Rat Bohemia

by Sarah Schulman

  She invited me out for a drink which turned into dinner which turned into her treat since I didn’t have any money and she had about six credit cards. I knew right away that they were all overcharged and some day soon the loan shark would be after her. But in the meantime she was sharp, tough, and having as much of a good time as far beyond her means as she could get. That’s when I knew she was Cuban.

  “Cubans are the saddest people I have ever known,” she said. “We’re angry and can never be understood.”

  “The Cuba nobody knows,” I said.

  “On the other hand, we really like to live it up,” she said, choosing the best things on the menu.

  It was all about how rich her grandfather used to be and how poor her father is. But that was just one of the stories.

  “In my town there was a terrible housing shortage. Every family was crowded together. It was very hard for gay people to find a place to have sex. Down the street from my mother’s house was this gay man who had his own place. He had four small rooms occasionally to himself. Those nights different lovers would go to his house to find a room to make love. One night my sweetheart and I were making love in his house and suddenly we heard a noise outside. Some kind of political parade going by with lights shining through the window. We thought it was against us. Terrified, we rushed out into the center room and so did the other lovers. There we were, four couples, all men, Beatriz and me. We lay there silently, together, nude on the floor with our hands over our heads, waiting.”

  “Was it against you?”

  “That’s not important. I’m telling you about the bodies, like corpses, smelling of sex and then of fear. That’s what I’m talking about right now.”

  “Why only tell half the story? ” I asked.

  “Because I don’t know the other half or because it’s none of your business.”

  She took me back to her apartment. An apartment in New York City tells many truths. It shows where you really stand, relationally. It shows when you came, how much you had, and what kind of people you knew. Her apartment was lonely. It was cozy and she had good taste, but so much was missing.

  We both knew we were going to have sex, but when you don’t know the other person there is this big void of knowledge from here to there. You don’t even know how skittish they are. When they’re going to object. Everything has to be cool, cool, cool. Her place felt like a motel which made the whole thing easier, sleazier, more romantic. A neon sign was flashing from across the street through the venetian blinds like some forties film noir. In fact, she seemed very glamorous.

  First we smoked pot and then we smoked cigarettes while I watched her make preparations. She turned off the lights and lit candles and stretched out on the floor. I started thinking about all the times I’d been in situations like this one. All the times I’d been alone, together, in a poor apartment with a woman with a past and something that makes it all so stark. Like our bones are showing. Everything else fades in importance except this place, this secret place, this motel room and our certain, quiet longings.

  Chapter Nine

  We start kissing and I’m lifting her body onto mine. She’s gorgeous. Within a few minutes I could tell from the way it was my hands around her waist and me lifting her. The way she’s crawling on top of my legs, climbing on, that she was turning over to me, wanting to give up. That’s one thing I know about sex. Not sex with love, but just for the sake of it. Most people want one of two things. Either they want you to submit. Or they want to get lost. They let you know which one it is right away. As for me, I don’t have a particular sexual taste. I just like the part where she shows her desire.

  When I reached down her pants and pushed inside her, this woman leaned back in my arms and said, “In this house we wear gloves.”

  “What? ”

  “In this house we wear gloves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We wear latex gloves. You know, because of AIDS.”

  This woman had beautiful skin, like the beach, and our bodies fit. She was free and open but not too open, and she was sexy. She wanted to touch me. But I could not let her put on surgical gloves. I like to get off, but I don’t need to be fucked that badly.

  “Well, I don’t do that,” I said.

  “You never know,” she said. “The virus is always mutating.”

  “I know a lot of lesbians,” I said. “So do you.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ve never heard of anyone who really got HIV sexually from another woman,” I said.

  “No, there’s a case in Arkansas. My friend told me about it.”

  “There’s probably a man or a needle lurking there somewhere,” I said. “If lesbians were getting AIDS from each other, don’t you think we would have noticed?”

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” she said.

  The situation was starting to get testy.

  “Look,” I said. “I have an idea. You do what you want and I’ll do what I want. Okay? ”

  So that’s how it went. I fucked her and sucked her and reached behind to that place you can only get to with your fingers. Who knows what it looks like? Each time that it was my turn she held me and guided my hands to my own cunt and then held her hands over mine while I masturbated. That happened a couple of times. When she was ready to let me have it, she guided my hands there instead and put her hands over them. It was so weird, it was sexy, but there was also too much fear going on in the safest place. That place between our bodies.

  I looked at this woman. I looked at her homosexuality. I watched it. I identified with her. Her nipples stood up under my fingers. Her ass fit in the palm of my hand. Her clitoris filled my mouth. Her hair was black and soft. We smoked, like lovers do, her on her back in the flashing neon light. Me, caressing her chest, smoke passing back to her and then back to me.

  “This feels like a forties movie,” I said. “Or a forties pickup, somewhere in Dayton, Ohio.”

  “Well, obviously you’re the lounge singer,” she said. “And I’m the New York bohemian just passing through.”

  “A real live bohemian? ” I fluttered coquettishly. “Tell me, what’s New York really like? ”

  “If this was the forties we’d be … we’d be …” She took another drag. “We’d be exactly who we are today. Our kind never changes. We’re the international, eternal bohemia.”

  I put my white hand on her brown stomach. She looked like a little boy, like a Mexican film star, like flesh.

  “No matter what goes on out there,” she said, “we always do the same thing. We smoke pot, we have sex, and we talk bullshit because we like it.”

  The venetian shadows flashed across her breasts.

  “I know you want a drink of water,” she said, holding the glass to my lips.

  Chapter Ten

  I had been dispatching all morning and talking rats seriously with Mrs. Santiago.

  “I know rats,” she said, big like a Buddha in her office chair.

  She never left that chair. She never even went to the bathroom. When it was time for lunch she just groaned, bent over, and pulled out a paper bag from her bottom desk drawer.

  “Before I got a desk job I was a case worker for the city. I used to have to go out in the alleys to wake up the sleeping homeless and invite them to the shelters.”

  “What kind of program was that? ” I asked.

  “You remember,” she said, patting her nice, neat bun. Rearranging the photos of her grandchildren. Moving her glasses to the end of her nose and peering over the rims before completing her sentences. All of this designed to measure how much she owned you. Mrs. Santiago was so bureaucratic she wouldn’t even gossip efficiently.

  “You remember back a couple of years ago when they were inviting people in? Well.…” She straightened a pile of papers on her desk, flipped through them listlessly, and then straightened them again. “Well, when I’d walk into those alleys in the dark of night and shine my light I’d see thirty rats scampering all over the dumpst
ers. Did you know that a rat can jump six feet from a standing position? ”

  “No,” I said breathlessly.

  “That’s right. So when you shine that light on them, you’d better be more than six feet away. Some of those people sleeping in the alley would have pieces missing from their arms when the rats just leapt up and grabbed their flesh.”

  She turned back to that same pile of papers, straightened them, slipped, and straightened them again.

  “Nice desk job for me,” she said. “I only work at a desk.”

  Then I got a call from an on-site worker to bring down a big empty cardboard container to the corner of Astor Place where an assassination team was trying out a new, low-cost method. They were about to go on a lunch break so I didn’t need to be there for three or four hours. So I gave Killer a call to see if she could help me carry the container down to the Village. But David answered the phone instead.

  “David, what are you doing at Killer’s house?”

  “I had to use her bathtub. My building hasn’t had hot water for a week and I’m too stinky to be cute.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Want to accompany me on a walk downtown and make your contribution to a vermin-free New York? ”

  “Okay.”

  “See you soon. Dave?”

  “Yeah? ”

  “You’ll love it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  On the way out of the building, I had to pass gauntlets of starving people begging for money for drugs or a roll. It’s like how you have to pay a toll just to wait for the light. Sometimes it makes me feel guilty for wanting things—like my secret desires for a VCR. Other times it makes me want to walk inside some café somewhere and order something really decadent—like scallops. Something completely uncalled for.

  As I walked to meet Dave I remembered the last time I went to a restaurant. I wasn’t hungry. I had groovy coleslaw with orange peel and sesame seeds in it plus lemonade. It took three hours to eat. The girl wanted to kill me. She kept staring at my table, glaring, trying to burn me out of my seat. It was so cold outside that day I didn’t have another choice. I was so fat that day my stomach was exploding. Every man on the street had to comment on my hips and every woman had to look at them and be glad hers weren’t that way. My plate of coleslaw felt like a plate of lard. My lemonade was lard too.

  That place had one of those old-fashioned ketchup holders—a red plastic tube with a nipple on top. In that context it meant more than nostalgia. It meant nostalgia for your parents’ nostalgia. There is a kind of loneliness that is solved through naked TV watching and late night talking to no one. I don’t have a TV, so I miss this opportunity and instead have to pace my tiny bedroom or look out windows at stillness in the dark. Can the smell of coffee keep you awake? That’s what I wondered in that restaurant and then had to order some. Black tastes so thin. Like watered-down hot scotch. It’s bitter like a cigarette-stained tongue. Haven’t had one of those in a while.

  At Food and Hunger they talk about Food a lot. One of our regular discussions is when everyone tells their favorite meal. Mrs. Santiago goes into this long rapture.

  “First appetizers and then an open bar,” she says. “Like you have at a fancy wedding or at the mayor’s luncheon three years ago. Campari and tonic, about six of them. Then I like little shrimps in coconut milk, teriyaki beef, meatballs in a bowl made of bread, caviar and olives. After that, the fish course. Fish with sauce, and a baby chicken stuffed plus mashed potatoes and sausages. Then, an individual pastry with berries, strawberry ice cream, and strawberry sauce. Then coffee.”

  David’s favorite meal is a whole other thing.

  “I choose yam cakes in a spicy sauce,” he said. “Spinach with dried fish flakes, marinated seaweed with minuscule whitefish in vinegar, potatoes with sugar and pork, tofu soup.”

  The guard at the metal detector’s favorite meal is “Steak, well-done with steak sauce. A baked potato. A beautiful salad with Thousand Island dressing. Wine. Courvoisier VSOP.”

  My father’s favorite meal is “Sweet and sour pork, pork fried rice, good beer, and a fortune cookie, plus pineapple for dessert.”

  Mine is meat, with fruit and pineapple for dessert, plus wine. Homeless people say chicken, juice, fried rice, a sandwich, broccoli, corn, a grape.

  When I asked Killer about her FM (favorite meal) she suggested “A catered affair, wholesome and healthy. No cheese. A broiled garlic cut in half so it looks like a pomegranate. Broiled carrots, roasted peppers—red and yellow. The best combination is to take a carrot and put it in curry sauce. There would be three dips. Then people would walk around with trays with little spinach pies and unidentifiable vegetables. Then there would be this thing called tartlettes. The waiter would keep coming over to ask ‘Would you like a tartlette?’ Stuffed mushrooms with, what’s that called again? Eggplant. Tiny little roast beef sandwiches. Two pieces of chicken on a really hard piece of toast. In one hand everyone would have a glass of champagne and in the other they’d have a steamed artichoke. Think how beautiful the conversation with those green paws raised high in gesture.”

  Sure, Killer had a great imagination all right, except when it came to finding a place to live. She couldn’t imagine her way out of that slum. Killer’s house is a good example of urban blight. To get there I first have to walk past a rat-infested vacant lot where some homeless people have shanties. Day or night the rats gallivant freely. They’ve never known fear. These are rats who think that the world loves them that way, that this world is for them. People bring them garbage like it was TV dinners on a tray. Then they scamper, do aerobics, and whine.

  When I approach that corner I get really tense, like a foot soldier on the banks of the Mekong Delta. I scan the sidewalk thoroughly and then try to race past as quickly as possible. If a piece of paper or a plastic bag should suddenly blow out of the sea of rats, I’ll jump ten feet and scream. Later on I’ll be clammy and pale, as though the actual monster ran across my bedsheets. And when the real ones do surface they are huge and deformed with tumors and other disfigurations. They get out in the middle of the sidewalk slowly and then lumber over to the garbage cans. Everyone’s out there scrambling. When a car turns down that street its headlights illuminate them, swarming like larvae on old cat food. But they don’t fear headlights. They just keep on. Then you get to Killer’s house.

  Chapter Twelve

  David is one of those mild-mannered, balding kind of young men who only get creepy looks on their faces when talking about someone’s big dick. Then he smiles devilishly and his voice cracks. Otherwise he’s the kind of guy I would have married if I had married a fag. Now he’s down below two hundred T-cells, so I’m starting to worry. I love him and I hate him.

  When I start to separate those feelings it is a real truth-teller about me, about what a cold person I can be. When I really face how I feel about David I see myself in a very unpleasant light. I see things unpleasant to convey. Like how angry I am that he never thinks about me. How angry I am that he’s dying and so has a good excuse. How afraid I am that if he wasn’t dying things might be exactly the same way. How ashamed I am that he is dying and I am only thinking of myself.

  “Hey, Dave? ”

  “Tired,” he said. “Can’t sleep. Stayed up late last night trying to read Muriel Starr’s new book.”

  “Good and Bad?”

  “Yeah, everyone’s reading it. Couldn’t get past the first few chapters. Too closety. I just lay awake in bed for hours twiddling my thumbs.”

  “Where’re you just back from this time?” I asked him as we walked down Eighth Avenue.

  “San Francisco,” he said.

  “And…?”

  “No rats,” he said.

  I already knew that.

  “It’s so different,” he said. “You walk out the door and there are three different kinds of trees, each with flowers of a different color. Yellow, red, white. Then there’s another tree with
little hanging plants that look like a string of bells. But actually, they’re petals. No rats, drug dealers, or urine-soaked sidewalks in every neighborhood. It’s all confined to a few, so just by walking you can actually get away from it and have time to have feelings and other emotions. You know, Rita, living daily in very hostile circumstances isn’t good for us.”

  “Makes sense.”

  David is very concerned about being remembered. I’m concerned about remembering because, after all, I’m going to be left behind. People we know die all the time and there is really no way to react. What can you do? Freak out every day? David brings memory up all the time. I can see how appalled he is at how little any of us react to AIDS deaths. He’s focused a lot of worry on being forgotten. That’s one of his greatest motivations for going on trips and writing us letters. Continuing to make new friends and building relationships is one way to ensure his legacy.

  We went half-time down the avenue. Dave was beginning to walk slow. I knew that the trip was hard for him physically, but whatever the cost was made up for spiritually when he realized he was going to make it the whole way. I could see he was starting to get that peripheral neuropathy where the nerve endings in your legs swell up. It’s called “tendonitis.”

  “The Castro in San Francisco is the Valley of Death,” he said. “There are sick people everywhere. Some are in their last moments and are being rolled around in wheelchairs. Others are just minimally decrepit, thin with ruddy medicinal complexions. The word AIDS is everywhere—on signs in newspapers. There is no pretense that it does not exist. That’s what I noticed most, the lack of denial. I don’t believe in denial. I think I’m joking. Everything I know to be true in my secret homosexual world is acknowledged publicly there. It’s frightening, disorienting. Freedom is so unfamiliar.

  “Here in New York AIDS is still a secret. When people get really sick they’re embarrassed and so crawl into their apartments and die. They feel defeated and no one is there to help them get down the stairs. Only the drug addicts are out there on their canes. The formerly beautiful homos just lie in bed waiting for God’s Love We Deliver to bring a hot meal and then spend the rest of the evening throwing up.”