Emma Who Saved My Life (4 page)

I interrupted: No one talks that way.

Lisa was laughing uncontrollably at Emma's apparently accurate imitation. “No, you're wrong,” Emma said. “One person
does
talk like that.”

Anyway, in her quest for a reaction, Susan would put a hand on your arm and say, that worldly look in her eyes, one omniscience confiding to another, “You know, he was so
good
 … I came three times. He knew what a woman wanted—these gay men, believe you me. Sensitive. Not ANIMALS like so many…” (in utter disgust) “mennnnn…” Anyway, by the time the story reached Lisa she had come six times, and Emma (who had heard it earlier when it was up to four) heard her say “I came seven times.”

Lisa stopped laughing to add, “Mandy, a friend of ours, has an open bet that it'll be up to nine before's year's end.”

Emma shook her head, adding, “Yeah and the punchline, of course, is that Her
e, sober and utterly embarrassed the next morning, said he was too drunk to do anything, he just sort of fell asleep on top of her. God knows how her mind works.”

Lisa said, “She's obviously never HAD an orgasm to tick 'em off like that. Or else, maybe it's the opposite—maybe she's such an easy mark, you just put your hand anywhere on her and BANG.”

We all laughed, ha ha. I couldn't have sworn what a woman having an orgasm was like either, so I laughed loudest of all.

2. Truth or Dare, a.k.a. I Want to Show You My Breasts.

Time: a month previous

Place: an uptown theater party, 2:30 a.m.-ish

Susan's favorite game was Truth or Dare in which she only had one line of questioning: everybody else's sexual experiences, which when listened to allowed her a chance to tell about hers (whether she had them or thought she had them or made them up and forgot she made them up, wasn't known). If you didn't tell the truth in Truth or Dare you had to do the dare, which was usually something harmless like downing your beer in one. But Susan kept saying things like “Oh god, I mean, just don't dare me to take off my top, I'd be so embarrassed!” and “I'm going to dare you, Cindy, to take off your top—just don't dare me!” Soon it became obvious that the game would not proceed until Susan was allowed under some pretext to take off her top. So someone challenged her and she took off her top, exposing this big fat pair of meaty breasts. “I'm really comfortable with my body weight. I like being this size,” etc. Finally, being persuaded to put her top back on, she started asking questions like “How would you react if I took off
all
my clothes?” The Truth or Dare players insisted there had been enough exhibitionism for the night, but one guy (the guy who dared her to take off her top) was intrigued and dared her to take off all her clothes, and of course she just couldn't bring herself to answer the question. “Oh my god, you mean I have to take off … take off ALL MY CLOTHES?” Machine-gun laugh. So she retreats to the bathroom and a sizable percentage of the party clears out, heads for the door having had enough, and the rest stay to see Susan emerge from the bathroom which she does. The game never got back to normal after that with Susan asking impossible to answer questions (“Would you kiss my breasts?”) with follow-up dares (“You have to take off all your clothes too and run down the hall and back with me…”).

“She was drunk, but still,” sighed Lisa, barely able to sip her second beer from giggling.

Sounds a bit pathetic, I said.

“You're making the mistake of taking Susan seriously as a human being,” said Emma, “which once you meet her, you won't do anymore. She's impervious. You could walk right up to her and go: Susan, you're a fat pig and the most ridiculous person in the world. It wouldn't register—her mind omits any negative input.”

Lisa kept giggling, almost spewing her beer. “Tell … tell Gil about her, uh, subscription…”

Emma put her head down on the table laughing.

What? What is it? I asked.

Emma reared up, tears in her eyes. “I don't know you well enough to tell you this one.”

Come on, come on.

Lisa and Emma enjoyed some more convulsive laughter.

It's probably not that funny, I suggested.

“You're right, it's not,” Emma said, before she and Lisa made eye-contact and slid off into hysterics again.

I went to the bathroom and came back and they had calmed down and had ordered more beers and a bowl of peanuts.

“There,” said Lisa. “We're all right now.”

And then they broke up again, virtually having to fall to the floor to hold onto themselves.

What? What? What? What?

“Okay, okay, okay,” said Emma, fanning herself, trying to catch her breath.

3. Susan's Magazine Collection

Time: this week

Place: Susan's loft, the bedroom

Emma had come into the bedroom to ask Susan how to turn on the gas stove and as Susan couldn't explain it, Susan left to do it herself and Emma wandered absently around the room noticing that Susan had been reading this porn mag, lying there on the floor, by her bed.

Emma hid her face in her hands. “I don't know you well enough to tell you the title. Lisa, you do it.”

Lisa tried to sober up and began to say with exaggerated dignity, It was called
Big
…” Then she couldn't.

Emma finished: “
Big Black Rods.
”

Lisa looked down into her beer. “It wasn't about motorcycles, Gil, if you know what I mean.”

“And then Susan comes in and there I am looking at this thing,” said Emma, “and of course she says she's a lesbian separatist and all that, but men have oppressed women through pornography for hundreds of years and she doesn't see why, now that men are in porno, that she can't buy an occasional mag to get even, blah blah blah. And then she went on to tell me about her … oh god.”

You've already started this story, I reminded.

“Then she told me,” Emma went on, rolling her eyes, “about her masturbation rituals. I mean, she just told me all kinds of things, things I could have lived very happily without knowing.”

“I would love for twenty-four hours,” said Lisa, “to go through my life with
one half
the confidence, the unashamed self-love that woman has. She has absolutely no shame. Emma, tell Gil about the cucumbers.”

Emma buried her head in her hands again. “I can't tell him about the cucumbers.”

I said I thought I understood already about the cucumbers.

“She's into cucumbers,” Lisa began.

“And vice-versa,” Emma added.

And she told all this to Emma?

“Yes, she goes shopping for them and she thinks it's more socially responsible than buying, you know, an aid, because that supports the female-oppressive sex industry. Besides, she said, a cucumber is natural, organic.”

Lisa finished off her beer and said, “I feel like washing my hands after this conversation.”

Emma turned up her glass as well. “I think it's time we go get ready for the party; it'll be an all-nighter, I bet. Old Tricky Dick must be down to his last moments in office, huh?”

We all trudged back to the Carmine Street sublet to clean up and Lisa hogged the bathroom for a half hour and came out looking just the same as when she went in (pretty as always), Emma plopped down in front of Lisa's tiny black-and-white TV checking for Nixon updates, and I went into what was going to be my room (the rich woman's little boy's room with a miniature desk and low-to-the-ground bed) and changed clothes. I didn't pull the door all the way shut and I heard Emma call out: “Let's see what Gil looks like in his underwear!” and I ran to slam the door and lock it to the sounds of giggling in the living room. “You'll get over your shyness one of these days,” said Lisa. “You're living with two women now, remember?”

No, that fact had not slipped my mind.

It was twilight as we walked along a street that looked like a movie set of warehouses, fire escapes, run-down if not abandoned small factories. This was Soho?

“Yes,” said Lisa, “designer ugliness for a new generation. A place for those who think the seediness and slum dwellings of the Village aren't quite bohemian enough.”

We went up in a creaking, dangerous-looking elevator, enclosed only by a scant railing and metal screens, the shaft exposed completely (which wasn't comforting).

“What will Susan be wearing tonight?” Emma, making nervous conversation, asked Lisa.

“The muumuu with the Chinese dragon.”

“You mean the mooooo-moooo?” said Emma, making cow noises.

Lisa laughed, ssssshhhing Emma because anyone could hear what we were saying and no telling where Susan was.

We clanged to a stop and got out on the sixth floor which was dark except for a shaft of light coming from underneath a door at the end of a long hall. We heard muffled party noises as we slowly, feeling the walls, approached the door. Then suddenly the door opened and we saw a great block of light which was soon eclipsed by a silhouetted, massive figure …

“
Emma
baby, come give Mother a kiss! Ahahahahaha…” This, I figured, was Susan. “Lisa you too!” Susan planted lingering kisses on my friends as they winced politely. “Lisa, always good to see you—and whoa hoa hoa, this must be the NEW BOY! A little fresh meat, huh?” The machine-gun laugh, followed by her hand on my behind. “Ooooh,
medium-rare
—how old is he? Looks sixteen, but the younger the better is what I say. Older women are more sexually compatible with a young man.” She fired off another machine-gun laugh, shaking her head, she was just too much for herself: “I'm crazy, I'm
wild,
I really am. Oh kid, you'll get used to me in time—I'm completely mad, that's what everyone says.” Her hand found my behind again and I was guided into the party. “Now don't you be offended at my wandering hands, you little sex object you. Men have treated women this way for centuries, so turnabout is fair play, and it's about time we women got some of our own back, you know? This is 1974, Bill, loosen up, loosen up. Are you a virgin?”

Emma and Lisa drifted away intentionally, as I was dragged into the vortex of the party … I turned briefly, seeing Emma waving a little bye-bye to me, Lisa blowing me a kiss.

“My parties are famous, Bill—famous. And wild things happen—I don't know how, god help me, but they just do…”

I was parked with a guy named Bruce while Susan promised she would get me a drink.

“We've met before, haven't we Bill? I'm Bruce. We talked about jazz last month at a party here, I'm sure.”

No, I don't think so, I—

Hands on my behind again: “GUESS WHO? Ahahahahaha…”

Susan put a gin and tonic into my hands and corralled me over to a group of skinny men with mustaches. “Boyyyys, oh boyyys,” she cooed, “some new ass for you—boys, meet Bill, he's from the Midwest somewhere on a farm—”

Gil, I corrected.

“He's an actor,” said Susan, raising one of her eyebrows with a pudgy finger, then winking, “and you know what that means, Tony don't you? Latent homosexuality.”

I met everybody. I ventured a comment after Susan fluttered away. Something like: She's really something else, isn't she?

“I love that woman,” said Tony. “She's stupendous, just tremendous…” Well he was right about that. “I'll tell you something: When I was coming out and trying to deal with certain aspects of my Gay Self, she was the best friend in the world to me. I mean, I can tell you stories, times when we held each other and cried ourselves to sleep, shared that kind of experience and pain. She even saved my life one time.”

Another strike against Susan.

Emma, meanwhile, was setting off brushfires around the room, pulling everybody's chain, whipping the conscientious activists into a frenzy, which was good fun, as it seemed for some reason that everyone in 1974 under the age of thirty had the
same
opinions.

“You're crazy,” I heard Emma say, as I sidled up to hear her conversation. “You're gonna miss Nixon when he's gone, and history is going to show he wasn't a half-bad president aside from his total moral corruption, which is probably a requisite of that office.”

A woman with a very earnest, high, hollow voice, long stringy hair which she tossed back when she was about to make an intellectual point: “You can't mean that. You didn't vote for him, did you?”

“I always vote for entertainment value, because I don't take the system seriously and I certainly don't think my vote matters enough to take seriously either. Nixon has been amusement from day one. Nice as it would have been to see McGovern go to North Vietnam on his knees and beg for the end of the war—”

Someone else: “He never said that.”

“—or distribute the wealth of the country and put a thousand dollars into my pocket, Nixon was the first bet for the entertainment-minded person. I mean, just look at all the entertainment he has provided: the greatest whodunit public television spectacle in history, better than the McCarthy hearings (which, significantly, he had a part in), better than your run-of-the-mill sex scandal. In fact, I'm going to be damn sorry to see him go.”