Hunger's Brides (195 page)

All strain at their leashes. None approaches, not one.

The bikini lady flaps back up the beach eight pieces lighter, the blondes topless still. One pink bikini-top sprouts from a beach bag.

Study them, the golden ones. What movie are you in?

[2 Feb 95]

Pickup trucks coming and going. Each day more jackals arrive earlier, stay later. Earlyworm guts the bird.

Return of the bikini rack, but draped today over a rolling billiard ball—thick, muscular, purplish brown, the bikini lady's son, must be—it's in the genes, so very very enterprising. His long sparse hair kinked like the corrugated shanks of bobby pins. A thin moustache slips from the greasy corners of thick Tartar lips. Sleazesmirk—bikinis,
muchachitas
, bikinis? Two blondes fumble for sunglasses, turn face down.

Dauntless he comes, stands in the shade of my palm parasol.
¿Mucho calor, verdad?
He sweats out sincerity.

I don't speak Spanish.

¡Caray!
—his call to the others. This one has
green
eyes!—
¡pero increíble!

Of course you speak Spanish,
amiga
. Everyone hears everything here. No bikini? You don't like the sea? How about
yerba
—marijuana? Anything you like just ask me. You like mushrooms,
cocaina?
Yes you like
cocaina
I think all in black from the city.

3 Feb 95

Mermaid picnics up the high strand. Little palm parasols, fashion shows, sand for tea. We are all here to make believe. Stars of our own movie.
Rich and tanned healthy and thin. Learn to fit in. Study the tourists, not the locals.

Two masked mermaids fin out to the reef, angelfish trawling spun-gold shawls.

Please—
you speak Spanish—on the reef! Mariana stepped on something. Will you help us, eyes wide blue. She needs a doctor.

Pufferfish foot, red tendrils reaching up the calf, vines of poison ivy searching out a heart to grow in. Stay calm stay calm call out to the billiard ball lounging in the shade. He sits at attention, sniffing opportunity. Call to them.
Oigan, pisó algo en el agua. ¿No las quieren llevar al doctor?

Billiard ball's slouch across the cool sand, casual.

So
señorita
you have remembered your Spanish. Let's see—
igua
pu
ta
, look at that!—a sea snake
maybe. ¡Muchachos véngense!
Sudden yap-ring of diagnostical jackals. No no a sea urchin.
Idiota
, urchins are not poisonous!
Pues, tiene una alergia
. Or a ray, yes a stingray. All agree now. She stops crying. Whitelipped shock, laboured breath….

Are you taking her or not?—just go. Let the doctor decide.
Apúrense por fav
or
.

Sí sí por supuesto. Ya vamos. Anda mal, ella
.

All clamber into an old grey pickup, pale swimmer in the truck box, head on a towel.

Won't you come with us please? I'm sorry I don't know your name. In case the doctor has no English? Please come.

Hypo squirt of clear bright drops.
Anti-histamina
. We will watch her for a couple of hours. Perhaps you will explain to your friends about these painkillers….

My friends.

Two hours later, all bundle into the truck. Blondes encased in macho airbags, collision proof up to 50 k.

Don't you want a ride back? Shortcropped blond, wide mouth and teeth perfect as her English, asking me.

I have things to buy.

We could ask them to wait. Playful smile. They seem very helpful.

I'll walk.

Walk back from Tulum town on trembling knees. Have I gotten so weak? Sunset. Horizon of palest rose and lavender. Half-moon half-risen.

We wanted you to have some of this papaya. We wanted to thank you. May we join you? Just for a minute?

Mariana, Renata, Brigit, Margo. Golden opportunity to study the golden ones up close.

Beulah, would you like to do a joint with us?

Coughlaugh into a cloud of smoke. No, not sisters. Brigit and I are Dutch. These two are Swiss. We travel together because of the Mexican men—I mean, we are friends but with four of us we handle them pretty well. Long smokestream, joint tweezered between long pink nails. Well, Mariana and Renata can. Brigit and I don't handle men.

Not if we can help it.

You look beautiful in that dress. Did you just buy it in town?

Evening cook-outs on little blue gas bottles. Packaged soup all the way from Switzerland. Pork sausage skewered on a driftwood fire.

Will you eat with us?

I ate in the village.

Liar
.

[4 Feb 95]

The sex entrepreneurs are bringing their ice chests. Yesterday's grey ambulance converted now into a delivery truck, backed up to a big palapa hut a hundred metres south. Bucket brigades of beer and ice and silver bottles. A generator sputters—blasts reggae in its first bawling breath. Welcome to Jamaica west.

One Samaritan ride breaks the ice, shatters the cool blue distances all around us. Smiling jackals are close among us everywhere now, muzzles in crotches, getting to nose us, one big happy family.

Tell your friends we have decided to open the bar for them. Same prices as Tulum. Fresh fish anytime, french fries, clean salads. Taxi service
to the discos at night. We know they like marijuana, tell them I can get anything—
mescalina
, peyote, mushrooms. Very safe. For you free, if you translate. For you free anyway,
preciosa
.

The billiard ball is called Diego. Sex jackal #1. Alpha dog.

Practise new manoeuvre: slip black one-piece on under long cotton dress. Take refuge in the sea. Vamp Ophelia in a sea of aquamarine.

[6 Feb 95]

Hola, buenas tardes, joven
.

Red neckerchief, bob of Adam's apple. Grizzled stork, bringer of random offerings. Feed your babybird, she eats only what you bring, only when you come to her. Yesterday you didn't or the day before, just so now I can forgive you absolutely everything.

Afternoon. Sheltering under my palm parasol, my veil of flowered cotton, purdah of mirror-shades. All watch this beauty of girls. Silver squeal and slap of a water fight. Mermaid naval battle at the shores of Valhalla. Duelling houris. Renata, skinny ribs, bladed hips, high little breasts. One blue eye, sleepy, skewed. Brigit all legs all day all angles. Mariana of the full-wide breasts, nipples pale sand-dollars, tiny paunch. Margo's wide-shoulders and narrow-hips, wide witchery of mouth, hair of cropped straw. A furious strawberry thatch presses out from her white g-string—crazed red wig of a balding clown as she runs past.

We are stars of our own movie, in an abandoned movie house. Ready on the set, stand by … 5-4-3-2-1. All lurch into action: Drawn down to the water fight, the sex pack flexes, vogues, beams white teeth. Pathetic pick up lines, beachboys in polysester pants, they call up to me, ask for translations.

8 Feb 95

Diego the purple-brown muscleman kneels in the sand, his dewy muscle-gut blocks all sea due east. What are you writing
amiguita
, are you a poet a journalist, what? Are you here to tell my story? Why do you buy food only from the old man? He has not come for two days now. Why do you not come to the bar with the others?

Why is the sea so clear here.

Compared to what?

Coatzalcoalcos.

Ah, el Golfo de Mexico
, America's toilet bowl. Diarrhea of the gringo rio Mississippi. This here,
amiguita
, this coast is
¡el Mar Caribe!

Long walks south down the beach. Floating for hours in my dress of red kelp, flowers. Write only after dark. Write at night if at all. Become a nocturnal animal. Write down to exhaustion, down to drugged calm.

10 Feb 95

Nights of bonfires in front of the bar. Reggae, seventies pop rock. Please more Jackson Browne. Turn up the Walkman, turn it up—to this blank tape hiss, my symphony of SSSSSSSHHHHH.

Each night they come back guiltier with offerings, each night drunker, more blurred. Brigit brings beer, Margo a joint, tonight Mariana a whole tinfoil meal of rice fish and beans. You should come with us, they're really not so bad. Diego, the one with the bikinis that day? Little giggles and groans. He gave us these mushrooms.

You don't have to sleep with that guy to get us free drugs.

Brigit's right, Mariana, we can pay.

It's safer this way. Besides he was very … primitive. Will you try them with us Beulah?

She means the mushroooms.

Mariana is always with guys like him.

While Renata waits for her prince.

One even better than Diego?

We hate it when they fight.

They know each other since the first day of public school.

Tomorrow Diego is driving us to some clubs in Playa Del Carmen. You could come, Beulah, please come. Dancing under the stars, it's amazing. Don't worry about the men, if we don't like them we just pretend to be lesbians too.

Through Margo's wide lips a tight slipstream of smoke and hiss. Beulah they are very excellent pretenders.

Margo's always wanting us to try.

Might as well, the way these two touch themselves at night, listening to us.

Shut up.

We do the same things. You just do them to yourselves.

And you, Beulah, what about you? Like men?

None I remember.

Come swimming with us.

12 Feb 95

Bright celt of moon overhead.

Killing God, primitive trick I've almost learned it.

Nocturnal creature, the moon's lemur-eyed daughter she writes in her shroud of half-moon light. She can be just like you, Golden Ones. She will dress like you. We will eat the local food, write down recipes. We will stay medicated. Each day more sophisticated in the primitive. Once a year when we come here. We come for love, we say how it ends.

Shooting stars of our own tragedies—keep filming keep filming—tanned and rich and wealthy just three weeks a year. The show goes on and on, bright stars of our lives. We feed the sun our flayed skins, the crusts of our wounds, we feed the mites and the fleas of the Insect Prince. We peel, we flay. He makes us a film of us, a book, a lampshade. Stay medicated. We numb our pain. Make believe we can afford this, we are really alive. We could live here. This is our life. Please. Here on this coast we can be who we are really are, only here. Please, just a little while.

My alpha dog walks up to us stroking his Tartar moustachio.
Amiguita, ¿qué onda?
all these nice Colombians slaving for years to bring drugs for the gringos and you don't even know how to smoke a joint correctly—look at you. And now you want peyote? These prices you women pay are stupid. It will be the same with
el peyotl
. Let me arrange this for you.

So let him.

[13 Feb 95]

Slalom through tropical nights! blizzards of stars—honk and swerve of trucks without headlights—movie-lot hayrides in this grey truckbox, standing up way UP. Nights of flint, stippling of musks, orchids of road-kill and skunk.

Beulah sit
down
at least.

Hold on
.

No hold me up I want to stand—what am I too heavy for you movie stars? Little visionary assumes the position / stands frisked and legsspread mouth propped wide / harrowed on nightwind—

Beulah please.

Open air disco, nightblood throb. Pass through the frond arches. Welcome to the Parrot Dance Academy.
²
Valentine Specials: Two for One. Remember Beulah, only reefers, only smoke here it's safer—the men can't put drops in your drinks. Over
here
Beulah, stay close to us.

Part the meat curtain, go in and get your fortune told. Rhythmically. A disco ball whirling under a nearfull moon, how novel how new. All sway—stutterstep—under this trash and scatter of costume-jewel light this endless changeless shorebreak of drumbeat.

Feel it, this doomed boombox tattoo feel it needle you stain you for life. Stand close, arms wide, let the speakers breathe for you.

Oye bonita
, how old are you can't be twenty-two marry me I loave you.

Oh I loave you too.

Recipe I've come so far for—found AT LAST. At a disco, end of the treasure map. Disco balls, swaying meat / foxglove and morning glory librium and allegories
Mescalina cocaina—teonacatl
togogo gogirl.
Peyotl, Ololiqui
, the sacred
octli
. And the secret ingredient—the occultest, the last—

Massive blood loss, pale harbinger of Ecstasy
.

This is the recipe for obsidian wine. Toast the brides.

Those men over there,
señorita
, are sending you this drink for free. They love the way you dance so do I. Come to a staff party after work with me, I want to be your boyfriend for life.