by Achy Obejas
One day, as I contemplated buying materials for a hex to cause California to fall off the earth and thus eliminate all chances of happiness for Sandra and her new babe, Lourdes came up with what then seemed like an epiphany.
“You don’t need any of this santéria stuff,” she said. “You’re a good egg; you just need a good chick to lay you.”
I took her advice. I went on a sex binge, although it was difficult because I don’t like to spend the night in a stranger’s home, and I felt it was too soon to bring anybody to my home where the bed had been our bed, Sandra’s and my cozy little love nest. So instead, I took girls out to Montrose Harbor, to the concrete circle that overlooks the lake and the best, most brilliant view of the city skyline. Even for natives, this can be breathtaking. We looked at the skyscrapers, at the long circuits of car lights on Lake Shore Drive, and at the way the sky divides into layers of blue and gray and pink, depending on the temperature, the pollution, and the cloud formations.
But instead of staring at clouds and trying to make sense of their shapes, we stared at the frozen waves and the little pieces of ice—all looking suspiciously like California floating out into the ocean—and tried to make sense of the terribly awkward situation we had put ourselves in. Inevitably, though, we would make love in my VW, an idea I successfully sold to each girl with the promise of “lesbianizing” high school necking experiences.
The first time was pretty hard. I came up breathless, convinced that I was surely doomed, that whatever drool I was wiping off my chin had just sealed the absolute hopelessness of any potential recovery of my relationship with Sandra. I realized then that every time I closed my eyes, I kept hoping to open them to one of those safe Sunday mornings in bed with Sandra, our bodies tangled together, the cats on either side of us purring. I stared off into the darkness of the lake outside my car window, watched the rats skip between the fogged cars around us, and hyperventilated. I don’t think I’d ever felt so alone in my life.
Then I noticed the girl I was with. I wish I could say I felt guilty for not remembering her until that moment, for having blanked her out so completely, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt a kind of relief, a strange connection with all the other wretched souls of the earth—whether they were reckless macho men or women—who woke up from their own selfish pain and suddenly realized they were about to inflict it on an innocent bystander whose only desire was love, or comfort, or maybe even something as simple as fun.
When I finally looked at this girl, I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but it was pretty clear that she didn’t need or want to hear my hellish confessions. She was fine, suffering not one little shrapnel of guilt or regret, popping a tape into the VW’s stereo, singing along, offering me more cheap wine. I wanted to say: Don’t you realize what we’ve just done? But she just kept singing, perfectly at home there with her elbow in my stomach and my breast crushed by her shoulder.
I knew I’d hit bottom when I realized what I really wanted was to confess to Sandra what I’d done, and to beg forgiveness for this and any other transgression, real or imagined. I wanted to explain to the girl in my car that this could never, ever, happen again because, for heaven’s sake, I was an unhappily-processing-my-primary-relationship-lesbian, and this, this thing that had just happened between us—which was, of course, beautiful and powerful and just plain great—was still, well, adultery. As soon as I dropped her off, I had every intention of going home to that long train-like apartment, kicking out any strangers who might have wandered in, and throwing myself at Sandra’s mercy.
But I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t do anything either. I stared out the car window, thinking the city looked extraordinarily innocent, and eventually came to my senses. I moaned a few times, then forgave myself for the temporary insanity that let me forget the block of cozy bungalows that now exists between my mailbox and Sandra’s, that we’d need marriage as a precondition for adultery, and that lesbians can only have, at best, a pseudo-marriage. I told the girl I was pseudo-separated, and surely headed for pseudo-divorce. Nonetheless, she never went out with me again, although she did buy me a scale model VW and attached a very charming note thanking me for helping her remember how much fun it used to be to park.
I’ve been back to Montrose Harbor numerous times since, but when I got her note I rubbed my tender muscles, climbed into my very real VW, and started doing circles around the block.
I know exactly when the accidents will happen. I also know that, short of being tossed around and bruised by the steering wheel and shoulder belt, I won’t be seriously hurt. And I know, as sure as I know that when I find true love again I will forget all of this misery and dive head-first into it, that the next time—the very next time I get behind the wheel—I will experience my post-Sandra accident.
That’s why I’ve been taking public transportation. It’s why I’ve bought insurance—not in a conscientious way, but in a totally ignorant, sure-to-be exploited way. I simply filled out a form I found tucked into the weekly Chicago Reader and sent it off with a sixty-dollar down-payment to a company whose phone number spells I-N-S-U-R-E-D. I don’t know what came over me; I just know that I needed insurance right there and then.
When I told Lourdes, she suggested that if I know the accident is imminent, and that if having the accident is the only way out of this post-Sandra depression, then maybe I need to just get it over with and run over a newspaper boy, ram a mailbox, or hit a station wagon filled with suburbanites. She said that maybe by avoiding the accident I’m delaying the healing process, sidestepping the very idea that Sandra and I are as dead as disco.
Just yesterday I went over to Sandra’s—an official visit to drop off a few things she’d forgotten in the move (a bottle of contact lens solution, a box of postcards, and a couple of pairs of cotton panties, all carried over in a paper grocery bag)—and for a few minutes everything seemed fine between us. We hugged when I arrived and, although she seemed smaller in my arms than ever before, her skin was as familiar and painful as ever.
Still, we talked without effort, laughed without embarrassment. It was almost like old times. Then the phone rang. Even before Sandra’s answering machine picked it up, we both knew it was San Francisco calling. We stood there, listening to the whir of the tape, the click, and then the voice that has replaced mine at those times when only whispers matter.
I know I was lucky: Sandra picked up the phone and very carefully said she’d call back in a bit, that we were chatting. She could have gloated; she could have smirked; she could have laughed nervously. All of that might have fit. But she didn’t. She did everything the sensitive-relationship manuals say to do: She exhibited patience, grace, and even gave me a little squeeze on the arm and a wet little peck on my cheek. She looked as sad and understanding as if she were my best friend, not the woman who’d dumped me. There was no question in my mind she was trying.
But it didn’t matter. I’d already clenched my teeth, my fists, all of my muscles, and there was nothing that could loosen them up again.
I still haven’t been able to get the episode out of my mind. And that’s the part I don’t understand. I know I’ve accepted the situation. I know that to go back would require a blinding absolution on both our parts, of which we’re both totally incapable. I’m not asking for another chance. I’ve accepted we’re over. I’ve even accepted, on some deep and awful level, that we are and will be with others. What I want is an answer of another sort: How long will this nag at me? How long will it hurt?
I’ve decided to take Lourdes’s advice again, so I’m driving my car and looking for trouble. I’m listening to new tapes, tapes I bought on a lark at the 7-Eleven around the corner from my apartment. The place was blazing in fluorescence, humming right along when I went in, moved aside the little American flags that hung from the shelves, and picked out every third tape across the top row. I wound up with some heavy metal, Loretta Lynn, and a collection of the Archies greatest hits, but I will survive all of their flaws and f
ind beauty in them if it kills me.
My new insurance card is in the back pocket of my jeans. I’ve got a tall, cool take-out Coke between my legs, and I’m pressing down on the accelerator and singing along whenever possible with Metallica. I’m in complete control. I pass a Jeep on Montrose Avenue, right at the intersection with Broadway, and leave behind a mess of pedestrians waving their fists in the air. At Marine Drive I shift and laugh, sending a man in a raincoat chasing after his frightened dog on the perfect lawn around Lake Shore Drive. I’m in the fourth lane and my radio is so damn loud I can’t hear my own voice singing along. My hair whips all over my face, a crazy dance of snakes. Before I know it, I’m leaning hard, away from the S-curve, rounding up to the Loop, and I realize I’m running out of prime city concrete.
I’m thinking, yeah, the interstate looks good, and I change lanes and climb the entrance ramp off Lake Shore Drive to I-55, pumping the VW, sure that everything I need will be taken care of in a matter of miles, even before the tape turns itself over. I’m thinking, yeah, San Francisco; I could drive there in a straight line if I wanted to. I’m thinking all this, thinking crazy, murderous thoughts when everything—absolutely everything—comes to a dead halt right there on the entrance ramp, right there in front of me, in one overwhelming wall of excruciating sound and light. I feel my head graze the windshield, like some kind of slow-motion heavenly knocking—immediate and exquisite and over with before I know what’s actually happened.
But I’m fine, and nothing has happened. Nothing, that is, except that the belt has practically cut my shoulder with the sheer force of how I descended on the brakes, all one hundred and twenty pounds of me, as soon as I saw the red lights going wild in front of my face. I stopped on a dime—on a dime. The guy behind me landed on his horn, releasing one long, petulant whine. I sneered at him in the mirror but he threw his hands in the air to apologize, and I realized I had to forgive him, I had no other choice. The guy behind him, I’m sure, kissed his bumper. I don’t know after that. I look in the mirror again, but there’s no sign of the end to this loose, dangerous train of cars on the ramp, all stopped for god knows what.
I jerk on the emergency brake, unbuckle, rub my shoulder, and leap out of the VW to find, literally, less than an inch between me and the car in front of me, a black BMW from which a gaggle of preschoolers improbably scatters. There are lights everywhere: red and terrible white lights from all the cars, blue lights threatening epileptic seizures from a cop car that’s backing up on the shoulder of the interstate. I try to cover my eyes from all the glare and notice a stream of liquid running between my shoes and down the ramp’s incline: green anti-freeze, water maybe, with a thread of something vivid and red that looks like blood. My shoes are soaked with it before I can move.
I walk up, maneuvering from small child to small child, all of them curious and straining to get a look at what’s under the wheel of the BMW. A woman’s voice tells them not to look, causing every one of them to stare even more intently. “Wow,” says one, his eyes as wide as saucers. “Disgusting,” says another, her face greenish. A man in a dark trench coat is pacing right in front of the car. “Oh my god,” he says. “Oh my god,” over and over and over again. He has a perfect haircut and his lower lip curls like he’s about to cry. I can’t see anything except that the liquid flowing down the concrete ramp is almost black now. The lights are so bright, and everything’s so confusing.
“Did the dog belong to anybody here?” asks one of the cops, averting his gaze from the scene of the crime.
I look at the colossal, mangled heap under the BMW’s wheel and make out a blondish mutt, one eye like blue glass, the other black with blood from the ruptured sclera. His huge body is torn apart, and he looks like the devil. He’s wearing no tags, no collar, nothing. His hair is soaked with dirt and all the liquids pouring from the car’s engine.
“It’s my dog,” I lie, reaching out tentatively to the still warm paw, as open as a catcher’s mitt.
“Well, what was he doing on the highway?” asks the same cop. “How come he doesn’t have a collar? I mean, I’m really sorry and everything but...jesus...you got any identification, huh?”
I pat my jacket for my wallet, not finding it, finally reach back to my jeans pocket, pull out my insurance card, and hand it to the cop. His partner, as faceless as he is, directs traffic around my bug and the BMW Since I’m squatting, the headlights blaze right into my face, and for an instant I feel like a criminal caught in some horrible act. One of the preschoolers, a little girl with a stammer, tells me she’s real sorry her dad ran over my dog. I just stare at her, and she backs off, bumping right into the cop.
“You know this won’t pay for the dog, right?” the cop says, handing me back my insurance card. “I mean, you’re still responsible for whatever damage to his car, but I don’t think you can get anything on the dog.”
“She’s irreplaceable,” I tell him, and let go of the demon mutt’s paw. I stand up and cover my eyes. The cop, who thinks I’m crying, squeezes my shoulder.
Now the cop’s partner is in the squad car, making noises on the police radio. The squad’s blue lights keep going around and around and around. The man in the trench coat, who can’t seem to meet my eyes, keeps apologizing to me. “I’m sorry; I’m really sorry,” he says, biting his lip until it finally bleeds. I squeeze his shoulder, and we make out a police report together. I think I’m going to owe him some money, but he says no, that he killed my dog, that he can’t take my money for what little damage the dog may have done to his car. We’re talking hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars here, but he insists.
Just my luck, I think, I’ve stumbled upon the last Good Samaritan in the universe, and driving a BMW no less. I can barely keep from laughing.
When I get back in the VW, I check my emergency brake, my gas gauge, then I look in the mirror. My face is smudged and wet, a strange combination of dirt, sweat and, maybe, tears. I really don’t know. I sit in silence for a while, just watching the cars go around me and the BMW I watch them disappear, not so much into the flow of traffic as into the night, beyond the slope of I-55, into the long line of boarded-up houses and old factories, neglected lawns, and loose dogs around the interstate.
I remember seeing Sandra for the first time, dressed in black, somber, and a little scared, and making her laugh. I have no idea what it was I said. It’s all behind me now.
Eventually, a huge blue city truck pulls up, followed by a tow truck. The city workers, all men with rough voices whose breath I can see, scrape the dog from under the BMW and hook the car to the tow truck. They hose down the concrete as the man in the trench coat and his family climb into a taxi. Before the taxi’s off the ramp, the water has frozen, and workers are sprinkling salt over it. Finally, it’s just me and the cops on the ramp. They turn off their blue lights, flick on their turn signal, and wait for me to mainstream into traffic.
The Cradleland
I was still standing, my pants pushed midway down my thighs. I took her in my arms. That’s all I did. I took her in my arms and kissed her, holding my breath the whole time, then said something—I don’t know what—that I meant as thanks but which sounded more like a gurgle. She turned away from me, flinging her hair from her face, and laughed, stroked my cheek once and walked out of the bathroom stall.
My belt buckle, dangling, clicked against the porcelain. I could hear the water running at the sink, the flow muffled by her hands rubbing underneath it. Then swoosh, off. I heard her heeled shoes clickety clack across the tiled floor. Paper towels flapping like wings. The door hissing shut. I swore I heard her sigh as she disappeared into the great commuter masses at the train station.
I finally let out my breath, all at once, perhaps too fast, too soon, and collapsed against the stall door. I wound my fingers around the coat hook. Wow. It’s all I could think of. I’m sure if someone had taken my picture it would have shown me out of focus because of the trembling, thighs shiny, mouth all red, maybe drooling, eyes wide a
nd fantastic, looking something like a victim, but way too ecstatic. Wow.
I had been telling my new girlfriend, Sylvia, about this last night, but it was just a fantasy then. We’d been wrapped up under the covers, our breaths little hot jets, then normal. We were just messing around, sharing fantasies. She told me hers of doing it on a Ferris wheel, and I decided to shut up and not mention that I’d already done it that way. I got dizzy from the memory of the lights and my fear of falling. Then, since we were on the subject of sex, we decided to talk about more serious matters, like AIDS and risk and all that stuff that nobody ever really wants to talk about but which is de rigueur nowadays.
We’re a relatively new relationship—just a couple of weeks—and we’re still getting some of the details out of the way, like HIV status, the names of each other’s brothers and sisters, and where we went to college. So Sylvia told me about the last time she’d had unsafe sex, when a rubber broke while her ex-boyfriend had his cock up her ass. Sylvia’s story depressed me terribly, even though she’d been tested and was negative, because it was essentially my roommate, Tomás’s, story, and he was dying. Plus, when I’d met Sylvia, I’d been hoping that for the first time in years I’d find a partner who was so low at risk we could actually get up close and exchange bodily fluids.
For the record, I’m fine. I mean, I’ve never been with a boy, and just before the epidemic started raging I went through a long period of celibacy. Since then, I’ve practiced safe sex as a matter of course. I rationalize it this way: It’s easier just to have safe sex, at least initially, than to go through that awkward clinical dialogue to determine if it’s necessary. I figure that later, after we get close, it’ll be easier to talk. Besides, I’ve promised myself I won’t hold HIV status against anybody, and so, to guard against my own prejudice, I just play safe and ask questions later. I figure that if I really like somebody, it’ll be too late to back out of actually admitting it to myself.
