How to Wrestle a Girl

by Venita Blackburn

  Fabulous, absolutely fabulous, Dar said with her knuckles under her chin, just what I was hoping for, incredible, all of it, well-done, well-done.

  She departed as quickly as she arrived, oily Converses squeaking away to the lights and action far, far away from Ree and Nicole’s little corner.

  Haa, you’re dead, Ree said, so fucking dead, fill out your unemployment like yesterday, because that was it.

  Ree said that loud enough for the nearby staff to smirk before he winked at Nicole. Everyone knew praise was one of those things lost in translation in the world of low-budget special-effects filming, much like vibrators become the rumbling of garbage disposals and hamburger wrappers become napkins to wipe one’s quiet tears upon in the restroom between takes. Nicole appeared to not do well in that moment and needed to rethink her entire approach to the monster destined to compose some of the final shots.

  We’ve got dolls, Nick.

  Don’t call me that.

  Ree nicknamed all cast members “dolls” for fun. He nicknamed Nicole Nick for torture. She once explained that he was subverting her femininity for irony when irony was not yet earned. He responded by grabbing his genitals and sticking out his tongue and pumping the air in front of him, a more emotionally complicated gesture than either of them put words to. Now she just exhaled, puckered her lips, and opened her mouth slightly around the drill bit. She read the brand.

  Dewitt, she whispered while making the motor purr. I should do it, she said.

  The “dolls,” the extras, had arrived and her moment for mock-suicide theatrics had passed. Ree criticized the outfits on three of the young women. Today the island of Lesbos was under siege. The entire horde of Sappho devotees were to fall in a fiery blaze of arrows and arise burned and steaming for some hot zombie lady lovin’.

  You are why I get up in the morning, Nicole said to her favorite of the cast, Chloe, while waving her over.

  This was Nicole’s fourth film with Dar, and she always had a favorite, who was always Dar’s favorite. Most of them she couldn’t remember because most of them were shapeless, something to turn into something else, a thing that liked her better than Dar, a thing that noticed how she could be more kind, appreciative, attentive. One actually ended in sex, but that’s not the one she remembered most. There was Centurion #2 in Mermaids from Space who always knew the best burrito spots. Blue horns cascaded from her forehead down to her neck with guacamole at the corners of her mouth. The two laughed hysterically over almost anything. Those were happy days, Nicole thought, with whoever that was under all that rubber.

  Today she was with Chloe and Nicole thought she might someday remember who that was. Chloe Chu was not American, not white, which made her somewhat of a cliché, a revolutionary, and an inexpensive commodity. All the new actresses were from across the seas or north of the border for some reason now and very, very young. At thirty-two, Nicole reasoned she must be getting very, very old and no one had told her to stop yet. She and Ree had speculated that the foreign actors were cheaper and could do American accents better than Americans, and talking to Chloe put some truth to that, but since Nicole didn’t operate in that end of the business, she could not be certain.

  How was your morning, sweetheart? Nicole asked Chloe.

  Oh my God, Nick!

  Nicole cringed at hearing that nickname Ree made a thing, but continued to mix face paint calmly. The room was cold and industrial, but Chloe’s skin was warm, the color of leaves that have lost all their green. Nicole tilted her squarish jaw like turning a camera to find the best angle. It seemed a shame to cover up that warmth and color with cold purple foundation.

  I did it, Chloe said with her eyes closed, smiling, her face held gently by Nicole.

  You lost your virginity to DiCaprio?

  Shut up! Her eyes shot open. I got my driver’s license!

  Same fucking thing!

  They high-fived it. Chloe was a talker, said she hailed from Brisbane, confirmed she was barely drinking age, some kind of East Asian. Nicole imagined a little girl from Chongqing, China, growing up in the outback, doing kung fu with a kangaroo because visually it was cute even though possibly racist. Chloe’s face was like a morning where nothing had to be done, just rest, her frame lithe, tall, and she believed in the Los Angeles public transit system for three full years. For that last one she was a marvel and a treasure to both Nicole and Ree.

  Where did you go first with this new freedom?

  Well …

  Nicole stopped listening and let the young Aussie’s charm fill the room for eighteen minutes where there was once only despondent dread and loathing.

  What would you have said differently, Nick? Chloe asked after a while, the context lost to Nicole.

  Who could possibly say? I don’t even know where my phone is.

  Chloe laughed and leaned in against Nicole, who had to lift her brush quickly to avoid a smudge. Ree had been watching and Nicole just noticed that she was being noticed and mouthed, What the fuck, man? to which Ree mouthed, You know what the fuck, man, but that proved to be too many syllables for Nicole to understand because lip-reading was not her thing, so she waited until Chloe was called to set before getting clarity.

  What the fuck? she finally blurted like a sneeze she’d tried to hold back.

  I had a dog, Ree said while capping his acrylics.

  Nicole rolled her eyes, but she was enthralled. Oh Lord. Here is your wise magic Negro moment of the day.

  Bitch.

  Sorry! Continue, sir, lordship, Master Reginald.

  My brother went off to the Navy when I was ten, so he let me have his dogs. They were named Taz and Eeyore.

  Pooh!

  What did I just say?

  I’m sorry, she whispered.

  Taz was a son of a bitch, never neutered, balls swinging, I-do-what-the-fuck-I-feel-like kind of motherfucker. I kid you not, bit everybody and everything in the neighborhood. The world was his. If it looked like something sweet, something salty, something soft, he had to bite it. He went to doggie jail, even, but the neighbors were illegal, excuse me, undocumented, so they didn’t show up to press charges. Now, Eeyore, his brother, totally chill, had his cushion, had his water bowl, had his food bowl, and didn’t bother anybody. But one day Taz was bored and said you know what, I want that cushion. So he started to chew and bite and tear every little bit of that cushion he could get to, even though Eeyore’s fat butt was laying right on it. Then Taz went to Eeyore’s water bowl and took a massive piss right in it. I kid you not. I’m getting to the point. Then Taz went for the food bowl. Eeyore leapt off the cushion, body-slammed into Taz, bit the hell out of him, and I was scared as fuck because I’ve never seen a big-ass lazy dog move like that. For the rest of their lives they kept that cycle up. Quiet, then rawrrrrr!

  Nicole had a hand to her mouth.

  What happened? she asked.

  That’s it!

  What is the moral of the story? I am freaking out! What’s the lesson?

  If you don’t know, you will never know.

  Ree turned his back and put a piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth. Nicole lowered her hand. She believed everything, though she would’ve preferred a metaphor where she did not have testicles, paws, and body fur. The temperament, however, matched perfectly. Peeing in water bowls was a young woman’s sport. No more. Chloe was pretty and sweet and probably soft but firm where appropriate, and none of that mattered when bills and a job had to be done. Nicole had duties, most she forgot about and survived on luck and bright moments of undeniable talent, but not anymore. She would be professional. Fourteen dolls each completed, singed and bloodied, the hardest part of the day done for the two of them. There was just the waiting, the touch-ups, the cleaning, the prep for tomorrow, and the thinking. A brilliant idea needed to come before 4:00 p.m. the next day when Dar would return to see the progress for the grand finale, Maximus Zombicus.

  Nicole lived in a converted garage, permit free, in Santa Monica. The actual property belonged
to parents of college friends who rented it out to the strange, hopeful, and financially liberal. LA is full of those special renters. When she returned home she unloaded her reusable shopping bags full of essential supplies and remembered her hunger, remembered her empty fridge, the decomposing tomatoes and red onions in jars at the back from her days of trying to pack salads for lunch only to become exhausted at the thought of packing a salad for lunch; two days of grilling chicken ahead of time, buying feta and dressing and arugula and layering it in folds like a beautiful English pudding was all she could manage before she was spending again. Seven dollars on coffee a day, and dollar-menu lunches when she was late to the craft service or there was no craft service or she needed to seem more conscientious and ate yogurt in public. Now the jars were science experiments with a colony of mold she thought fascinating because she made it happen and because there might be a cure for something in there. She remembered her phone and retrieved it from its long nap in the kitchen next to the Keurig: four messages, two from Ree, one from Dar, and one from her mother.

  Aw shit, she said into her collar before listening to the message from her mother.

  The voice was clear as water, each syllable exacting and pristine, full of hope and pride and love and biblical scriptures tinted with good old-fashioned condemnation and wonder and shame and declarations of the most obvious kind, which only made them that much more endearing.

  Kiki, it is your mother. I am calling you now. You need a reminder as usual because I am sure you have forgotten about your new roommate. They are a drifting soul, as you know well. This is my pastor’s sister’s child, and you will be good.

  I’m always good, Mama. I’m the good one, in fact!

  Eight-ten in the morning, Kiki. You will forget if you do not set the alarm on your phone. That works for you.

  What was she talking about?

  Nicole replayed the message to get the parts she missed while talking to herself, the parts about picking up this stranger from Nassau at the airport at 8:10 a.m., which required that she not sleep if she was going to actually accomplish the task.

  Shit, Mama.

  After groaning into her refrigerator, Nicole did the most depressing thing she could think of: she ate gummy vitamins and a yogurt for dinner before sketching out another plan for the armor.

  The delirium of wakefulness in spite of the need for sleep put a glaze over Nicole’s eyes and mind and her perspective of what the world must see of her as she stepped around the LAX baggage claim. This was no ordinary pickup of a friend at the airport. Nicole was opening her world, her home, to an almost-stranger because they were a similar kind of strange, the kind that is abandoned, the kind that is often hidden and spectacularly frightening when suddenly made real. This was Nicole’s great gesture of understanding and generosity to a fellow queer in need, which provided an opportunity to bond over their African American heritage, and as much as she desired to hold on to those noble intentions, there was another voice in her mind, dictating the scene back to her: her mother’s.

  Your body is eating itself, Kiki. You want to be skinny like the white girls, but you ate a large order of french fries and thirty-two chicken nuggets, and drank a venti mocha latte seventeen hours ago. Those are not good numbers. It does not add up. Waif. You want to be a waif. A waif is a wafer, a cookie. What is a cookie, Kiki? They are sweet and unhealthy and stupid. Do you want to be a cookie? There are barbecue packets about to explode under your car seats. Feel as beautiful as the Lord has made you. Cut your hair a little.

  Nicole?

  She jumped. The stranger jumped. The stranger gasped and jumped, actually.

  Oh God. Joshua?

  I’m sorry, so sorry.

  No, it’s fine, except I almost killed you!

  The stranger laughed because Nicole was half his size, appeared intoxicated by most standards, and carried her world in a reusable shopping bag.

  I go by Lorin, my middle name.

  Okay, cool.

  Nicole steadied her eyes and her heart to take in all of this new Lorin person, very tall to her, considering the height of everyone in Nicole’s family peaked at five foot eight. Last they met, Lorin was Joshua, a young man who fifteen years ago Nicole recognized was a little too sassy and a little too smart for public adoration. He’d have a troubled life and here he was or she was or they were in artificial eyebrows and lip gloss. Lorin smiled to the left side and did not show any teeth, gray as the overcast morning in that bony sallow face, hair pulled back tight into a bun, shaved at the back, and wearing a tank top for a soccer club Nicole did not recognize, but she appreciated the gold accents.

  Are you hungry? Nicole asked.

  Starving, oh my God.

  They shared a plate of novelty pancakes large enough to feed four people, but they were determined. She wanted to show off the soft sides of the city, the sweet balmy air and gritty dream-stained asphalt. Nicole learned that Lorin began transitioning from male to female three years ago at twenty-six, and Lorin was her grandfather’s name; it worked because of the feminine sound, though was passed down from a Jewish businessman who gave the gene for finance to his son and blurry XY chromosomes to his grandson. Lorin was allowed to stay in a condo in the Bahamas that her father owned and never occupied. The hormones successfully atrophied her upper-body muscles, and Nicole could see the pride there from the way Lorin rubbed at her shoulders.

  Wow. We should do a vacay! Nicole declared over a mouthful of pancake.

  A kind of light slipped out of Lorin. The carbohydrate high dimmed at the mention of her former home, and Nicole knew not to mention it again.

  I was never there much, Lorin said.

  It took a few weeks for Nicole to realize just where Lorin must have been on that island when not at home. The dream of her new roommate did not quite match the stark full sensory reality. She learned just how small her garage conversion residence was with just the addition of a pair of men’s size-twelve Nikes in the living room and the ladies’ size-thirteen cheetah-print platforms under the kitchen table. Nicole dreaded the presence of a foreign body before going to the airport but secretly expected a hand-holding dervish the equivalent of chest-bumping basketball players coming together for a victory against the world that declared them outcasts, but Lorin seemed committed to doing other stuff whenever Nicole suggested they go to an improv show or eat at Umami Burger. Nicole realized that she did expect a friend from Lorin, and if not that, then a little bit of worship and admiration. Instead, a sharp ambivalence spilled out into her home and the two of them spoke very little and saw each other even less. Over those days she received the usual texts from Dar, always compliments, always a kind of sincerity that made Nicole nauseous. She still had one of Dar’s T-shirts, old photos of them together that were nice enough to put in print. Their faces had no similar structure, so they made a terrible couple, except they were the same height. Dar had a shine to her like the light behind a closed door.

  A bizarre kind of rejection and disappointment coated Nicole, and somehow that kind of emotional discontent becomes contagious, a willful contagion, Chloe the next infected. For a few days Nicole continued working with a little more reservation, but it was hard not to notice when Chloe was the one talking and Nicole was the one touching her affectionately. Chloe always seemed happy to sit down and mournful to leave for the set. It wasn’t going to work, Nicole finally decided one day. When Chloe immediately sat in front of her to begin the day, Nicole moved away and passed her off to Ree. It was easy and cool, like stepping out of the wrong line at a bank, leaving the others in line to secretly wonder if they’re in the wrong place too.

  You’re mine today, doll, Ree told Chloe tenderly.

  He was sweet and Nicole was grateful and could not stand to look Chloe in the eye. Chloe tried to ask a question, but Ree was a better talker than all of them and swept her in another direction literally and figuratively. On the upside, Dar loved Nicole’s plan, meaning she nodded dismissively, to incorporate a cluster o
f fingers and a hanging eyeball into the torso of Maximus Zombicus. She could breathe a little freer, her job security more stable. And other than feeling like she would throw up every time Dar put an arm around Chloe on set, things were looking up for Nicole until the felony incident.

  She came home expecting it to be empty but slightly comforted by the thought that someone just might be there, just might be curious about her day, and felt safe because of the space she provided. These were big complicated feelings for seven o’clock in the evening and they slipped away slowly as the sun when faintly she heard a dog barking. She did not own a dog. Nicole entered and could hear the low raspy bark of a really large animal out on the shared patio, but more than anything she was met with a smell, a foreign smell, spicy as hummus but with a depth as inviting and repulsive as good cheese and baby powder. Then Nicole saw the source of this disorder, epithelial glands, lavender-based lotion, collarbone, hips, breasts, powerful forearms: a whole person. Lorin and what could be described only as a muscular Black transsexual woman in a long auburn wig and leather miniskirt stood in the kitchenette looking at Nicole, waiting, smiling. Behind them on the counter next to the kitchen sink were little plastic baggies folded neatly into each other, stuffed with an assortment of colorful pills. There were maybe twenty little baggies set out like tulip bulbs for the planting into hearts of men and women.

  The auburn wig tilted above a wide smile, and a strong, heavily moisturized hand stretched out to Nicole.

  I’m Marseilles Savage. Enchanté.

  Nicole wanted to recoil and say, No, no, no, you have this all wrong, the wrong house, the wrong day of the week, the wrong illegal substance, the wrong family. This is a house for cheap wine and fast food where fruit is bought ironically and thrift store shopping done out of necessity. There is only the rare and occasional marijuana use. You must go. All of this point in time must go. Instead she offered her own hand to be gingerly swallowed by Marseilles’s.

  It’s nice to meet you too.