said: that sounds good.

  And my father interrupts me again to say Karla thinks, and I say: You’ve never given a shit before what Karla thinks, so what has changed now.

  And my mother says: We’re worried about you. We’re worried about your hustling.

  And my father says: Are you on drugs?

  And I say: Am I on drugs? Am I on drugs? I am on so many drugs that I finally figured out how to think.

  My father says: Do you need help?

  And I say: Do I need help? Do I need fucking help? Look who’s asking me now.

  My father says: You’re psychotic.

  And I say: Look—the psychiatrist is making a diagnosis. Maybe I’m on the wrong drugs. What would you like to prescribe for me, Doctor Freud?

  This is when my father starts yelling, I knew he was going to start sometime so I’m studying the way the floor in the kitchen slants in the opposite direction from the floor in the dining room I guess because this building is so old but I’m not sure how old, maybe the late 1800s but when did they put this linoleum in, I guess the sixties or seventies, and my father’s yelling something about how I’m psychotic, I need help, they’re going to come up to Boston and make sure I get the right kind of assistance, obviously I’m not seeing the right therapist, this is my therapist’s fault, something needs to change, I’m in danger, it’s about my lifestyle, they’re worried about my lifestyle and something needs to change.

  And just then he pauses, and that’s when I say it. That’s when I say I know you sexually abused me, you raped me, you molested me, and I don’t want to talk to you ever again unless you can come to terms with it. And then he starts screaming again so I hang up the phone. I hang up the phone, and unplug it, and then I take a deep breath. I go in the bathroom, and I do another bump. I feel like a different person. I feel totally calm. I feel fine. I feel like I can go on with the rest of my life.

  I want to do something relaxing, maybe a movie, what’s playing? Oh, Kids—the one that got the NC-17 rating, that’s at the Sony Nickelodeon. I need to eat something, but first I’ll take a shower, yes, a shower, my favorite place.

  I forgot this theater was literally on the BU campus. All the most horrible people in the world, really, all of them, right here. And can you believe they card me when I buy a ticket, I mean do I really look like I’m sixteen? And then, what the fuck is this movie? It starts with a het preteen make-out scene, you can see the sweat on their skin, little zits on her face. I thought Larry Clark was gay. I’ve seen some of his photos, and it’s all shirtless boys. Like this boy, I guess—his skinny body fondled by the camera while he says: “I’ll be gentle.”

  Teenage boys talking about virgins and pussy and how AIDS is a make-believe story to get them to stop fucking. And what is up with the fake New York accents? Especially this boy Tully, who looks like he’s about twelve, slurring all his words in the voice-over, talking about how he really likes virgins, and then you see the girl from the opening scene, Jenny, going with her friend to get her HIV test, they’re both getting tested but Jenny’s only had sex with one guy, Tully. So we know what’s going to happen.

  And here she is after her results, stunned, this can’t be possible, driving around New York with shorter hair, right, wasn’t her hair longer before? Here she is, telling the taxi driver that everything’s wrong. And yes, this is cheesy, it’s obvious, but still I’m thinking dammit, she’s right—everything is wrong.

  And then there’s a scene in Central Park, this group of kids smoking pot and two guys walk by holding hands and all these boys are yelling faggots, you fucking faggots, and one of the faggots, who’s kind of cute and a little bit industrial or something, he starts to yell back and oh how I know that feeling.

  Then Casper, a white guy who’s best friends with Tully, who’s also white, he gets in a fight with a black guy who’s a few years older, and then suddenly his whole group of friends, mostly white guys, a few girls too, all of them are kicking and punching the guy until Casper slams him in the face with his skateboard and the guy passes out, blood all over his face and everyone is laughing.

  He might be dead, that’s what some of them think. They leave him there. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the violence of teenage boys depicted so accurately.

  Jenny walks right past the line at the club, where no one’s dressed up at all, tank tops and cutoff shorts, do people really go out like that in New York, guest list for Jenny and she does look better than the rest. Some guy hands her a pill, no actually he pushes it into her mouth, says it’s better than K or ecstasy. Jenny’s trying to find Tully to stop him from fucking another girl, she keeps missing him until the end of the movie when she walks in on him with a thirteen-year-old, saying: I’ll be gentle—of course I care about you.

  And then Jenny starts crying, stumbles over to a sofa in the other room, and passes out. Casper the friendly ghost rapes her while she’s sleeping. We see his ass, muscular, pumping away while he’s telling her it’s okay.

  And I’m crying because I know these teenage boys. These were the boys I went to school with—everyone went to school with them. I’m in the bathroom stall hugging myself and saying it’s okay, Alexa, it’s okay.

  I call Joey. She says we should get cocktails.

  I can’t get cocktails.

  I need to talk to Joanna, I really need to call her before it’s too late—it’s almost 10:30 on the West Coast, and now Joanna goes to bed early. I could go to the phones on Newbury but what if they don’t work so I hail a cab and then when
I get home it’s almost eleven, I mean eight, and Joanna’s mother answers and says she’s already asleep.

  I call Melissa, and I’m so excited when she answers. Melissa, I say, I just went to this movie, Kids, have you seen it? Oh, it’s horrible, it’s so horrible, I mean it ends with some het guy raping this girl while she’s asleep, all these kids beating up this one black guy in the park, two girls kissing each other for Truth or Dare in a swimming pool while these guys watch, the only fags in the movie are just walking by while the straight boys yell faggot at them, and the movie is about AIDS, do you see what I mean?

  And Melissa says Alexa, you’re speaking too fast.

  And then I start sobbing and saying Melissa, it was awful, I mean it was about AIDS but it wasn’t about AIDS, he doesn’t care about AIDS. No one cares about AIDS. I’m sick of AIDS. I don’t even know if he’s queer.

  And Melissa says Alexa, are you high? And I say no I’m not high, I’m not high at all, I mean I did some coke earlier but that was hours ago. And Melissa says Alexa, I need you to call me back when you’re not on drugs.

  So I get off the phone without even telling her what really happened. And then suddenly I’m angry, really angry—Melissa hasn’t ever done drugs, any drugs, not even pot. I’m not high just because I did a few bumps of coke four fucking hours ago and dammit I need to eat something, what is there to eat?

  Oh, I can’t wait for this water to boil for pasta, I’m so fucking hungry. Maybe a spinach salad—oh, there’s no spinach. What the fuck am I going to do? Everything was fine, everything was fine before I went to that movie. I mean I confronted my father, and then I felt great, I felt amazing, I felt incredible, remember?

  But why am I thinking about calling Michael in Arlington, just because he said he used to hire that hustler who was a crack addict, and then the hustler would show up in the middle of the night, and I remember thinking it was kind of touching when Michael said he understood. Maybe he’ll understand me.

  But that’s ridiculous. And I have coke right here. I’ll just do the rest of this vial, two big lines, oh my, yes, just what I needed. But what am I going to do now? Oh, a page, I have a page, yes, a page. He wants to know where I’m from. What an original question. I tell him I’m just waiting for my dinner, is an hour okay, and he thinks that’s funny, I’m not sure which part but he says take your time.

  He lives on the fancy part of Comm. Ave. but I don’t realize how fancy until I get there and pretty much everything on the block is posh, but his place is one of the white stone ones that I’ve always thought were the most impressive, and when he opens the door there’s a marble entryway with a huge chandelier. And then we walk through another set of doors and enter a living room with ridiculously high ceilings, long white sofas and armchairs arranged in different seating areas around Oriental carpets—antique tables, huge paintings in gilded frames, nudes and crosses and God.

  I wonder why someone this rich would have such bad hair, almost like a bowl cut from a barbershop but he’s already asking if I want something to drink, sure, and then we sit down on one of the sofas so white it’s kind of iridescent, or maybe that’s just the effect of the chandeliers and recessed lighting from way up like we’re in a museum and a ballroom at the same time. And when he puts my cocktail down I notice there’s $200 on the end table, just the way I like it. He says: You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you?

  It’s funny how he’s so formal even though he’s wearing just a silk robe with leather slippers, gray and blond chest hairs on his pockmarked skin. He crosses his legs, and I focus on his droopy eyelids, I can’t tell if he’s tired or if that’s just his expression. Of course he wants to hear about how I’m paying my way through college, and yes, it’s hard, but it’s worth it, right, because I want to get an education, I’m thinking about my future. And, hey, I really like sex with older guys, so why not mix business with pleasure?

  And he laughs like I just told the best joke in the world and says do you want to go in the bedroom so we head upstairs. I can’t believe this bedroom—it’s like a hotel except everything is white instead of beige. Calla lilies on the dresser. Photos of naked men on the walls. Gilded mirrors. Is that his wife and kids? A huge four-poster bed that looks like something right out of some British colonial fantasy. Wallpaper with flowers in raised velvet. Little chandeliers on the ceiling, the ones where the crystals drape across, I’ve always loved those, whatever they’re called.

  He pulls the covers down so I finish my drink and then lie back and look at the ceiling and think about coke and cocktails and how chandeliers really make the light so much more beautiful, and he starts to unbutton my sweater, my shirt, then he’s sucking my dick and when I grab his head I realize oh, the hair, it’s a wig, but why this wig?

  He’s moaning so I pull him up to me like I need to kiss him right now yes now I’m so present in his fantasy that I actually feel possessed by this power that isn’t really power as he slides the condom on my dick and yes, he already told me he wanted me to fuck him. Of course I said that sounded great, and I’ll admit that now that he’s face down it actually does feel pretty good. Because I don’t care, I don’t care about anything except whatever it is that’s keeping me hard, whatever it is I’ll just go with it, pretend to come in the condom and then pull out so I don’t crash afterward but this time dammit I’m so in the role that I’m actually thinking of giving him the real thing until he comes on those white sheets that someone will bleach in the morning and yes, that’s the place to stop so I pull out and he says do you want to wash up.

  Sparkling glass doors to a shower three times the normal size with floor-to-ceiling blue tiles, and he goes in another bathroom so I have three shower heads all to myself—one for front, one for back, and I guess the other one is for my asshole, right? Black marble counter with two sinks, plush white towels but for some reason all the toiletries are sample sizes from hotels, I can’t decide if that means he’s cheap or boasting. I do like this mirror, that’s for sure, front and back, and when I meet him downstairs he has another cocktail waiting.

  THE PROGRAM

  Now that Joanna has replaced Polly, the kids in East Boston are confused. They don’t carry sticks anymore, but they still stare and point and try to make fun of us and we just laugh. Where’s your friend, they keep asking.

  Finally I say: This is my friend. Then they look more confused. At least they’re just kids. Sometimes on the T people act like we’re some punk-rock couple—oh, look, it’s Sid and Nancy.

  How could anyone be so stupid?

  It’s still warm out so we go to the park on the piers every day to watch the sunset. Sometimes we even bring food in two big straw purses and set everything out on a plaid blanket for a picnic. It’s kind of like we’re on vacation except this is our life, our life together. Sometimes I can’t believe this is really happening, I mean I keep thinking back to that conversation on the phone when Joanna was still in Issaquah and she told me she wanted to move to Boston, but her mother wouldn’t pay for it—she was still upset from the last time, when she gave Joanna a thousand dollars and she spent it all on heroin.

  I told Joanna I’d pay for the ticket, it wouldn’t be a problem now that I have this trick who pays me monthly. I said I’d pay her rent for a few months too so then she wouldn’t have to worry about looking for a job right away, and at first she said no, she didn’t want to owe me anything, but I told her it would be for me just as much as her, I mean now that Polly’s gone I have this apartment all to myself anyway, and what am I going to do with all this space?

  And then Joanna said okay. I got all excited and said I’d stop doing drugs too, so Joanna wouldn’t be tempted, and she said you don’t need to do that but I said don’t worry, it’s done, I’m stopping right now. I’ll even stop drinking if you want. But Joanna said you better not stop drinking—the first thing I’m doing when I get on that plane is ordering a shot of Jack Daniel’s. And I said are you sure that’s okay? And she said I’ve never been drunk
when I shot dope, what would be the point? Drinking and pot are totally safe. And I said I don’t know about pot—remember when you first started shooting up? And she said oh, good thing you’re here to watch out for me.

  So we made an agreement that neither of us would do any drugs, but we could drink. And I said wait, how about if we only drink when we’re having a meal, so that it’s part of a ritual that doesn’t involve drugs? Maybe that was more for me than her since I’m the one who always wants drugs when I have cocktails. But the ritual, that was for Joanna, she’s the one who likes rituals.

  One of our favorite rituals is to go to Bread & Circus and choose all the most expensive things from the salad bar, like artichokes and smoked tofu and grape leaves and quinoa, and then we walk right past the registers and sit down in front and eat everything. Once our blood sugar has leveled out we buy broccoli and tofu and pasta, scallions and carrots and tomato sauce, rolled oats and brown rice and fresh dill, basil and mushrooms and sweet potatoes, and then we stuff all the expensive things into our bags.

  We dream a lot. I dream about my parents in dark rooms. I dream about hanging from the ceiling like a piñata. I dream about the ocean pulling me out while I’m fighting the tide. I dream about fleeing from my father’s hands, he’s choking me with shit smothering my nostrils, I’m flying off a cliff in a car I don’t know how to drive.

  I dream about my father banging on the door, and when I wake up I can’t tell if that’s now. He called once, and left a message saying only a monster could do what I accused him of. He said he was in analysis at the time—nothing like this ever came up in analysis so it couldn’t be real. And then I left him a message telling him not to call me again unless he was ready to acknowledge the abuse. So now it’s always my mother who calls, and I don’t answer.

  Joanna dreams about her father smoking in the bedroom, dropping the cigarette into the carpet and then everything is on fire and she wakes up drenched in sweat. She dreams about getting stuck in her mother’s refrigerator, pounding on the door but no one can hear. She dreams about feeling my heartbeat in her chest and is this okay?