Face Value

by Lia Matera

  I glanced at Sandy. His eyes drank in details of their anatomies, especially when one lay back and spread her legs, arching her back.

  “Is Arabella in here?” Sandy asked.

  The woman sat up with a sigh. “Well, she—”

  The other woman preempted her. “You’ll have to check back. We could take care of you now. Get real nasty.” She held up the speculum. “Show you what it looks like deeeep inside.”

  Her look of phony ecstasy, worn like a mask, worn like the servile helpfulness of a store clerk or the elegant bonhomie of a maitre d’, seemed to put her miles away from us.

  “Will Arabella be here later?”

  “Check back,” she repeated.

  It was unsettling to get no confirmation that Arabella was working. I hoped Margaret had been right.

  We headed down some steps into a room labeled “The San Francisco Room.” It looked like a small nightclub with murals of people having sex in every conceivable position. Onstage, women licked each other under a lightly spraying shower. On padded tables in the center of the room, women lay on towels displaying their genitals to men who sat there. On other tables along a wall, women displayed themselves individually to lone men. Most were inserting fingers or dildos within inches of the men’s faces. They were all very beautiful. They were all very young.

  We heard one say, “Do you have a little inspiration for me?”

  A man handed her what looked to be a ten-dollar bill.

  “Do you have another one of those?” the woman asked.

  He handed her another.

  “What do you like? I have toys.”

  She pressed one into herself. “For a little more inspiration, I could put it deeper,” she offered.

  The women on the stage began lip-syncing to a song called “Sex-Positive.” The lyrics basically said, We love it all the time in every way, we’re the new kind of woman, we’re sex-positive.

  The patrons seemed pleased to observe their enthusiasm and pleasure—which I supposed was the point. I tried to imagine other workers radiating such passion for their toil. But it was hard to imagine miners singing about being “coal-positive.”

  “Surprised?” Sandy whispered.

  I nodded, still gripping his arm. “If Arabella’s not in the Main Room, let’s go.”

  “There’s plenty more—room with glass walls and suction-cup dildos, theater where you can see movies of scared-looking Asian ladies sucking—”

  “I get the idea. I’ve seen enough to get a take on the place.”

  In the Main Room, three or four men occupied each row surrounding the stage, several free seats between them. On one man’s lap was a gorgeous woman who looked about twenty, wearing a very sheer teddy. He kept his eyes on the stage as she braced her forearms on the seat in front of her and undulated in his lap. As I watched, she sat back, ran her hand over his cheek and whispered to him. He handed her a crisp bill, and she resumed rocking forward and back. I supposed this was the “lap dancing” advertised on the marquee.

  Two other women wandered the aisles in bikinis or teddies and high heels, bending to whisper to the men, most of whom shook their heads. One man in the back, his hair matted and his skin pocked, nodded yes. The thought of lowering myself onto his lap nauseated me. The young woman didn’t hesitate. She nuzzled against him, whispering in his ear.

  As Sandy went to speak with the remaining dancer, the smell of sex—female wetness and semen—rose from the fabric of the seats in front of me. I hoped I hadn’t touched anything; I’d have my clothes dry-cleaned, I’d scrub the hell out of my hair when I got home.

  Onstage, a nude woman collected scant tips. Men could get closer views in the other rooms. They could see women do things to each other. They could go into a booth or into the Private Room and touch themselves. This was relatively tame stuff.

  I watched the dancer, startled again by her physical perfection. I didn’t have a bad figure—up until this evening I’d have said it was good. But these women were in a separate league. It was so much more dramatic than seeing photographs of starlets. I began to wonder if I’d judge myself differently when I got home and looked in the mirror. I wondered if the men in the audience viewed the women at home and at work differently.

  Sandy returned as the loudspeaker boomed, “Isn’t she hot? Isn’t she wet? Isn’t she stupendous? So head over to the Private Room now and see her in the flesh with another lovely and talented young lady. Go on over there and let them make you happy!”

  Sandy shrugged. “Everybody’s being cagey as hell about de Janeiro. Either she’s not here, or she’s put out word she doesn’t want to be IDed.”

  He turned me slightly, putting his body between me and various jostling men. I felt clenched, every muscle ready for a bolting exit. I’d never felt so out of place anywhere.

  “You ready to go?” Sandy kept his hands on my arms.

  I leaned against him. He inhaled sharply, wrapping his arms around me.

  He was in the mood to have sex, I could feel it. And I could feel myself respond. Because it was the result of visual manipulation, my desire felt cheap and tawdry and somehow much more urgent. Maybe it’s part of the drive to want what’s lurid and outlaw and sleazy. I wondered how it would feel to make love with these images swirling in my brain. I wondered how it would feel to go with the cheapness of it.

  It was heady, almost irresistible.

  I hated getting sucked into rampant, panting I-don’t-care-if-they-don’t-mean-it desire. It swept over me, and I hated it.

  I took a backward step. “We’ll ask the ticket seller one more time on our way out. If not, let’s go.”

  Our final inquiry was fruitless.

  Two steps from the door, someone handed me a button. It featured the ubiquitous slogan “Sex-Positive.”

  It sounded so clinical, like the results of an HIV or a pregnancy test. It sounded so Orwellian.

  I stood there looking at it, remembering the wave of sybaritic desire that had washed over me in there. A hundred images flashed through my mind, Penthouse and Hustler come to life.

  I looked up at Sandy and was suddenly worried that the images would never leave me, that sex would never be the relatively private and personal thing it had always been, that these women and this evening would crowd into my bed with me.

  I guess Sandy read that in my face. “Same with police work,” he said. “You never drive down the street that you don’t see the people got knifed there and shot there, or who were lying there in pools of vomit. Once you actually see it, the world’s different for you.”

  “I know that.” A bit of an overstatement. “I just didn’t think it would make me this uncomfortable.”

  I’d forgotten how consoling and caring his face could be. We’d clashed in my hometown. He’d hated Hal, and he’d hated Ted, and he’d lashed out at me. And I, chilled by four years of Hal’s frost, had been determined to let Ted McGuin envelope me in his high-energy heat. I’d said some pretty harsh things to Sandy. He’d said some harsh things to me. And looking back on it, we’d both been right.

  “Think of it like TV, Laura. Or Newsweek magazine. It’s a slicked-up bunch of bullshit images. You let go of them when it comes to your reality. You’ve got to.”

  “I feel like showering for a week.”

  Suddenly he laughed. He put his arm around me and gave me a quick squeeze. “That’s it,” he said, “that’s me. You always think of me as such a straitlace, such a traditional-values fellow.” He cocked his head. “Yeah, I know you do. Well, now you know why. The shit I saw as a cop you wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t even describe it, and you couldn’t take it in. So that’s why. You liberals always think it comes from being puritanical, from wanting to protect our innocence or some goddam thing. But that isn’t even close. A person wants to take a step back into something cleaner than what he’s seen. Those old-fashi
oned values, they’re your week-long shower, you know what I mean?”

  My hand closed around the “Sex-Positive” button. “Traditional values just means you don’t want this stuff in your face. You put some clothes on it, and it’s mainstream television and Miss America.”

  “At least it’s not a nineteen-year-old girl spreading herself in public for money.”

  I rested my head against his chest. I felt as if I were coming down from a major drug. I felt depleted.

  “And what the hell any of this has to do with religion and guru stuff, I don’t even pretend to guess,” Sandy added. “You got yourself one very weird case here, you know that?”

  “I’ve got myself money in the bank.”

  He chuckled. “Inspiration.”

  “That’s right.” I nodded. “For a little inspiration, I’ll put it in deeper.”

  12

  I’d taken a long shower, trying not to notice my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t look like the young women at The Back Door. No one I knew looked like them; only Barbie dolls, only TV stars. And yet it was my forty-year-old body that looked wrong to me tonight. Twenty years ago, with breast implants, I might have aspired to such perfection. Now I was merely trim, reasonably fit after months of hiking. But somewhere along the way, my skin had lost some of its creaminess, some of its glow. There were pockets of crepiness where once there had been elasticity. It had never bothered me before. I hadn’t thought about it much. I’d been living in my head more than in my body, perhaps. In my career it was essential to wear nice clothes. If your body wasn’t a good rack for the accepted styles, that was a problem. But what did strippers do when they reached forty? Did they stay “sex-positive” when it no longer served a business purpose?

  I climbed into bed feeling dispirited and unattractive. I was just nodding off when the phone rang. I checked the clock: 2:02. I picked up, thinking it might be Sandy, just returned home.

  “Laura. It’s Margaret.” Her voice seemed thin and brittle, about to crumble under some emotion. “I know it’s late, but— I’m going crazy. Gretchen doesn’t answer. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “She called me. Arabella.”

  I sat up, pulling the comforter around my shoulders. “Did she say something about the videos?” Why else would Margaret phone me?

  “She was hit in the face and stomach.” Margaret moaned.

  It took me a minute to understand: this wasn’t work-related. “She was beaten up, you mean?”

  “Ambushed. In the parking lot tonight on her way in to work. She’s got cracked ribs, black eyes, a split lip.”

  I shuddered in the cold room. “What time was this?” Did it happen while Sandy and I were inside? Earlier? We’d asked a number of people about her, had they known?

  “Around eight. That’s when she usually goes to work.”

  So she hadn’t taken part in the SF-FASE benefit, as Margaret had assumed she would. But perhaps she’d crossed paths with some of the throng as they made their way to their cars.

  “Did anyone see what happened? Do you know who hit her?”

  “Two men. That’s what she said. She’s … she didn’t want to go to the hospital, she wanted to take care of it herself, but it was too bad. She called me.”

  I envisioned the crowd at The Back Door. I supposed she hadn’t wanted to stagger into the middle of it and ask for help.

  “I tried to take care of her, but it was awful. I took her to the hospital.” Her tone chilled suddenly. “She thought Brother Mike hired the men. I told her he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  That got my full attention. “You know I represent Brother Mike now?” So don’t tell me anything you don’t want him to know.

  “Yes. I thought you should know. I had to talk to someone. Oh god, it’s so awful, Laura. You should see.” There was panic in her tone. Harm had come to someone she loved. And she wasn’t sure her guru hadn’t caused it. Not after what he’d done with the videos.

  “Are you all right, Margaret?” Obviously she wasn’t; she hadn’t waited till morning to phone.

  “Ninety percent of the time, Arabella doesn’t call me. Why now? Why did she call me now? To make me feel terrible?” The last words came out like cap-gun explosions. “She’s hardly talked to me since Brother started doing videos. After two years together, suddenly she was too busy. We were together two years, did you know that? That’s a long time. Especially for an exotic dancer. It’s hard to stay with someone who has sex with other people all the time. But I hung in. We hung in. Two years.”

  And what? She only calls when things go wrong? She only calls to worry you?

  Margaret began to cry, a high keening that was barely audible. “I hate love. It’s so debilitating, so embarrassing. I work on it and work on it, but I just can’t keep it small enough.” She swallowed a sob. “It doesn’t seem worth it. My mom killed herself when my dad left. I never understood, I was so angry. But now I do.”

  I didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. “Margaret.” I hoped my tone was bracing, not unsympathetic. “I know this is painful for you. Are you still at the hospital?” I envisioned her outside the emergency room. Or in the lobby waiting for visiting hours.

  “I came back to get my car. I’m calling from my car.”

  “You’re on your way home? Will you be all right?”

  “Not home, no. I need to walk.” Her tone became increasingly hysterical.

  “You need to rest, Margaret. It’s late. Arabella’s being cared for. Things will look better when you’re not tired.”

  “My mother was a poet, did you know that? Graciella Lenin. Every once in a while, some college offers a class on her poetry. She wrote a poem right before she killed herself, about why she had to keep walking. She wrote it while she was walking; you can tell, it’s so scribbled. ‘I walk on shards of memory like mirrors of myself in pieces, and each step grinds my image finer and I walk myself into bright dust.’“

  “Where exactly are you?”

  “Parking lot. The Back Door.”

  Why there? Had she driven Arabella’s car to the hospital, returning now for hers?

  “You can’t walk around that neighborhood this late, Margaret.” I shivered under my comforter. My old apartment had been warmer.

  “‘I walk myself into bright dust.’ That’s what I have to do. So the pieces won’t cut me.”

  I wanted to crawl deeper into my bed. I didn’t want to deal with this woman—a mere acquaintance—and her pain.

  “My mother went to where my dad worked, and she stood out front for a long time, and then she threw herself in front of a truck. It had mud flaps with silhouettes of naked women on it. Big old truck—I stared at it afterward, because it crushed my mother. They found the poem in her pocket. It was stained, but I let them publish it. Dad didn’t want me to. But I saved it. And when I grew up, I let them publish it.”

  “Margaret!” I imagined her outside the theater waiting for a passing truck. Could she be that upset? “Please don’t—”

  “And now I totally understand it. About the memories being like shards of mirrors.”

  “Where exactly are you, Margaret? In the parking lot in back?” Sandy had parked across from the building’s rear entrance.

  ‘“I walk on shards of memory like mirrors of myself in pieces, and each step grinds my image finer, and I walk myself into bright dust.’“

  “At the very least, why don’t you drive home and maybe take a walk there?” My old neighborhood was relatively safe, if she didn’t get too close to the Presidio.

  “I have to go now.” A sob. “You stand up for yourself all the time, don’t you? You tell people what you really feel.”

  I listened for background sounds, but heard none. “Margaret, are you okay to dr
ive?”

  “No. I won’t drive. I’ll walk. Walk myself into bright dust.”

  “No. Wait there for me. Wait in your car. If you want to walk, we’ll go together to …” I tried to think of a place two women could walk safely in the middle of the night. “Will you wait there?”

  “My mom believed love was a superior form of intelligence, preverbal and more powerful than intellect or sensory intelligence. It’s in her poems, if you want to read them.”

  “Will you stay there and wait for me?” God, I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to be cold. I didn’t want to be in the world. I didn’t want to see anyone, much less someone going crazy. “Margaret?”

  “Brother Mike talks about genuine love, where you transcend who you seem to be, and bond—I forget what part of the brain you bond in, but not the surface areas, not the intellect. Because obviously, intellectually you wouldn’t want to be with someone who sleeps with so many other people, would you? You’d want fidelity, wouldn’t you?” Her voice was reedy, tiny.

  “Will you wait there? I’d like to talk to you in person. Okay?”

  “It’s not easy to feel compared. You know, your partner sleeps with all these perfect-looking women. And they’re so young. You have to give up food and get a face-lift to look even half as good. Sure, you tell yourself it’s totally separate for them, their emotional life and love and all that, and sex. The others are just fuck buddies. It has nothing to do with you. Or with love.”

  “Margaret?” I was despairing of an answer. “Will you wait there, please? So I don’t go out in the middle of the night for nothing?”

  “Even if you tell yourself, okay, I won’t worry unless she actually falls in love, well … We all love Brother Mike. But she had to make it personal.”

  “Or, Margaret?” I was cold and tired, feeling selfish. “You wouldn’t want to take a taxi to my house? I’ll call it for you.”