Like a Woman

by Debra Busman

  Taylor thought it was pretty cool that her uncle got to meet Lassie until he laughed at her and explained there wasn’t really a “Lassie” but actually seventeen Lassies that looked almost the same but got used for different things. Turned out there were Lassies for falling down cliffs and Lassies for swimming across rivers—actually lots of swimming Lassies because when they’d reshoot a scene they had to start over with a dry Lassie each time. Then there was the Lassie that barked for Timmy and the one that lifted up his paw and whined. Taylor didn’t believe her uncle at first, because for one thing she couldn’t trust anything anybody in her family said, and for another, even though she was a pretty tough and savvy kid, she’d really believed Lassie was real and it frightened her to think that maybe the TV people made up a dog that saved kids just like they made up parents that didn’t drink or hit.

  Her uncle brought back photos of lots of Lassies in cages on a studio truck. That was always a good adult joke—finding something a kid believed in and then showing her how stupid she was for believing it. Taylor didn’t get tricked very often, mostly because she didn’t talk when adults were around, but that time she did and her uncle told that story for years at her expense.

  It was okay, though; Taylor had her share of jokes. Her favorite was actually her mom’s boyfriend’s joke, but she got to see it once so she claimed it as her own.

  Sometimes the family would get all dressed up and go out to fancy movie-star restaurants with her aunt and uncle. Taylor’s mom would get to borrow one of her aunt’s elegant dresses, and her uncle would give the boyfriend a nice sports jacket and tie. The first part of the joke was that the boyfriend was a vacuum cleaner salesman, but when he dressed up in the uncle’s clothes he looked just like the actor Richard Widmark. Later, when he got older, he looked like Gerald Ford, but that’s another joke.

  The second part of the joke came when they were all sitting down to eat at this fancy-ass restaurant and a group of autograph seekers spotted their table and began to make their way over, all giggly, whispering and pointing. Taylor’s uncle puffed up real big and prepared to be the gracious star, but the group went right up to her mom’s boyfriend instead and said, “Oh, Mr. Widmark, could we please have your autograph. We just love your movies.” The boyfriend laughed and joked with them for a while, asking which of “his” films they liked best. When Taylor’s mom saw how pissed her brother was getting, she kicked her boyfriend under the table and he kissed the girls’ hands and signed their books, “I will always remember this night, best regards, Dick.” It was a perfect night, and during all the commotion Taylor got to pocket three of the extra forks they give out at places like that, plus a silver linen napkin and two ashtrays.

  Taylor took care of her grandma every day when she got out of school, and they had a pretty good time. Taylor hated cooking meals so some nights she’d fool her grandma and tell her they’d already had dinner—she was pretty forgetful by then—and what they were doing now was making pies for dessert. Grandma would just say, “Oh,” and then settle into making the best crust in the world while Taylor made the lemon meringue or double chocolate Jell-O pudding fillings. Then they’d eat pies together and Taylor would get to hear those famous tales.

  Grandma loved to tell stories—about rattlesnakes, rich people, and the crazy folk in California—and Taylor loved to listen to her. She sometimes got teased about how when she was little she always used to ask, “Grandma, is that true?” Grandma would laugh and say, “Honey, you look around us here in this family in this town and you tell me something that’s true, and then I’ll tell you about my stories.”

  When Taylor’s grandma died, her mom kind of went off the deep end and Taylor had to move out of the house before someone— usually her—got hurt. Crazy as they were, the streets actually felt safe, predictable by comparison.

  Years later, Taylor was living with a high-end sex worker in West Hollywood and working at a place called Eddie’s Speakeasy over in Pasadena when she heard that her uncle had died. Eddie had been born male but always felt female. After she transitioned to female she still liked dressing like a man so she kind of looked like a big-breasted dyke in drag. She spoke in a higher-pitched queen’s voice but she could throw a guy clear out into the street if someone broke the rules of the “speakeasy.” There were rooms in the back for turning regular tricks, but Taylor worked out in front where there were these tacky booths built for johns who wasted the prostitute’s time when they wanted to talk rather than fuck. Somebody came up with the idea as a joke, but it took off, and Eddie charged these guys thirty bucks a half hour to sit and talk with a girl—no touching allowed. It was great. Taylor had a job, didn’t have to touch the motherfuckers, Eddie made good money, and the women in the back could get down to business. So, that’s where she was when her girlfriend called and said she’d read in the paper that Taylor’s uncle was dead.

  Taylor called her mom, who said she was going to have a special memorial service at her house—no, the others didn’t approve, but goddammit he was her brother and the service was going to be at her own goddamn house, and yes, she could use Taylor’s help. When Taylor arrived her mom explained there would be newspaper reporters and a lot of important people, so the place had to look really classy. Taylor laughed, looking around at the orange carpet, peeling linoleum, and three-foot-high weeds in the back yard. “Right, Mom. Classy.”

  She had her mind set, though, so Taylor just went along for the ride and let her mom do her thing, which turned out to be pretty incredible. She was a great cook when she was sober, and the house cleaned up pretty good, and Taylor mowed the weeds down low so they almost looked like grass. Her mom gave her a can of green spray paint to cover over the dirt spots, but the Santa Ana winds picked up and blew wet, green dirt everywhere, so she gave up on that. Then, an hour before people were supposed to arrive, her mom looked up and panicked. “The walls! Classy places are supposed to have pictures on the walls.” Taylor told her to forget it but she was on a roll. “No, I know just the thing. Come on!”

  She dragged Taylor to the hardware store to buy some one-by twos and nails and then across the street to JCPenney’s, where she’d seen huge beach towels on sale. Rummaging through the pile she found two velour ones and then they tore out of there and back to the house. In ten minutes Taylor’s mom had hammered together frames and pulled the towels tightly over them, stapling it all together in the back. Then she stood up on the back of the couch, hammering into the wall, and Taylor handed her the “prints” to hang as high up as she could reach. When someone knocked on the door, she stashed the hammer behind the couch.

  Taylor went out back on the “lawn” to smoke a joint and watch people arrive. There were some people from her uncle’s church, a lot she didn’t know, all her cousins and then, in a surreal parade, the cast of the Father of the Year show, all fat and grown up. Darin Saunders, the guy who played the son, was looking pudgy and wannabe suave with a woman in a tight black evening dress, loitering right under the new “prints.” Taylor had to admit the pictures looked pretty damn good—they were two abstract silhouettes, global continents all shiny black against a shimmery gold background that actually did tie in nicely with the orange carpet and black couch. Taylor appreciated the joke. She wished her grandma was there to see it, but figured she and her uncle were probably watching the whole show from above. Or below.

  She came back inside to find Darin, with tears in his eyes, telling her cousin Kevin how her uncle had been just like a father to him. And Carolyn Chandler, who looked exactly the same and talked just like she had on the show as the “good housewife,” had a drink in one hand and Taylor’s mom’s arm in the other and was telling her how absolutely stunning her two prints were, and where did she possibly find such lovely abstract representations of the world?

  Taylor’s mom took a long drag on her cigarette. She struck a dramatic pose, paused for effect, then exhaled real slow. “Oh, those old things.” She smiled, flicking her hand in the direction of the pri
nts. “They’re just a little something I picked up on a trip somewhere. I’m so glad you like them, Carolyn dahling.” Taylor wasn’t sure which movie star her mom was imitating, but she was riding pretty high, thoroughly enjoying herself.

  She glanced over at Taylor, arching her eyebrows and pursing her lips in a familiar what did I tell you? look. The girl raised her glass in a mock toast. Then she moseyed over to the makeshift bar, where her uncle’s old publicity lady was hustling a former stunt man who said he was Tony Curtis’ double in Some Like It Hot. It was a pretty good joke because he thought he might get a part out of her, but he didn’t know she was just a rich old drunk who didn’t have any clout left in Hollywood. The agent thought she might get some hot sex from his still-studly body but Taylor knew that wasn’t going to happen because she’d already seen him outside hitting on her two gay friends, whom she’d traded dope to in exchange for providing “valet parking services,” which in reality just meant making sure the cars were still there, hubcaps and all, when people wanted to leave.

  But the best part of the joke wasn’t either of these clowns. It was the gold-sequined pocketbook dangling off the back of the publicity lady’s barstool. Taylor had spotted it earlier when the lush interrupted her story of all the women Taylor’s uncle had fucked to clasp the girl’s head to her damp lilac-scented bosom, rock her around a little, and mutter, “Oh dear, what a loss. What a tremendous loss this must be for you kids. He was such a god. A true icon.” The right side of her face was pushed into the gold sequins of the lady’s sweaty gown straining against her breasts, but out of her left eye Tayor glanced down and saw the matching gold purse, its clasp slightly open, revealing a gold-plated cigarette case and seriously bulging gold-sequined wallet. Now here it was again, that shimmering pocketbook right in front of her eyes, swinging just below the lady’s broad gold-sequined ass, gaping open in a sweet offer Taylor just couldn’t refuse.

  Screwing the rich

  “C.N., get your hands off that girl. This ain’t no lesbo porn movie we’re filming here.”

  I hear the voice as if it’s far off down a tunnel in somebody else’s dream. A few minutes ago I was so messed up on the Quaaludes and hash they gave us before filming that I was feeling absolutely no pain. In fact, I wasn’t feeling much of anything except hot lights and sweaty bodies pushing against the numbness of this body that was about to pass out. We were filming the scene where the hero stud comes to California, meets up with some hippies, they all smoke from a hookah pipe, and then immediately break into a wild orgy. I was trying to stay conscious because otherwise I wouldn’t get paid, but I was losing it. Next thing I knew I got like shot through this tunnel of sensation and everything went from being numb and blurry to being bright and intense. And I don’t mean the lights. Now I am full-on pressed right up against the body of this woman they seem to be yelling at and I wonder if I am “that girl” they are talking about. All I know is that every cell in my body is suddenly alive; I am inhaling this woman, my face is buried in her neck, and I am feeling pleasure in places in my body I’d forgotten even existed. And check it out. I am feeling pleasure right in the middle of filming a goddamn porn scene. I’m telling you, in Hollywood fact is stranger than fiction. Not only am I feeling pleasure like, honey, someone just turned on the light switch after years of darkness, but it’s like my heart got reattached, too. I don’t know what the fuck is going on except that I am probably gonna lose a really good job but they are definitely gonna have to tear me away from this woman that is stealing my sorry-ass heart right here and now.

  “Cut! Goddammit, C.N. I told you to knock it off. I’m not gonna have any kinky shit in my film. This is not a lesbian movie.”

  “Oh, but that’s exactly what it is,” she laughs. “Come on, darlin. I’m taking you home.”

  I manage to get up, get my clothes on, and watch this woman reach over and put on a cowboy hat left over from the scene where the hero-stud did the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Then she smiles at me and I pass out.

  When I wake up I am in fuckin’ heaven. That’s all I can say. She’s still smiling at me, only now I am lying in her bed, in her apartment. In her fancy-ass penthouse apartment. In her bed that looks like it could sleep ten people and you could just sink right down into the softness of pillows all around you and a huge feather pillow underneath you. And it smells so sweet. Man, she can’t hardly get me outta that bed. Not that she tries too hard. Turns out she’s working the trade, but on some completely different level. She turns like two or three grand a trick, is in business for herself with three other women, two of them dykes, and not only does she not get bothered by the pigs but they actually set her up with some of her best clients, diplomats and foreign dignitaries and shit like that. Check it out. This woman is smart. When we talk she makes my mind do the same flip-flops my belly does when she touches me so deep. Turns out she used to be a college professor of philosophy at some fancy school back east. Says she loved teaching but that the academic bullshit she had to put up with messed with her spirit. She says it keeps everything cleaner to fuck with your body as opposed to your mind. And the money’s better, too. Hell, I’d have gone to school if there were teachers like that but hey, check it out, here we are. And, girl, I am learning some things from this woman.

  Besides all that, she has one whole wall of her apartment built into bookcases and they are filled, floor to ceiling, with books I haven’t ever gotten my hands on. Like I said, I have died and gone to heaven. I tease her (but I’m not joking) and say that she is never gonna get rid of me till I’ve read every one of those books on her shelves. She kisses me so sweet I forget we’re having a word kind of conversation. Then I see she’s looking at me with those eyes that are more sad than sparkly, eyes that I call her “see ins” (which is what I think her initials really mean) because they see right into my heart and so far in the past and the future and right through the belly center of the present. Don’t nobody else see things like C.N., which is one of the many reasons nights have turned into days into weeks and months and I am loving this woman like I actually know some things about loving in this world.

  “Honey,” she says. “You know that everything I have is yours. That’s just how it is. You can read me, you can read my books. But I’m going to have you start over here with Sartre and some existentialists, because I have a feeling that before you get through with the Marxists you may not want to be hanging out with a bourgeois hooker and I’m not ready to let go of you yet.”

  I don’t have a clue what she is talking about or why she thinks I could ever begin to think about leaving her. I don’t know too much about Marxists or that bourgeois shit and I can’t imagine what could be wrong with screwing the rich—they got the money, right? But I have learned a few ways to get that old sadness out of her eyes and so I pull her down on top of me and let the world just drift away for a little while.

  we are the women

  we are the horses who know no reins. no metal cuts into our cheeks. no leather pulls and jerks our heads. our direction lies within, and our bodies know the way. no sweaty straps cinch into our girths. we will bear no saddles for those who have forgotten how to ride. we run together, turn as one. strong hearts set deep in broadened chests. cresting hills, our nostrils flare to take in scent and breath. we are the women who ride the horses who know no reins. bare upon their backs we eat air with our laughter, comb our hair with the wind. our hands are free for loving. stroking warm fine necks, fingers wrapping into mane. we ride together, turn as one. bodies leaning forward, surging over hills, turning with the mere muscled press of a soft inner thigh, shifting slightly back to slow the wondrous pace. we are the women who lie down in moonlit meadows, nuzzled into sleep with dreams of thundering hooves and hearts galloping in the night, dancing circles around our bed of gathered grasses. we wake to touch in wonder the dawn-filled hoofprints embedded in the earth—protective rings around our love, left by those who know no reins.

  universal Studios

  C.N.
pulled into the back lot of Universal Studios and waited while a stagecoach and fifteen rangy horses passed by. A cowboy drinking a Coca-Cola and listening to a Walkman tipped his hat to her. “Can I help you find something, pretty lady?” he asked, leaning up against the side of her convertible.

  “I seriously doubt you would have any clue as to what I’m looking for,” she answered, putting the Trans Am in gear.

  “Well, if you don’t find it, you come on down to Studio 13 and I’ll be waiting for you,” he called out as she pulled away, driving around the horse dung.

  C.N. turned down Avenue West and drove slowly through the set at Studio 9 in case Fernando was still working on his made-for-TV remake of Dickens’s Great Expectations. The set was empty; a door banged against an old Elizabethan storefront, blown about by the Santa Ana winds. She shivered and headed over to the Costume Warehouse, parking by Jason’s pink Corvette.

  “C.N., darling, how are you?” A tall, slim man climbed down from a sliding ladder and dusted off his hands. “It’s been forever. How are you anyway, sweetheart? What brings you to this part of town? Want to be someone else? Want to be the someone someone else desires? Talk to me, baby. You’re in my house now. You can be anything you want here.”