This January morning bright and windy and he’s staring at a face floating in a mirror. Dirty mirror in a public lavatory at the Trailways bus station. The man’s face appears beside his, looming above his like a moon. The face larger, stained teeth glistening in a wet sly smile. Maybe at one of the churches, he’d seen this face. Maybe it was Mama who’d introduced them. One of the ministers, to take the place of the elder. And the fingers clutching at his, that little (secret) tickle of the thumb against the palm of his hand, so he’d laughed, and shivered, and was ashamed. And now, that face has followed him here. In the mirror beside his. And the hands touching him, tickling at first, and then harder so he could not break away and he could not breathe for something tarry-black flew up to his face, covering his mouth, his mouth and his nose, he could not breathe and began to fall into the tarry blackness, and the hands gripped him, and the arms gripped him, and the mouth sucked at him, and he opened his mouth to scream but could not. And a door opened and there came a shout Hey! What are you perverts doing! Jesus. And the voice faded, the door was shut again in revulsion. The man-who-was-a-minister was gone. He wasn’t sure, he’d thought it was a minister, and Mama had thought he was, but Mama was sometimes mistaken and when this was so, Mama would not admit her mistake and became very excited if you tried to correct her. The side of his head hurt, he opened his eyes not knowing at first where he was then seeing he was lying on a filthy floor partway inside a toilet stall. And urinals along the wall, filthy. And sink and mirror splotched with filth. And the smells, he could not breathe. Where he’d been dropped, like garbage. Dropped and kicked in the chest, with the hope that his heart would cease beating but it had not. To his shame he saw that his trousers had been opened, the front of his trousers crudely unzipped and the zipper broken and Mama would know, if the zipper was broken. He was breathing now but so shallowly he could not catch his breath. He was crying, and he was whimpering. Someone came to lift him by the underarms, in disgust. Get out of here. Go away from here. Shame! The age you are! Never come back here, go away to Hell where you belong. Barely he could walk, the pain between his legs was so severe. Pain in the crack of his ass, the tender skin broken, bleeding. Barely could he make his way through the bus station waiting room where every eye was fixed upon him in revulsion and mirth.
Demon-child. Look!
Crawling away to die. Where he’d hidden. One of the boarded-up buildings on the river. Crawl through a window, and inside. Dropping to the cellar floor. And there, a metallic surface in which the face awaited except now he saw how the mark of Satan was upon him, in his right eyeball a speck of dirt? dust? blood? Where at last the demon has been released. For it is the New Year. Shifting of Earth’s axis. For to be away from what is familiar, like walking on a sharp-slanted floor, allows something other in. Or the something other has been inside you all along and until now you do not realize.
With a strange sick calm he knows. Knows even before he has seen: sign of Satan. In the yellowish-white of his eyeball. Not the coiled little snake but the five-sided star: pentagram.
The ministers had warned. Five-sided star: pentagram.
It is there, in his right eye. He rubs at it frantically with his fist.
Runs home, two miles. He’s a familiar sight here though no one knows his name. Mama knows there’s been trouble, has he lied about taking his medication? Hiding the capsule under his tongue then spitting it out? Jesus yes but you can’t oversee every minute with one like him. Yes he was born wrong and nobody’s fault, nobody’d told any of us don’t smoke don’t drink that shit they tell the young mothers today nobody told us, like nobody told our mothers or their mothers, see? Yes but God must’ve wanted it this way. Yes but your love wears out like the lead backing of a cheap mirror corroding the glass. Yes but you have prayed and prayed and cursed the words not echoing up to God but downward into an empty smelly well.
Nineteen years old, and stunted-growth like a dwarf, or almost. And the rounded shoulders of a dwarf. Shaved-head glinting blue. Little bumps, knobs and shallows in the shaved-head, and a constellation of pale freckles. People thought he’d been sick, his hair had fallen out, he was so skinny, gangly-limbed. But luminous shining eyes women at church knew to be beautiful. And on the street, where he’d wandered miles. Strangers, smiling at him. Smiling nervously, tensely at him. Smiling as Christians are bade to do, not to judge. And in the neighborhood near his home he was known by a first name like a Bible name—Jethro. Weird sweet boy but excitable, couldn’t look you in the eye. Twitching his shoulders like in a spasm like he’s shrugging out of somebody’s grip.
Fast as you can run, somebody else runs faster!
Or, pursuing you in a vehicle. Horn honking, and guys screaming out the window. Freaky Jethro. Sick perv. Fag.
In the place they are living now, row house on Mill Street he’s pressing his knuckly hands against his ears not hearing his drunk Mama shouting why is he home so early, has a job in a lumber yard five-minute walk away so why isn’t he there? Pushes past the drunk fat woman and into the bathroom, shuts the door and there in the mirror Oh God it has returned: five-sided star, pentagram. Unmistakable sign of Satan. Embedded deep in the right eyeball below the dilated pupil.
No! No! God help.
Goes wild, rubs with both fists, pokes with fingers. He’s sobbing, praying. Beats at himself, fists and nails. His sister now pounding on the door what is it? What’s wrong? Jeth? And Mama’s voice loud and frightened. It has happened, he thinks. First clear thought Has happened, now everyone will see. Like a stone sinking in water, so clear and so calm. Because he has always known the prayers were useless. On your knees bowing your head inviting Jesus into your heart but why should Jesus come into your heart that’s so freaky-ugly, and the heart of a fag? Sign of the demon would return, absorbed into his blood but must one day re-emerge.
Pushes past the women and in the kitchen paws through drawers scattering cutlery that falls to the floor, there’s the long carving knife, his fingers shut about it like fate. Again pushes past the women without taking notice of them, shoves aside his heavyset sister as lightly as he lifts lumber, armloads of bricks. Hasn’t he prayed to Our Father to be perfect as a machine, many times? A machine does not think, and a machine does not feel. A machine does not starve for love. A machine does.
Inside the bathroom and the door shut and locked behind him against the screaming women. Whispering to the frightened face in the mirror Away Satan! Away Satan! Jesus help me. Steadying his right wrist with the fingers of his left hand, in the fingers of his right hand gripping the carving knife, bringing it to the eyeball, unable to resist wincing, blinking, jerking away with a whimper—but again forcing himself to bring the tip of the knife to the eyeball, and with a boldness borne of desperation inserting and twisting the accursed eyeball. Yes! Now! It is in. Pain so colossal it could not be measured—like the sky. Burning cleansing roaring sensation as of utter surprise, astonishment. A blast of fire. The eyeball is not easy to dislodge, it is connected by sinewy tissue to the interior of the socket, he must pull at it with his bloody fingers, moaning, not knowing that it is he who is moaning, sawing with the sharper edge of the knife. Manages to cut the eyeball free, like Mama squeezing baby out of her belly into this pig trough of sin and filth and defilement, no turning back until Jesus calls you home.
He drops the eyeball into the stained toilet, flushes the toilet with shaky slippery-excited fingers. And the sign of the demon is gone.
One eye socket empty and fresh-bleeding like tears and he is on his knees praying Thank you God! Thank you Jesus! weeping with joy as angels in radiant garments with eyes of blinding brightness reach down to embrace him not mindful of his red-slippery mask of a face and not mindful that he is freaky, a perv or a fag, for he is none of these now, now he is himself an angel of God, now he will float into the sky above the Earth where, some wind-blustery January morning you will see him, or a face like his, in a furious cloud.
Lorelei
Please lo
ve me my eyes beg. My need is so raw, I can’t blame any of you from looking quickly away.
Not you, not you, and you—none of you can I blame. Only just love me, can’t you? Love me...
That Sunday night, desperate not to be late, I had to change trains at Times Square, and the subway was jammed, both trains crowded, always I knew it would happen soon, my destiny would happen within the hour, except: it was required that I be at the precise position when you lift your eyes to mine (casual-seeming, by chance) as you turn to face me. I must be there, or the precious moment will pass, and then—so lonely! In the swarm of strangers departing a train, pushing into the next train, pushing to the gritty stairs, breathless and trying not to turn my ankle in my spike-heeled sandals, my hair so glossy black you’d suspect it must be dyed but my hair is not dyed, this is my natural hair-color, and my skin white, exquisite soft-skinned white, and I’m wearing a black suede short skirt to mid-thigh and black diamond-patterned stockings with a black satin garter belt you can catch a glimpse of when I’m seated and I cross my slender legs in just the right, practiced way; and a white lace camisole, and beneath the camisole a black satin lace bra that grips my small breasts tight lifting them in mute appeal. Please love me, please look at me, how can you look away? Here I am, before you. My shiny-black hair I have ratted with a steel comb to three times its natural size, my mouth that’s small and hurt like a snail in its shell I have outlined in crimson, a high-gloss lipstick applied to the outside of the lips enlarging them so I’m breathless smiling making my way to the far side of the track being pushed-against, collided-with, rudely touched by—who?—sometimes I feel one of you brush against me light as a feather’s touch, purely by accident, or almost-accident, sometimes it’s a hurtful jolt, I could step aside if I’m alert enough but a strange lassitude overcomes me, this one isn’t the one, and yet!—the shock of him colliding with me as he hurries past, scarcely aware of me, doesn’t slow his pace or apologize, not even a murmured Excuse me, the touch is like an electric shock, half-pleasurable, though meant to hurt. As if he knows, this stranger, that he isn’t the one. Not tonight.
That Sunday night, not late—not yet 10 P.M. And not so crowded as the previous nights, those wild weekend nights, but still plenty crowded at Times Square, you can be sure. And I was the desperate girl you saw hurrying to make the downtown train. Before the doors closed. Stumbling in my high-heeled shoes so you might have thought there was something wrong with me, the over-bright glisten in my black-mascara eyes and parted crimson lips, the look in my feverish face of anticipation and dread, you’d have felt a stab of pity, and maybe something else, something deeper than pity, and more cruel, and possibly you’d offered to help me, offered your seat to me at least. And possibly, I’d have accepted.
Always in the subway I think On this train, this train is my destiny: who? Which one of you? Tremulous with excitement. Anticipation. Pondering through my lowered eyelashes the possibilities. Mostly men of course but (sometimes) women also. Young men, middle-aged men, occasionally older men. Young women, with a certain sign. But never middle-aged, or older women. Never. I tried not even to look at them. Resented them, their raddled faces and tired eyes. And sometimes in those eyes a look of hope, which I particularly despised. For in the hopeless, hope is obscene! And when out of sheer loneliness one of these women smiles at me, moves over inviting me to sit beside her, like hell I will sit next to some old bag like she’s my mother, or grandmother!
As if I would ever be one of them.
On the train that night a woman of about forty-five took shrewd note of me as soon as I entered the car, out of breath and laughing to myself, my hair just slightly disheveled, fallen into my face. The woman was wearing a green uniform, and ugly dirty-white nurse’s shoes they looked like, and her dirt-colored hair flat against her head in a hairnet, staring at me not with sympathy or pity but with disapproval I thought, prissy fish-mouth I tried not to look at. Hate that type of person observing me, judging me coolly. Not to the hairnet woman was I pleading Look at me, love me! Hey: here I am.
In the subway the trains move so swiftly you can never catch your breath. Outside the grimy window that’s a reflecting surface like a mirror mostly there are the rushing tunnel walls, that slow as the train slows for a station, and the doors open with a pneumatic hiss like the sigh of a great ugly beast, and passengers lurch off, and new passengers lurch on, and I lift my eyes hopeful and yearning Who will be my destiny? Which one of you? At Thirty-fourth Street one of you entered the car, sat near me, I could see that he’d chosen the seat beside me deliberately, for there were other, unoccupied seats. The way his eyes trailed over me like slow slugs, my crossed legs in the patterned black stockings, my mouth in a dreamy half-smile, as if I’m expecting to recognize a friend. A friendly face. Like a child hoping to be pleasantly surprised, for I am not a cynical person by nature. And he stared at me appraising. His mouth moved into a kind of smile. He was many years older than I was, one of the bad-Daddys of the subway. In the underground are the bad-Daddys, you know one another. Staring rudely, with that smile at the edge of a sneer, or a sneer at the edge of a smile. In his early forties, pale coarse pitted skin attractive in that battered way some men are, that would be hopeless laughable ugliness in a female. Sand-colored hair crimped and wavy like a wig, and in his right earlobe a silver ear cuff looking as if it might hurt, like something clamped into the flesh. The sign that took my eye immediately was that he was wearing suede, which matched my skirt: a black jacket with chrome studs. (The jacket was not “real” suede of course. My skirt, that strained at my thighs just inches below the fork in my legs, was not “real” suede of course.) He was wearing dark trousers and (fake) ostrich-skin boots. On his (hairy) left wrist, a heavy ID bracelet. When he opened his mouth to smile, there was the shock of a gleaming tongue-ring winking at me. As if he knew me he spoke a name, had to be a name he’d invented at that moment, or maybe it was a name known to him, of a girl he’d known and had not seen in years, and I smiled at him saying no that is not my name, I am not that girl, and he asked Which girl are you, then? And the tongue-ring winked at me in a nasty way, unmistakable. And I told him Lorelei—I am Lorelei. And he cupped his hand to his ear as if hard-of-hearing in the noisy subway train and he repeated the name Lorelei and added A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. It was not clear to me if he spoke these words truly or in jest but I saw that he was excited by me. I saw the light come into his eyes, that were ordinary small mud-colored eyes. In a lowered voice he began speaking of himself, said he was a lonely pilgrim searching for something he could not name, been searching for all of his life, would I like to have a drink with him, please would I like to have a drink with him, we could get off at the next stop and have a drink together, he knew just the place, and all this time I was quietly observing him, through my mascara-lashes I was observing him, his eyes that were ordinary and mud-colored and hopeful and the truth came to me No: he is not the one. So politely I told him I could not get off the train with him, no thank you. Told him that I was meeting someone else. And he stared at me not-so-friendly now, and spoke to me in a low crude voice not-so-friendly now, exposing the spit-gleaming tongue-ring not-so-friendly now, called me Lorelei like it was Loora-Lee and some kind of stupid name, cow-name, he didn’t think so much of. All this while other passengers in the train were trying not to observe us, trying not to hear the man speaking to me, the way you’d speak to (maybe) a retarded girl in the train, a girl her family ought not to have let ride the train alone, that kind of girl, but I am not that girl of course. One of those eavesdropping was the hairnet woman in the ugly green uniform, I saw now was food-stained, had to be a cafeteria worker probably, so I could pity her. The hairnet woman was frowning at both of us like we were the scum of the earth, so I could despise her.
Shutting my eyes then, and not opening them until later, several stops later, the hairnet woman was gone and the tongue-ring man in the seat beside me was gone and I checked my reflection in my little gold
mirror compact seeing a shiny nose, anxious eyes for I had almost made a mistake. That one was a test. In your ignorance you might have gone with him.
For my life at that time was a continual testing. That in ignorance or desperation I would make a terrible error, and would not realize my destiny.
Slamming into the car from the car ahead was a big girl of about thirty with no eyelashes like she’d plucked them all out or shaved them, and she’d shaved most of her head so just stiff platinum-blond quills remained, so striking!—everybody in the car stared at her even those who’d been nodding off woke to take in such a sight. The girl’s face was glowing and shiny as if made of some synthetic material like flesh-plastic, with no pores, and her lips were swollen and pouty, and moved as if she was talking to herself. For in the subway, some of us sometimes talk to ourselves, and you are (maybe) meant to overhear. Seeing me, her eyes latching onto mine, she stopped in mid-stride and stood swaying above me holding the rail about two feet from me, observing me and a slow smile broke over the plastic-face like something melting. Big husky girl six feet tall in khakis and tight-fitting black T-shirt with DRAGO FREK in red letters. The sign was a bullet-shape silver ring on the middle finger of her left hand which was the bullet-shape of the silver buckle of my belt cinching in my waist tight. Her eyes on me restless as those minnow-sized fish that devour living things in seconds—piranha. Leaned down to ask did I know what the freak time it was and I laughed saying no I did not know what the “freak time” it was, I was sorry. After 10 P.M. I said, this is what I thought the time was up on the ground where there were clocks. This made Plastic Girl laugh too, and a smell of spicy meat came from her opened mouth. She asked didn’t I wear a wristwatch?—and I said no, and she laughed again saying Hey was I a girl who didn’t give a shit about the time, and I frowned at this, I did not like to hear profanity or nasty words, not even from a girl who stared at me in a way that was flattering. All this while Plastic Girl leaning over me and breathing that meaty smell saying, I guess you’re the kind of girl who knows her own mind. That is fucking cool.