Rat Bohemia

by Sarah Schulman

  I can smell you when you’re only halfway up the stairs, but even that warning doesn’t anticipate the delight at your appearance. We embrace, sit together, chat softly. I bring you something, something to drink. I have been holding on to an emotion, trying to figure out how to offer it—to offer you a tip of an iceberg as bait to my life. Finally it comes out carefully, seems to appear haltingly. I wait for some recognition, but there’s an associative silence instead. Whatever it was I said only reminded you of your own sadness. It brought up something hidden which is now occupying your mind.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  (In which Killer receives a letter)

  “What is it, baby?” I ask softly. “Come on, just tell me.” Because I want so desperately to be close to you. I’m trying every way I can.

  “Oh,” she said. “I was coming over here and I saw a woman who looks exactly like Anita. You know, that dark, wild kind of beauty. It made me feel so guilty and upset, missing her. When you’ve been with someone that long, losing them is indescribable. It is like cutting off half my body. It is like I lost myself and I don’t know what’s left.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I feel so awful,” Troy said, “for all the bad ways I’ve treated her. For all the mistakes I’ve made. For all the ways I’ve hurt her and haven’t treated her right. I come home at night and listen to the answering machine. Every night, waiting to see if there will be a message from her. I mean I can’t be the one to call her, it would be like torturing her. I can’t be the one, but my life is incomplete without her. My greatest fantasy is that she would be in my life every day and I have to find a way to have that because having that would be having everything and without that I … I don’t know.”

  “Oh.”

  God, my apartment looks so shabby. I’m ashamed of it. My clothes are all hand-me-downs. I’m deeply ashamed. Where is my father? I haven’t heard from him since April. He and my mother came over to the house. We were sitting around watching the TV news. My mother brought over some Cypriot food. I guess it was around the Greek Easter. Domaldos. Little cakes. Rita came by, stayed for a second. Later my father called me up admonishing me for hanging out with dykes. I guess he forgot that talk we once had. It is so hard to defend myself to my own father when there is nothing to defend. But like every child, I desperately want him to love me, so I sit, stupidly, trying to explain. There is no explanation. Only now, after the subsequent nine months of silence, can I see that he didn’t call for an explanation. He called for an excuse.

  Sometimes it seems too obvious that women are replaceable. I don’t like feeling that way, but I often do. You love one then you love another. Each one is different and eventually you stick with one or you don’t. They have the same pros and the same cons. The ones that like me are naïve, gullible, respond to praise, love permission, can never fully reciprocate because they are so goddamn insecure. That’s the trap. The same reason they’re grateful is why they can never give back. That’s why Troy is my dream girl.

  Three months into the silent treatment I wrote my mother a letter. I feared being shunned forever. I can sit here in my slum apartment in Manhattan, look for work, water plants, fall in love, and they’ll never know the difference. I wrote my mother a letter and asked her to love me. Here is what she said:Dear Stella (my real name),

  My background was more limited than yours. My opportunities were more limited and my experiences were more limited. My father and mother came here on a boat from Cyprus. I still do not fully understand American ways even though I have lived here my whole life.

  As my first child, I was over-involved with you, hung on every achievement with incredible wonder, and suffered with every distress as though it was my own. It was too much and I knew that I needed to dilute our relationship. To normalize it. But I guess I never did it good enough.

  Now you are asking me to go against your father’s will. I think you need to understand what your father has done for us. When my father died, he left my mother penniless. You may remember that in her will she left each grandchild thirty-five dollars. I think you used it to buy a pair of sneakers. There aren’t too many people who would have taken in a mother-in-law to a three-room apartment while facing a new baby and a demanding job.

  Daddy went beyond the line of duty in the way he took care of my mother, me, and my children. I will always be thankful for that.

  Your father and I are old now. He is sixty-eight years old and I am sixty-five. We are not going to live forever. We want to enjoy our last years of our lives with as little tension as possible. You are so uncompromising. You are the one creating the problems.

  Love,

  Mom

  “Anita was my life,” Troy was saying. “You know, she’s my family.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  (In which a newly employed Troy takes Killer out for coffee)

  There I am, 11:20 in the evening waiting for my beloved to appear at the door, on the evening of the fourth day of her new job, caked in white pastry flour and smelling of vanilla like Aunt Bea or some other pudgy nonentity. I am waiting for my female boyfriend. It’s a beautiful night.

  After work and a shower, Troy took me out for a cup of coffee at some strange place with burnt-orange shag carpets and two balconies. I was undergoing a temperament change—being curt, rude, lonely, saying NO to others. Everything going every which way.

  The air was soothing, like flesh. The two combined put me in a coffee shop diva dream state. A painting of Santa Lucia holding her own eyes on a plate. Café con leche the real way. A little cup of espresso in a big glass of hot milk. I forgot to mention the Puerto Rican folk guitarist singing “Sloop John B” for some friends in the back.

  Then we climbed the stairs for two suddenly expensive margaritas on the mouse-infested rooftop bar—walls painted luscious tangerine flesh. Spending money. Me realizing I’d better start budgeting and then me and Troy talking, her telling me something very special. Something I’d only imagined privately and thought I’d have to wait for. Eternally elongated secret hoping.

  Now here is what she said, but I’ll put it in parentheses which is the written version of a whisper.

  (She said, “You shouldn’t worry about Anita, Killer, because my relationship with you is already better than that one was—even though you and I have only known each other a very short time.”)

  “I’m in love with you and you’d better get used to it,” she said.

  After going home and making love we got into a critical discourse on Americana as global kitsch. We started going one for one with good American worldly contributions and bad. Every time she’d come up with some fantastic Americanist creation like Ornette Coleman, I’d come back with something equally banal like Epilady or Domino’s Pizza. We finally converged on the question of Steve Lawrence and Edie Gormet and whether they were absurdly awful or absolutely fabulous depending on whether we were going by my egghead, beatnik, natural wood floor aesthetic or her green shag, East Village fag aesthetic—which we agreed was high on the list of America’s greatest creations.

  “I knew Clinton was going to be a dog from the televised inauguration parties,” she said. “Especially when he had Aretha Franklin sing the theme song from Aladdin. It was all downhill from there.”

  “Well, who would you want to have perform at your inauguration?” I asked Troy wistfully.

  “You know, something presidential. Like the Village People and Lorna Luft.”

  Then we went shopping on Avenue C buying Catholic/Chango tchotchkes and mangos. Bodega candles are part of generic Loisaida culture.

  “God, I wish you could see the market in Mexico City,” Troy said.

  I’ve never been anywhere. I grew up in South Brooklyn between Avenues L and M. Lennon and McCartney.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said. “There are anal-retentive stacks of thousands of purple cloves of garlic in four or five varieties. Huge bales of sun-blanched corn husks and clear smooth banana leaves rolled out in even pi
les. Caught some guy with his hand in my back pocket. Piles of wet, brown móle like little towers of fresh shit. Dried fish the size of dragonflies. Wet green catcuses deneedled and raw. Watermelons with red gaping holes of invitation. Deep-fried eggs, fake carnations. Dried tamarinds. Tomatillos in light green husks. Tomatoes in rows like red, plastic teeth. Granadas. Mamey.”

  “What else? ” I asked.

  “El Aquario Fantastico del Mundo del Mar—which turned out to be a collection of fish tanks on the thirty-eighth floor of the Latino-Americano Building.”

  “Troy,” I said. “I feel so close to you and I know you feel close to me.”

  All night we rolled around with animals underneath our lips. Troy had a snake wrapped around her teeth and I had a big rat, in honor of Rita, caught passively between my molars. That day purple petals fell from the trees every time a light breeze blew.

  “Ate tortillas soaked in red chilis with sour cream,” she said. “White cheese.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  (In which Killer sees the beautiful people)

  A few things have gone on since then. Occasionally Troy realizes one or more of her life’s goals and I am peacefully happy each time. Purely happy where your facial muscles relax and the mirror loses your years. She is kind to me and loving to me, but still looking back. I try to quell my jealousy. She keeps working at the wedding cake factory. I water plants. The rhythm of work. How hard it is to make a living. I’m not some middle-management wannabe. That’s not the life for me. One great thing about work, afterwards I’m too tired to be anxious. I knew two girls named Expression and Order. They were a perfect match. They met, fell in love, and helped each other for the rest of their lives. Their home together was comfortable and warm.

  One night we went to a party and both knew for unspoken certain that Anita would be there. I watched Troy put on the vest Anita gave her. I saw how much she still wanted to please her. She wore her gift on her chest like a blazing welcome sign. I became very quiet. Wait. When the day comes that too will pass. I will be filled either with rage or with joy. But until that moment I can’t imagine which. Leidenschaff, die Leiden Schafft. That suffering which passion creates.

  “Troy?” I said in bed last night. “How do you think you’re going to die? ”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Probably like Sam Cooke. You know, running naked through a hotel lobby chasing a white woman. Hey you, what do you want? ”

  “I want you to bind me,” I said. “Gag me, blindfold me, beat me, fuck me, and then I want you to kiss me.”

  The next morning I walked to Rita’s house so that we could go over to the hospital together. My eyes were wide open—the whole city was a poem. There were young beautiful people everywhere drinking coffee. They’re not THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. They’re lovely.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  (Red River)

  The next evening Troy and I were sitting around watching TV.

  “They hired a new manager today and it was not George,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of his drinking. I told you. So, guess who got it? ”

  “Who? ” I asked.

  “Guess.”

  “Who? ”

  “GUESS!”

  “You.”

  “No,” she said. “Louise from purchasing. She wants to cut lunch from one hour to forty-five minutes. I told her, that’s why it’s called a lunch hour and not a lunch forty-five minutes.”

  The movie on TV was Red River.

  “Look at that man ride a horse,” I said.

  “Tell me about your day,” she said.

  “It was boring. Tell me about yours.”

  “Well.…”

  “Sounds pretty boring.”

  I thought about a bowl of popcorn.

  “Carole at the shop is pregnant,” Troy said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  “Louise at work filed her nails. I painted my toenails Amethyst Smoke.”

  “You did? I looked down at Troy’s feet and ripped off her socks. “Oh my God, you painted your toes.”

  “Amethyst Smoke. Now he’s gonna get it.”

  We looked back at the screen.

  Then the intercom buzzed and Rita walked in.

  “Hi lovebirds,” she said, looking really strange. “I bought a six-pack. It’s ten o’clock, time to come out and play. You guys are too much. Mind if I turn down the sound? I knew two girls like you once. They were real cute. One started seeing a boy and the other flipped out and left town. I drove her to the airport.”

  “Are you all right? ” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “What are you two watching here? ”

  “John Wayne in Red River,” Troy answered.

  “That movie is so gay.”

  “No, it’s not,” Troy said.

  “Yes it is,” Rita answered, popping open a beer.

  “Where? ”

  “When Montgomery Clift looks Big John longingly in the eyes and says ‘I want to hold your gun.’ Hey, let’s put on a record. When did you stop buying records, Killer? 1963? Frank Sinatra? Goes great with John Wayne. Two famous assholes.”

  “No one’s making you stay here,” I said.

  “Dave died,” she said.

  “Oh,” Troy and I both said. And then we were all overcome by that moment for which there is no appropriate response except familiarity. It is shameful, not knowing how to really feel it. Being overprepared for death.

  “I’ll make some popcorn,” Troy said and went into the kitchen.

  “I wish I had a girlfriend,” Rita said.

  “Hey,” Troy called in. “There isn’t any popcorn.”

  “Look,” Rita said, turning the channel. “Now this is a really great movie. This is a Frank Capra film. This is really funny.”

  PART FOUR

  RATS, LICE, AND HISTORY

  Chapter Forty

  Mrs. Santiago and I sat, anxiously staring at the old clock on the wall. Two minutes to nine. It was so quiet in the office you could hear bottles smashing on the sidewalk seventeen floors below.

  At nine o’clock on the nose, the Rat Commissioner would be releasing his new report to the city press corps, and everyone at Pest Control and Food and Hunger had placed bets on which papers would run the story on the front page. Daily Double if you could pick the headline.

  “‘A Good Year for Rats,’” predicted Mrs. Santiago. “Five dollars on Newsday.”

  We all knew the report’s contents by heart. The Health Department had found an eighteen percent rise in rat sightings. They were trying to put it off on increased public awareness about vermin. But the facts were that the number of reported rat bites had also gone up and someone was going to have to pay.

  From my point of view, the problem has to do, primarily, with the narrow scope of perspective that New Yorkers apply to rats, and occasionally to mice. They think it only happens here. New Yorkers are so myopic. They don’t realize that at the exact second that they are watching rodents frolicking on the subway tracks, somewhere off in a faraway ocean, a weather-beaten fishing trawler is about to dock on a tiny island. Stowed away in the locker of that boat is a pair of one-pound Norway rats ready to scoot along the hawser when the sun goes down. At the same moment, deep in the hold of a neighborly grain barge, a family of Polynesian rats are about to come ashore. Once they’ve invaded the previously pristine spot, these rats are going to go after large unsuspecting birds by biting the backs of their necks, severing their spines and chewing off their legs. New Yorkers think this only happens to them.

  Rats are an essential part of the history of the world. They are more influential than people. The dynamic between vermin and civilians, creators and destroyers, is the relationship most at the center of life. Everything else spins around it, because of it. There are Norway rats, genus Rattus norvegicus, which have lived and bred underneath New York City probably as long as humans have done so aboveground. Heaven and hel
l are just metaphors.

  Take me and Killer, for example. We are most comfortable living in neighborhoods where there are so many people walking around who would be locked up in institutions if they lived anywhere else. In relation to them, we feel normal. Same is true for the Norways. They are very partial to the moist underground conditions of lower Manhattan with its high water table and channeled rock and all those substructures dating back to the earliest days in the life of the city. We’re all living together in our favorite part of town.

  In my world a lot of people die young. They get AIDS or drugs or live dangerously. But some of the most decrepit street people seem to live forever. The most annoying ones live on and on. Like the filthy, emaciated white girl who wears a winter coat in the summer and shuffles along barefoot whining “No one will help me because I’m white.”

  This approach doesn’t really make you want to help her.

  Or the really insane skinny black guy, also filthy, who wears a pair of pants over his head and always has mucus on his shirt. He sits in the middle of the sidewalk and says, “Excuse me, do you have any Grey Poupon? ”

  You just can’t believe they’re still living, but year after year they are.

  Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll see a young gay man just moving along, minding his own business. Something in this guy’s shirt or stance or facial expression will remind me of another gay man I used to know but haven’t seen or heard from or thought about for months or years at a time. Suddenly, I will consider and then assume that he is dead and I will never see him again. Sometimes it will be a gay man whose name I barely knew and so it would be impossible to ask anyone after his whereabouts. At this point, I usually wonder why I am still alive and I worry about how much David must have hated me for outliving him. The envy of the dying for the living. I feel like one of those Super Rats.