When I got home that night the house was quiet. ‘Tash?’ I found her sitting all alone on her bed, laced into thigh-high boots and a black bra, a beautiful champagne flute in one hand, and nursing the biggest box of condoms in the entire world. ‘Economy size,’ it read.
She raised her glass to me. ‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah. Two women all alone on Valentine’s Day. How fuckin’ symbolic.’
Another full glass of champagne sat fizzing by her side. ‘Where’s Andy/Sandy/Chuck/Hank?’ I asked, kicking off my shoes.
‘Bernard.’
I removed the huge box of condoms from her lap and placed it on the carpet. ‘What? Didncha have his size?’ I gibed as I plonked down on the bed.
She rolled her heavily made-up eyes. Honestly, she wore so much make-up, it must have been like weight-lifting her lids. ‘Ya know wot? I thought he really liked me.’ Her lipstick had smeared over the line of her lips and her too-red rouge was smudged. ‘I told him I had herpes and he, like, freaked.’
I looked at her bleakly. ‘You’ve got herpes?’ I freaked.
‘Everyone in LA’s got herpes,’ she said with casual calm, as though diagnosing a cold. ‘The prick leapt off the bed like I had leprosy for Chrissake.’
‘Really?’ I said, leaping off the bed as though she had leprosy. I backed towards the door. I planned to disinfect the entire bedroom. The bathroom. The whole house. The entire neighbourhood.
‘Ya can’t catch it. God, girl, where do ya live?’ she admonished. ‘In a box? It’s only contagious about three goddamned times a year. Jee-zus, I can’t believe how he sucked me in. I should’ve known. I mean, these days if a guy says he “wantsta getta know ya better” it just means he’s trying to find out whether or not you’ve had an AIDS test.’ She drained her champagne glass in one go, then ran her forefinger around the lip which emitted a high-pitched squeal.
‘Nice glasses,’ I ventured, ‘Did Bernard …?’
‘It’s stoo-pid gettin’ presents from men. It’s dishonest. I mean, why thuh hell not just sleep with ’em for money?’
‘Oh Tash, don’t flog them. They’re too nice to –’
‘Kat, I owe C.J. six thou. I’ve only raised two and a half. These oughta bring in a hundred bucks maybe.’
‘Speaking of money. About the rent …’
‘Chrrrist, Katrina. Where is all ya money goin’, girl?’ Tash drew up her formidable breasts. ‘Ya didn’t give in to that creep again, did ya?’ Tash took a gulp from the full champagne flute this time. She now had a glass in each hand. ‘God, we’re too soft. That’s our problem. Ya see what happens when ya show a guy any vulnerability at all? J’know,’ Tash said, ‘I have this over-powerin’ urge to murder every man I’ve ever met – and my period’s not due for ages.’
‘Me too,’ I confessed, flopping back on the bed.
‘Here,’ Tash passed me the bottle of champagne. ‘Console yaself. Pierce would’ve been shitty in bed anyway. Good-lookin’ men always are. ’Cause they don’t have to try hard. Go for an ugly, scrawny lookin’ poet or somethin’ next time, will ya?’
Tash was right. My lack of imagination suddenly appalled me. I should have fallen for a Lithuanian librarian or a hunchbacked nuclear physicist. I was so clichéd. So predictable. I hadn’t lost my heart to Pierce Scanlen; I had lost my mind.
Tash wet her finger again, and ran it round the rim of the glass faster and faster. ‘Okay. It’s time for a Survival Technique. Clitori-decto-mies,’ she enunciated. ‘J’know there are countries in this world where they still do female circumcision? Gross huh? Jordan, Indonesia, Southern Saudi Arabia.’ All of a sudden, her arm shot forward, sending one of the glasses hurtling across the room where it shattered into the wall. ‘Parts of Iraq, Iran and the fuckin’ Sudan,’ she shouted, sending the other champagne flute into flight. We both sat in stunned silence looking at the glass shrapnel. ‘Shit,’ she said finally. ‘They were crystal too. Rejection brings out the worst in me.’
Just as well I hadn’t eaten any lunch. I had a feeling it was going to be a ten-cake night.
‘Oh well. Back where I began. $2,564 bucks.’ Tash took the bottle from my hands and swigged at it. ‘I’ve decided I’m gonna become a Feminist. Which means no more men.’
‘Oh come on, you can be a Feminist and still like men.’
‘Kat, get real! That’d be like bein’ a vegetarian and still eatin’ meat.’
I propped myself up on one elbow. ‘It depends on the sort of man. Just like it depends on the sort of meat. I mean, you can be a vegetarian and still eat fish, right?’
‘Well, I’m gonna be a Vegan Feminist then. From now on, I’m having a social diet completely free of animal products.’ Tash took another swig from the bottle and passed it to me.
I thought of Pierce, of the ease with which he could lie, of the love bites on his mirror. ‘Me too. No more men on our menu, right?’ I put my mouth over the bottle, tilted back my head and swallowed.
‘Right!’
We slumped back against the lace pillows, silently passing the bottle back and forth between us.
‘J’know,’ Tash said sadly, after staring at the ceiling for a full five minutes, ‘that more people attempt suicide on Valentine’s Day than on any other day of the year?’
Make that a twenty-cake night.
Then, as though electrocuted, Tash leapt out of bed, tugged off her boots and started peeling down her tights, the nylon tendrils winding round her ankles.
‘Okay, let’s go out dancin’ and get some uppers and get stoned off our faces and stay up till dawn. I need to relax.’
* * *
In another attempt to cure me of Pierce, Tash took me to a mystery club. I looked around. Loud music; pools of vomit in the loo; patrons slumped, legs splayed, heads lolling when their owners forgot to prop them up with their fists. It just looked like every other bar I’d ever been to. It seemed such an ordinary social cocktail: agenty-types on the take, actors on the make, mixed in with the usual male and female Barbie dolls, preened and creamed to perfection. I couldn’t work it out. My only clue was my drink coaster. It was embossed with the name ‘Simplex’. I frisbeed a coaster across to Tash, who was poised on the lip of a stool opposite me. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Simplex. Herpes Simplex. It takes the anxiety out of datin’.’
‘You mean,’ I said, anxiously, ‘that everyone here has … that they’ve all got …’
‘Put it this way, if some dude tells you about his personal growth, he ain’t talkin’ EST.’
Tash folded her lips around a pale green olive, sucked it into her mouth, then snapped the toothpick in two and flicked it into the ashtray. ‘Ya see,’ she said, warming to her theme, ‘there’s a new etiquette in LA. It goes like this –’ she paused to swallow her mouthful. ‘Ya go on a date right? Things get, well, amorous. Ya tell the guy that you’ve got herpes. He freaks. You then give him your gyno’s card. He then gets his doctor to ring your gyno. The doctors converse. After consult-in’ their calendars and comparin’ the stress and biorhythms of their patients, doctors then advise their respective clients that it’s safe to bonk on the third of June, at three p.m. 1995. And by that time,’ she took a sip of her cocktail and was lost momentarily in the ornamental foliage, ‘ya’ve prob’ly gone and gotta new disease and have to start all over again.’
‘Gee. How romantic.’ I suddenly became aware of the stool on which I was sitting. My dress was short and the seat was vinyl. It felt extremely hot and sticky. I was practically levitating, let me tell you. I decided then and there that from now on, I would only have relationships with Franciscan monks. And even then I would cover myself in neck-to-knee spermicide, wear six cervical caps and use a full-length condom. And that was just for phone-sex.
‘But hey. It don’t matter anymore, right? Now that we’re Vegan Feminists. Drink up.’ I took a sip of my cocktail. Tash nodded approvingly then suddenly sat up to attention. A young bloke was ricocheting across the room. He seemed to bounce from pillar to table to stool, collide with dancers, then rebound backwards or sideways into someone else. He was like one of those silver balls in a pinball machine. I knew from the languid limbs and the gleam of his shaven head that it was Pierce.
‘Fuck off, ya schmuck,’ a dynamic-looking girl with long, jet black hair advised him, as he sent a huge tumbler of icy cocktail into her lap.
‘Well, you’re helluva witty lady, aren’cha?’ Pierce drawled, making an ineffectual mopping motion in her general direction. ‘Did you think that up all by yourself?’ Losing his balance, he made a grab for her, clutching at the long black ponytail. It came away in his hand. He looked at it as though it were a dead rat. Pierce lifted his eyes to hers with great effort. ‘Don’t fret Contessa. Your secret is safe with me, for I too am of noble birth.’
Tash was watching me closely. The DJ was playing ‘My Funny Valentine’. ‘Your looks are laughable,’ the crowd crooned along, ‘unphotographable. Yet you’re my favourite work of art.’
Tash’s fingers closed around my forearm. ‘What happened to no more men on the menu?’
Shaking her free, I was on my feet and moving towards him, when it suddenly hit me where I was. If Pierce saw me here, in this club, he’d think I had herpes. God. I was having enough trouble getting him into bed while he didn’t think I had herpes, let alone when he thought that I did. But, then again, what was he doing here? So that was why he hadn’t made a move on me yet. He had herpes. In the time it took for all of this to seep through my muddled mind, Pierce, braying like a donkey, had attached the girl’s switch to the back pocket of his jeans, hunkered down on all fours, kicked a famous film producer in the groin, and been tucked under the arm of a large bouncer with missing teeth. The only good thing was that, with his clean shaven head – an eggshell blond we called it at home – nobody had recognised him. ‘Each day is Valentine’s Day,’ the song purred on.
By the time I’d navigated my way outside, Pierce was lying in a pile of crumpled designer clothes in the car park.
‘Have to take a piss,’ he said, as I helped him to his feet. As he unzipped his fly, I retrieved his possessions. Along with the wallet and car keys, I found at least six plastic vials of multi-coloured pills. Nudging them down the drain I heard the soft hiss of his urine as it hit the wall behind me. It struck me that Pierce’s piss would have a street value of about $6,000. So this was what all the money was for.
‘So, how’s the old llama?’ I asked witheringly. The membership of the Southern Californian Skeptics Club had just gone up by one.
‘Huh? Llama? Oh. Shit. The llama. Sick. Real sick. The llama is not looking good, kid. Shit.’ He started groping round on the ground.
‘Where’s your girlfriend, then?’
‘Huh?’
‘Your girlfriend. You know, your “minimalist”?’
‘Who? Oh yeah. Right. Um, yeah, well, we broke up.’ Even stoned off his face, this guy was quick on his feet. ‘Eons ago. See, the point is, kid, I’m too goddamned busy for a relationship. I go to bed stoned outta my brain and wake up so strung-out that I just have to get stoned again. And, well, there’s just no time in between for anythin’ else. Where are my goddamned pills?’
Snippets of music drifted into the cark park. I recognised a song by that Terence Trent d’Arby bloke. ‘Sign your name across my heart,’ it warbled, ‘I want you to be my baby.’ I luxuriated, just for a fleeting moment, in the idea that Pierce would sign my heart, would be my baby – then just as suddenly dismissed it. It sounded so, well, Californian. ‘I want you to know … that I’m not here ’cause … I mean, see, actually, I came with a friend … What I’m trying to say is that I don’t have … Do you have?’
‘What?’
‘It.’
‘What it?’
‘It it. You know.’
‘No. I don’t know. Where for Chrissake are my …? God. Is this my head? Or did my neck throw up?’
‘Look, you don’t have to lie. I mean, why else would you be here?’
‘Where am I?’
‘The Simplex Club.’
‘Oh, is that where I am. Who did I come with?’
‘If you do have, you know, I mean if you do, it’s okay. I don’t have it, that is, but if you do … And, I mean, it’s only contagious about three times a year, right?’
Pierce got back to his feet. He seemed suddenly sane again and stared at me steadily. ‘What? Herpes? No. But that’s a definite reason not ever to get involved with me, kiddo.’ He touched my arm, absentmindedly, the same way people drum their fingers on a table-top. ‘I’m sure I’m in a high-risk category. For herpes and AIDS and just about anythin’ else that’s goin’. And I’m not just high-risk, I’m ten-storeys-high-risk. I’m the World-Trade-Towers-high-risk. So, I’d stay right away from me if I were you. For Chrissake, where did I …’ He rummaged once more through his clothing.
‘Pierce,’ I said, tucking his pills deeper into my pockets, ‘why are you taking so many drugs? It’s so bloody dangerous.’
‘Well, it does limit my chances of being run over by a bus. Besides, this is LA, for Chrissake. A drug habit is a goddamned status symbol round here. Like a limo. Besides, I can handle it. Shit.’ Pierce grabbed my arm to steady himself. ‘Now I’m goin’ back inside to find out who I came with. I just hope I had the good sense to come with someone who does drugs.’
Insects flitted around the fluorescent light high above the car park. I stood below them, in the dark, feeling the pressure of his fingers long after he’d taken his hand away.
So. That was it, I decided later that night, lying in my room. I was just going to have to learn to do drugs.
The debris of Tash’s day lay abandoned on her bed. I sifted through the flotsam and jetsam of black boots, bondage ropes, a large pink dildo looking oddly exposed in the lamp light, school tunics, wigs, a box of false nails and a jar of opaque jelly jammed full of ball bearings. (I didn’t even want to think about what she did with that lot.) But where, I wondered, was Tash’s drug stash? I was sure she’d kept some for a rainy night. Ferreting through her possessions, I longed to be more like my best friend, brave, bold, tough as a toenail. I rooted through the usual hiding places: the toes of hardly worn shoes, the bottoms of tampax boxes, between the covers of a hardback bible. I found lots of things I didn’t expect to find – a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the English Royal Family, half-finished; an Annette Funicello mouse-keteer hat; a Girl Scouts ‘Sewing Achievement’ certificate and a school prefect’s badge. But nothing as astounding as what I discovered on top of the cupboard.
Shoved back out of sight, against the wall, was a suitcase, blanketed in dust. It was locked. Feeling along the lip of the wardrobe door, my fingers fumbled on to the key. As I levered open the corroded lid, I was assailed by a chaos of scents. Standing on tiptoe, I plunged my hands into the box. It rattled with empty perfume bottles of all brands, shapes and sizes, hoarded away, just as I’d done as a kid with mum’s cosmetic cast-offs, to scent my sock drawer.
Gobsmacked, I sifted through a botanic garden of dried and shrivelled floral bouquets. There were baby brag books – empty. Wedding invitations – empty. Photo albums embossed with wedding bells and love doves – all empty. As empty, in fact, as the eyes of the wrinkle-and-pimple-free young women on cover after cover of a magazine called Bride to Be. A matching battalion of blow-waved grooms beamed out at me from pamphlets advertising wedding reception centres, honeymoon destinations, marriage insurance contracts, dental plans for newly weds.
The breath went out of my body. Knowing Tash as I did, this box seemed as mysterious as Ming’s tomb. I excavated further and found white stockings, unworn; white garters, unsnapped; a moulting teddy bear wearing an ‘I Wuv You’ T-shirt; heart-shaped cards of the sunset-teary-eyed-orphan-type, wishing non-existent couples happy engagements and blissful marriages. Finally, at the very bottom, lay a pair of white knickers embossed with a plastic cupid who played ‘This Magic Moment’ when touched.
I stood there, transfixed with embarrassment. It was as though I’d stumbled upon a spy-hole to Tash’s personality. Even though the bed below me was strewn with the sexual detritus of Tash’s day, it was this box, its secret contents, which made me squeamish with embarrassment. Losing my balance, I grabbed at the box with both hands. The underpants burst into song, serenading me with ‘This magic moment, with your lips so close to mine’ as I hurtled to the floor. I scrambled back up on to the dressing-table to slam the lid shut but nothing could silence those underpants. Though muffled, the tinny strains followed me across the room … ‘will last forever, until the end of time’. They were still warbling ten minutes later when I dashed back into the room and blew along the wardrobe wood to remove all trace of my fingerprints.