X, page 16
Margot’s fingers are still wrapped around my arm. “Let’s get out of here,” she says in my ear.
A vein throbs in Syd’s forehead. “So you are together!” they’re yelling. I’ve never seen them display so much personality. I didn’t think they had it in them. It’s sort of a turn-on.
“Listen!” Margot screams at them.
“We just broke up, and now you’re with them?” Syd yells at her now, pointing at me. “You think I’m so awful, and you left for them? And after what happened to Petra?”
Something inside me stirs, a bad thing pricking its ears like a sleeping Dobermxn. The last time Petra and I came to DYKE ADJACENT, we were right here, dancing, drunk and flirting with each other and anyone in our line of sight. She was wearing that black skirt, open-toed heels, no bra. Now I’m yelling, too.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
Syd’s head whips back toward me, a furious smile slathered across their face. “I,” they spit, “am not talking to you.”
“Fuck you,” I say. Margot’s hand tightens around my arm.
“Hey,” interrupts the futch. They’ve wedged themself between me and Syd, their face a mask of glitter and caked-on ReflecTec. They put up their hands. One of them grazes my cheek.
####
I dream of X, and when I wake up, I keep my eyes closed. I want the dream to crystallize. I want it to stay.
These dreams are the closest thing I have to photos of her. I have a million of myself, of people I know, people I’ve dated, people I’ve fucked, people I’ve cruised. Faces turned to their good sides and naked bodies without heads. A gig of selfies. My Cyte archive alone would crash the dusty old desktop that the professor that Mom dated had in his office at the community college. That was the first computer I ever used. The last time I saw him, he opened up Microsoft Paint for me while he and Mom went to talk in the hallway. I dragged the mouse around, doodling Jessica Rabbit leaning buxomly over a red convertible. As I was admiring it, the door opened behind me, and I x’d out as fast as I could. Mom looked like she’d been crying.
I wonder if X is photogenic, or if she has an unreliable face like Camille. In my dream, X’s eyes were full of sorrow. Or maybe it was just her face that was sorrowful, each tender feature tightened. Why would someone like X be sad?
Maybe the sorrow wasn’t for herself, but for me, and people like me. When we were together, I could see that she was anticipating something, and that that something was not for her, but for me, something as inevitable and necessary as her authority, the wrack and surge of which roared like a tidal pool in the dark.
I open my eyes.
####
Belt lurches against my gut. Arm whips around my throat. Can’t see Margot. Can’t see Syd. Can’t see anything except colors, teeth, lights.
Someone’s dogwalking me, propelling me forward like I don’t weigh a thing. I twist against them and my arm twists back, and the fact that it hurts at all, in this crush of adrenaline and alcohol, tells me that it really fucking hurts.
“Leave it alone,” a voice sings, breath hot in my ear. “You wouldn’t want to break anything.”
My face slams against the front door and it bursts open into the cool night air. A shriek of feedback all the way from the stage crawls up my spine, reminding me of my neck and the tiny little bones inside it, eensy nerves clinging to them like budding leaves. A men’s size 10 slams into my ass, and the pavement connects with my shoulder, elbow, hip. Now the boot’s on my head. The sidewalk burns my cheek.
“What the fuck,” I moan. Stars in my eyes. Blood in my mouth. Ground smells like gasoline. The boot lifts. I hear Syd’s voice, and other voices responding to them. “Get the fuck out!” someone yells. “Fuck you!” That’s Syd. Other voices collide with them. “Let’s go, baby,” comes through soft and high, right above my head. I think about Petra.
I roll over onto my back and into the black flutter of my sight steps Mary, casually adjusting her sleeves. Her girlfriend, Tamara, as wide as Mary but two inches shorter, is beside her. I don’t see Syd, or the futch, or Margot—just a bunch of strangers crowding around me and the bouncers. When I brace to stand up, my elbow touches the ground and I want to throw up. “What the fuck,” I moan again, resisting the instinct to grab hold of it.
Mary just keeps tidying her right sleeve, rolling and unrolling. Tamara kneels on the pavement and leans in close, a fan of braids fainting over her right eye. “You,” she says, gently stroking my forehead, “were asked to leave.”
She’s so dramatic. “You don’t even work here!” I snap. Mary is on the payroll. Tamara just keeps her company. Lesbians.
Tamara shrugs. Like every butch, she has beautiful eyes—mile-lashed and just a little too far apart—like Katy Jurado. “What?” she asks, lifting a hand and raising her voice, as if making her case for the crowd around us. “Am I supposed to let her do all the work?”
This is probably foreplay for them. They’re probably gonna go back home when Mary’s shift is over and wrestle for the bottom.
“Congratulations,” Mary says to me. “You’re still 86’d.” Her voice is as calm as her movements. She finally stops tidying her sleeve and tugs on Tamara’s jersey—black, yellow, green—pulling her back to center.
“You guys can’t handle a little shoving?” Gingerly, I touch my elbow with my finger. It feels like broken glass in there. Shit.
Tamara laughs. “It’s like she don’t even remember last time.” She shakes her head. Mary rolls her eyes. They watch as I get to my feet, Mary scratching a patch of buzzed skin on her scalp.
“I really don’t know how you sneaked in,” Mary says.
“You need to stop looking at your phone all the damn time,” Tamara teases.
Mary rolls her eyes again, but she withdraws a real cigarette from her breast pocket and offers it to me. I take it with honest gratitude, even though I know I can’t smoke it here. I can feel four beautiful eyes drilling into my back as I walk away, my shoulders hunched, as if I’ve been defeated. I want them to think I’m leaving.
On the other side of the block, where I know they can’t see me, I start a perimeter of the building. There has to be another way into Fist, perhaps through the back, where X could still be waiting. I circle around. The smoking patio is enclosed by a fence, and all the doors that I come across are bolted tight. I do three laps, carefully blending in with the crowd each time I pass Mary and Tamara, before reality sinks in: The only way into the bar is guarded by two muscle-bound sphinxes.
I loop back to the corner and lean against the wall, just out of sight of the entrance. I decide I’m going to wait right here until X leaves, and it’s not a bad plan. She can’t stay in there forever. I check for Mary’s analog behind my ear and make a mental note to ask the next person who walks by for a light. Maybe even another smoke. Who knows how long I’ll have to wait?
Now that I have a moment, I realize I’ve lost track of Margot. Either she wasn’t thrown out with me, or she left along with Syd and the futch. I check my phone but she hasn’t texted. Bitch. I wonder for a moment if she’ll talk to Syd like I asked her to, but then I decide to worry about that later.
Around me, puddles shine undisturbed, reflecting the cowboy boots, threadbare tennis shoes, and galactic Pleasers of the queue. The last time Petra and I came to DYKE ADJACENT, it was right after daylight savings, and it stormed. We had gotten into an argument earlier in the afternoon, and when we made up, we tried to play—just some needles, for romance—but there was too much eye contact and too many silences. I took the needles out quickly and gently, and there was very little blood. A bad omen, I remember thinking. Thunder outside. Then there was nothing to do, so she made us drinks.
By the time we arrived at Fist, we were drunk and soaked—Petra had forgotten the umbrella I told her to bring. We drank more while we dried off. I didn’t want to dance but Petra did, so I went to the floor with her. I was doing okay until she started flirting with a mint-green Mommy she knew I didn’t like. She was trying to get a rise out of me, and it worked. We started arguing again. It got bad fast. We never argued in public.
That was one of the last fights before I moved in with Camille. After Mary bounced us, we came and stood not far from where I am now, by the puddles. Petra cried, wet and puffy, while I ordered us a car. It was too expensive, but I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting next to her on the bus or the train and watching other passengers look at her face. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another second with her. The thought of our bed made me sick to my stomach.
Tonight’s weather is a clone of six months ago, the Gregorian calendar’s mirror image across time. It’s late, but still warm. Balmy, even. I lean against the wall and start waiting.
####
“My fucking ex is texting me again,” says Camille.
“Who?”
She sighs. She’s lying on the floor, phone directly above her face. “Kim,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll be rid of her till she dies of being a massive bitch.”
For a long time after things ended with May, or Maybelline, she and I were good. We weren’t friends, but we always said hi when we saw each other. Once (it was before the first wave, I think, but only just), we ended up at the same play party. I kind of panicked—it was different than bumping into her on the train—and almost left, but then she saw me, and nodded across the room. I decided to stick around. I chatted with friends and stroked the toys laid out for us by Domina Katsumi, she of the perfect feet and monster cock, doing my best to pretend that May wasn’t a few feet away.
A few hours later, when everyone was putting their street clothes back on, I watched May lace up her shoes. Our arms had touched when the scene was peaking, as we both reached for the same spreader bar. It happened spontaneously, our closeness. I could smell her hair, the castor and gardenia oils. We were topping a beautiful blond laughing boy. He had a gold ring in his septum and more in his ears, as well as a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, which were waiting for him on a table by the front door. “You’re so beautiful,” he said to May, still laughing. Angel. He was on the floor now, on his back, looking up at her, stripped to blood-stained underwear.
When May smiled down at someone, she always looked a little shy. That’s when I liked to call her Maybelline. She wasn’t like a lot of other dominants I knew, me included, who had to be hard and cold and strong without fail. It was that, or else the world would end, but not for her. As her heel traced the blond boy’s hairline, I suddenly realized I had forgotten what size shoe she wore. My head swam. I got that sick feeling you get when you narrowly miss getting hit by a car. How could I forget? Strong Maybelline. Vulnerable Maybelline. We might as well have never been together.
The boy’s laughter, a little softer now, brought me back. You could tell he was the kind that always wanted to be good, one of those babies the scene saved from his dismal high school bedroom. His chest was scarred like an Etch A Sketch: double incision, nipple graft, razor blade, cat claw, unspooled paper clip, broken bottle, plate glass. A black heart cracked open on his left pec. Maybelline’s heel lifted and dropped like a crane, twisting into the inked fissure. His skin broke like fruit. They laughed together.
Camille’s eyes race back and forth, like she’s watching herself play a game.
“Hey,” I say. “Have you seen May lately?”
“May?” When the word is out, Camille’s mouth hangs open.
“I was just thinking about her.”
“May’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Exported.” Tendons jump in Camille’s hands. “Back to France. Thought you knew.”
Beach, bed, lungs. Regret feels like the tequila shot that puts you over the edge. After the scene, I had rushed for my bag so I could follow May out of the dungeon. She stood a few steps from the door, lighting an analog, her leather gloves cupped around the flame—too much clothing for the season, but that was May. The party had gone late. The moon was somewhere else. The pressure in my ears felt like a storm.
I asked if she wanted to try hanging out again sometime. Her embarrassment was worse than scorn. The blond boy came outside, hair wet from the shower, soft skin, bunny eyes, and walked over to us. I realized he and May were leaving together.
“I’m sorry,” May said, and I could tell she meant it.
She went on ahead, and before following her, the blond boy turned to wave goodbye. I waved back. I wanted to rape him.
Now I regret blocking her, which I did that same night. It feels like something I can’t reverse. Not that it matters now. May is gone, and I’ll never see her again. I wonder if the blond boy went with her.
Camille has moved on. She’s playing a game now, mouth still sagging open. It feels like everyone outside this apartment is dead and it’s just me, her, and the phone.
####
“I can’t remember the first time I ever did it,” said Camille. She smiled dreamily. “But I remember the first time I had an orgasm. I don’t know why it was different that time. I didn’t use the showerhead or anything. I just touched myself there, like I always did, and then it happened. I was seven or eight, I think. After that, my mom made a rule that I couldn’t go to my room between dinner and bedtime because she knew what I was gonna do in there.” She laughed, delicate and dangerous, like Dorothy Dandridge.
I didn’t touch myself when I was a kid. One time I asked Mom about a word—orgasm—that I had heard somewhere. I knew it had to do with sex.
“Christ,” said Mom. As usual, she had been watching the TV in the living room from over the kitchen counter. During commercials, she would stand and write, leaning over her notebook to punch down cramped blue letters, all caps. “Christ,” she said again.
When the news anchor came back from the break, the chyrons disappeared, and bursts of red, white, and blue filled the screen around him. The war update segment. Mom followed the war very closely, in an apolitical way. She wasn’t invested in any particular outcome. She liked to keep track of how American imperialism was affecting the world, like a baseball geek memorizes batting averages. She lunged for the remote but missed her mark, instead ramming her finger through the left prong of a skewer that was sticking out of the ceramic jar of cooking utensils.
“CHRIST!” Mom screamed.
I ran to the bathroom for gauze, or something, forgetting my question. While she cleaned herself up, I went and opened a new bottle of wine. I decided to ask her again later, but for some reason, I never did. That was around the time when I first remember having the hardware store fantasy.
The fantasy goes like this: I’m in an empty hardware store. At first I spend a lot of time just looking at hammers, nails, clothespins, wood, padlocks, pullies, eyebolts, thumbtacks, staple-guns, sewing needles, wooden spoons, fishing tackle, chains, metal rulers, rubber tubing, spatulas, rope, twine, C-clamps, S-hooks, razor blades, scissors, tweezers, knives, push pins, two-by-fours, ping-pong tables, alligator clips, duct tape, broom sticks, bar-b-que skewers, bungie cords, saw horses, soldering irons. That’s all I do, just walk around and look.
But after a while I start touching. I touch everything. I pick things up and put them in my mouth, running my tongue over their flavors and angles. They are bitter and hard, greasy and shiny. I know that wherever I reach my hand will find something that I desire. I know that there is no one else in the store and no cameras, and that nothing I do when I’m in there will ever be discovered or known by another person.
In the fantasy, this can go on forever. I never run out of things to touch and taste and feel. I never run out of time. And I’m never not alone.
I would usually imagine my walks through the hardware store while lying on Mom’s bed, before she got home from work. I kept my eyes closed, but I didn’t sleep. I didn’t touch myself or anything. I would just sort of drift through the metal and wood and fabric and rope and blade, and the great beautiful capability they held. I remember my fantasy fondly, like how I imagine people must feel when they look at children they have affection for and are reminded of being young.
####
Like the third son in a fairy tale, I wake up with the sunrise. I’m sitting upright against the building around the corner from Fist, cold as a dog bone. My elbow aches. My neck and lower back, too. My shoes are still on my feet, and my wallet and phone are still tucked into my coat. Cooling piss beads my leather.
I jump up and race around the corner. Mary and Tamara and the line of people are gone. The lights are out. The bar is closed. I yank on the door with my good arm. Locked, it rattles.
I take a step back and look around. The street’s empty, except for a few raccoons, who scurry back behind the dumpsters together and watch as I kick the door. It rattles again.
####
It happened back before the first wave, before I’d ever even been to New York, back when I was still going to the only gay bar in my town to cruise men. I hadn’t been living on my own very long, but I was already thinking of myself as gay, even though I hadn’t been with a woman yet.
That night, the guy I cruised was pretty cute, but he sobered up enough to clock me by the time we got to his place. He didn’t live far from the gay bar, so when he kicked me out, I figured I had time to go back and try again.
After a block or two, I realized I was being followed. I didn’t recognize the guy. He was white, wearing a baseball cap and Levi’s, like me. Faggot, he hissed. I figured he had followed me and my cruise from the bar, and now he was following me again. A streetlight crisscrossed my face, blinding me for a blink. I looked back again. He was tall. I walked faster.
