Kamikaze Lust (27 page)

“I have way too much pubic hair.”

“Let’s get rid of it.”

“You serious?”

She nodded, cheeks dimpling foolishly, but I knew she was indeed serious. She said she’d always wanted to shave a woman and, at that moment, she could have said she wanted to have a threesome with a goat and my response would have been, “Let’s find a petting zoo.”

An occasional advocate of the clipped bikini line, I had the necessary accoutrements. Scissors. Shaving cream. Disposable razors. Vitamin E capsules and aloe vera lotion. Shade draped a towel over the toilet seat and sat me down, spreading my patent leather legs. She picked up the scissors and my thighs caved inward. I had this fear of sharp objects near my pussy, especially when they were in somebody else’s hands.

“It’s okay,” she said. She kissed the top of my clit, stroked me with her fingers and already I wanted to scream. I leaned my head back, felt the pull of my pubes, the cold metal of the scissors, and then, a tense snip. My eyes shut to the clip of the shears, the hum of Shade’s voice.

When I next looked down, my pubes were tightly buzzed; sort of prepubescent, sort of in-the-Navy, yet caught between these shiny leather lampposts. I almost liked my own body. Shade smiled, filled her palm with shaving cream and my heart beat wildly.

She started shaving from the top. The back of my neck tingled, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from whimpering. I could feel my legs shaking the closer she came to my vagina. “Trust me,” she said, two fingers spreading my lower lips so she could get in further with the razor. “I was always really good at shaving the balloon. It was my favorite booth at the town fair. I won prizes.”

“You’re such a little suburban girl.”

“I never said anything different, everyone just assumes I’m from Brooklyn or wherever. From the ’hood, as it were.”

“I’m more from the ’hood than you are.”

“Exactly, but it’s like that’s the past I should have had.”

“You can have mine if you want.”

“That’s very kind of you…can you move your left leg up a bit…there, that’s it.” My right leg slanted against the sink as if I were a contortionist so Shade could get underneath. In flooded visions of losing my balance and sacrificing my clit to a disposable bic. No coming, ever. Not even the hope of it. I shivered, felt the muscles in my stomach contract.

“Relax,” Shade said, as if she’d read my mind. She softened the scrape of her razor, stopping every so often to stroke me with her fingertips. I felt them so intensely, the opposite of relaxing.

She pulled back, tapped the razor against her chin. “I’m wondering, maybe we should leave the hair on top.”

“You’re the stylist.”

“Here.” She tilted a hand-held mirror toward me.

“Ugh, it looks like a moustache.”

“Our customers are mad for it, we call it the Charlie Chaplin.”

The little black hairs sneered above my cunt. Bald, I could handle, but these few molded strands reeked of a slow, uncomfortable death. “More like Adolph Hitler,” I said. “I hate it, take it off.”

She grabbed my chin in her free hand, kissed me, then returned gallantly to her shaving. When she finished she rubbed me clean with a warm washcloth, and I felt pampered, cared for in a way I’d never experienced.

White fluorescents streaming, she dropped to her knees in front of my bald vagina. She licked me slowly, so tenderly it hurt more than the pull of her razor. She pushed my legs further apart, fingered me. On her knees, she was licking me and fucking me and I could feel it this time, feel it for real. I was thinking please, please, please…but I lost it again, was soon ambushed by those familiar frustrations. There was just no letting go. I lifted Shade’s head. “You’re all wet,” she panted. I started sobbing.

We fell down on the cold bathroom floor, Shade’s arms mainlining relief as I wailed maniacally. I said I was sorry for not coming, and she said it was okay, it didn’t matter. “I was almost there, I swear it.” I hiccuped, and she held me, for hours it seemed. I’d never cried in front of a lover, never cried so deeply with anyone before, not even that day in Kaminsky’s office when I realized I was losing Aunt Lorraine for good. Such emotion frightened me, felt more foreign than my shaved vagina.

I longed only to comfort her back, be good to her, but my own feelings were so overwhelming they left me mute and immobile. Ultimately, I was afraid I’d failed her and would always fail her, because I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I couldn’t give her everything.

Darkness eclipsed my studio, offering a night and day contrast to the two of us in this light-bright bathroom. “I’m starving,” Shade said.

“I know, but I can’t move.”

Gently, she lifted me, put her arms around my waist, and hugged me.

“Sorry I ruined your fantasy,” I said.

“You didn’t ruin shit.”

“It’s not what you wanted, it should have been sexy.”

“It is, Slivowitz,” she whispered, her breath mingling with my ear lobe. “It really is.”

I don’t know whether I believed her or not, but the words felt right. As did her body on mine, stumbling from the bathroom and collapsing back into bed.

GOOD MORNING HEARTACHE

On the seventh day, Hy called and said that Mom and Aunt Lorraine had been admitted to the hospital. Nothing to worry about, both were doing fine, he repeated a few times before telling me what had happened. They’d been watching television the night before when Rowdy barreled in screaming. “Get the doctor, man! She ain’t breathing right.”

Mom and Hy followed him upstairs where they found Aunt Lorraine wheezing uncomfortably with her eyes closed, the sight of which caused Mom to drop. Rowdy called an ambulance. When Mom, after they’d roused her, complained of heart palpitations, they put her in the back seat of Hy’s Cadillac and followed the ambulance to Sisters of Mercy Hospital, whereupon they both were admitted. Aunt Lorraine had broken a couple of ribs, Mom, they suspected, was suffering from exhaustion.

I got out there as quickly as I could, all things considered. Orienting myself to the world after stowing away seven days was difficult enough without having to leave Shade. I dropped her off on my way to Brooklyn. We stared out the windshield for a while, holding hands over the stick shift.

“I wish I could go,” she said, finally.

“I know, but…you know.”

“I know.”

Our language had become a pyramid; it’s foundation vast and firm, we barely needed words anymore. Yet as soon as we parted, I feared the last few days had been a lie. I felt disconnected, utterly exposed. As if cast from the garden, I was doomed to walk the planet naked, all eyes on me, taunting me for my shaved cunt, my watching porno films, my sleeping with another woman, everything. Like Lilith, I was banished and horny and alone.

These visions of sprites and spirits were magnified at Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Most of the nurses wore crosses, and biblical scenes adorned the walls. Hy had to hang his coat over the painting of Jesus across from Mom’s bed. “I couldn’t stand him looking at me,” she said.

She was fully dressed, face painted. Hy said all the tests had come back negative and she was about to be released.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said.

“I’m telling you, Ray, you should have seen it,” Hy said. “They all come in here and bow down in front of him.”

“In front of who?”

“Him, the big guy, in the painting. So, I try to take it off the wall and guess what? It’s nailed down.” He laughed hysterically, was joined by Mom. I must have looked confused. “Nailed down,” he repeated, waiting for my response with his mouth agape.

“Jesus…ooops!” Mom laughed, covered her lips with her fingers. It amazed me how animated she became when she was the patient. Normally, she couldn’t walk into a hospital without fainting.

“Don’t you get it?” Hy said. “They say the Jews crucified him, but they got him nailed to the wall.”

“Oh.”

“Forget it, she won’t laugh at Catholics,” Mom said.

“It’s a bad joke,” I said.

“Look at her, acting all high and mighty after she tells the whole world about the filth she’s involved in.”

It took every ounce of self-control I had to ignore her comment. I walked to the window, tried to find my jeep among the cars in the parking lot. Already I was antsy and wanted to get back to Manhattan.

A doctor came in and had Mom sign her release forms. Hy lifted his jacket from the Christ painting. I half expected to see the devil jump from the frame. But he was just your average Jesus, a long-haired guy in a bathrobe. I followed Mom and Hy back to Aunt Lorraine’s room where Rowdy was videotaping Aunt Lorraine and Kiki talking about
Days of Our Lives.

After a quick powwow, during which I barely spoke, we decided to have lunch. Then I would come back later for the meeting with Aunt Lorraine and her oncologist. She’d asked me to be there, and I’d said yes, resigning myself to the fact that I would not be leaving Brooklyn for a while. Though I felt a bit resentful, I swallowed it as I leaned over and kissed Aunt Lorraine’s cheek. “Buckle up, hun,” she said.

“What?”

“Your seat belt, can’t be too careful.”

I took a deep breath, laughed. As much as I sensed her words were coded, I adhered to them when Rowdy and I settled into my jeep for the short trip to the diner. We got there first. By the time Mom, Hy, and Kiki arrived I’d memorized the descriptions of the various Belgian waffles and Rowdy had eaten all of the rolls in the bread basket.

“Our chauffeur here made a wrong turn,” Kiki said.

“You said right, I went right,” Hy said, and that was only the beginning of his bickering. He sent back his soup. Then, after he’d dropped his spoon on the floor, he demanded another, saying it was filthy anyway. Finally, when his burger came, he cut into it with a knife and sneered as if he’d discovered a hair or fingernail. “Say, young lady!” he bellowed at the waitress. His voice pierced my ear drums. A few heads turned our way, the waitress rolled her eyes, walked over.

“I said medium rare, this is still bleeding,” Hy said. “Take it back and cook it, would you?”

“Everything’s gone downhill here,” Mom said.

“When you been here before?” Rowdy asked.

“They’re all the same.”

I couldn’t care less about Hy’s food, the downswing in service at diners, nor whether Mom’s emergency visit was covered by her HMO. I tried to remember if I still had health insurance while on strike, but couldn’t. This upset me, the not remembering. My thoughts clouded over with Jesus Christ and his downy nimbus, Aunt Lorraine and that feeding tube in her arm. “It’s a nice hospital, very clean,” she’d said upon my arrival. I remembered touching her shoulder, biting the inside of my cheek until it stung.

Kiki nudged my arm. “You gotta eat, Rachey, you’re getting too skinny.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, though I was starving. I couldn’t remember the last meal I’d eaten. But after two bites of my chicken salad sandwich I felt nauseous. It was like my notcoming, no matter how deep the craving I couldn’t satisfy it.

“Can I have your fries?” Kiki asked. I passed my plate to her.

“Wait, wait,” Rowdy reached out his hand and grabbed my sandwich. “You don’t want it, right?”

I nodded no.

“Rowdy, give me her pickle,” Mom said.

They devoured my food before ordering dessert. I moved my sunglasses from the top of my head back over my eyes, drank another cup of stale coffee. I didn’t speak again until I stood up and, leaving them at the diner, returned to Sisters of Mercy Hospital to meet the cancer doctor.

Two zero-degree days passed before Aunt Lorraine could leave the hospital. Rowdy and I borrowed Hy’s Cadillac and found her as feisty as usual. Insisting that she was no invalid, she eschewed her wheelchair, instead clinging heavily to our arms as we walked through the hospital corridors and out into the savage winds.

It took a while to get her upstairs and settled into bed. I sat down next to her, a pang creeping from the pit of my empty stomach into the back of my throat. It was a combination of fear and anticipation that I imagined as a ball constructed of thousands of rubber bands.

“You’ll stay tonight,” she said and, though I’d been hoping to get back to Manhattan and see Shade, I said of course I would stay with her.

“Good, because it’s time we talked serious.”

“Serious?” The ball in my neck started bobbing.

“Open that drawer over there.” She pointed to her side table. Inside the top drawer were two containers filled with tiny orange capsules. The labels read Seconal. I removed one, the pills clicking as I opened the child-proof top. A couple of pills I examined in my palm. They were so bright like the psychedelic orange from a black-light poster or neon orange road signs with big Helvetica letters: Warning.

Alongside the pill bottles was a stethoscope, its base coiled neatly around the earplugs. There were also a few books on assisted suicide, including Kaminsky’s self-published “how-to” guide, and a stack of business cards tied together with a broken rubber band. A few of my own bands snapped. I slammed the drawer shut.

“I can’t do it,” I said.

“You only think you can’t.”

“No, I can’t. Isn’t that why we got Kaminsky?”