Without telling the Prime Gottlieb anything, I took a day off from my bookstore job and walked to Ocean Beach, where the surfers couldn’t give a shit about performance art. I watched the waves and ate noodles. I thought about calling Daphne 1.0 to tell her where I was, but fuck that. I sat and watched the waves, and drank three espressos, and looked at a cute dog, and read both weekly papers and the neighborhood broadsheet. And watched the waves some more. And counted N-Judah trains.
Okay, so I got kind of bored.
Daphne-Alpha hadn’t even noticed I was gone. She was trying to build the world’s largest banana out of tapioca and mango skins, in her bathtub. “In the future,” she said, “all art will be organic.”
Something about the contrast, her dark clothes against the white tub and the bright yellow peels, was so vivid I knew I’d remember it forever. I felt full of affection for her. I was a reflection of her, but she wasn’t a reflection of me. She was a whole person, who’d come up with a whole school of mango art while I was staring at the ocean and thinking about noodles. (Like, did you ever wonder where the word noodle comes from? It sounds German. Like strudel. But poodle is French, right? Or is it?)
So all of a sudden I felt ashamed of having wanted to abandon her, and I wanted to make it up to her. And my mind swerved back to the idea of the two of us making a single DAPHNE GOTTLIEB.
“So, hey,” I said. “I noticed you haven’t had a show at the Mission Art Hole in like a few months. And Stucco McSandblaster does a performance there every other week. We should rattle some cages, hey?”
“Fuck the Mission Art Hole,” Daphne said, not turning away from the mango skins she was stapling together in the bath.
“Yeah, I know, they’re totally lame. But I just think it would be good exposure to—”
Daphne finally turned her dark, unblinking eyes on me, and I stepped back without meaning to, plus I didn’t want tapioca stains on my new shirt. She held my gaze with hers. “Fuck. The. Mission. Art. Hole.” She kept staring me down.
I blinked and stammered that yes, fuck them, fuck them all over and then tell them to fuck the fuck off. Fuck those fuckers anyway. But D-Alpha had already turned back to her project, which she was planning on slingshotting at the mayor.
Okay, so she didn’t like the Mission Art Hole anymore. That just meant I had to work a little harder to get us more exposure. Success comes from organization, right? While she worked on her giant banana, I got on her computer and created a spreadsheet of every single art space in the city and when, if ever, she’d last performed there. And how many times. Then I added columns for Stucco, Dollar-Store Molly and a few other local performers, so she could compare their gigs with hers. It took me six hours.
Somewhere during that time, D. had gotten naked and was trying to wrestle the giant banana into shape. I still had my black leather pants and wife-beater on, so for once I looked more like her than she did. I held the eBook over the edge of the tub so she could look at my awesome spreadsheet, but she turned away and pushed the big banana head between us. I tried explaining a second time what I’d done, but she wouldn’t look. She thanked me, but not like she was really grateful. And then she sent me home because she was tired and needed the whole bed to herself.
After that, I didn’t see her for a couple of days. And then we hung out again, and she seemed friendly and mellow. She told me all about her friend who had a webcam performance art deal, and we went to a Jewish orgy where she turned me into a human dreidl using bondage tape and a vibrator. I spun on my ass, naked, while people sang the “made it out of clay” song. It was pretty intense.
And then I didn’t see her again for a few days, because the banana wasn’t aerodynamic and she had a grant proposal. I worked extra hours at the bookstore and practiced my gestures. I almost called her a few times, but I bit my hand. At last, another Friday cranked around and she asked me to a backward-alphabet party, and that was fun. And then more days apart. She had a date with someone else. She went out of town. She was juggling dogs, and I would just make them nervous. Et cetera. Et cetera.
So what was I supposed to do? I started going out on my own more.
At parties, people asked if I was the real Daphne and I said yes. I mean, I’m not imaginary, am I? The only problem was when they wanted me to do some art piece, and I had to make something up. The first couple times that happened, I just froze. Then I tried getting naked and using canola oil to denounce our reliance on fossil fuels, and that seemed to go well, even though at the time, I couldn’t remember where canola oil came in that whole performance-fluid hierarchy.
I started getting into it. I was already doing a kind of performance, being the other Daphne, but now I was performing on top of that performance. Why not? More layers! The next time people asked me to do something, I was all ready with a whole poi-spinning/butoh/breakdancing commentary on the homogenization of mass culture. And then just as I reached the handspringing climax, I noticed Daphne #1 standing near the doorway, staring between her feet.
“You’re actually not too bad,” she said afterward, back at the taqueria where we hung out that first time. “For a beginner, anyway. But you do need to find your own art. And you know, symbols work best when they have a literal meaning besides whatever they symbolize.” Tortilla steam settled all around us, sour and starchy, like it could conduct electricity.
“So you’re not mad at me? I mean, I was trying to be helpful. You know, with the uppercasing.” I made a capital D and G with my fingers. “I mean, just imagine if you could be performing in two places at once. Or all the time.”
“Daphne, listen to me.” She put down her burrito and took my face in her hands. Her fingers were probably a little greasy, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment. “That James Brown autobiography I showed you. He wrote it in the mideighties. Do you know what happened to him after that?”
“He got into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”
“No! Well, yes. But besides that.”
“He died.”
“Before that.”
“He invented a new dance?”
The wiser of us Daphnes sighed and abandoned my face for her burrito. “Look it up,” she said. “The point is, uppercasing. It comes with a cost, especially if you’re not careful.” She talked some more, about always keeping a window open to your real self, even your bone-deep boring self. Later, I wished I’d written it all down. But at the time I just thought to myself that if any of this stuff was worth saying, Daphne would have found a way to say it with giant airborne fruit.
The next week or so after that was kind of nice. We stayed in a lot, just the two of us, reading or playing Twister. I wondered a couple of times if Daphne was just trying to keep me hidden, so I couldn’t embarrass her any more. But I figured she knew she could just order me to vanish.
Every now and then, I’d glance at the mouthy window and notice the sun was out or it was raining or it was night. It was nice to be shut-ins, like little old ladies or people who were boycotting everything. I never had a boyfriend or girlfriend in high school, so I soaked up the novelty of feeling like half of a couple. Maybe I’d finally arrived, here in this yellow one-bedroom with the lumpy futon. Crimson and clover, like Joan Jett said. Crimson and motherfucking clover.
And then Daphne wanted me to go to an orgy with her, for the first time in ages. She took me to this little hidden trapdoor in the bathroom at a particularly grimy coffee shop near 16th Street. Underneath the café was a huge dungeon that ran along Valencia Street, all the way to 24th. The basements of every single boutique, bookstore and tapas restaurant turned out to be connected, and they were all full of people fucking or being tortured. Walking through one of the connective tunnels, you could just hear the people over our heads, talking about white-trash caviar, or the old-new narrative, or what kind of waist you were supposed to wear this year. But underneath, a group of women were electric-shocking each other. And there was a circle-jerk in a centrifuge.
I asked what the par
ty was for, and the original Daphne said it was my going-away party. She tied me to a giant wheel, and I lost count of how many people spanked or nibbled or bit me, while Daphne’s strap-on got bigger and bigger inside me. I felt hyperaware of everything happening to me and around me, and yet I barely knew I existed. I shouted myself hoarse and kept shouting, spinning and climaxing. When they finally stopped, I was so exhausted I fell asleep, still tied to the wheel.
I woke up in New Jersey, my dreds shaved off, wearing the denim overalls I’d worn on my first day in San Francisco. I was just a few blocks from my parents’ house, so I walked home. I sneaked inside, not ready to talk to Mom and Dad. I didn’t hear anybody home, so I went upstairs and slumped in the shower. As I washed myself, all my tattoos peeled, leaving fresh skin underneath, a little pink. I tried to hold them in place, but they slipped through my hands. My skin blanked out. When I looked down, all my ink had pooled in the drain, in the shape of a lowercase d. I started to cry into the showerhead.
PINUP
Vanessa Vaughn
I sat at the front of the library in my usual place. It wasn’t much, but it would do for now, a simple grad-school job. I inhaled a long breath, taking in the beautiful clean smell of books. Usually, I felt comfortable here.
But not now. Not since she started working here.
We had been watching each other silently for weeks, but hadn’t been properly introduced. I had my own name for her: Bettie. That’s what I called her in my head. That’s what she seemed like. Something a little old fashioned; cute, but maybe a little cruel; somewhere between the ultimate pinup queen and a Dewey-decimal-reading, card-catalog-loving student librarian.
As I wheeled across the computer lounge to help someone else, I could feel her eyes on me again. This back and forth was our dance, our game. I wanted it to be over, but I wanted it to continue. Most of all, I wanted her.
I knew what she would see as she looked me over again. The line of my chin was sharp and boyish, sometimes a startling contrast to my plump, pink mouth. Wild short-cropped hair crowned my head in a butch fauxhawk. In the back of my thoughts, I wondered if she might prefer a girl who was a little softer, a little more feminine, but judging from the way she had seemed to fixate on me, I knew I should put that out of my mind. Unconsciously, as I thought of this, I reached up to run my hand along the side of my head. I hoped that she could just make out the muscled curves of my upper arms under these loose-fitting short sleeves.
I looked down at my strong hands clinging to the large wheels. She must have noticed them. I wasn’t fragile and hoped she didn’t expect me to be; in fact, I was quite the opposite. Was the wheelchair something she always took note of? If it was, I prayed it was a turn-on, something new and unknown. Sex with me was warm skin mixed with hard muscles and cool smooth steel. It could seem a little different, a little kinky. I hoped she was intrigued. She sure as hell seemed to be.
I turned toward her again, catching her in the act of watching me. She started as I locked on to her green eyes once more. I was certain I could look right into her head and see hundreds of twisted scenarios swimming there. I was certain she wanted me. She seemed captivated as she leaned toward me over her desk, but it was she who looked away first, her cheeks reddening, apparently a little flustered.
She picked up another book, running the spine across the scanner ever so slowly and reading the computer. It was obvious she was conscious of me as she continued with her work. Her actions were graceful and deliberate. She raised two fingers to her stylish dark-rimmed glasses, adjusting them gently on her nose. She pretended to concentrate on the screen as she twisted a strand of long black hair with her fingertips. Placing the first book aside, she grabbed another.
I felt myself shiver as I watched her moisten her glossy red lips with her tongue.
This is getting ridiculous, I thought.
In that moment, I made up my mind. I grabbed the nearest book and pulled up to one of the computers. I ran a quick search and hit the PRINT button, snatching the warm page from the tray. Wheeling across the entryway and making my way behind the long desk, I pulled up behind her. She smelled like cinnamon, sweet but full of spice.
Bettie continued her work, not yet sensing my presence. Lifting the date stamp, she pressed it firmly to a card on a book’s back cover. Red ink seeped from the rubber sides as she held it there. I imagined her delicate hands pressing against my neck that way, firm but tender. I imagined what she would feel like against my skin, against my fingers. Involuntarily, I twisted. I could feel myself getting wetter.
“Excuse me,” I said gently, clearing my throat.
It startled her. As she whirled around, I found myself face-to-face with those green eyes.
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. Neither could I. She had seemed like a dream before, something far off and untouchable. Now she was real. I was sure she was thinking the same thing. This was her warmth next to me. Her skin was so close, I could reach out to touch it if I was brave enough.
I reached across and laid the printout on her desk, brushing her arm with mine. The touch seemed to send a jolt through her. She was roused from her open-mouthed stare. She turned her head to read the document but kept the rest of her body still.
As she looked away, my eyes were on her legs. She wore thin transparent black stockings. I watched as she shifted under the short skirt, revealing more of her thigh.
I felt goose bumps run up my spine. What a tease. She sucked on the end of her pen, drawing attention to her mouth. “I see the problem,” she told me. “The books you’re looking for are translations. They’d be in another section. Upstairs.”
She turned to look at me head-on. “I’ll show you,” she said simply. She didn’t wait for a reply. Standing suddenly, she walked toward the elevators.
I watched her go. Neat black seams ran up the back of her stockings. On her feet were black patent-leather heels. These pieces of clothing were common enough, but on her, they seemed indecent. I hadn’t quite expected them. She stopped and stretched to the side to push the elevator button with a short red-enameled fingernail.
I came to my senses and pulled up beside her. We took the elevator to the fifth floor, the second from the top. I followed as she exited and took a quick left. “People don’t come up here much,” she explained with her back to me as she walked. She turned and shot me a cautious look.
I glanced around. Only a single student was briefly visible in the aisle all the way at the other end of the floor, his arms full of books. We passed rows and rows of deserted stacks before finally stopping. She eyed the paper in her hand as she checked the numbers, adjusting those adorable black glasses.
Bettie turned and walked halfway to the end, long legs placed gracefully one in front of the other. I followed close behind her. She took one more glance at the paper before she stopped and slowly bent over at the waist, reaching for a book on the bottom shelf.
My heart leapt into my throat.
Tease is right, I thought. It was obvious she was doing this for my benefit. In those heels, I could see everything from this angle, her pert backside framed with a lacy black thong. Without saying a word, she was making it clear what she expected; and I eagerly indulged her.
I picked up a book and smacked her firmly on that perfect ass. She let out a little cry of surprise as I did this, but she didn’t protest. She held her position. In response, I smacked her twice more, this time hard. I could see pale red marks forming on her skin.
“Stand up,” I said.
She complied. I reached forward and spun her around. She had a startled look on her face, obviously surprised by my strength, and I liked that. I pulled her hips toward me roughly and she smiled. That smile took my breath away. She looked gorgeous but ferocious at the same time, like a beautiful animal. Her green eyes flashed and her glossy lips quivered as she eyed my body. Then I saw the vaguest change in her expression. I could tell she had made her mind up about something.
Slowly, she disentangled
herself from me and righted herself. I was puzzled for a moment as she wordlessly began to back away. I was confused. Was she leaving me?
No, she wasn’t, I realized with relief. Instead, she seemed to be leading me somewhere. Bettie backed up slowly and seductively, beckoning me to follow her by crooking her red fingernail in my direction. She placed one high-heeled foot delicately behind the other as she slinked backward along the row of books. She moved gracefully, but in an exaggerated undulating way that was all hips and shoulders and green eyes. The only thing I could compare this seductive motion to was a cat—and not some simple house cat, but a jungle cat, some kind of lioness or panther, something sleek, but no doubt dangerous.
I put my hands on the sides of my chair and pushed toward her, following as if in a trance. I heard a pencil cracking under one of the wheels. All the time, I eyed those legs of hers. They were long and curvaceous; legs that went all the way up, up under that short skirt that swished as she stepped backward. I noticed a tattoo curling up her right ankle, a black dragon with a twisting body of intricate scales and teeth and claws. It fit her, and it was definitely hot. Tattoos usually were.
As I tried to take in the sight of her, we rounded the corner, passing the rows of book carrels and desks. She never took those eyes off me. Bettie continued, moving into the farthest corner of the library. Then, she reached out to her left and opened a door. It was a door to one of the group study rooms—yes, the room was small, and the large pane of glass would allow anyone standing out here to see right in, but it was still slightly more private than where we were.
Bettie stepped inside, pushing a book cart up against the wall and out of our way. As I entered, she closed the door decisively, and then moved toward me. I reached out to pull her closer. To my surprise, as I caught her waist, she grabbed my wrists and maneuvered herself out of my grip. She pointed an index finger toward the ceiling, waving it back and forth, correcting me playfully as the side of her mouth twisted into a smile. “Uh-uh,” she warned. “Did I say you could touch me yet?”
Best Lesbian Erotica 2010 Page 14