Then the freckled woman came and said: We’re still trying to understand you. Do you remember what Colleen said to you?
I told her I was disgusting, and—
Then what?
Then nothing. Where’s J. D.? What have you done to him?
Do you love him more than Neva?
Where’s my boyfriend? You fucking . . .—Then she wept again, while they watched her.
5
Let’s talk, said Colleen.
I don’t want to, said Judy.
What do you want to do?
I don’t know.
Exactly. So let’s talk about you.
Judy closed her eyes.
Colleen said: I don’t know anything about being male, but I know that presenting femininity in the world, if you have the world seeing you, then you know what it’s about.
Then you know what exactly? said Judy, feeling dizzy.
It’s about how you’re read.
I want to be read as . . . as a lady.
Oh, really? said Colleen. What kind of lady are you?
I, I, I’m a whore.
That’s a good true answer, said Colleen. I’m aware that the life of a trans prostitute is extremely scary. So that’s who you are?
Sure, said Judy sullenly.
Around her neck Colleen placed a greenish pendant with wings outspread like an eagle’s. Judy flushed for confusion.
I have trans femme friends who have had to experience it from cis women too, getting told both that you’re not a woman and definitely not a man. Yeah, that’s a very dangerous and vulnerable place to be. And I have so much respect for them, Judy. So much respect for you.
For me?
Oh, yes.
Then I, I respect you, for being a beautiful out lesbian who—
When I was in high school I had shame around it. I quickly realized that being shameless is my thing. Not allowing shame.
But how is that possible? the transwoman demanded. Because all the time I—
Shame is kind of the same category as jealousy. I don’t accept it. I don’t accept it but I also know that people are programmed to feel it. It’s not a real natural healthy human experience.
Judy said nothing. She didn’t believe it.
6
Behind a tree of white flowers like a stately candelabrum stood a little yellow house with lacework curtains. Colleen took her by the hand and led her there. An old woman was waiting in the doorway.
I’m Reba, she said.
Where’s J. D.? What’s happened to him?
Come in, said Reba.
Open-mouthed, Judy crept forward like some newly adolescent girl who so greatly fears a shameful menstrual accident that all month long she worries that a bellyache might be a cramp, or that any feeling at all down there might be blood dripping between her legs. She thought: Whatever Neva wants me to do; whatever she wants to do to me . . .—Yet then she stopped.
Colleen said: Go on, Judy. Follow that fuckin’ Yellow Brick Road.—So she had to go inside with the old lady.
Now, Judy, whom do you love more, J. D. or Neva?
Neva.
Will you leave him for her?
I don’t know.
So I thought. We’re keeping him asleep. Come sit down.
And Judy sat at the kitchen table, letting Reba take her hand and smile at her while she smiled back politely. She felt terrified, as anyone would have in the old Jewish tales when the demon princess kisses someone with the kiss of death.
Reba seated herself in a rocking chair, and began carding wool with a bronze comb. The only comfort Judy felt came from her greenish pendant.
Over the counter hung Lynda Koolish’s classic photograph of Margie Adam, snow-faced and young, with the sleeves rolled up her muscular, hairy arms as she leaned over the piano, closing her eyes, parting her lips in a music-seeking smile. Judy had never before seen it.
Reba said: Have you ever heard the tale of the teacher who gave her student everything, then was abandoned?
No, said Judy.
Well, that’s what Neva did. And that’s what the teacher wanted.
Why?
Well, it was the best thing.
And you were the teacher?
Oh, no. Neva’s had a hard life, loving all of you. Who else has the stomach for it? Wife or goddess to everyone and soul mate to none, oh, my . . .
Reba’s hair was as delicate as the white and beige of linen plainweave. She came and stood over Judy. Slowly she drew Judy’s face in between her breasts. Then she stepped away, looking. After awhile she kissed her, and the ecstasy of the spirit flittered down. Judy felt turned inside out. How was she supposed to know the difference between a mother and a lover anyhow?
She seemed to be looking down upon herself as she worshipped Reba’s pussy, her head moving up and down like a seal’s black head among dark kelp.
7
There came a knock. The old lady said nothing. After another knock the freckled woman came in. On the kitchen table she placed a vial. Then she bent down, kissed Reba on the forehead and departed.
Look, said Reba.
In the vial was a tiny shard of something coral-pink.
Reba said: This is a transuranium element called ladium. Our island holds the only known deposit. From its position in the periodic table it should be radioactive with a very brief half-life, but that’s actually not the case. Do you understand what I’m saying?
No, Judy whispered.
Do you want to be a lady once and for all?
I am one.
Then why do you let your boyfriend call you Frank?
Neva told you!
No, he did, in his sleep. Listen, Judy. Ladium reacts violently with anything male. If I place it in contact with your body, you may suffer serious burns or worse. The reaction will be instantaneous. You may be maimed or even killed, but whatever remains of you will be entirely female. Do you want to try?
Do you, I mean, do you think I’ll be killed?
I doubt it, but I can’t say. You know I’m not trying to murder you, Judy.
God, I feel afraid . . . !
If it does kill you, you won’t suffer. If it burns you, we’ll nurse you.
What about J. D.?
We’ll keep him asleep as long as you want us to.
Judy craved to escape herself through this old woman who cared for her without perhaps desiring her. But no; she didn’t want to get burned away!
What if I want to go away just the way I am, with J. D., and . . . ?
You mean, would we allow you?
Judy nodded.
Of course. But we wouldn’t let you remember much.
Then Judy, bewildered as usual, said what she always used to say: If I could only be somebody . . .
You can, said Reba. Now shall I?
Judy hesitated, then finally nodded, believing that the old lady had spoken all.
Reba opened the vial. A pink vapor began swirling out. Reba sucked some of it into her mouth, blew it out and grinned. Then she waited. Leaning gingerly forward, Judy smelled something like the sweaty fragrance of healthy topless young women driving nails and chopping firewood. She heard not a voice but the faraway mother of a voice. Then her nose began stinging and bleeding as if she had inhaled sulfuric acid. Terrified, she bolted into the kitchen. With a sorrowful smile Reba closed the vial.
8
I myself would not have liked to be wearing Judy’s panties just then! Perhaps she should have been pining outright for the retired policeman, or hoping somehow not merely to die in Neva’s arms, but to ensure that the two of them died together. But she didn’t care to live or die at all. She merely felt ashamed. Had I been there I would have told her: Click your heels together three times and say . . .
They
took her up a hill to a place where she could oversee threads of mist stretched midway across the mountains, and then a maze of islets, severed fingers furry with trees, clouds like the disarticulated bones of a hand, lying miraculously unscattered, with trees and channels beneath them. Going ahead, Reba knelt and kissed a certain stone. They said: Our teacher is buried here.
On the other side of the grave was a blackberry hollow, and down there the retired policeman was sitting bound and gagged on a chair like some Pharaoh’s stone effigy which vandals have been chipping at. He was snoring over a brazier of witch’s mallow.
A muscular young lesbian with a shaved head, a dragon tattoo on her forearm and a leather collar squatted over the brazier, pissed, and its smoke sizzled out. Then she went away. After awhile the retired policeman opened his eyes.
What he saw beneath the crow’s claw spread of cedar leaves was a lesbian. With her shining eyes, pale high forehead and dark butch haircut she reminded him of the mug shot of Alvin Karpis, who was Public Enemy Number One back in January 1935.
She said nothing to him.
Where’s Judy? he said.
They brought her forward. As usual, she was reeling and crying like one who comes to implore forgiveness when it is too late for the wrong to be righted but not too late for the sinner to be comforted. She felt ashamed. Suddenly she turned to them and said, as if this knowledge could help her: Neva has the women’s mark.
Oh, you saw it?
She showed it to me! I want it; I want it!
At this they withdrew and murmured angrily. Presently someone pulled off her greenish pendant. But Reba looked on; she appeared to pity her.
9
How long was I asleep? he said.
Oh, the whole three days. They wanted to change the sheets, and then they were going to call a doctor, but you—
It still stinks of that fucking aromatherapy bullshit. When I see that bitch who made me sick—
No, J. D., she was really really nice! She took your temperature and everything. When you were sleeping I had a chat with her. Oh, I’m so sleepy. And she said: Judy, just learn to be shameless. And—
What’s that supposed to mean?
I don’t remember, she said, trying and already failing to remember the touch of Neva and the smell of her hair.
J. D., she said then, I really, really want to be pretty.
That’ll be the day, he said.
I don’t know, but I feel somehow glad we came here even if we didn’t do much.—Actually she was feeling tentative and out of sorts.
He said nothing, so she tried his patience another inch: It was relaxing, I guess.
It was a fucking waste. Pour me a drink, he said.
I guess you’re right, she said. I don’t know why I made us come here. Oh, God, I hate myself.
Shut up, he said.
I feel so worthless—
If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, he said to her, why the hell are you doing it? Find what you like and go do it instead of bitching about it.
The whiskey hurt his stomach, so he staggered to the toilet.
10
It was checkout time. Once the retired policeman was in the corridor calling the elevator, Judy left a tip for the kind chambermaid; he would have yelled to see her waste money like that. Trudging to the harbor, they reembarked. He said: For once you don’t stink . . .—at which she finally believed with all her heart that she was sometimes very pleasing to him. There are many who can love without concern for the beloved’s sensations, but Judy, like her namesake, aimed to captivate! She might love Neva infinitely more than her retired policeman—she did!—and Neva certainly loved her, but how could she ever please Neva? Expectation of the likely answer made her throat seize up.
On deck they saw a happy old lesbian couple caressing each other with wrinkled hands; Judy thought: I want this. Click your heels together three times and say . . . There’s no one like Neva. There’s no one like Neva. There’s no . . .—Then the ferry began to hum across the cold and milky strait whose low isles were uninterrupted by anything. It is just as well that neither of them were acquainted with Judy Garland’s recurrent nightmare about standing on the deck of a ship that had just been christened and was about to disembark on her maiden voyage when it began to sink, and everyone stood at attention as if nothing were the matter while the water rose up to their necks, and then the young star woke up.
They went home to the Y Bar, where Xenia was saying: I dated this Ph.D., this woman who’s a sexologist, and she told me what makes a predator . . .—But Neva was absent, so Judy bought pills from Francine, kissed the retired policeman goodnight, locked herself into her room and got high. Strutting and striding in her garters, she, confident again, rolled her tongue in her mouth and longed to fuck all of us just as Neva did.
11
Scurrying over to the Hotel Reddy, she decided not to announce herself. Within five minutes a man came out. Judy rushed to catch the door before it shut. The man frowned, but Judy was already in!
Creeping upstairs, Judy, passing by Catalina’s partially open door, heard that person say, evidently on the phone and probably to Neva: It was really hard. It really impacted our sexual life. Because of her dishonesty, because of her cheating, it really damaged that emotional connection that we had.
Neva’s door was closed and silent. As she approached, Catalina’s door began to creak wider. Judy fled.
12
She went to the Y Bar, but found only Hunter blubbering drunkenly to Francine: I had a dream that Xenia left me, and when I told her I felt anguish she just laughed at me . . .
So she went to the Cinnabar to see Carmen, who smiled at her.
She ordered a bourbon and ginger ale for a dollar more than at the Y Bar. When Carmen brought it, Judy said: I need to ask you something.
Carmen looked tired and patient.
I don’t know who I am.
So?
How do I decide if I’m a man or a woman?
What do you want from me?
I mean, did you always know who you are?
I feel like I always knew, said Carmen. I didn’t have the concept of what that meant, but I knew that I was different, thinking that girls were really pretty and I just wanted to be their friend. As a kid it was just like that innocent love-and-wanna-play kind of thing. It wasn’t until I got older that I started to understand what that meant. It was probably around eighth grade when I realized, oh, this is a thing. I was very feminine with my hair and my makeup and so forth. There’s this box that they lock us into, of lesbian hair and being mannish; but it’s not a cookie cutter kind of thing. We’re all people like everybody else. I still wasn’t sure that lesbian was a title that I wanted to take on, not wanting to disappoint my parents, or label myself and end up changing my mind. I felt that I had to commit to that term for all my life. So I came out as bisexual at first, and that was easier. And it wasn’t until I was an adult that I dropped that and . . .
And Carmen lifted up Judy’s drink, wiped obsessively beneath it with her napkin and daydreamed about her lost love at the Silver Fox bar in Bakersfield: styrofoam snowballs and plastic snowflakes in the mirror above the shining army of glasses, Steely Dan on the speaker, Christmas stockings in the names of Britt and Marisa, three muted televisions, one showing a commercial for cars, another set to sports, the last to news; and there sat the lost love, Glenda, who, longhaired, friendly and cheerful, munched on olives and maraschino cherries all day and sometimes used to hold Carmen’s hand right there at the curved old wooden counter; the first time they kissed, Carmen got so tingly and swoony that the bottles of gin and whiskey glowed an even deeper red in the glamor-hell beneath the bar.
What about Neva? asked Judy.
What about her? said Carmen wearily.
I think she hides who she is.
Well, what if sh
e did have a secret and let’s say a certain Judy wanted to tell people and ran her mouth? Have you ever been outed?
Well, I . . .
Maybe you don’t understand what it means to out people! For me it was someone randomly saying like, oh, I hear you’re gay now, or, oh, you think it’s cool but you haven’t been with a real man. And for Neva, who knows what her secret is?
But she has one?
Honey, we all do.
Because she was locked out of Neva’s secret, Judy felt more lonely than ever. Closing her eyes, she seemed to see a fog as subtle as if bleached and broken clamshells had been thinly silvered.
13
She went home, locked the door, opened her lingerie drawer, opened the plastic bag and withdrew the torn blouse that she had stolen from the lesbian. She kissed it. She said: Neva, tell me what to do.
Of course there came no answer.
Closing her eyes, she seemed to see for a moment a tall, strong broadshouldered woman with a lovely neck and long dark hair, glossy black lips and sad, sad eyes. Could that be her? She so much wanted it to be. Where had she seen that person? She would never remember that the source was one of those illicit catalogues from her boyhood days; her girlfriend Marjorie used to keep it hidden for her; it had consisted of photocopied sheets stapled together: TRANSVESTITES IN BONDAGE, page thirteen, Queen of Hearts. Shaking away that image, she pressed the lesbian’s blouse to her face and began to masturbate.
Neva and the Baby-killers
He shall come forth by day after he [has died], and he shall perform all the transformations which his heart shall dictate, and he shall escape from the fire.
THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
Then the female spiritual presence came in the form of the snake, the instructor, and it taught them . . . “It is not the case that you will surely die, for from jealousy he said this to you. Rather, your eyes will open and you will be like gods, recognizing evil and good.”
THE GNOSTIC SCRIPTURES
1
Had I spent any time living as opposed to dreaming my life, this story would run as brief and easy as a fairytale, in which case I should have plastered over ambiguities, repeating the simple claim that from the instant we saw her, we had to have her—even Shantelle seized the faith that the medicine between Neva’s legs would be good for her!—but since I feel chilly, nauseous and dizzy, let me lie in bed longer, the better to proffer exceptions.
The Lucky Star Page 41