Inner Beauty

At the baths, the biggest steroid queen I’ve ever seen: mound upon mound of tanned flesh covered with short dark hair and crowned with the face of a consummate thug. He’s just gross, I agreed along with the boys downstairs. He’s too much.

But when he finds me alone in the upstairs shower, when it turns out he likes me, that’s a whole different story: oh gorilla of my dreams!

His embrace surrounds me on all sides and, overwhelmed, I have no sense of a whole body, only parts. The biceps that cover my sides, the wing-like lats, the chest like a high counter we must lean over to kiss. There is so much of him: he extends on every side as far as I can reach, plush, queen-sized, super-deluxe. A living bed.

He doesn’t break bones or shove me to my knees. He doesn’t make me call him ‘Sir’ or ‘Daddy’. He kisses me and rocks me in his arms. His mouth is fleshy, generous as the rest of him, but his tongue is slender and delicate. The Steroid Queen is a wonderful kisser. I stretch and touch as much as I can reach. His colossal back is covered by small prickly hairs and studded with pimples. He squeezes his arms around me, mashing me between muscle groups. I think of the boa constrictor, the anaconda, his tongue darts into my mouth, I come onto his chest.

I’m not sure what’s acceptable post-coital talk with a Steroid Queen.

“So,” I asked. “Do you pose for calendars?”

He looks away. Obviously the wrong question.

“It sure is a good thing you’re friendly.”

I give up and kiss him some more.

While we’re showering, he tells me I’m handsome and I say, no, I'm not.

This is the Universal Gay Conversation. One man says, “You’re handsome.” The other man says, “It’s the light.”

“I can tell you’re a really good person,” he says. “That’s why you’re handsome.”

This excites me. Unbeknownst to myself, I am radiant with inner goodness!

“The inside is what matters,” the Steroid Queen says. “Even if the outside is, like, totally deformed--if the man is kind, he’s beautiful.”

I’m not sure I’m still flattered.

“But if the guy’s an asshole--” the gorilla queen continues, “then he’s ugly, he’s hideous, no matter how perfect his body is. It’s the inside that matters.”

I launch myself into his arms. Surprised, he staggers a little. Blessed redwood of a man!. I kiss him for a minute or two before I even know why.

I’ve just received a discourse on inner beauty from the man holding the record for the Largest Surface Area in Chicagoland.

We kiss beneath the shower. He holds me tight. It’s the inside that matters.

I believe in inner beauty too, just like he does.

Other people can rely on inner beauty.

We don’t trust it yet.

I want to tell him—and I want him to tell me—that what’s inside will be enough, that it can hold us.

Favor

A man has chained himself to the train tracks!

There’s no arguing with him. He’s not protesting anything.

This is not about Tobacco, not about Big Oil. This is not the War on Fur. Reporters point their mikes to his parched lips. “All I want is to be honest with myself, he says and adds: “I am in favor of everything.”

Sally Pierce ran out of her house for this, the latest disaster. A tragedy to be sure, and still the dishes must be done.

Meanwhile the neighbors beg him to relent, unlock, escape. Already they are preparing statements: The trash went on Wednesday. We are, all of us, very religious people.

But this train cannot be delayed by good intentions: the man is due to be crushed at a quarter past noon. In the meantime, his mouth is full of dust and praise for tube socks and carbon monoxide. He has seen up several ladies’ skirts and praised what he saw there.

A rumbling is heard: the train is coming. The reporters step back and cameras are lifted.

The train: what it is, what it is, what it is.

There’s a man on the tracks who loves the world and he’s not going to stop till it knows.

A small man is alive . . .

A small man is alive in my oven. He’s in there with the pie. He’s rooting for it. An update on dessert is all I want but there he is, plumped up like a baked apple, giving me advice accompanied by small puffs of steam.

“More is possible now,” he says. “Some of it is awful. Not all of it.”

I quickly close the oven door. I get scared when he tells me that I too must learn to cook.

Cheering Up

A tractor tire across your chest and all you have to do is pop it, which you try doggedly to do with your weapon, your tool, a perfectly white plastic spoon.

Human Touch

Grizzly bears walk upright out of the steam, white towels draped over their shoulders. Foxes chase rabbits down the mirrored halls. An octopus hangs from the sling. The tattooed rat tells me there’s a horse in the hot tub. The rat goes quiet; I watch him quiver against the steam room wall. A bear gets him. He disappears without a squeak.

We pride ourselves on being more dangerous than the average petting zoo. It’s eat, or be eaten, on Bear Night at the baths.

An otter glides the length of the pool, water streaming his sleek belly, his eyes closed in private joy. I dive after him and he wakes, becomes an eel. I am a shark. The eel reaches the end of the pool, becomes a newt and darts away. I am a bullfrog. A ‘gator takes a fancy to me, but before his jaw snaps I am gone.

The otter, the eel, the newt in the triple X video lounge is now a cougar cub. I am my very best lion. His warm feline eyes survey me—god how I love him when he is a mammal! He is a gray-footed ferret. He runs. I pad through the maze, roaring and arranging my mane. Has a escaped? Look, a mouse! He starts to scram, I catch his tail. He’s about to be a short snack but now he’s a wolf-dog with ideas of his own. I am a bear, I cling to him as he turns into a tiger. I can be a tiger but his is a snake so I am a mongoose and he is a hornet. I am a wasp. The maze splinters, falls away. He is an elephant, a tusker. I am a mammoth, extinct until recalled by desire. We joust, we tussle, the other animals race away as from a fire. Can I be fire? I blaze, he rises up above me. Steam.

He is gone. He has escaped. A parrot appears above me in the air. He returns to me, green and yellow, in a flash of furious wings. “Make a wish!” he cries. “Make a wish!”

He knows what I want, but I can be a parrot too, and I squawk.

Twin explosions in the air, our other species rush past like books of pictures flipping fast as we try to be at once and in all parts together men.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 22

Is this seemly behavior for a Hindu wife?

Standing naked, black skin gleaming, her garland of human heads drips fresh blood on the lily-white corpse of her husband. Her red tongue sticks out nine miles and even dead he’s got a hard-on.

What’s going on here?

According to the commentator Dasgupta, originally the corpse was just a corpse, a heap of corpses, demons slain in cosmic battle. It is the touch of the Mother’s foot that turns the śava, corpse, into Śiva.

Nothing pure or impure. Nothing holy or profane.

Thus it is said: she herself has become everything,

Yama Kama Curry

As soon as I saw the sign I knew we had to stop. Yama is the Hindu god of death; Kama is the god of sexual desire—the same one that got blasted to cinders by Shiva.

Who could pass up a chance for lunch at the Sex and Death Curry Shop? We lack for nothing here in Tokyoland.

These moments interest me most: when the day offers itself for dream interpretation and appearance is a scratch on the sand beneath which a secret is buried.

Lunch special: fresh homemade curry, 880 yen.

Seven worlds up a river of light empties into a round expanse: in this world it manifests as a spoon.

In this world where absolutely everything matters--was beef the best choice?

There was even a stamp card--to keep us coming back. Excuse me, I can't read Japanese, but I hope to redeem my twelve entrees for entry to Paradise.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 21

When I was six I knew that when I slept a witch came with a rattling shopping cart to carry me off to the land of dreams.

About the afterlife I had no questions. I knew that when I died the shopping cart would ascend through all the invisible worlds, which were stacked one on top of the other, like a multi-storey parking garage.

Actually two parking garages. One was Heaven and the other, Hell. Heaven was on the left. Sometimes. Other times it was on the right.

That was the problem. Heaven and Hell kept switching places. You had to be very careful not to choose the wrong one and wind up in Hell by mistake. Needless to say, Hell put on a good show. At the edges it looked absolutely splendid. What you saw was a woman sipping a cocktail beside a pool full of gentlemen. It wasn’t until too late, until you’d already chosen, that you saw the cocktail was molten lead, the pool was pus and the men were all talkers with big opinions and no genitals. You had to look carefully and try not to get dizzy, as the devil offered you unlimited free pinball machines.

Heaven, on the other hand, was honest and humble, and generally lost out.I looked, and waited, and tried to decide. Meanwhile, my shopping cart kept going higher.

Where was I headed? I hadn’t a clue. Only the cart knows where it is going, up higher and higher, someplace unimaginable.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 20

In this dream I look out the window of a cabin into a snowstorm. I see only trees and I know that I am very far from any road or town. The snow deepens; I will be trapped for many days. This is when I ought to pray, I think. Just then a man steps out from behind a tree. He is a tall broad-shouldered woodsman, and naked except for a ski cap.

Snow falls on his fine hairs and his prick points to the sky.

I went to the wilderness to be good, to clear my head. All day I sat with my holy books and good intentions. All day I burned with hopeless desire. He has found me, even here.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 19

Wouldn’t it be nice, if everyone just went ahead and did what they were going to do anyway—but this time without beheading any cats?

Percent Real

Two major news events came to dominate the year 2009. In the first, news long-suspected was verified at last: classified government documents revealed that 87.5% of the populace was made-up. Not made-up of something, just made-up. Remarkably life-like phony stand-ins created by congressmen seeking to increase their percentage of federal tax dollars.

These so-called people—incapable of actual feeling—served primarily to charge up massive credit card bills, win sweepstakes, and answer telephone polls.

(Some trivia: by luck or design, the populace of Delaware turned out to be overwhelmingly real. Ditto Wyoming. Connecticut, on the other hand, was found to be only 6.2% real.)

The outcry was immediate, passionate: These so-called people are taking our jobs! They’re taking up space on the trains and the roads! They’re polluting the air! Heedless creation is genocide-in-reverse! These fake people must be deflated at once!

The fake people, for their part, insisted they were just as real as anyone else—felt pain, felt joy etc. At times their pleas were quite convincing. We took care however, not to believe them.

The outrage created by the first report was nothing compared to the fury that greeted the second.

We apologize profusely for any inconvenience, came the news. It comes as a shock, even to us and indeed we’re ashamed to admit it:

(You might want to sit down to read this.)

Everyone’s real.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 18

One day Nasruddin’s disciples found him in the vegetable market, crouched down beside a brimming basket of chilies, crying inconsolably. They watched, astonished, as he bit into the fiery chilies one after another. His face flaming with pain and surprise, tears rushed from his eyes and blood from his cracked lips as he continued, nonetheless, to eat the chilies one after another, without respite.

Finally someone grabbed his hand and the disciples asked, “Nasruddin, why are you doing this!”

And through his tears, Nasruddin said, “I keep hoping I’ll find a sweet one.”

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 17

I was a college kid disguised in a wife-beater the first time I walked in the door at Club Stud, 220 South Broadway in Denver. The bartender looked me over and said, “So you came to visit us, huh? That’s all right. You can have a lot of fun in the gutter.”

Later, when it was my turn on the street, I would go to the all-night diner where that same man worked and, if no one else was there, he’d give me a free bowl of biscuits and gravy, then blow me in the mop closet. If he heard the front door rattle, he’d run out to pour coffee and leave me there, my jeans shoved to my knees, my head leaned on the wall beside the mop heads, and I prayed, in the long term, for a less doomed life, and, in the short term, for the guy to get back in there, and meanwhile I reminded God and the Devil that I really did not want to get arrested, not for anything.

Test Results

Call at 1 for test results, I’d been told, but when I called at 1 the secretary said the doctor was out and could I call back at 3? I didn’t really believe the doctor was out. At 3 I called back and the secretary said, just a minute, and put me on hold.

I should have remembered the song, something played on a Casio keyboard with only one finger. Waiting to talk to the doctor, I flashed on everyone else who was scared just then, all of us awaiting bad news, the universal brother-and-sisterhood of those to whom shit happens.

The doctor came on then and said I was fine but it wasn’t the way it usually was, it wasn’t like I’d been saved forever, it was just “not today”. Cancer tests are coming up Thursday; there’s a lot of traffic between now and then.

Deep fear is useful, like a forest fire. The fire passes and I find myself standing in a clearing with the scrub burned away. The previously important appears as rank hallucination. I wanted people to respect me. I worried about the size of my ears.

I was some kind of loony!

A thirty kilo suitcase. Thirty kilos--and no little wheels! Thirty kilos every day of my life, tugging that suitcase up and down stairs, hauling it onto the train. Nobody notices, they’ve got a suitcase of their own to muscle around. Thirty kilo suitcase and what’s inside?

Birdseed. Thirty kilos of very important birdseed.

The reward for panic is vision by firelight. In a blackened forest clearing, I scoop out birdseed by the handful. Even the suitcase, it turns out, is made entirely of sunflower seeds.

Leave the suitcase in the clearing. The birds will come. The birds will know what to do with all my very terribly tremendously important birdseed.

Let's Pretend None Of This Is Going On

(The following message will vanish in a few hours or days. After that, it may from time to time reappear.)

My father asked me once, “Where will I find your book? Will it be up on the bestseller rack, or will I have to ask for it, wrapped in brown paper, from under the counter?”

“Neither,” I told him.

Last Sunday, at the café, my husband turned to the man at the next table—I was about to stand up and read a little—and he said, “He only writes about sex. It’s all dirty. Are you over 18?”

I have two names. One I keep shined for work; it pinches my toes and makes me limp when I walk. At work I must forever refer to my husband as my “roommate”. At work—a women-only school--I am sternly reminded that I must never romance my young and attractive students.

I must nod solemnly and promise to keep myself in check.

I am not allowed to say, ”The young ladies are safer with me than with a birch tree.”

I’m a dirty writer. As such, I am a constant recipient of sermonettes on monogamy, marriage and appropriate behavior.

I used to say that if I ever made a picture book of Tokyo, every picture would bear the caption, Let’s pretend none of this is going on.

Make that a picture book of the whole world.

I had a job at a pizza parlor once where my boss pestered me constantly for tales of sexual conquest. (What can I say? I was 23 and living in a place with sand dunes.) I told him tales and he’d stand there starry-eyed, his prick standing up beneath his apron.

He fired me for immorality.

I hereby warn the sermonizers. The next time I run into you at some place you said you’d never go, doing something you said you'd never ever do—I am not going to be understanding.

I’m going to raise a ruckus. I will press my hand to my chest and swoon. And when I wake up I will crawl across the floor whimpering, “Hypocrite? Hypocrite?”

The world won’t end if you tell the truth--and if it does end it wasn’t a world worth saving.

I’m a dirty writer. How entirely depraved.

”Not only does he do it, he talks about it!”

You are perhaps aware that we are in the midst of The Great Tokyo Popper Famine.

No poppers in Tokyo. They’ve been banned. Toss those poppers folks; they’re illegal.

My husband and I mentioned this recently to a visiting friend. He looked shocked that such a thing would even be mentioned. He said, “Oh well I would never.”

He was so shocked, apparently, that he left his knapsack behind in which, after a sniff, we found, secreted in multiple pockets, no fewer than eight bottles of poppers.

Eight! The man is downright inflammable!

Naturally we returned our dear friend’s bag immediately, but we did debate for quite awhile if we could perhaps keep a bottle or two of Rush or Jungle Juice, or Man Scent. It’s a famine. Poppers ought to be rationed.*

After all, he’d never think of using them. They’d been mystically teleported into his bag: a miraculous event akin to the virgin birth.

Were we within our rights?

I think there ought to be--for the first time in the history of the Earth—some kind of incentive plan for telling the truth.

But of course I think that. I’m a dirty writer.



(*Statements included herein should not be seen as encouragement to use Poppers of any brand or variety. Poppers are dangerous and illegal. Poppers are bad for you and me.)

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 16

It should not be underestimated, the profound solace and reassurance the devout receive, just from hating queers.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 15

In theology, as in India, the problem is Partition. Some bozo came along and drew the line in the wrong place. We live in exile now; half the family is over there. We have left, back in that other country, a lot that we need.

The body and the soul, for the chance of being together, must risk a dangerous crossing. Reunions are rare.

Some of us are sneaking over, in the dark of night. Of course it is appallingly dangerous. You can come with us if you want.

How good are you at running in the dark?

The Second Aquarium

I love you more every day, she said, and of course he agreed. Quick kiss. They were to be married in 3 months time. Her first, his second, marriage.

He had his doubts. Most of what passed for love was fluff, of course. A cozy blanket with all the durability of dryer lint. But he thought he had found a pretty good barometer of actual love and that was simple. Love was how much you could be actually, you know, be bothered. Inconvenience, the test of true love.

Not that he was by nature a reflective person. A disastrous first marriage had rendered him self-aware against his will; he was prone to see himself at moments when he would really rather not.

Honey, can you do me a favor? she said, and immediately his polite objections would begin. He would be happy to, of course—but right now he was busy. Couldn’t it wait? Was it really so necessary? Is it really so important to you, dear?

He was usually able to dodge the request, defer it, or haggle it down to something more convenient.

Compare this to the early days of their relationship when he was happy to do anything to share with her a cup of coffee. He’d cross the city to light her cigarette.

Think of when she’d gone away for the first time—a three week business trip—and she’d given him, as a token of good trust, the keys to his apartment. Use it whenever you’d like, she said. Actually, she had a favor to ask. Would he mind checking in a few times, just to make sure the place hadn’t burned down--and just to feed the fish?

He’d agreed immediately. Never mind that her house was an hour and a half from her own. He’d be missing her and would be grateful to catch the scent of her hair from her pillow.

Two freshwater tanks. Standard 15 gallon tanks full of common pet shop fish: platys, mollys, neon tetras, angelfish and tiger barbs. Nothing ambitious. Nothing that cost more than a dollar-forty-nine. He decided that when they knew each other better he’d convince her to exchange the plastic plants for real ones. Still, the fish were pretty, he decided, as he sprinkled in the food. It’s good for city-dwellers to have living things to care for. Keeps us in touch.

The first week he checked in three times. The second week was busy at work and then of course he deserved to relax and live a little. He stayed out late and drank a lot and even befriended a very charming and affectionate woman. Not that anything inappropriate had occurred, or at least no worse than what many people would do after a few too many drinks. He was sure that his fiancée would laugh if she had seen them—but of course it was better she had not seen.

The stink when he opened the door was warm and dense, like rice left in a cooker for a month, like something had gone wrong while baking bread. One tank entirely dead. He was stunned by how sorry he felt as netted out the rotting fish and flushed them in her peach-colored toilet. He ladled out most of the water with a sauce pan and spilled some on her rug. It occurred to him that he was probably doomed in love.

The tank of dead fish had been nearer the window. It had gotten too warm. A few fish had died and that had poisoned the others.

The fish in the other tank were sluggish but alive.

She’d forgive him of course. Just fish! He’d apologize abjectly and they’d laugh it off. Just 99 cent fish!

He repeated this to himself as he crouched beside the tank of survivors and studied the neon tetras. One of them was struggling, he thought. It had a definite limp.

Could fish limp?

How could it be that he’d gotten this far in his life and learned absolutely nothing?

As for her, she was too good for him. He knew that. She was so young and confident. So hopeful. She had a high opinion of the world. He argued with her, playfully, and sometimes accused her of being naïve. Privately, he hoped she’d win the argument. He wanted the world to turn out hopeful, people good.

The problem wasn’t dead fish, really. They were dead and could not be worried over.

He understood now that Hell was the second aquarium, which remained now to be tended to or slaughtered.

He would apologize, sincerely and repeatedly. That’s all he needed to do. Even if he did kill off the second tank. They were just fish, after all. She couldn’t have spent more than ten dollars. Another reason why God created the gift certificate. He’d give her one for fifty, or even a hundred, dollars. She could upgrade to piranha.

He reassured himself this way every night as he rode the train across the city for 90 minutes, a little more, to her dark apartment where he stood at the open door and sniffed the air, tip-toed across the floor to spy into the dark tank and check for signs of movement before daring to turn on the light and see that, yes, the fish were still alive.

Every night he slept in her apartment with only fish for company. Work was busy again—he often didn’t arrive until after midnight. Worse, he found himself worrying about the fish during the day. An angelfish was looking ragged. He’d only counted six neon tetras; he was sure there’d been seven before.

Why had he ever gotten involved with this woman? He could be relaxing at home. His own house was a wreck; he’d hardly been home in days.

On the day she was to arrive he’d carefully cleaned the glass, washed the plastic plants in the sink and begged the fish to please—please--survive that day at least so that she wouldn’t find one floating when she came home.

What’s one dead fish? Nothing, he thought and still he’d prayed when they at last walked into that dark room together, home from the airport where he’d picked her up, stunned to find her even more lovely than he remembered, thrilled to embrace and welcome her—and to quickly, embarrassedly, explain that he had killed her tropical fish--but only half of them.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 14

Maybe the genie feels entirely at peace as he waits all day and all night in the lamp.

Slouched against the cool dark bronze with his feet stretched out in front of him, thinking, “I did it. I made her queen.” Even if he’s a little bored, he knows the score. She’ll either ask him to move mountains or she won’t. He might wait for years--or maybe this very hour he will fly through the air again, a palace in his palm.

Whatever happens, he belongs to her. She’s the queen of the world. She’s got two wishes left.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 13

Of all the qualities to be desired in a lover, shape-shifting is the best. Admit it. How much easier to love someone if they are, well, someone else, at least occasionally. Your sweat-soaked warrior, also a college boy, bodyguard and confidante, and sometimes just one of the girls. Put a diamond stud in his ear, so you can spot him, when he turns back into a bear.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 12

Don’t be fooled and imagine we’re praying for evil. That wish has already been granted. We have more than sufficient evil, thank you, and if anyone else is running low, well, we are willing to trade some of ours—for even the cheapest red wine.

What we are yearning for is a visit from that inspired guttersnipe, sent irregularly from Heaven to enrage the Religious Right. The patron saint of snow days and public sex. The policeman’s untied laces. The fire drill that goes off at exactly the right time.

The Devil, Dearly Loved, Renounces Evil / 11

Milarepa, murderer and black magician, fearing the tortures of hell, devoted himself to spiritual practices. He meditated in his cave until his skin turned the green of nettles, until word of his spiritual prowess reached the pointy hairy ears of the demons.

And one day the demons went to visit him.

He greeted them at the door, “Lust! Spite! Envy! Despair! How are you! Come in, come in.”

The demons, a little taken aback by this reception, took off their spike heels and sat on the floor. Milarepa served tea and they all sat around like society ladies until Demon Spite remembered that this was not why they had come. With a couple kicks and a snarl he rallied the other demons to action and they crashed around the cave hissing and flashing their teeth and filling the air with their hot stinky breath.

Milarepa continued to sit calmly, sipping his tea amid all the destruction and clatter, like a mother possessed of unshakeable calm at a birthday party for pre-school children.

Seeing that chaos was having little effect on their host, the demons started in with the threats, revealing to him scenes of unspeakable pain and, when that didn’t work, delirious pleasure. Like traveling merchants they showed him everything they had on offer—but Milarepa was unmoved. Finally, the most terrifying of the demons roared--showing its cavernous mouth, its teeth like black blades, and its breath was the smell of corpses in plague time--and Milarepa, hospitable as ever, placed his head into the demon’s mouth.

And the demons vanished.

Alone in his cave, Milarepa continued to sip his tea.