Your Body is Changing (20 page)

“Hi, everybody, my name is Daisychain. I just feel a wonderful spirit of love here in Birmingham, Alabama, tonight. These are my sisters-in-Spirit, Carlotta and Magna Mater, and this special and loving male being is Taylor. Collectively we call ourselves Gaia’s Laughter. Thank you for coming out tonight. We do something a little different that you may not be aware of in Alabama. It’s called improvisational comedy. Improvisational comedy is humorous because we use our skills in a non-hurtful way to bring you enjoyment through a communion of laughter. That communion means that we respect you, the audience, for participating with us in creating spiritually uplifting laughter through the process of improvisational comedy, which is sometimes called ‘improv’ for short. Really when I say ‘audience’ I don’t mean to separate ‘you’ from ‘us,’ or to imply that we are in some position ‘superior’ to yours. We are all equals here in Gaia’s Laughter. And that equality extends to all of you, my beautiful Alabama sisters who have come out tonight. Did you know that every time we laugh we create an opening through which the Goddess is reborn? So please join us in that important work tonight. And now, just to give you an example of how improvisational comedy—or ‘improv’—works, we’d like someone to name a place or an activity.”

“A coven!” someone shouted.

“A coven, beautiful! Thank you, heart sister. You’re getting the hang of it already—respect yourself for that. Now will someone please give us a profession?”

People shouted things.

“I think I heard ‘surfer,’” Daisychain said. “We will now present a humorous look at life in a surfing coven, with no disrespect to either surfing or covens.”

The man, Taylor, trotted up to one of the microphones and began imitating the sounds of a drum and guitar playing the song “Wipeout.” Carlotta and Magna Mater stood near the back of the stage with their arms out, pretending to wobble on surfboards. When Taylor got to the yelling part of the song he yelled “Witch-out!” instead of “Wipeout!”

Nobody laughed.

“You guys don’t get satire,” said Taylor. “Hey, Mike Nesmith’s mother invented Wite-out, did you know that? She’s like a millionaire. Maybe I should have yelled ‘Wite-out.’ Now I wonder what that would sound like.” He started making his drum sounds.

Nobody laughed. A few people groaned and complained.

Taylor stopped in the middle of his fake drumming.

“I wonder what’s going on at the surfing coven today?” Daisychain said.

“Damn!” said Taylor. “Don’t you people down here know anything? I’m from Motown, yo. We know who Mike Nesmith is, okay? He made a little movie called Tapeheads? He played in a little band called the Monkees? Yeah, that’s right, we have this thing up North called school, maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“Oh dear,” said Daisychain.

“I remember the moon landing, okay? I saw it on my aunt’s TV, yo. Who here remembers the moon landing? Raise your hands. You do have TVs down here, right? Or do you still communicate with a freaking chisel?”

Everybody started yelling at Taylor.

Carlotta, the honey-looking girl in the sweatshirt, came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at her. She made gentle shooing motions. When he didn’t move, she gave him a little shove. He stormed into the wings and disappeared. The crowd jeered and applauded.

Carlotta looked around slowly with a comical appearance such as an addled surfer might affect. She pushed her black bangs from her bright black eyes.

“Dude, where’s my coven?” she said.

People had become bored and were chatting loudly.

“Okay, okay, we’re going to change course here,” said Carlotta. “Hello?” She tapped her finger on the microphone and things quieted down a little. “I was just wondering, is there a goat in the house?”

People looked around, laughing and pointing at Henry and Little Bit.

“I know I saw a goat in here earlier,” said Carlotta. “Where’s the boy with the goat?”

“I think she’s talking about you, handsome,” said the bartender.

Some of the women appeared to have a lot of fun roughly shoving Henry toward the stage. He was shuttled as if on a conveyor belt, his feet barely touching the floor as he was passed from one group of women to another.

“Great. Somebody give him a boost.”

Strong womanly hands dug into Henry’s behind, boosting him onto the stage. Little Bit followed, climbing eagerly and easily, as if he had always wanted to be a star.

Henry put his arm over his eyes to block out the spotlight. “Now I get it,” he said. “This is a den of witches!”

Everybody laughed like he was part of the show.

“Excellent suggestion,” said Magna Mater, the one in the big boots and flowery dress. “I believe I heard, ‘abducted by witches.’”

While Daisychain frolicked with Little Bit, Magna Mater bound Henry’s wrists together behind his back and tied him tightly to a chair. All his screaming, begging, praying, and attempts to escape were greeted with applause and laughter—he seemed to be, in fact, the most popular part of the act, and the more he cried for help the harder everybody laughed.

Magna Mater and Carlotta danced around his chair while Daisychain explained to the audience in her sensitive and worried voice that they were exploring negative stereotypes of female power and agency, and hoped by bringing them to the light of day through playful satire to eliminate them once and for all from human consciousness.

“No, we’re really going to sacrifice him!” Magna Mater said.

The audience cheered.

“Magna Mater is amplifying the humor by pretending that she and I are at odds in this matter,” Daisychain said.

Magna Mater sat in Henry’s lap and vigorously rubbed his bald head.

The buttons down the front of her old-fashioned lilac dress strained at their buttonhooks. One breast pressed against him. She smelled wonderful, like seasoned flour for fried chicken.

Something began to happen in Henry’s robe.

“I loved your Halloween special,” Magna Mater said. “Charlie Brown, ladies and gentlemen!”

She jumped up. Carlotta leaned down, winked at Henry and patted him on the knee as if to indicate that everything was okay.

Henry was confused. His images of being castrated and hung upside down as the blood from his slit throat dripped into some sort of ceremonial dish had become contaminated with a strong and pleasurable sense of sexual temptation.

“Help! Help!” he screamed. He was vaguely aware that his cries had become, in part, theatrical.

Henry sat on the edge of the stage in the dark, empty club, the sleeves of his robe pushed up, examining the rope burns he had received during the show. There was a considerable amount of clinking as the bartender made her rounds, picking up stray bottles and glasses. Carlotta was somewhere in the back, collecting her “percentage of the door” from the owner.

But Henry didn’t run. He stayed. He told himself it was because he couldn’t find Little Bit and he had a responsibility to take care of him, and Carlotta had said, “I think the girls took him to the Lifemobile,” and he didn’t know what a Lifemobile was, so he had to wait for Carlotta to find out. Also, she had said, “I’m going to have a lot of money on me and I need you to protect me from evildoers in the parking lot, okay? So wait right here like a good boy.” And she gave him a kiss on the cheek before she disappeared.

The Lifemobile turned out to be a white hearse with flowers painted all over it. There was a smattering of women gathered round and Magna Mater and Daisychain were selling homemade comedy CDs out of a white baby coffin.

As Carlotta and Henry were heading to the Lifemobile, somebody hissed. They saw Taylor peeking out from behind an SUV. They walked over.

“What’s up?” said Taylor. He was smoking a cigarette. Carlotta took it from him, had a puff and handed it back.

She laughed. “Get a load of you. What are you doing, hiding out so the mean old lesbians don’t get you?”

“You got that right.”

“I swear, if you didn’t own the Lifemobile…”

“It used to be the Deathmobile, yo.”

“I vouched for you, dude. And then you go and…”

“I was improvising.”

“You’re just such a man, dude. You ought to be more aware of it. You’re like such a Leo.” She turned to Henry. “Why are all the men I know Leos?”

“I don’t know,” said Henry.

“You have to be aware of the audience, that’s all,” she said to Taylor. “You’ve seen us perform. We’re one way at an Earth Day celebration and we go off in a whole other direction if it’s a pro-hemp rally or Walpurgisnacht or whatever. Be aware.”

“Hey, what about this. What about when we’re doing a witch gag, I say, ‘I wonder if it’s really cold as a witch’s tit in here,’ and then I grab your tits. And I like, check a thermometer.”

“How about not.”

“You used to like it. You used to like checking my thermometer. My meat thermometer.”

Carlotta laughed a little but didn’t say anything. She bummed another drag of Taylor’s cigarette.

“There’s a TGI Friday’s about two blocks over,” he said. “You coming with? We’ll have a couple of those cheesy cocktails you like in all the colors of the rainbow. Remember that Christmas Eve?”

Carlotta linked her arm around Henry’s.

“I think I’ll help our new friend find his goat,” she said.

“Goat’s in the hearse, taking a nasty, shitty nap on the seats I just cleaned at seven o’clock this morning. Come on.”

“Well, I think I’ll take a walk with our new friend anyway.” She squeezed Henry’s arm. “He saved our asses tonight, no thanks to you.”

Taylor, who had not taken off his sunglasses even though he was outside at night, gave Henry a long, intimidating look up and down. Henry found himself standing tall. It was very prideful to be the object of sexual jealousy!

“Suit yourself,” Taylor said. He walked away.

Henry and Carlotta walked into the brightly lit breezeway of the red brick building, sat on a concrete bench and studied the darkened storefronts across the way.

“A wig shop next to a Subway. And there’s a lesbian bar downstairs. Is that normal for Alabama?”

“I guess so,” said Henry. “This is my first time in Birmingham. I’ve been to Montgomery twice. All I remember is they have an ice-skating rink at the mall. That’s weird. We don’t have stuff like that in Mobile.”

“Those wigheads are spooky, aren’t they? It’s like, ‘This turkey sub is great. You know what? I’m in the mood to buy a wig.’ What’s up with that?”

“Why do they think people in Alabama are going to know how to ice skate?” said Henry. “There’s no ice in Alabama. Not enough to skate on.”

They sat a moment in reflection. Henry felt comfortable and intelligent, like he imagined he might feel on a date, though he had never been on one.

“You’re interesting,” Henry said. “I mean, your friends have interesting names.”

“Magna Mater,” said Carlotta.

“Was she named after the Magma Carter?”

“You’re crazy!” Carlotta said, in what sounded like a flattering way. “Magna Mater is the Corn Mother. Haven’t you ever heard of the Corn Mother? Demeter? The Grain Goddess? The Earth Mother?”

“I believe I’ve heard of that last one. I saw it on a can of chili in the store.”

“Boy, you’re so crazy!” said Carlotta. She pinched him and he enjoyed it. “I bet you’re a Gemini. You act just like one. Did I nail it? I nailed it, didn’t I?”

“Oh…no…that doesn’t go with my beliefs. I wish I had this little comic book they gave me at school. Have you ever seen it? You should get ahold of one. It shows how the devil uses Harry Potter to trick everybody into doing astrology. Astrology is like the marijuana of the devil world. Like if you start smoking marijuana you go on to heroin and if you start doing astrology you go on to killing stuff and drinking its blood for the devil.”

“I see,” said Carlotta.

Suddenly Henry shook all over in a great panic. “Please don’t go with the devil,” he said. He grabbed her hands.

It was the first time he had held a girl’s hands.

The parking lot had emptied. Daisychain was asleep, curled up on the front seat of the hearse with her jeans off and her thumb in her mouth. Little Bit slept beside her, most of him on the wide floorboard and his chin resting on the seat. Carlotta studied an atlas spread out on the back floor, looking so pretty as she concentrated and pushed the bangs out of her eyes. Taylor hadn’t returned.

Henry sat cross-legged on one of the blue yoga mats as Magna Mater—who had changed into some red long johns with feet built into them—pulled on some yellow rubber gloves and rubbed a paste onto his wrists, which she had harmed and blistered while tying him up. “Don’t rub your eyes or mouth on that until it dries. It’s pretty deadly. Hey, don’t worry, it’s a great topical painkiller and I diluted it like crazy. I like to be on the safe side. It’s monkshood I picked right here in Alabama, by the Cahaba river, so I think that’s a positive thing, you know what I mean? Like you come from common soil. How does that feel?”

“Real good. Kind of cool and tingly. Hey, do you have something totally non-poisonous I could rub on my tongue?”

“Why would you want to rub something on your tongue, precious?” said Magna Mater, snapping off her gloves.

“It hurts. It hurts from time to time.”

“Open up and let’s see what we’ve got.”

“No, that’s okay,” Henry said.

Magna Mater grabbed his mouth by force and opened it and looked inside.

“No way! You have like a forked tongue!”

“No I…”

“Hey everybody, Henry’s got a snake tongue! That is so punk rock! Hey, Daisychain, wake up! Henry’s got a snake tongue!”

Daisychain climbed over the seat to look at Henry’s tongue. Though her water blue nightshirt reached nearly to her knees, Henry saw her white panties as she scrambled over the seat, and—hardly less astonishing—her pink legs and the clean golden soles of her dainty feet.

There was no doubt in Henry’s mind that it was time for some orgies of sensual pleasure, which was when three women took off their shirts and rubbed themselves all over a male victim, usually while feeding him grapes and venison and other characteristic foods of the region.