Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

I didn’t know how to pose, but it didn’t matter; the music was like a big red flower you could disappear into. The sweetness of it was a complicated burst of little tastes, but under that was a big broad muscle of sound. It was like the deep feeling of dick inside and the tiny sparkling feelings outside on the clit. Except it was also like when you’re in love and not thinking the words dick or clit . Gregory Carson watched ecstatically, a tiny complicated thing looking for a big broad thing to hold him. “Doesn’t she remind you of Brandy G.?” he cried. “Do you remember her, John?” John said yes, he did, and Gregory leapt up and scrambled again. I pictured him tiny, scrambling on a giant clit. I giggled, and Gregory said, “That’s right! Have fun!”

So I did. It was like the first time I made a sex noise, and instead of being embarrassing, it was great. It was like being with people I didn’t know and making them stop so I could go in a store and buy chocolate milk, instead of worrying they would think I was a baby or a pig — and it tasted great. It was like eating pudding forever, or driving in your car forever, or feeling the dick you love forever, right before he sticks it in. Far away, my dad was playing songs for men who thought he was crazy. I was going to be a model and make money walking around inside songs everybody knew.

Then Gregory said he had to see me naked. “We aren’t taking any more pictures,” he said. “No one ever shoots you nude. I have to look at you because I’m the agent.” He went to turn the music off, and suddenly John was in the room. He looked at me so hard, it was like a meaty head zoomed out of his cardboard body. His eyes were different: There was no BS about beautiful and terrible things. He was saying something — what was it? The music shut off. “All righty!” said Gregory. John’s head got pulled back into the cardboard. He smiled and said he hoped he’d see me again. Gregory walked him to the door. When he came back, I was naked. The stereo was still making an electrical buzz. The big broad thing had sucked the music back inside it.

Gregory looked at me. “You’re five pounds overweight,” he said gently. “And your breasts aren’t that good.” He touched my cheek with the back of his hand. “But right now, that doesn’t matter.” Ossifier’s bright red voice sang in my head: Don’t hesitate ’cause the world seems cold . “Alison,” said Gregory Carson, “I’d like you to tell me about the first grade.” He said “first grade” like it was something wonderful to eat, something he hadn’t had for a long time. He looked like he might jump up and dance on the clit again. I looked down and felt my face frown. In the first grade, Miss Field was my teacher. She taught me how to write in big black letters. Ossifier stopped singing. Miss Field sat at her desk and folded her hands. A terrible feeling came over me. I felt like she was there, getting sucked into the electrical buzz. I didn’t want her to be there. I didn’t want her to be eaten.

Gregory reached out and took a tear out of my eye right as it fell. He put it in his mouth. He was tasting the terrible feeling and his eyes were full of pity. He had come to the deep liver place, where I was still a child attached to my family. He recognized it and he respected it, a little. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to say.” He reached down and held me between the legs. Here it was. Ossifier. Miss Field floated in a bright, distant oval. He watched my face as he rubbed me with his hand. He didn’t care if he was a pig or a baby. The chocolate milk was delicious. His face came close and his one eye grew giant. Miss Field’s bright oval winked shut and she was gone. Gregory Carson’s eye said, After you, baby! and then we got sucked into the electrical buzz together.

One night at work, Veronica asked me how I got into modeling, and I said, “By fucking a nobody catalog agent who grabbed my crotch.” I said it with disdain — like I didn’t have to be embarrassed or make up something nice, because Veronica was nobody — like why should I care if an ant could see up my dress? Except I didn’t notice my disdain; it was habitual by then. She noticed it, though. The arched eyebrows shot up and the lined, prissy face zinged out an expression sharp and hard as a bee sting. This ugly little woman had a sting! I would’ve stung back, but I was suddenly abashed by her buzzing ugliness. But then her expression became many expressions, and when she talked, her voice was kind.

“Every pretty girl has a story like that, hon,” she said. “I had that prettiness, too. I have those stories.”

I looked at her and my face must’ve said, Like what?

“I once had an affair with a man I worked with. It was a dull job doing market research — I had to do something . Anyway, it was toward the end of the relationship, not much excitement left, when he remarked that he’d never had anal sex. I said, ‘Really? I’ll do it with you.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I said, ‘Certainly!’ Like I was performing a public service.

“Well, he was ecstatic. He told me later that during an office party he related this event to one of his friends from a visiting organization and that the guy insisted on knowing who I was. He pointed me out — discreetly, he assured me — and, according to him, the guy said, ‘Why, she’s cute!’ Amazed apparently that I didn’t look like some desperate slut, but I was quite flattered.”

“You were ?”

“Yes! The only time I was not flattered was a year or so later. It was during the Christmas party, after we had broken up; each department was nominating people for best smile, best legs, best ass, and so forth. I asked him if he’d nominated my ass and he said no. I sulked for the rest of the night.”

She drew on her cigarette, blew out. “Of course, you’re a lot prettier than I was — you’d have won the contest hands down!” She laughed. “But prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to do that anymore. It’s my show now.” She said these words as if she were a movie star walking past me while I gaped.

“I wasn’t trying to please anyone,” I said uncertainly.

“No?” She stubbed out her cigarette in a bright yellow ashtray. “What were you trying to do?”

Imagine ten pictures of this conversation. In nine of them, she’s the fool and I’m the person who has something. But in the tenth, I’m the fool and it’s her show now. For just a second, that’s the picture I saw.

Fucking Gregory Carson was like falling down the rabbit hole and seeing things flying by without knowing what they meant. Except I was the rabbit hole at the same time, and he was stuffing things down it like crazy, just throwing everything in, like he couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. And I could take it all. I was on my back and he on his knees; he grabbed my ankles and spread my legs up over my head until my pelvis split all the way open. I pushed myself off the floor with both hands and rose up to face him. His small chest swelled as he reared above me; his stomach stuck out like a proud drum and I could feel his asshole alight and tingling on the end of his spine. His face looked like he was saying, Remember this when they’re taking your picture. Remember this . Like he was stuffing me full of him so that any picture of me would be a picture of him, too, because people who looked would see him staring out of my eyes.

When it was over, I went down the stairs like I was sliding down a chute and came out the other end of the rabbit hole. On the street, it was business as usual. There was no secret language of little complicated things. The fog had come in and the store windows had gone dull. It was cold and I was hungry. I found a diner, where I had a piece of blueberry pie with two creamers poured over it, then tea with sugar. Across from me, a meager girl with raw bare legs was crying against a big older woman in a rough coat. Flares kept going off in my body, rushes of strange, blank sensation, like bursts of electricity. Gregory Carson had given me cab fare, but I kept it and took the bus. It soothed me to sit with so many people and to rock with the movement of the bus creaking up hill after hill. The flaring subsided and my body quieted; with listless wonder, I realized that the song had not really said “ossifier.” It had said “hearts of fire,” which I thought was not as good.