Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

He is quoting from the Book of Wisdom. Wisdom is not something the green girl possesses in abundance. Her sacred scriptures are new wave films and fashion magazines.

Walking past Carnaby and down Oxford again, it begins to rain. She doesn’t really notice, except for tourists jerking about into the Boots to purchase umbrellas. The clang clang of the Hare Krishnas approach, playing their instruments, chanting their Hare! Hare! Krishna! toward their temple near Soho Square. The rain, which spots their melon-colored robes with translucent patches, doesn’t slow them down.

They always look like they’re having a lot of fun, Ruth thinks, and stops and claps her hands as they pass by. She makes eye contact with a boy about her age. He grins back at her as he dances around in a circle, his short rough ponytail swaying. She admires the intricacy of the bright white markings like an eagle’s beak. She temporarily forgets herself. So ecstatic. So lost inside themselves. So taken up by the crowd.

She jerks and pushes and pummels her way through the throng. Freezing rain. The umbrellas hunched over, protective. Thump of dance music outside the high-street shops. Mannequins. People. You can tell a tourist because they always look up, she thinks. Londoners stare ahead, or to the ground. Not that Ruth is a Londoner but she isn’t a tourist either.

Faces here like faces there. Faces and faces. She thinks she sees HIM in the crowd. She is always posed for seeing HIM, even across the world. Perhaps a narrative plays out in her head as the rain stains her. HE has stained her. She will spy HIM in the crowd, no, HE will spy her first, and HE will see her anew. That is why she left, why she went to London. For HIM to follow her here. For HIM to realize HIS love for her and HE is searching, searching, searching for her. She walks as if HE is watching her. She is always being watched. She is not free. The vision of HIM follows her everywhere.

Phrases flit through her head. My mad girl’s love song, a hymn of HIM:

This is strange to think perhaps but if I saw you would I know who you were you could be hidden like a stranger in a crowd the Greeks thought that strangers could be gods in disguise are you my god in disguise? Would I recognize you? How could I not recognize someone who so regularly occupies my thoughts? Perhaps now you have facial hair (did you have facial hair)? I close my eyes I attempt to resurrect you conjure you up I can’t make you out for the life of me maybe you are not you. Maybe you are someone else.

The green girl is infused with Desire.

Obsession— Parfum pour femme .

She shakes her head no at the fliers thrust at her, like a parade of flying legs in a variety show, except clothed in gloves and coupons for Sainsbury’s. Sometimes it is easier to just take the flier thrust at you rather than go through the motions of mumbling no, no thanks, although Ruth has learned to blow right by them, rehearsing the same cool look of decline that she has come to know as English in nature. She shakes her head no, doing that quick smile where she doesn’t show any teeth. There’s the smile, now it’s gone. A grimace, not really a smile at all. There was a meaner version as well, practiced on those who did not take the first hint, who gathered closer, urgent and insistent.

Down Charing Cross, past red phone booths with the faint waft of men’s genitalia littered with escort calling cards, postcard Sirens luring in men walking by. Ruth shivers. She wonders what it would be like to prostitute herself. To be a beautiful young girl fed to the lions. Like a sort of martyr. Sometimes she fantasizes about this. A state of utter depravation. Except it is a Hollywood version she dreams of, like Jane Fonda in Klute .

She prays to be preyed upon. She is a deer standing in the middle of the forest road, knees buckling, begging for a predator. And Bambi has no mommy. The mean hunter has a sexy glint in his eyes. This is why she cannot forget HIM. HE was not fooled by her face of innocence, by her pale pinchedness. HE used her and abused her and she begs for a repeat of this experience. When HE would come over for their nocturnal couplings she would plead for HIM to destroy her, murder her, pound her back into the nothingness from which she began and which she knew deep down she would inevitably return.

She hadn’t known she had desired a beast. Someone to destroy her.

That first meeting ended in bruises that she would lovingly watch yellow over the weeks.

The rain lets up. It will descend again soon. She wanders down the cobblestoned streets of Soho, past the dark sticky alleys of peepshows girl mannequins blankly bearing whips naked boy mannequins wearing plastic grins holding hands of other boy mannequins. Glass windows revealing rows of pastries crowned with whipped cream.

She walks past a shop she had worked at when she first came to London. Ruth had liked the idea of working in a sex shop, the vulgar aspect of it. She liked to slum, to place herself in humiliating circumstances. She didn’t know why. The work itself was rather dreary, shelving bottles of lubricant, lining up dildos like wriggly, neon soldiers, picking up handcuffs from the floor, ringing up meekish customers, alone or in pairs.

The manager at the sex shop gave Ruth the creeps. Thin, oily, folded into a crisp suit, a handlebar mustache tickling tight lips. When he walked her around giving her the tour, he seemed to get satisfaction out of trying to shock her. Does it bother you to look at this? He would point to a TV monitor showing a long black penis sliding into a gaping red hole, in and out, in and out. A headshake no. How about this? A phantom penis ejaculated like splattered candle wax over a brunette’s massive breasts, as she groaned and writhed about. Trying to shock the American girl with the innocent face and the little girl voice.

We’ll try you out he had said to her. As if he was a pimp and she was a prostitute. We’ll try you out. A trial period. We’ll see if you like us and if we like you. That’s what they always say — but what they really mean is we’ll see if we like you. The part about you liking them is actually immaterial. And one learns not to care. One learns to deaden oneself and to hold one’s breath and wait until it’s all done with. This is Ruth’s philosophy for many aspects of her life.

She had lasted at the sex shop for two weeks. She hadn’t even picked up her paycheck. Ruth had a talent for quitting jobs. Often she would simply not show up, and then they would call and call and she would erase and erase the urgent where-are-yous. She has even been known to just walk out. Oh, the freedom of just walking out, the no-thanks, the not-for-me, the push of the door and pull back into herself.

Dreaded Saturday crowds. The grandiose door spits shoppers in, spits shoppers out. They are indistinct. They come in waves. An exodus of

the masses.

Walking down the row women poised like flierers handing out scented sticks of paper.

Desire? Care to try? Desire? Desire? Plastered smile, pink ornament of pastel scent at attention. Ruth does not even register the constant throb of gloves and shoes and clipping walks. She feels the pastel globe weigh on her hand. It is covered in silver netting, which pierces her palm.

She has to display this bottle of perfume at chest height for an indeterminate period of time, like those Vanna Whites displaying prizes on game shows, a spokesmodel who only has one line to speak, until the powers-that-be allow her to take a break, where she will escape to the employee toilet and lock herself in a stall of porcelain white, feeling the silence of her own breath.