By Blood (15 page)

With the patient gone for the holidays, there was no recourse but to resume those of my activities one might designate as “normal.” I would go to the office, traveling to and fro at regular hours. I would keep myself among crowds. I would wear my gray suit and overcoat, put on the narrow-brimmed hat with the feather in the band that I had bought after Thanksgiving. So attired, perhaps my Furies would not recognize me; would see an average man walking on a public street.

Yet immediately I faced an obstacle. To arrive at the office at regular hours meant encountering the security guard, that blot upon the refuge that was my lobby. I was not ready to withstand his scrutiny; not yet able to face the menace I felt emanating from his pretty countenance. I therefore delayed my departure for the office, hoping to time my arrival with the comings and goings of the lunchtime throng, and thereby evade the gaze of Mr. Handsome (as I had taken to calling him in my mind). His face haunted me all during my ride on the streetcar, as I again tried to ascertain what it was particularly that gave him such an air of threat. Perhaps it was the perfect, too-square jaw, like that of a plastic action figure—it made him seem not quite real, a G.I. Joe, a fantasy of male power. Or the eyes, which were fixed and penetrating. Or the mouth, perhaps, almost a girl’s carved lips, absurdly full and curved for a man of his stature.

I waited outside the lobby doors, in an area where the guard could not see me unless he turned and craned his neck, and I peered through the glass to see if a crowd had assembled. I was fortunate. Many were waiting for the elevators, and then two cars arrived at once, creating a perfect traffic jam of people trying to get off jostling those trying to get on. I entered, pushed past the security guard in the midst of this confusion, and was the third person inside a waiting elevator car. The car began to fill around me.

Then the guard reached his hand inside.

Step out, please, sir, he said.

It was an order. Yet I answered:

But you know me!

I do not, sir, he said. Please step out.

He held the elevator door open. The eyes of all the other passengers fell upon me.

I stepped out.

Again the guard indicated the sign-in book.

But you know me! I repeated, once more showing him my name on the roster.

He scrutinized me as before, his lovely lips set in a firm line, only his eyes going back and forth, dark orbs like those of the cherubs. As time ticked on, I began to fear for my safety, for it came to me: He can see through me! He can hear the noise in my head! He knows the dark acts of which I may be capable!

I saw his brow narrow, just a hair’s width. Meanwhile his gaze remained set upon me. It was impossible to know what he was about to do. I saw that was the source of his power: His beauty mesmerized; one could not read his face; would a smile or a knife be the next thing one saw?

Go on, sir, he said at last, but noncommittally, as if to say, I will get you next time.

I do not know how I passed the day. Dr. Schussler’s office was quiet, no patients, no sound machine, and the emptiness of the adjoining room made my loneliness feel particularly acute. Finally night fell. The guard would be gone. I went down to Union Square to lose myself amongst the crowd.

A tall Christmas tree stood in the center of the square, as did a Jewish candelabrum, its eight lights already lit. I could only wonder what the patient felt as she gazed upon that Jewish symbol. Last year, it was probably no more to her than a civic show of ecumenical spirit. But now, while crossing the square, as she would have to do to negotiate the shopping district, did she find the candelabrum oppressive? Wish she could return it to its former irrelevance? Mexico offered the patient many opportunities for relaxation, I thought, not the least its relative shortage of Jews.

But I could not long retain these thoughts of the patient. All around me a sort of frenzy seemed to be in progress. Great convoys of shoppers went by in furious motion, sailing in noisy groups, as if something desperately needed to be purchased and the shops might close at any moment. The crowds were full of shouting young men. Heavy shopping bags kept clipping me behind the knee. I was pushed into the street by a raucous, half-drunken group; no sooner did I regain the sidewalk when I was pushed aside by another. A passing car spattered my pants leg with mud.

I fled the square and wandered in the now-dark business district, where I soon found myself before a grill with a long wooden counter, at which sat a row of gentlemen who were taking their dinner. As this seemed to be the sort of establishment where a man dining alone might feel comfortable, I went in, joined the gentlemen, and contentedly passed two hours listening to the banter between diners and waiters, who, it seemed, had acquaintanceships of long standing.

It was when I left the grill that something seemed to change in my very metabolism. It might have been the effect of the deserted business district, where the stoplights blinked their reds and yellows into empty streets. Or perhaps it was the faded frivolity of Union Square, where discarded wrappings were trapped in the shrubbery, and a large blown bow, like some horrid spider, skittered across the sidewalk. I only know that, before I knew what I was doing, I hailed a cab, settled in my seat, and asked the driver, Would you perhaps know a bar called A Little More?

The driver put his arm on the seatback and did a slow turn around to look at me.

Sir, are you sure you want to go there?

I was not sure of anything. My body seemed not to belong to me.

Yes, I said. Please take me there.

The driver said nothing as he drove us across Market Street, proceeded what seemed to me east and south for several blocks, then traveled under an elevated roadway. We came to a district I had never seen before, a wide boulevard lined with warehouses, now dark. Then we turned up a short street that dead-ended into a parking lot.

Are we there? I asked. Where are we?

The driver gestured toward the far side of the parking lot. Back that end, he said.

I paid the fare.

Want me to wait? the driver asked.

Why would I want you to wait?

Okay, sir. You know best.

And he drove away.

Once the sound of the cab faded off, I could hear music spilling out of a doorway. The night had turned cold and blustery, and as I crossed the crowded parking lot, the music came and went, blown about by the wind.

In the entranceway was a woman sitting on a barstool, who stood at my approach.

You lost, buddy? she asked.

She was an average-looking woman with a pleasant face, wearing a white shirt and chinos, with a parka around her shoulders—nothing to identify her as a lesbian, to my eye. Her manner was not exactly hostile, but she was wary and a little amused, I thought.

A friend asked me to meet her here, I said.

Another woman came to join her. She looked precisely like my idea of a lesbian: big, heavyset, mannish. The words “bull dyke” came to mind involuntarily. What’s he doing here? she said to the first woman.

Says he’s meeting a friend.

They both laughed, looked me up and down, and finally the first woman sighed and turned to me. Too bad we can’t keep you out legally, she said. Cover’s five bucks, Mr. Friend of Somebody.

I gave her the money, and she stamped my hand with something out of a children’s printing set: the image of a giraffe. Then I was free to enter, but as I went by, the big woman pulled me aside and said, Be good, little buddy. I’m keeping my eye on you.

I found myself in a large, darkened room, standing before a crowded dance floor. A revolving mirrored ball hung from the ceiling, casting circling pinpoints of light on the dancers, as they too swirled about, so that for a moment I felt dizzy, as if it were the floor that was moving, not the ball or the dancers. The room was hot and smoky, throbbing with the beat of music I knew was called disco. And as my eyes became accustomed to the dim light, I could see that the dance floor was ringed with small tables, each one filled with a small group of women who crowded around the tiny circle of the table, holding cocktail glasses and bottles of beer. So many women! I thought, for there were perhaps two hundred or more in the room, filling not only the dance floor and the tables but also the bar area behind me, where ladies stood four deep as they pressed forward to place an order with the busy women bartenders.

And all of them are lesbians! came my next thought. For there were charming ladies of every variety, far outnumbering the “bull dykes” whom I had always imagined were the typical sort. There were women in neat pantsuits—businesswomen, they seemed. And many “old-style girls,” who looked just as delectable as the patient had said, in their tight sweaters and red lips, curvy, like lounge vamps of the fifties. There were tiny Asian women, who seemed to be in pairs in which one partner took the role of the man and one the woman. And women who simply looked fresh and athletic, as if they had just come from the clubhouse after a swim—could these be “Dinah Shore lesbians”?

By far the largest group were the “politicos”: women with short hair and flannel shirts who, to my mind, looked not like women but like tender preadolescents. Many had stripped off their shirts and danced in their undershirts, cotton muscle shirts, braless nipples bobbing sweetly beneath the surface of the cloth. The word “youths” came to mind as I gazed upon them—not “boys” or “girls” but “youths”—for they seemed to have stopped themselves at that delicate moment just before the terrible descent into the divide between male and female: girls who could still run around unashamed in their underwear, boys whose cheeks were still soft with down. And as I watched the couples sway on the dance floor—to a popular slow song, “Midnight Train to Georgia”—I could not understand why the patient was so resistant to their charms. For I found them adorably sexy, with their short haircuts with cut-in sideburns and cute little cowlicks, their tight blue jeans, bodies pressed tightly together as they moved to the rhythm of that aching, plaintive song. And, thrust between each other’s legs, a knee seeking a tender spot.

Was Charlotte here? I suddenly wondered. She might be relaxing amongst her goat-lady lesbians. Then again, about to find herself newly single, she might be one of those women in blue jeans, her knee already exploring the inner thigh of someone new. And which of these women had the patient flirted with, on those nights when she had had one too many: that woman wearing a dark, tailored pantsuit? Or, better yet, that one there: a blowzy vamp showing cleavage? It thrilled me to think that this is where the patient had stood, right on the edge of this dance floor, gazing into the many faces of female allure.

The room suddenly seemed very crowded, for all at once there was a cloud of women around me. Their bodies were so close that I could smell their perfumes and hair gels and sweat, and I did not try to move away, for I confess it was a very pleasant sensation: to be so surrounded by so much female flesh, the occasional brush of a breast against my arm, the rub of a backside, a hip to my thigh. Without actually dancing (which would have been strange, since I was alone), I tried to sway with the crowd, just slightly, if only to go unopposed with the movement all around me. I felt myself being drawn from the margin of the dance floor slowly toward the center, and again I let myself be taken by the overall drift, for it seemed odder to force my way out than to let the situation be as it was: twirling lights, undulating women’s bodies, a high, sweet voice singing
I love to love you, baby.

Then the music changed to something faster, and a cry of happiness rose from the throats of the women all around me. They danced with a wilder energy, throwing their arms about, singing along with the chorus.
Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?
In the tighter press of bodies, I began to be elbowed now and again, but I thought nothing of it, as there was now a kind of abandon in the dancing, a joyousness, and I—a man amidst this happy throng of women—was surely an obstacle to their pleasures.

I tried to edge my way off the dance floor. But the crowd was now quite thick, and I had not gone two steps when I was sharply jostled. Sorry, said a woman, giving me a tight smile. She was a politico type, and after I mumbled a “sorry” of my own, it seemed to me that her girlfriend, another woman in an undershirt, threw her partner directly against me. They both laughed, then danced away; and before I could consider what had just happened, I felt an elbow to my ribs. Instinctively stepping aside, I received a jab in my back. I twisted around, and an arm flew into my neck. Oops! came a voice behind me. I tried to see where this had come from, but suddenly a foot came down upon mine: the high-heeled shoe of a blonde in a tight skirt. Sorry! she sing-songed as her partner swept her away.

The women seemed to be pressing in around me. The dance floor cannot really be as crowded as all this, I thought, as I was bumped from one side, then from the other. I tried to move away, to an area that might be more open, but I was soon stepped on again, by a businesswoman in sensible pumps, then by the combat boots of a bull dyke. A tiny Asian woman, giggling, reached out a graceful foot and pressed it upon my toes, then howled with delight, like a child at a balloon dance.

And still the women seemed to press in, to the point where I could not move, even to defend myself from the next spike heel to the instep, the flung arm that hit me in the face, the fist that landed on my throat. The heat became overwhelming. The smell of their bodies and lotions was now sickening. The feel of their bodies upon mine—the tight jam of flesh on flesh—was now causing me a kind of panic, as I was terrified that I might unintentionally touch a breast or a thigh and so bring upon myself some sort of physical retribution. I wanted desperately to leave, but no matter how I turned and turned, the women’s bodies trapped me in place, and I seemed to drift ever farther from the edge of the dance floor, from the entrance, from the red glow of the exit sign, which I watched recede into the distance as I was swept into the depths of the room. Still the music throbbed and the lights swirled and the blows fell upon me, and I could not find my way out of this mass of women, who, I saw, were laughing at me.

I was about to cry out, when a loud voice shouted from the far side of the room:

Take it easy, girls. Don’t gangbang ’im!

All the women stepped back, just an inch, and I was able to turn around and see where this voice was coming from. It was the bull dyke from the door, parting the crowd with her arms. She was laughing. Don’t gangbang ’im, girls, she kept repeating, and soon the crowd took up her laughter in a rippling wave that washed over the dance floor. Is that what they had been doing: gangbanging me? Finally the big woman reached me and put a meaty hand on my arm.

You better get outta here, mister, she said, still laughing, before these girls stomp you to death.

I moved in her wake toward the door. But still the women were gathered around me like clinging fog. Creep! someone said in my right ear. I turned in the direction of the voice, and immediately to my left someone said, Letch! I turned my head again, and directly into my face a woman spat, Pervert!

Go on, mister, said my rescuer. Just keep moving.

At the doorway, she raised an eyebrow at me, which was pierced by a tiny ring. And remember, little buddy, she said in a kindly voice, it’ll be worse next time.

I hurried across the parking lot, shivering as my sweat met the cold night air.

I marched down the short street to the dark boulevard, then stopped, searching for evidence of the elevated roadway, for any sign of the route that cab had taken. I walked in one direction then another, striding, the taunts of the women sounding in my head.
Creep. Letch. Pervert
. That’s what the students at the university had called me. But it was all wrong, very wrong. I always went alone to student haunts. I never approached—never even thought of touching anyone. The boy intrigued me, that was all. It was only my way of trying to understand him!

Somehow I came to the elevated roadway. Somehow I found the route the cab had taken, Folsom Street, I thought. Not a block from the roadway was the neon sign of what seemed to be a diner. Hamburger Mary’s, it said. I opened the door to a rush of warm air.

Table? asked a waitress.

I slid gratefully into a booth, took a menu, asked for coffee. As I sat and felt the blood coming back into my hands, I noticed there were many men in leather jackets in the diner, some with chains on their wrists and around their necks. After the waitress brought my coffee and took my order, I asked her, Is this some sort of biker hangout?

She laughed, a hoarse laugh. You don’t know where the hell you are, do you, honey?

I ate a hamburger, fried potatoes, a salad, finding myself starved despite my dinner earlier in the evening. Feeling warmed and fortified, I asked for the check, paid it, and prepared to go back out into the night to find my way home. It was only when the waitress brought my change that I noticed it: her height, the size of her hands, the Adam’s apple that bobbed at her throat.

She must have seen the look in my eyes, for she said, Honey, you don’t look so good. Let me call you a cab.

Then she shrieked: You’re a cab! You’re a cab!

Her laugh was so shrill that I instinctively slid to the far side of the booth. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the other patrons, the men in leather and chains, were glancing over, amused, but otherwise showed no interest. Was this a common occurrence? Could anyone wander in from the street for a hamburger and find himself pressed against the wall while a looming man-woman shrieked at him in utter ridicule?

Please, I said. I’ll just—

Oh, don’t be so sensitive! She had abruptly stopped laughing. I’ll let you know when your cab’s here. Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to you.