William Vollmann - Whores for Gloria

That story was so sweet I think I'm going to puke, sneered the ungrateful girl, at which Jimmy frowned and started to wonder how much longer to put up with her and he wondered also whether her sadness were as plain, as honest as a fat whore spread-eagled against a brick wall or was it phony in fact like a whore whose face was so powdered and wigged that she was like a smooth white plastic doll with plastic black hair and plastic earrings and plastic white teeth that matched her new white dress and just above her crotch a plastic ruby glittered as she stood against the wall so happily and the headlights of cars pitched by like gobs of napalm and it was very dark. — The girl had hardly touched her drink although the ice cubes were melting nicely.

It sounds kind of sappy I guess said Jimmy drinking his fourth Budweiser which the bartender had popped down in front of him at a single majestic incurve of Jimmy's finger but without Gloria I wouldn't be anything wouldn't even know myself.

I'm not sure how to put this said the girl very seriously so that he liked her again but do you think some people are just not meant to get loved? I mean you can try and try so hard and it just never happens.

Oh baby don't ever think that or no one will love you you gotta maintain a positive attitude stay in combat readiness keep your eyes peeled especially a gal as beautiful as you shouldn't have any trouble why my friend Dinah (she's not half as beautiful as you) she gets all the dates she wants so just keep your chin up and keep LOOKING yes said Jimmy from his vantage point of solved universal problems like one of those brick hotels that looked down on the corner where Nicole used to stand holding to the fire alarm pole (but as Luna said Nicole had gotten stabbed) being in love Jimmy said is a beautiful feeling it makes me take big steps walk fast knowing the whole Tenderloin belongs to me. I could go ANYWHERE because I'm master of all I survey.

If you have such a great relationship with your wife the girl pounced at last where's she now? And how come you wear old clothes and need a shave? And if you don't mind my saying so did you know that you could use a bath?

Well uh said Jimmy gripping the counter hard she's visiting with our friend Phyllis in the hospital who got kidnapped last week when she was waiting for the bus you see this bastard whom they haven't caught yet took her right across the Bay Bridge and onto the freeway you know way out of the territory and he said he was going to drive her up into the Orinda hills and rape her so she had to jump out of the car at sixty miles an hour and her face was cut open from here to here and she's been at SF General ever since. Gloria said I'm gonna get her a big bunch of roses I said get her some candy from me they say with plastic surgery she'll look as good as before, but you never know I mean that's the kind of thing they always say to make you feel better. Me, I don't trust doctors.

Why can't you be straight? the girl said. I don't care what your story is as long as it's straight.

Honey you OK? said Jimmy.

No, the girl said, and looking sharply at her Jimmy saw that her face was quivering like a disturbed pool of water whose reflected images keep shimmering and shaking like a girl about to cry. I'm sorry, she said. I can't help it I can't help it! Just leave me alone.

In that case, said Jimmy brightly, maybe I better go tidy up the place for Gloria before she gets back, but here's three bucks to buy yourself another drink and I do want you to know that I'm rooting for you and wish you all the best.

You and your Gloria, the girl said, make me so fucking sick.

Jimmy walked around all night admiring the whores and thinking how nice it would be to stick his tongue up their dirty asses oh— oh! but the unhappy girl had upset him with her weeping ways; it now seemed that he could never be tranquil anymore like the transparent greenness inside a nice fat botde of Cutty Sark, with the surface of the whisky barely trembling so that you know that it is there and waiting for you to drink it and it is right in front of you and all you have to do is reach over half a foot and start unscrewing that navy-white cap with the clipper ship on it and Jimmy had once counted all the sails on that ship let's see in his mind's eye a bank of four and two banks of five big ones each but Jimmy rarely drank Cutty Sark anymore because it was not that cheap a drunk. So maybe Code Six was right, and Jimmy did need to escalate it a little farther. He saw a pair of dirty panties on Larkin Street, but they were not good enough; he had to buy them from a whore to make them pure. In his dreams of Gloria he was hammering at Being, hammering at lightness to shape someone who would not turn her face away from him the way the whores he flatbacked did; she had to have a shape; he could no longer bear a glowing white facelessness for a face no matter how holy it was; he had to have Gloria and Gloria had to be comfortable with all her things around her — not as many as Imelda Marcos's shoes, but enough to make her feel at home. But even this late (it should be said) Jimmy still knew that he was pretending like Phyllis pretended with a pretty wig whose locks half hid lips pouted into a heart, with false eyelashes meticulously applied, with the same care that an entomologist might apply to reassembling the legs of some rare and brittle millipede that he hoards inside his cabinet of types, and he remembered how Melissa had said to him well one of the things I used to do to combat that boredom was building forts, building like a little cave with the sheets, crawling under it, like a little tent I was inside by myself, setting up housekeeping, just pretending I was somewhere else. It was kind of easy in that dark environment. That's what being a kid is about, pretending. You've got to pretend you're this, pretend you're that, pretend you're a grownup, pretend you're not, pretend you're somebody else. — That's right Melissa, sighed Jimmy to himself sitting on his bed, and when you're a grownup you've got to pretend you're with somebody else. What a lot of work and trouble everything is.

The questions

Gloria, are you still crying? I guess you're just doing what you've got to, but I wonder if happiness is growing inside you? Is it going to be a boy or a girl? A girl I guess because all the whores were girls. I'm just trying to understand you Gloria but it's so hard. I'm doing what I can. If I love you hard enough will I be able to see you? How many more happy stories do I have to hear because they're sticking to me like mud and making me walk more and more heavy so I need to know how many? How many? Gloria, do you understand what I'm saying? Gloria, I never stop thinking about you.

When he met old Peggy ten nights later on the corner of Ellis and Jones, his SSI check cashed by kindly Pearl, he could tell just by looking at her that she was a shooter, though whether she shot coke or smack he couldn't say, nor was it really his business out here among the dark dirty old buildings that must have been nice once before he was born. — Jimmy was glowing with power. He was Homo erectus . Tonight he said to himself tonight I'm gonna GET Gloria I'm gonna have her once and for all because I've heard so many stories that I'm almost there and one more batch will get me there kissing her fingers like cloud-fingers rolling over the Tenderloin at sunset and I'll love her because no matter what that bitch at the Coral Sea said Gloria is and will be my wife. My wife! I can taste her all around me so I know she's in me I'm in her and we'll be together soon as that old whore starts talking she looks like a talker and I have money so what more can I say what more do I need?