Valencia (20 page)

Iris missed her bus. It came, pulled right up to the shelter in all its rumbling orange glory, opened its mouth, swallowed up a couple of passengers and kept going. Iris stood on the curb, the most pained expression on her face, and I shrugged, maybe smirked. Well, I'm Going Home, I announced, watching her bus cruise away. Iris wanted another kiss. No Way, I said. She wasn't going to get everything while I got nada. She chased me home, literally, the sky starting to sprinkle again, and I was running down 14th Street with her feet slapping behind me. Good Night, I said, digging for my keys.
Have another cigarette
, she coaxed. What was this about? She didn't want me. This was fear, this was the primal fear of abandonment, it was childhood, fear of death, the infinite void, fear of the unknown. This was not about me. That's what killed me, worked me into a cold astrological bitch. To have someone know you so thoroughly and not want you. Is there anything more painful? I was a favored piece of clothing that had lost its novelty. I was bound for the thrift store, to be bought by someone who would think I was new. I just couldn't kiss her again. I submitted to a hug, my arms around the familiar leather jacket.
Goodnight, Michelle
, she said. It sucked that she said my name like that, her sad little voice with its faint southern twang. I thought, what is she trying to do to me? I was still teasing her as I unlocked my door. Last Chance, I said, and she made an awful noise, this guttural speaking of my name, and I realized she was crying.
I really have to take care of myself
, she said.
This is really hard, I really have to go home
. Iris, I said, reality
breaking a bottle over my head. Are You Ok? Do You Need Anything? I had this feeling, like when I was a kid playing different characters with my sister, playing for so long I couldn't get out of it, my brain feeling stale in my head. What confused thing had been created?
I just have to go
, she said sadly. Goodnight Iris, I said, watching her go. Take Care.

15

When I agreed to play a part in the artsy lesbian porno flick, my breakup with Iris was so recent that I was actually still talking to her. Although miserable, I hadn't yet realized the depth of the cracks and fissures, wide enough to get lost in—and I would. I met up with Iris the night of the shoot, at the bar where we'd taken our affairs when we were girlfriends. It was a dive down on Capp Street that no one had discovered yet, busted-up booths with scarred tables, smoke-soaked couches and the women working the streets outside stumbling in on ground-out heels to use the bathroom. Oh, I wanted her back so badly. Iris. She was soft like a girl no one had broken and, impossibly, no one had. The girls Iris went through wound up cracked vases no longer fit for flowers, leaky dust collectors. After
Iris, girls left town or started fucking boys. She ruined everyone. I should have run from her watery smirk, but there I was all bunched up in the booth, trying to act cute and unconcerned, the only way when your heart is so big and ugly, when your brain is a cartographer mapping out her tiniest road of intention. I was wearing black skater shorts with little skulls all over them, a death metal t-shirt and a bandana over my head, which was growing in hair strangely. Just sprouting up at different dumb angles I couldn't slick down or back or anything, I could only hide it and wish it were long and stormy, blowing around my head like the cloud that hung there, flashing. I wanted dense, angry hair.
You look like such a rocker
, said Iris. Iris said she was into punk girls. Iris said she felt like she was only taking a vacation from me, surely she'd be back. What a stupid thing to say. That one sentence stayed with me at least a year, so much longer than our relationship. Maybe, I thought, maybe she's only pretending to break up with me so that I can write again. Girls always threaten or politely offer to do this for me, because I cannot write when I have a girlfriend. But I still couldn't write. I could only do sit-ups in my room, my hips bruising on the wood floor, so that I could fit into tinier and tinier t-shirts, my new fashion. Lie still on my dustball floor with PJ Harvey's erotic mourning rushing through me like a virus. Sleeping was a good pastime. I slept as much as possible, though waking was the worst. A moment of groggy delight at the blue spring sky outside my window followed by a seeping dread that roused and woke me, killed the rest of the day. At night
I would dream that I was old and didn't know how to dress my age. I was wearing children's t-shirts with faded '80s cartoon characters stretched across my chest, and people would pull me aside and whisper to me. I dreamed that Emma was inside my house, and my roommates wouldn't let me kick her out. I dreamed there was a newspaper filled with every good thing I had ever done, I sat in an armchair with Iris and flipped the pages in her face, crying, while outside, Emma smoked cigarettes with my mother.

I'm Going To Be In Bernadette's New Porn Film, I bragged casually. This wasn't a dream. We're Filming It Tonight At Her House, So I Have To Leave Soon. Iris wasn't so impressed. I dumped more beer down my throat. I figured I should get drunk. I didn't know what would be expected of me, but I knew it would flow better drunk, not sloppy, just loose. It would be good to have cinematic proof that I was sexy. The film would be premiered at the big gay movie festival in case anyone had any doubts. I had some doubts. I left Iris at the bar and trudged up to Bernadette's place in the Castro. I was the first girl there, and I wasn't really drunk, and Bernadette had only a single bottle of wine that belonged to her roommate.
I don't think she'll mind
, she said, and dumped a bunch into a glass for me, thick purple stuff. I sucked it down and waited for the others to arrive. Ashley and Tommy. I didn't like being alone with Bernadette. I'd sort of harassed her for a date once and then forced a messy kiss on her and felt that generally she was an echo of Iris: contained and clean, a Virgo, a shirt-tucker. The theme of the evening's film
was “film,” and all the erotic props were to be film supplies, like cameras, tripods, metal canisters and long loops of amber film that Bernadette had unraveled and strewn across her bedroom. The room was lit by metal dishes of light and the night felt dangerous. There was Bernadette, and my bandmate Tommy, who was after Bernadette, and Ashley, who was after both Bernadette and Tommy, and then there was me. Why had Bernadette invited me? I sloshed myself a bit more wine. I knew I was louder than the other girls, and brassier, would probably take more risks in front of the camera, certainly that was a worthy role to fill at a porn shoot. When Ashley and Tommy showed up, they wanted some wine too, and I thought, there's no way that one bottle is going to get us all drunk, but it will get me drunk, and I was here first. No way. They drained the bottle, and Bernadette said,
Let's go
. Her bed was smothered in film, which looks soft and flimsy but is actually hard and plasticky. We warmed up by go-go dancing in it, kicking the plastic up in little piles like autumn leaves, holding cameras and dressing in some of Bernadette's cowboy accessories, because you know how dykes love cowboy accessories. I took my shirt off, and things felt a little looser. My bandana fell off my head, and I hoped for the best. With the old-fashioned cameras, we pretended to film each other dancing. Bernadette handed me a rubber dick, and I hung it out of my shorts and whacked it around with one hand while aiming the camera at wiggly Ashley with the other. Ashley and Tommy started making out.
Good, good
. Bernadette was a
friendly and encouraging director, moving around the room with her video camera growing out of her face.

What would you like to know about Ashley and Tommy? Ashley's sexiness was aimed at everyone and no one. She would have crushes on a dozen girls at any moment, and though she would never do anything about them, you, as her friend, were instructed to stay away from these girls because they were her crushes. Ashley was sexy, a broad, earthy gas that tumbled over everything. It never seemed focused, but there was a maternal, unconditional sexiness present in the way she smiled at you when she spoke—her gift to the planet. Tommy was either tightly asexual or profoundly sexy. I couldn't figure it out and recently had felt on the verge of having a very meaningful crush on her. Her sexiness was a laser, a thin beam. It was intellectual, and if it wasn't shot at you, you might miss it. Or you could trip it like an invisible electronic security system and find yourself trapped in sudden floodlights with the cops on the way. Don't ask about me. I was not drunk. I figured the best I could do was whip myself into some natural hysteria, like a hyperactive child.

Bernadette wanted us to do something with the tripod, which was difficult. All we could think of was to rub our crotches on its legs like a pack of humpy dogs, and that was not sexy. Plus, it was very lightweight and kept falling over. I crawled beneath the tripod and that felt kind of cage-like, and Ashley was inspired to tie my limbs to it with strands of film and, getting really creative, grabbed a plastic yellow spool that the film had been wound around and
popped it into my mouth like a ball-gag, tying it there with more crinkly strings of film. Bernadette loved it, and I was relieved of having to move or do anything, which was good. Somehow all my clothes were gone by then, and Tommy brought her face very close to my crotch and hesitantly began kissing my thigh.
Is that ok?
she asked, and I nodded. It was a porn movie, right? Tommy looked striking in the dim light by my legs, her bleached bangs falling over one eye, and I wondered again if I should perhaps get a crush on her. It was all so competitive then, sex and romance, and everyone wanted Tommy, so I pushed the idea out of my head and rolled my eyes up to Ashley who was touching my face and beaming her little smile at me like a benevolent health care worker. The plastic spool was really too big for a gag. My jaw was cramping, and the spool kept popping out of my mouth, and the little knot of film kept coming undone, until it finally rolled spitty onto the floor, and me and Ashley started making out. I had already kissed her once, a few weeks before, in the bathroom of a martini bar. She had flung me up against the wall and kissed me violently, bit my neck like a tough piece of steak and then released me, giggling. She wasn't attracted to me, Ashley, it wasn't about that, it was simply the air around us then, pulling everyone together in a bumpy awkwardness that you tried to eroticize. Everyone was horny and bored and drinking too much. Bernadette circled our kiss like a technological vulture and I wondered if this was at all a turn-on for her, for any of them, and if it was meant to be for me or if we were simply actors. We got
rid of the tripod and messed around with the film. Tommy stuffed some down her boxers and out the fly, and I got on my knees and kind of nudged it around with my tongue, trying to look seductive, but come on. I didn't know how Bernadette was going to make any of this look respectable. I dove into the bed of unraveled film and flailed my legs, like a '50s starlet, I imagined. But the film was actually painful, giving me sharp little nicks all over my skin.

And then I got it, the plan for my shining cinematic moment, the reason I had been invited to participate in this awkward soiree: inspiration, the daring act that no one else would do, pulling the whole film together. I would stuff the film up my pussy. Like Karen Finley and the American flag, like Carol Schneeman and her damp scroll, like all the women artists and drug smugglers before me who had seized on the genius of having an actual hole in your body that you can actually store things in. I rolled a single garland of film into a tight cylinder and pushed it gently into my cooch, leaving a little tongue of celluloid hanging out so you knew it was up there.
Oh my god no way no way!
Bernadette was gleeful,
Jack off with it!
She had a bottle of lube and squirted globs of it onto my crotch as I tugged the little strip of film over my clit and jerked it. Bernadette brought a dish of light over and aimed it brightly at my cooch, which was, incidentally, going through the same transition as my head, growing in from being bald, shaved, still bearing bumpy stubble and redness, and then more redness along my inner thighs where the heat rash I sometimes get in warm weather had
flared. A strange tropical reaction that I picked up as a kid visiting family in the Louisiana swamplands, a sort of fungus that feels the weather warm around it and begins to rise to the surface of my skin, homesick, bursting like sweat in my thighs and armpits. I thought of how awful it would look on film and wondered if my friends now thought I had some skanky STD. Having a fungus didn't sound much better. It's Just A Rash, I offered lightly, and tried to hide that part with my hands. I felt embarrassed that mine would not be the belle of the beaver ball. For the grand finale I cautiously eased the film out from my secret hole and let it unspool on the futon beneath me.
That was great!
Bernadette crowed, and handed me something to mop up the lube with.