The Story of Junk (10 page)

“You're all coming to Cal's opening, right?” Toni says with a deep-throated chuckle. “Saturday night?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “You should see my new paintings—I've been working in gold. They're really great.”

“They're in a new
penthouse
gallery,” Toni adds.

“Isn't that special?” he says.

She nods. “Too divine.”

“Come, precious,” he says. “Let's take a walk.”

I'm glad when they don't try to sit with us.

“But they're fabulous,” says Honey.

“Maybe,” I hedge. “But a woman who's never had a period always makes me feel like a freak.”

“Mercy!” says Lute, running a hand through her curls. “Can you cheer up? Take a pill or something?”

Honey seems nervous. “Another depression coming on, hon?”

“I'm not depressed and I like Toni fine. She's too beautiful, that's all. It isn't fair.”

Magna downs her drink. “Maybe we should get some food.”

Lute waves her arms in the air, her eyes rolling. “At this place? I cast no aspersions on your kitchen,” she tells me, “but it's a pain in the butt to get waited on here.”

“I don't care,” Honey says. “I'm so hungry I could throw up.”

Magna wouldn't mind another drink. “Maybe I'll walk over there,” she declares, her eyes still on the bar. “I think that bartender's cute.”

“Poor Whit,” I say.

Magna's cheeks puff out. “I am NOT going home alone tonight,” she pouts. “You can all understand that. A person should not have to live without the pleasures of the flesh—human beings were not meant to sleep alone.” She gives me an intensely meaningful look. “Sex for one simply doesn't CUT it in my house.”

“Maybe you didn't know, but I don't live alone.”

“Where
is
Kit, anyhow?” Honey asks.

“On the road,” I tell her. “Germany.”

“Really?” she squeals. “I'm going too! To Berlin, to the film festival. I'm a judge. Does Kit know Udo? Of course she does, she must. Tell her she has to look him up. He's really great, if you're in Berlin, though he's kind of an asshole here. Anyway, he knows everyone—he's really fun. You should come with me, hon. Why don't you? Oh, come! We can stir up all kinds of trouble there.”

Of this I have no doubt. “Excuse me,” I say. Rico's signaling me from the kitchen. “Daddy wants to see his girl.”

Lute gives me a poke in the side. “When are you going to make up your mind which sex you like?”

“I don't see why I have to,” I object. “I like them all.”

This is not my favorite topic.

Where I grew up, no one talked about sexual identities. More attention was paid to class. This was just north of Philadelphia, an all-American suburban town, a house and two cars and a pet for the children. You were middle-class white or blue-collar white, mostly Protestant. The Catholics went to their own schools, the Jews were the ones who took fashion seriously. I was one of these: a style queen. We were tolerated. There were a few black people in the area, but they lived in another township, on the other side of the tracks. The richer white people lived on the other side of another set of tracks, in large homes overlooking a riverbank. We were in between, not working-class but not professional, either. Truly middle—just where I hated to be.

Middle meant ordinary. Middle meant safe. I wanted excitement and excitement meant sex, but it was never a question of gender. If you were a boy, you were a boy, and if you were a girl, you were a girl, and that's all. There was no confusion over who wore the pants, who the lipstick. Boys had crewcuts or long greased-up hair and sideburns. Girls set their hair in rollers every night and lacquered it with hairspray. They shaved their legs and padded their bras, they made jokes about sanitary napkins. It was all in good fun. No one took drugs. No one mentioned them. We lived among dairy farms and monuments that commemorated the Revolutionary War. We drank beer and milkshakes. We were wholesome.

You had to be a good kid or you were bad. Good meant smart; bad was lower-class. Bad meant you got pregnant while you were still in school, you smoked in the bathroom and got drunk in the parking lot, and you had more style than the good kids, who would say you didn't know how to dress. If you were bad, you dressed for sex. That wasn't so bad in itself; what ticked people off was being obvious about it. It didn't make you more boy or girl, but it did make you more available. All you wanted was to be popular. And that's how it is in the world today; sometimes it seems we never got out of high school.

My school was just a stone's throw from the birth of the Bristol Stomp, but it bored me. Everyone wanted to get married. I only wanted to get out. Freedom lay on the other side of the world, in Paris, Rome, New York, San Francisco, or in the back seat of a car. We all had cars. It was important to stay mobile.

I drove to a summer job in another county, where I was an usher in a country playhouse. The actors all came from New York and they were always having sex, some of the men with other men, the others with girls like me. They showed me a world that separated me from the kids I knew at school. None of them had ever seen a queer. Older women had not propositioned them, and they didn't blow married men in small hotels. These kids had no idea what I was up to, and having a secret knowledge of the truth gave me a sense of entitlement. It was the same feeling I was soon to find in drugs. In the sixties, we called it enlightenment.

I watch Honey pick the ice out of her drink. She's femmier than I am, softer, loose. I'm all angles: pointy hair, bony hips and Peter Pan tits, sharp jaw, tense. I've always been bashful about my appearance. I ought to be grateful for the times we live in—androgyny's the height of fashion—but I hate getting caught in a trend. I didn't invent this look but I didn't go out and buy it, either. This is the way I was made.

I let myself in the office behind the kitchen. Rico's at his desk in front of a postal scale and two Ziploc bags fat with powder. One holds Peruvian cocaine; the other has the cut.

“Listen,” he says, balancing the cocaine in the one bag with the mannitol in the other. “You know Dean? He's always in here. Dean, with the beard. You've seen him. He's coming over with some Downtown I thought you'd like.”

In Rico's personal code, ‘Downtown' means dope; ‘Uptown' is coke. I guess he's been uptown all night. His right knee is bouncing off his chair like a proton lost in an atom smasher. He asks me to stick around.

“I'm around,” I say. “Kit's out of town on tour.”

He raises an eyebrow at this, scratches a lip. I know that look. I don't meet it. He hands me a straw and I help myself to a line off the scale. It whizzes through my brain like a bullet. “I don't know if I'm into anything tonight,” I say. “It's my day off, you know. I'm tired.”

“Have another hit,” he says, scooping yet another powder into the mix.

“What's that?”

“You know,” he says, pulling at the air for the word he wants. “Methedrine. Speed.”

“You're cutting this coke with speed?”

“Yeah. It keeps you from getting a headache.”

“Does it?” I ask. “I've never heard that.”

“Sure, it does. Of course, you knew that. You're the one who told me.”

“I'd like to taste the crystal,” I say, reflecting. “I've already had the coke.”

A smallish guy with sandy hair and a closely trimmed beard appears in the doorway. This is Dean. He clears a space next to me on the couch, which is spread all over with papers. The office is never too tidy. There isn't much room for hanging out, though that's all anyone does here, between two desks pushed against opposite walls, on either side of a safe.

After a few torpid pleasantries, Dean reaches in his pocket for an envelope. It's the dope. He draws a few lines on a mirror with a razor. We taste it. This stuff is so smooth and clean it's like not even doing a drug. I feel perfect. Maybe it's getting help from the coke, but this dope has a taste all its own. Nothing like it.

Dean says there's plenty where this came from. If I know anyone I can split it with, he can get me a gram. “How much?” I ask. It's six hundred dollars.

“It's worth it,” Rico says. “You can step on it with an elephant and it'll still be better than what you get in the street.”

“Why don't you buy it?” I say. He's the one with the six hundred. It's about two weeks' pay to me.

“I just invested in this shit,” he says, snorting a big one. “No, really, I can't handle having quantities of Down. You can do it, though. You have some control. You can do it.”

People like buying drugs from me, Kit said. I'll wait for her return. Then I'll see.

“Kit's away?” Rico asks, wrapping some coke in an old dinner check. “Oh, yeah. You said. So, what are you doing tonight? You don't want to stay here, do you? I'll be done soon. We can go to your place.”

“I'll be outside,” I say. Best thing to do now is humor him.

He's snapping his fingers, scratching his cheek, bouncing his knees. “Too bad Kit's out of town,” he says, snapping away. He's crackling. “We could really get something going, the three of us, huh? Kit looks like the type who could, you know, party all night, you know what I mean? A cute ass like that has to know how to party.”

“Right,” I say. “I know.” What must we look like to him? He's never said anything about Kit before. I know she would never have a threesome with him—men don't turn her on—and threesomes make me feel lonesome. In any case, she'll be home late tonight. I wink at Dean. By tomorrow, we'll be in business.

When I return to the table, the girls have been joined by a wan scarecrow in white jeans and a black silk jacket. He's Prescott Weems, an opera buff, and a very
buffo
guy. He's also a critic. And a poet.

“
Mon dieu!
” he yelps at my approach. “Doesn't she look happy!”

“I hope so,” says Lute. “She's been a bitch all night.”

“I'm not a bitch,” I say gently.

“Darling, of course not. And I'm the king of Prussia. You'll order me a drink, won't you? You're so good.”

Lute clasps his hand. “You know what, m'dear? Men are pigs.”

“But look at her! Look at her!” Weems won't stop pointing at me and shouting. “Her eyes are little pin spots. Teeny
tiny
. She's
loaded
!”

“Says who?” I ask, but at the same time I'm thinking: here they are, my first customers.

“Darling,” he says, “if I had your look, I wouldn't be sitting
here
. I'd be Salome. I'd be Aïda. I'd be in love.”

“No,” Lute says. “You'd be quiet.”

“Isn't that someone we know?” I inquire, nodding toward the opposite side of the room—another customer?

“Uh-oh,” says Honey. “There's trouble.”

Magna looks interested. “What kind of trouble?”

“Big trouble.”

“How big? In inches?”

“Oh, my dear!” Prescott howls. “Who is this babe? Where did you come from, where have you been? We should have known each other years ago.”

“I was in school,” Magna tells him. “In Europe.”

Prescott moves his chair beside her. “Girl? We have to talk.”

I've known Prescott Weems a long time, ten years. He's spent his life yearning to be a socialite. His dad was some kind of gangster, died in jail. Heart attack, they said. Prescott suspected foul play. His brother went schizophrenic. Prescott couldn't wait to get away. He came to New York and met a few painters. In spite of, or because of, a compulsion to drink himself blind, he became a notable interpreter of new movements in art. Poets are like that; Prescott more so. “These young painters,” he likes to say. “They're
sooo
cute. But they're
no one
until I've written about them. No artist is anywhere in this town without a poet to write them up. Without me.” He says this often. That's what he's saying now, to “big trouble,” to Claude.

Kit knows him, I think. He has that band, what's it called? Red Cross or something? Blue Whale? White Duck? Some color of something. They're all painters who play or sing, after a fashion—echoey, vibrating stuff, music you can dance to, if you put your mind to it. They're appearing later at a place called The Scourge. We're invited.

“You know Claude, right?” Honey says. Her eyes are locked on his, eyes that burn holes in your heart. “This is Claude Ballard, Prescott's new
find
.” Claude nods self-consciously in my direction. He's a twenty-something guy with creamy pumpernickel skin and Brillo dreads. “Come to the gig,” he says. His smile's as wide as the Atlantic. “I'll leave your names at the door.”

Yes yes
yes
, I think as he departs. A customer.

Tina, the waitress, reappears. Magna leans forward in her seat. Claude's visit has left her panting. “Let's have something CHOCOLATE,” she says, her lips moist. “There are SOME desires only chocolate can satisfy.”

“The food of love,” Honey agrees.

The waitress suggests oysters. “Great idea!” Magna brightens. She orders a dozen, along with chocolate cake and more drinks all around. A busboy piles our empties in a tray. “I'm sure that boy has a thing for me,” she muses, watching him walk away. “Did anyone check out his MOUTH?”

Prescott picks up her drink and drains it. “It wasn't his mouth that caught
my
attention.”

“That's Belle's son,” I say.

“Go on.”

“No, really.”

“Talk about what's not FAIR,” Magna pouts.

Lute cups her hand to her mouth to stifle her shout. “Lord, give me
strength
,” she says. “Cal Tutweiler—will you check out the
hat?
” Now he's wearing a dark cape and a flat black fedora. “He must've died and gone up to his next
life
or something!”