This Body

by Laurel Doud

  Katharine had always carried on conversations in her mind. They were the normal discussions most people have with themselves. At least, she assumed they were normal. This was another question she had always been too afraid to ask anyone. But now it was as if the different personalities in her brain had been given speaking parts, and it was getting crowded inside. Certain voices were easy to distinguish as the residue of people in her life. She could recognize her mother's gentle and sometimes needy voice — Take care, Katharine, watch out — Philip's logical, unflappable voice — For God's sake, Katharine, it's not as if the world is going to end — and her father's often irritatingly optimistic voice — It will all work out; it was all meant to be. It just means that there's something better on the horizon.

  There were other voices that she didn't have names for. There was the sarcastic one that was always trying to tell her what to do, as if it knew better than she did. Then there was the voice that whispered with its ingratiating, persuasive, chummy lilt. It was a shadowy presence outside herself that felt familiar enough to be disconcerting. It was as if it sat on her shoulder, just tall enough to lean over and whisper down the length of her ear canal.

  I'm hearing voices. Maybe I should be committed.

  At first, she was going to turn off onto the exit to her hometown. What are you going to tell the girls? How are you going to explain this one?

  As the sign for her city flashed above her, her hands stayed still on the wheel, and the exit slipped by.

  All right. I'll drop the girls off and then come back.

  In the parking lot, she was torn. You can't leave them alone. They're your responsibility now.

  Maybe Ben and Marion are here. Maybe I'll see them. It's something they might do together.

  You're here. You might as well try to enjoy it.

  As they walked to the entrance, Katharine thought she saw Ben or Marion a dozen times. She hurried the girls along this way and that, to pull up alongside someone wearing a shirt similar to one of Marion's, or walking pigeon-toed like Ben in those black, high-top boots that looked so terribly hot and uncomfortable. But they were not them.

  At the entrance, she got frisked.

  A hip-looking security guard with round sunglasses reminiscent of John Lennon's stopped her to check the backpack that she had stuffed full of needful things from Thisby's apartment — clothes and sunscreen and hats and Band-Aids. When the guard returned her pack, she started forward, but he stopped her again. “I'm sorry, but I have to pat you down.”

  The girls were disappointed that they didn't even get stopped.

  It had been kind of fun to get frisked. It was almost as if she were a … a dangerous woman.

  At the midway, they split. They made arrangements to rendezvous there every three hours, unless a band was playing — then they would meet right after it finished.

  A mother couldn't have said it better. But I didn't say it. Philip would have been proud of me. It was Quince's idea.

  To the right was a flea market, the vendors selling a hodgepodge of concert wear and accessories, silver and beaded jewelry, East Indian-inspired baseball caps studded with dime-size mirrors and other sparklies, and anything in Rastafarian green, yellow, red, and black. The temporary tattoo and body-piercing booths were doing a brisk business. Katharine watched a girl get her nose pierced. The young woman almost fainted when the gun went pop! through her flesh; her friend teased her for being a wimp.

  The cloying smell of burning incense spread from punks that lined most of the booths' tables and shelves. A tendril of smoke spiraled right into her brain, and Katharine tripped back in time to Ben's room, rancid with stale incense, the punk burning holes in the carpet, Marion complaining of the smell, and Katharine wondering what other smells the incense was covering up. She regressed deeper into memory. She was a sophomore in high school. There was a party at some senior's house. She had gone with a girl who lived on her block but who normally hung around with a faster crowd. They drank tequila sunrises at the girl's house beforehand, the only time Katharine had ever been drunk in high school. The backyard, full of the in crowd, and full of marijuana smoke, had tables covered with food for when the reefer madness hit them and they got the munchies. Katharine saw a guy who she had always thought was cute, a football player two years older and with all the right moves. God, I even remember his name. Stef Djordjevic. Before she even knew how she had done it, she found herself backed up against the patio wall, making out with Stef Djord-jevic. She remembered the incense burning — sandalwood — and his tongue, his body pressed up against hers, his crotch matching hers, hard and pressuring, his insisting they go to his car — her resisting — his urging. She had gotten scared and bolted, the alcoholic fog dissipating in the anxiety. She remembered finding her friend intertwined with some other senior and demanding that they go home.

  The next day she had felt that the scarlet letter A — for Alcohol — was seared across her forehead, but her parents continued in their befuddled ignorance. She had a hangover but was sicker with the memory of being prodded by Stef Djordjevic. She felt way over her head and had vowed to never give up control like that again.

  Katharine continued down the concourse hung with banners spelling out various political causes: safe sex, abortion, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, animal rights, marijuana legalization. She scrutinized those collecting literature who had the contours of her children. She was mad if they were standing at the marijuana-legalization booth, frightened if they were at the abortion-rights table, proud if they were supporting Amnesty International, and disappointed when she realized that none of them were her children.

  This is ridiculous. I don't belong here. I have no reason to be here. My children aren't here. And even if they were, what would I do?

  She could never think past the image of spotting them, walking along together, Ben protecting Marion from the slea-zoids who appeared to be all around her. The frame always jammed up and then melted, the center curling back until there was nothing left to burn.

  On a patch of grass half a dozen people were sitting on folding chairs, holding large purple viewfinders like snorkeling masks over their faces. A man in his late forties, in tie-dye from bandanna to drawstring pants, was pulling more viewfinders from a large cardboard box and speaking softly to the vendor next to him. “My distributor really blew it. I could have sold two thousand of these today.” He turned and addressed the group. “This is an LSD flight simulator, and I'm your pilot …”

  Katharine turned away — what suckers — and retraced her steps to the entrance. She continued on to the left of the split; the scent of food was so heavy, she could walk on it: grilled chicken and beef over open pits, frying onions, garlic, curry, saffron, and hot barbecue sauces. People were walking around with corn on the cob, meat and vegetables on skewers, huge turkey legs that they were tearing with their teeth and fingers like Tom Jones.

  In front of a small stage off to the left, a large group of people periodically crowed with approval. It took Katharine a while to realize that the person on the stage, who was dressed in a G-string and an unbuttoned leather vest, was picking up cement blocks attached to chains that were hooked to rings threaded through his nipples. The ringmaster was explaining how Mr. Lifto was next going to use the ring through his penis to lift — The announcement of what exactly he was going to lift with the ring through his penis was lost as Katharine turned away from the trajectory of sound and went up the ramp to the amphitheater.

  The amphitheater was bowl-shaped, funneling to a stage that looked impossibly tiny, where roadies were setting up for the first group. At the separation between the grass seating and the rows of orange-colored chairs, large video screens puffed like sails.

  Along the lip of the stage ceiling there was a computerized message board espousing all manner of politically correct statements:

  RECORDS DON'T KILL KIDS — BULLETS DO

  and

  THE EARTH IS NOT DISPOSABLE

  Most of it
was hip trivia, though, meted out in short phrases like sound bites:

  AVERAGE LENGTH OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE —

  IN HUMANS IS —

  TWO MINUTES

  75% OF AMERICAN WOMEN —

  WEAR THE WRONG —

  BRA SIZE

  PERCENT OF NUTS SQUIRRELS LOSE —

  BECAUSE THEY FORGET WHERE THEY PUT THEM —

  50%

  Everything was whirling around her. It was overkill — the sounds, the smells, the Hardbodies, the Winter People — that's how she thought of the two groups of young people who surrounded her.

  She watched a Hardbody — a tanned, shirtless young man — pull a Ziploc bag from inside the waistband of his jeans. Amber-colored liquid sloshed from side to side, leaving gold droplets clinging inside. He poured a third of his large soda into the grass and, after slitting the seal of the bag, tipped the alcohol into the cup. He took a sip, the hard, flat muscles of his stomach shivering, and passed the cup to a young friend, who grinned and sipped and passed it to a third member of their group, a girl in low-slung shorts, her underwear rising high over each sun-bronzed hip, and a crop top with SOME LIKE IT HOT printed on it.

  The Winter People — their wraith bodies clad head to toe in black with silver accessories, their pale skin already reddening — passed around a conch shell no bigger than their palm, a Bic lighter held over the length of the lip.

  Thisby had been one of the Winter People, Katharine realized, seeing Thisby in her mind's eye. She's at an event similar to this one. She's wearing the bell-bottom jeans and the denim halter top Katharine had found in the bedroom. She even has an authentic Woodstock necklace on, the silhouette of a bird perched on the neck of a guitar. A narrow thong of rawhide is tied around her forehead, the beaded ends tickling an earlobe. A roach clip in sunflower filigree is clipped to the inside of her halter top. She's out cold, unconscious, on the lawn. Her friends have ditched her, leaving her to sleep it off and afraid to be in the vicinity when she wakes up to find her face almost blistered by the sun — the roach clip gone. And she has missed the concert.

  Chords crashed, and the first band began to play. Katharine watched as a group of kids down the slope started running in a clockwise circle, a haze of kicked-up red dust hovering overhead like a familiar. Every once in a while, a body was hoisted over the running mass and passed on shoulders until it was sucked back into the maelstrom.

  The boys in the band tried vainly to incite the crowd. “Don't let the deciders decide for you. Fuck the deciders. Your anger is a gift”. The crowd in the orange seats responded dutifully, but the grass crowd seemed too busy with their alcohol and their drugs and their hair to react at all.

  A voice floated from the loudspeakers. Katharine tried to see the miniature human on the stage.“I'm Dr. Timothy Leary,” the voice said. “Am I having a flashback to Woodstock?” The crowd yelled. He introduced the next group, an all-girl band, and ended with the admonition “Learn how to program your brain.” The crowd nodded collectively at such sage advice.

  Katharine sneered. The sixties are gone, and here's another generation trying to rip them off. She wanted to spell out another item across the computerized message board:

  GET A LIFE — GET A FUCKING GENERATION OF YOUR OWN

  Oh, knock it off. You're just feeling sorry for yourself. What did you have in common with the Woodstock generation? You weren't a hippie or anything. Hell, you just watched. The movie. The news. Where it was safe and easy. Just because you were such a Goody Two-shoes doesn't mean everyone else has to be. It doesn't make them degenerate or future drug lords.

  But it takes just one time. One damned time. I know. I lost Eve that way.

  That was an accident. This is an Event. They're busting out. Give 'em a break. Tomorrow they'll be back at their jobs or back to school …

  Tightly compressed images battered at her neurons like blipverts, overloading her system, and she feared that she would spontaneously combust.

  She got a hand-drawn henna tattoo above her heart. She thought it would distract her.

  “That one.” Katharine pointed to the zodiac sign for Gemini, two identically beautiful, fair-haired women joined back to back, their hair twined around each other's throats. She didn't like the crabby sound in her voice, but she felt crabby. “But different. I don't want them to be twins.”

  The artist fiddled with his tools. “Opposites, then? One dark, one light? One Jekyll, the other Hyde?”

  “No,” she said, immediately horrified, and was startled at her own strong reaction, though it somehow softened her mood. “Just different. Not opposites. Just different.” Just different. Because if we're opposites, who has to be Mr. Hyde? Am I so sure that it's Thisby?

  When it was done, no matter how she craned or ducked her head, she couldn't see the tattoo properly. She fought her way forward in one of the restrooms to see her image in the mirror. Thisby's elfin features stared back at her, her pale brown hair beginning to flatten. Katharine ran a hand through it to spike it back up. She realized that Thisby had been essentially right; darker hair would probably be a better color for her, more dramatic with her pale skin and light eyes.

  She changed into Thisby's halter top and bell-bottom jeans — they were some of the things she had on impulse stuffed into the backpack — and the curve of the halter top delicately framed the tattoo of the two-faced woman. Both faces were young and attractive, but one seemed stronger, the other smarter. She could see the tattoo only in the mirror, and therefore only in reverse.

  “Great threads,” said a girl who looked like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, with her black hair, black makeup, and white skin.

  “Yeah, they are.” Katharine took a last look at her reflection; it was almost with affection. Okay, Thiz, let's try this again.

  “Shit,” Quince commented approvingly when she saw her sister at their next meeting. “Where'd you get that outfit? Is that a tattoo?”

  “I had the clothes. The tattoo is temporary. You guys having fun?”

  The girls were sweating as if they had been in a race, but they wiggled with yet unexpended energy. Quince was bare of face — no earrings, no nose ring, no chains — and she looked somehow strangely exposed, almost naked.

  “The pit's bad. There're some crazy guys out there. Gert lost her balance and almost got trampled. I need something to drink. Can you get us a beer?” Quince pointed to the red bracelet around Thisby's wrist.

  Katharine had felt strangely obligated, after she donned the new clothes, to approach one of the many ID stations where, after a rather cursory perusal of Thisby's driver's license, she had been equipped with a hospital-style plastic bracelet that identified her as a legal drinker. She had waited for the whispering to begin, but she heard nothing.

  “Why not?”

  She waited in line. Perhaps she would get a beer for herself too. Maybe the silence was a sign. Maybe it meant she could drink again.

  Hey, this is an Event. I'm busting out. Tomorrow I'll be back to safe, old, boring Katharine.

  She was next up to the counter. She suddenly didn't feel so good. She had that sense of being stretched again, as if something were pulling at her, tugging at her, driving at her. Spores of anxiety popped like sweat in her brain, and the rhythm of her heart became irregular. She started to tremble.

  “Thisby, are you all right?” Quince pulled her from the line and sat her down in the shade. “You're shaking like crazy. Are you cold?” Quince took a sweatshirt from Thisby's pack and wrapped it around Katharine's shoulders. Quince and Gert waited silently until she stopped quivering.

  The sun had set, and although it was still light, the blue sky was darkening to shades of gray. The relentless energy of the crowd had mellowed. The frenetic edge had softened, and people moved more deliberately.

  Katharine came upon a pentagon-shaped structure called the Rhythm Beast made with a life-size Erector set. At the five corners hung speakers draped with animal pelts, and from the crossbeams remnants of a civilizat
ion dangled down: hubcaps, washtubs, inverted pails, a car radiator, a bed frame, and various lengths and widths of sheet metal and tubing. It was a vision of the Apocalypse — now the salvaged technology is good only as junk, and it is crowned by the real trophies of life: skinned and scalped prey.

  Katharine stood there and watched. She had stopped looking for Ben and Marion in every step, dress, face that passed by. It was as if she had had double vision all day long — always stepping awkwardly, afraid she would lose her balance. She now felt strangely light. She weighed less. Gravity eased. Her vision cleared.

  Five men approached the Rhythm Beast, ringing its perimeter. They picked up the drumsticks that hung from wires and hammered out a rhythmic pattern on the metal in front of them. Katharine could feel the syncopated pulsebeat like tremors burrowing up from the ground and grabbing her bones. Her heart, her blood pressure, pumped with the tempo, the cadence. She wanted it to go on forever, but a young man with lank hair barked, “one-two-three-four,” and the drummers jumped to the next panel and began a different rhythm. Her body shifted easily enough and conformed to the new pulse. It felt right again, but then the leader yelled once more. Another shift, another rhythm, another beat. Each time Thisby's body seemed to adjust and achieve synchronization immediately. Katharine could have stood there all night, but the group abruptly stopped, leaving the last tremors to slowly ripple through the soil — tangibly — and her body to continue to throb like a sustained note.

  She sat down heavily on the nearest chair, and the tie-dyed LSD flight simulator pilot handed her a viewfinder, a tube jutting out from the bottom. The top of the mask went up to the hairline, the sides to the ears, the tube in between the lips. Recessed in the cut-out eyeholes were whirling, multicolored disks. She blew gently into the tube. The circles passed the open eyeholes like softly flickering strobe lights. They made her high and dizzy, and her stomach started to cringe. “Blow harder,” she heard the man say, and she increased the shutter speed. Her eyes stopped trying to catch the circles, and her stomach settled back down, the sustained throbbing from the Rhythm Beast still humming through her ears. Instead of the air escaping out the tube, it felt like it circulated back into her body, expanding it. She didn't feel connected with the chair or the ground under her feet; the slightest puff of wind would send her off like an escaped helium balloon. The sounds, the smells dissolved around her, and she swelled until she thought she was going to explode. At the instant of explosion, she collapsed in on herself, the extraneous parts of her hurled away and the essential parts coalesced.