First Things First, page 18
She’s living alone in an elegant studio apartment over some old warehouse down by the docks, of course. It’s an unsavoury neighbourhood, yes, but the apartment inside is perfect. One big room, high ceiling, green walls all covered with her own work. She’s meeting herself every time she turns around, first thing in the morning, last thing at night. Evelyn thinks it may well be the best place in the whole world.
Her first piece in this vein hangs now over the king-size bed. It’s called: The only thing worth caring about is food.
There’s Evelyn in bed in a cheap motel room nursing a cracked WATERMELON which has leaked red sticky juice all over her belly. Arranged in piles on the lumpy sheets are PARSNIPS, CELERY, ZUCCHINI, and ten copies of The Joy of Cooking. Her stretch marks are like slugs. Some people have said this piece is too obvious. What do they know?
Evelyn’s best-known piece is called: I spy with my little eye something that is edible.
It is a series shot in Safeways downtown and it stars Evelyn and six of her friends, life-size. There they are, each curled up in a shopping cart holding up flash cards that say:
BROCCOLI
BRUSSELS SPROUTS
CANTALOUPE
LEAF LETTUCE
CALIFORNIA GRAPEFRUIT
STRING BEANS.
Evelyn’s flash card says:
BUY ME.
I’M A NUTRITIOUS
AND DELICIOUS
LITTLE PEACH.
The critics usually admire Evelyn’s courage, her sense of humour, her technical ability, and her vast and brutal talent, quote, unquote. Evelyn has been alone for years and she figures it’s probably just as well, saves having to defend herself and decamp. She cuts out the rave reviews and sends them to her ex-husband, Gerry, who is still writing a bad novel in Michigan and never replies. He has stopped sending her money and Christmas cards. She could care less.
This afternoon Evelyn’s working on something wonderful called: Portrait of a woman wearing metal.
She sets up the camera in the kitchen, takes off all her clothes, and climbs into the stainless steel sink, which has been polished like a mirror in preparation. She puts the colander on like a helmet, one CARROT sticking straight out the top. She poses patiently in the hysterical heat, sweat trickling down her sides, back, nose, and into her mouth.
Later in the darkroom she will decide that her baggy SWEET POTATO breasts are far more expressive than her face, which is too pale, too bland, an ordinary old POTATO.
Evelyn knows that she’s not getting any younger, she’s closer to forty than thirty now. She could care less; in fact, she’s kind of relieved. Youth, it seems in retrospect, was nothing more than a damp guilty invasion of privacy. And marriage was like when she worked in that bank one year—a misguided attempt at being, if not exactly normal, at least ordinary.
Now she’s well-seasoned with furious secrets.
She wants to be admired from afar by those heavenly young curious men who come to her shows and want to buy her a drink or a vegetarian pizza afterwards. They never have enough money to buy her any of the things she really wants. And so sometimes they’re all falling in love with her just when she’s walking away.
* * *
When we can have whatever we want, we want Beaujolais in crystal, good to the very last drop. It makes us feel silky and smart.
When we can have whatever we want, we want rich red food, the kind that’s hard to come by:
lobsters with claws
succulent berries and cherries out of season
steak tartare dripping.
It makes us feel bloody and wet.
When we can have whatever we want, we want a crystal chandelier for the dining room. It makes us feel vicious and spoiled and it will cut you when it falls.
Some people say we’re already vicious, already spoiled.
Not spoiled enough.
Not vicious enough.
When we can be whatever we want, we want to be exquisite.
What we want is deluxe.
* * *
Sandi goes out shopping almost every afternoon. Her man Stan’s on midnights at the mine, he’s working, always working, bringing home the paycheque, bringing home the boring old bacon. He’s sleeping all day and Sandi’s just got to get away. I don’t want to disturb you, sweetie. And besides, his humid snoring bulk in the bedroom drives her up the wall. She can’t sing, she can’t dance, she can’t even vacuum.
She puts on some more makeup and runs for the bus that’ll take her way across town to the mall.
Once there she walks up and down for a while, just looking in the store windows, admiring the shoes, the anorexic double-jointed mannequins, and her own reflection in the glass. She sits down for a while and has a smoke which she butts in some potted plant. She recognizes some of these young punks who are just hanging out, they’re here every day too. Why aren’t they in school? Why isn’t she? They’re always eating buttered popcorn and footlongs, slouching around the record store, stealing the odd little thing. That girl with the pink hair must be some kind of freak.
Sandi tried stealing once too, a pair of fake gold earrings shaped like zipper heads. But it was no big deal. Buying things is more fun.
She has a toasted bacon-and-tomato sandwich and a hot fudge sundae (which gives her pimples and courage too) at the lunch counter in Zellers.
She likes to look at everything. I’m in no hurry, just passing the time. Just looking thanks, this stuff is junk. She likes to buy barrettes, mascara, pantyhose, shampoo, and a zodiac key ring, Cancer.
She’s looking half-heartedly at wee frilly baby clothes. She knows she’s too young yet for a baby. Some people said she was too young to get married too, just seventeen. But that’s different. You can always get rid of a husband if you have to, but you can’t divorce a kid if you decide you don’t like it after a year or two. The two people in the world she would like to talk to most right now are her mother (who’s gone to Hawaii for the winter with her new husband, Bert, who’s better than the first two anyway, richer) and Linda Ronstadt.
She’s trying on ten pairs of shoes because the salesman has nice big eyes behind those silly glasses and he’s rubbing her arch, well sort of, and admiring her ankles, well maybe. This is something like Cinderella but sexier.
She’s trying on a purple sweater shot with gold threads through and through. She’s trying on that new brand of jeans that everyone’s wearing, they’re all the rage, they’re the ones you see on the side of the bus. They look better on the bus. She’s trying on five purple t-shirts with different sayings on the front. Purple is the greatest because it means something. Purple is like orchids and eggplant, exotic.
Sandi’s standing in her old blue ski jacket in the pink dressing room thinking that she’s naked, bony, and nippleless like those bald-headed mannequins and the shoe salesman stands there staring. He’s never seen anything like it. She just wants him to see her, she’s not sure what will happen after that. After that, it doesn’t really matter.
She just wants him to stop thinking she’s dumb and half-dead just because she’s so young and so married. That’s only the way she looks, not the way she feels.
She wants him to know what she’s really like.
She wants him to know every single thing about her that there is to know.
She’s going to get one of those black velvet paintings, either the one with the bullfighter or the one with the big eyes crying one tear, for over the couch, and good old Stan, he’ll just have a fit.
So let him.
* * *
Picture this:
Our eyes are like bruises.
Our legs are like milk.
Our breasts are like magnets.
Our hips are like instincts.
Our teeth are very cultured pearls.
But our hearts, our hearts are sweet, sweethearts.
What we want is a new disguise.
* * *
Lillian dreams about surgeons. She used to be a nurse.
She’s on the table in the operating room
blinking in the bright light
waiting for the cocktail party to end.
Everybody she knows is there
sipping dry martinis
eating little crackers
sucking their thumbs.
Her daughters are drinking tequila and swinging.
Somebody plays a piano poorly.
The surgeons come at her from all directions
like bees
kissing through their surgical masks
tickling her with feathers or forks
mental as anything. They take her apart like a puzzle
painless bloodless
pass her thighs around on a plate
bite-size delectable lox.
There’s nothing to fear.
There’s nothing to fear, dear.
She knows there’s nothing to fear.
When they put her back together again
she’s a new improved model
deluxe lovable wise and her breasts are perfect.
Only trouble is sometimes they get too drunk
forget how the puzzle fits
leave her spread out all over like that
one arm dangling from the door knob
smelling fishy.
Lillian’s husband Hank is a half-crooked new- and used-car salesman. Lillian’s twin daughters are half-crazed teenagers but she’s not sure how crazy because they’re never home anyway. They might be out getting pregnant, addicted, or arrested right now. You never can tell. What the twins say they’re doing is visiting the museum, studying at the library, or attending an afternoon of chamber music. Do they really expect her to believe that? They do it on purpose, they want to be unnatural, they want to annoy her, they think they want to be writers or something.
This family lives in a happy beige house with a view, a verandah, three bedrooms, and a two-car garage. Lillian’s in the kitchen right now whipping up hundreds of cookies for Christmas, rolling them in finely chopped walnuts, topping each one with a clot of raspberry jam when they’re cool. The whole house smells like a TV commercial.
Hank’s out in the garage changing the oil or something. Lillian’s waiting for the last batch to bake, licking her fingers, and flipping through last month’s Vogue or the numbers on the television dial. Outside, the wind is coming up grey, bringing snow at last.
Oh good, it’ll be a white Christmas after all.
What’s wrong with this picture?
They sniff at her all day like dogs, the dreams. She wants them, doesn’t, wants them, doesn’t, wants them, doesn’t, does. It does not seem possible or necessary to tell anyone or do anything about the surgeons. What you don’t know won’t hurt you.
* * *
We want.
We sing.
We like.
We scream.
We see.
We say.
We can say it without saying a word.
We can be cunning.
We can be brave.
We can be lazy.
We can be maidens all in a row, singing the postpartum premenstrual brand-name blues.
We can be dragons too.
We’ve got personalities we haven’t even used yet.
What we want is a fight.
* * *
Mitzi May is a tricky kind of gal. She keeps a room in some run-down hotel, the kind you see from the bus, with steamy little windows lined with ketchup, milk, and beer bottles. There was some woman died down the hall one time. It was the smell that finally brought them around. The room when they broke down the door was filled with bird cages. Worse than the death was the sadness. But Mitzi isn’t sad, Mitzi doesn’t worry, Mitzi’s just rolling along.
One time she met this funny old boy in the alley and he’s telling her, You’ve never seen life. He’s trying to catch some broad who’s crawling away from him, puking. And Mitzi just smiles up one side of her face and takes off after the guitar player from The Deadbeats who’s taking her to a big party tonight. But she never forgot either.
She comes out at night like a dew-worm. The city this summer is stuck on hot, new wave, heat wave, swollen. The high-rises radiate silver sluggishly. She’s not afraid of anything, this one, no one can hurt her, no one can touch her now. She’s getting on her best dress, all silver like armour. Her breasts are like badges or the poke of a gun in your ribs.
She cruises the all-night donut shops, checking out the fifty-eight varieties, baked every day, fresh coffee too, one free refill only. Everything’s fresh here, country style.
Mitzi wears black lipstick just for a laugh and talks all night about her new tattoo.
Baby you’re not listening.
The guy at the next table slumps deeper down into his fresh cup of that fresh coffee.
Honey what you want?
He’s looking around for the waitress who’s supposed to come and save him. The guy’s a simple insomniac, innocent, listening to country music on a portable tape player. Help me make it through the night. This is just too corny to pass up.
Sweetheart let me help you. I could make your dreams come true how true.
Sugar I could do things do some things for you make your blood boil over make it run ice-cold.
When the cops come in on their nightly rounds, the first one says, Hey Mitzi, what’s a girl like you doing in a nice place like this? Ha ha ha.
They’re both smirking at her, wiping their foreheads with the backs of their hands like bus drivers. But even they’re afraid to touch her, she’s so excitable, this one, she’s a real lizard, this one.
She’s really something, that one, the other one says as sulky Mitzi sashays away, packing a purse like a suitcase, and singing The Rolling Stones.
She’s pretty snappy-looking tonight, this one. She thinks she’s going to some pizza palace where the coffee’s better and they’ve got wild music on the jukebox. She thinks she’s going dancing.
* * *
We want to be dangerous.
We want to be wicked.
We want to be enormous.
We want to run rampant.
We want to get savage and leave the whole sad world behind us, hanging by a thread.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
What we want is a getaway car.
* * *
We could be anything.
We could be wives.
We could be terrorists.
We could be artists.
We could be wizards.
We could be legends in our own time.
What we want is a change in style.
LIFE SENTENCES
(1983)
They’ve known each other, this woman, this man, ever since they were kids, healthy, wealthy, and (xxxxx). For all their young lives, they lived in identical ranch-style homes side by side on West (xxxxx) Avenue. Both their fathers were important energetic men in the (xxxxx) Company downtown and their mothers were (xxxxx) housewives, lazy and slim.
They were both only children, growing up smoothly with a strong sense of their own (xxxxx) power. Everywhere they looked there was money or signs of it. Money was not something they ever had to (xxxxx) about. They lived comfortable lucky lives, exclusive (xxxxx) lives. They knew nothing of pain or suffering, danger or (xxxxx). Such things did not seem (xxxxx) or possible.
As adults, they share (xxxxx) memories of lavish turkey dinners, shiny bicycles, picnics at the cottage on Lake (xxxxx), and washing the Cadillacs with their dads on Saturday afternoon in the sunshine. Their moms are sitting in one kitchen or the other, slopping up brandy until they come outside angry and squinting and (xxxxx), refusing to cook. These kids don’t care, they don’t know any (xxxxx).
They were innocent together, this girl, this boy. They have no sense now of having met; they might as well have been (xxxxx), that’s how close they were.
One day in high school the young woman looked (xxxxx) at the young man and saw that he was remarkable. She knew then that she wanted to spend the rest of her (xxxxx) with him and only him. There was no reason to think that she wouldn’t. She’d always got what she (xxxxx) before.
They did everything together in those halcyon days and their parents thought they were (xxxxx) and cute. They went to movies, dances, and football parties, holding (xxxxx), smiling and kissing in corners. They made (xxxxx) love in the back seat of the car the young man’s parents bought him for his (xxxxx) birthday. The young woman loved it when he put his (xxxxx) in her (xxxxx). She was filling up her hope chest with crystal, fine linen, and (xxxxx). She just naturally assumed that the young man (xxxxx) her as much as she (xxxxx) him. He certainly (xxxxx) as if he did.
Of course their parents all approved. Their fathers were talking about retiring early and buying a condo in (xxxxx), which was all the rage at the time. Their mothers were still drunk half the time and now these two kids understood that such behaviour was (xxxxx) and likely to drive them to the same psychiatrist in later years.
After high school, the young man smashed up his car and walked away without a (xxxxx) to some fancy college in (xxxxx). The young woman stayed behind and sold novels in a bookstore while she (xxxxx) for him to come home. Her rich parents said this lousy job was (xxxxx) for her.
They wrote letters back and forth, this young woman, this young man, long letters, (xxxxx) letters, unsatisfying letters. It was only after the young man came home for Christmas the second year with a (xxxxx) gypsy girl that the young woman realized he might not (xxxxx) her after all. Some men when you (xxxxx) them, you know that somehow, slowly, they’re going to defeat you. She was (xxxxx) but he wasn’t paying attention anymore. So she pretended to be (xxxxx) and succeeded. He was (xxxxx) fooled.
The man and the gypsy were married the next summer in his parents’ backyard. The woman was invited of course and had to go just to show him she wasn’t (xxxxx).
