‘A pro domme’s abandoned apparatus – I was fascinated. I thought it would be cool to live around those things. I had no idea they’d belonged to my friend Marie.’
‘I think there’s more, something you haven’t come to grips with.’
‘Like what?’
‘Why don’t you think about it … then tell me.’
I ponder her question a while. ‘A dominatrix is an archetype, the cruel woman. And Josh painted her as the Queen of Swords archetype from the tarot deck. I work with archetypes. My Weimar singer. The sex-kitten character in my Black Mirrors piece. My rich society lady, Mrs Z. This femme-fatale character Rex keeps asking me to play. It’s all of a piece, isn’t it?’ I smile at Dr Maude. ‘I guess we’re going Jungian today.’
‘Even though I’m not a Jungian analyst, I’ve always liked his ideas about archetypes. But that isn’t what I was getting at. I’m pressing you on this because I believe you can account for feeling haunted by this woman. And I don’t think it’s just because of an improbable coincidence. It’s something within you, Tess. You create your performances out of material from your life. I think when you saw the apparatus Chantal left behind you decided to keep it because on some level you thought you could use it in a performance piece.’
‘I’m that exploitive?’
‘It’s not exploitive to use what comes your way. Anyway, I don’t make value judgments. It’s psychological truth we’re after here. I like the way you take material from your life then transform it. I think you may end up using Chantal in a piece once you sort out your feelings about her.’
After session I rush over to San Pablo Martial Arts and attack the heavy bag – kicks, punches, knee strikes.
On my way out of the locker room I run into Kurt Vogel, gym owner and head trainer, a former Muay Thai tournament champion whose natural charisma is heightened by his German accent, gleaming shaved head, and watery green eyes.
I ask if he heard about Marie.
He nods solemnly. ‘Read about it in the paper. Terrible thing. She was a warrior so whoever did that to her must have taken her by surprise. If he came at her straight she’d have put up a tremendous fight.’
I peer at him. Why, I wonder, must he frame everything in terms of combat?
He peers back, eyes unblinking. ‘I want you to train harder, Tess. Work on your fighting skills. From now on, whenever you come in report to me. I’ll set you up with a sparring partner and if no one’s available I’ll spar with you myself.’
Later, back in the loft, I think about my session with Dr Maude. She was correct about my process. I am a scavenger. I take bits and pieces, shards of my own and other people’s lives, combine them and reassemble them into stories I then declaim as monologues. It’s my way of coping, working through my fantasies and making sense of the world.
I rejected her notion that when I saw the cross and the cell in the loft I immediately thought about creating a performance piece. But now I admit to the possibility that on an unconscious level I was considering how those artifacts could be used.
I believe the reason I’m now feeling so haunted by Chantal is because, though she played the role of an archetype in her work, she was a real person whom I happened to meet who suddenly started to act strangely and then met a very bad and cruel end. There’s an unfinished story there, questions to be answered, a quest to be pursued, a mystery to be solved.
Josh calls, asks me if I’d like to join him for an evening stroll.
‘It’s first Friday of the month, Art Murmur night,’ he reminds me. ‘Tonight the streets of downtown Oakland come alive.’
We meet in the lobby, Josh wearing his watch cap, jeans and a faded blue and white OAKLANDISH T-shirt, I in black tank top and shorts. We move up Broadway with the crowds, angle off on Telegraph Avenue, then stop in at a funky bar for Stoli Greyhounds made with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.
I like the scene here, a cross-section of Oakland, people of all ages talking, laughing, drinking in a long narrow room. The walls are festooned with weird inscriptions, shriveled stuffed reptiles and layers of unrelated bric-a-brac which give the place a suffocating quality I find appealing, perhaps because it’s the opposite of my own minimalist aesthetic.
‘I love these voodoo walls,’ I tell Josh. And when he signs he can’t hear me due to the music and noise, I shout it again into his ear.
‘Yeah, it’s like a three-dimensional piece of outsider art,’ he shouts back. ‘Whoever assembled this stuff had a bad case of horror vacui.’
Surprised by his use of the art-history term, I realize I know little about him. He presents himself as a rough-around-the-edges type. I think he’s a lot more sophisticated than he lets on.
Emerging again on Telegraph, he turns to me.
‘I saw the way you peered at me in there.’
‘Peered? Really?’
‘When I said horror vacui. You wondered where I picked that up.’
‘For all I know you have a PhD.’
He laughs. ‘Put in two years as a grad student at CalArts, then quit. Didn’t want to be an art teacher so didn’t see the point sticking around for the fucking MFA. At heart I’m an autodidact. Something interests me, I delve into it. Chantal was also like that. Told me she was at San Francisco State, double majoring in psychology and German. Then when her parents died she decided to take a leave. She went to Vienna where she met this old domme, apprenticed with her a couple years, then came back to the Bay Area and set up shop.’
We’re working our way toward the cluster of galleries above Twenty-First Street. The sidewalks are less crowded here, but the restaurants and cafés lining the avenue are filled with young people eating, drinking, yacking away. Due to Art Murmur, downtown Oakland, usually deserted and ominous after dark, is teeming with life.
Josh points out a grouping of large blue-gray birds resting on the limb of a tree. ‘Black-crowned night herons. They say the gulls chased them out of the port. They like lampposts, buildings, and people so they settled downtown. They roost in the yucca trees. I happen to like them, but a lot of folks don’t. They leave an inordinate amount of shit.’
‘Guano.’
He laughs. ‘Yeah, whatever—.’
Since we’re getting along so well, I decide to try and find out more about Chantal.
‘Those built-in bookcases in my loft – did she put them in?’
I feel him stiffen. ‘Funny you should ask,’ he says. ‘I built them for her. She had a helluva lot of books.’
‘Were they sold at the tag sale?’
‘I heard her fetish-book collection was. But she had plenty more, serious non-fiction. I believe she sold them in bulk to a local used bookstore.’
We work our way through a mob clustered outside a trio of galleries. The pub and gallery crawl is now at full throttle. Two rival street bands playing on opposite sides of the avenue create a weird cacophony. A rapper is holding forth in tortured rhymes from the flatbed of a pickup truck, and a tall anorectic stoned-out girl with long stringy blond hair stands in the entranceway of a boarded up shop plucking aimlessly at a double bass.
We enter a gallery. There’re so many people inside it’s difficult to see the art. Josh offers his hand, I take it, then let him lead me to the wall. I observe him as he scrutinizes the artwork. I can tell by his expression he doesn’t think much of it, but I’m impressed at the respect he shows each piece, pausing before it, devouring it with his eyes before moving on to the next.
‘See anything you like?’ I ask back out on the street.
‘Yeah. The triptych. Reasonably priced too. Not that I’d buy it. I’ve got tons of my own work and nowhere near enough wall space to hang it.’
He’s right about the triptych. It was the only decent piece in the exhibition. He has a good eye, I think.
We make our way through a dozen more galleries, viewing hundreds of paintings, sculptures, mixed-media pieces. In a garage on Twenty-Fifth we come upon an in-progress performance. A group of youn
g people, dressed in black sweatshirts that identify them as members of THE FUCK-ALL COMMUNE, are seated at a round table feasting on asparagus spears while mock-seriously spouting anarchist slogans. It’s funny and ridiculous, but I’m more intrigued by the attention of the onlookers than the performance.
‘It’s crap like this gives what I do a bad name,’ I whisper to Josh.
Engrossed in the scene, he doesn’t react.
Are these his politics? I wonder.
Emerging again, turning toward Broadway, I ask if he took part in Occupy Oakland.
He shakes his head. ‘I like what they stood for. But their encampment was overrun by druggies and pickpockets. Since I live in the neighborhood I didn’t feel like fouling my nest.’ He turns to me, grins. ‘But, yeah, at heart I’m an anarchist.’
He seems to have an uncanny ability to read my mind.
We find a free sidewalk café table, sit down, order coffee.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asks.
‘It’s a fun scene.’
‘But the art mostly sucks, right?’
‘Oh, does it ever!’
‘Hey, don’t look now,’ he says, ‘but Clarence is across the street. If he sees us he might come over. We wouldn’t want that, would we?’
‘Sometimes when I go out for a run I see him walking around the neighborhood, but outside the building he doesn’t seem to recognize me. He kinda slinks when he walks. And he rarely blinks.’
‘Yeah, I’ve noticed that too.’
‘When he talks to me he giggles a lot. Does he do that with you?’
‘Yeah and I’ve no idea why. Mornings he stands in the lobby behind the concierge’s podium greeting everybody with a big smile, then couple hours later I see him dumpster diving out in the alley. One time I went out early and caught him going through trash barrels. So I yell, “Hey, good morning, Clarence.” He looks up, gives me this shit-eating grin. “Yeah, hi, Josh.” It’s like there’s this happy-go-lucky side and this weird side that’s into other people’s garbage.’
‘He’s always nice to me.’
‘To me too. But “Who know what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”’
‘“The Shadow knows.” Right?’
‘Yeah, The Shadow,’ Josh says, seemingly delighted I recognize the line from the old radio show.
We laugh, then Josh turns serious. ‘I’m surprised you’re not attached.’
‘Does it show? I recently got detached. Feels good too.’ I meet his stare, then decide to change the subject in case he’s thinking of coming on to me. ‘Something I want to ask you about Chantal?’ I continue even as I feel him tighten up again at the mention of her name. ‘You said something like “none of her friends knew her real name either”.’
‘I probably said that, yeah.’
‘So that tells me you met some of her friends?’
He nods. I peer closely at him. He’s going cagey on me the way he did when I first encountered him in the elevator. Which is odd since a few minutes ago he offered information about Chantal’s college career and apprenticeship in Vienna. But rather than take his cageyness as a signal to drop my questions, I decide to see how far I can press before he cuts me off.
‘I’d like to meet her friends,’ I tell him.
‘And you’re asking me – what?’
‘Would you introduce me, or give me a name or two?’
‘And where might that lead?’
‘Wherever. Look, I see you’re reluctant. You’re protective of her. But you did show me Queen of Swords … and that spoke to me, Josh. It did. I’m intrigued by her, maybe because I met her and now I live and work where she lived and worked. Who was she, Marie or Chantal? I’d like to find out all I can, get a sense of what she was really like. Your portrait tells me a lot, but I know there’s more. So, yeah, I’d like to meet some of her friends and hear their impressions. If that annoys you please tell me and I’ll drop it.’
He studies me a while as if assessing my sincerity. ‘You could try Lynx,’ he says. ‘Another pro domme. They were partners for a while, then Chantal took the penthouse and set up on her own. Still they stayed friends. You want to find out about Chantal, Lynx would be a good place to start.’
‘So how do I find this Lynx?’
He smiles. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard, not for a smart girl like you.’
He pulls out his wallet, places a ten on the table, stands. ‘On Art Murmur nights the free shuttle runs till midnight. It’ll take you within a block of the Buckley.’
‘You’re not going to walk back with me?’
‘No offense, Tess, but I think I’ll walk alone for a while.’ He gives me a quick hug. ‘See you around.’
I watch him as he saunters back into the gallery district.
What’s with him? I wonder. First he tells me stuff about Chantal, then he stiffens and goes monosyllabic when I ask about her. I decide not to worry about it. He coughed up Lynx’s name, and perhaps inadvertently gave me another lead: that a local bookstore bought up Chantal’s library.
Shouldn’t be too hard to find out which one … least not for a ‘smart girl’ like me.
Early the next morning Jerry calls.
‘This murdered pro dominatrix I’m reading about – she the one used to live in your loft?’
‘Good morning, Jerry. Is this really why you called?’
‘Yeah, good morning, Tess. Sorry. Saw an item in the paper. Wondered if it was the same woman.’
‘It was.’ I pause. ‘I didn’t know we were speaking, actually.’
‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t be.’
‘When I left you said some hostile things. I’m still reeling from that.’
‘People often say things when they’re stressed, things they don’t necessarily mean.’
‘Thing is I think you did mean them, Jerry. So if there’s nothing else on your mind, I’d like to get back to work.’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Sorry to bother you.’ And then in an unfamiliarly feeble tone: ‘Be well, Tess. I mean that, I really do.’
I wait two days before searching out Lynx. Doesn’t take me long to find her. I start with a BDSM internet board that provides links to Bay Area pro domme websites. Chantal Desforges is on the list. When I click on her link I get a blank screen. A note in tiny letters informs me the site’s been taken down at its owner’s request.
Next I click on the link for Mistress Lynx, gaining entry by agreeing I’m over eighteen and not in law enforcement. An image comes up of a pretty light-skinned black girl wearing a seductive smile. There’s a caption: DON’T MISTAKE ME FOR NICE. I CAN BE VERY CRUEL!
The ABOUT section describes attendance at an exclusive Swiss boarding school. ‘I was even dominant back then,’ the commentary reads. ‘I enslaved my roommate and enjoyed disciplining a groom when I caught him mistreating my horse.’
Under SPECIALTIES Lynx provides a lengthy list that includes every form of BDSM behavior I’ve heard of … and several I haven’t. At the end she adds: ‘Plus anything else your twisted little mind can think up!’
There’s also a statement in bold capitals:
DOMINATION IS NOT PROSTITUTION.
REQUESTS FOR SEXUAL FAVORS WILL
RESULT IN INSTANT DISMISSAL!
The GALLERY section shows Lynx in various dominant poses and a CONTACT page gives precise instructions for arranging an appointment. Applicants are required to fill out a detailed questionnaire with information regarding their fetishes, experience, and a reference from at least one other dominatrix.
The final paragraph is explicit:
‘PLEASE BE ADVISED: it is a PRIVILEGE to session with MISTRESS LYNX. If I find your response of interest, I will email my phone number so that we may discuss your needs and schedule your session. If you don’t hear back from me after a reasonable time, you may assume I have no interest.’
I click on the questionnaire, fill in my full name, address, and phone number, then skip to the section marked ‘Anything else I should k
now?’ I write:
‘Hi! I have your name from Josh Garske. As should be clear I’m not contacting you regarding a session, and please be assured I’m not a journalist nor do I work in law enforcement. I’m a performance artist (please check out my website: www.tessperformances.net) interested in learning all I can about your late friend Chantal, whom I knew slightly under the name Marie. I now occupy her old loft in the Buckley. I’m sure this is a sensitive time for you, and I hope this message doesn’t come as an intrusion. Please let me know if you’re willing to meet for coffee or a drink? Sincerely, Tess Berenson.’
Pressing SEND, I figure there’s probably a one in three chance she’ll respond.
I take the BART to San Francisco to meet with Rex. He’s invited me to his place to go over my part in his new Vertigo. When I enter and see the pole he’s erected in the center of his living room, I figure he wants me to demonstrate my pole-dancing skills.
Fine! I think. He needs a charge, I’ll give it to him.
But then when I start to strip, he surprises me.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘You want to see me work the pole, right?’
‘No need. I saw you work it in Black Mirrors.’
‘So what’s it doing here?’
‘I use it for exercise.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘Show me your moves later if you want. But first let’s go over your role.’
We sit down. His apartment, no kind of hovel, is roomy and flooded with sunlight. The living-room walls are covered with theater posters, the shelves filled with stage-set models interspersed with books on acting and theater history.
‘You want to come off as this very classy escort,’ he explains, ‘say in the fifteen hundred a night range. Mike, our client, will recognize you from a photograph and your red dress. He’ll come over, you’ll signal him to sit, then you two will have the kind of conversation you’d typically have on a blind date, during which you’ll feign serious interest in his background and achievements. You’ll both be playing out a classic getting-to-know-you scene. Play it like a call girl pretending to be fascinated by a john when they both know she’s really interested in getting his money, getting him off, and getting away.’
The Luzern Photograph Page 6
