Stabs at Happiness (23 page)

“That's disgusting,” Kim might say, or she'd quote Jack Smith, who'd said, “Sex is a pain in the ass.”

Sometimes she'd insist that she was asexual, that she felt no desire for anyone, man woman or child.

Other times… mmmm. She looked kind of like Elizabeth Ashley, or maybe Lesley Anne Warren. It was so fleeting, this thing she was after, it required so much upkeep, and sometimes there were terrible down days when she felt ugly and did not wash or get out of bed.

For a while she worked as a salesclerk in a porno bookstore, but she didn't really like that job. The customers were such creeps. The pornography got her down. She was much happier when she got a job waiting on tables, flirting, swinging her hips.

She got a boyfriend, Andre, who she really loved. But he had a tendency to mix alcohol with dexedrine, a combination that made him jealous and unpredictable. Andre sometimes beat her up, not that bad, he pulled his punches, but it hurt, and she didn't like having a cut lip or black eye. One time he showed her a knife, and she was afraid he was really going to kill her, accidentally, carried away. He wouldn't mean it.

By checking behind scenes, you regain sense of direction. A recent dream, properly interpreted, could prove prophetic.

Artificial, stylized, larger-than-life plants, the leaves having simplified shapes, made more angular and stiff. The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Kimberly walked among the fake potted plants like a sleepwalker, in a filmy gauze dress, her new round breasts jiggling gently, bobbing, nipples plainly erect. Her hair was tied back, and she looked ethereal, composed, as enigmatic as though seen in a dream. She bent over the fake grass, bright green, and looked at a crawling snake, which was real. She was not afraid of it. It formed an “S.”

It crawled away.

Kim was with Jean-Luc, Paulie, Beverly and Clark the sound-man in a bar in Soho when she saw André, dark-skinned and good-looking, slender, a pearl in his left earlobe, and she was scared. She hadn't kept in contact or been faithful while he'd been in jail.

He saw her and came over. He was loaded on something, and his eyes looked just like the last time she'd seen him six months ago. He often seemed an unusually tortured soul.

“Come with me, Kimberly. I need you, baby. Leave these fags and come home with me. I'll forgive you everything if you'll just come home right now. I need you, baby. You need me too.”

“André, no.”

He nodded, as if she'd said what he'd expected. He smiled then. “Right on, bitch. One of these days, you can bet your sweet ass, I'm gonna show up and shoot you full of holes. Shoot you down dead. Cold blood. You take care now. Remember I love you. Be seeing y'all, folks.”

“Who was that?” Jean-Luc inquired. “Here, have a Valium. Let Paul light your cigarette. That guy was scary. Did you drive him crazy with love?”

“No… He was crazy before I ever met him. Let's get out of here, okay? I don't feel safe. All those guys hanging out at the bar look like undercover cops.”

A life-sized articulated skeleton sat in a chair. Princess Beloved danced around, after the manner of Isadora Duncan. That is, not without clumsiness. Would-be Grecian gestures. Her girl slaves danced too, less like Isadora than like groupies backstage at a Mott the Hoople show.

Big phony mouths opened and closed in the backdrop, which was black, painted with stars, sunbursts, and moons. Kim's gown was purple, with golden crescent moons in sequins. Violet eye shadow. They were going to perform a magic ceremony. Incense and candles burned. The lights swam in a melting vaselined lens.

Princess Beloved was helpless, surrounded by soldiers in a circle, enclosing her, each pointing at her, menacingly, a spear. It was a shot that Jean-Luc had long admired, stolen from a bad movie directed in 1954 by Riccardo Freda—
Theodora, Slave Empress
. Princess Beloved, trembling, groveled. But no, she wasn't to be killed. She was condemned
to a fate worse than death
.

Transsexuals almost always manifest some degree of transvestism before the age of twelve, and they usually have spent more time playing with girls, playing with dolls and so forth, than have their boyhood peers.

Stay clear of self-deception, pie-in-sky schemes. Individual who makes many promises may be sincere but misinformed. Check with Pisces.

There was something very vulnerable about Beverly, thin and pale, small as a neurotic child—though she could talk tough and act cynical and hold her drugs. She and Kimberly were friends. Beverly wanted to be a writer. She had at first wanted to play the guitar and sing, and had learned some chords and a few songs, but she was too shy to sing in front of the public. Even a tape recorder made her nervous and dumb. She came to New York from Sacramento, California. She looked much younger than she was.

As far as Beverly was concerned, Kim was sort of like an older sister, and they shared secrets, forming a united front to deal with Jean-Luc when he got too full of himself.

When Beverly found André in the apartment with Kim, his head now shaved bald, handsome and dark, with his earring and a mustache, she was frightened, but Kimberly seemed wanton and happy and stoned.

“Let's get high. You want to get fucked up with us, Beverly Hills?” asked André, with a nice smile that seemed devoid of even a trace of menace or malice. Maybe he and Kim really were in love.