Jim: “Baby comin’ in for a landing, rrrrrrrrrmmmmm…”
“Oh I don’t know,” said Emma, shying away from the incoming baby. “Oh Jim, I don’t, I’m not good with, I…”
Emma held Baby. Emma had this sick look on her face. She drifted to me—no you don’t Emma, no Baby Hot Potato here; YOU hold it. “It’s alive,” said Emma to me quietly, “it’s a living thing.”
“Baby says who’s this? Baby says who’s this cray-zee girl? Baby says where’s Mah-mah? Huh where’s Mah-mah?”
“Mah-mah’s here, woah woah woah woah…”
“Hatcha hatcha hatcha—Baby says, cut it out, cut it out!”
Then Phoenicia, who was making me feel guilty with all her deference to these white people, took Baby in her arms and laid her to rest in her crib (“Time for Baby to lie down, yeahhh…”). Emma stood there with her arms cradled a moment longer as if Baby were still there, overcompensating for our drop-the-baby fears.
“Quiche and cocktails by the pantry,” said Jim, tapping us, all smiles, the proud father; and then he and Lisa meandered to the crib with their fellow employees.
Refreshments, I said.
This was a catered affair. There was a nice, clean gay boy behind the table: “Some quiche?”
Two Bloody Marys with quadruple shots, lots of tabasco, three slices of quiche, those little things in the bowl—
“That’s Russian yogurt,” he said helpfully.
—a spoonful of peanuts there, those things on the crackers, those meatballs, tons of them.
“Want it all on one plate, do you?”
Emma smiled. “We can expand.”
We took our bounty to a corner, away from the throng. “The temptation to drop this pile of meatballs on the shag carpet…” she sighed.
Now Emma …
“Have you see Andy Warhol’s BAD, where the woman throws her baby out of the skyscraper and it goes splat?”
Emma, really.
“Just thinking aloud, thinking aloud…”
We got drunk, very drunk. So did the other advertising people and marketing people and research people and corporate people and Lisa’s old friends. No. Wait. We were the only old friends. Everyone else was Jim’s old friends, or business contacts.
Lisa came over to our corner to tell us about Towelies. “Remember my work for Wipe-Away? Well, they were impressed and I’m getting to manage Towelies now—hey, I’ll send you a case. It’s a real challenge making paper towels interesting.”
“Well,” said Emma, taking another cocktail off a tray, “there are people like me, of course, who read everything they can get their hands on concerning paper towels, who find the topic naturally stimulating.”
Lisa laughed a bit unsurely. “Oh Emma, here, here”—she dragged Emma toward a round woman with a nasal voice—“this is Marge—Marge, Emma, Emma, Marge. Marge keeps me sane at work.” Emma watched Lisa walk away and was stuck with Marge, who talked to us about Bathroom Blues, a thing you hang on the side of your toilet bowl which turns the water blue.
“What do you do?” Marge asked at last. “Could I have met you before, Emma?”
Emma brightened. “Was it the Celibacy Support Group?”
“What? Ahahahaha…” She had an even more irritating laugh.
“What do I do?” Emma continued, tottering with her sixth Bloody Mary. “I’m in telecommunications. Phone service. Phone sales.”
“Oh really? That’s going places they say.”
“Up, up, up—getting bigger every minute.”
“Like whadya do exactly?”
“I work in Onanistics.”
“Oh. Yeah I’ve heard of that. Exciting work.”
“It’s a coming industry.”
Emma darling, time to go home.
We went to the door, or stumbled toward it. Suddenly, Lisa had us blocked. “Oh you’re not going are you? You know Emma, there’s a guy at Simon & Schuster coming later to watch the baseball game on Jim’s big-screen … I mean, you ought to stay, you’d get along so well and you never know how it might turn out.”
“What do I care about a baseball game?”
Lisa laughed. It was a new laugh, a New Lisa laugh—she hadn’t laughed this way a year or two ago. “Oh silly you! No, a publishing job. Don’t you want to get out of the East Village and all that? Honey, you could edit. And make contacts, contacts for publishing a book of poems or a novel…”
“Contacts,” Emma repeatedly flavorlessly.
“And I thought,” added Lisa charmingly, “that we could, you know, talk over old times. I wanted to talk old times.”
Old, old times. Just having “old times” implies a larger looming sadness somewhere. I told Lisa we had to run.
“Yeah,” said Emma, “gotta go. I do my phone sales all afternoon on Saturday while people are home, you know.”
Yeah gotta go, another time, blah blah blah.
Jim joined Lisa at the door. “Come back and see the two of us—”
Lisa squealed: “I caught you, Jim! The THREE of us!”
Jim slapped his forehead like on a commercial. “Can you believe it! Did you just hear me? Don’t tell Baby!”
Bye-bye.
Emma didn’t say anything until we got to the elevator, and then she said we oughta keep drinking, drink all afternoon long, call Janet and tell her to warm up the blender. Which is what we did. Going home the long way by the liquor store (put it on Emma’s credit card), the junkfood store on 14th Street, getting some of that pretentious foreign ice cream that was big then, some homemade cookies, Pretzel Stix.
“Now you see,” said Emma, scooping the goodies into her arms, “that’s what Jim and Lisa have given their lives over to. Deciding to spell words like S-T-I-X. Stix, Pretzel Stix. God, I hate CRAP.”
She put the Pretzel Stix back on the shelf, having said that.
On that principle, I pointed out, we had to put the Cheez Crunchies back too, but Emma conceded that we had to bring home something to junk-out on.
“Well that was an exercise in bullshit, huh?” Emma said, mouth full of cookies, as we walked back to her place. “Ugh, have some cookies—I’m getting nauzed already.”
Cookiezha. Thanks. I don’t want children, by the way.
“Holding the kid wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Emma said, tossing two remaining cookies in the pack in the gutter.
Hey, you just littered.
“Jesus, Gil, New York is the one place you can litter in the world and not feel guilty.” She reached into the shopping bag, fished out the Cheez Crunchies, opened them, began eating. “Janet’s seriously making the moves on me these days.”
Really?
“Yeah, she’s determined there’s a lesbian in me somewhere.”
I shrug. What’s it to me? Why not give it a try, I tell her.
“You’re supposed to be jealous and say you’ll slap me around if I do that.”
No, I got it: I take pictures of Janet slapping you around—we can make a film. It’s a short step from phone sex, porn films, you know.
Emma and I arrived at her place, and she cursed everything and everybody as she tried to locate her keys in one of four pockets, juggling the shopping bag all the while. “Anyway, Janet’s acting weird lately. Hurt that I don’t sleep with her, except she’s not hurt she’s just bored and between girlfriends. So can you stay over tonight? Hang out a while?”
Can’t, I said. I was going to see Betsy.
“I’m tired of behaving about her,” Emma groaned. “Betsy is a blah.”
Well, soon enough Emma got to check out Betsy in person. I invited Betsy to the opening of the Soho Center’s Chambers production. As no one understood a damn thing about this show, it was a critical success—Slut Doll’s sound effects were praised everywhere, and we even got a few punkers curious enough to attend and pay admission in the show’s four-week run. Monica from the Venice showed up to the opening-night festivities too. There they were: THREE women in my life in one room.
No catfights though. Just once, once I’d like to see two women go to it roller-derby-like, tearing out each other’s hair, bashing each other with chairs, overturn the punch table—Gil’s mine, all mine!
“You could do better,” said Emma, after talking to Betsy at the refreshment table, “but you could do worse.”
(I sort of missed Emma savaging my love interests.)
“However,” Emma went on, “if she gets in my way, I’ll mount an offensive. At the moment she seems too insignificant to exercise my venom upon.”
The first Emma versus Betsy incident followed the very next week. If you didn’t know any better, you’d hear this story and think I was still in love with Emma.
“Let’s go up on the roof,” she said. “Now look, you don’t have a rehearsal tonight, so look what I’ve done…” She ran into the kitchen and came back with a tray. What was on the tray was covered by a pile of paper towels (Towelies, courtesy of Lisa). “Ta-da!” she said, unveiling two bottles of the world’s cheapest beer. “No, don’t thank me, its was expensive, yes, but Gil … for you, anything.”
Uh, I said I was going to see Betsy tonight.
“POOH on that girl. You don’t love her. You want to stay here with me; you want to go up on the roof and look down at St. Mark’s and urinate on passersby and…” She trailed off glumly, because I looked resolved to go.
Betsy’s making dinner and I haven’t seen her this month except once, because of the play and all.
Emma looked genuinely disappointed, instead of her usual affronted. “Oh yuck. I was in the mood to tie one on with you.”
The thing about people who rarely demonstrate any direct affection for you, is when they do get around to making a heartfelt request for your company … well, it’s rather touching and you can’t refuse them. And I never could refuse Emma much anyway.
I compromised. I called Betsy and said something came up at the theater and I’d be late.
Up the stairs we went to the sixth landing, then up another small flight to the rooftop door. Emma singing ahead of me: “When this ol’ world starts a-gettin’ you down / and … blah-blah blah-blah blah, up on the roof. Why hasn’t Motown signed me yet?”
Absolutely no singing talent? Could that be it?
I loved that roof, though you couldn’t see a thing (except in the neighboring windows, which could get good) other than the street below when you looked over, taller uglier buildings to our sides, an ever-so-small bit of the Twin Towers sticking up above the building across the street.
“They have to keep the lights on all night, because it’s too expensive to turn the buildings off and then on again,” said Emma.
I know. You told me but I can’t remember when.
“Sorry. I’ll get some new Emma-Facts.” She took a swig of beer and it was musictime again: “Way on up at the top of the world—no, stairs / I got no problems there / Up on the rooooof … No that’s not right either.”
Way on up on the … The thing about Emma and lyrics is that she massacred them in such a way never to get the real ones back into your head.
“I shoulda been a Platter. Or was that the Drifters?”
Just bring the beer over here, huh?
Emma was hyper tonight; she leaped along a slanted part of the roof, a skylight once perhaps, now tarpapered over. “I want to leeve in America / Everything’s free in America … La la la la in America—”
You don’t know that one either.
“That was a great movie, West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet urbanized. Hard to think it was ever slummy on the West Side. Hey, maybe we could do a musical version of Titus Andronicus. And we can set it in the East Village.”
Never read Titus Andronicus.
“Everyone gets cut up and it’s very bloody, just like an average night on Avenue A.” Emma sat beside me and we each took a swig of the cheap beer. “I’ve never read it either,” she added, after a moment.
We sat there and Emma sat unusually close to me and we stared across the street at people about to go to bed or get dressed to go out or about to make out with/make love to their dates—
“My god, we are going to see something,” said Emma, pinching me, whispering (as if they could have heard us). “Three floors down, the orange shade. She is nude.”
She is not nude. She’s wearing a flesh-colored sweater.
“Those are breasts, I tell you.”
She’s watering her plants and those are not breasts. Where are your contacts?
“And here comes the guy … he’s going to kiss her and fondle those breasts. And I bet he’s naked from the waist down.”
It’s a sweater, I’m telling you.
“Maybe she has very fuzzy breasts.”
It was time to go to Betsy’s.
“Another half hour won’t hurt. Oh come on. They’re going to be copulating in the window ANY minute, I promise.”
No, Emma—
“What if I call them up and ask them to?”
I gotta go.
Emma laughing. “Wait, wait—let’s, uh, talk about this … Can we negotiate? What’ll it take for you to call her and say you can’t make it?”
And so we bargained for a while, but only for another half hour. Fifteen minutes later we agreed on the half hour.
“Starting from right now.”
No, including the fifteen minutes’ bargaining time.
We started bargaining again. Emma said she’d make sandwiches. She would even make a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich, which repelled, nauseated, violated, reviled and disgusted her, but for me she’d do it. “Better’n what you’d get at Betsy’s, I bet,” she said.
Oh poor Betsy. Here we go, readers, Entry 5689 in Gil’s Hall of Shame:
Betsy on the phone: “Gil, where are you?”
… uh, still at the theater. Everything’s taking longer than it’s supposed to.
“I thought you had a night off tonight at the theater.”
Well yeah, it was a late night off, I should have been free but we’ve got to repair some of these sets that are falling apart.
Pause. “Ha, you’ll never guess what I bought today, dear.”
What?
“A Slut Doll album,” she said, with a small laugh.
You can record it on the back side of your Barry Manilow and Carole King tape, I said.
“How do people listen to this stuff?”
Some people like it.
“I thought, since I met her at that play and all, I’d go check it out.” She sighed. “And so I got it. I thought you could explain the lyrics to me, since I’m not up on all these trendy things like you.”
Yeah, I’ll do that, Betz.
“How ’bout later tonight? When you get off? I mean, you know me, nothing to do. I mean, I’ll be up.”
Yeah sure. But if it’s too late I may be tired and I may go on home, and we can do it tomorrow.
Pause. “Yeah, I guess. I got some food for you…”
Oh shit Betsy, you didn’t go to any trouble did you darling?
Pause. “No. I just … I just ordered out some Chinese stuff. Sit here and pig out myself, I guess. No, it was nothing special, don’t worry.”
Yeah well, sorry.
A big sigh, then she brightly says, “Love you.”
Emma is standing at the fridge looking at me complacently. And I say, yeah Betsy, same for me too.
I know: I’m a bastard.
It’s easy to do that kind of thing with someone you’re having sex with and don’t love. Oh, and hell, I could fill a book with things she did nasty to me, though. She’d read one-thousandth as much as Emma and was determined to make me feel stupid. She always kept toying with the theory I was gay because “most actors are” and I hung around with Kevin at the theater. And she kept needling me “Why don’t you tell Emma, if you two are so close, about your herpes?” And I dressed like shit, too. Didn’t do anything with my hair—I’d get more parts if I just shaped up, she’d say, Miss Expert all of a sudden. And as for s
ex—
“Something the matter, Gil?” Emma asked, dutifully depositing a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich into my hand. “Look, was this some big date you had going, or just some average get-together thing? I didn’t mean to mess up anything. Well I did, but not anything important, I mean.”
Back to the roof.
“Guess what I brought…” Emma nudged me with an elbow.
What?
She considered not telling me, but then did: “A new poem.”
THAT’S GREAT, Emma, you’re writing again!
“Oh I’m always writing, but not always writing well. I think it’s all right, for a change.” She uncrumpled a piece of paper from her jean jacket.
NOW THAT WE HAVE LOVED
Now that we have loved,
what do you bet death must be a sure thing.
We will destroy ourselves (you, me and Mankind),
and earth will become as barren as the moon
and the sun shall lose its hard-earned colors
and again be that cold unfortunate star
left to argue against the darkness
in this corner of the void.
With smoldering earth as barren as the moon,
the moon forgets her envy and consents to dance,
quarter moon and quarter earth,
lunar white and jagged,
circle each other in an eternal minuet
of ceaseless symphonic silence.
On the other hand,
maybe not.
There may be other nights with you beside me,
and me and the night thinking of endings,
endings grand and final, worlds in flame,
even the judgment of God cut short by a louder bang,
the so many deaths to be had …
But we have loved,
and so I guess I’m going to have to be a big girl
about death etc. and say
it’s now all right. Forever.
It’s a love poem, I said slowly.
“Yeah.”
It’s interesting, I said (and she gave me a copy of it, and that’s why I still have it). Is it about anyone?
Emma Who Saved My Life Page 35
