Spent (8 page)

18

W
hen Marya peed her
pants in front of a judge to get on SSI, I thought it was the most brilliant scam ever. Several of her hot butch friends were doing it. I knew SSI was government support for crazy people, but Marya was totally clean and sober so she couldn't be crazy, or so I thought. She was just enthusiastic. She had gusto. She lived by her own rules, slept until 10
a.m.
every day, swam every morning, attended meetings, ate ice cream by the gallon, and was never broke. She prioritized having fun above everything else. This was a huge drag to me because I slaved away at my stupid retail job on Haight Street and was burned out at the end of every shift, especially when I came home from pulling a double shift at The Lusty Lady.

I wanted to be clean and sober, and I wanted to be with Marya. She devoted herself to our sex life like it was a vocation, wanted all of my free time, and nagged when she didn't get it. She didn't like me dancing at The Lusty Lady, and I didn't like her nagging.

She was totally non-monogamous so there were always ex-girlfriends sharing her bed, or fisting parties she had to attend. Marya held fast to what she loved: great sex and magic potions. She discovered new miracle elixirs that she thought were going to cure everything from AIDS to arthritis, back pain, and wrinkles.

The first magic elixir was urine therapy, something she picked up from a compulsive liar at the lesbian bathhouse she cleaned. The woman convinced Marya that the healing properties of drinking her pee would cure her rheumatoid arthritis. Marya followed her advice and swore it helped. Her kitchen always looked like a science lab: pots boiling and large glass bottles full of pancake-sized mushrooms fermenting. I was terrified she'd spike my soup with her pee.

“What's cooking?”

“Kombucha,” she said. Kombucha was the second magic potion she became obsessed with. She watched the spongy mushrooms float around in giant jars for days as they got engorged and turned into the fizzy, bitter, brown medicine. She was still drinking her urine, but it wasn't enough. She was still in pain, or claimed to be. I was tired, and growing more tired of her complaining.

“I'm going to have to be in a wheelchair for the dyke march this year,” she said, in a depressed voice.

“Really?” I said, impatient and not sure whether to believe her.

She bought a wheelchair, and I avoided her at the march. I dressed up in feathers and glitter and ran around on Pink Saturday with my friends from The Lusty Lady until I dropped from exhaustion. I didn't want to be bogged down by Marya's ailments. She stayed in the wheelchair until she stopped eating ice cream by the gallon, which immediately made her arthritis less severe.

To her, life was a nonstop sex party. Her days revolved around fucking and vacation. She slept with whomever she wanted—sometimes that was me. This was our deal.

“I do whatever I want, but you're my little whore,” she said with her favorite knife to my throat. My job was to resist her.

“That's not fair,” I said, knowing she'd leave purple welts on my back and ass, like every other time I talked back. I squirmed and moved closer to her.

“How would you feel if Bianca spent the night with me in my bed?”

“You can't be trusted. At least I tell you what I'm doing,” she yelled back. Then we fucked for hours and lost another day, missed our AA meeting, missed work, and forgot the world outside.

Arthritis aside, Marya's life
was charming and mine was shit. I first ended up in AA because I wanted Marya, not because I wanted to quit drugs. I thought getting sober meant living a dull life full of rules, restrictions, and confessions, but Marya made dating just as intoxicating as drugs had once been.

When we had a date I had to decipher instructions and perform them. I wore different outfits in accordance with the characters she created—the details of which I found in messages she would write in chalk on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I shared the apartment with three other people, so Marya's tactics were public. My three roommates, disgruntled, informed me of the messages scrawled in big blue and red chalk letters by leaving a note asking me to hose off the sidewalk. The neighbors had complained. The sidewalk today, read:

Lulu is an airline stewardess.

Lulu has a shoulder-length red bob.

Lulu chews bubble gum.

Lulu stops by Uncle Timmy's place for dinner after a long flight.

I borrowed a dusty red wig from Cinnamon at The Lusty Lady and chewed bubble gum until my jaw hurt. I brought along a Southwest Airlines duffel bag I'd found in the trash at Wasteland. Marya opened the door holding a wooden spoon and oven mitts. She wore a moustache and had a pillow tucked inside her shirt. The black leather sling was the only thing in its usual place, she had transformed her apartment again: the table and chairs were set for dinner and long, slim, Gothic candles were lit. “Uncle Timmy” spared no expense. “Hi sweetheart. How was your flight?” Uncle Timmy had a lower voice than Marya.

“Looong,” I said, and let out an exhausted yawn, like I was weaker than I was, and more vulnerable.

“Come on in and put your things down. I'm making you dinner,” Uncle Timmy said. I put my suitcase on the floor and felt Uncle Timmy's eyes on my ass, trying not to break character. In the kitchen, Uncle Timmy was cooking roasted beets and a big pot of vegetable miso soup. Uncle Timmy was insufferable. He kept bumping me on the ass with the oven mitts and laughing till his gut wobbled. At dinner, he spilled miso soup on my shirt, so I had to take it off.

“Maybe you should take your pants off, too,” he said and reached under the table with his small hand. He squeezed my thigh.

“Don't touch me. You're not my real Uncle,” I pouted. I was dragged to the sling and gagged. That was the first time I felt the pressure of a being fisted, and the tight pressure of needing to pee while Uncle Timmy's hand was in me. His moustache kept slipping off. I felt like my pelvis was being pulled out of my body and my guts would soon follow. The pain was exhilarating the way speed had been. Thankfully, Uncle Timmy used a ton of lube.

After our date, as
I walked the streets near Duboce Triangle, I saw red chalk hearts with arrows shooting through them and words like “This way to love” on the sidewalk. I figured they were for Marya's other lovers. Each one of them stung. I was jealous, even though we were non-monogamous; I only wanted her. I carried a damp rag with me and wiped out any messages that I found on corners, blurring the words and obscuring the letters.

The next day, when I came home from work, she was waiting for me on my porch.

“I'm going to Italy for a month to hang out with a friend,” she said, moving a twig across the sidewalk in front of us.

“What friend?” I asked, my stomach muscles tightening, annoyed at the twig, the sidewalk, and her evasive glance.

“Her name's Critter. I used to sleep with her but I don't know if we're going to fuck, but probably not,” she said to the twig, which meant that, of course, they were absolutely going to fuck and prance around Italy together while I worked at my two lame jobs and obsessed about who else was sharing her bed. “But I will write to you everyday and let you know,” she said. As if being told she was fucking a girl named after a rat would feel better than not being told. I preferred her lies, but I couldn't tell her that. I clammed up. Jealousy was not invited to the non-monogamy racket. I was failing Marya.

“Letters take a long time,” I said. “Hang on.” I walked into my apartment and filled a pot with hot soapy water to rinse her chalk instructions off the sidewalk. When I came back outside, both she and the twig were gone.

Weeks later, a break
up letter from Italy said goodbye in three languages, as if we hadn't already said it a thousand times before.

19

W
ithout Marya around, I
attached myself to Jessa, my AA sponsor. When my mouth watered at the sight of powder—like when Taylor asked me for a dollar bill that she then rolled up tight and snorted a line off the counter inches in front of me—I clenched my teeth and went back to putting on makeup and curling my hair. Then I slammed my locker shut, rushed upstairs, and got busy making between three and six hundred untaxed bucks in about four hours.

The Market Street Cinema was the filthiest strip club in town, with old televisions suspended in the air in the audience where porn played nonstop on a gray static loop. In the audience, dances were twenty bucks, but in the back area, in closed off horse stalls, men could get a forty dollar topless dance. Bent nails stuck out so we had to walk carefully or get scratched and need a tetanus shot. At the MSC many of the girls had pimps, like Pandora, who popped in from hooking on Capp Street when she cleaned up. When Pandora was spotted in the dressing room, we would clutch our Hello Kitty purses extra tight and be sure to lock up our costumes while we danced onstage because we would be robbed in seconds.

The MSC offered full contact lap dances, which meant hands all over my body, in the crevices and cracks, breath on my neck, my ass in their hands, an occasional tequila-scented tongue in my ear, and being face to face. In the audience, we stayed in our bikinis for lap dances that lasted a song long. Guys could touch us all over on the surface, but they weren't allowed to put fingers inside of us. Behind the curtains in the back, it was a constant negotiation of hands, money, and antibacterial baby wipes. A nude dance lasted about three and a half minutes. The buzz of making piles of money kept me awake until 4:00
a.m.
most nights, but it was never enough. I wanted more. Dancing and performing was exhilarating. I loved choosing a three-song set that matched my mood. Still, as the money poured through my hands, I spent it faster than I could make it. I burned through the cash until my bank account was overdrawn and then raced back into the club to make more. I knew there was more to life than this (tailoring my personality and body to appeal to the men paying me while I was squandering my time in the bowels of the MSC ), I just didn't know what to do about it.

I had followed Jessa to the MSC because she was my idol. She had told me that the real money was in the lap dance clubs, and she was right. Within a few weeks, I had stacked up enough dough to pay all of my tickets at the DMV, the utility bill that was in my name, and all of the friends I owed money to. I was fascinated by Jessa's ability to dance sober. She looked like a muscular mermaid with blue star tattoos that covered her stomach, thoroughbred thighs, and bright orange hair that swung in thick tresses down her back. She had a quick answer for everything—a clever magnetism that was beyond big boobs and firm abs. I watched her talk to men and their expressions slowly softened; she made them feel complicated and important. “Teach me how to hustle,” I said one afternoon as we shoved tuna sashimi in our mouths before our shift at the MSC.

“Remember their name. Remember their dog's name. Compliment them. Ask them personal questions. They want to open up.” She made it sound easy. Her customers bought her stereo equipment, clothes, shoes, perfume, and followed her like Jesus' disciples; my customers slid off me and moved onto the next girl. Jessa had staying power. She could convince you to buy her granny's dentures, still soaking in baking soda, and you'd happily glue them in place. “Let's feature,” she said. If it was her idea, I was sure it was a good one.

“Can we do that even though we aren't porn stars?”

“Yeah, we just won't be paid by the owners.”

“We should call our act ‘Pigs on Ice,' I suggested, since I battled weight gain, and we did synchronized pole tricks that looked like water ballet without the water. We laughed and got busy planning. Jessa hired a choreographer to teach us how to do fake splits, or “stripper splits,” where you sink down until your hands catch you and then cross the front leg over the lower one on the floor, moving across the stage. We looked like a couple of crabs in stilettos. I got splinters on my kneecaps. After that, we had to have several meetings to download our music onto a pile of CD sets. “If we are going to do this, we are going to be the best drag queens out there,” she said. We had matching outfits made, and recorded elaborate three-song sets for our big debut. In an effort to make the most money in the shortest period of time, we would be the main performers and do four acts per day, pay no stage fee, and work all week from 11
a.m.
to 1
a.m
.
, straight through. We would get exhausted and irritable as we hung upside down on the pole in roller skates, grinding our hips to “More Than a Feeling.” We stripped twelve hours a day everyday, despite headaches and colds. We argued, then made up. We met guys on unemployment who camped out all day long and watched our shows holding signs that read “We Love Josie and Lolita.”

We met a choreographer in her dance studio in the Mission who watched herself in the mirror while we slid across the dusty floor. Our timing was off. Her modern dance moves and ballet posture were difficult to learn. Her neck muscles were long and lean. We never quite got the routine down, but we performed it at the MSC anyway. I got splinters doing the walking splits and we ended up ditching the choreography anyway—it was too fussy and took too long.

We had many three-song sets with a theme, but we were no Porn stars. For the “clean” set we dragged a kiddie pool with water onto the catwalk and extended it from the stage and into the audience. For our dance, we stripped off vintage lace teddies and lowered ourselves into the kiddie pool, pretending to wash each other. We realized our act's humor because we were the clean white girls who wouldn't get our hands dirty, everyone else made money giving handjobs or more. Jessa got so angry that we ditched the clean set after one performance. We worked with a dozen black girls who had names like Versace and Chocolate. They only danced to hip-hop like Lil' Kim and Snoop. They taught me everything I know about hip-hop and rap music and how to move to it. They stood and watched us do our “Pigs on Ice” act with their hands perched on their hips, in turns laughing and yawning.

The harder we worked at our synchronized pole tricks and choreographed sets, the clearer it became that the audience didn't care, but the girls were amused by us.

We didn't make as much money as we had hoped, but we had become the “Pigs on Ice.”

In the dressing room mirror, Jessa locked eyes with me and said,“I'm quitting these meds. They're making me fat.”

A couple weeks later I got a call. “She took a bunch of pills,” Sky said. I walked up Jessa's stairs into her studio apartment. She was sitting on a chair, vomiting on the floor. Jessa was so pretty, even with gray bile on the sides of her mouth. To me, she had everything figured out. She had more discipline and more determination than anyone I'd ever met. It was no wonder guys fell hopelessly in love with her and sent her flowers, stereo equipment, and piles of cash. I looked at her face and saw she was fragile and brilliant and soft. The anger from before bled out and now she wore a slack smile.

“I don't want to give up my sobriety date,” she said, after they charcoaled her stomach in the hospital.

“Who said you have to?”

My anger became a knot of fear in my gut as I drove home that night feeling the cool wet air on my nose. Jessa was a God to me. She had kept me sober for five years. The fog was heavy and cold. Without her I felt more alone than ever and stupid for not being able to help her. Back at my apartment, not even Mom's voice could comfort me. “I went to the Farmer's market and bought acorn squash. You wouldn't believe all the kinds there are to choose from. Kinds I've never heard of. Yellow and green and weird shapes. Plump and ripe. You've got to come to the farmer's market when you visit. It's right in old town by Ramone's bakery. We'll go there next time you come. When are you coming home?”