Apprenticed to Venus

by Tristine Rainer

  “Oold it in,” Jean-Jacques said in my ear.

  Coughing, I tried to hand it back, but Jean-Jacques murmured, “To Caresse.” It went around the circle of passengers without comment, each hand covering it as the next received it, though I didn’t notice who smoked and who didn’t. I was too absorbed in the sudden intensification of sound, the beauty of streetlights streaming through the inky night, and my release from self-consciousness. The limo, Ella on the radio, their animated faces, Anaïs snuggling with Hugo, the bursts of laughter—everything blended and flowed.

  Until my feet hit the ground. The pavement lurched under my heels, and Hugo chivalrously stabilized me. Languidly, arm in arm, Anaïs, Millie, and Caresse were walking toward the art deco facade of the Lenox Lounge. It seemed to be taking them a long time.

  From above my head, someone growled, “Look at that white and pink flower.” I looked up past the club’s neon sign to a narrow metal balcony where a sinewy man, so dark he gleamed purple, was leaning forward in a folding chair looking down at me. “Pretty enough to pick.”

  I wanted to be where Anaïs, Millie, and Caresse were, but my legs seemed to pull like taffy, getting nowhere. Then I felt Hugo’s hands on my waist from behind while Jean-Jacques stepped in front of me, and we all filed, like a Chinese dragon with twelve legs, through the entrance of the narrow bar into the back room.

  Sconces glowed like hot embers against the orange walls. A table had been reserved for us, the only white people there, it seemed. When Anaïs selected her chair, I willed myself beside her.

  A waitress with large hoop earrings asked for our drink orders. She didn’t even give me a second look when I ordered a bourbon and ginger ale, a drink my aunt once let me try.

  The room quieted when a man in tight pants and a ruffled shirt took his place at the conga drums in the corner. As if sharing a secret, Anaïs leaned in to me, “I know this conguero from Havana. Mongo Santamaria.”

  Mongo had a V-shaped grin that wrinkled the skin over his wide nostrils like soft black leather. Suddenly his hands were a flock of birds taking off. A trumpeter and tenor sax joined in and people started to fill the floor, hips swinging, shoulders pumping to the Afro-Cuban beat.

  Hugo and Anaïs rose and danced flirtatiously, apart and together. Later I learned that they had both studied flamenco dancing. That night what I saw was a couple joyfully seducing each other, sharing a secret in their movements.

  My feet moved under the table, and I could feel a smile on my face.

  Caresse, who was seated between me and Jean-Jacques, nudged us both. “See that mixed couple?” I saw a blond woman I hadn’t noticed before clasped to the chest of a black man. “That’s how Canada Lee and I were together. Sweet as hot fudge on vanilla ice cream.” My giggle caught in my throat when she hissed, “Anaïs had an affair with Canada, too. She doesn’t know that I know.”

  Jean-Jacques lifted a groomed eyebrow. I didn’t believe Caresse. I assumed she was jealous of Anaïs because Anaïs had Hugo who adored her, while Caresse’s husband Harry, I’d gathered, had killed himself.

  Caresse donned a glamorous smile when Millie, Anaïs, and Hugo returned to the table out of breath. Saying goodbye, Millie left for home, and Hugo, after pulling out Anaïs’s chair, excused himself for the toilette.

  Dropping her smile, Caresse leaned toward Anaïs. “While Hugo’s gone, there’s something I have to say to you.”

  I was afraid she was going accuse Anaïs of being with Canada Lee, but instead Caresse said, “You know that you and Hugo are always welcome at Rocca Sinibalda, but please do not bring the other one.”

  Anaïs paled. I wondered what Caresse meant.

  “I understand,” Anaïs said to Caresse and abruptly turned to me and Jean-Jacques. “Rocca Sinibalda is a castle outside Rome that Caresse purchased as a home for Women of the World Against War.”

  “Is that where I should write to join?” I asked Caresse.

  She ignored me and continued speaking to Anaïs. “Hugo isn’t passive like you think. When you’re in Los Angeles he pesters me with questions.” Anaïs came to Los Angeles, where I lived? I wanted to ask when, but Caresse kept on, “I love Hugo and can’t bear to see him hurt. You’d better watch out or somebody like me who appreciates him will grab him while you’re dallying on the other coast.”

  Anaïs cried, “You think I don’t appreciate Hugo? You think I don’t love him?”

  “You should mind your own business!” I heard the words shoot out of my mouth at Caresse.

  There was stunned silence. The others looked at me with a mixture of pity and concern, like arguing parents who become aware of an upset child in the room. My nightmare had come to life. I had stopped the drama by saying the wrong thing—as if I were still a kid coming to my mother’s defense.

  Anaïs broke the paralysis of the moment. “Out of the mouth of babes.” As if offering me a reward, she wrapped a lock of my hair around her index finger. “Your hair is so silky. It’s the shade mine was at your age. I never appreciated it.”

  “Because brown hair is so boring,” I said.

  “Not at all. It has gold and amber highlights. Brown is the color of polished wood and mink coats, of brandy and cellos.” She must really have wanted to make me feel good, because years later I learned that she hated the color brown.

  Jean-Jacques jumped up. “Mambo avec Mongo, Anaïs?” He took her hand and she rose to join him, but then we all saw Hugo returning to the table. Anaïs brushed right past Jean-Jacques and coquettishly entered Hugo’s arms, calling back to us, “I promised this dance to my husband.”

  Jean-Jacques turned to me. “You’re it.” He took my hand to lift me out of my chair.

  “I can’t dance to this,” I objected. I only knew rock and roll and the formless slow dancing we did at St. Cyril’s parish mixers.

  “Don’t dance. Just move to the rhythm.” Jean-Jacques revealed small, even teeth in a seductive smile. Though he wasn’t tall, he gave that impression because of his erect posture. His posture changed as he danced, hunched like a hipster, slender legs in his finely tailored pants loose and easy. I tried to mirror him.

  Anaïs sped by with Hugo. “That’s it, Tristine!”

  Jean-Jacques took me in his arms. “Allow me to move you.”

  I followed his instructions, amazed that my body twisted and whirled under the guidance of his hands and that my feet kept the rhythm without tripping. He pulled me close so I was aware of my breasts pressed against his chest and of his leg pushing between my thighs. The thumping congas, the blasting trumpet, the squealing sax, our hearts drumming violently, harder, faster, built to a crescendo.

  When the music stopped, people stood apart, panting, but Jean-Jacques squeezed his body against mine so that our pounding pulses slowed together. I looked around the spinning room to find Anaïs. She and Hugo were speaking in Spanish with Mongo.

  From what I could pick up, they were asking for a son they’d danced to in Cuba. When it began, without separating our clasped torsos, Jean-Jacques and I began to move in a slow dance. When I pulled back to look into his face, his mouth was closed in an ironic smile, though his dark eyes were kind. I had assumed that Jean-Jacques’s age and sophistication put him out of my league. The creases in his cheeks and the hardness of his mouth had frightened me, but now I was flowing with the feelings in my body. I was scared and excited, yet my muscles were relaxed and melded to his.

  He put his mouth to my ear and blew softly, giving me a shiver. He whispered, “I can tell how firm your breasts are under that schoolgirl dress.” I knew he was being fresh, but liquid pleasure coursed through me.

  We danced to Mongo’s Afro-Cuban rhythms and boogaloo riffs until the club closed. At one point, everyone started dancing with everyone, changing partners, then gyrating in a circle. I danced with Hugo, with Anaïs, with the men and women from Harlem, whirling, the floor vibrating under our feet. Caresse couldn’t dance because she had a bad leg, but she clapped and danced with her hands, and w
hatever tension may have remained between her and Anaïs, or me, dissolved.

  Though I had missed dinner and drunk too many bourbon and ginger ales, the music held me up. When it stopped, I would have fallen like a puppet from cut strings were it not for Jean-Jacques’s supportive arms. Without knowing how I’d gotten there, I found myself nuzzled next to him in the limo, my head on his shoulder, drifting out of a stupor only when the chattering between Anaïs and Caresse rose to laughter.

  When we arrived back at the Guilers’ brownstone, I roused myself. I heard Hugo say to Jean-Jacques, “Why don’t you take the car and see her home.” I mumbled my godmother’s address and fell back into oblivion.

  The next thing I knew, Jean-Jacques was pulling gently on my arm to encourage me to leave the limo.

  “I don’t feel good,” I complained as he helped me out onto the street. “I’m dizzy.”

  “Keys,” he said.

  Not getting a response from me, he took my purse from over my shoulder and found Lenore’s key ring while supporting me against his trim frame.

  “Walk. Just to the door.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I won’t let you fall.” He skillfully negotiated the keys. We made it into the freight elevator, and he held the cage doors as we stumbled out into Lenore’s foyer. We removed our shoes, and he unlocked the door to my godmother’s huge work space, which had once been a sailmaker’s loft.

  “Wow!” He took in the 10,000 square feet of open space punctuated by painted columns, wooden looms, and long worktables. Lenore’s towering woven sculptures hung from the high cathedral ceilings: one a ten-by-ten black cross made entirely of tight little knots, another a circle filled with open airy threads enclosed by a solid, dense weave. The tallest weavings, twenty feet high, were narrow, woven totems that swung slightly to and fro, great sacred beings that seemed to breathe and watch us.

  As if we were in church, Jean-Jacques whispered, “Where do you sleep?”

  I pointed to a muslin screen that partially concealed my rollaway bed. Once I’d collapsed on it, I realized I couldn’t get up again. The loft was rising over my head, circling under the bed, and coming up repeatedly from the metal frame at my feet. My hands grabbed the mattress and held on.

  “The room,” I murmured.

  “Stay there,” Jean-Jacques said. Where would I go?

  He rifled around in Lenore’s bathroom and brought back two aspirin with a glass of water. He supported my spine as I swallowed the pills. “These will help in the morning.”

  I sank back down on the feather pillow, and though I worried that I’d never be able to get up to pee, I did feel better from his care. It made me think of my mother’s tenderness when she used to bring me baby aspirin and a rubber hot-water bottle. Maybe that’s why it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to be unbuttoning the front of my dress as if I were a sleepy child.

  “Let’s get you some air,” he said. He tried to pull my slip over my head.

  “No,” I said weakly. He stopped and, sitting on the edge of the cot, leaned down to kiss me. I responded, lost in his musk of exertion, Gitanes, and French cologne. His fingers traced my arms and his lips softly brushed mine. I’d expected, because he was French, that he would put his tongue in my mouth, which I didn’t like when the boys my age tried it. But Jean-Jacques just kept touching his lips to mine tenderly, and I responded with the same light touch. When, after a long, dreamy time his tongue entered my mouth, it wasn’t slobbery or pushy at all.

  Unwrapping himself from me gently, he stood up, looked at me, bent to place a finger to my lips, then quickly removed his slacks. He was wearing gray satin shorts, sort of like a prizefighter’s, but smaller, and in the dim light I saw a horizontal tent protruding in the front of them. Only then did I realize his intentions.

  “I’m a virgin,” I said, my voice so faint I wondered if he’d heard.

  He must have, for after a moment’s pause, he said, “I respect that. Don’t worry.”

  He carefully folded his slacks and laid them on one of Lenore’s worktables. He unbuttoned his shirt so it fell open but he did not remove it. He stood over me, shorts still on, and lowered himself so he was sitting next to me on the rollaway bed. He attempted to raise my slip again, and this time I helped him by lifting my weightless arms, inhaling my own bouquet of sweat and deodorant. He deftly unfastened and removed my bra, watching me in the light of the streetlamp shining through the high loft windows. He touched my breasts with a kind of reverence, then kissed them. I was floating, enjoying, without the fear I’d always felt when boys I made out with wanted to go farther. The nuns had indoctrinated me so well that I was terrified of sex, yet that night I could not find my fear and didn’t want to.

  I still had on the light girdle with garters that held up the nylons I’d ruined by dancing holes in the feet.

  “Why do you wear a girdle?” Jean-Jacques asked. “You have no need.”

  I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know why; my mother was fat and wore a girdle, and I thought that’s what all women did. I allowed him to unfasten the nylons and skillfully roll them down. Then he pulled down the girdle, expertly, as if he’d done it many times. I felt so much better with it off, and I was still safe because I still had on my panties, and he did not try to touch them, as he covered my body with his.

  The totem gods hanging above us swayed, nodding in approval as he pushed his pelvis against mine. I had never experienced a man moving his body on mine like that before, and it seemed so natural, so right.

  He raised himself with one arm and ran his fingertips from my nipples down my abdomen, sending shivers of pleasure through me. Then he lowered his frame over mine again on the cot. I could feel the satin of his shorts protruding against the nylon of my crotch. I looked down and caught sight of his penis coming through the opening in his shorts. I had the impulse to touch it, because a girlfriend had told me that touching a penis felt like petting a horse’s nose, and I loved the soft nose of a horse. I slipped one hand between us as he rose up and let my fingers brush against it. I was surprised by its heat and pulled my hand away.

  The great totems were watching from above, saying yes, touch it, feel it, do it; it is right, it is nature. I closed my hand over it. He stopped moving then. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know,” I said and pulled my hand away again. What I wanted was to stay unknowing, just moving. I thrust my pelvis upward and he pushed against me, his rhythm my rhythm, the rhythm of the totems, again and again, as I looked up at the swaying gods, watching us, pulling us through a spinning siphon of pleasure into their world.

  The next thing I knew, Jean-Jacques was standing above me with a washcloth and a towel. I was confused.

  “Did I throw up?” I said.

  “No,” he laughed. He must have seen my alarm. “Nothing happened,” he assured me. His voice was comforting, and the washcloth with which he wiped my stomach was wet and warm. I let my hand go to my tummy. To my relief I was still wearing my panties, but where the elastic top met my bare skin, I felt something sticky. He wiped my fingers then with the towel and softly patted my tummy dry.

  Later I could hear the toilet flush in the bathroom, and he came back to my bedside. I tried to slide over in the cot so he could sleep next to me, but he kissed me on the forehead. “Goodnight, little one.”

  My last thought before I drifted back to sleep was, I forgot to get the books from Anaïs.

  CHAPTER 2

  The East Village, New York, 1962

  TODAY, WHAT JEAN-JACQUES DID WHILE I was intoxicated would likely be considered a form of date rape. But in 1962 there was no such concept. In fact, for me, having come of age in the 1950s, a man taking you while you were helpless was a secret fantasy. One where I could have pleasure without guilt, as when I imagined myself being bound to a factory conveyor belt and carried on it to a man like nougat centers to the chocolate dip—moving toward desire free of volition.

  I did realize that I shoul
d not have let a man into my godmother’s loft. Lenore had told me that she had given up men for the sake of her art, and this loft was her sanctuary. She would not be happy if she knew how Jean-Jacques had defiled it. So when I awoke after my night with Jean-Jacques, grateful not to have a hangover, I gathered up my panties and the bed sheets and carried them to the laundry closet, noticing in wonder little translucent chips flaking off the fabric. I argued to myself that nothing had really happened. Jean-Jacques hadn’t taken my virginity. Although he’d been aroused, he hadn’t tried to enter me, which told me he really respected and cared for me—and that, in my innocence, meant the beginning of love.

  I was confused that he hadn’t said anything about seeing me again but I assumed he’d written down Lenore’s number from the phone dial so he could call me later. When I checked her telephone, though, there was no number on it.

  Maybe Jean-Jacques would ask Anaïs for it. I should have Lenore’s number written down and ready when I went to retrieve the forgotten books.

  That afternoon I repeated my steps from Lenore’s Bowery loft to Anaïs’s Greenwich Village apartment. She buzzed me right up but seemed flustered when she opened the door.

  “Did I interrupt you?” I asked.

  “No, but I only have ten minutes. I have to meet Gore for lunch.”

  I didn’t know who Gore was but thought it unusual she was leaving for lunch at three. She was wearing flared silk trousers and a chiffon blouse with one large ruffle down the front, more suitable for hostessing than going out, so I guessed Gore, whoever he was, was coming there.

  “Sit down for a few minutes.” Anaïs indicated the couch. In the soft light of her living room with the shades drawn against the sunlight, she looked younger and more natural, and suddenly I knew why she’d seemed familiar the first time I saw her. Though aged, she had the face of Botticelli’s Venus rising from the sea on a clamshell, the same heart shape, the same arched brows, identical lips, a likeness emphasized by how she penciled the upper twin peaks.