Almost
twenty years ago now, I was an art student in Philadelphia. My friends and I
wanted to wear black, all black. Nothing but black--we even wore black tampons.
And we desperately dreamed of finding our own gallery dealers who'd take 95% of
our income, shoot us up with heroin like they did with Jean Michele Basquiat;
take our promo shots and cover all the track marks up and down our arms with
thick stacks of diamond tennis bracelets; and then lubricate us with tubes of
our OWN oil paint and fuck our armpits, cracks, and folds...
But we
didn't care! We wanted gallery openings-- gallery openings with triple-cream
brie, crusty French bread, washed down with thin tinkly laughter (ha ha ha!) and
robust, full-bodied glasses of adoration.
But not
long after art school, my friends realized how women making it in art was pretty
much a crock, so they washed all that eyeliner off, threw out their vials of
patchouli, and bagged the art world to get married and become bright and cheery
mothers content to paint the scenes from their driveways. Oh, and they were nice
driveways.
But
suddenly we had nothing to talk about except old times. And back then, old times
for us was only like a month earlier.
So I
came to San Francisco in search of Paris-in-the-Twenties...
I
imagined a smoke-filled land where women laughed loudly without being
interrupted by small children asking for glasses of apple juice and their hair
could grow loooong without being yanked out by slimy babies...
... a
land where women sat back with their legs open so their ankles wouldn't get
thick and covered in varicose veins, and on sunny days passersby could bow down
between their thighs for refreshment as if their pudenda were rejuvenating water
fountains that weren't just for the colored people. [WINK]
Paris in
the twenties! And oh--it WAS roaring! [STOMP] But roaring in a SLIGHTLY
different way. Roaring for all the baby boomers EVERYWHERE, who were waving
their hands in the air like they just didn't care, all the while telling us to
stop wearing perfume, pick up that dog shit, avoid MSG and caffeine, recycle
plastic bags, and put that goddamn cigarette out so THEY can play another day
and pay us our only slightly roaring 39-cent raises.
It took
me a week to save up for a #4 Value Meal. I eventually had to break down and
apply for food stamps.
The year
was 1995 / a year when lesbianism was all the rage until straight girls finally
realized that actually being GOOD at lesbian sex involves a whole lot more than
tossing your head back and moaning like you can do with boys. Boys think you're
great for simply being warm, and downright amazing if you actually move. It
doesn't matter if you're reaching for the remote control or a gun.
But with
another chick, once reporters pack up their cameras and go home, you'd better
know how to actually DO something other than toss your head back and moan 'cause
after the third date that shit's just not gonna fly.
I know.
From personal experience. Yeah, lesbianism's harder than any of us bisexual
girls ever realized. A whole lot harder, let me tell you. I'd rather change my
motorcycle tire with a stick of butter and a shard of glass.
Sometimes
everything just comes down to the impossibility of teaching old dogs because
I've been fucking boys since I was 12 or 13 and I can't even learn SPANISH as a
second language.
1995 was
also a year when bloated gold earrings as big as BAGELS hung from black girls'
ears, and rested on their shoulders next to all the responsibilities for
fatherless children borne out of promises to pull out in time.
Now,
when I first came to San Francisco, I thought that there were no black people in
town and that they had to rent them for special events like extra chairs.
But when
I got to the welfare office, the last of the city's tenacious black people
hiding out in the food stamp line before they had to pull out of this foofy
biscotti city of latte people.
And one
of these last black men sauntered by in a white nylon running suit. When he
walked he sounded like a teacher with loud pantyhose and swishing thighs as she
passed by your desk in grade school. Remember that? (SWISH SWISH!) I could
imagine plump thighs fighting and pushing to get in front, wearing away the
pantyhose with friction so intense, it should've started fires. (SWISH SWISH)
Instead, we fidgeted in our seats while she SWISH SWISHED by our desks, and
created warm and moist environments that would soon prove to be dangerous.
That's
what our man in the white nylon suit sounded like : plump teachers' thighs about
to cause a roaring yeast infection. Now, I didn't find that sexy, but maybe
that's sexy for others.
In fact
it WAS : The nylon man felt waves of attraction coming at him. He stopped and
lightly touched at the tangled mass of gold chains on his neck. He turned and
looked at all of us with the publicly confident sleepy-eyed look of a lion that
has just fed and fucked, and sent rays of love to a girl in front of me : The
BAGEL-EARRING GIRL I MENTIONED EARLIER. The one on the CUTTING EDGE of Ghetto
“Fuck-you-PARIS” Fashion in 1995--
---Now,
SPEAKING OF PARIS, I wondered how all of these men could prance around the
welfare office with folded food stamp and welfare applications under their
armpits, and maintain confidence for picking up women in a place like this.
I mean,
I totally, totally didn't understand THIS whole “food-stamp, MAC-daddy”
attraction thing because being so broke doesn't exactly make ME feel like having
lots of sex.
--At
least for free, that is.
Well,
SURE ENOUGH, the BAGEL-earring girl smiled and giggled--and with THAT, the nylon
man craned his neck toward her, wiped at the corners of his mouth with thumb and
forefinger, dried his fingers on his white nylon pants AS HE GRABBED his crotch
and whispered something to her.
The
BAGEL-earring girl fumbled with the French blue cover of the food stamp
application and wrote something in the edge. She tore the corner off : HER PHONE
NUMBER.
It was a
MATCH... Bagel-earring girl and yeast infection boy were going to get it ON, and
it'd be beautiful because for a time at least, she'd believe he was really GONNA
PULL out for real. Yeah, for real.
And when
our bagel-earring heroine turned in her application to "Window A"
seven years ago, the tired lumpy people in charge would try and break her down,
make her feel bad for being broke! But she couldn't be broken! Nuh uh! The big
gold bagel earrings were ALL she had and the new man in the white nylon pants
would make her feel goooood again, yeah.
Like [SWISH,
SWISH]
The
state would make her pee into cups, admit failed dreams, then bring in utility
bills from 1937, BUT they wouldn't notice the missing corner of paper, and the
lumpy, tired food stamp workers wouldn't ever know what it meant, and so they
couldn't take that from her. She'd found love. A French-blue love. The kind of
woosh-wooshing love that would make her feel real pretty and create those old
warm and moist environments that might not prove to be so dangerous this time.
[SWISH,
SWISH]
...
