Darcey Steinke - Suicide Blonde

WAS IT THE BOURBON OR THE DYE FUMES THAT MADE THE PINK walls quiver like vaginal lips? An acidy scent ribboned the pawed tub, fingered up the shower curtain. My vision was liquid and various as a lava lamp. In the mirror I saw the scar from the blackberry bramble that had caught my chin and scratched a hairline curve to my forehead. It was hardly noticeable, but left the impression that my face was cracked. Taking another sip of bourbon, I put on the plastic gloves and began parting my hair at the roots. As the dye snaked out there was a faint sucking sound, like soil pulling water, and I wondered: if I were brave enough to slit my wrists would I bother to dye my hair?

This is what happened: all day yesterday Bell had stared out the window, smoking cigarettes. There were his usual reasons — his father, no acting jobs, that he was getting ugly and old. Plus there was Kevin to moon over. He eyed the eggshell envelope of Kevin's wedding invitation and stared out the window for hours, his face vaguely twitching as he moved from one memory to the next. His melancholy made me think he was getting sick of living with me. And this, in turn, made me want to please him, to show him I was not one of his worries. So when he went walking I put on my black teddy and arranged myself on the futon. Looking at my breasts covered in lace flowers, I thought I seemed overly anxious, like a Danish or a little excitable dog. I looked desperate. . using the one thing that would keep him near. It seemed manipulative, even if it was an attempt to jerk him from his melancholy. Men are never more appealing than when they brood.

Bell came in and walked to the foot of the bed. His eyes narrowed with lusty admiration for my forwardness. He lay over me and said, “I'm in charge now.” But when he didn't release his weight I asked him if he was going to take off his clothes. “You seem to want me to,” he said. I blushed and asked him if he felt bullied, told him now he knew how women felt. “You take off that,” he said, stretching the lace of the teddy. I rolled it down and then adamantly pulled his shirt off. There was something hard in me that wanted him, no matter how awkward it was going to be. We kissed in a distracted way. Eventually, he turned his head, as if watching a bird move across the horizon. I saw dark continents under the paint of the walls beyond his profile.

“I'm bored,” he said.

I sat up on the edge of the bed, then walked to the closet. Shifting the hanging clothes, I felt my hands already beginning to shake. I dressed and went into the kitchen. There was a taste of pennies in my mouth, a fierce nausea and tinny rawness, like the moment after you break a bone.

Bell sat in the dark at the painted table by the window. Occasionally the streetlight would show a wisp of cigarette smoke, his face dissected by crossing panes of light, his eyes clear and vacant like a cat's.

“I have to get more cigarettes,” he said.

He didn't sound mean, just sullen. And I couldn't tell whether he was falling clunkily out of love with me, or if, as he claimed, it was just his usual reticence. Sometimes I suspected he was stunted, not capable of predictable human emotions. Last week he had laughed at a tourist couple separated by the BART train doors. I imagined a wire grid behind the skin of his forehead and a cold metallic look in his eyes. Of course it was only my imagination, but the sensation was terrifying, like finding out your lover is a killer.

Now he'd been gone twenty-four hours. For a while I had found his habit of floating off charming, but to appreciate this suddenly seemed masochistic. I didn't want to be one of those women addicted to indifference.

I peeled down my gloves and threw them gingerly, like used condoms, into the trash. The teddy incident was terrifying because it exacerbated the sensation that my feminine power was diminishing, trickling like drops of milk from a leaky pitcher. I wrapped my hair in a towel. The way I looked reminded me of some clichéd floundering female, so I took off my robe and lay across the couch, a better spot to watch shadows gather in the fleshy green fingers of the big jade plant. He'd inherited it from the last inhabitants of the apartment, because it wouldn't fit through the door when they moved. Near the plant was a cedar wall panel with a Japanese scene. Bell's boa hung on a hook beside his film stills; blurry body gestures from a super-8 film Bell made years ago. There were lots of little things: the blue glass lamp, the leopard with eyes that glowed, empty wine bottles, brass goblets, postcards of Europe from former lovers, candles and incense on a special table with a linen cloth, along with Bell's crucifixes, saints, Hindu gods, a GI Joe doll, obsidian voodoo beads, a dog's skull and an African mask of an antelope.

The window looked over Bush Street and toward the staggered roofs of Nob Hill, slanted like some Middle Eastern capital. The penthouse terraces had exotic French doors, miniature lemon trees and lacy wrought-iron furniture. On one there was a green fountain; another, on warm days, had a stand with a cockatiel. Above it all shone the neon Hotel Huntington sign, drenching our room with wavering green light.

My body was like a part of the room, a chair or a vase. I remembered the first time I saw my mother naked. She stood before a mirror, pulled at her hips, pressing her stomach, checking as I was now for signs of decay. The female body, I thought, has the capacity for such exquisiteness and such horror. I sat up to drink, but the bourbon spilled and trickled over my breasts, running all the way down to form a puddle in my navel.

Watching my body I had the sensation it was the same as Bell's. Images came fast: an expressive hand gesture, his smell — wet dirt and hand-rolled cigarettes — how his features were large and most beautiful when he was meditative, how in certain light his skin paled so that it looked blue, how he seemed at those times like a creature and I half expected to see wings appear on his shoulder blades.

In temperament Bell was not so much exotic as sophisticatedly adolescent. He had intellectualized youth's themes, perfected and lyricized them. And this core of exquisite longing was his excuse for brooding, for his erratic behavior, and the fuel for his philosophy of life's emptiness and the cult of pleasure. But Bell wasn't really immature, just trapped in some premature state, like a beetle whose back is all the more vivid because the last homogenizing stage to adulthood is never reached.

The clock ticked loud; it seemed to mock me with its pointy fingers and monotonous rhythyms. I took a swig from the bottle and realized I was drunk. My thoughts were jagged and I had the sensation that my life was exactly half over. It started with a tingle in the back of my skull that made me shiver, then spread over my head like a hood. But I've never felt any different. And I knew my memories, childhood or otherwise, were simply times I rose up into consciousness and was intensely myself. I heard the hum I always do when a memory is encasing itself and I recognized that sound as my particular and continual way of being alive.

My hair stunk up the whole apartment. I cracked the window and Bell's boa expanded with air. In the bathroom, the porcelain tub was cool to the touch. I adjusted the water, pulled the towel from my head and then got in, kneeling on all fours. My breasts swung down, reminding me of the utilitarian tits of mammals. And through the scope of cleavage I could see the hair between my thighs. The tiny black curls seemed scrawny, even obscene. Water beat on my hair. The bleach was strong. My face became prickly and warm and I realized that even though I was alone, I felt embarrassed. The acidic residue backed up, biting into my knees. I am dyeing my hair to get Bell back , I thought, and because the whole world loves a blonde. The bright light made the room stark, soap flecked into my eyes and I felt a rising frazzled sensation that always means I'm going to cry. The water ran clear down the drain. When I stood, my hair was steaming, tangled together in clumps like pale shiny snakes.