Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

There is no other I than them.

When I’m sopping wet I decide to rehydrate. I take off my Velvet Underground T-shirt and stuff it partly into my back jeans pocket. I’m glad I wore my black Lycra bra and not my little red push-up because the little red push-up sometimes exposes a nip when I wish it wouldn’t. I stomp back over to the bar. While I’m waiting for my drink, I see something out of the corner of my eye. Like a glint of silver. I look to my left, and there’s a hot looking older dude sitting at a little table with two people my age — one male, one female. The male looks feminine and the female looks butch. The attractive older dude smiles at me. I smile at him. He’s way good looking. Kind of in that David Bowie way. The dude never ages, you know? Makes my mouth water. This guy’s like that. It’s hard not to look at him.

In fact, it’s like he’s got a tractor beam. He’s locked on. I feel magnetically pulled over to the table. The boy who looks like a girl parts his chin length bangs and smiles. The girl who looks like a boy crosses her bare arms and her biceps bulge and she smiles. The hot older dude nods his head yes. Before I know it I’m stomping straight up to them.

I can smell patchouli, but I’ve no idea which one of them is wearing it. Patchouli has this weird way of making me drowsy and yes-y. Like cat nip.

The attractive older dude says, “Won’t you join us?”

The boygirl and the girlboy’s heads bob in agreement. They slide over on their shared red vinyl booth seat and make a spot for me. I don’t know why, but it seems like I fit in there.

I flash them a peace sign and sit down and sip my drink.

“I’m Otto,” the boygirl goes.

“I’m Sabina,” the girlboy goes.

I smile. I sip my drink. I rummage around in my Dora purse and pull out my purple sharpie and write on my drink napkin — wait — who am I again? Oh yeah. I write DORA. They all smile and nod. I look at attractive older dude. That’s when it dawns on me. I’ve SEEN him before. At the restaurant. He’s the guy who made Siggy faint dead away on the floor. UR JUNG I write under my DORA on the drink napkin. I hold it up at him.

“Have we met?” he says — smiling pretty much like a Cheshire cat.

I shake my head no and smile.

“Let’s get it on,” the girlboy yells, meaning let’s dance, so we do, all four of us move like a single organism out to the pulsing larger organism that is people dancing.

The dude can dance.

I don’t mean like a dude his age. I mean like a dancer. Like a real dancer. Like a dancer on stage. He moves like water. He embodies the bass of the music. He looks like desire. He’s fucking mesmerizing. His hips do things not even hip-hoppers achieve. He’s fast — he’s slow — he’s barely moving. His shoulders lose their bone structure. And he does this head shoulder chest hips thing that kind of makes you want to take your clothes off really fast. The smell of Patchouli and sweat and really great shampoo dizzy me. His hair, it’s perfect. He slips his arm around the boygirl he releases he slides his hands onto the girlboy’s hips releases he bump grinds me from behind with his hands locked around my abdomen I rock my head back he slips a pill into my mouth I close my eyes I don’t care what it is it is good. Then the girlboy is behind me and up against me and the boygirl is in front of me pressing in until I’m a Dora sandwich and I hope it lasts a really, really long time. I’m creaming my jeans and my nips? Hard as ball bearings. I close my eyes. I feel someone tugging the belt loop of my skinny jeans and I let myself be led by the hip and spun and held close it smells like rain.

Obsidian.

We are more or less entwined, muscular and wet, moving in and out of each other inside sound and light. She is laughing. She throws her head back and her sheet of black hair cuts the air and the obsidian around her neck, I lick it, I suck it, I taste the salt of her. If I could choose when to die, I’d choose this moment, a little death inside the wordless bliss of her body.

Hours later, spent, baptized by sweat, I step outside for a cig.

Attractive older dude is standing with one foot against the building, finishing a joint. He looks over at me, smiles, offers me a toke. I hold my cig up indicating I’m good. He nods and exhales the maryjane way. I light up. Inhale. We both stare at the night sky. Seattle’s glow blots out the array of stars, but we both know they are up there. Life is good.

Then a fucking rat walks right in front of us, pauses to look up with its nasty little marble eyes and its shitty ass rodent tail, and scurries away.

I jump back a bit and my face twists all up. I mean gross.

“Au contraire,” Jung says, reading my mind. “Animal totems are primordial symbols of the collective unconscious.” He sucks his fatty and holds his breath, then continues. “Think of the aborigines, the Celts, the Egyptians, Chinese and Native American cultures… ” He points the joint down to the ground. “Our friend the rat? The rat totem indicates a pronounced drive for success. An almost uncanny ability to adapt. A cunningness … and the ability to defend oneself aggressively when necessary. Perhaps you need only to adjust your state of mind to see the rat’s relation to you.”

I point to myself and give him a what the fuck look.

Jung laughs. He wets the tip of his joint with his tongue and puts it in his pocket. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Well it wasn’t there for me, Dora.”

And then he walks back into the club. I watch his hair as he walks away.

I stare at the cig in my hand. Smoke curls up toward my face. So the guy is obviously sexually open, has no problem with recreational drugs, loves to dance, and digs animal ju ju. I take a big ass drag off my cig, then flick it. It bounces on the pavement and glows for a moment.

I just have one question.

Why the fuck couldn’t this dude have been my therapist?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED? I write. I press down super fucking hard with a red Crayola crayon on a napkin at Shari’s, and thrust the napkin pretty much into Ave Maria’s face.

“ Well I just mean I didn’t think it would do any harm,” Ave Maria goes.

I snatch the little napkin back and break the goddamn crayon trying to write an answer … I have to get a new napkin and crayon. The napkins and crayons and straws and silverware and shit are all at this mini station in the center of Shari’s restaurant. It’s exactly like the medicine cabinet deal in the ER. Maybe the whole world works like this — little substations in life. I grab a wad of napkins and a black Crayola and some Tabasco for good measure and go back to the table.

The orange gloom of Shari’s feels a little like we’re sitting in a bowl of puke. It’s two a.m. so there aren’t too many other customers — a table of goths across the restaurant — jeez did I ever look that dorkish? A couple of truckers on barstools, a gaggle of rotund nurses I sincerely hope I’ve never seen before. Cops don’t congregate until around 4:00 a.m.

Obsidian sucks on a banana milkshake and fondles a plateful of bacon. Little Teena downs steak and eggs. Ave Maria polishes off a plate of pancakes with whip cream and strawberries all over them. She’s got whip cream smeared on her chin. Yes it’s a perfect joke. But I’m in no mood.

“What’s the big deal?” Little Teena asks. “It’s just a few Facehooker friends and YouTuboners that are looking at it, and no one really knows what they’re looking at anyway, right? Plus it’s pretty dark. It’s not like there was proper lighting. I mean, the troll’s even in the shot a couple of times.” He whips out a cigarette and a lighter. Lights up.