Flushing and trembling, the transwoman removed her flip phone and opened it. The retired policeman watched her, smiling grimly.
Oh, he said. Just a text. Is it a robo-text? Poor little Frank.
But the transwoman now paled; the retired policeman had never seen the like—except maybe in that newspaper photo of the blankly submissive face of Bruno Hauptmann with its turned-up eyes. (The attorney general had said: We demand the penalty of murder in the first degree. Hauptmann never admitted anything. His triple answer to the cross-examination: To a certain extent.)
The color seemed not merely to bleed but to sink out of Judy. First her forehead went white, then her cheeks and even her lips, her neck, her hands.
She sat down. Her mouth stayed open.
Well? said her master.
Judy took a deep breath. She said: Neva got married.
2
It had happened according to the usual chemical laws.—You’re not going to be a virgin much longer, growled the straight man, and Sandra giggled; they were now both pulling off each other’s clothes in happy desperation, and he went down on her until she was laughing in her orgasmic happiness; then she said: I need you inside me, and he reared up eagerly, only to feel his erection waste away. Again and again they tried; she did everything, touching, stroking, sucking, pleading, and the more she needed it, the more under pressure he felt; soon she was weeping: Oh, God, I need you in me so bad . . . Please, baby . . . Why can’t you . . . ?
And he didn’t even feel ashamed. A sad lassitude only slightly touched by nausea left him more dreamy than otherwise. Sandra forgave him, of course. It wasn’t his fault that he was getting old! She still loved him exactly the same.—Off she rushed to the lesbian.
Now they were kissing. As soon as the lesbian’s tongue entered her mouth, she lost control of herself, twitching and pissing like a fresh-shot cow. The bed seemed to swerve and capsize; Sandra no longer knew up from down. The lesbian was riding her or she was sitting on top of the lesbian, slamming their cunts together, grinding pelvis against pelvis as the bed flew through space. After a long fall through darkness they struck concrete, shattering into slime laced with skeleton-chips, drooling in agonizing orgasms. Sandra groaned in ecstasy. Sunlight jolted through her like semen.
Oh, girlfriend, I feel so much better now, she said.
The lesbian took her hand.
The time we had was perfect!
Smilingly, Neva kissed her cheek.
And I feel so much closer to you. Do you feel the same?
Oh, yes, said the lesbian.
I want to be with you for the rest of our lives, said Sandra. Again the lesbian kissed her, at which non-answer Sandra took on an expression not unlike that of the longhaired girl who threw back her head and slammed shut her eyes, sobbing and smiling in agony, while the defense lawyer sat with his arm around her shoulder, clenching his fist on a folder of documents and squinting up in outrage at the verdict of guilty regarding a perfectly altruistic occasion when the girl had texted a troubled boy until he agreed to gas himself in his truck; when he began to feel afraid and stepped out, she directed him back into the vehicle, which solved his problems.—Sandra was already getting the chills. The dawn-bright lesbian, so sensitive and quick, was already proffering a glass of water and two sky-blue analgesic tablets. Her clitoris was a medallion of Cybele and her nipples were pink jade, and there was nothing imperfect in her.
Sandra, shivering in Neva’s bathrobe, said: I, you know, I am your girl forever.
Thank you, said the lesbian, whose previous lovers resembled a line of ballerinas frozen in darkness with their long narrow arms uprisen.
Sandra said: One thing I’ve learned: You’re vulnerable. I need to remember that. Part of me has always worshipped you; I just never realized that I had the power to hurt you—
Don’t worry, said the lesbian.
But I don’t want to hurt you!
You’re my pretty mermaid . . .
What about Judy? Isn’t she your mermaid, too?
I just want to give everyone unconditional love.
But why? Why aren’t I enough for you?
One of these days I won’t be enough, said the lesbian.
But romantic Sandra denied that there would ever be new mermaids in the sea. Inhaling the entreaties which were made to her, Neva regarded her with the smile of the Apollonian woman whose carver had condemned her to be part of a marble column, staring pupillessly across void sunshine at a fat limestone owl for Athena.
3
When the straight man came to drink his own share of manna, for which he had been hungering ever since Sandra left him, it seemed the worst thing that could have happened, short of his own death, which he self-pityingly told himself that Neva might bring about.
It was before noon. His achievements reminded him of the acrid after-note in the fragrance of the tandoori ovens on Hyde Street.
When the lesbian, sitting on his lap so that he could enter her from behind, gazed down between his ankles, that somehow made him feel abandoned and therefore enraged.—She makes me sick, he thought. I want to run away from her, or kill her, or marry her forever.—In fact his sickness was the selfsame anxiety that he felt whenever she murmured something to Shantelle or Judy or me, something that he could not hear.—As for her, she found herself dreaming of a little wooden girl, naked but for a collar of beads, who stood with her head down. This was very different from the feeling she used to get in the pit of her stomach when she had to sit beside her mother for a long time.
Finally they completed their sexual acts to his satisfaction. She watched the reflection of his bald head in the long mirror, and the light so pink on his soft hairless shoulders. He was sobbing: Oh, Neva, I need you so bad; Neva, don’t leave me. Don’t you love me?
Oh, I do love you, said the lesbian.
He woke up feeling as if he had hardly slept enough. It seemed a little more difficult to get ready for work. As he walked down to the streetcar stop he began sweating and sweltering, although it was not very hot outside. It must be the humidity. When he got to the office, he sat down and broke out in a sweat. He wondered if he were getting ill. His stomach felt queasy, and he had a headache. Then he suddenly realized he was finally addicted to Neva. Of course that was her fault.
4
And if I don’t see you tomorrow . . . said Sandra.
Why wouldn’t you? he demanded.
If I can’t—
Are you still my girlfriend?
I . . . I, yes, I guess I still am.
Dismayed and angered by the lukewarmness of her reply, the straight man longed to kill someone. But it seemed more practical to elevate the lesbian into a person caught by marriage and hence unavailable to others.
He told Sandra that he was going back to his wife. In fact he had divorced her, and was proposing to the lesbian.
5
Sandra was sobbing as soon as the lesbian answered the phone. She said: He told his wife, and then she gave him a choice, and at first he chose me; he moved into a hotel, and he was going to be with me, and I was so overjoyed; I never thought anyone would leave someone else for me, but this morning he called and said he’s going back to her, and, Neva, I know that everything’s changed between us and you don’t love me as much because you hardly ever call me and when I call you I know you can hardly wait to get off the phone, and I’m sorry I’m crying but I just feel so empty with such a long long time of being lonely ahead of me . . .
All right, said the lesbian calmly. Tell me all about it.
No, wait; first tell me how you are—
We can get to that later. Now how are you feeling right now? Sad? Anxious? Desperate?
I, I, I . . .—She was gasping for breath.
You’re a beautiful, intelligent, loving woman, and I will always love you. Did you want to marry him?
>
I’m so sorry—
When he left his wife, were you ready to go to him?
I was, I was overjoyed that he, I don’t know, but probably . . . You’re not angry?
Of course not, Sandra. You and I can’t marry, so . . .
But why can’t we?
What do you love the most about him?
I’m not criticizing you, Neva, but he always had time for me; he’d text me or call me for an hour or more every day, which made me feel so attached; he wanted to introduce me to his family; he was interested in everything about my life . . .
Was he good in bed?
Yes . . .
And kind and intelligent, I would think . . .
Yes, yes, he is . . .
And what’s happening with him now?
He, he said he couldn’t talk to me for a long time, maybe a month or two, but then he’d tell me how he was doing, and I . . .
Remember this, said the lesbian almost sternly. You were fifty percent of the relationship, so the breakup was fifty percent your responsibility. That means you have fifty percent of the power right now. He changed his mind about you several times. You can change your mind, too. You can call him and give him twenty-four hours to take you back, and if he doesn’t then he’s not to contact you ever. You can fly out there and drop in on him and his wife. You can wait one week or two months or six months. You can do whatever will bring you strength and peace. Just now it’s as if he raped you; he took your power away. You may not get him back, but you can take back your power and make your own decision—
I can? I don’t know why, but that makes me feel a little better.
Make a decision and follow it. And right now, when you’re already feeling bad, if you want to leave me, it’s all right. I’ll never be everything you want. Make a list of how he and I and everyone else helped you and disappointed you in our various ways . . .
I thought our being in love was enough, but it isn’t—
Don’t worry about me, said the lesbian, and she gave the other woman all the advice she could.
You’re very wise . . .
The lesbian closed up the phone, ashamed and sad that she had not married Sandra. Just then Xenia called. It was another emergency.
6
. . . And Shantelle, desperately biting her neck as they rubbed clitorises together, quickly climaxed and screamed in the distress of an overwhelming happiness.
Oh, Neva, I wanna have a face like you.
You’re beautiful to me, I swear—
But you got a look. When I try an’ copy it, it won’t turn out. What’s your secret?
Should we put on makeup together?
Yes! crowed Shantelle, laughing and clapping her hands. (I wish you could have seen that sweet slow smile whenever she felt that Neva truly loved her.) And pretty soon the lesbian was making up both their faces so they could pass for sisters. In the lesbian’s lap, softly singing her favorite pop songs, Shantelle hoped for the best new songs for all women to sing, but when the lesbian had finished, and showed her their two faces side by side in the mirror, Shantelle shouted: You still look better! You did that on purpose!
The lesbian tried to kiss her, but Shantelle punched her again.
7
Her multiple involvements, which cured us with a touch, made it all the more crucial for the lesbian to keep every date, and although most of her lovers (the transwoman decidedly excepted) could be occasionally expected to call her with changes of plan, most of those the result of mere lateness—because who was so fulfilled, or self-loving, as to cancel out on hyper-scheduled Neva? (the ones who did that were the losers who stood up their probation officers and neglected to buy an impounded vehicle out of the towing garage before the fees exceeded the value of the car)—the lesbian herself tried never to keep anyone waiting for more than five minutes, which rule she was proud of. That was why the straight man had every reason to expect her in that upstairs Thai restaurant on Castro Street, a few doors down from the Q Bar, where he, the bus having brought him nearly half an hour too early, sat hoping for lesbians, but found only one female couple in a high-backed booth, each young woman leaning toward the other but only to stare into her cell phone, and that went on and on while the straight man watched one or another of the televisions in the flesh-pink wall whose ornamental lattice, which might have been an actual grating but in his opinion was only painted, resembled a black lace garter laid across a wide, wide flatness of glowing hairless thigh. There were television screens wherever he looked. There were single men gazing down into their cell phones, and because they were not women he began to hate them. At least the place didn’t stink the way the Y Bar did. Paying for his beer, he went out into the rain. It was dinnertime. Climbing the stairs, he took a table for two. The smiling waiter soon learned to hang back. Looking out past two bearded men who were holding hands in a table at the bay window, the straight man watched the reddish stripe of a long bus swimming up Castro Street, and the marquee of the theater engaged him with neon like frozen fire. There were many rectangles of reddish darkness in the high arched window above the marquee; he counted them.—No, he told the waiter.—A small crowd lined up by the ticket booth. The marquee said:
NOIR FILM FESTIVAL 1/12–21
BERLIN 7 BEYOND 1/14–17
The crowd slid and slithered into the theater. Now the ticket-taker sat alone again in his illuminated booth, and gusts of rain struck the shining black asphalt. The male couple had finished now. He had been here an hour. Throwing down five dollars on the table, he brushed past the waiter and went downstairs, alert and nearly indomitable with anger.
8
Glowering at her so that the whites of his eyes burned like torture-lamps, he crooked his slender forefinger and said that it was she who had manipulated him for so long.
I don’t give a fuck about Xenia, he said.
To underscore this point, the straight man slapped her. She tripped and bumped her knee, crying out; that sounded phony to him. Even then he kept wondering: Why have I never been raped? I’m the one who needs to be . . .—yearning for the lesbian to be against the dark velvet, spreading her long white legs to show the red gash.
9
I wish I could be the way I used to be, said Sandra. I wish I could be happy being faithful, but I just get lonely. I, you know, I guess I’d like to stop cheating, and I want you, and I wish . . . I still don’t know when we’re going to see each other next, but I get a little despairing since I . . . I mean (she was sobbing), if I could have everything the way I wanted it, it wouldn’t have to be secret and I could have a baby or at least see you a lot more.
Yeah, said the straight man.
I’ve never regretted it and never stopped loving you. You’ve always been a complete marvel to me; it’s true I was in love with Neva and wanted to make a life with her but I never stopped loving you. I think maybe calling her a girlfriend might be stretching it, but I do feel a sense of gratitude and tenderness and love and guilt all together. But I do think about you all the time . . .
Well, he asked bitterly, then do you imagine me when her dildo’s inside you and you’re climaxing?
I don’t claim that absolutely in that moment I’m thinking about you, but when I’m alone and I close my eyes I want this to be our little world—
Are you getting more attached?
I don’t want that. And I’m sure she’ll get over it but I guess she’ll . . .
He waited.
And when I get lonely I get anxious, she explained, and when I get anxious I seek other company.
10
Because it was Neva’s task to tolerate anything, all the way to the end, he exhausted his rage in her. I myself sometimes saw her as some sandstone female figure whose arms have been broken off and whose knees and nose have been chipped away, while still she smiles with severe sadness, offering
her single breast and simple hairless slit, tilting her head and crossing her ringed ankles forever.
Neva, he demanded, why don’t you love me?
I do, she said.
Then you’ll stop it with everyone else?
No, she said, waiting for him to hit her again.
He was breathing loudly. He said: What about Xenia? She took my turn. Won’t you at least give that bitch up?
I’ll make it up to you, said the lesbian.
Slamming his way out of there, stamping downstairs, he right away began to crave her; actually, it felt as if she were calling him to her—wasn’t he now hearing her?—but summoning him without any promise, so that he could not help but wonder whether what he heard might be his heart calling to her, and thus echoing in his own chambers of living blood.
So he wooed our Neva; he flew her to Hawaii for a long weekend. They lived high-class on barbequed tuna steaks, sweet and sour roast pig and of course Patriot Dry Lager. Outside their hotel window, two trees breeze-danced like one tall woman bending against another, nuzzling her throat.
After fucking her until she could barely walk, he celebrated by body surfing, leaving her to sit alone on a tree-root and listen to the breeze blow her sweat away while the bright ocean exhaled hissingly and inhaled almost silently. All around her a wall of skinny tree-trunks and their spider-roots guarded her safely in, as if she had returned to that other island where the old lesbian first loved and healed her of what some might have called her humanity. A young family approached in a line, the girls and women all tiny-breasted in string bikinis; leaving the hot sun they came into her shade and began to ascend the mucky trail. The trees were squeaking around her, and she sat drinking in sea-oxygen.
She looked up. At once the people gathered around her.—I just want you all to be happy. I want to make everyone happy, said the lesbian, pale and bright-eyed like a sick child.
The Lucky Star Page 63