Stray City

by Chelsey Johnson

  Topher crossed his legs. “Don’t pimp me.”

  “We could all name it,” Lawrence said. “And raise it without a gender.”

  “Hell no,” Meena said. “It is ethically wrong to procreate. The planet is horribly overpopulated and human reproduction is destroying everything.”

  “One baby’s not gonna ruin the earth,” said Marcy, who didn’t yet recognize the glassy fervid glint Meena would get in her eye when you bumped against one of her deeply held convictions.

  “I’m dead serious. This is a moral and ethical imperative—”

  “Meena has an interview at Nike.”

  Everyone turned to Lawrence, who had been sitting on her hands, a frown deepening on her face. Then we all looked at Meena, who gave Lawrence a death glare. Lawrence cringed but shrugged.

  “What?”

  “Advertising?”

  “Marketing?”

  “Beaverton?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Meena said, “I need health insurance! I need a real job!”

  “But Nike,” Robin said. “The worst sweatshops of all.”

  Meena said, “I’m not going to give them any good ideas. I’m still going to do my own art on the side. I’m still going to do the band. I just, I need a real job.”

  “What happened to ‘selling out’?”

  Unnerved, Meena tried to redirect the searchlight back to me. “Oh, I’m selling out?” she said. “At least I didn’t secretly fuck a man.”

  “Yeah, but you’re basically fucking the Man,” said Robin.

  Meena and I both stood at the same time and said, “Fuck this.”

  “This is rich,” Marcy said appreciatively. Finally she was getting her money’s worth.

  Robin folded her napkin and said, “Well, then,” at the same time Topher pushed back his chair and said, wincing, “There’s more pie?”

  No one wanted pie. Well, I did, rather desperately, but I didn’t want any commentary about eating for two. I offered to do the dishes, hoping to linger in order to defer the furious talk that would erupt behind my back if I left first, but Robin and Topher and Marisol refused to let any of us help. They wanted to leave for the house show; two bands from Oakland were playing, and Marisol knew one.

  I hated to peel away from the group, leaving them to discuss me, but I couldn’t face a party. While they gathered the remaining alcohol and figured out who’d drive, I said good-bye, passed the coffee table strewn with Polaroids, and stepped outside.

  The night had turned cold, clouds parted to reveal a sharp full moon, and I drew that first breath so deeply into my lungs it hurt. My secrets were gone. The Andrea I’d been was over. But instead of feeling that she’d died, I somehow felt wildly, recklessly alive. The wet sidewalk before me gleamed under the streetlights and I lengthened my strides down the block toward my car, charged with an inexplicable idea that I couldn’t quite believe I was having. Could I?

  My headlights were on, dim and dying.

  I stopped in my tracks. “Oh fuck,” I said. “Please. Please.” But sure enough, the car could not start. A whine, a click, silence.

  Lawrence found me trudging up Southeast Twentieth, near the cemetery. She pulled up beside me in her blue Corolla wagon and waved me in.

  I wished I could lone-wolf it and say, I’ll take the bus, or even tougher, I’ll walk. But my adrenaline had ebbed and fatigue had hit me full force. I got in. Cool air still blew from the vents. “Thanks,” I said. “Aren’t you going to the party?”

  “Meena is trying to get with Marisol and I don’t really want to be around to watch.”

  “Oh.” I blew on my cold fingers. “Are you into Marisol?”

  Lawrence sighed. “She’s not really my type. I was just excited there was someone new in town.”

  “Well, she got to see Meena at her most Meena tonight, so there’s the true test.”

  “Oh my god, that dinner was so intense,” Lawrence said.

  “Do you think she’ll forgive me? God, will anyone?”

  “It was a shock, but honestly? I don’t think it’s that big a deal.” Lawrence lowered her voice. “You know, I gave a blow job once in high school.” She looked scandalized and amused by her own admission.

  “We all know about your famous blow job, Lawrence. But it didn’t knock you up.” I looked at her. “Kind of nasty, aren’t they? I’d rather never do one again.”

  Lawrence shuddered. “I am so glad I’m a lesbian.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly glad or mostly lesbian?”

  I started to laugh and Lawrence did too. “Neither. Both. Oh my god, Lawrence, I’m fucking pregnant. That’s what I am. I think I’m a whole other gender now.”

  “We can work with that.”

  The car had warmed up by the time we turned up Twelfth Avenue. “Lawrence. What if—” The toasty aroma of baking bread wafted through the vents. I looked out the window. Above the Franz Bakery, a giant loaf of premium enriched white rotated lazily. How could something so mass-produced and processed smell so real and good? “What if I just went for it? I mean, this is never going to happen again. It’s like, here’s my chance.”

  “How would you afford it?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Food stamps. Something. Maybe Summer can get me a dancing gig.”

  “Let’s be honest, Andy, you can hardly touch your toes.”

  “When you’re naked, you can get away with a lot. Or maybe Meena can get me a Nike job.”

  Lawrence cringed. “She’s going to kill me.”

  “She’ll get over it. Once she gets her first paycheck.”

  We pulled up in front of my house. “Whatever you do,” Lawrence said, “I’m here for you. I mean it.”

  I leaned across the stick shift and hugged her tight. She tolerated it for a moment and then writhed gently away. Before I shut the door, she said sternly, “But there’s one thing that’s not negotiable.” She looked troubled.

  A shiver of dread. “What’s that?”

  “That child had better respect cats.”

  I solemnly swore.

  That night in bed, I lay on my back and rested my hands on my abdomen. Of course it was far too early to feel anything. But I knew it was in there.

  “You and me,” I whispered in the dark. Two selves. “Do you think we could do this?”

  Reasons Not (But What If)

  REASONS NOT (BUT WHAT IF)

  • I have no money

  • will landlord even let me (is it like a pet clause)

  • roommate—no one wants to live w/a baby

  (Ryan?! doubt even he would)

  (plus complicated)

  • I HAVE NO MONEY

  • diapers terrible for environment

  • never want to live w/plastic toys on floor

  • what if it’s a boy

  • raise a feminist boy

  • chance baby will be queer too—genetic factor?

  • how would I work and/or how much does day care cost DAY CARE

  • this is not the life I planned

  • then again technically nothing so far is a life I “planned” and still, amazing

  • I’m too young

  • when else are you going to do it

  not exactly a teen pregnancy

  and besides all those girls in high school managed it

  sort of

  • pain of birth AAAAAAGH

  • there are drugs

  • no sex ever again? lesbian untouchable?

  • big change haha

  • don’t know any queers with babies

  besides, like, Adrienne Rich 2nd wavers who came out late in life after husband etc. I mean people my age.

  would I have to hang out only w/straight moms at playground

  • don’t like word “mommy”

  • what if baby calls me “mommy” and won’t stop

  • what would I do about Ryan

  child = child supp
ort? = bound for life?

  Yikes

  • could help out some, at least

  • HAVE TO TELL PARENTS?!

  • entire life as I know it OVER?

  • will lose friends

  • will find out who real friends are

  • what if it’s cute

  • what if it’s smart

  • what if it’s an amazing person who fixes things no one else could

  like the world

  • what if I end up loving it more than anything I’ve ever loved

  • what if I already maybe almost do

  • no idea how to raise a kid

  • kid raised by us would be different

  ULTIMATE DIY PROJECT

  • NO MONEY

  • have lived w/o money since age 19

  money isn’t love

  have mountains of love

  uncontrollable love feeling is already kicking in & I’m not sure I want to stop it

  Out

  THE CURTAINS WERE DRAWN ON TOPHER AND ROBIN AND Marisol’s house when I biked there the next morning to rescue my car. I was lucky: the battery had recalibrated enough to nudge the engine to sputtering life, so I wrangled my bike into the hatchback and drove to the studio, where I worked most of the day in eerie solitude. Summer stopped by our place that evening to swap out clothes, and the Gold Stars had band practice. I drowsily watched High Art on the couch with Bullet, growing more and more depressed in the process, and reminded myself it was just a movie, just one of those Saturday nights when everyone was busy. Tomorrow I’d be back in the thick of things. The Unrest Auxiliary of the Lesbian Mafia had a meeting to plan some direct action—since the art show had closed, we’d been working on pranks to mess with the downtown stronghold of the Church of Scientology.

  When I arrived at the house at noon sharp, Jade, the lead organizer, was the only one waiting for me in the red-painted living room. A housemate was cooking something with cumin back in the kitchen.

  “Is it true?”

  I stopped unbuttoning my coat. “Is what true?”

  Family dinner, it turned out, was not the verbal sanctuary we alleged it was.

  “Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Jade looked at my stomach and asked what the plan was. I said that wasn’t her problem to worry about. What was my relationship to the biological father? We’re friendly, I said.

  “Is he straight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you had . . . a relationship with him?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it that.”

  “You slept with him? Multiple times?”

  “It sounds weird when you put it like that.”

  “It does, doesn’t it,” she said pointedly. Then she adopted the self-care voice, a tone of firm, mannered earnestness. “Look. Andy, why don’t you go on home. Rest up and do”—she gestured toward my abdomen—“whatever it is you need to do.”

  “But I’m here to work.”

  Jade gritted her teeth. Clearly I was being uncooperative. She said, “We have plenty of actual lesbians to carry on the Lesbian Mafia’s work.”

  “I’m still a lesbian,” I said. “And every lesbian is in the Lesbian Mafia.”

  Jade pressed her nail-bitten fingers into her temples and said if the Lesbian Mafia weren’t clearly lesbians, then who could you count on to be one? Words had to mean something. And I said, Well, I’m definitely queer, and she said, Come on, “queer” can be anything, married suburbanites with a leash and a pair of nipple clamps claim they’re queer. I said, Can’t someone be culturally lesbian?, and she said it was a matter of practice, and I said, What about all those young girls stuck at home who know they’re lesbians but haven’t met any others yet, do they not count?, and she said, They get a pass, and I said, Like babies in purgatory?, and she said, I don’t know that Catholic shit, don’t confuse the issue: you’re with a dude. I said, I’m not with him, I just did things with him, and she said, So you’re totally done with him? and I said, Yeah. She said, Never again? I said, Who cares?

  She gave me a look.

  “I’m a card-carrying member,” I said. “I literally printed the cards.”

  She threw up her palms. “Thank you for your service?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m out. Good luck.”

  Jade sighed with relief. “Thank you, Andy. Good luck to you too. I really mean it.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said. She gave me a stiff, sympathetic hug at the door.

  I realized I had traded one small town for another.

  I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I’d known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we’d formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic.

  By the time I got home my whole body felt like it was aflame with anger and shame—a cold fire, a numbing burn. The only place I could bear to be was outside. I summoned Bullet and grabbed some treats and her leash. Ryan called while I was pulling on my rain boots. I said I was going to the river and he could come along if he wanted. I didn’t think he would, but he said sure.

  Bullet paced in the back seat. When Ryan got in, she licked his face.

  “How are you?” he said gently as I ramped onto Highway 84.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said.

  “Let me come with you to the clinic on Tuesday. Please.”

  I checked my blind spot and accelerated to merge. When I was settled into the flow of traffic, I said, “I’m not going.”

  “Not going Tuesday or not going at all?”

  I shook my head. “At all. I think.”

  “That would mean . . .”

  I nodded.

  “Andrea, that’s crazy.”

  “Totally.”

  “I mean it’s really fucking crazy.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Aren’t you a lesbian?”

  I shot him a look. “What does that mean?”

  “Seems like this would really mess with your whole identity.” He said identity with dental precision.

  “Do you want to get out right here?” I said, swerving toward the shoulder. Bullet stumbled across the back seat.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to tell him about getting kicked out of the Lesbian Mafia, but to do so would disclose the existence of the Lesbian Mafia. I couldn’t break the code like that. I said, “I’ve had a bad fucking day.”

  We parked in the muddy potholed clearing that was the lot and Bullet scrambled over Ryan to get out. A dirt trail led through dead corrals to a vast winter field, brown and gold, a gray path curving through it, power lines overhead. Bullet opened up and ran for no reason other than to run, legs like pistons, ears streaming backward. She galloped in huge elliptical laps as if she were pursued by happy demons. It was impossible not to laugh.

  “Joy,” I said with relief. “There it is.”

  “Hers or yours?”

  “Both.” I realized Bullet was my dog now, my animal family. I’d protect her. She’d protect us.

  The path turned sandy and wound through scrubby willows toward the half-flooded river. Bullet thundered past us as if she were on a racetrack.

  The river was swollen and slow, dark blue in the afternoon light, with only a small high strip of beach to stand on. Bullet rooted around in the willows and came up with an abandoned flip-flop. Ryan took it from her and hung it on a high branch.

  “I’m trying to get my head around this.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and paused to light one. I shielded the flame for him, felt its brief warmth on my palms. “I never wanted kids. Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. The same reason
I don’t want a horse?”

  I had always wanted a horse, but I held that back. “It’s not really the same,” I said.

  “Yeah, you can sell a horse,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought you wanted a kid either.”

  When I was growing up I’d always thought I’d have kids, because everyone had kids, and I preferred making blanket forts and playing Legos with my younger siblings and cousins to sitting in the living room with the tedious adults, but when I moved to Portland and grew older and smarter I wrote off that feeling as gender conditioning and compulsory hetero et cetera, and besides, I didn’t want kids then, I didn’t want to be pinned into a Good Housekeeping life like my older sister and my high school friends, I wanted to stay up all night working in the studio and to sleep around and to go to shows with my friends. Queers got to live young for as long as they wanted, forever even.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I don’t. Except maybe this one.”

  “I should have guessed,” he said. “You keep everything. One more for the archive.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “You think you can really do this?” he said.

  “You don’t think I can?”

  “I’m not saying you can’t. I just know that I’m not cut out to be a parent. I’m not very patient.”

  “You’ve been patient with me,” I said.

  “That’s what you think.”

  I wished I had one of his cigarettes. I jammed my hands into my pockets. “I know I wasn’t easy.” I kicked at the ground, sending sharp little pebbles scattering. “I thought I would be, but I wasn’t. I’ll try to be now. I’m not asking you to be a parent, Ryan. I don’t need money or a custody deal or whatever. You’re off the hook. You can have your life.”

  “I don’t know how that’s really possible.”

  I asked what he meant and he said, “I don’t know how to go about my ordinary life while you’re having my baby.”