Friends (2 page)

“Why the ski?”

“To give it a, well, a little Russian flavor. Because I love Russian everything—Russian dancing and Russian dancers especially. I've changed my name to ski, you know. Sarah Nortonski.”

“Okayski, Miss Nortonski, any other newski?”

“Yes. You can sleep over this Friday. Mom says it's all right. And you know my dad didn't mind, since he has a crush on you.”

“Sure he does.”

“He does. He says ‘How's your friend Magna? How come we see so little of her these days? Let me tell you,' he tells me, ‘if I was a young woman of fourteen and wanted a good friend for life, Magna's the one I'd choose.' Other times he's called you beautiful, witty, charming, precocious—I love that. And brilliant, he once said—talented and brilliant and, my dear, what extraordinary poise. That's how he put it. He's in love with you, you cookie.”

“Then think I want to sleep over your house?”

“Oh, he's in love with my mother also, but he's got a Russian crusher on you. You deserve it too. You're really everything he says.”

“Why thank you, Ski. Sure I can come Friday. But I have to clear it with my folks. Hold on.”

Magna goes into the livingroom. Her father says “I don't see why not,” and her mother says “Let me speak to Mrs. Norton.” The two women talk. The girls are both dears and a pleasure to have over, the mothers agree, and Friday will be fine.

“Great,” Sarah says to Magna. “I can't wait. I'm going with Harry to a movie on Saturday or I would've asked you for that night too.”

“Is he staying over Saturday?”

“Magna, how could you? This is an extension. And of course he's not. You know that.”

“I'm sorry, that was dumb of me. Okay, got to run, unless you have other important news.”

“How about you? I always talk, you never do.”

“What I told you about Mr. Subway wasn't talking? And I saw a woman completely nude for the first time in my life today in art class. I suffered and I know why too. I'm going to end up looking like her, with my breasts and hips already large as they are. I don't think I'll have as much hair down there as she had, or I hope not, and never mounds of it under my arms and so dark, nor will I look so down and out, and so sad. But the body has to end up sagging like that, doesn't it?”

“Not with us dancers, my dear. Keeps the breasts and tushies tight—not just the legs. Ever see some of the old ones? Sixty, seventy years old. I've seen them in the showers and dressing rooms at ballet school and their bodies still look half great.”

“Maybe I should give up painting for dancing then, but aren't we talking silly? Always the body, never the mind.”

“Not you, just me. I can't stand to think deep or read. All I ever want to do with my life is eat like an amazon and exercise and dance. Oh: see ballets and good ballet rehearsals too. But you're getting much too serious for me, and I got to scoot too. See you Friday, Brainstem, and come straight from school.”

In bed that night she thinks about the model. The teacher told the class to go up and take a good look at her. “It's allowed. I checked beforehand with Astor and she said for the sake of art and higher learning, look anywhere you like and close as you want too, though keep a five feet distance from her if you have a bad cold.”

Magna stayed on her stool, drawing the model and the few students who went up to look at her. The teacher came up behind her and said “What're you concocting there, a basket of fruit? Take advantage—go up and give her a real inspection, unless it's against your principles or whatever, of course.”

“It's not. It's just that, you know, I'm a little concerned she might think I'm just staring, no matter what you said she said. And I thought I had a pretty good drawing going till you came by, but if you still—” He was nodding his head, so she put the drawing down and went up to the model.

The model was on the floor on her back, legs spread apart, looking up at the wall clock. Magna stared at several parts of her body—hand, feet, shoulders—before she looked between her legs. It's so shiny and big. They're really not the prettiest things in the world, that's for sure, though penises, from what she's seen of them on statues and in photographs, aren't the nicest looking things either and look stupid besides. But go back and draw it. Let Mr. Finkel think “Oh boy, this kid really got something from my lesson—maybe more,
if she shows it to her folks, than I bargained for.”

She made a large drawing of just the model's legs spread apart and her vagina and pubic area. Mr. Finkel came over, made believe he was handing her something and said “Here, kid, you get today's cigar. It's your best effort yet, not just for what you put in but what you left out also.” She said “I think I know what you mean, but can you explain it further?” He said “Just think about it—you'll get it,” and walked away. She still didn't know what he meant and doubted he did either. Just pretending to be profound, like most of her teachers, but anyway…

She's been rubbing herself down there for the last few minutes. Door's closed and lights out and she's under the covers. She's tried to masturbate a few times but has either fallen asleep doing it or stopped because she thought one of her parents might walk in and turn the light on at the same time and catch her at it, and once when the light was on she thought there might be a tiny hole in the ceiling or walls someplace and one of her parents or the building's tenants might be looking through it. She knows where and how to rub and what she's supposed to do to complete it. She's read a couple of library books about it and what the end's supposed to be like, but she's never come near to feeling anything but a little titillation down there while she was doing it. She also read in one of those books that every woman, including married ones, should practice masturbation for all sorts of reasons—spiritual, political, like that—and sooner a younger woman learns how, better it'll be for her and all freedom-loving women in general, so she's never really felt much guilt over it but hasn't yet talked about it with anyone. She doesn't like the idea she's doing it so soon after she saw that man on the subway, but is sure that incident had nothing to do with it. In fact, more she thinks of him, less interested she is in continuing to rub herself, so
she closes and opens her eyes a few times to get him out of her head, and also changes hands because the right one's become tired. The model today probably had more to do with it than anything else. Thinking of that woman's vagina probably made her think of her own, though without really knowing it, since right after she thought of her she found her hand rubbing down there. Sarah and her new boyfriend and the heavy petting she bets they'll start doing in a month if they stay together? No, she never thought of that till now, though again that's not to say somewhere deep inside she hadn't been thinking of it. But she still doesn't think so, nor anything related to Sarah's father being infatuated with her, something she already knew by his actions and looks and wishes he'd stop, more for her friendship with Sarah and Sarah's mother's sake than her own. Anyway, whatever it was that started her doing it, it's not working. She's been rubbing for around fifteen minutes, both hands are tired, she's beginning to ache down there from it, and she's no further along in getting excited as those books said she'd get than she was a few seconds after she started. Maybe she's doing it wrong or is just too young yet or the books left out something or some other reason. No big deal. It was more out of curiosity that she wanted to complete it than any other thing. She turns on the light, listens from her bed if anyone's behind the door, reads a little and falls asleep.

In one of her dreams there was a big bull with a long unicorn's horn on its head. She knows what those mean and knew in the dream. In the dream she said to the bull, when he stepped out from behind a bush and got into a charging position, “Come on, I know what you and that horn mean. You want to try and fool me with symbols and stuff, get more complicated, but don't come around like some old-time figure in art.” She's become something of an expert on her dreams. Her youngest aunt's a psychotherapist and they've
talked about their dreams a lot. The bull chased her after she lectured him on dreams and art. That was when she stopped interpreting within the dream, or even thought of it as one, and it became more like a normal dream. She was dressed only in white, even her socks and shoes. White's such an obvious symbol for her, though she didn't think of it then, but it can also stand for death, can't it?—in the Orient her aunt's said and she's read. Anyway, she was chased, fell back against a wall that had a few pillows on it, that suddenly became one huge pillow. A bed, what else? or something close to it. No? Yes. The bull charged from about ten feet away, head down, horn out, straight at her. She thought she'd be pierced by the horn and she screamed, so loud that she thinks she must have screamed outside of the dream too. The horn was a few inches from her stomach when she woke.

She's thirsty. She gets up and goes to the kitchen for some ice water or seltzer. Her mother's reading in the livingroom. “Everything all right, sweetheart? It's past two.”

“I had a bad dream. Did you hear me scream?”

“No. It was that bad? Anything you want to talk about?”

“I don't know if it was that bad, just very revealing, I think.”

“Tell me.”

“I dreamt about a man about to penetrate me with an erection. In the stomach. But it's the same thing, isn't it—myself down there and my stomach? Only the man was a bull with a unicorn's horn, and the horn, well it has to be what I think it is to think it was an erection, right?”

“Sounds right. You haven't had any of those experiences—even close to it—have you?”

“Me? Not a chance. How would I? Where?”

“I'm not accusing you, I'm just naturally worried. So it
was your whole day of bad experiences today. But anything else bothering you related to sex?”

“I don't know about bothering me, but another man got suggestive with me on the subway, right before the one who exposed himself. I just walked away.”

“Maybe from now on let's take the bus.”

“And Sarah's father. I didn't want to say anything for I don't want to hurt my friendship with her, but if she's telling the truth, he has a crush on me. Actually I know he has. I've seen the way he looks.”

“You think you're old enough to tell?”

“I am. And not that he's evil or would do anything or anything, but he doesn't do a good job of hiding it.”

“Then maybe you shouldn't sleep over there this Friday after all.”

“Maybe for a while it's not a good idea. I can go over for afternoons and she can sleep here.”

“Don't tell her the reasons though. It'd only hurt her. So, sweetheart, back to sleep?”

“I also tried to masturbate tonight and not for the first time too. That's all right also, considering everything, isn't it? I didn't want to tell you, but we were talking and I guess I really wanted to get it out, and now it is.”

“What can I say? That I like hearing it? Not so much. The act itself is normal for young women as well as some older ones, I suppose—I'm not going to say at what specific age you do and you don't—but let's not talk about it anymore. It's not that nonsense that I don't like learning you're growing up but maybe something you can try to save for your friends. But if anything is troubling you and you want to talk about it, no matter what it is, come to your father or me or both. Now off to bed.”

“I want to get something cold to drink first.”

“Not too cold or you'll have trouble sleeping.”

Magna pours herself a glass of seltzer. Her mother goes back to her reading. Later her mother comes into Magna's room, thinks she's sleeping, pulls the covers up an inch or two to Magna's neck.

Cooked Goose

They said no more stories, no more novels, we don't want anything of yours anymore, your novels don't sell, your collections do even worse, each of your books gets panned more than the last one, find another publisher if you can but you'll be wasting your time and ours if you send another work in.

I phone several editors at different publishing houses and they all say the same thing. They've read my reviews and sometimes my stories and books and I should feel lucky I even got my work published and reviewed. Try another profession—that's our advice. If you feel you must be in the arts, try music or mixed media or something like that—acting, because occasionally your dialogue hits the mark, for about three sentences in a row, but please don't bother sending us any of your manuscripts.

I write a short story and think this is one of my best and send it to a magazine and finish the novel I've been writing for a year and make a few copies of it and send these to publishers and begin another novel and write more stories and send these to magazines and I get back rejection slips and letters from magazine and book editors all saying please don't try us again, be so kind as to solicit beforehand whether we want to read your work, your fiction is not only unsalable but just plain unworthy—the syntax and bad taste, the characters, the grammar, style, form, content, language, writing, wording, everything, you're deceiving
yourself, you're taking up our valuable time which we could much better be using to read novels and collections by other writers—our own and newer writers we've asked to send their work in.

I finish the novel and send the two new novels out and write more stories and another novel, which is the third part of the trilogy to the last two novels, and send this work out separately to some publishers and all three together to other publishers and the few literary agents I haven't tried yet and my stories to magazines and anthologies and a collection of my last twenty stories to other publishers and they all return my work saying just about the same thing. This isn't for us and we don't see any other house publishing it either. You're fooling yourself and should get out of writing fiction or at least take a couple years break from it. You had a professional writing career going once but something happened along the way to stop it that is probably as unexplain-able to you as it is to us, even if it isn't that rare. Maybe you should try finding a job in journalism or adver tising, publishing, publicity or technical or medical writing. If you feel you have to make a living doing fiction, try writing a popular novel. Something about outer space or a detective or erotic novel or a book for kids—anything but what you're writing now which we know was intended to be serious fiction but just doesn't come across at all that way.