C h a p t e r

T h r e e

OUTSIDE THE MARKET STREET BART STATION, PAVEMENT PUDdles reflected bits of clouds, pigeons balanced on the Woolworth's sign and punks panhandled the tourists in line for the cable cars. Across the street an abandoned porno theater still showed posters of women in garters and push-up bras. The prospect of a search gave the streets a tingly importance. I decided to go see Bell at the costume shop he worked at on Eddy. As I passed the Golden Nugget on the corner, drinkers raised their heads, men and women who looked alike, as if booze had an androgynous physical ideal.

The shop was called Ozymandias. There was a Jesus costume in the window complete with stigmata paste-ons and a crown of thorns. Waiting to cross the street I picked out Bell moving among the carrels of magic tricks, the familiar motion of him pulling his jacket up over his stooped shoulders. The owner, a tiny unsmiling man in a baseball cap, dead-bolted the door behind them.

Bell turned up Jones and I realized he was walking toward the theater for his audition. I followed. He didn't seem particularly nervous or troubled, though on Sutter and Jones he stopped for a moment, sunk his hands into his pockets, leaned back against a brick wall and looked up into the sky. His leisurely motions reminded me of dreams . . . watching your lover speak in hushed tones with someone else. Bell put his flattened hand against his chest. Could he be thinking of the morning his father died? How he had woken from a one-night stand in a strange house, in a neighborhood he didn't recognize, how he walked to the nearest bus stop and shyly asked the driver how to get home? Maybe he was thinking of how Kevin would drift into a café with an atlas under his arm and order a glass of red wine? How his nostalgic yearning for his teenage lover was about to be derailed by a heterosexual reality: Kevin's marriage.

I FOLLOWED HIM, AT A SAFE DISTANCE, INTO THE THEATER AND sat in the back row. It was a small place with abodons and other dark angels smiling down from the cornices. The stage was lit for a moody dream sequence, so dim it took a minute to see the green couch, the kitchen table and the single wooden folding chair.

People were scattered in the front rows where Bell had already taken a place. To one side an older man with a thick waist held a clipboard. Beside him stood a very thin woman in jeans. Their heads were ducked in consultation. The woman shrugged her shoulders, put her hand on her hip and lit a cigarette. Blue smoke rose above her short brown hair. The man called a name and a stocky young man rose and headed for the stage.

“You got it? Your wife is sleeping around,” she said. “And forget your lines. We're looking for something fresh.”

He didn't look old enough to have a wife and I could tell by the way he took the stage that he was uncomfortable. His face compressed with seriousness. He sat stiffly on the couch like it belonged in his old aunt's parlor. After a minute he jumped up and began to pace.

“You dirty cow.” His words echoed. “If I had a gun I'd shoot you. You're like a myna bird, you see something pretty and you just pick it up,” he ranted. Even from where I sat I saw his face was red. “It's not that you're fucking someone else, it's that you've had someone else's cock and didn't give me a chance to decide whether I wanted mine there, too.” He went back to the couch, sat back, crossed his arms over his chest and said, as if to himself and more slowly, “God knows I could never touch you now.”

I was moved by his naive delivery, his seriousness. Maybe he reminded me of my first lover? I could be kind to him, like a lover on a one-night stand, because I knew he didn't have a chance. He went over to the woman and she patted him on the back, speaking to him in an insider's whisper.

I remembered again why I hated theater: the melodramatic idea that a person could wake up over toast or driving to the gynecologist and see they'd ruined their life. And I don't like feeling responsible for humans on stage. It reminded me, with its confrontational emotionality, of the homeless men on the street who told you their sad life stories, then asked for change.

She must have admitted he wasn't right for the part because he grabbed his raincoat from the backseat and walked noisily past me, out the door. The man and woman spoke together softly, until the others waiting began to grumble. From his clipboard the man called Bell.

“Same thing,” he said. Bell nodded, walked toward the stage. He hadn't worked much since I'd known him, so it was odd to watch his attempt at professional composure. In our own conversations there were moments he would perform, his turn of phrase or the graceful way he raised his glass.

To watch him reminded me of my photographs, snapshots of shirtless boys in the Mission and Mexican girls in first communion dresses. I quit because they seemed voyeuristic. I started thinking in terms of the single frame. My brain felt dry, lacking the fluid it takes to link images into confluence. I think of going back to photography sometimes because people become intimate when you have a camera. Everyone has one expression that they believe is attractive or profound. Faces reveal a frightening self-deception.

Bell sat on the chair by the table, which strangely resembled the black table at home, hands folded in his lap, his face set toward the seats. It took me a minute to realize he was pretending. He let his shoulders fall slightly and was quiet so long one man coughed and another let out a long fed-up sigh. Without changing his expression, Bell said, “You should have told me, Jesse.” The stage light became as hazy as a million suns.

“Not that I didn't suspect it, coming home late with your legs clamped and the nape of your neck smelling like whiskey.” He stood and walked over to the couch. Even from where I sat I could see him snarl. “But it doesn't matter if you're fucking Kevin as long as you know now I will too.”

His voice continued, but I didn't hear anything. My head was full; sloshing water, heat spots, beating wings. I felt sick and fumbled out of my seat. The raw street light was brutal, so I stepped into a Moroccan deli, stared at the tubed meats, the squares of cheese in wedding-dress shades. It wasn't that he had used my name or mixed it up with Kevin's, but that I would never know whether Bell was acting or not.

MADISON WORKED AT A BAR CALLED CARMEN'S SNUGGLED BEtween the Fallen Angel and a brightly lit Chinese cafeteria. The block was mostly boarded-up storefronts. But there were a few older pubs designated by the San Francisco symbol for bar, a pink neon martini glass. Across the street was a massage parlor called the China Girl. I wandered into the Lusty Lady, a few doors down, hoping to calm myself a little before I approached Madison.

Inside, I saw a row of numbered doors and disks of refracted light from the glass ball in the foyer. A Japanese woman in high heels replaced my dollars with pentagon-shaped coins, nude girls on either side. The booth reeked of cleaning fluid, and disco music pounded through the wall. I slipped a token into its slot and a panel rose like a suburban garage door. Behind the plastic window, a forty-year-old woman danced in an otherwise empty room. Empty, I thought, so men could unobstructedly ease the woman into memory, take her home and into bed. As the door opened, her feet were revealed first. She seemed huge, big-boned with shaggy hair dyed black, more vulgar than sexy. She had a bored, tattered look that reminded me of a zoo animal. The woman that serviced the other angle was younger and slender with a pixie cut. They never talked or looked at the leering men in the windows as they swung their butts and opened their pelvises. I felt a tightening between my legs. Did I want the woman that rubbed her nipples and grabbed her crotch or was my desire elicited by the massive lust emanating from the other booths? I left quickly wondering if being wanted so intensely could make a woman feel strong.

Down the block, in Carmen's storefront window, a TV on a Doric column showed the horizontal chaos of static. Inside, the walls were sheet metal. Reflected shards of purple light gave the bartender's silver eye make-up and angular hairdo a futuristic glow. The waitresses wore see-through tops and glitter in their hair. Computerized devices sent out bands of fractured light like the flames glowing around a sacred heart. Black lights illuminated the white collars and cuffs of the businessmen gathered at the bar. Carmen's wasn't worn and melancholy like the Black Rose, but brutal and energized like an operating room. A hundred TVs covered the walls, showing continuous car-crash footage—splatters of glass, a panicked eye, puddling blood.

People slowly packed in, squat rockers with skull rings and men in blue pants with the musty smell of work. There were a couple of skinheads in boots and flight jackets, their skulls buffed up to an evil gleam. And scattered women: full-time drinkers with bland sheepish faces and pale rocker chicks with black lipstick and deep circles under their eyes. Everyone looked uncomfortable and eyed each other suspiciously.

I ordered a vodka, thinking of it as a companion, wondering if Bell had passed his audition and if the women in the Lusty Lady enjoyed their work. The music was distracting. The beat doubled my heart's and the melodies were woven with sirens and sound bytes of political speeches. I couldn't think coherently, but that was O.K. because I wanted to quit processing. I wanted to try and let things build up around me, encase me like an exoskeleton.

The music changed abruptly to an Indian sitar, and a test tube of green light appeared on the elevated stage. A woman rose from beneath through a trapdoor, dancing languidly toward the light, testing it as if it were water, first a pinkish hand and then a pale leg. She was tall and slender with shoulder-length blond hair. The TVs miniaturized and multiplied her. Through her dark reptilian make-up, there was some sense of the young girl in the portraits at Pig's and, more amazingly, of the woman I had seen bathe in the fountain. Madison moved her torso smoothly, twisting her arms at right angles, like a soldier. Her belly vibrated as she spread her legs before the crowd. The black light made her skin seem rich and flawless and emblazoned her white lipstick and the wide eyes painted surrealistically over the material of her top. She was a psychedelic dream.

I pressed to the front of the crowd. Dancing in a slow introspective way I thought might attract her. This is the first thing, I thought, doing whatever is necessary to attract someone. Sweat soaked the material over her breasts and they slowly became visible, each nipple pierced with a slender gold ring. Her pants became translucent and I could see the dark ringlets of her pussy. My palms were wet and I found myself staring at her stomach. I wasn't sure if I wanted her or wanted to be her. The music broke down and she swung her hair. She never looked at me, just danced harder until the music ended with a sound like a bomb exploding. She fell to her knees and threw her arms back, lifting her torso in offering to some huge tongue. The light extinguished on a rising cloud of smoke and she disappeared. The industrial dance music began again and the crowd loosened, returned to conversations. I felt light-headed, disoriented, because I felt attraction for Madison instead of the pity I had anticipated.

She appeared at the bar about ten minutes later with a fresh layer of white lipstick and without the dark eye make-up. Her body was fragrant and delicately flushed. She wore a sleeveless silver mini-dress and white go-go boots that laced up the front. I felt giddy to be so close. I watched her neck pulse as she drank from the slender cocktail glass. She caught me staring and smiled, placed her drink firmly on the bar.

For a moment I forgot why I came and cast my eyes stupidly down. Her hands were puffy like Pig's.

“I know your mother,” I said. She flinched and I realized I should have started slowly, told her I liked the performance, asked her name.

She smiled, but all her emotive energy cut off, black screens went down in her eyes and she turned back to the bar. It took me a second to realize she wasn't going to speak to me. Bar noises grew louder; copulating voices, driving disco, the sound of breaking glass. I pressed my side against her, felt my nipple harden but still she didn't turn, so I bent and whispered, “She sent me.”

“Are you her new girlfriend?” Madison looked over her shoulder as if something about me physically might explain why I had come.

“I do some shopping for her, a few chores around the house.”

“I bet,” Madison said, smiling at the bartender.

“She's your mother. She wants to see you.” I didn't like my earnest whiney tone of voice.

“That's really what she told you?”

I nodded.

“My mother is dead, both my parents died in a plane crash.” She spoke so blankly it was impossible to tell if it were true.

My eyes welled, not because I felt sorry for Madison, or that she was being cruel by playing with me, but because it seemed the facts I trusted were lies. I felt awkward, stupid, tears came and I saw Madison realize this and reach for her silver bag.

“Go to my apartment,” she said quickly. “Here's the key. You can tell me what's wrong with Pig later.” She got a pen and wrote her address on a bar napkin.

HER APARTMENT WAS ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF A MASON STREET building. Her door grimy, patched with a square of raw wood. I knocked. No answer, just the faint rush of cars from the front window. The door next to Madison's opened and a fat woman in sweatpants came out, her hair pulled back tightly. She smelled of yogurt, and her face might have been pretty if it hadn't been so fat.

“She's hardly ever here,” the lady said. “If you want to come in I'll write down where she works.”

Over her shoulder I saw the inside of her apartment, posters of wrestlers and football players, mostly black. “I've already been there,” I said. “I'm a friend spending the night.”

She lumbered closer to me. “It's a sleazy place, isn't it?” She seemed excited. “Madison's a lap dancer isn't she? Not that I care, I'm moving soon. I don't want any of that AIDS shit.”

When I tried to answer, the woman frowned, she had already decided what to say next. I was uncomfortable and stared at the crossroads where the woman's big belly and crotch met to make a T. This was how she got her thrills, I thought; trying to shock people gave her intimacy with them. She looked at me sternly, deciding I needed to be converted, that I was a physical and careless person. The way she hesitated, I knew, too, that she was lonely, that she hoped we would talk forever. Sweat broke out on her upper lip, beaded on her forehead. I felt an instinctual disgust for the woman, and that repulsion must have passed over my face because she tipped her chin in like a child who is shy, then said, “Good-bye,” stepped back into the forest of poster men and slammed the door.

I went into Madison's apartment. The overhead switch, the lamp by the bed and the bulb in the refrigerator were all burnt out, so I pulled the curtain back and let the street light illuminate the place. To say the apartment was shabby would be unfair. The falling plaster looked more like an abstract painting than simple decay, and the wood floors were worn smooth. The bed was covered with a rough wool army blanket, and above it was a knifish cubist painting. A blowfish suspended from the ceiling spun slowly on its line, first one way and then the other. The only furniture was a nightstand near the bed and a chest by the window.

I sat on the bed listening to street noise and the building's creaking pipes. Would Madison come and did Pig tell me the truth? I tried to think of them as mother and daughter, but the more I pushed them into that scenario the less likely it seemed a family had ever held them. But it's hard to think of myself in a family. And I, like everyone else I know, considered myself, even as a child, different, aloof, out of sync with the rest.

The fat woman ran her vacuum and I was reminded intensely of the abortion I had had in college. The suck of the vacuum, the rich smell of blood, and how afterward I stayed in my room with the blinds closed and the lights off for several days. I had the sensation of being completely empty, like standing in your old room the minute after the last box has been carried out. I remember going outside in my nightgown to a bench in the sunlight. Nothing that came before that moment seemed real. As if I woke, not just from three days, but from a whole lifetime of sleep.

Patterns of barbed-wire light fell over the walls. I lay there listening to clicking high heels and men yelling to each other. I was sleepy and thoughts began to fragment. I remembered my mother in a special pale-green nightgown that she would wear when my father returned from business trips. In my mind's eye that nightgown grew and grew until it filled the corners of the universe and I slept.

When I awoke it was dark. The curtains had fallen and it took me a minute to sense the parameters of the room and remember where I was. Just as I did, the bed shifted, someone was beside me. I stiffened. At first, I thought instinctively that it was Bell, then more logically that it was Madison, but I knew by a certain musky scent that it was a strange man.

My back was to him, but I was close enough to feel his warm breath on my neck. I tried to calm myself, thinking he simply thought I was Madison and once he figured I wasn't, he would apologize and leave. There was an odd familiarity here, because I had used this fantasy a hundred times—being with a stranger in a strange room, never seeing his face as he took me from behind. I had a liquid sensation of ice melting into a shot of whiskey. The man slipped a hand between my legs and before I could think he began to undulate his fingers, sliding his other hand under my shirt. I pulled away a little and made a negative mumble, but he yanked me closer. His fingers were calloused and I could feel them slide under my bra, cradling the curve of my breast. With his forefinger, he rubbed my nipple until it hardened. He unzipped my pants, letting the heat of his fingertips flow over my lower stomach. I was very wet, the moisture running into my ass.

All in a rush, he loosened his pants and his hard cock flapped against my spine. He rubbed it in the crack of my rear. Spreading his fingers over each breast, he pulled back, forcing me to arch, so he could lick my neck and shoulders. He moved his hands down to my hips, pulled my pelvis up and easily slipped inside. For a moment he was still and I listened to the footfalls on the stairs; it was long enough for me to rise to logic, think—what is happening, think, kneel down.

He began moving in spirals. A car alarm whined and another man coughed through the wall. I tried to pull off but he grabbed my hips back hard. I tried again, feeling the tip of his cock just barely leaning on the outer lip of my cunt before he pulled me back, gasped. I could feel his cock stretch and the arch of semen, felt dizzy and frightened, stood, pulled my jeans on and ran to the door. The stranger made soft disoriented sounds. The bed creaked. He leaned up and said, “Stay.” I looked back a second, the light falling on his bare legs made them look scrawny and strange sprawled on the rough blanket.

*  *  *

THE NARROW GRID OF MY LIFE WAS CHANGING VIOLENTLY LIKE flood waters expanding the banks of a river. I was suspicious that I had let the stranger fuck me because I was intentionally trying to devastate myself, encourage confusion and misery, so that I would have no impulse to pose or lie. I felt I knew what was best for me, but that somehow, because of a certain well-practiced falseness, a sort of stupid conventional programming, I couldn't do it. But was I right to undermine my life in an effort to right it?

It didn't matter, because it hadn't worked. The first thing I decided was to lie to Bell. Not so much because I always thought I would, but because to keep the lie secret would give me strength. I used to lie a lot until I met Bell, who lied better and with more regularity. When you lie you take on the role of either self-promoter or coward. I was the latter, but to have a potentially hurtful secret would give me power. Lying is like violence in its momentary thrill.

Why lie? Wouldn't it be a relief to have him stomp off? But I didn't even know the stranger. He had about as much significance as a rat and it would be a bigger lie than not telling to pretend he had meaning. Also, I remembered Bell's audition, his threat to the couch, that he would torture me with his own infidelities.

The lobby of our building was painfully bright and the stairwell smelled of strange meat. I turned the key silently and immediately heard Bell's even breath. Though I knew he was asleep I still felt awkward stripping, like he was subconsciously checking for hickeys or wet hair between my legs. I got under the covers. No man could save you from yourself. I had a rush of remorse about what I had done. Maybe I had overblown our problems? Bell loved me and it was a wrongheaded sexual retribution that had lured me to the stranger. I let the traffic lull me, watched several planes on their way across the Pacific and thought how much better things would be between us now.

But then he shifted, pulled me closer, reached his hand between my legs and whispered, “You're so wet.” The thought of sex with Bell in such proximity to the stranger was terrifying and I moved his hand and said, “I don't feel like it.” It was so rare I refused that he persisted, moved his hand back over my cunt, worked his hips and cock against my rear, said into my ear, “What I love about us is that we're like gods.” He slipped a finger into my cunt. I was worked up, felt the skin at the base of my neck get numb and pushed into his hand. Bell pulled my pelvis back and slipped inside with a wet sound. He tightened his hands on my hips. His breath quickened, he kissed the nape of my neck, said I had a tight pussy, that he wanted to come all over it, that he was going to come on my face. The dark was mucusy and all I could focus on was the dog skull on the ledge and the red exit lights in the hallway windows of the Hotel Huntington. I thought of the stranger and how he smelled like charcoal, how his cock was thick.

“Do you like it like this?” I whispered, “This is just what I did for the stranger.” I pressed my pelvis back hard, thought of both men taking me at once. As Bell came, he shook me into a liquifying sensation, like honey rising up into combs. We lay there, until his cock softened and slowly slipped out. My ears rang and to keep from getting nauseous I looked for stars in the midnight blue sky above the hotel lights.

Bell was sound asleep. I couldn't get comfortable and I don't know if I had slept or not when I saw a man in our room. I gasped. It was Bell's little friend from the Black Rose. The light from the street illuminated the reds and pinks in his open mouth, he caught my eye like a fish hook, holding his fingers to his mouth. “Sssh,” he said, “you'll wake Bell. Come see me downstairs.” He stood, put his coat over his arm and walked quickly toward the door.

As the door shut behind him, Bell opened one dreamy eye, then rolled to the other side of the futon. I didn't want to wake him, or for him to interfere. I stood, pulled on my jeans, forced my feet into high-tops and buttoned my jacket over my bare chest. I found the little man sitting on the steps of our building. He blew smoke in the direction of the used-book store across the street and looked up at me. “Well.” He stood awkwardly. “You're angry I stayed?”

I had to remember not to displace my anger on the little man: it was Bell who was the fucker. Why had he wanted to have sex with the troll in the room? Did he get off on the fact a stranger was so near? Did the little man masturbate along with us, rubbing his dick, waiting until he heard our breath quicken so we could all come together?

“I feel too stale and stupid to talk right now,” I said. He nodded miserably, knowing something grave had happened. There was that cantaloupe-colored light on the buildings and the digital bank clock across the street beat out the time. I felt like I had dirt in my heart. Irrationally I wanted to confess to the little man. “It doesn't matter you were there while we fucked. An hour ago I fucked someone I don't even know.” Even the idea of telling the truth made my face flush and I pressed my hand over my hair.

“Let's sit down,” he said, “on those steps there.” We sat on the lowest step of a Victorian. He took my hand into his lap. It was like holding the cool hand of a child. We were quiet. He spoke in a deep voice that sounded strange coming from his tiny body. “Let me tell you about yourself. You're a girl from the suburbs. A good girl, not that you haven't done bad things. You've lied to seem interesting, complex, and it's worked, especially combined with your intrinsic charm. You still think of that cheap ranch house, the bedroom with white furniture and the mall you went to on Saturdays, browsing through discount records, drinking Orange Julius and buying plastic earrings at K-mart. You want to be different, not just from your suburban neighbors, but from everyone. It's not really megalomania, you just need to feel special in order to believe you are loved.”

I started to open my mouth, though I had no idea what I would say. But the troll held his hand up. “Just let me finish . . . Your parents are divorced. With a girl you can tell around her eyes, boys have other ways of showing.” My mind went away from the troll's voice. I thought how odd it was my parents were divorced. How one day I had a set of grumpy parents in a home that held the family archives and the next my father had married a younger woman and enthusiastically joined her family. And my mother was so bitterly furious in her little divorcée condo it was hardly possible for her to interact civilly with me at all. The little man talked on.

“Your father cheated before he left your mother. This has made it hard for you to trust men. But you're also suspicious that your mother undermined your father's love by scrutiny and mockery. You have noticed this trend in yourself and it frightens you.”

There was a feeling like I was breaking up, blood seeping out of arteries, exposed veins moving like snapped electric wires. “If you're so good at this,” I said, “what about Bell?”

He was angry I wasn't more appreciative of his magical trollish predictions. Stupid troll. Whether he had guessed or not, I would always think he had heard everything from Bell. I had a sudden vision of Bell in bed, his warm soft skin under the blankets, his head filled with erotic blue dreams. I looked at the little man still talking and thought, What he is saying has nothing to do with me.

I stood abruptly. He stood too, screwed his face up. He was going to have a temper tantrum like trolls do. And he did stamp his little foot and say, “You'll never be happy unless you learn to forgive.” His neck muscles constricting, his little fists tightly at his sides, as if without absolute control they would start punching. I thought, like a wife, and turned, heading quickly down the hill. He grabbed my arm, whispered that I was a fool to hate people who were obviously one thing or another and by not choosing to be something completely I would end badly. “Watch out,” he said, when I finally pulled away. “You don't want to become a fag hag.” The thought hit my chest like a solid punch. The ones I knew had dramatic hairstyles, wore expensive tailored clothing and elaborate make-up. They talked loud, telling self-deprecating stories, then laughed drunkenly whether intoxicated or not. They seemed foolish and desperate, willingly abused by their gay friends.

I didn't want to go back to the apartment, so I walked over a few blocks and into Nob Hill. The streets were filled with cars and people coming out of their apartment buildings, hurrying to work. I saw a clean and attractive couple holding hands. I got close enough to smell her fragrant hair and his aftershave. They spoke in an intimate code and I thought of asking them if they would take me home. I followed until they kissed at the corner of Columbus and Grant and went off for the day in separate directions.