Rat Bohemia (13 page)

(In which Troy describes New Jersey and goes to get a cup of coffee)

 

 

“Troy?” I asked, fully reinvigorated by the thought of the new age. “When did you first realize that you were in love with me? ”

Troy sat back in the saddle, her cowgirl/aviator eyes. Her hips, lips, jaw slung slack like a fast train to Denver. All-American waffles and coffee in an old metal pot made on an open fire.

“It took me five hours of sitting on a Greyhound bus, bored and exhausted, before I could actually have a feeling. And then I realized what had really come true. I am so in love with you. I'm old enough now to know what love is. To recognize it.”

“What happened on the bus?” I asked. “Where were you riding? ”

“It was New Jersey, in January. Rolling industrial tundra where cancer is king. You know what I mean, Killer. Where every day of your life is 1962 and the dairy truck still rattles along a hardworking, run-down street. Kentucky Fried Chicken looks so old-fashioned in the graying dusk from a passing bus. Snow is resting on the eaves of small houses. Aluminum siding on a four-by-four square lot. Ho-hum. New Jersey.

“Some guy's got a machine shop over there. His boy is in the army. His girl does not want to get pregnant. The army's filled with fags now. Better off to keep your boy home. Go to Kentucky Fried Chicken feeling like an old-timer. It reminds you of your youth. A life in the history of advertising. Every logo had its moment. Even
the countryside is dreary. Stomping ground for traveling oldies revivals. The Marvelettes are sixty. Still singing,
Mister Postman, please. Please bring me my social security check. I'm an aging Marvelette passing through New Jersey on a bus out of New York.
There's not one person who I envy in that entire state.”

“And that's when you fell in love with me? ”

She was so handsome, beautiful. My boy, my sailor. Tadzio meets Querelle. Dirty, sexy blue eyes. Soft lips sink ships. It was strange, what was happening. I just assumed it was a purely romantic image—a pretense of falling in love with a beautiful, smart, sexy, talented, interesting woman and her falling in love with me. And then, at some point, she decided that she wants to be with me forever. And then, just at that point, usually I would notice that she was able to cry and have temper tantrums and little moments of breakdown and vulnerability and I was not able to do so. Therefore, I had to leave her since I was not being conquered and remained emotionally brain dead.

All the while, though, I kept pretending I was really just some woman living in a ball of confusion pretending to be a lady-killer, but being very usual instead. Then, one day, as Troy was loving me, I realized that I was exceptional. That I was that strange ball of fire on whom romantic figures are traditionally based. I realized that I will never be alone for very long. I will never be bored and I will always be loved. I had to come to terms with the fact that I am sexy and I am easy to love. And it hit me, like a comet, that underneath all the huge waves of pleasure and all the passion and beauty and wonderful experiences and all the new ideas and emotions traveling with me, underneath all of that there might be this GASP pathology that has something to do with gay people and our families.
How they have abandoned us and so we remain isolated. Yet, Troy can love me despite what America has done to us.

True, straight people do have all the other problems that we have. Especially being plagued by their own resentful selves as we are plagued by them. But they have not felt their own boots on their necks. Yet whenever I think about these facts, I worry about being glib and not noticing the impending sea of sadness that will be revealed as a moon-crater ready to envelop my entire persona, i.e., my world. When I notice that this crash has not happened yet, I worry that it will happen, should happen, must happen because it is hard to believe that a person can have had as much joy and pleasure and interesting moments as I have had and not await punishment.

“Honey,” she said. “I'm going to the corner to get a cup of coffee.”

(In which Killer has a reverie about poverty and she and Troy play word/love games)

 

 

“Get me one too,” I said, simultaneously worrying about my finances, hoping that she would also buy a couple of doughnuts so I could have something to eat. In preparation for my visit with my beloved I had scraped together the cash for a deluxe chicken liver dinner. These ingredients were now waiting in the fridge. One dollar's worth of chicken livers. Rice. Thirty-five cents' worth of fresh mushrooms from the farmers' market. One onion. She returned from the store with four coffees and a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts.

“What happened at the store? ” I asked.

“Saw a rat,” she said. “Then I was upset and wanted something special. So I asked the storekeep if he had Diet Cherry Seven-Up or Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi. But he only had Crystal Cola Clear Pepsi. Not even Diet Crystal Cola Clear Pepsi. He did have Diet Dr Pepper, Diet Mandarin Orange Slice, Caffeine-Free Sprite and Grape Gatorade. So, I got a box of doughnuts instead. I mean we could sit around eating hearts of palm and blood-red cherry tomatoes if you wish.”

“What do hearts of palm taste like? ” I asked.

“Like canned asparagus.”

Between us there were few of the usual barriers. I had the chance to see her clearly. I guess it is this choice between being partial or being complete with other people you love. I guess
mixture is the desirable state.

“Baby,” I said, “choose your desirable state of choice from the following list.”

“Okay.”

“Mixture. Tundra. Beaucoup. Remo. Remoulade. Satay.”

“My Way.”

“At least you're honest,” I said. “Your turn.”

“Okay,” Troy said, stretching her torso out over my world. “Okay, Killer, pick a phrase from the following list.”

“I'm ready.”

“Shark shards glistening. Lava raven so fine. Voodoo mixture Rambette.”

“Ooh, baby be mine.”

I ate three doughnuts in a state of deep shame. I don't have very much money for food right now. It is not that I don't eat. I do. I just don't have enough money for a free choice of food. I have to eat a lot of the same thing. I don't end up hungry at the end of the day, but I do spend a lot of time imagining different tastes and treats. Like a piece of cake. A piece of cake filled with white cream.

“Last year I had a scare in the middle of April where I was living on a two-dollars-and-fifty-cents-a-day food budget. And I thought SHIT and got very depressed.”

“Rice omelettes?” she asked tenderly.

“Yeah, and banana omelettes and rice and beans and bean omelettes, and beans and bananas and bananas and rice. And tea in coffee shops with lots of sugar and lots of milk.”

“That is very hard to live with.”

Something about her kindness and the coffee turned me on. I was overcome by sexual fantasies about her—all of which had
nothing to do with her tenderness. She held me and caressed me and kissed me with real feeling, but I wouldn't let go of the desire for something more. How strange to fantasize about your lover when she's actually there pleasing you. It got stranger and stranger. Her hands were all over me, caressing me through my shirt, and I refused to respond, becoming more and more limp. Imagining, imagining, imagining. I wanted her to ask me what I wanted so I could ask for it at her bidding. But her silent caressing was deafening, silencing me, and I became angrier and angrier.

(In which there is anger, sex, and predictions about
America's future)

 

She's nude. I'm clothed. She wrapped her cunt around my leg and I could feel it leaving that dried white stain to be noticed later on the subway. She started fucking me but I wouldn't let her. She tried to make me come but I refused to do it.

“Tell me what you want to do to me and I'll let you,” I said. “Tell me that you want to fuck me and I'll let you fuck me. Tell me that you want me to come and I will come.”

“Do I have to say it?” Troy whined.

She paused and sighed a sigh of resolve. Amateurishly, but with great love and no desire, she grabbed my wrists and fought with me. I was so angry I could have punched her. I clenched my teeth. She bit my neck until I thought her teeth would break. Thank God. I like it when it hurts. Vaginal trauma is what I live for. Skeletal friction first and then my skin is the softest skin. When she comforted me, I loved the comfort. When she hurt me, I loved the pain. When she controlled me, I loved the capitulation. When she serviced me, I loved the intent. Coming out is not the end of insanity, you know. It is only the beginning.

“You're not evil,” she said.

“Call me Satan.”

“I'll call you satin.”

“I'm so excited about my future,” I said.

“Future is a scary word here in America,” she said, putting on her spurs. “Americans are dangerous, Killer. We destroy the earth, mind, and lymph node, and then market that destruction. We
make it sound groovy. I have a lot of predictions about the future of America. Predictions that might have already come true.”

“Like what? ”

“I predict that there will be a new kind of cancer and advertising executives will name it Lymphomania. I predict T-shirts that say
I want to rape you
. I predict haphazard memorial services at every hour of the day and night because too many people are dead. Their ghosts have to compete wildly for remembrance. I predict that homeless people will piss on bank machines like storefronts lined with urinals.”

“And personally? ”

“First I lost my country. Now I predict that my country is going to lose me. Hmmmm. I'm suspicious.”

“Of what?”

“You.”

“Why? ”

“Killer, you're too quiet to be trusted.”

“What do you mean? ”

“You're too selfish to talk.”

“As Bob Dylan said, ‘It's not my cup of meat.'”

“Well,” Troy said. “I'm just Joe Lesbian on the street. I'm in love with you and I want to be with you. This is what Billie Holiday sings about. It's that dangerous netherworld called
really living
. Hey, I just thought of the first line of a new poem.”

“What? ”

“Roses are dead.”

Troy's mouth is wired for sound. The nations of the world surrender to her beauty. She is penetration in public places. She is unisex to me.

(In which Van Gogh and Muskogee, Oklahoma both make an appearance)

 

 

“Tell me,” I said sweetly. “Tell me, Troy, what kind of women do you usually like?”

“I used to have a stock answer,” she said. “I like women who are not too pretty, kind of insecure, good in bed, and butch enough to do me.”

“That's about ninety percent of the lesbians in New York City.”

“Well,” she said. “Then God bless New York City.”

And all I could think about was how I had given up my key to the world for the sake of my twat. On the other hand, I actually think I am led around more by my mouth than I am by my own genitalia. If I was a man I'd be a real cocksucker, always at your service. Oh, wait a minute, women do that too. It seems so unnatural.

“Another thing about America,” she was saying. “I saw these ladies getting off of the bus in Muskogee, Oklahoma. They looked like East Village drag queens. Every fashion decision they made that morning was predetermined by some nice gay man.”

“Icky,” I said. “The unconscious fag hags are everywhere. Now the insomnia begins.”

“Insomnia?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What else is worse than boredom? I'm so surprised that you fell in love with me, Troy. But it is so delicious. What a carcass on you, girlfriend. What a massive slab of beef.”

“There was a really beautiful Puerto Rican woman in the store
this morning,” Troy said. “She also saw the rat.”

“How come Spanish women look divine in something that would make any white girl look like trash? ”

“Because, Killer, you have a double standard. You see something tacky on a Spanish girl and you think it belongs there. Admit it, and then get over it.”

Where I live is just an apartment but it is airy. Icy, with illusory sky and high-ceilinged blue. I like living in a blue room because Van Gogh had beautiful blue rooms in that painting. Van Gogh's room.

Troy was making my deepest wish come true. She was watching me and seeing me and telling me hard to face, difficult unpleasantries about myself that I would never otherwise know. That is really what I want from another person.

One of the things that I love is a hot summer night. A hot winter night. The sound is blowing in your hair instead of breeze. There are two candles—purity and passion, and purity burns out while passion is just getting started. It's exciting.

“I'm excited,” I said. “I think I had too much coffee.”

“Here baby,” she said. “Smoke a cigarette. It helps drain some of the oxygen away.”

I feel the way I feel when I'm sitting home alone in the dark and I can't even listen to the radio because everything is too sensitive. It is so romantic.

Will I stay in bed reading in the morning while my lover sleeps beside me? The trees outside my window. My tattoo. Her book. Will I bustle, bring her coffee? Read the paper silently? Comment on an article and happen to look up? Her body there before me. Sitting sipping coffee. Eating bread so slowly. Hair unkempt. Feet bare.