by Janet Capron
“‘You fool,’ you say, ‘I am a witch. I was a witch all along. You fool,’ and so forth. Then the stage goes dark. The end. Got it?”
“Yes, we’ve got it,” Elijah said.
“Can I run to the loo first?” I asked.
Vincent looked over the seats. A few customers were starting to file in, one at a time, most of them dressed in suits and ties.
“Make it snappy,” he said.
As soon as I shut the bathroom door, I whipped out a small mirror, a short straw, and the tinfoil of crystal meth from my bag. Even though the adrenaline was racing, I didn’t want to take any chances, run out of energy and suddenly lose heart. I knew if I hesitated now, if I started to think, I would lose more than heart, I would lose the power of momentum that was promising to carry me and my psyche further out than anyone had ever been. I was by now deliberately going crazy, under the aegis of God and His Mother, or so I told myself. Then better to sail drug-ridden through this event, zoom through it mindlessly stoned if possible.
When I got back to our ‘dressing room’ high up in the dark balcony, Elijah was already naked. I pulled off my clothes, and we both just stood there, shivering slightly in the big, cool auditorium, waiting for our cue. Finally the orchestra section was about full. The lights went dark, just like real theater, I thought. I got a rush of stage fright and looked over at Elijah. He was stroking his beard in an agitated way. Vincent nudged us.
“Go on,” he said.
Elijah took me by the hand and led me down the center aisle and up a small flight of stairs at the edge of the stage. His hand was cold and moist, but his grip was gentle and firm. It inspired confidence. The audience was so quiet it was hard to remember they were out there. The two of us wandered around, trying to look lost and innocent. Then Elijah did an inspired thing. He sat at the edge of the stage and let his legs dangle, as if he were splashing his feet in a stream. I hovered near the tree. God yelled down to us, as promised.
“Eve,” he said, “stay away from the apple. You, too, Adam.”
Adam jumped up and pulled me to him. We both quaked. I couldn’t get over what a fine improvisational partner Elijah had turned out to be. Except that he already had a huge hard-on, long and lean like he was. So much for prenubile innocence.
He went and lay down to take his nap. As soon as he did, the Serpent stepped out from behind the curtain at the back of the stage and started calling, “Eve, Eve.” Adam was lying there with his penis sticking straight up, and I had to wake him and convince him to eat the apple. He did shake his head appropriately and turn away, but before we knew it, we were clasped in each other’s arms. A combination of circumstances precipitated our sudden embrace: our fear; the hot pink lights; the exciting contrast between the dark brown and white of our skins; both of us being stoned literally out of our minds on our respective drugs—and the fact that we were Adam and Eve at the time didn’t hurt either. Adam scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the center of the stage. He lay me down slowly on the wooden floor and gingerly spread my legs out. We made love, noiselessly, as if by keeping quiet, we could shut out the forty or fifty pairs of eyes that were fixed on the action. In other words, we no longer cared where we were.
No fool, Vincent in his role as God waited for Adam onstage to come. As soon as he did, God started thundering from the balcony. He banished us from Eden. Elijah lifted me in his arms again and carried me offstage and up the aisle.
An eerie silence hung over the huge theater. The men in the audience weren’t even shuffling in their seats, let alone applauding. Vincent seemed unperturbed.
“Fine, fine,” our director said when we reached the balcony, “but listen, Elijah, man, you’re not supposed to get a hard-on before you eat the apple.”
“I don’t see why not. Anyway, it couldn’t be helped,” Elijah said.
“Another thing. If you keep fucking like that, you’ll never last through four shows,” Vincent said.
“It’s all right, mon, it was worth it,” Elijah said, smiling at me.
Vincent wrapped my hands in a big chain, and Cotton Mather pulled me down to the stage. As excellent an Adam as Elijah had been, this next role was a real stretch. Elijah as Cotton Mather stood there condemning me to the stake.
“You got to die, woman. You’re a witch. No, no, you got to burn,” he said in a deep voice.
I found myself dancing tentatively, more the suggestion of a dance than the real thing, my hips swinging back and forth slightly. As halting as my movements were, I could sense the audience responding to them, and Elijah gave me plenty of time to seduce him with my supposedly irresistibly lewd performance. Together, we managed to drag out the second act, building suspense, if there could be any suspense left. Finally, I stood in a pose of witch’s triumph with my foot on Cotton Mather’s head, and the stage went dark. When the lights in the theater came up, one or two men in the audience started to clap, but most of them filed out in a hurry.
Word of mouth must have spread through the corridors of National Broadcasting, because the orchestra for the next show was just as full as it had been for the last. It was unusual, Vincent said, to draw that big a crowd in midafternoon. Elijah and I dallied in foreplay now that we had overcome the worst of our stage fright. Basking in the pink light of Eden, we began to caress. I finally got up the nerve to touch his dreadlocks, which were as soft as knitting yarn. Later, freed from my chains, and according to the spirit of Vincent’s morality play, I took the lead, straddling the defeated prude Cotton Mather and riding high.
While I was wiping the sweat off my body with a Warwick Hotel towel that Candy had given me, Vincent gestured to Elijah, taking him off to the side where he said something to him. They shook hands, and Vincent handed him some money. Elijah came back and started putting on his clothes, bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed T-shirt. He tucked his mad hair into a big woolen cap. Then he sat down and began lacing up his sneakers. I went over to him.
“Why are you leaving? I thought we were doing great,” I said.
“Ask Vincent. He’s got his regular player back. Besides, you wasted me, darlin’, I’m all used up. But it has been grand, just grand, girl,” he said in his Island-English accent.
He stood up, pulled me to him, and kissed me on the forehead. Then he was gone.
Vincent came over to me with another man. This one was white and beefy looking. His name was Lester. He had to be the original Midnight Cowboy, but there was something threatening about him. A gray shadow hung over his snub nose and popping eyes.
“Lester’s my buddy from the gym. He’s a regular now, been doing this all week,” Vincent said.
“I thought Elijah and I were good together. We were packing them in.”
“Yeah, sure, honey, but you’re a killer. You wore him out. He was spent, finished.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I liked Elijah.”
“Don’t worry about it, Lester’s a pro. Anyway, look at those muscles. Ever see muscles like that?” Vincent asked me, poking Lester, who was stripping now. I took Vincent by the hand and pulled him away from Lester, out of earshot.
“No, no thanks. I got to pass. He’s too creepy, sorry.”
Vincent looked over at the naked, exceedingly white hulk of a man and nodded.
“He does seem a little sinister at that, now that you mention it. But hey, thanks, Janet, man, you are very hot. Maybe you’d be willing to do this again sometime if I can find the right partner,” he said.
I was touched and gratified by his words. Thanks to my psychotic state, I was beginning to find myself ostracized almost anywhere I tried to go. When I was particularly high, I wandered and chatted to the invisible, I laughed and sometimes cried out loud in the street, and even when I wasn’t behaving like that, I was now giving myself away just by my dilated pupils; my long, electrified straight hair that shot out from my temples; my increasingly odd outfits; and my unnaturally skinny body. But there were always certain people, certain nonjudgmental people who
were either as crazy as I was or close to it, or simply very kind, who accepted me as a whole human being. Vincent seemed to be one of these sympathetic allies.
I went to check on Sigrid, to make sure she was still on the premises. I poked my head around a screen in the massage parlor room, and there she was, chatting casually in Spanish with a customer while she stroked him absentmindedly.
“Just wanted to see how you were doing,” I said.
“Racking it up,” Sigrid said. “How about you?”
“Lost in the footlights,” I said.
“Any time you feel like leaving, let me know,” she said.
The customer must have been turned on by the sound of us talking. He groaned and started to dribble semen into Sigrid’s hand. She grabbed a tissue and wiped him off with the calm and aloof air of a nurse bending over her patient.
I stood around in the front room, trying to summon the courage to go behind one of those screens with a patient. Just wasn’t up to it. Anyway, I’d had enough for one day. Candy was behind the desk, ordering the men to sit down and wait their turn as if they were schoolchildren. I went back out on the balcony, where Vincent was talking to Lester, who was putting his clothes back on.
“Don’t worry, I got another pair to finish the set for today,” Vincent said, as if I might be concerned about letting him down. “No really, it’s going to be fine. Yeah, they’re a couple of Okies, two young kids, just married and fresh—I mean fresh—off the boat. They’re sitting down in front...say they’re flat busted, could use the bucks...I don’t know.”
“Oh, let them try it,” Lester said. He seemed perfectly content not to be appearing today.
“OK, but would you two mind waiting around just in case?” Vincent asked. He pulled out a wad of twenties and handed them to me.
“Hey, Vincent, this is a hundred bucks for two shows,” I said, counting out the twenties.
“A bonus. You deserve it, kid. You’re a star. When you shine, nobody shines brighter, Janet,” he said, grinning his prefab grin.
Vincent called out to the couple, Jeff and Lee Ann. They came running up the aisle, hand in hand. He started to explain the plot and they nodded vigorously.
“Yes, sir,” they said.
The seats began filling up.
“Take off your clothes,” Vincent said.
The couple undressed quickly. They stood there, buck naked except for the shining gold crosses they both wore around their necks. Lee Ann took a minute to fold their clothes neatly in a pile. She stared up at her husband, all trust.
Lester had disappeared by this time, but I stayed to watch. The two of them marched brazenly to the stage. Jeff jumped onto it and then lifted up his bride. It was immediately obvious that they hadn’t paid attention to any of Vincent’s directions. No point in God sounding his warning, it was already too late. They started to soul kiss, and then Jeff went down on Lee Ann, just like they always did. She yelped and moaned. He pushed her onto the floor.
“Oh, great. What a pair of rubes,” Vincent said. He threw his hands up. “Fuck it.”
Jeff started humping with a regular, married-style rhythm.
“Oh God, oh God,” Lee Ann started screaming, “I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come. Oh God!”
All of a sudden, the place was thick with cops. It reminded me of the time termites in nuptial flight hit my grandparents’ home in Palm Beach. One minute, the house was still inside, the next minute it was moving, swarming with twitching insects. Cops were everywhere: cops on the stage, pulling the couple apart like they were two dogs; cops on the balcony surrounding Vincent and me.
“You go by the name of Vincent Damone?” one of the cops said. He slapped cuffs on Vincent’s wrists before he could get an answer. He read him his rights.
“Who are you?” another cop asked me, pulling me through the door into the massage parlor waiting room. As he did, I watched the audience full of suits stampede for the exit.
They were holding on to Candy. She was screaming, “That Lester son of a bitch. He set us up, that motherfucking rat bastard!”
Three cops were holding her now. She kept crying out and thrashing her head from side to side like some kind of modern-day Sabine woman. The cops meanwhile fell right into their roles, behaving like perfect Roman-style straight men, gripping her by the arms and the back of the head and standing fast with grim expressions on their faces.
“All right, Candy, cool it,” Vincent said as they dragged him through the room.
My cop threw me down into a chair, and I found myself sitting next to a very composed Sigrid.
“You don’t understand, officer, if you’d been here earlier, you would have seen for yourself. This play is a work of art. It has redeeming social value,” Vincent was saying as they hauled him and a kicking Candy out the door.
“OK, girls, what’s your story? Your blond friend here says you was just visiting,” my cop said.
The massage parlor workers from the next room had been lined up in a row. A short little cop was pushing the last one along, as if they were all attached. They filed out in an orderly manner, looking bored.
“So, girlie, your friend tells me you two are roommates,” my cop said. He was plainclothes, dressed in slacks, a corduroy jacket, and a tie. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Well, what were you doing here?”
“Visiting, officer, visiting our friends Vincent and Candy,” Sigrid said.
“I’m not talking to you. I asked your little friend.”
“That’s right, officer. I’ve never been here before. I thought it was kind of an adventure, you know?” I said.
“Adventure. That’s pitiful. A nice girl like you, like both of you.” He was shaking his head.
There were only a few other cops left in the place, along with Sigrid and me. The bust happened so fast. I worried for a moment about Vincent, then thought better of it. He could take care of himself. But Jeff and Lee Ann, the poor kids.
“Here’s how it is. I’ll let you two go this time. But if I ever catch either one of you in my precinct, I’m going to make it real tough. Get it? Names, please.”
While we gave him the information, another plainclothes cop took it down. He kept looking up at us and shaking his head.
Two cops in uniform put Sigrid and me into the back of a squad car. As we headed up Broadway, they seemed to be making a point of ignoring us, perhaps to show what honorable, upright officers they were. This made us giggle. Here we were getting chauffeured home by the law.
When we reached Sigrid’s apartment, one of the cops got out of the front seat and actually came around and opened the door for her. She took the policeman’s outstretched hand and alighted from the car. I followed. The cop stood in the street, his eyes trained on Sigrid’s behind. Maybe it was only in that instant it hit him: this elegant white girl was a whore after all; she could be had.
“See you around, hot stuff,” he called to her. “You little slut,” he said under his breath.
When Sigrid heard that, she turned around and winked.
Outcast
Maybe as long as a month had passed. Toward the end of it, my extreme speed run had thrust me into kairotic time. Instead of roaming around town talking to God and His Mother, I began to travel deep inside my own mind, where I explored other dimensions and the origin of the universe. Instead of chatting with the two of them, I actually turned into God’s Mother, who, I realized, came first. Before there was anything else except me, I was so lonely that I kept falling into unconsciousness, only to come to into nothingness once again. Finally, I woke to find another being there. It was obviously a he, who smiled smugly as if he thought he was alone and glad of it. He seemed to be enjoying his solitude immensely. “I Am,” he said. The great “I Am!” I was so thrilled to see him, I never bothered to seriously question whether he might be just a figment of my own tortured imagination. I was so glad of company that I was happy to let him think I was the latecomer.
Aha! The secrets of existence laid bare
by a mind fueled on crystal meth! The true story of creation hidden for all time until now: what a discovery! And it just might explain why we women are still so quick to acquiesce. Sure, let them think they started it all. Anything’s better than that nothingness and no one.
I had news for the world! I was planting a flag on the furthest reaches of the human psyche. Meanwhile, not only was I losing track of what day of the week it was, I was beginning not to know what millennium. I was out there.
OK, enough. I knew I had to confront the great “I Am,” a.k.a. Michael, to bring us once again into the three-dimensional world, our humble stage after all for as long as we lived. It was seemly to communicate with our voices and not just telepathically, as we had been doing.
At midnight I strolled into the Traveling Medicine Show in a spanking-new brown suede fringe jacket, the cashmere sweater, and a pair of jeans that were no longer as tight as they used to be. I felt I looked, well, divine would not be putting it too strongly. How could I not, sylph that I was?
Michael eyed me in a critical way. I didn’t expect him to jump up and throw his arms around me, but considering how connected I thought we now were, I had hoped he would beam radiantly at least when I returned. Maybe he was angry that I had stayed away so long. While continuing to stare at me, he actually stood up and slammed his Voice down on the table. He was pissed.
The only other time I had ever seen Michael so angry was not that long ago, at the end of August, when one night his mother, frantic to reach him, called the saloon. He had an extension rigged to the wall next to his table, but he never answered the phone himself. He let Jimmy do that, even when the bar was three deep and Jimmy was scrambling up and down behind it. As it happens, the place was busy that night. The jukebox was playing Neil Young’s “The Loner.” Jimmy moved from behind the bar and cut a path through the regulars. He signaled to Michael, pointing to the phone. Then he came over to the table, where Michael sat reading the latest Playboy, and where I just sat.