Valencia (21 page)

That everyone started fucking around in Bernadette's bed that night, where we were supposed to be merely sleeping, makes me think that for my friends the film shoot was sexy and fun and not a jingling ice cream truck offering a variety of icy anxieties. Bernadette's room was complete blackness, the tree by her window blotting out any light from the street outside, and splotchy ghosts of bright camera lights hung burned in my vision. For a second I kissed Bernadette, or maybe Tommy, and then that was done and me and Ashley were by default paired off while Tommy climbed onto our director and bucked there 'til morning. It was so silly. I should've just slept but the performancy group participation was burned into
the night like the lightbulbs, and Ashley was kissing me roughly and alternately rubbing and slapping at my panties.
Bad girl
, she murmured in a Cruella de Vil voice, pulling my hair, but it was impossible to take her seriously because she was Ashley, slumber-party Ashley who lost her house keys weekly and came over to crash on my futon. Ashley who phoned me at work sobbing because her roommates rototilled the backyard when she had just planted peonies and daffodils. Ashley my best friend who lent me velvet gowns and cascading wigs of hair and sternly told me to please not ruin them. She petted and poked my crotch and pushed my own hand away from hers until we finally fell asleep next to Bernadette and Tommy's slurpy slurps.

16

I really needed a hobby after breaking up with Iris, so I decided to stalk someone. I decided to stalk Fate. Because it sounded poetic and because she said I could. So I don't know if it truly counts as stalking. I wasn't risking a restraining order, or violence, or any of the drawbacks true stalkers face. Fate grabbed me in a bar, held me tight, told me I was cute. Fate was a pretty grabby person, I'd seen her go up to girls and stick her tongue down their throats as a Hello, so I don't know why I thought I was so special. She was this really cute girl, fucked up looking in the best way, just layers of ripped-up clothes and studded leather scraps she wore in a true, punq way, not like some S/M lesbian trying to look like a bad girl. Scuzzy head of hair, blue, and a lot of tattoos. She had two Madonna tattoos, the
True Blue
cover
on her forearm—head back, eyes closed, hair in perfect tousled spikes like a Nagel painting. Then on her shoulder, Madonna from the cover of
Interview
—bowler hat and polka-dot shirt, grabbing her crotch. She was going to get them covered up, which totally excused her for having them. So Fate grabbed me and gave me that simple compliment, and I went, Should I Stalk You? and she blinked and said,
Sure
. And I said, Really? 'Cause I Will. And she said,
Sure
, and let me go. That was all the action I got off Fate that night. She may have sat on my lap at some point, but Fate sat on many laps.

Fate became my art project. I made this great note, hundreds of eyeballs with the words “I am watching you” clipped serial-killer style from different magazines. I slipped it through the mail slot at her apartment on Valencia, then walked up to the Kentucky Fried Chicken and got a bucket of gluey mashed potatoes. I had just gotten my tongue pierced and couldn't really ingest anything that required chewing, and Fate herself had recommended the mashed potatoes. She had her own tongue pierced like three times, this clump of silver clattering around in her mouth. I sat across the street from Fate's house and sporked the glop into my mouth, inhaled it to the back of my throat, and swallowed. You had to be careful not to inhale it all the way or else you'd choke. I was feeling pretty stupid about my new piercing, pretty fashion victim. The other night my new roommate, newer to my new house than even I was, had had this nice lesbian potluck, and all these lesbians brought over this lesbian food, healthy stuff with rice and greens, and I was starving.
I'd been living off smoothies, so I attempted to eat some tahini-tofu thing, and I sucked it into my windpipe and couldn't stop choking. All the lesbians just stared at me. I went to my room. I had pierced my tongue so I would stop smoking and because breakups always leave me with a need to make myself different. Since breaking up with Iris, I had acquired a sailor suit, just like the one my grandfather wore when he got his picture in the paper for being the youngest boy in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to go off to war. In the picture, my grandfather is skinny and kind of sinister despite his smile, like David Bowie. His eyes glow strangely. I wanted to look like that, different, so that when Iris looked at me now she would not think she knew me, that she owned any part of me by knowing it. If she had ever known me she would not have left, and I would parade her ignorance through my own transformation. Really I just wanted a new girlfriend immediately, to show her what hot property I was, how well I got on with things, and plus I missed spending all my time with someone who thought I was really great. I figured I'd slip Fate a few more notes, she'd see how really great I was, want to be my girlfriend, and I could forget all about that last one. I chopped up some more magazines and slipped the product through the mail slot, rang Fate's bell and ran. It was pretty fun. I had some friends with me, we made a racket clattering up the street, me hissing Sssshhhh over their laughter. Bonzai, a video artist, wanted to make a movie about my pursuit of Fate. I thought I could maybe do a zine.

I went to a play party at a warehouse space in Oakland. The girls who lived there would throw these parties where you could walk around and watch women in various states of undress having painful things done to them. This one was more of a fetish-themed dance party, though there were people being tortured. A girl was rigged up to this wooden structure, her hands stretched up with chains, and another girl was doing something like sticking pins in her, or pulling them out or maybe burning her. Quick, jabby motions that made the bound girl shriek milk-curdling shrieks. It was hard to see exactly what was going on because they were surrounded by so many girls, all watching intently with serious looks on their faces. There was a bar serving red plastic cups of beer, and a dance floor filled with girls dancing in shining leather and latex. I was wearing this leather and chain-link garter belt I had found on the sale rack at this overpriced fetish barn and had bought even though it was a couple sizes too small and hard to breathe in. I paired it up with some tall black go-go boots, and I looked like a gigantic slut. I looked like a slut a lot right then, needing attention and pursuing it with the artistry of an abused twelve-year-old girl. My heart was broken, I couldn't be held responsible for my fashion.

Where was Fate? She was over on the couch where the porn movies were playing, with this red-haired girl she was maybe on a date with. I couldn't figure it out. She'd been flirting with me pretty
hard recently, but if she was on a date I would have to leave her alone. I mean, the reason my heart was currently in such sore shape was because that slimy creep of a girl Emma had moved in on my true love in a way that I thought was just incredibly disrespectful of girlhood and lesbian relationships, and I was getting a lot out of hating her and feeling superior about her apparent lack of a code of honor. If I wanted to hold on to that feeling, I was going to have to play by my own rules. So I flirted with Fate, left, danced a little, wandered around the warehouse. I bumped into this girl I had really hurled myself at when I first moved to San Francisco. I had been in a bar wearing a black see-through dress and some shiny blue panties, and I pulled off the panties and offered them to her as a gift. I really loved crazy women and just assumed everyone was with me on that, but apparently it was not the case.
How long have you been here now?
she asked me. I Don't Know . . . Two Years?
You've really grown up
, she said. I went back downstairs and pulled Fate out onto the dance floor. It was hard to move around because a parade of girls in intense Victorian costume had emerged from the back room and engaged in some theatrical performance involving a crawling girl on a thin, glinting leash. My beer was sloshing all around the place. It occurred to me that I was drunk, and I wondered if it was a plus or minus for Fate to think I was a lush. The party cleared out at midnight, everyone having to catch BART back to the city. I attached myself to Fate and the red-haired girl of vague status, and we all got a ride with that girl I had given my panties to.
I didn't want the night to end. You Guys Want Tarot Readings? We stopped at my house to grab my deck, and went on to Fate's place, which didn't at all match her rough and tumble exterior. It was homey, clean, with plants. Green, living plants. I found out during the tarot reading that Fate and the red-haired girl were indeed on a date. They curled up on the couch like kittens. It was just a first date, though. My integrity went right out the window. It wasn't like they were girlfriends. I wasn't busting up a relationship, wrecking a home. If I stopped stalking Fate, I'd have nothing to do. Plus, she kept making out with me. Just grabbing me in bars and planting one of her platonic soul-kisses on me.

Ashley was having a huge birthday party. She was a Taurus, and it would be an enormous bash for all the Tauruses. Lots of lesbians are Tauruses. There was a bull theme, so I figured I would dress up like a mariachi dancer and invite Fate, a Taurus. A fact which explained her clean home with the adequately watered plants. I cut her up another stalker note inviting her to be my date, and she said ok. I was so excited. I wondered if Iris would be there to see me on a date with such a cute and dangerous-looking girl. I spent weeks searching for the perfect mariachi dress, and I found one, tight red velvet with an incredible ruffle explosion happening at the hem. I got red lace to tie in my hair, a big shawl, clunky shoes. I got ready all day long. I bought red lipstick, I bought a flower for behind my
ear and another for Fate's lapel or whatever raggy t-shirt she would wear. All evening I left messages on her machine. She called me back in the early evening, groggy. She had just woken up, she had had a really weird dream. She was disturbed, she'd be ready in an hour. I'll Wait For You, I said.
Well yeah, I'd hope so
, she said. She sounded cranky. I spent the hour perfecting my makeup and she showed up in leather pants, a shitty t-shirt and a black cowboy hat. The pants were new. I tried to safety pin the flower to her shirt but the pin tore the flower apart and the petals fluttered onto the sidewalk. The walk to the party was excruciating. I realized we had this flirtation based on flirting, and I didn't know how to do much but giggle and say stupid things and she just kind of nodded and looked uncomfortable and told me she was freaked out by her dream and she'd decided to quit drinking and was in a weird mood. That's Ok, I said. Could I stop acting so vacant? What was my problem?