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i am despondent over the doberman
by Mordantia Bat
In the darkened bar, I waited for Yves. I
was almost nervous as it had been weeks since I had seen him, and
Yves had always had this peculiar effect on me. Once, I thought
it had been lust. Now, I knew better. I had replaced my youthful
promiscuity with a feeling of reverence for the victims of my libido,
assigning them as mystical archetypes in the fabric of my life.
One lover satiated my intellect, another my passion for exploring
darker sex, another simply let me read tarot cards on his chest
for him as we reposed post-coitally in his bed. The latter told
me I read best after an orgasm. I thought him a little odd in my
more lucid moments -- and I liked that -- but as I descended into
the miasma of my own affected persona, I noticed the lucid moments
came less and less.
But Yves. Yves was different than all of
them. I had met him initially in my early 20s, in the midst of
my scattered promiscuity, when I listened to punk music and copulated
with skate rats, and spent my time disposing of them and being
disposed of by them. In those days of jaded innocence, it seemed
like there would be an endless supply of fresh young bodies and
experiences, and relationships seemed so oppressive. And they had
been. The few times I had allowed one of my skate rats to move
in with me, suddenly their innocence metamorphized into irresponsibility
as no matter how they first came to me, invariably they would abandon
their boring jobs on the grounds that such a shit job was interfering
with their pursuit of a more artistic life, and I wound up paying
the rent and feeding them while their passion for me dwindled and
they began to spend their nights elsewhere. One of them, when I
asked him where he had been all night, told me he had just been
riding the bus all night, enjoying the solitude and the darkness.
I don't suppose even he thought I would believe that, but I had
to admire him for being so brilliantly uncreative. After a while,
I got the point and stopped letting them have keys to my apartment.
As I grew older, my taste in men hadn't improved
in the grander sense of things. I desired the misfits, the artists,
the narcissists, the odd -- all of them damaged, and I suffered
while they dropped their various emotional baggage on my feet.
Now, at 35, I was older, no wiser, but perhaps a tad more practical.
I had become adept at stealing passion without offering intimacy,
adept at bedding them and not becoming entangled. I sought out
the experience, enjoying the cat-and-mouse games of rejection and
conquest and revelling in my own lonely bitterness, which was,
of course, entirely my own fault. I adopted a dialogue from the
movie, Impromptu, as my axiom: "You promised to love me," Mallefille
said. And George replied, "But I did not promise to succeed."
And through this all, there was Yves. My
friend, my cohort, sometimes my accomplice and, infrequently, my
lover. Yves's romantic history was similar to my own, which was
reason enough to adore him, but there were other reasons as well.
He was an artist (of course), a well-read and witty neo-Oscar Wilde.
But the world had no use for the likes of an Oscar Wilde these
days, and so he divided his time between honing his affectations
and working for a computer game company, creating moody atmospheres
and backgrounds for adventure games. Once, Yves and I dreamed of
moving to London or Paris and starting an absolutely transcendent
avant-garde magazine that would sustain us, creatively and financially.
We would drink champagne and coffee all the time, accept our accolades
and adoration in the most modest and zen-like fashion -- and, of
course, get on the guest list to everything interesting.
In our youth, we were selfish and narcissistic
and hardly ashamed of it. Later, though, I began to feel I should
have some accountability in this world, and so I took my semi-literary
skills to a non-profit agency devoted to helping victims of AIDS,
where I worked part-time, writing press releases and brochure copy.
But even in the midst of this sobering atmosphere, I still sat
around some days daydreaming of romantic art. I couldn't help it.
It was an involuntary reflex. I blamed it on reading too much in
my youth. I didn't completely fit in at the agency. Although I
cared, certainly, and had taken the job because I was incensed
at how people -- so many of my friends and so many others -- were
dying, I couldn't ball my anger up and spit it out into doing something
political or revolutionary. I was an artist, by temperament and
self-training, and in that environment, that was, unfortunately,
seen as being quaintly indolent. I was not correct, despite my
intentions.
I, like those I desired, was a misfit. A
malcontent, an anachronism. In between my job, my flailing attempts
at romance, and my daydreaming, I spent an inordinate amout of
time writing novels no one would publish. This was how I lived.
Scratching at everything.
And this was part of the reason why Yves
had remained close to me. He admired my stamina at failing.
In the bar, I sat alone at a darkened booth
in a back corner. This booth was familiar to me. Through the years
I had been coming to this bar, I had spent a goodly many evenings
having a debauch or an epiphany in this booth. Its marred table
looked shimmery in the dim lighting, the candle in the middle giving
scant illumination. The wallpaper in this corner was reddish and
almost a brocade, as if in imitation of a cheap bordello. Above
the booth was a framed and faded print of Botticelli nymphs, which
further reinforced the bordello theme. Hail, Dionysus, take me
away. A bordello bar in hell, suspended in time, populated by a
gaudy mix of types, and given to an alarming turnover in bartenders.
I sipped at my pear cider, a recent find of mine, letting the tart
and sweet mingle on my tongue for a moment before swallowing it
down. I wondered where Yves was. He was prone to being late. Ordinarily,
I didn't mind so much, as I could entertain myself by scribbling
stuff in one of the spiral notebooks I always carried in my bag,
but this night I felt uninspired and weary. Still, I had the notebook
open and would doodle in it when a stray bar patron looked in my
direction. Sometimes, people assumed that a lone female in a bar,
even if she were cloistered in a dark booth and out of the way,
was, like a pastry, on display and waiting to be taken home and
devoured with a demi-tasse. Although I knew many women who were
angry about such a presumption, finding it just one more injustice
in this world of injustices, I really couldn't see the horror of
it. But then I had been the huntress as well as the hunted, and
my view was that as long as the presumer would politely go away
after being told "no, thank you," then no harm done, eh? Yet, on
a night like tonight, when I felt weary, I didn't even want to
put out the effort to say "no, thank you" in case anyone took it
in their head to approach me. Suddenly becoming absorbed in my
notebook doodlings generally served to deter them and send them
off after more amenable prey.
Weary. I contemplated the word, and took
it on my tongue with another sip of the cider. The feeling washed
over me, and I became impatient for Yves. He had called me that
afternoon at work and cajoled me into meeting him for a drink.
I hadn't seen him in weeks, had hardly even spoken to him on the
phone. Through the many phases of our long friendship, there were
weeks when we were inseparable and other weeks when we hardly spoke.
It was a long cycle, punctunated by our respective tendencies to
get distracted by a new project, whether social or creative. I
hadn't any idea what he'd been up to in these last few weeks, although
I knew I was about to hear about it.
I selfishly hoped it wasn't a love affair.
I was feeling hungry myself in that realm, and I didn't want to
think about it. I hadn't had sex for a month or so, although, technically,
I still wasn't completely broken up with my most recent trio of
lovers: my intellectual affair, my sexual dark affair, and the
man I read tarot post-coitally for. The intellectual had suddenly
opted to become dramatic and clinging, and after a few screaming
pitched fights over basically nothing, had faded. I kept it in
my head that perhaps after he calmed down, we could pick up again,
but his sudden descent into petty bickering had chased me away.
He still called a few times a week to pick on me. He said I was
a cold and unfeeling bitch, which was on occasion probably true
-- but it was such a pat statement and given that he was usually
articulate and interesting, I thought he could have come up with
something a little more original. The sexual dark affair was on
hold or finished, as that man had taken up with a new person and
was temporarily in love. Actually, that phrase had been what had
gotten me into some trouble with the intellectual man, as he enjoyed
quizzing me about my love life (because he found it fascinating,
he had said). I had told him one day that the dark one -- as I
tended to refer to him given his goth tastes -- and I were no longer
fucking since he was temporarily in love. And the intellectual
one blew up at me, telling me that was my problem, using modifiers
like "temporarily." How dare I assume that everyone else was as
distant and as cynical as I, maybe the guy was really in love,
yada, yada, yada. And suddenly I realized that the intellectual
had fallen in love with me and hated it. But the fact was -- as
I attempted to point out -- that the dark one was the one who had
said to me that he was temporarily in love. It was his phrase,
not mine. He was cynical, too, and despite the fact that I knew
he really wanted his new love affair to work and to turn into something
soothing and long-term, he wasn't counting on it and he simply
told me about it that way so he could have an excuse to resume
things with me if he had to.
The last of the three, the man I read tarot
for, had gone to New Orleans for a few months, perhaps for good.
Writing him tarot readings via mail just wasn't the same.
As the unravelling of all these affairs had
happened simultaneously six weeks ago, I hadn't had the energy
to go find myself something new to do yet. I missed them all. But
these things happen -- usually not at once, however. I had to admit
that having my entire love life explode at once was disheartening,
and that was why I selfishly hoped that Yves wasn't going to come
bounding into the bar, joyful over something new. And, yet, I would
be happy for him. I had to be. It was the way it worked.
I drank some more of the pear cider and wondered
what time it was. The bar wasn't very crowded yet. There were a
few scattered groups at the various tables and booths, but perhaps
only about twenty people in the place total. The place was large,
and tended to get very crowded on the weekends, especially when
they had live music. I liked it better on the weeknights, like
this, when it was quiet enough to hold a conversation with people,
and yet noisy enough to provide some stimulation. As I scanned
the familiar surroundings, Yves entered.
Yves was beautiful, and people looked at
him when he walked in. They always did. He knew they did. He thrived
on it, although he pretended to be disgusted. Still, he would wither
without that sort of acknowledgement, having received it all his
life. He was an exotic specimen of humanity -- a mix of French,
Native American, Italian, and Moroccan blood. The mingling of these
genes had produced a tall smooth androgynous boy with high cheekbones
and dark thick hair, which fell to the middle of his back. Tonight,
he wore an interesting blend of clothing, a blend of styles he
had accumulated over his many years of making peculiar fashion
statements. Black tight jeans with clunky motorcycle boots, a white
T--shirt featuring a likeness of Edgar Allan Poe, and a black velvet
waistcoat he had bought at a vintage clothing store. His testosterone
poet look, he'd called it once. I'd retorted back, "Or is it frou-frou
biker?"
Yves bounded over to the table. "Leda! Dahhhhhhh-link!" he
said and enveloped me in a hug. I tell you, a man bounding in motorcycle
boots and a velvet waistcoat is one sight that should not be missed
in a lifetime. I laughed delightedly at his attentions. And felt
my usual stabbing hunger at how beautiful I found him. I did still
completely desire the man. But. Although over the years, we had
on infrequent occasions dallied with each other, we never kept
it up. Dallied. Quite the euphemism in this case. Our few dalliances
had been accidental after-party gropings, or a sudden lunging at
each other after a late night of intense conversation -- always
over in the morning when we scuttled away from each other. Last
time we had tried it, more than a year ago, it was miserably awkward,
and I think we were both afraid to approach the other in that manner
again. I knew I was. I never asked why he didn't. And we never
spoke of our attempts, seeming to prefer to pretend those incidents
had never occurred.
"Hello, you," I said. "Sit."
"I want to buy a bottle of champagne," he
said. "You'll help me drink it, won't you?"
"Champagne? Here? You're crazy. Too 'spensive."
"Fuck that. I got a raise last week. I want
to celebrate."
"Well, by all means, go for it. You know
I won't say no to free champagne."
He smiled at me. "I knew you wouldn't." He
turned and went to the bar.
Hmm, he bounded. And wanted champagne. No
doubt about it. He was getting laid and regularly. I sighed despondently
and yet felt entirely grateful that there was something to celebrate
for one of us. Besides, I countered to myself, champagne bubbles
would chase this weary bleakness away. I wondered whether it did
that because of itself intrinsically, or because champagne was
-- well -- champagne, historical pulchritrude in a bottle.
Yves returned with a bottle of champagne
and two glasses. Marie Antoinette glasses, I thought. I had read
somewhere that champagne glasses were fashioned after the shape
of Marie Antoinette's breasts. That's the sort of trivia that stays
in your head even after the rest of the brain cells go and you
spend your time forgetting where you set down your housekeys.
Yves stood as he poured the champagne into
our glasses, and then sat down gracelessly flinging the tails of
his waistcoat out so he wouldn't sit on them. I picked up my glass
and nearly took a sip before I remembered it was champagne, damn
it, in a nice glass, and this was Yves, and there was a certain
ceremony to these sorts of things before you got completely wasted.
"To?" I asked, lifting the glass in a toast. "Your
raise?" I wanted to say to his new love affair, but he hadn't told
me about that yet. At least not verbally. All things in good time.
"No, to us. Because we're brilliant," he
said.
"And we're Leos," I said. It was an old joke
between us.
"Hell, yes!" he said and we clinked enthusiastically.
The champagne wasn't half-bad for overpriced
bar fare.
I was about to ask him what was new, to coax
his inevitable story out of him, but he took the floor first.
"How's the love life?" he asked. "Have the
boys come to their senses and dropped at your feet and begged for
forgiveness?"
I laughed. He knew most of the story in the
small sketches I'd told him on the phone in the last few weeks.
We hadn't had time to delve into the intricate absurd details,
and I wasn't really sure I wanted to tonight. I wasn't feeling
flippant about it. I was feeling wretched and failed, and I was
never very entertaining when being maudlin about it. I supposed,
though, I had to offer something to Yves in the way of an update.
"Oh, no, they're all still quite gone. Poof.
Bye-bye. Feast or famine. I'm preparing for the drought now. I
got a letter from Jarret today, and he thinks now he's going to
stay in New Orleans permanently. Invited me to visit sometime.
La la la la. Stefan's still screaming at me when I bother to pick
up the phone, and Marty's -- well -- you know."
"Indisposed?" Yves offered.
I laughed. "Yeah, that." I took a gulp of
the champagne, pleading with the bubbles to do their magic trick.
I was feeling worse. I'd spoken their names. I'd made them real
again after having worked so hard to make them silhouettes in my
mind. My heart. My viscera. Damn it.
I must have allowed emotion to cross my face
because I saw the familiar apprehensive pucker of Yves's brow as
he recognized my symptoms and thought he might have to console
me. This wasn't to infer that he was unsympathetic -- because I
knew unquestionably that he cared about me very much -- but it
was just that he was really bad at consoling others in the usual
fashion. He was great at mordant commisseration, however.
I shrugged it all off and attempted a half-smile. "Maybe
I can get some writing done now. Fucking does so interfere with
my ah-arrrrrrrrt. Or is that the other way around?"
There. I'd made him laugh now. He knew he
wasn't going to have to hold my hand and tell me it would all be
all right someday. Whenever someday was. He relaxed. My turn to
quiz him.
"So, dearheart," I said, lolling my words
on my tongue and lounging back in the booth, "do tell what's been
keeping you so busy these days. Details, details, details."
He brightened and, likewise, lounged back
in the booth, the storyteller preparing for an odyssey. He held
his champagne glass with both hands.
"I'm having the most delicious threesome," he
said. And sipped his champagne in a very self-congratulatory gesture. "I've
taken to referring to them as my more irregular lovers -- as that's
what they've become, both in time span and character. I only met
them three weeks ago and we've only actually gotten together, intimately,
a couple of times, but they are simply the most frightening and
devious of partners."
"Mmmm," I said, offering him an envious tone.
I could see Yves writhe in his afterglow,
and the expression he took on became lofty and calculating. I knew
instantly I was in for a great story. As I knew Yves's tendencies,
I doubted he had divulged any of the details to anyone else yet,
and he was, with his body language, with the champagne, with the
choice of wording, setting the stage for the premiere of it. He
liked to try out his anecdotes on me first.
"You know it's best not to invite these types
into your home. So, I went to theirs. Seduction was heavy in the
air. It cannot be so otherwise. And especially not at Dirge and
Eugénie's. So heavy was the smell and ambiance of pending sex,
we had no choice but to indulge ourselves in several hot and terribly
arousing games of 'Clue,' as any physical contact at that point
would have proven detrimental due to the level of passion. One
of the games ended, strangely enough, with Miss Scarlet doing terrible
things to someone in the lounge with a rope and Dirge, who happened
to be dressed that evening very much like the Diva Scarlet herself,
tipped the board game over, stood on the bed where we were, in
fact, playing the game. Perhaps this made the following inevitable.
He screamed, 'I am Miss Scarlet! And these are my ropes!' taking
several from a convenient shelf by the bed. A struggle ensued,
but then, love is a struggle to begin with."
I smiled. Yves paused in his narrative to
sip his champagne and reflect on his sudden philosophy. He refilled
my champagne glass then and continued.
"Then Eugénie and I restrained the boy and
wrenched the coils from his white knuckles, tying him to various
pieces of furniture, perhaps too far-spaced apart rending him looking
like a street tart on a rack. He whimpered and twitched as much
as he could as Eugénie lifted his skirt and cut away his panties
with a pair of scissors. Eugénie and I quickly shed our clothing,
making ourselves even more stylish than we had been before, if
that were possible." Yves smirked at me. "Dirge writhed in pain
and pleasure (I've always confused the two) and begged to be released.
This was not his original plan, apparently. And he was a built
enough drag queen to overcome anyone. But not two people. Eugénie
told him to shut up and sat on his face. Though Dirge could hardly
breathe, I found Eugénie's gesture of the most genuine sort, though
I held quite an amount of pity for the writhing boy. To release
his tension (or build it up, again, I cannot discern betwixt the
two) I aggravated his quivering needs in my mouth."
I laughed outright. "Quivering needs? Oh,
my god!"
"Hush. So, I'm getting carried away. Anyway,
done with fondling him, I watched the scene between them for a
few mintues and I found myself envious of Eugénie, and decided
she'd been hogging the boy long enough. So, I ripped her off the
poor servant's face and replaced her with my own loins. Eugénie
was upset. Steaming mad, I'd go so far to say. She grabbed onto
this terribly goth chandelier-thing they had affixed above their
bed and swung at me to demonstrate her wishes that I had not done
that. I, of course, heeded little attention to her until, with
a crash, the chandelier ripped out of the ceiling and I turned
quickly, worried for my safety. Eugénie was standing on the bed,
holding the chandelier over her head like a trophy and looking
quite confused. She scowled. I indicated she may, if she so desired,
mount the fair drag queen as I was not requiring his lower plumbing
facilities at that moment. This she did, still holding the chandelier
over her head like a grand chapeau and began bouncing with conviction.
Well, Leda, it wasn't long until full rapport was achieved and
our hair curled. In the afterglow of our escapades, someone suggested
anouther round of 'Clue,' but I insited on playing 'Trouble' instead."
"You would."
"There is a rather dark postscript to this
story, though. In the morning, after we'd slept off our exercises,
I awoke to find myself alone in the bed with Dirge. I got up, dressed,
and intended to leave quickly, maybe leaving a little 'thank you
note.' But as I emerged from the bedroom, I heard sobbing in the
kitchen and went in to find Eugénie standing over a dead doberman.
Their pet had died during the night and had arranged himself in
a most dramatic pose for his departure, his body twisted around
and his head lying partially in his china water dish. Eugénie was
besides herself. She admitted to me that he was a terribly old
dog -- so it was not a complete surprise -- but still to find the
dog in this grotesque pose was just awful. I offered my sympathies,
of course, but got out of there quickly as I wasn't in the mood
to share in the grieving process."
"Was the dog drowned?"
"No, he was just dead. Anyway, I've spoken
to Eugénie on the phone since that night. They had a little Egyptian-style
funeral for their pet, and invited me, but I didn't go. They're
going to on a little vacation next weekend. A drive up to the wine
country. They've invited me to that, and I've RSVP'd quite eagerly.
I can't wait to see what amusements a little country jaunt with
these two will provide."
"They sound like quite a pair."
"Oh, they are. Rather eccentric and actually
somewhat wealthy judging from their house. I haven't inquired,
of course. That would be gauche. But I'm so used to hanging out
with the poor eccentrics, that I'm excited to see what rich ones
do."
"Hmm, maybe you can be their new pet."
He laughed and laughed. "And end up dead
with my head in a water dish? I think not!"
I drank my champagne somberly, but tried
to smile. Yves noticed my bleakness, and, again, I saw his brow
pucker. He refilled my champagne glass and put his hand on mine.
He didn't say anything. His touch depressed me. I felt as if a
vacuum surrounded me, and I was alone -- as I had designed it,
as I had preferred it.
I couldn't help feeling a little despondent
over the doberman.
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