Nekked
I started writing this story about two years ago. Gave up on it after about six months. Read some of it yesterday.
I can't believe I wrote this. I don't know if I'm proud or embarrassed. But I feel compelled to post it because I hate to see it just thrown to the boneyard. Here's the first part:
At parties in Sean’s Cornelia Ave. apartment she’d been courted mercilessly and in earnest by two of the three swarthy young Barrett triplets. Descendants of the legendary Barrett bloodline. They of the collective contract with Ford Modeling Agency, who represented, respectively, each of the personae most valued in males by females: humble intellectual, free-spirit extreme athlete and poet/individualist. Not at all like the typical turtleneck-and-sportcoat crowd that perpetually abutted the fireplace mantle with merlot and horn-rimmed glasses and an uncanny (and OK, unsettling) cognition of free-form interpretive dance and surrealist opera. Nor did they resemble the couch-bound Corps (i.e. corporates) with the Rolexes they disengenuously attempted to cover up in humbleness as they pontificated on the efficacy of a non-Scottish single-malt or some shit, seeming to care about such trivialities while really only reprising a polished game that interested not the women, as they assumed, but themselves (this approach was ultimately mistaken as successful, by the way, if the deal was closed later that evening, the subject actually being captivated more by the authentic mohair sweater and the spoils said sweater adumbrated than by the conversation). But so she parried each Barrett jab with the subtle dubiousness of a seasoned beat reporter who knew all the angles and her deftness was such that the Barretts (the two of them, anyway) left each gathering under the distinct impression that they'd made progress and were maybe one encounter away from closing the deal, bending her over the proverbial bathroom sink and entering from behind. And indeed at their Lincoln Park loft later that evening they would argue who’d come closest and in turn dismissively assure their kin that no, she told me you were this or that and definitely not interested in your bobsledding trip to Tibet and the February fashion spread in Whatever Monthly.
She was Laura. German-born. Hamburgian. Whose family had moved stateside so her father could take a position at the University of Chicago lecturing on early-Aristotelian ethics (a zealously guarded UC staple that was seemingly in place to anger dissident philosophy students out of the philosophy department — see Pirsig); whose interests, ambitions and general ethical standards were frustratingly difficult to pinpoint (the Barretts observed); whose temperament betrayed a touch of self-consciousness and insecurity; whose stubbornness did not allow her to compensate for physical shortcomings with make-up of any kind; whose natural beauty had matriculated somewhere in her early-20s and whose sense of fashion was rooted in an ambivalence toward fashion; whose German accent had diminished to the point of non-existence by the time she attended high school and would not return now no matter how hard she tried to replicate it.
Standing by a bookcase next to rows of fake book spines and half-listening to Austin Barrett tell her about himself and his interests and ambitions and how (and her lips almost mimicked his as he said it) he never really wanted to be a model. My brothers made me do it, or some such. Austin being the poet/individualist of the multi-hued Barrett cloth. Laura listened, or affected the mannerisms of a listener: Nodding, sipping her bourbon concoction at strategic intervals while maintaining eye contact and interpolating brief hyperboles of her own. The effort wasn't taxing. She didn't dislike the Barretts, after all. Especially Austin, who made his overtures fairly drip with sincerity and who to anyone else would seem to be that exceptional sort of rich chap who, they would say, has a good head on his shoulders. A stunningly gorgeous head, Laura would concede. And admittedly the thought of taking fists of his shaggy curly brown hair in her hands during some sort of illicit encounter had crossed her mind. Several times even. Now even. But she a stubborn mule and the Barretts' intentions lacking a gentlemanly discretion (for suits of their tweed), Laura took their handouts, put them in her pocket and suspended judgement on whether to save them for later or toss them out. The decision as yet unmade. But again she was stubborn and would take her time and do things in her time and not feel obligated to live up to the socially accepted flirting-response time allotment. And furthermore the thought of being with Austin engendered the same exquisite guilt, Laura imagined, as stealing from a museum. And furthermore the name Austin being the type of name reserved for folks whose parents were sickeningly rich (which the Barretts were; their parents, father specifically, having made the type of money that was best measured in tonnage). Like names like Stratford and Baxter and Court and Blake and Taylor and Carlton. Young men who were accustomed to getting what they wanted. Wanting things simply to get them. Getting them and taking them for granted. Or worse, doubting they ever wanted them in the first place. And these thoughts being the thread by which she hung on Friday nights. By which she hung over a deep and beautiful blue-green ocean of two-headed masculinity into which she desperately wanted to plummet, but which she feared because the ocean big and nebulous and dangerous and shark-infested and bitterly cold. And she hung on and was confident of her grip.
“...the shoot in Cabo. And you get up so early it's still cold and the sun has some pure light or something the photographers love down there. And we’d be finished by like eleven and I'd go over to this bar, La Strada, and sit on the sidewalk drinking something cold and orangish and watching the sun until it reached its apex and never hardly ever blinking. And the palm trees were like cool underneath and unnaturally cool for just plain old shade.”
“Yeah.” Nodding. Sipping. Eye-contacting. Laura had this uncanny ability to make cigarettes materialize in her off hand. Most people didn't notice, but those who did thought this particularly uncanny and kind of weird-neat. They didn't really just appear, the cigarettes, but Laura was liquid in her motion, and keeping up was like trying to track a ripple in water from afar. Her most inauspicious mannerisms elegant and kind of shady and like maybe a ghost would move. Or like one imagines a ghost would move.
“You should check it out...”
“Yeah. Sounds cool.”
Hokkani Boro, the gypsy girl, was reading Tarot cards for some Nameless (pl.) on an indigo-heavy Turkish carpet in the den in Sean’s apartment (known by frequent attendees as simply The A.S.). But so her openness about her ethnicity and the superstitions that characterized it made newcomers to Sean’s parties invariably levitate toward her. That magnetic eccentricity that foretold of some sort of artistic sensibility (misleading, in this case). And Hokkani wearing several too-large copper bracelets — some bead-encrusted, some not — on both wrists and waving those wrists to illustrate points of destiny: flailing in confusion and discord or spreading slowly from the center out in love, happiness and contentment. No one seemed ever to have told her that people prefer endearing, generous fortunes to allusions to disaster or major foot surgery, Hokkani more often plowing ahead, arms a whirling dervish as she foresaw, say, impending inner-ear infections or mongoloid offspring. And her hair a curio closet of tight, multi-colored wraps and plastic gemstones, even tiny inaudible bells, all woven into the production and the hair being incredibly good-smelling and deep black clean of east Asian women's hair despite Hokkani's reluctance to get it wet and possibly disband what one could only guess was stockpiled follicular mojo. To be sure, her boyfriend Eric took her washing her hair to indicate interest in other men and an attempt to woo (his word) other men. And this would lead, indeed, to incredibly bad and embarrassing mojo in front of several people. Which is why Eric is not welcome at the A.S. lately and why Hokkani has told several of her friends that she's taken to telling the male Nameless that her ear-kissing is a time-honored gypsy tradition and should in no way make the recipient feel apprehensive and maybe call me sometime this week but after eight, always after eight, she would say.
And now for the life of her Laura’d been distracted and couldn’t remember what Austin was talking about.
“...for the first time. And it was pretty scary, you know. But it’s cool too cuz like by the second time you’re like totally relaxed and it, it, it just like, man, you've got to like experience it to understand.” He stroked his chin. “But afterward I felt like peaceful. Like excited but peaceful at the same time.” He took a belt of brandy and nodded to himself. “Yeah ... I'm definitely doing it again.”
“Uh huh.”
Austin Barrett (the self-proclaimed poet/individualist Barrett — known for high cheekbones, broad shoulders and crisply sculpted, photogenic buttocks) spoke with a whispery, watery soft voice that maybe came out sounding stranger and more inhuman than it did to Austin in his head. And when Laura heard it — when he got drunk and really fell into it — it seemed to her a conscious attempt to replicate the mannerisms and timber of some poetic ideal. The long hair, fingernail-crescent eyes, stubble, rucksack, old, oily leather boots, second-hand this-and-that and the leaning the head back and looking as if something of great importance was on the ceiling, all that added up to little when he talked and it seemed like he ruined everything, senseless words in a manufactured voice carving out fatal ruts in the trunk of his appearance.
“I wrote about it when I got back. I hadn’t written that much in one day since shit I don't know when. And some of the best...”
It was no use. She hadn’t a clue what he'd been talking about and Austin, despite what Laura guessed was a decent amount of genuine intelligence, could not pull off talking about himself without somehow sounding like a teenager: sort of a well-measured reluctant self-absorption.
So she made a verbal exit while Austin was in mid-stutter — half-drunken eyes searching the ceiling for the word, fist and palm at the ready to make the point as soon as the confounding word revealed itself — and went to refresh her glass.
The A.S. was a narrow, high-ceilinged duplex with audacious archways and crown moldings and hand-scrubbed hardwood floors spotted with authentic expensive rugs that smelled of incense and dried leaves. The sofas and chairs and ottomans were pea-green organic hemp-cloth-looking and of womb-like comfort. The walls were covered in cream ribbed paper. Sean detested hanging art unless it was original and what few items broke the walls' blank plane looked like framed paintings by primates or young, uncoordinated relatives.
And Lone Stan Kirk was in the kitchen archway alone, as per his moniker, making no attempt to mask the fact he was looking at body parts of passing women that gentlemen simply don't make a show of looking at unless they're in an adult club of some kind. But no, Lone Stan, as the ladies passed, would look straight down at their bottoms as if he were at a bottom store pricing and comparing potential bottoms. Tilting his head slightly as he stared and almost looking as if he'd give the bottom a pinch to, you know, test it out and see if he wanted to buy. Never really talking to anyone unless provoked and always holding his tumbler of rum curiously close to his chin and occasionally making quick, animated facial expressions as if practicing for an upcoming conversation. And no one was really clear on how he came to be a regular at the A.S. to begin with but he being completely and almost laughably harmless thusfar his presence didn’t bother anyone and the Straw Girls (tall, rail-thin and traveling in packs) made a game of walking by, pausing to bend and pick up dimes covertly dropped before Lone Stan’s arrival and mentally tallying the results from across the room. And no one really clear either on whether he knew of this and, the results being to his liking, did not exhibit compunction about it out of fear they’d stop.
And Laura radiated beauty, yes. But not the kind of beauty that was complemented by a let’s say gymnastic posterior. So when she went to the kitchen knowing well what kind of bodily inventory was afoot she would always slide sideways past L.S. Kirk and make eye contact and say hey or whatever. And she’d go into the kitchen and always in the kitchen there would be Troy Barrett, the gregarious ex-bartender and April ‘99 coverboy of Men’s Health, mixing drinks and holding court to any of a number of female subjects. A skilled mixer of drinks, indeed, and the type of square-jawed chap who represented a beacon of public competence to legions of the socially gangrenous. Everyone’s friend like. Indiscriminate. Real class president material if he hadn’t been home-schooled.
