Darcey Steinke - Suicide Blonde

People slowly packed in, squat rockers with skull rings and men in blue pants with the musty smell of work. There were a couple of skinheads in boots and flight jackets, their skulls buffed up to an evil gleam. And scattered women: full-time drinkers with bland sheepish faces and pale rocker chicks with black lipstick and deep circles under their eyes. Everyone looked uncomfortable and eyed each other suspiciously.

I ordered a vodka, thinking of it as a companion, wondering if Bell had passed his audition and if the women in the Lusty Lady enjoyed their work. The music was distracting. The beat doubled my heart's and the melodies were woven with sirens and sound bytes of political speeches. I couldn't think coherently, but that was O.K. because I wanted to quit processing. I wanted to try and let things build up around me, encase me like an exoskeleton.

The music changed abruptly to an Indian sitar, and a test tube of green light appeared on the elevated stage. A woman rose from beneath through a trapdoor, dancing languidly toward the light, testing it as if it were water, first a pinkish hand and then a pale leg. She was tall and slender with shoulder-length blond hair. The TVs miniaturized and multiplied her. Through her dark reptilian make-up, there was some sense of the young girl in the portraits at Pig's and, more amazingly, of the woman I had seen bathe in the fountain. Madison moved her torso smoothly, twisting her arms at right angles, like a soldier. Her belly vibrated as she spread her legs before the crowd. The black light made her skin seem rich and flawless and emblazoned her white lipstick and the wide eyes painted surrealistically over the material of her top. She was a psychedelic dream.

I pressed to the front of the crowd. Dancing in a slow introspective way I thought might attract her. This is the first thing, I thought, doing whatever is necessary to attract someone. Sweat soaked the material over her breasts and they slowly became visible, each nipple pierced with a slender gold ring. Her pants became translucent and I could see the dark ringlets of her pussy. My palms were wet and I found myself staring at her stomach. I wasn't sure if I wanted her or wanted to be her. The music broke down and she swung her hair. She never looked at me, just danced harder until the music ended with a sound like a bomb exploding. She fell to her knees and threw her arms back, lifting her torso in offering to some huge tongue. The light extinguished on a rising cloud of smoke and she disappeared. The industrial dance music began again and the crowd loosened, returned to conversations. I felt light-headed, disoriented, because I felt attraction for Madison instead of the pity I had anticipated.

She appeared at the bar about ten minutes later with a fresh layer of white lipstick and without the dark eye make-up. Her body was fragrant and delicately flushed. She wore a sleeveless silver mini-dress and white go-go boots that laced up the front. I felt giddy to be so close. I watched her neck pulse as she drank from the slender cocktail glass. She caught me staring and smiled, placed her drink firmly on the bar.

For a moment I forgot why I came and cast my eyes stupidly down. Her hands were puffy like Pig's.

“I know your mother,” I said. She flinched and I realized I should have started slowly, told her I liked the performance, asked her name.

She smiled, but all her emotive energy cut off, black screens went down in her eyes and she turned back to the bar. It took me a second to realize she wasn't going to speak to me. Bar noises grew louder; copulating voices, driving disco, the sound of breaking glass. I pressed my side against her, felt my nipple harden but still she didn't turn, so I bent and whispered, “She sent me.”

“Are you her new girlfriend?” Madison looked over her shoulder as if something about me physically might explain why I had come.

“I do some shopping for her, a few chores around the house.”

“I bet,” Madison said, smiling at the bartender.

“She's your mother. She wants to see you.” I didn't like my earnest whiney tone of voice.

“That's really what she told you?”

I nodded.

“My mother is dead, both my parents died in a plane crash.” She spoke so blankly it was impossible to tell if it were true.

My eyes welled, not because I felt sorry for Madison, or that she was being cruel by playing with me, but because it seemed the facts I trusted were lies. I felt awkward, stupid, tears came and I saw Madison realize this and reach for her silver bag.

“Go to my apartment,” she said quickly. “Here's the key. You can tell me what's wrong with Pig later.” She got a pen and wrote her address on a bar napkin.

HER APARTMENT WAS ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF A MASON STREET building. Her door grimy, patched with a square of raw wood. I knocked. No answer, just the faint rush of cars from the front window. The door next to Madison's opened and a fat woman in sweatpants came out, her hair pulled back tightly. She smelled of yogurt, and her face might have been pretty if it hadn't been so fat.

“She's hardly ever here,” the lady said. “If you want to come in I'll write down where she works.”

Over her shoulder I saw the inside of her apartment, posters of wrestlers and football players, mostly black. “I've already been there,” I said. “I'm a friend spending the night.”

She lumbered closer to me. “It's a sleazy place, isn't it?” She seemed excited. “Madison's a lap dancer isn't she? Not that I care, I'm moving soon. I don't want any of that AIDS shit.”

When I tried to answer, the woman frowned, she had already decided what to say next. I was uncomfortable and stared at the crossroads where the woman's big belly and crotch met to make a T. This was how she got her thrills, I thought; trying to shock people gave her intimacy with them. She looked at me sternly, deciding I needed to be converted, that I was a physical and careless person. The way she hesitated, I knew, too, that she was lonely, that she hoped we would talk forever. Sweat broke out on her upper lip, beaded on her forehead. I felt an instinctual disgust for the woman, and that repulsion must have passed over my face because she tipped her chin in like a child who is shy, then said, “Good-bye,” stepped back into the forest of poster men and slammed the door.

I went into Madison's apartment. The overhead switch, the lamp by the bed and the bulb in the refrigerator were all burnt out, so I pulled the curtain back and let the street light illuminate the place. To say the apartment was shabby would be unfair. The falling plaster looked more like an abstract painting than simple decay, and the wood floors were worn smooth. The bed was covered with a rough wool army blanket, and above it was a knifish cubist painting. A blowfish suspended from the ceiling spun slowly on its line, first one way and then the other. The only furniture was a nightstand near the bed and a chest by the window.

I sat on the bed listening to street noise and the building's creaking pipes. Would Madison come and did Pig tell me the truth? I tried to think of them as mother and daughter, but the more I pushed them into that scenario the less likely it seemed a family had ever held them. But it's hard to think of myself in a family. And I, like everyone else I know, considered myself, even as a child, different, aloof, out of sync with the rest.

The fat woman ran her vacuum and I was reminded intensely of the abortion I had had in college. The suck of the vacuum, the rich smell of blood, and how afterward I stayed in my room with the blinds closed and the lights off for several days. I had the sensation of being completely empty, like standing in your old room the minute after the last box has been carried out. I remember going outside in my nightgown to a bench in the sunlight. Nothing that came before that moment seemed real. As if I woke, not just from three days, but from a whole lifetime of sleep.