Scream (31 page)

Kindly text me to let me know that you have received this email.

You have placed me in a very difficult position financially and I do not appreciate it at all. When I return we can talk about the future of our working relationship.

Thank you for your prompt response to this email.

What? I was so embarrassed and upset! “I am in the airport,” I e-mailed her immediately, apologizing. “I truly don't know how this happened—there is plenty of money in that account.” I called the bank and they said, “Your name is not on the accounts. You only had POA, which stopped as soon as your mother died.”

This was a different story than what I'd been told. I apologized to Dawn, over and over, but her angry e-mails continued—just like my brother's!

It turned out that the account on which I had written the check not only had the money in it (visible to Dawn) but also had—as I had thought—been left in trust for me. Only the bank had lost the card stating this.

Now I had to start from scratch. It was mid-November, pitch dark at 5
P
.
M
. It was cold and already there were snow flurries. Hunting season would start soon.

When I took a look at the work Dawn had done, what had been recorded on the QuickBooks accounting program—all of it was incorrect! She'd written down vast amounts of money that weren't there, that had never been there. She'd simply made up numbers; it was completely wrong.

At night the coyotes howled and screamed all night, right outside my door. And in the day my brother emitted via e-mail his punitive cries—only his were filled with hate and vitriol. He decided to take me to court. I'm still waiting for the trial. It's coming up soon. My brother's retired now. He has five million in the bank, plus property. I've got a lawsuit in a month—he's trying to sue me because my mother left me two small accounts he wants half of. Me, the life of a writer? I'm broke.

no conclusion

W
hat happens? What happened.

Here I am, eight years old, they hauled me out of second or third grade at Smith Day School to model for the alumni magazine.

Arlene Studio for the
Smith Alumnae Quarterly
. Used by permission.

No kidding. And life, too. That happens.

Just before Christmas of 1986, Andy said he had a Christmas present for me that he would give me when he got back from Milan. But then he died. Twenty-nine years later, in 2015, the portrait of me appeared in the
New York Times
. It was found in his house, following his death, but had not yet been stitched together. I never did receive it.

I wanted to include it because (a) I appear deranged and have only one eye, (b) it represents a major change and breakthrough in Andy's art, and (c) I am and will be the only person to have a portrait done by Andy and
also
appear in a Spider-Man comic. This, to me, is proof of my existence. But I couldn't. Reprint rights were expensive. Here is my attempt at a similar portrait.

I'm still with the contractor and am waiting for my trial. I am writing. I am riding my horse. Most of the past is a blur because only the present exists. But there are still a few things that make me smile when I reflect back. Like, one time I got a call, back in New York City. A man said, “Hi, Tama. I am calling to ask if you would appear on a talk show with Peter Parker—he's just published a new book of photographs.”

“Well, no,” I said. I mean, I was thinking, why would I go on a talk show to promote someone else's book? I have enough trouble promoting my own, and I get very nervous going on talk shows. “He's booked on a talk show and he can't promote his own work, himself?”

“You don't understand,” the man said. “You'd be with Peter Parker in a
comic book
. Peter Parker is Spider-Man's alias!”

“Are you serious!?” I said. “Of course I would appear in a comic book! I'd be totally thrilled!”

That's how I ended up in a Spider-Man comic.

© Marvel. Used by permission.

postscript

F
inally I get to go to the Snake Charmers Lounge, the bleak-looking “gentleman's club” on the tourist wine trail road, near the Christmas shop and the Glen. In summer the road is always busy. But in winter, which lasts for around nine months of the year, almost everything shuts down, except for this lounge. According to the contractor, the legal (and illegal) Mexican workers from the dairy farms need someplace to go, and they're known to spend entire paychecks on lap dances.

I've been waiting for this moment, but I was always too much of a wuss to go there on my own. The construction worker takes me. He pays admission to a grayish figure at the end of a bar—it costs something like ten dollars each—and we get soda (there's no alcohol in the place). There aren't really any customers, either, apart from us. There's a big table surrounded by bar stools and a long, glistening table with one pole, and in the corner of the room are four or five bored girls in bikini tops and panties tossing their manes and stomping their high-heeled hooves. He gives me a stack of singles. Now a girl comes out from behind a doorway and gets on the table. First she cleans the pole with some presumably antibacterial wipe and fairly promptly takes off her clothes—except for her high heels—then writhes, undulates, and performs various contortions, stopping in front of us. The construction worker tucks a dollar in her garter and she places his head between her breasts. Her dance is over. “That's one of the owner's daughters,” he tells me.

“Who's the owner?” I say. “That guy who you paid at the door?”

“Yes.”

A man is sitting across from us now, and another girl comes out and wipes off the pole. The man has a very appreciative expression, and as she spreads her legs, allowing him a look at her vagina, he gives her a dollar. This one is even more agile and is able to spin on the pole upside down and so forth. “That's another of the owner's daughters,” he says. They have very nice bodies and dance without any sensuality whatsoever. I can't tell how old they are.

“The place is empty,” I say.

“Oh, it will get crowded.”

But it never does.

Each girl wipes off the pole. I can't tell if it's to get rid of the previous dancer's perspiration or if it's because each is pathologically afraid of obtaining a disease. The whole place reeks, smelling of marijuana and the kind of disinfectant that haunts you forever after you use the toilet on the bus or train. One girl is wearing striped thigh-high stockings and sleeves and platform sandals in bright clown colors, and she waves her breasts at us, bending low. “Ooh, what a cute outfit!” I say, even though that doesn't exactly seem like the right comment to make. “Where did you find matching shoes!”

Now a young girl comes out, and she doesn't
appear
to be any older than fourteen. She has to be coached by another dancer, who sits in the corner nearby, gesticulating to the girl how to move and what to do. This girl seems very nervous, unlike the owner's daughters. I'm thinking, why was I so upset when my dad wanted me to enter a wet T-shirt contest? I am just so old-fashioned, right? A strong skunky odor wafts out from the side room from which the girls emerged. I guess there's no alcohol in this place but these girls smoke plenty of pot, no doubt with their dad.

Such sad parents my daughter has, right? With her own father telling her grandfather not to get his granddaughter high and a mother who spent a lifetime trying to discourage her daughter from getting a job as a topless dancer as a career choice, and advising her not to get any tattoos. The first semester that kid was at college, the university sent out a letter at Thanksgiving warning parents not to be alarmed if their child came home with a tattoo, that it was perfectly normal. Only it was too late.

Now another girl comes out, I don't know if she is yet another of the owner's daughters or what. First she splays herself in front of the construction worker, and then, coming to me, begins to nuzzle me on the side of my face, reeking of dirty hair and that skunky smell. I want to shove her off me! Quickly I give her a dollar. How much will I have to pay to keep her away from me? If she puts one hand on me, I think, I'm going to start screaming and I won't stop. Any hope or aspiration I had of becoming a lesbian is now ended forever. My life would have been better, possibly easier, had I been gay but now I see there is truly no hope.

My contact lenses are bothering me and I should have known not to wear long underwear to this venue. It's freezing outside, there's a chance of snow, but what kind of idiot wears long underwear to a nude club? Finally we get up to leave. I take a deep breath, glad of fresh air, only . . . the smell is worse than inside. All that time indoors, it was nothing as strong as it is out here. As we get closer to the car—the side the dressing, or undressing, room was on—the odor becomes more ferocious. It really
is
a skunk! Some skunk must have pooted right under the side of the building.

Is there a moral to any of this?

None that I can think of.

Fiction has morals; fiction has a point.

Life? I guess not.

There are always two sides to aisle 11.