Paula Bomer - Inside Madeleine

“Well, it’s beautiful,” I said again, and I meant it. Mostly, I was jealous. I could never get such a tattoo. I needed to work and I had no idea what kind of work I would need to get in the future. Bank teller? It seemed better than sucking dick for a living. I was only twenty-two.

“Let’s go shopping after I feed the cats,” she said and put her coffee mug in the sink. She had two cats, one enormous, half-blind cat named Dave and a little thing called Susie. I did the breakfast dishes while she tended to her pets. Then we went out. It was a gorgeous day and the East Village was so different than Allston, the neighborhood where I lived in Boston. It was so much cooler, like Lise was cooler than me. It had a secret language I could feel, but couldn’t decipher. I wanted more than anything to hold the key to its language. But in the meantime, I would have to walk around, craning my overly long neck around, absorbing the people and stores as they passed me by.

“Careful, Linda,” said Lise, annoyed, as always, with my clumsiness. “You keep bumping into me.”

The next time I visited her I was very sad. My boyfriend, Ron, had been treating me like shit. I’d been going out with him for two years and he was the first man to ever give me an orgasm. In fact, he gave me an orgasm before I ever gave myself one, so I was very attached to him. But he was an asshole. He had borrowed six hundred dollars from me and then hadn’t returned my phone calls for two weeks. The last two days of those two weeks I had stood outside of his apartment at night, staring in at the light in his bedroom window, feeling thick with self-hatred. When he did call me back, he said he couldn’t see me right now. That he needed his space. I had three days off in a row from work, so I took the Greyhound to visit Lise. She was good that way. She never turned me away. She let me visit.

“Check it out,” she said, tilting her chin upward. She had a new tattoo on her neck in gothic style writing.

“Is that your name?” I asked.

“Yeah, man. It hurt so much. But it was worth it. It’s so jail. No one is ever going to fuck with me now.”

I tried to think of any time that anyone had fucked with her and I couldn’t. She went to a posh private school, a Quaker school, in San Francisco. There were some stories of mean nannies. But still, her life always struck me as quite safe.

“Wow.” I said about her new tattoo. “That is really rad.”

Her live-in boyfriend, Dylan, who played in a punk band, was back in LA, visiting his friends from Crossroads, she explained.

“Crossroads?” I asked. “Isn’t that a rehab?”

“No, Linda,” Lise said, like I was the dumbest person in the world. “It’s the school he went to in LA.”

Because Dylan was out of town, I got to sleep in Lise’s bed with her. This was an enormous treat for me. I could run my hands over her bristly yet soft, closely shaved hair. She was on the zaftig side. We would spoon, and my hands could touch her bosomy chest. She was like a big, comfy pillow to my angles and corners; my straight, bony body. I savored the closeness: I was so hurt then, so mad at my boyfriend and mad at myself for needing him to go down on me to get off. Before we went to sleep, we tented the blanket over our heads like children playing a game. Suddenly our warm, damp bodies blossomed into the bubble the tented blankets had made. We had entered another world, like children do. Oh, the intimacy! The heat of our bodies, our animal selves, safe and covered! We heard a tiny meow above us, felt the tender steps of little paws. Lise opened the blanket to let the kitty in.

“Come in here, Susie Q, come here, pussycat,” Lise cooed, and in walked Susie. Purring, she slunk down to our feet and curled up. “You know, Dylan and I don’t really have sex anymore,” she said, her body a yellowish, hot fruit under the covers next to me. I felt her breathe. My eyes had adjusted and I could see her in that barely way.

“Really?” Ron and I fucked like poisoned beasts the times we were together. It was vicious. But we were seldom together anymore. “You two are such a great couple. Why do you think you don’t have sex anymore?”

“We’re like best friends. I don’t know. We just have no passion or something. He’s like my brother.” She rolled over onto her back. It was getting stuffy now. It was the time when you throw the blankets off and feel incredible release. She turned back to face me. “Sometimes, I think it’s because we started pooping in front of each other. Like that was the beginning of the end of our physical attraction.”

“Wow. Maybe you should see a counselor. You two are so good together. Ron and I, we have sex. But we’re horrible together.”

“You’re horrible together? He’s horrible to you, Linda. There’s a difference.”

Then I threw the blanket off. It felt involuntary. The fresh air cooled my pink cheeks. Susie scurried out, gently rubbing her feathery self against my body as she went.

“You’re right, Lise. You’re right.”

The next morning, we went shopping again. I never had that much money, but she had a credit card that her mother paid off every month, and shopping was something she did sort of like I waitressed. It was serious work to her. I tried not to bump into her while I excitedly walked down the street with her. I couldn’t help but crane my head around: the East Village mesmerized me. Lise bought a pair of dark, stiff jeans, a forest green cashmere sweater she claimed was for visiting her grandmother, and a vintage, yellow vinyl handbag. Then we stopped for lunch at a place on Sixth Street that we’d been to before. It was downstairs and had a lovely garden. A piano sat in the back and sometimes someone was there playing, but not that day.

“I’m a vegan now, Linda.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t just not eat animals, I also no longer consume any animal by-products. No milk, no milk products, no eggs, no honey, no leather,” Lise went on, “I still haven’t decided whether to throw out all my leather stuff I already have …”

“Wow. That’s intense. That’s a real commitment. No honey? I didn’t think honey was so bad.” I ate my salad in silence. I was not a vegetarian, but I sort of pretended to be one in front of Lise. I didn’t actually ever say to her, “I’m a vegetarian!” but I never ate meat in front of her. So, in my mind, I was only being half-dishonest, as if such a thing existed.

“It’s a matter of principle. The bees produce honey for their own reasons, not for us. We think we own this world, but we need to share it properly with other creatures,” Lise said, the wonderful edge of righteousness emanating from her very core. “It’s up to each and every one of us to make this world a better place. That’s what it takes. To end the senseless killing of animals by the selfish, hate mongering rich people in this world.”

“Right,” I said, thinking of all the bacon I planned on eating when I got back to Boston and feeling so confused yet so in awe, in admiration, of Lise. She knew what was right! And she even had the good sense to then live in accordance with her knowledge. I knew nothing at that point, not even how to get myself off, so her convictions and certainties amazed me. I wanted to be her, in so many ways. I wanted to be rich and so secure in my righteousness. I wanted to have large breasts and a boyfriend who was nice to me even though he was a rock dude.

Later, we decided to go hear a friend of hers and Dylan’s band, Inner Revolution, play at CBGB. I was so excited. Seeing bands was the absolutely most favorite thing I did in Boston. And CBGB was this historic club that I had never set foot in. How would it compare to Boston’s The Rat? I put on a pair of suede hot pants that laced up the sides and black vinyl (see! I was sort of vegan!) boots with chunky high heels. I’m sure I wasn’t wearing a bra. I never wore bras.