Cool, Calm & Contentious

by Merrill Markoe

  My short-range plan was to entertain Mr. IFAP with my enormous shoe box full of unintentionally funny postcards, which I had been collecting since high school. Ceremoniously, I removed the box from the cabinet and placed it on the rattan seat between us. Then I began to pull out a few of my favorites, many of which I had sorted by themes. I had at least ten different ones that featured a photo of a giant trout filling the bed of a pickup truck, though some were “strapped” to the side of an only slightly larger horse. They all said something like “Caught a FAIR-sized trout today.”

  I was prepared to move from there to a second, equally amusing theme: postcards featuring lots of different photos of squirrels eating acorns, all of them captioned “Nutty About Nuts.” After that, I would break out the cards spotlighting enormous fruits and vegetables. But before I could locate the three different versions of giant cabbages loaded onto flatbed train cars, Mr. IFAP leaned in to kiss me.

  My worst fears were confirmed.

  I was so uninterested in kissing this blocky, bearded old guy that I had no idea what facial expression to plaster on this time. Kissing him was like making out with Santa.

  In retrospect, I probably looked to him like a girl who had been around. Maybe my short skirt and my high boots and my foul mouth had him fooled. Or the way I had acted blasé when he talked about all the people he knew who had orgies and liked Victorian erotica. Maybe he assumed I liked that stuff, too. He almost certainly would have been surprised to learn that I knew a lot more about power tools and funny postcards than I did about human sexuality. So far, I had only slept with the Mechanical Man. And he had been such a puzzling first encounter that just a day or two before I had asked a friend, “What does it mean when a guy says, ‘Did you come?’ Come where?”

  “I’m not sure,” she had replied. “I think it has something to do with having an orgasm.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  Next thing I knew, the Internationally Famous Art Professor and I were on my Murphy bed having sex because it seemed rude to say no to him. He was my professor. He was a big famous guy. He was Santa Claus!

  When I opened my mouth to form the words that would excuse me from participating, nothing came out.

  So Mr. IFAP took his place as the second guy in the sex parade. To be fair, despite his advanced age he was a much better partner than the Mechanical Man. Yet I was still left wondering what it was about the act of intercourse that had captivated the souls of writers and poets for centuries.

  The third guy I had sex with broke into my apartment the night after my big date with the Internationally Famous Art Professor.

  I was asleep in my Murphy bed, in the farthest of the three rooms that stretched out in a row from the front door, when I awoke to a strange noise. I thought it was the wind rattling a window in the living room. When I stumbled out to fix the problem, only half awake, I saw a guy in a dark jacket standing beside the sawhorses. I froze as I tried to make the image compute, thinking, What about this don’t I understand?

  Before I had an answer, he had moved toward me, grabbed me, and put his hand over my mouth. A wild electrical charge went through my brain, an exploding flashbulb. Who is he? What is he doing here?

  And then my very next thought, swear to God, was Jesus Christ. He’s here to steal my power tools.

  But I guess the guy must have had his own electric sander and band saw because he appeared to be ignoring my workbench entirely. The feeling of his big warm hand covering my mouth was an awful sensation.

  I remember him saying something about having a knife as he dragged me to my bedroom and threw me on the bed. My mind was racing, searching for a strategy, a plan of escape. In the Abnormal Psychology 101 class I was taking, I had learned that rape was not about sex but about power. If subduing a struggling woman was a turn-on, then I would pretend to pass out. That might buy me some time.

  So I went limp.

  When he moved one of my arms or legs, I let it fall, like a corpse. When he started pulling off the T-shirt I was sleeping in, I let my lower jaw hang open, my tongue fall out until it was resting on my bottom lip. Keeping my eyes closed during all this was the real challenge. My eyelids didn’t want to relax. But I guess it all worked, because only a few minutes after it had begun, he got up and left the room.

  Had he gone to get the power tools? Had he gone to get some water to throw on me to try to revive me? I didn’t wait to find out. His blue nylon windbreaker was still on the edge of the bed when I jumped up, locked the bedroom door, and started to scream.

  Then I called 911.

  By the time the police arrived, I was in my bedroom alone, sobbing, dressed in the first clothes I could find … the ones on the floor by the bed: my short T-shirt dress and a pair of high leather boots. The policemen barely spoke to me as they dusted the walls for fingerprints. I wondered if they thought of me as another stupid, weird Berkeley chick. I wondered if I was one.

  Next thing I knew I was boarding an ambulance.

  I barely recognized my reflection in the thick glass door as I was escorted into a county hospital emergency room somewhere in Oakland. With my hair sticking out at odd angles and my makeup smeared, I looked like I’d been trick-or-treating.

  Taking a seat by the wall in the waiting area, I settled into staring. I had no attention span for paging through Redbook, the only magazine in the room and one I’d never liked under the best of circumstances. That the whole incident had even happened was just beginning to sink in. It was still hard to believe. I felt sad and alone, but there was no one I could think of to call. Most of my friends had gone home to some other state for the summer. I definitely didn’t want to involve my parents in this and take on their predictable rage. I could hear my father’s “beardo weirdo” rants echoing over the cacophony of my mother’s hysteria. So I sat very still and gazed, glassy-eyed, into the middle distance, seeing nothing, occasionally looking over at the young mom directly across the room from me, who was waiting for someone while keeping an eye on her young son.

  Probably out of boredom, the little boy was drawn toward me. He was seven or eight and intruding into my personal space in the way that only a guileless grade school kid can. He was clearly eager for any kind of distraction in a room that offered not a single intriguing square inch.

  I sat miserable and silent, trying to ignore him.

  “Lady,” he finally said, positioning himself right in front of me, then cocking his head and squinting. “If you ain’t Medusa, you is Medusa’s sister.”

  Stunned that a kid his age had referenced Medusa, I started to laugh.

  “You’re right.” I nodded. “I’m her sister. That’s correct.”

  His mother called him back to her side and he scampered off.

  But as I continued to sit there, his remark made me laugh again and again. In my new role as Medusa’s sister, I was somehow better equipped to cope and put things in perspective. I’d entered the hospital a sniveling, disheveled victim who had been crushed by a cruel, violent encounter. But I would be leaving an awe-inspiring, terrifying Gorgon: a winged woman with brass hands who could turn a man to stone with her piercing stare. Or, should I say, the sister of a woman who could do all of that, but come on! It ran in the family! I had pull with her. She would listen to me. We were on very good terms, me and my sister Medusa.

  A short while later, the hospital released me. I don’t remember much about the medical exam. When I was standing at the reception desk, checking out, I became aware that I had to call someone for a ride home.

  This was a problem. The only person I knew with a car was Mr. IFAP.

  “Hi. I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, aware of voices and laughter in the room where he had answered the phone. Apparently he was entertaining guests again. “I’m calling from a hospital emergency room. And I … well … someone broke into my apartment and I don’t have anyone to give me a ride home now.”

  Much to my relief, he agreed to come get me, even though he was already in the
middle of mentoring another young art genius.

  I babbled incomprehensibly as IFAP and his other prodigy drove me back to the scene of the crime, where they dropped me off curbside so they could make a U-turn and head back to their previously scheduled event.

  I stood alone in the foyer of my apartment house, afraid to open the door to my apartment. I was not eager to face a long night filled with the loud silence of walls full of dusted black fingerprints. What if my attacker was nearby, watching me? Or worse, what if he was already back inside, waiting for me to return?

  It was in this moment that I met my neighbors for the first time.

  “Are you okay?” said a slim blond man, peering out from behind the chain on the door of the apartment across from mine. “What happened?”

  Looking more closely, I could see that he and his companion were in drag.

  “Well, I guess I’m okay,” I said. “Except for … you probably don’t know this, but I … a guy broke in through the window.…”

  “Oh my God!” he said. “Are you okay? Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “Would you mind standing there while I open the door to my apartment?” I asked. He unbolted his chain lock as I put the key into the door and then gingerly kicked it open. I let it swing wide so I could see inside without having to actually enter. The first thing I noticed was that my power tools were still lying on my worktable.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, seeing something else. “I think he got my purse.”

  “Probably had a belt and shoes to match,” said the blond guy. Yes, it was a predictable dumb joke. Inappropriate and not even all that funny. But at that moment it seemed like the most hilarious joke in the world. I laughed and laughed, thrilled to have had two occasions to laugh on a night like this, wanting to stay inside that laughter as long as I could.

  “Honey, why don’t you come in and have a drink with us,” said the blond guy, stepping out from behind his door and into the foyer. “I have to apologize. Kevin and I just split the last Quaalude. But we still have Valium and Tuinal.…” He held out a faux-antique tin full of pills of all different colors and shapes.

  “No thanks,” I said, refusing the pharmaceuticals but relieved by the invitation to escape into someone’s apartment besides my own. The last thing I wanted was to sit in my apartment by myself. So I followed them back into their art deco– and rococo-laden lair, which looked like it had been decorated by someone’s middle-aged aunt who owned a thrift store. Kevin led me over to their Victorian floral print sofa, and his blond partner poured me a glass of white wine.

  After my story had worn all three of us out, my new blond friend handed me a big envelope full of photographs he wanted me to see.

  “This is me as Judy. And here I am as Barbra,” he said, as I shuffled through a massive pile of photos of my two hosts dressed as female celebrities, stripping onstage. “That’s Kevin as Carol Channing and Lady Bird Johnson!” I oohed and aahed, dwelling on each photo with great enthusiasm, happy to go slowly so I wouldn’t have to leave.

  How odd that the weekend had begun and ended with female impersonators. Now Charles Pierce and his impression of Bette Davis became a detail over which the three of us could bond.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” Kevin confessed, once he heard I was an art student. “I’ve been doing some drawing. Would you mind having a look at some of my recent work? I’d love an honest critique.”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all!” I said with a forced enthusiasm that really meant Just don’t make me go back to my apartment alone.

  He brought out a giant pad full of charcoal sketches, set it on a chair, and began turning the pages. I focused intently on examining each of his incredibly detailed studies of male nudes. In almost every case the proportions of their bodies were off: the arms too long, the legs too short, the feet too blocky, the penises much too long or too wide. (Or were they? They were, weren’t they? They had to be, didn’t they?)

  Then I threw myself into an earnest and scholarly critique of the drawings that offered all of the formulas for drawing anatomy I had learned in class thus far. At no point during our discussion did either one of us ever mention, even in passing, that all the drawings were of men having anal sex.

  Finally it was daybreak. I was relieved to see my old friend the sun on this bright new day. My plan was to start out fresh and put the past behind me. I would resume my student routine as though nothing had ever happened.

  Except now every aspect of the world appeared somehow different. Overnight I seemed to have gotten the lead in a Fellini film.

  I was floating above myself as I walked to class, scrutinizing my every move with suspicion. Now I was aware, for the first time, of how my clothing hung on my body.

  I also seemed to have sprouted some kind of radar or antenna whose job it was to scan the 360 degrees around me for signs of danger. Everywhere I looked, I was picking up worrisome details, subtle vibrations about some stranger’s bad intentions. None of the assumptions I’d had yesterday seemed to apply anymore. As I walked to the university down Telegraph Avenue, all the people I passed appeared to be looking at me through a fish-eye lens. If I caught their gaze, an alarm went off in my nervous system. My heart began to race and my breathing quickened. The hair on my arms stood up. I felt light-headed. What was wrong with these people? Why were they staring at me?

  All that independence, swagger, and newly developing sense of power I had begun to try on over the past few weeks of summer quarter went right into the Salvation Army receptacle, along with my miniskirts, my knee-high boots, and my T-shirt dresses. The clothes I was used to wearing suddenly seemed like a dangerous wardrobe for a war zone: a magnet for the wrong kind of attention. Looking attractive now struck me as a very stupid idea.

  Too afraid to return to my apartment, I spent the next few weeks on the couches of friends. And along with my increasing paranoia came Rime of the Ancient Mariner’s disease. I felt compelled to tell the story of what had happened to me, over and over and over to anyone who dared to say, “What you been up to?” or “How was your summer?” I told it in cafés and classrooms, packaged and burnished like it was just another amusing anecdote full of self-deprecation, well-timed pauses, carefully constructed one-liners, and inappropriate laughter.

  My favorite part of the grisly tale, in addition to meeting my neighbors, was the little boy in the waiting room. “If you ain’t Medusa, you is Medusa’s sister,” I would repeat to everyone, laughing, never fully appreciating how stunned the people on whom I sprung this story were to hear me tell it.

  Oddly enough, in addition to the flabbergasted expressions that greeted every telling, an alarmingly high percentage of the girls who heard my story responded with “Something like that happened to me, too.” Then they’d fish out their stories as a way to make me feel better about mine. On the bright side, I stopped feeling so alone.

  It was early August and summer quarter was creeping to a close. I still hadn’t told my parents what had happened because I didn’t want to suffer the predictable consequences of having my newfound independence shut down: Goodbye, apartment living; hello, Mrs. Bissonette!

  Despite my display of bravado, I was on shaky emotional ground. Tired of growing weepy at unpredictable times but unable to will normalcy back into my routine, I started cutting classes and stopped turning in assignments.

  So I made an appointment to talk to a university-affiliated therapist, knowing in advance what I wanted her to say. I wanted her to tell me that I was acting like a baby. “Get over it,” I thought she’d tell me. “It’s been two weeks already. Move on.”

  “I just keep walking around feeling sorry for myself,” I said to her, trying to bait her into delivering the message I thought I needed. “Boo-hoo. Poor me. I start to cry for no reason.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “But it’s not for no reason. You have every right to feel sorry for yourself.”

  I never went back.

  When school ended a couple
of weeks later, I had no choice but to go home for the rest of the month. The lease on my new apartment didn’t start until September. A guy from my life drawing class came with me and stood guard outside the door of the crime scene while I packed everything I owned into the trunk of my car.

  I arrived in the driveway of my parents’ house near Palo Alto the day after my nineteenth birthday.

  At a belated birthday dinner that night, my parents wanted to hear all about school. They had a million questions about how it had gone with Mr. IFAP. They were proud I had studied with such a world-famous man.

  “What did he think of your work?” my mother asked.

  “Um … I think he liked it,” I said.

  “What sort of things did he have to say?” my father asked.

  “Well, you know … this and that. I don’t really remember,” I mumbled.

  “Do you think he might put you on a list for a scholarship or something?” my father asked.

  “Or maybe invite you to exhibit at the gallery where he shows?” said my mother.

  “I don’t know,” I said, rushing past the uncomfortable. “Maybe. Who knows.”

  Then, after dinner, of course they both wanted to see what I’d been working on.

  I had no explanation for why I had so few pieces of work. So I kind of hemmed and hawed and then showed them the only painting I’d finished: a watercolor self-portrait with snakes coming out of my hair. Beneath it I had written the words “Medusa’s Sister.”

  My mother looked at me and shook her head.

  “That’s it?” she said. “This is why you had to go to school all summer? Anything else?”

  “Well,” I said, “wait till you see my new power tools.”

  Roiling on a River

  SOME PEOPLE ARE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT I WENT CAMPING A lot when I was in my twenties. I’m not sure why this surprises them. Maybe the endless excuses I have used over the years to avoid attending parties have added up to the impression that I have had the flu for two decades, thus creating a portrait of someone who is fragile and consumptive. Of course, it could also be the detail that I haven’t done any additional camping in the last twenty years.