thirteen.
INTERNAL DISTORTION, OVERLOAD. Too many conflicting desires and anxieties and I walk five blocks without thinking about where I’m going.
Flesh, perhaps. Inexpensive flesh.
Jude was pretty irritated about the vomiting. She said some very nasty things that I’m sure she didn’t mean, then went to meet Miller without me. I took a couple of Vicodin and went to sleep.
That was yesterday.
I woke up the next morning and she hadn’t come back. I took a bath and called room service for some breakfast. I needed a drink and thought solid food would be an interesting plot twist but I found the bacon too crunchy and alarming and the Western omelet downright objectionable. I drank the bloody mary and went back to sleep. There was no sign of Jude when I woke up and I formed the theory that she was busy fucking Miller to death and taking her sweet time about it.
I want to lose myself for a while. I want the anonymous touch of a whore. The streets are fuzzy. The hiss of traffic on wet blacktop sounds like analog, like vinyl. I’m angry and not sure why. I vaguely remember telling Jude that I don’t get jealous but now I’m thinking that was a lie. The swirl of cigarette smoke and ruined voices around the corner. I come upon two women with thick, muscled shoulders and narrow hips, heavy thighs. Terrible mouths and the bodies of men. I ask them to point me in the direction of the Tenderloin and they commence to hoot and holler. They ask me what I’m looking for.
Gratification, sympathy. False intimacy.
I don’t know, I say. Maybe a massage.
Honey, says one. I know just what you need.
Lord yes, says the other. Four hands better than one. You come along with Sorrow and me and we gonna take care of you. You think you gone to heaven.
Sorrow? I say.
That’s right, says the first one. My name is Sorrow and this my sister, Milky Way.
Temptation.
I am briefly tempted by the horror of another rented room. The sour sheets. The stink of boiled skin, the heavy perfume. The flicker of dying light. The panic and grind of Latin pop music. The raw, foreign hands of two transvestites with such unlikely names.
Invasion, humiliation.
I could easily lose myself, I think.
No, thanks. I’m looking for a regular girl.
Oh, honey. Now that’s rude.
I believe you want to apologize, sucker.
I’m sorry. I’m looking for a different girl.
Uh huh. You sorry as can be.
What kind of girl?
I don’t know. Foreign.
They laugh and screech like mad chickens and Milky Way finally tells me to go fuck myself.
Jude and I are two people, not one. Funny but I have to remind myself of that sometimes. The velvet warms and binds but I don’t really know her. I don’t know what’s in her heart. I am safe with her for one day, two. The cocoon is temporary and what do I want. Obliteration. The ability to fly.
I tell myself to shut up, to keep walking. I have four hundred dollars. Enough to take me back to Flagstaff, to a mattress on the floor. Dishwater skin and bourbon in a jelly jar and a window with an unbroken view of the sky. The edge of the desert. I can listen to public radio and daydream about Atlantis and I can satisfy my physical hunger with my own two hands. I can destroy myself, if necessary. I stop in the middle of the street and look down at my open hands. The little finger of my left hand has twice been broken, and is now crooked. Otherwise they are ordinary hands with but one visible scar between them. Twenty-nine stitches on the palm of my right hand that effectively wiped out my life line. I tell people that it happened in a knife fight but the truth is that I was the only one involved. The wail of a car horn and someone yells at me to get the Christ out of the road.
I keep walking, keep walking.
This is the wrong way.
I am moving slowly uphill and I have a feeling that the Tenderloin should be down from here. I should be moving in a downward spiral. But perhaps this is metaphorical thinking. Or would that be irony, symbolism. These things are vaguely defined in our culture. This is San Francisco and eventually I will find whatever it is I’m looking for.
The Paradise Spa on Hemlock, a nasty little alley off Van Ness. Tanning and oriental massage. The very same establishment recommended me by young Jeremy. The sign is barely visible from the street and I might have easily walked by it. Blue neon, pale and wispy. Tucked in along a doughnut shop, a Vietnamese grocery. The Paradise Spa is open until midnight. Because you never know. You never know when you might suffer a pinched nerve, or when you might want to do a little maintenance on that tan. I wonder if they even have tanning beds.
The front door needs a coat of paint.
Open it and step inside and I’m facing a steel mesh door, locked. Dark red curtain behind it. To the right of the door is a small black sign with white lettering that tells me a half hour massage is fifty dollars. A whole hour is very economical at eighty dollars. Tanning is twenty bucks for twenty minutes but who gives a shit. To the left of the door is a buzzer. Press it with my thumb, briefly.
The red curtain is pulled aside and the face of a troll appears, shriveled and brown as a peach pit with black eyes bright. The eyes study me a long moment. Troll apparently decides I am neither cop nor psycho because the door is unlocked.
Come, she says.
Troll takes me by the wrist with little claw, pulls me inside.
Come. You ever be here before?
No.
You want half hour?
I want to be agreeable. Yes, I say. The half hour.
Come.
Warm, soft light. Japanese prints on the walls of the hallway. The furniture is cheap, simple. The kind of shit you find in a Holiday Inn. Troll leads me down the hall past several closed doors, her sandals flapping softly on tile floor. I hear whispers.
Then grunting, man or pig.
Pulse quickening now. Troll shows me to a tiny room with bed and chair. The bed is covered with white towels. On the wall above the bed is a shelf with yellow lamp and radio, a box of tissues, and various oils and lotions. The radio is tuned to soft jazz, elevator-style. Troll holds out her hand, impatient. The money, yes. Fumble in pockets and produce fifty dollars.
You need shower, she says.
What?
Take shower. You wash.
No. I’m clean.
Troll makes a nasty smacking sound with her leather tongue, stares at me. I stare back at her, hoping she doesn’t insist on the shower. I feel relatively cozy in the confines of this room and I just want her to close the door, to go away. I don’t like this idea of a shower at all. I would be vulnerable, paranoid under bright lights. I would be slippery and exposed and I don’t want my asshole inspected.
I don’t want a shower.
Troll stares at me and I decide she wants an explanation.
I’m afraid someone will steal my shoes.
Troll frowns and sighs. Undress, she says. Lie on bed.
The door closes behind her and I sit down in the chair. Unlace my boots with fingers numb, unresponsive.
