The Gorgeous Girls (2 page)

Look at him, a rhinestone in the rough.

—Dorothy Parker

The first time she
saw Jag Silvertree she was watering the garden, and her clematis got soaked as she dreamed of melting into his face. The second time she saw Jag she knew she would never feel his angular jaw against her thighs. Jag Silvertree carried with him a hurt that she figured would stand out in a field of wounded soldiers. No, she could not take that on; she had her own wounds to heal. Besides, she'd heard whispers that Jag had a wife or girlfriend.

The third time she saw Jag she hardly saw him at all—hot thighs, angular jaw, wet clematis.

And so they married on that first night. No, not the legal institution of marriage—for Jag did have a wife somewhere, estranged but nonetheless still bound by law—but the
process
of marrying: like paints and brushes on canvas or clematis and wisteria on a garden trellis. They slept and fucked and exchanged vows.
I take this man. With mango juice on his hard cock. And here comes the bride.

No sooner had he left that first morning than the neighbours came knocking at her door, one by one, to borrow a cup of milk or the plunger and to dish on Jag. “He's done this before. He'll do it again. You'll see. He'll dump you soon enough for someone else. This is his pattern.”

Wanda declared, in a determined but naive way, “Go take care of that shit in your toilet, Velma. 
Take care of that shit in your brain.
 This love is pure.”

And every night and every day, Jag and she married. Often, he brought her wedding gifts and told her he loved her. One day he opened his big strong hand on a small, crumpled bit of fabric—a black lace glove he'd found in an alleyway.

While he was at work she washed it and hung it to dry beside her white Fruit of the Loom underwear, its elegant, dark solitariness invoking a longing for her lover.

But Jag was a troubled man, and his trouble spilled over into her life without let-up, it seemed. Smashed furniture, shattered mirrors, broken promises. Delusional episodes and paranoid behaviour. Still, she loved him, and often that was enough to heal his fractured soul. Other times there was no stopping the rage, the abuse, the hatred. And then she would tell him to leave, and she would miss him till he returned.

During one such reunion she joined him in a steamy bath and kissed his wet candlelit mouth, biting his lips and then moving down to suck his rosebud nipples. She could feel his cock swirling in the water like a sea anemone beneath her, getting hard as coral, and she slid down to slurp at its succulent beads of moisture.

“Step out,” he mumbled, getting out of the tub. She stood and took hold of his mighty coral erection from behind and between his legs. He grabbed the lace glove from the rack, and as she slid her hand into it he dropped to his knees. Wet, lacy fingers grasped his hair, the mane of a palomino stallion; her legs turned to liquid, his tongue to a wild seahorse. And soon enough she came in his mouth, in waves, and he didn't let up until she came again. Then, sliding smooth and fast, her lacy hand became a blur as great spurts of jism shot into the bath and onto the glove, hot creamy pearls trimming black net.

On the first anniversary of the day they met, roses filled their living room in celebration of their love. The neighbours came to drink champagne and eat crow. Jag gave her a new pair of black lace gloves. She set them beside a bouquet of red roses and wore the alleyway orphan to their wedding that night.

But the next day, hungover and overtired, he flew into a rage when she said the abstract painting he'd been working on looked like an alien with chicken pox. She didn't know what made her say it, but she did.

She apologized profusely, but it was too late. He threw his coffee mug at a mirror and left.

As she swept up the shards (walking on eggshells was one thing; broken glass was quite another), she saw him through the window. He sat in the yard of a neighbour who'd just moved in—a Rubenesque woman with golden hair. They drank beer, laughed loudly and flirted. He took the new neighbour for a drive that afternoon and when they returned, she took his hand and led him into her house. All the other neighbours came to regurgitate their once-eaten crow.

It was only a matter of days. Tearful and apologetic, he returned. Wanda bolted the door, a swirl of memory flooding her being. Wild seahorse, glittering shards, wedding nights and days. Over. Decree absolute.

Part Two

“According to Dorothy Parker,
‘Brevity is the soul of lingerie.'” Rose rattles off this Parkerism with the intention of modelling the panties her lover bought her during the last sultry days of summer.

But Con beats her to the limelight by asking, “Have you guys tried ESO?”

“The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra?” Wanda asks.

“No, silly,” Con says, slurping at the Om Shanti Shake she'd picked up at Fresh. “It stands for extended sexual orgasm.”

“Oh,” Rose says dryly, “I thought it meant extended shoe orgasm, just another name for a shoe-shopping spree.”

“Look, smartasses,” Con says, “ESO is a method to increase the number of your orgasms.”

“Multiple orgasms? How many?” Wanda asks, sipping a Lavender Hound. The girls have convened at Cocktail in the west end, not far from the house Wanda rented after she divorced Jag. With the soggy salad days of summer gone, an autumn wind carrying a portent of winter nudges their dreams indoors, enveloped in soft golf sweaters and cozy Uggs.

“Serial,” Rose corrects. “They call them serial orgasms now. Breakfast of champions!”

“So it's a way of achieving serial orgasms?” Wanda persists.

“Yeah,” Con continues, “a way to have more orgasms by understanding that each one is a peak and that the so-called valley is just where you wait before you go up the hill again.”

Wanda's interest is piqued. She orders another Hound.

“You think of yourself as still coming during that valley time,” Con explains, “and then do what you gotta to ascend again. It's that knowledge that brings you off.”

Wanda looks puzzled. “So what do you mean exactly when you say, ‘Do what you gotta to ascend again'?”

“Well, what turns you on, Wanda?” Con asks. “You know, tongue on your clit. Or images. Like maybe workmen with erections under their tool belts, or soft breasts with hard nipples or horses with giant hard-ons. . . ”

“Horses?” Wanda hisses. “And this sort of thing makes you come repeatedly?”

“All sorts of things.”

“What's the most you've ever had in one go, Con?” Rose asks.

“Twenty, maybe. You?”

“I usually lose count, but once I got almost to thirty,” Rose answers. “But they diminish as they grow in number. For me, anyway. The first orgasm is fantastic—a sweet physical and spiritual blast. The second is generally also sweetly intense but shorter, sort of like the dot on an exclamation mark. The third is good but after that they tend to be sweet but brief.”

“I know what you mean,” Con says. “The more you have the more they begin to seem like chips off the old block—the block in this case being the first one and then the chips being the smaller likenesses.”

“Yeah,” Rose agrees. “I'd really rather settle for the first couple of full and intense ones than go on to have a bunch of baby ones.”

Wanda has followed this discourse with some bewilderment. “I have never had more than three in one go. With Jag I would always have at least two or three. But before him I was a one-orgasm girl.”

“One can be sufficient,” Rose says, sucking back the last of her Hound.

“There was a time I didn't even have one,” Wanda says. “It depended on the guy.”

“But now you know it depends mostly on you, right?” Rose asks, glancing out the window at the first yellow leaves of late September.

“You mean, if I think about horse penises . . .” There is a note of disgust in Wanda's voice.

“Orangutans, if you like.” Con smiles. Wanda looks a little pale at the thought.

“And how do ESOs go with pregnancy?” Rose asks Con.

“Because you tire easily, you don't try to break any records,” says Con. “But they massage the baby with pulsations that make your entire enlarged womb contract.” She runs her hands over the red plaid shirt that covers her four-month-ripe belly, and her charm bracelet tinkles a lullaby. “I think of orgasms as pleasurable rehearsals for labour,” she gushes, then presses Rose for details about contractions and their comparison to orgasms.

“Well, yes,” the mother of two hesitantly concedes, “every orgasm you have when pregnant is like a mini-rehearsal for labour—rocking and massaging the baby, preparing it for the big ride out.”

Con coos with delight over Rose's description and doesn't let up cooing until Rose feels obligated to level with her.

“Seriously, Con, I think I owe it to you to tell you orgasms are only like contractions if you're having sex with an elephant!”

Wanda lets out a shriek. “Horses, orangutans, elephants! You guys are sick.”

But it's Con who's blanching now. “Look,” Rose says, inwardly blaming the Hounds for letting this particular poodle off its leash. “Think of it as two sides of the same coin: climax/contraction, pleasure/pain, little death/big life.”

The last comparison gets Con back on track. “I've heard of women climaxing when the head crowns. Did you?” she asks.

“No,” Rose replies. “But the earth did move. It is the greatest high, every bit as great as having sex, but better because you've got this amazing new being there—clamped onto your nipple . . . .”

“What a blast!” Con screams. “It's gonna be a blast!” She raises her shake in a toast. Wanda and Rose follow with their Hounds. “To the blast!” they say in unison.

And then Rose hops off the bar chair and pulls down her matador pants just enough to show the girls not so much her new mint-green boy-cut knickers as her stretch marks—silky little lilac testimonies to the two wonders she'd carried and birthed.

“Gorgeous.” Con sighs.

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

—Dorothy Parker

In a man's world
it's better to be a porn star or a stripper than a mother. Certainly there have been no fins or sawbucks in my underwear, but then my breasts have spent years spouting milk, not tinsel. During the height of my breastfeeding days, I thought of having them tattooed: “Milk Not Cheesecake” (though for the right man I have drizzled them with raspberry syrup). Some men who see the vertical smile bleed and scream to discharge a baby reject it in favour of the fantasy grin that exists solely for their pleasure. Like Curtis.

But there was a time when Curtis loved me. Or maybe he just loved the way I made him feel. He was a drunk when I met him, a charming drunk with literary pretensions, but even through his alcohol-dulled perceptions, a sunset or an orange in the morning could move him. But nothing, he said, got through like me. He said I sparkled like stars in a winter sky or sunlight on water and that I was as strong as the north wind. He always used to say I was a better man than he was. And he was right about that.

Until I became a mother. And I needed him. But it turned out he wasn't capable of really caring for anyone. He could only handle that superficial kind of caring that runs rampant in bars—“Here, buddy, have a cigarette”—or in strip clubs with a generous bill tucked into a beaded strap.

It all seems so long ago. When we exchanged vows I recited Shakespeare's Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove . . .” And I insisted this was love. And so I resisted for years bending with any remover to remove. But when the children came along it became as clear as a bell what would have to happen one day.

Inside, Curtis was running from our babies and me. And I felt isolated and deserted. After our first child was born, occasionally I would just sit down and cry. And then he would yell at me. “If you're in such bad shape you had better see a doctor then, hadn't you?” That's the way Curtis talked—had and hadn't and all that. A very literate drunk. And I would continue to cry, as he'd rant, “Look what you're doing to this poor, innocent child!” And then he'd take the baby away from me, shielding her eyes from the sight of her tearful mother, all the while spewing fire and damnation.

So I went to the doctor, and when Curtis heard the diagnosis he bellowed, “Well, you had better change doctors then, hadn't you?” He said postpartum depression was “just another invention of the feminists.” He offered no help; he yelled and he drank and he ran. And so, five years after our second baby arrived, I ran from him.

The week after that child's fifth birthday I put my plan in motion. First I needed to get out in the world, make a little money, check the lay of the land. I had been writing monologues for a character I'd named “Raz Ma Taz Connelly” (my alter ego), and I began using these pieces at auditions.

Soon I was cast in
Streetcar
. Curtis was to watch the kids while I rehearsed but often he hired a babysitter. One night after rehearsal I stopped at the strip club where he was rumoured to be hanging out. I had to see for myself if it was true that my husband and our money were being spent on strippers.

I saw, and finally understood, that while I'd been rolling pennies to buy Kraft dinner, Curtis had been folding bills into rhinestone thongs.

And so I had the affair with the hot soundman. That wasn't so much a part of my plan as it was a delicious escape. Sex practically became my religion that summer. I worshipped often at this church to which my husband did not belong. The day after the show closed, I made my real escape.

My friend Joan put us up in her attic room. That first week, the kids snoozing beside me, I quietly cried myself to sleep every night. I knew Curtis would be hitting up the bank machine to get more dough to slip into glittery straps while I'd be hitting up the food bank to get more edible dough, as in bread. It was Curtis's warped idea of tit for tat that even as his kids did without proper clothing, he ogled women without any clothing.

I had waking and sleeping nightmares of seeing the man I'd married sitting in that tacky booze joint, just another leering drunk. On the night I had actually seen him, I had walked out of the club and stood paralyzed on the sidewalk outside, like the shell-shocked housewife that I was. In the maraschino-cherry glow of a sign that proclaimed “The Best Party in Town,” I shed every last vestige of love and respect I'd ever held for Curtis—like a stripper taking it all off, a few soft stray feathers borne aloft on the breeze.