by Zoe Whittall
We trek out to a quiet spot away from the tourists. Andie shuffles her motorcycle boots in the sand, like she’s trying to figure out how to be at a beach. Everything about her is the opposite of the surroundings: the leather boots, the black jeans, the tank top. We watch some teenagers trying to hide a bong under a beach umbrella as we walk by.
“Were you a skid in high school?” she asks.
“I was in the school orchestra and never had boyfriends.”
“That cannot be true! Not with what I’ve heard about you,” she says.
“Band geeks are always the pervs.” I shrug.
We find a slightly private spot and I lay one of the towels I swiped from our motel down on the sand.
We drink a few more beers and trade gossip about the bands we both know. The sun and beer have an anesthetizing effect.
“So what have you heard about me?” she says.
“I dunno. Only that you’re gay.” That really is the only thing I’ve heard. Most dudes in bands, the same ones who think they’re so liberal, reading Malcolm X biographies and wearing pro-choice T-shirts, are so weird about gay people. Usually it’s some guy watching Andie walk by who whispers, “She’s a dyke,” and then seeing my expression, adds quickly, “and a really great drummer.”
“Ugh, I hate that that’s my only notable tidbit.”
“One guy couldn’t believe Team Dresch are all dykes. He was like, ‘They’re too good!’”
“They are the best.” She laughs.
“I guess there are few of your people in the indie rock world. But I also heard you banged Courtney.”
“She was very drunk. But in my defence, I was much drunker.”
“What have you heard about me?”
“That you’re some kind of cello prodigy, and that you’re, um, pretty wild.”
“Wild, eh? Is that a euphemism?”
“Hey, no judgment! I am very pro women getting what they want in this life.”
“You are, eh? So, what do you want?”
Andie blushes.
“How do you stay faithful on the road?” I ask.
“Faithful. What an antiquated word, I love it.”
“But for real?”
“We’re non-monogamous, my girlfriend and I. But it’s still hard. We write a lot of letters, which is pretty romantic. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend back home who’s understanding of, you know, this life?”
“Nope. I’m free to do whatever I please.”
“That sounds like a pretty good deal,” she says. “I hear you’re a heartbreaker, too. That even the most aloof boys kind of follow you around until you ditch them.”
“Nah, that’s not true. I just meet them where they’re at, and then I play to win.”
“Win what?”
“The balance of power, I guess.” No one has ever asked me to elaborate before.
“I hear James Clark got so tired of you throwing him in the garbage over and over that he hooked up with that girl from that female Megadeth cover band because she’ll, quote, ‘never leave him.’”
At the mention of James’s name, I feel a truly uncomfortable sense of longing.
“Oh my god, that is not true. I don’t know where you got your info! He knocked a girl up. He turned me down this time around. This world is too small.”
“He was in love with you. Everyone teases him about it. He hitchhiked to see you play in cities where he didn’t even know anyone!”
I let that sink in. “Nah, that’s not true. He just travels a lot. Maybe we should go in the water,” I say. Was that actually true? Was I the one to blow it with James? I’m either too attached or not attached enough to people. It feels like a lonely realization, like I am not ever going to get it right. I realize the music world, at this level, even though it is vast and spread across the country, is pretty similar to high school. It is probably a hundred or so people making it big in a given year, and we all encounter one another in festival green rooms and recording studios, at awards shows. It is a small world of sorts.
The heat starts to feel stifling, so I peel off my dress. Andie stares at me brazenly, then looks away as I cross my arms over my bikini top.
“Can you do that again, but slower?”
I throw the dress at her. “Did you bring a suit?”
“This is it,” she says, standing, pulling off her jeans to reveal boxers. She folds her jeans and places them on top of her wallet, and then takes off running.
“Wait!” But she’s not running to the water, she’s running after something. She catches it and brings it back.
“Someone’s beach umbrella, what a score!”
She plants it in the ground and leans it over so it’s partial sun coverage and partial block from anyone walking by.
We huddle under the umbrella. A pool of sweat gathers in her collarbone. She smells like some earthy kind of citrus oil.
“Missy Alamo, you’re trouble,” she whispers, both hands cupping my waist. Our mouths get close.
“I never kissed a girl,” I say, as she leans in, then pauses. She turns her head, laughing a little.
“Well, I’m not much of a girl,” she says.
And there, on the beach under an umbrella, while a truck speaker blasts all of Paul’s Boutique, another person makes me come for the first time.
That night, I fuck up the intro to a song I’ve played a thousand times. I forget to join on the harmony in the finale, and when I do, I flub the lyrics. All these errors are imperceptible to anyone in the audience, but Tom can hear it, can see me glancing toward Andie leaning against a speaker in the wings, arms crossed, smirking, tapping her drumsticks on the wall. Every time I look at her I think I might come again, just from the way she’s looking at me. Looking at other lovers I’d always felt like they were conquests, to be tackled and climbed. When Andie looks at me I’m the one caught in a net, wishing she’d throw me over her shoulder and run away. This must be what they felt, I think, remembering the way I studied my lovers’ faces in those moments. This is it. I am feeling that. Holy shit. I look at Andie again. She bites her lip and nods my way. I feel a deep longing in my chest, and also a hesitancy that turns quickly to annoyance with every mistake I make.
After our set, I pour a bottle of water all over myself before I’ve even changed clothes. It’s hot, but more than that, I’m irritated. Irritated for fucking up so much, irritated by this flush of emotions I can’t handle.
I duck out early, even though I promised Andie I’d stay for her set. She wanted to take me out somewhere for a late-night special in Vegas, some secret spot with incredible food where real mobsters used to eat. But by the time I get to the green room, it’s the last thing I want to do. Tom and I are jumping in the motel pool before she’s even done her set.
“What was it like?” Tom asks, floating on his back as I crouch under the lip of the diving board.
“I dunno, I guess she’s really skilled.” I shrug. I don’t know why I’m downplaying it, but it feels like the right option. What am I supposed to say—It was the best sexual experience of my life and the way she circled my clit with her tongue without actually touching it until I wanted to die, was, like, expert-level moves? But also, I really hope she moves to Mars?
“Yeah, my roommate in college used to blow me sometimes when we were drunk. It was the best head I ever got, but I never, like, had romantic feelings for him.”
“Did you hurt his feelings?”
“No. Guys don’t really work that way. I mean, I don’t think so. He never said anything.”
“I feel more like a guy in that way,” I say. “So, don’t tell anyone about it, okay?”
“Girl, I don’t think anyone’s gonna think you’re gay with all the dick you suck.”
I kick water in his face until he ducks under. I’m already trying not to compare the sex between Andie and me, and men in general. I suppose she was more attentive, slower, than most guys. But I didn’t touch Andie after she’d fucked me. I followed her cues tha
t the sex was over. She’d gotten dressed, smoked a cigarette. Maybe that’s just what happens? I have no frame of reference. It was nothing like lesbian porn. But it was hard to discount the Only Orgasm Of My Life While Someone Else Was Present.
We drink beer around the pool until most of the bands return. Tom indulges more than usual, and by the end of the night we are curled in a pool floatie writing a song we insist is our next single. Of course, it’s garbage, but it feels like the best thing we’ve ever written. I am happy Tom and I are cool again.
When Andie and her girls walk by us on the way to their rooms, the singer waves and raises a beer toward us. Andie looks down, casually aloof, doesn’t even glance in my direction. A part of me feels like I should climb out of the pool and follow her, should explain, but I have no idea how. So I shove my guilt aside, as I’d be doing all tour, and flip out of our floatie, staying under the water until I know they’re gone. I tell myself, Just pretend you’re a dude and only your own feelings matter. So far, it has been working for me. But this time, it doesn’t feel totally right.
My bandmates order pizza and before we dig in poolside, they stick a fat birthday candle in the middle. I blow it out just as the singer from Andie’s band emerges from her room, barefoot in a yellow sundress. She nods at us from a chaise longue across the pool, drinks an entire beer, burps, and puts the bottle down before pulling off her dress and jumping into the pool completely naked. She swims toward where we are sitting, pops her head up out of the water, mascara running all over her face like a candle melting.
“Hey, I’m Agatha,” she says to me, not Tom, though we both say hey back.
“You know, no one ever rejects Andie. I’ve never seen it. It’s like science fiction, basically. Anyway, respect,” she says, laughing and swimming back to the other side of the pool.
We watch her stand up, squeeze the water from her hair, and saunter back to her room with her dress in her hands. Sometimes I have a knowing feeling when I meet someone new. I had it with Tom. With Amita when I walked into first-year composition class.
I turn to Tom and say, “She’s going to be my best friend.”
“Yeah, sure. She’s way too cool.”
“I’m cool!”
“You are not. We are not. We’re just having a cool phase right now. It’s not permanent.”
I finally head to my room. I save a message from my father playing “Happy Birthday” on the ukulele. I listen to it three times. I lie back and listen to the click-click of the overhead fan. I think about knocking on Andie’s door. I get up and go outside onto the landing. I flash on the afternoon at the beach. It’s so late but it’s still just as hot out. I grip the railing, second-guessing my desire. I want to see her, but I also want to never see her again, with equal intensity. A crow bops around on a lawn chair below.
“Hey pretty,” I call out. “What should I do?”
I used to ask the sheep questions every night when I was a kid, after they came in from pasture. The crow looks up, cocks its head. We are making what feels like fairly meaningful interspecies eye contact when out of nowhere another crow swoops down and starts attacking it.
“Stop!” I yell uselessly. I clap my hands. I yell again. He doesn’t stop.
I run back into the room and grab a can of Coke from the mini-bar and throw it toward the attacking crow, trying to stop him. But it’s already done. It’s like a horror movie. I run down the steps, slipping on the bottom one and scraping up my leg. The crow’s body is still and bloodied. The murderer is squawking and strutting.
I start to cry, so hard I feel like the full-body shuddering might never stop.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, girl? You hurt?” I look up and see Agatha, holding a bucket of ice from the ice machine.
When I explain what happened she gives me a big hug and says, “Sometimes crows are territorial. They’ll kill other threatening males.”
“That’s so crazy, I thought they were smart. And loving!”
She shrugs. “Why I don’t walk you back to your room?”
We sit on my bed and she paints my nails silver as we watch Desperately Seeking Susan on TV, our mutual favourite childhood movie.
“We have another gig together in Los Angeles in a few weeks,” she says, blowing on my thumbnail. “We should write each other postcards until we see each other again. We could even compile them in a zine or something?”
“I love that idea.” I lean back against the pillow, debating asking her when she knew she was gay. I rehearse a number of ways to bring it up that would sound natural. But instead I take a hit of a joint she offers, and fall asleep.
Chapter 10
carola
the bus let me off in front of the post office in Mallow as the sun was setting. I walked up the hill to the centre.
Since I was a long-term resident, I had my own small cabin up in the woods behind the main buildings. Nothing more than the essentials—it was pretty much a studio with a kitchenette, a bathroom. I had furnished it with nothing more than a futon, a bookshelf, and a single dresser for my few belongings, mostly loose clothing for yoga, thick oatmeal-coloured sweaters for the winter. Living without excess was an essential part of my life here, and I couldn’t imagine padding on the layers that most people live with, photographs, knickknacks, or god forbid a television. Other than a few candles and books, feathers or stones I’d found while hiking, my shelves were bare.
When it was time for the meeting, I hiked up to the springs. The moon was bright enough to see through even the thickest parts of the forest path. I’d gotten used to everything at the centre, but I was still taken by the beauty of the springs every time I visited, the silvery mossy rocks and the sound of the water trickling. Though technically a mineral bath, there was no unpleasant sulphur smell. One time I saw a bear lolling about in the water when I arrived just before dawn.
A few other women had already gathered and were taking off their clothes and getting into the water, or rolling up pant legs and dipping their feet in while perched on the low rocks that bordered the pool.
I took off my outer clothes, kicked off my sandals, and put my feet into the springs, sitting away from a few other women who were speaking in a familiar rapid hush. The oldest woman was Ocean, whose face was freckled and bronzed, framed by a slick silver bob. Most of us were in our forties, and then several of the women who had been involved with the guru more recently seemed to be in their late twenties to mid-thirties or so, if I had to guess.
Blue had anointed herself our leader for the evening. We went around the circle and began to talk about our relationships with the guru, about whether they were right. I didn’t say much. It had been so long ago. We’d had an amicable split after about five years on and off. I wasn’t one of them anymore, but it felt important to them that I joined their ranks, so I just kept my story at a minimum.
Rose, an ebullient redhead who still looked like a teenager, spoke next. Was she even eighteen yet when she met him? Could she be younger than my daughter? She had been a volunteer in the gift shop. She talked about how she’d gotten pregnant, and he had made it clear that she had to have an abortion or leave the ashram.
“He gave me some herbs, and I had to be rushed to the hospital. I almost died. He didn’t care. He said something about the universe taking care of us.”
I pulled my feet out of the water, slowly drying them off with a scarf. I wanted to reach out to Rose and comfort her, but she was across the pool. Everyone was murmuring consolations, before a pause so long I thought I might have to take over facilitating.
But Blue brought us back to the task at hand. “Juniper, do you think the community should hold him accountable?”
“Yes,” I said. “He should be held accountable.”
“I think so, too,” Sarah said. “He’s not who you think he is. He has this whole thing about condoms, right? He won’t use them. He says they’re unnatural.” Sarah had always been my closest person at the centre, but we had not confided in each other ab
out our relationships with the guru.
“I tried to avoid certain acts with him, avoid him when I knew I was ovulating. Eventually he started to figure it out. I think it was his kink in a way, to try to get women pregnant, though he’d panic when women actually did.”
Half the group looked at me, alarmed, but others nodded in agreement.
I didn’t tell the group that the month before we officially broke it off, he’d discerned that I was avoiding him and why. He had me summoned over the intercom to come help him in the garden. I already knew I was pregnant. My breasts were tender again, in the way they had been with Missy. I’d felt them when I was raking leaves.
He’d given me the herbs in a purple cloth bag. But instead I had it done at a proper clinic.
When I came back, I avoided the guru, but I hardly had to. There was no tenderness in his looks my way, no invitations or overtures. I had been spoiled for him somehow. And it started to make sense, how some women had left the centre abruptly and sometimes in distress, over the years. They all thought they were chosen.
“You didn’t warn anyone about him?” said Jaya.
“Honestly, I thought I was his only partner at the time. And any women that came after, well, we’re adults. We can negotiate our own terms.”
Jaya looked at me, puzzled.
“You have to remember that we all worshipped him. No one wants to hear anything bad about any boyfriend, let alone a guru.”
I remembered that after I’d returned from having the abortion, he’d kept me behind after a class. He asked, and I was honest, about where I’d been.
“You didn’t trust the herbs, you didn’t trust the natural solution, and you endangered the reputation of the centre by going outside the walls.”
At the time, I’d been defensive, then felt guilty. But revisiting it now, years later, I realized what a scammer he was.
“I’ll help,” I told Blue. “I know a lot of what you need to know.”
“Thanks, Juniper. That’s brave of you,” Blue said, satisfied, evidently ready to move on to someone else.
