Baby Geisha (6 page)

“It makes you feel like a mother bird,” she said.

This was one of the few times I piped up and said, “Way too much information, dude.”

“What, you don't jerk off?” Pandora asked.

“Well, yeah, but…”

“Go tie your apron on and bake some pies, prudie,” Pandora said. Pie baking was our generic wholesome activity.

Pandora stuck out her tongue, marched into her bedroom, and slammed the door. She banged out Hendrix's “Foxy Lady” on her drum kit, then after a silence her and James started moaning and grunting. It was at this moment that I decided I wanted my own James, who wouldn't lurk around waiting to be poked with the drumsticks Pandora had just jammed out Classic Rock beats with.

 

At sunset, the beach was for the no-tan-line crowd. I wore a more substantial black bikini bottom because my ass looked like a Mylar balloon in the silver lamé. Some ladies were coffee colored—one Corsican woman had beautiful tan lines on her neck from where her long hair for years had covered her skin. I was splotchy bronze like hash browns. But I liked how my teeth glowed an especially attractive white compared to their usual tea-stained yellow.

Pan sipped tin cups of white wine from the taverna, and in between drinks he swam out for rock diving. I snorkeled away in the salty, curative sea. Underwater, green spiky anemones and purple crabs coated boulders. A spotted squid disappeared in a puff of sand as soon as I realized what it was. I imagined he had returned home—to a ruined Pandora statue, her heels stabbing the seafloor like prehistoric anchors colonized by seahorses. The seahorses' prehensile tails curled and uncurled as they navigated marble stilettos overgrown with burgundy sea plants. I love seahorses!

 

Pandora didn't flinch when I described this vision of her, ruined and swarmed with seahorses, back on the beach. She
continued sipping her ouzo in silver lamé, a silk sunhat, and Chanel sunglasses. I plopped down next to her.

“You're all wet!” Pandora said, dipping her fingers in ouzo and flicking them at me.

“There's a giant underwater statue of you out there,” I said.

“Where?” Pandora asked.

I pointed one cove over.

“Pan's still there,” I lied. “We followed a squid to a sunken statue of you wearing stilettos and surrounded by seahorses.”

“Stilettos?” Pandora asked, intrigued.

“Size fifties,” I said.

“5-0,” Pandora said in awe. “But seahorses?”

“What's wrong with seahorses?”

“Are they even animals?” she asked.

“They lay eggs,” I said. “And the males carry and deliver the babies. Want to go see?”

“No,” she said. “That's nasty.”

Pandora's definition of nasty is often different from mine.

“Half the reason I traveled here was to see seahorses,” I said.

For a second, I thought she was boring. I had the edge. As far as she knew, I had seen the seahorses. She was such a debutante, coming halfway around the world to sit around and drink. But then, I flew out to see seahorses, which is equally weird. Where was Pan, with his brilliant rationality, when I needed to sort this out? Or would he have refused to dig me out of the competitive pit I was lowering myself into?

I have a Seahorse bookshelf in my living room library. I guarantee Pandora has a Sex Toys section. She has her glamour, and I have mine—in my black suit, fins, mask, and snorkel, I looked like a marine biologist. That's seductive in my book. We love different things, but each a lot. Pandora worships her pussy, and I am vaguely devoted to things that symbolize a pussy—caves, pregnant seahorses. So maybe I'm too removed. At least I'm not a man-eater.

“Swim out there with me,” I said.

Pandora finished her ouzo, set her hat and sunglasses down, and borrowed a mask.

 

There were no waves, only a sheet of transparent blue forming the horizon. Pandora's silver bikini was reflecting sunbeams off of it. It could have been a lighthouse beacon for lost boaters, but instead it attracted a school of metallic, shimmering orange guppies. To them, Pandora was the Mothership, the O.G.: Original Guppy. The school followed Pandora as we swam around the point, where I hoped there would be seahorses, preferably surrounding a sunken statue wearing high heels. Pandora reminded me of the mosaic mermaid.

“Look at the fish,” I called, pointing down. Pandora put her mask on and looked at her feet.

“Those aren't guppies,” Pandora said, coming back up. We looked again. The fish had pencil-tip-sized razor-sharp teeth. Pandora started kicking them away. We came up and ripped our masks off.

“They're man-eaters,” I said, half-joking. “It's a new breed.”

“Do they bite?” Pandora asked, drawing her legs up towards her stomach. She only asks me for information when she's scared, which proves she trusts me. The fish did look capable of gnawing us.

“They don't bite,” I lied, staying a cool fifteen feet away. Instead of paddling away, Pandora let her legs down and took her fins off, to test a nibble. I pulled my mask on and went under to watch. Though legs always look like things that attach to other things, they're peculiarly isolated. I watched this underwater man-eater documentary wishing Pan could see. The soundtrack was snorkel breathing. Pandora's undulating knees were the coral reef. Fish circled her calves, trying to nudge their lips onto her, with no luck. She said their teeth felt bristly,
but weren't cutting. The guppies eventually took off, but the suspense was way better than seeing seahorses.

Pandora is 100% woman, and that's probably why she confuses me. Paddling there, watching her, I invented recipes for us. Pandora is part man-eater, part coral reef, part drumstick. I am part books, part caves, part marine biologist. I was glad I'd shared my honeymoon with her. Watching Pandora do tricks ultimately makes me love her more. Like the two men obsessed with balls, Pandora reaches out. Treading water, I knew I'd be a good wife if I could be half as brave as my girlfriend, even if she has stuck a wider diversity of objects up her crotch.

WORD SALAD

I watch for wildflowers speeding through West Virginia. It's tulip-shaped on the map, so I stupidly assume the flower scene is heavy here. Instead of letting the landscape blur into green hilly strips, I focus my eyes on specific bloomers, following them the whole split second they're in my view. This is how I hunt flowers while driving. If something looks peculiar, I'll stop, reverse, and approach the plant to shoot a photo for later ID.

My first stop is to investigate what might be a
Fritillaria biflora
patch one hill over. Chocolate lilies look a lot like tulips, so it makes sense that they'd be here. I exit the highway, but the off-ramp concludes into a vast lake: nowhere to go except in. I plunge, my engine dies, and I crack my door to leap out of the big rig before it's submerged. I swim to shore and watch my vehicle sink into the blue lagoon. Refusing to drown in a truck. That's why, to me, flowers are nightmarish roughage, though trucks still arouse me.

I'm a figurine representing a person about to get murdered, a cursed voodoo doll. A hand with red fingernails waves me around as a powerful talisman to worship and fondle. I'm an inanimate doll, not necessarily a woman, an animal, or a man, and that doesn't matter. What matters is that my dress flaunts an empire waist, and that my long, resplendent hair is braided.

With each sip of rose tea I take in this luxuriant bath, bubbles curl around my neck like a ruffled collar. The bubbles are lace, folding in and out into infinity like elegant costuming that transformed 16th century queens into birds of paradise. Tipping my mug back, I arch my eyebrows upwards pretending they're drawn on with grease pencil. In my mandarin collar with Dietrich brows, I also envision my lips over-painted past their lip lines with burgundy pencil. I wear, in this high tea bath, feather-toed slippers, a topaz brooch, a six-carat brilliant cut sapphire ring, and my golden hair is pin-curled up with opal barrettes. Fiery pink cabochons welded onto slender silver clips. My cat bats a half-dead mouse around the cat claw bathtub.

I'm the kind of snowflake who likes to be the last one clinging, crunchy and die-hard. I'm not delicate; my crystalline features are not the most quixotic, but at least I won't melt the second I hit earth. If I had feet, I'd kick tires to show how tough I can whack that rubber. Take me to the saloon and slip me into your drink. Flip my icy hair around like a whip. Pretend I'm a parrot and let me ride on your shoulder.

My snowflake pals are out of town and this village is a muddy mess.

“We're stuck in a mud bog,” a woman says, wiping mud cakes off her boots. I'd clean her boots if I could; I'd frost them then melt, make her boot soles sparkle and shine. I watch her boots from the sidelines, hoping she'll stomp my curb next.

I live in a spiral conch, and I hate my name. It's too obvious—yeah, I live in a seashell. Living in shells on this beach to
either side of me are fifteen other Shelleys who feel the same way. Why did all the shell dwellers who got pregnant in 1970 name their spawn Shelley? My mom must have been a member of the local Venus cult. On my one-inch mother-of-pearl shellevision, I watch crustaceous programming while administering elaborate manicures to my microscopic fingernails. This delicate box, powered by sample-perfume-vial-sized tube amps, has screened all the famous Shelley's, from Shelley Duvall to Shell Silverstein, who kids call Shelley. I admire watching these calciferous celebrities, but I'd rather perfect the application of teeny decals to my nails. Over three coats of high gloss enamel, for example, I prefer pinstripes to glitter dolphins.

To: Looking for someone to love, You are so hot~!

To: Yeah I wear animal costumes, so?

To: Why do you assume that because we both like skunks we should have sex?

To: I just thought we should grab a salad bar together first, to develop a rapport.

To: There is a man crouched in front of my house, speaking Spanish into his walkie talkie. I will ask him.

I ask for something and I definitely get something but I get something that I didn't expect.

Only because I, as a kid, got locked out of treehouses, am I the type of adult who snitches on secret treehouse builders.

I flip through the most miraculous skirt rack I've ever seen in a thrift store. It starts with red skirts and ends on violet. To be exact, the aisle's left rack covers red through yellow-green, and its right rack begins with hunter green at the far end and arrives to me with purple. It is so exquisitely color-coordinated that I don't care about the clothes. I have the urge to walk slowly back and forth through this rainbow tunnel of textiles, huffing color. Lining the tops of the racks are extended rectangular shelves of baskets and purses, but wicker and pleather, today, don't hold my attention. The women next to me are hunting maternity pants.

There are cute puppies, ugly puppies, aromatic puppies, puppies with dynamic hairstyles, puppies whose paws feel like flannel, puppies who are assholes and puppies who are as delightful as red velvet cupcakes. I am texting this story to you from my cell phone.

Jim is a nickname for three longer names, each shorter than the last.
Jim
is
Jim-Ben
cut in half, which is a shortened version of
Jimjamin
, which is curtailed from Jim's full name,
Jimson Benjamin
. Jim to Jimson Benjamin is like Teddy Bear to Theodore Roosevelt, while Jimjamin sounds alluringly botanical, like Jimsonweed. Jimjamin belies Jim's Jamaican ancestry; Jimjamin sounds like
We be jammin'
. This is the story of Jim's Rasta Vibe.

We pull the car over on the two-lane mountain road, to an iron railing installed to prevent humans from falling into a rushing river at the bottom of this treacherous gorge. Jim steps out, pulls his t-shirt halfway off so it covers his head like an Egyptian pharaoh's headdress, walks over to the railing, and hops over. My job, for the rest of this jazz, will be to hunt the riverbanks for Jim's remains. Not fun, not cool, negativo.

Jim's cliff-jump is Rasta, because I suspect Jim will eddy out of the river to say,
I was only cliff-jumping
,
chill.
Jim is a producer of situations that come out of nowhere. My variable reaction is the erotic charge for him. Years ago, when we worked in the same office, he cornered me in the lunchroom.

“Want to do it in a bathroom stall?”

I didn't, but it was nice of him to ask. I like how he thinks. Why not make love on your lunch break?

 

 

 

 

 

HAIRPIN SCORPION

…ThE wOrDs lOOkeD LiKe tHiS As I sPoKe tHem. MoSt wOrDs sEEmEd bAcKwArDs, bUt iF I tYpEd tHat to yOu iT wOuLd bE tOo diFFiCuLt (T-L-U-C-I-F-F-I-D) tO rEaD. The words hung in the air like metallic smoke. We exhaled sneaky, silvery-scented, smoldering puffs. (Crack smoke has two qualities: the opacity to hide you from others and an eye-burning aroma to act as a distracting agent.) I smiled, watching a pot of mushroom tea boil on the hot plate. Everything was under control in our army tent, but it was about to get martial. We sat inside expecting desert winds to kick us around as the sandstorm twirled in its infant stage. The small rocks blazing in Zane's glass pipe were fear erasers. If I blew F-E-A-R in cursive letters into the air like smoke rings, like the airplane artist's love message in cloud writing, there would be the drug's valiant sword dueling with F-E-A-R then slaying it. Chunks of smoke would fall to the ground. I'm not always panicky, but when weather gets ominous I crawl into my foxhole.