Roll with the Punches (49 page)

At monologue practices, Alice meets the Venus Warriors, a fearless group of college women who cheerfully dish on men, menstruation, and menopause while bonding through skydiving and workshops where ALL things feminine are explored. Add an odd trio of men who long to explore all things feminine with Alice, starting with her lips and moving toward her monologue zone. But seriously: A snake-loving professor in Birkenstocks? A chain-smoking student with a chin mole? Or a too-young Colombian coffee god? The choice makes her head hurt.

Things get rough when someone sabotages the monologues with loose stage wires and poisoned brownies. But when one female student is found dead and another is in peril, the Venus Warriors fly to the rescue, and Alice skydives smack into an alligator's nest of answers.

by Amy Gettinger

Raucous Eucalyptus Press Irvine, CA 2014

Cunt. Begged, borrowed, stolen, freeze-dried. Cunt. Fluffed, seared, raw, breezy, coarse, moisturized, lemony. Cunt. There's nothing like it, nothing it can't do, nothing more fragile or more steely.

“People read this stuff out loud? Really?” Alice blinked and adjusted her glasses in an effort to focus again, but the damn paper still read the same thing. One hand went to the collar of her red linen shirt. The other flipped the page face down on the desk. "Fast reader," Alice forced a little smile at the bright-eyed, fiftyish woman sitting behind the desk. "Ever since first grade. I got awards for it every year. May still have the little ribbons at home." She skimmed more pages and kept running into horrible phrases like
got my period
and
teased her G-spot
.

Flip. Flip.

"Well?" prompted the woman behind the desk. Dr. Maya Singh was Dean of Women's Studies at Garden Beach Community College, where Alice worked part time teaching English as a Second Language. The dean's voice had a strong Indian lilt. Tiny creases fanned from her bright black eyes. Her gold-trimmed fuchsia sari lived with the ease of old jeans and T-shirt on her plump figure. “Which one do you like? We still need readers for all of these pieces in the show.”

"You know, Dr. Singh," Alice said, "I can't tell stage left from a leftover. I'd probably be better with backstage stuff—sound effects, curtain straightening, bake sales.”

“Oh, Alice. Call me Maya.” Her bright eyes twinkled.

“Sure.” The dean was so smart, getting chummy right away, so Alice wouldn’t be able to say no. “And, of course, I'm awfully busy right now. My kids have Scouts and tennis and baseball. I have three jobs and an afghan to crochet and a manicure to get and—" She checked her watch. "Oh my, it's getting—"

"Yes, that's it!" Maya said. "You nailed it. It's getting everyone in the community to see the universality of our beloved Venus, her universal power and presence through space and time and culture and generations, all the way back through the evolution of species. We women are all Venus incarnate, in some form or other. Like you, a Venus Genetrix, a dedicated mother devoted to your little Cupids! And this department believes it's our job to sing the joys of every form of Venus, to shout them loudly and proudly to the world!"

Alice nodded skeptically.

Maya went on. "You took anthropology, right? Surely you studied our beloved Venus in all her feminine glory and variety? In every museum in Europe, Asia, the Americas, even Africa, there are embodiments of Venus under all her many goddess names. Venus has ultimate unity with every single society, every single culture, every single woman. And now, in this humble college, our own women's studies students and instructors have harnessed massive Venus creativity, and have written these astounding
Venus Monologues
for us to perform!” She thumped the pile of scripts in front of her. “In so doing, they have sharpened our focus on the essence of femininity, beautifully churning, writhing, spinning and pulsating from its central core, the rock solid yet ever-flowing foundation of the female."

Alice bunched clueless feminine eyebrows. "Rock solid? Like Venus de Milo?"

"You’re teasing me, Alice." Maya rolled her eyes and waved a hand with a bright blue cast covering her wrist. "Come on. You know this. If you boil Venus down from all her myriad expressions of femaleness, what is she? She's one huge, wonderful, glorious, mind-altering, gaping—"

"Wound?" Seemed reasonable to Alice.

"No, silly!” Maya grinned. “Vagina!"

Oh, God. The V-word. Alice's jaw dropped.

"You see?" Maya laughed. "Every woman can relate to Venus on a very deep level because, let's face it, vaginas are wandering around among us completely unsung all the time—you know, like spiders. They say we're always within three feet of a spider. Well, same thing with—"

"Yeah, got it." Alice envisioned a ubiquitous swarm of giant, beady-eyed tarantulas with moist, bulbous, pink uteruses attached to their backs, crawling through the walls and floors of every building. Eeeyuuw.

Maya proclaimed, "So it's time to own up to their presence and their power!"

"Of spiders?" Alice said hopefully.

The office phone rang.

"Alice, help yourself to more biryani while I take this." Maya turned toward the collection of dark, oval African masks on one office wall and spoke Hindi or Gujarati into the phone.

Finishing up her chicken tikka and picking up a cup of chai, Alice envied the smooth, cosmopolitan woman in front of her with the dark coil of glossy black hair that had just enough white streaks to give her administrative credibility. Could plain, Oreo-loving, adjunct instructor Alice ever be as powerful and confident as that? In her dreams. She sighed and rose to tiptoe out of the office, but just as she passed Maya, the hand with the blue cast whipped out and shoved a fistful of scripts at Alice's chest.

Did this woman have eyes in the back of her head? Alice sank back down into the chair. Checking the office corners for hidden mirrors, she saw an ornate red and gold Chinese ceremonial robe hung at one end and a fountain of pastel origami cranes at the other. Alice considered her modern-day, 2003 relationship to Venus. In her conservative teacher clothes and sensible shoes, she probably resembled the planet Venus on many days, but seldom did she feel like the goddess. No, make that never.

She noisily shuffled monologue scripts, dreading their contents. The top one, yielding the words
clitoris
and
mutilation
, went straight to the bottom of the pile. The next script had the words
violence
and
bruises
jumping all over it. Alice gave up.

By magic, two more samosas had appeared on Alice's plate. She took one, silently cursing them, her delicious downfall. In the wake of state budget cuts, her dean, Dr. Daniel Pagano, had recently taken on a second division and moved his office to this side of campus. Alice needed to ask Daniel for a personal day off, so after teaching her class today, she'd braved the corridors on this side of campus, a rabbit warren of concrete walls where people without map and compass could get lost for days. She'd just poked her head into the Women’s Studies outer office here to ask for the new location of her new division office when the spicy scent of hot samosas had hit her like a warm bath. There they'd sat, pungent potato-filled triangles of buttery pastry, looking forlorn on a silver tray.

Well, Alice just couldn't abide lonely food, especially fresh little works of culinary art cooked by someone with skill. One tiny step toward the little darlings had brought a swarm of eager students toward her, all chattering at once. Then Dr. Singh—er, Maya—had swirled out of her office to envelop Alice in her fuchsia cloud with warm, familiar greetings and a plate heaped with all kinds of delectable food.

And now Alice was here, being laughed at by two Hindu god figurines dancing on a shelf above Maya's head. The male, labeled “Shiva,” had an evil-looking serpent necklace. Three of his hands mocked her, waving a drum, a phallus, and a trident at her. The female, labeled “Kali,” had three wild eyes and a long, angry tongue hanging out of a purple mouth. Her braided green snake hair was very Medusa. Her skull necklace, corpse earrings and skirt of dismembered heads and hands were very pygmy Halloween. As Alice watched, a drop of something red seemed to drip from Kali's mocking mouth.

Alice looked away toward the colorful Peruvian hangings filling the other walls—bright cotton tableaux of cute little doll people working in fields and markets. What they were called again?

"Those are arpillera," Maya said, startling Alice.

Good grief. The woman was psychic.

Maya turned back around and spoke a blur of words into the phone, ending with a heavily accented "Bhut you dhon't need to fix dhinner tonight.”

Alice sighed, feeling totally unequipped to contribute to Maya's Venus Monologues production. It seemed a clever trap had been set and sprung by this woman across from her, virtually a goddess herself, with eyes in the back of her head and enough hands to hold a phone, check through scripts, nibble samosas, file her nails, and keep Alice in line all at once. Now Alice squirmed in the web.

Maya, still on the phone, turned back toward Alice. "Honestly, R.G. That happened in the next county. I'm not in any danger." She made a face. "Oh, all right. Pick me up at 5:30." She put the phone down and shrugged. "My husband lives in fear of every page ten article in the paper. How can I convince him a student disappearance three weeks ago at Canyon Creek Adult School, however reprehensible, has nothing to do with me?"

"Oh, I worked there last year." Alice sipped her chai. "We part-timers get around, you know. Wherever they need us. Now I'm teaching here and at Lemon Valley College and El Camino Rojo Adult School."

"Well, they're offering a reward for information about this young Mexican student who's gone missing. Inez Rios. Did you read about it?"

"No," Alice said, eyeing the last three samosas. "But a lot of the younger girls in ESL classes get their first taste of freedom in college. She's probably just gone off to Vegas with her new Iranian boyfriend and forgotten," she used air quotes, "to tell her parents. You know how that is.”

Those samosas called Alice like tiny bereft sirens. Oh, hell. She took one and devoured it.

Maya brightened. "So, aren't they wonderful?"

Alice nodded, mouth full. "Mmm. Samosas. Great."

"I meant the monologues, silly. Let me see me those. Isn't it amazing that our own students and instructors have constructed such gorgeous, evocative poetry?"

Alice shoved the scripts at Maya like she was sending a salad with a caterpillar back to the chef. She owed Maya something in return for the lunch, but reading one of these scripts? Aloud? On stage? No. Her whole body constricted at the thought.

Maya shuffled through them. "No, not ‘Venus Interrupted.’ It's about the killing of innocent women all over the world. You know, like those awful honor killings and dowry deaths in Asia, the maquiladora killings in northern Mexico, and female infanticide in places like China.”

A chill went up Alice's spine, and she heard Kali giggle from her shelf.

"Too depressing for you," Maya said. "Ah, here. Try ‘Venus Nipples.’ Start here." She shoved the whole script pile back at Alice, pointing to the top one with her long, slim index finger, so tan and refined next to the graffitied cast below it. “Aloud.”

Alice obeyed out of old habit. "
I am Venus’s rosy, erect n-n-nipple, open and tamarind sweet, full and ripe and waiting, pulsing to nourish the world. My dark au-au-aureole, its rich coffee halo roots taste of warm bergamot, yearns and blooms, aches a saxophone echo of my plummy, t-tart Venus l-l-labia, q-q-quivers the sweet, tender
—"

"Going to lunch with us, Maya?" came a tenor voice from the doorway.

"Ahh!" Alice lurched upright, clutching the scripts to her chest.

A shaggy male head in a worn-out baseball cap appeared at the office doorway. "Oh. You have company." She saw worn brown corduroy pants on a medium, stocky build. His Birkenstocks stepped inside the doorway.

Alice saw a chance to bolt.

Maya said, "Hi, Joe. Lunchtime already? Alice, this is Joe Dancy from art history. He and I eat with a group of colleagues on Fridays."

Alice stood and took a step, but her long, flowered skirt caught on her chair leg. Rip. Pulled off balance, she grabbed Maya's desk, and the bundle of scripts fell through her grasp like pornographic confetti.

"Whoops!"

Private female words danced around the office floor like a bunch of naughty four-year-olds. Alice dove at the scripts, ripping her skirt farther.

But Joe, Boy Scout-quick, was already kneeling and chuckling at the top script. "
Nipples? Lick me, suck, me, and drag me howling to your famished depths?
Whoa, momma!"

Maya grabbed the script. "Joe, Alice here teaches ESL part time.”

In her mad scramble after pages, Alice mumbled hello.

Maya said, "Alice, what was your last name again? I'm sorry. My memory plays more tricks than Kali and Shiva together."

"Hey, don't call in your demons, Maya. I've got enough trouble this week, thank you," Joe grumbled.

Alice finally looked up to see a wild sandy beard and sandy eyebrows to rival Groucho's. Joe's gray eyes lit up as he glanced at another script. "
A climactic, pulsing, reverberating sunrise of glossy, moist, pink vibrations?
"

Alice wrenched the whole paper mess from his hand. "Hi. I’m Alice."

"Alice … ?" he said expectantly.

"Chalmers." Three, two, one. Alice evened the stack of papers and checked that her cell phone was on in case one of her kids barfed at school or her house caught fire. The best thing about her ESL students and city folks in general was that they didn't blink at her famous name brand.

Joe nabbed three more scripts from the floor. "Oh, Jane Rohmer mentioned you." Jane Rohmer was ESL department head. "She and I just served on the technology committee together. She likes your enthusiasm for the new classroom computers. They were her idea, you know.”