The Lucky Star

by William T. Vollmann

  Do you have any experience?

  Well, I’ve performed at the Y Bar—

  Oh, that place, he said.

  I vouch for her, said Xenia.

  Well, said the manager, the stakes are low, so what do I care? Okay, Judy; you’ll be Number Six. Don’t let us down.

  Thank you, sir, she whispered.

  Just don’t be lame, said the manager, striding off to number other girls.

  Loudly slapping Judy’s shoulder, the retired policeman said: Knock ’em dead, babe.

  She nodded, too anxious even to speak.

  And now, said the manager, our all-star ambisexuals. First up, please welcome Miss Xenia Ruffles.

  Everyone clapped and whistled. Xenia began her new routine, wiggling and lip-synching to Nancy Sinatra: These boots were made for walkin’ . . .

  Not bad, said the retired policeman, upraising his shotglass, only to discover that it was empty. (Sometimes, to keep up his mind-conditioning, he’d memorize the clothes that the murdered daughter had been wearing, the blue woolen jersey with half-sleeves, the black cashmere stockings and all the rest, so that once the envelopes of evidence came to be introduced at the trial, he’d be right there and ready with identifications.—He rolled around in gore because that made him a better cop.)

  More than half the patrons clapped for Xenia. Young women crammed dollar bills in her G-string, and her eyes darkened with excitement. As for Judy, she had a feeling she would fail again.

  And Xenia raised her arms, burying her hands in her pretty hair, so that the straight man, re-jilted by Sandra, could truly appreciate this person’s breasts; her act was over, so let the gleaning begin! He rubbed his chin, stared and bitched about his job. They sat talking like college students, she naked on the edge of the platform and he clothed. She descended to sit on his lap, there at the edge of the bar.

  Hunter glowered. Suddenly she stood and went out.

  And now, said the manager, let’s show some love for Mistress Fancy. She has the magic cape that goes all the way from here to there!

  Mistress Fancy emerged from the red curtain, waving both hands. Sick with fear, Judy whispered: I’ve gotta pee.

  Then pee.

  But Judy didn’t dare move. She was afraid that someone might look at her. If only Neva would arrive!—But Neva, who had certainly intended to cheer her on, got waylaid by Catalina, who was gripping her by both wrists and saying in a rush: I think the expectations we’re taught as a woman come down to: you have to get married and take care of a family and so on;—but when a woman of color doesn’t do all that, you’re judged a lot harsher. So you have to stand up with grace. I’m undocumented, Neva. Did you ever know that? In college I never got that financial aid; I had to pay out of pocket. I’m still paying back my loans. And you know, as the females in our culture, we’re supposed to take care of our parents. That’s the difference between a white woman and a brown. I am a brown person. I’ll bet your parents don’t expect anything from you. I’ll bet your Mom wasn’t one percent as strict as my Mom. You’re a liberal white girl, so you got to do whatever. And that’s why you think you can treat me any way you feel like. Well, Neva, it hurts me! But I’m brown and you’re white, so what the fuck do you care? Excuse me, Neva, I know you have to go . . .

  I love you, said the lesbian.

  Don’t talk down to me.

  Please come here, said the lesbian, who then did whatever she had to so that Catalina went away fulfilled.

  In those days Hunter was trying not to see the lesbian too often, just to maintain herself the way she was, but she did need to see her a little more and then a little more, sometimes on ecstasy or some other drug, and she had begun to notice changes in herself that made her disappointed. She was turning in her school papers late or never. She was less loving to her mother. She felt more numb to everything, and when the transwoman asked her if that was a good thing or a bad thing she said that it was mostly bad.

  She was hoping to get through the semester. She called Neva and said: I’m feeling very rejected and sexually frustrated. And Xenia’s bad to me.

  Don’t worry, honey, said the lesbian. When we’re together we’re going to invent sexual positions that no humans have ever tried.

  You’re so kind . . . she whispered. I love you so much . . .

  Hunter now like so many of us went walking to and fro on this earth, just as Satan used to do; and before she knew it she was sitting in the Buddha Bar, where an elegant middle-aged woman whose “look” favored that of Julie Andrews was answering a starstruck younger femme: I never had anything really bad, like I would talk to the manager. You’re handing out alcohol and people are drunk. At one point we had little tiny dresses with heels, fishnets. Black. They would put you in an area, and someone would go, cocktails! If you worked the high roller room that was always nice. Then the touching and grabbing wouldn’t happen. No, sweetheart. Oh, no. I never touch anyone in the audience. Go-go girls? Sure, it’s a living, but it’s not really what I want to do. I would imagine that you’re dealing with people you don’t want to deal with.

  Hunter eavesdropped—which was as pointless as suddenly bringing to mind the Hotel Western on Leavenworth; all the same, she imagined kneeling down before the Julie Andrews lady and giving herself utterly to this wise and stately person who would tell her how to live and then maybe . . . She was telling the starstruck girl: I mean, you work for good people and you get paid, but not always . . .

  Meanwhile the lesbian sat wondering whether it would be better or worse for Hunter to break up with Xenia, who kept making her cry and apologize, but as it happened Hunter was the one who kept calling Xenia, not the other way around. She had told Neva: I’m the type of person that has to be pushed until I can’t be pushed anymore, and then . . .

  Just then at the Pink Apple, Mistress Fancy was wriggling up and down the aisle, soliciting for her pension fund. The retired policeman reared up chuckling. Mistress Fancy smacked her lips when he stuck another dollar bill on her bra, everything glitterglam and spangly. Then he sat down, saying: Get ahold of yourself, Judy bitch.

  Number Three was a hulking old black T-girl who sang You better lick it before you stick it, chomping her lips for greedy joy every time some worshipper held out a dollar bill; she would seize hold of men’s and women’s hands and drag them up onstage; her grip made you think that your finger or wrist had been caught in a paper shredder; the retired policeman laughed until he choked. Xenia was still swishing around with her fans and glamorously air-kissing her enemies. Judy wished someone would shoot her in the head.

  In the ladies’ room her bluehaired friend Colleen was smoking a joint. She asked Judy: Do you remember me?

  Sure. Did you parachute in?

  I’ve got something for you.

  Oh. I mean, you really do? Thank you. By the way, I’ve got to—

  And now, said the manager, let’s give it up for Princess Tiger Girl.

  Open your mouth. What I’ve got for you is a kiss.

  Judy did her best to swallow Colleen’s tongue. She was adoring it because it opened her up like daylight. Then Colleen said: I love you, Judy. You know why? Because I love women, and you’re trying so hard to be one of us.

  How do I look to you?

  I dated a couple of people who have looked very different, like you, but my partner now, she’s pretty feminine. What it comes down to is, I don’t care how you look. You’re Judy and that’s enough! I told you before and you forgot it, so I’m telling you now: When you feel disgusting, embrace your disgustingness. Now get out there and shine. But you’d better pee first. Hurry up now.

  And now, let’s rock the house for our longest-playing act ever, Miss Iris Quintana.

  Judy rushed into the stall and peed while Colleen kissed her.—Good, said Colleen. Now here’s a present from Neva . . .—depositing on her tongue a drop of yellow serum.


  You know Neva!

  I’ve told you that. Go out there and make us proud. Hurry, hurry!

  Hitching herself up, she rushed to take her place behind the red curtain just in time to witness the final twirls of Iris Quintana, who reincarnated long dead, golden-eyelashed Natalie Wood with a golden butterfly in her hair, flaunting her thighs in a gold-mesh micro-minidress. Judy should have been terrified. Instead, she was roaringly eager.

  And now, please welcome Miss Judy Garland, straight from the Land of Oz!

  Lip-synching to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Judy marched out to strut her stuff. Although she strove as well as any movie actress not to be human, the applause was tepid, and she was already wishing to hide, but then the yellow serum began to flood her with confidence. Remembering a certain stripper from somewhere who had kept caressing her own buttock, then slid down her thong-strap in quest of hard cash money, Judy now yanked her dress up to her belly button, waggled her buttocks and shouted: I wanna be disgusting! Then they all roared, loving her. Even the retired policeman was beaming.

  They egged her on. The raunchier she got, the better she did, feeling so lucid in the night, shrugging and laughing, the tops of her breasts shining like dreams as she strutted so immense and wonderful. Playing a symphony of garters and thighs, a breast or two and that clenching and unclenching bottom, Judy had herself a crazy crazy time flying around the catty pole! While Judy Garland kept singing why, oh, why can’t I, the other Judy was mouthing: Fuck me, fuck me! I wanna FUCK! And it transpired that the audience could read lips.

  Winking into the impossibly doll-like eyes of a glossyhaired G-girl, Judy shouted: Come on, baby!—The G-girl smiled and blushed. Judy felt powerful—much like the T-girl who confessed to murders she didn’t commit in order to get more attention.

  They leaped up and mobbed her with one-dollar bills. One fan even gave her a five. Xenia was laughing and yelling. When her song was over, horny drunks invited her to their tables. A boy wanted to lick her mouth. An elderly Japanese gentleman made arrangements to meet her at the restroom door in order to buy her used panties for fifty dollars. Licking a lesbian’s cheek goodbye, goodbye, Judy departed for her next rendezvous, where she was soon pumping her buttocks in the lap of a young man in a business suit whose smile mixed embarrassment with astounded happiness.

  3

  And so she received full membership in this paradise of girls with perfect long blonde hair which felt to her stroking hand like fishing line. It was almost as marvelous as her avatar’s doubly dreamy moment when Norma Shearer had given her a brand-new cream-colored makeup kit and, oh, God, Clark Gable was sitting at the very next table! (Judy had never made that comparison before.)

  Knowing that loving the lesbian as profoundly as the lesbian loved her was impossible but that not attempting to do so would be evil, Judy still felt relief, to love only herself for awhile. At closing time she continued sorrowfully perfect, wriggling her receding buttocks in the darkness. By then Colleen had vanished but that didn’t matter because at two a.m. Judy had a date with her ultra-favorite sweetheart!

  You see, said Neva, you didn’t need me. I’m so proud of you—

  But where were you?

  You know.

  That’s okay. Anyhow, tonight I got to feel what it’s like to be you, or maybe just a little like you, and, oh, Neva, it was all stars and spangles!

  I’m glad, said the lesbian.

  It’s like that for you, isn’t it?

  I love you, Judy.

  In the dawn the lesbian awoke with the transwoman nestling against her shoulder, and the transwoman’s face was almost beautiful when she opened her big blue eyes and murmured sleepily: I love you so much . . .

  Shantelle’s Medicine

  The feminine faculty of anticipating or inventing what can and will happen is acute, and almost unknown to men. A woman knows all about a crime she may possibly commit . . . But what woman has not been disappointed in her crime, once she has committed it and the murdered lover lies there at her feet?

  COLETTE, 1941

  Perhaps in most people’s careers it occurs that they are bitterly disappointed in the one thing that really counted.

  NATALIE WOOD, 1966

  1

  Our deliciously perverted impositions on Neva—cheating to lengthen our turns, stealing the clothes she had worn (by now even Al possessed a modest collection of her underwear), became their own hilarious rewards—but don’t get me wrong; I was better than the others—why, I even tried to celebrate her, knowing that there is no such thing as possession of another person (yet all the while determined to somehow keep her tight against me forever); and none of us had any idea as to whether she supposed she could love forever, although ever since we’d caught her with that lone grey hair (that cheatin’ bitch! cried Shantelle), we anticipated ecstatic ringside views of inevitability: the entire complicated shimmering projection beginning to collapse like pancake makeup cracking on a woman’s face, defeated by sweat and time. I’m not saying that Neva deserved what she was going to get. But if she’d only let us in on her secrets . . . ! Maybe that was how it had to be. We are told that the Goddess wishes us to know Her, but in fact She reveals to us only the least fold of Herself, like a masked woman who uncovers her face only in darkness, and then only for a single haunting kiss. So it was with the lesbian, whose love required her both to know us and to prevent us from knowing much about her.—You know, said Xenia, it’s like there’s some warmth that isn’t there.

  2

  Speaking of Xenia, Hunter now called Neva to report, giggling and high: There’s only one little cross. I marked it, and my dog marked it. Another girlfriend, down!

  Are you going to be all right?

  Oh, sure. You know what they say: Make you a priority before you make your partner a priority. And also, we’re friends because our community is small. Xenia’s probably gonna be in the parties this summer, so it’s better to just smooth it over for everybody’s sake. Maybe I’ll avoid the Y Bar for awhile . . .

  How’s Xenia?

  Why not ask the next time you fuck her? She’s probably having the time of her life. Neva, I . . . Could I come see you? I need to be held—

  Okay, honey, said the lesbian.

  3

  As for the warmth that Judy still imagined, of light on shoulders and breasts and spangled hips, of being the almost whole and perfect female who incarnated herself by whirling round and round, riding down the melting light on her buttocks and into her own delicious spine in order to console herself for and even usurp Neva’s spine and the darkness between Neva’s buttocks, as we all lusted, and the lights crawled more and more, she had won that, she hoped maybe forever (which meant, for whatever indefinite corridor of months she could see partway down)—but our Judy was, as you know, especially sensitive to upsets, and what now happened with Hunter knocked her into sobbing disequilibrium.

  4

  The lesbian sat on the edge of her bed, alone for another twenty minutes, held her phone to her ear and listened to another groggy message from Hunter: Hey, babe, I was so happy to hear your voice again; it really cheered me up; so I’m calling you from bed; I’m all wrapped up in blankets, and I wish you were here to take off these funny sweatpants I’m wearing. Last night I was feeling sad about Xenia so I took some morphine and it’s not working too well but it’s real nice to wake up at dawn. Baby, thank you so much for giving me your high school picture. It made me so happy. I just can’t take my eyes off your tits. In different lights they seem to be different things, I think. They’re breathing a little bit right through that T-shirt; I wish you weren’t wearing it. I’m excited you’re going to be with me soon but I’m nervous, too. I hope I don’t feel too guilty. I’m okay; I’m trying to be healthy. Lonely for Xenia, but . . . Just had a little bit of heroin in my bathroom . . . I guess I’ve been thinking about you even more . . .
I’ve been coming to bed, sick, sick, sick with two blankets under me and four blankets over me. I think about having you with me. I love you so much. Honey, please call me . . . Honey, what are you doing now? Where are you? I had this idea; maybe you’re in someone’s bed, and under someone’s blanket. I admit I’m jealous of Judy right now. And Shantelle, and Richard, and that goddamn Xenia . . . Whatever you’re doing, stop, stop. Come over here and embrace me . . .

  5

  Hunter had adored Xenia; all year she loved only her (aside from Neva, of course). Because she was crazy about holidays, or rather the idea of holidays, but in actuality felt sad to spend them with her parents and sister, she invited Xenia up to see National Women’s Day with her, and by eleven p.m. her sweetheart, who was considerably older, had grown very tired, but Hunter really, really wanted to stay up until midnight, so they did, and kissed each other, proclaiming their undying love, after which Hunter begged to stay up for another couple of hours, but Xenia said that in that case she would go sleep in the other room, at which Hunter agreed to turn out the light, but tossed and turned in bed; truth to tell, Hunter was quite the night owl. The next day Xenia sucked one last long sweet orgasm out of her. But now Hunter acted worried about herpes; she insisted that even skin-to-skin contact might spread it, so when it came Xenia’s turn she was permitted only to masturbate while her stern young lover held her. That day Hunter kept interrupting no matter what Xenia said. Xenia cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner; each time Hunter required that her own portion be made to unique specifications. The day after that, while they were waiting for Hunter’s airport shuttle to come, Xenia, whom I have always celebrated for her expert experience, could perceive all too well that her companion had tired of her, so she felt relief right at the final weary embrace, when Hunter recited the stale lesson that she loved Xenia so very much. Her voicemail calmly ran: I have a feeling that you’re going to leave me, and all night her phone was silent except for a five-second I love you from Neva; the next morning she woke up to find that Hunter had called her back, saying: That message made me very, very sad. Of course I still love you!—Xenia called Hunter, but Hunter didn’t call her. So she called Hunter again; in other words, no one could blame her for anything.—After the fifth ring Hunter said: The reason I was so sad was that I loved only you last year but I’m not sure that I want to do that this year.—Maybe you need to leave me, said Xenia, but Hunter said: I can’t ever leave anybody. I’m too weak.—It will never be easier than now, said Xenia. You want to do it; it’s part of your New Year’s resolution; make it clean . . .—and so Hunter left her. A little sorry for her, slightly amused, mildly relieved and mostly cold, Xenia said: You can call me whenever you like, but I’m not going to call you anymore.—Hunter tried to say something, but her cell phone suddenly had poor reception.—I’m going to say goodbye now, Xenia said.—Goodbye, said Hunter.—So long, said Xenia, hanging up, after which the loneliness began to nibble at her, so she dialled up Sandra, and then of course Neva, both of whom considerately unfolded several loving not to mention erotic ideations they had manufactured. As long as Xenia stayed on the phone she was happy. Then she hung up. It was dark outside. She began to feel drearier and drearier, even though she knew that nobody needed six girlfriends; she was freer now and more honest; it wasn’t as if she missed that crybaby, who had craved to be seen, and to go out everywhere holding Xenia’s hand, and maybe even with medical assistance make a baby that they would raise together, although who could blame her for such desires? Xenia sat listening to the dark, reminding herself that she had dodged a bullet. Finally, with a halfway bitter smile, she began to do the lunch dishes.