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Androgyny was in fashion. Full frontal nudity. Glitter bands. Boys wore makeup and high heels. Nixon was president.
It was 1973. Cheap sequins were in the air.
Nobody wanted to spend any more time thinking about Vietnam.
The first time they talked, at a party upstairs on 2nd Avenue, Jean-Luc, in his black-rimmed glasses, asked the pretty transvestite: “What’s your name?”
“Kim.”
“What?” Jean-Luc couldn’t quite hear: other voices and music partially drowned out their words.
“Kim. It’s Chinese.”
“But you’re not.”
“Sure I am. Kim Wong.”
“You don’t look Chinese at all.”
“Kim White?”
Knifey guitar chord as Lou Reed explained, deadpan: Vicious / you hit me with a flower / you do it every hour / Oh baby you’re so vicious
More guitar.
***
The Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and took over Sumer, absorbing and assimilating their culture. Then, after a few hundred years, the barbarian Assyrians conquered Babylonia and ruled it, with their fierce new laws, until the Babylonians, together with the neighboring Elamites and Medes, were able to successfully rebel and decimate the hated Assyrians, seemingly wiping them off the face of the earth.
***
“I want to make something like Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra,” Jean-Luc said, thumb and index finger squeezing Paulie’s left nipple while it grew, pouty, erect. “There’s something very sexy about the Biblical epic,” interrupting himself with a sticky kiss, their warm tongues exploring each other’s mouths. “William Wyler’s Ben Hur, Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis?, DeMilles’ Samson and Delilah … anything about Baghdad or the Arabian Nights, with Steve Reeves or maybe Sinbad… You ever thought about that name? No… not Steve Reeves.”
“Ben Hur,” Paul said, squirming a little, nude in Jean-Luc’s arms.
He loved himself more and more in the heat of Jean-Luc’s worship, eyes shut now, glued lost in delusion and dream as his body was explored and spread open like a big flesh flower, luscious plum-red anal sphincter forming a sensitive blossom in the golden light. Oh. Oh.
And so Paul Fairchild got the part.
***
Routine will change. You’ll be with more people and popularity will increase. Due to unusual schedule, eating habits may become erratic. Don’t neglect nutrition.
***
Kimberly sat like a woman, walked like a woman, had buttocks and breasts and legs like a woman. She didn’t have to go to the electrolysis parlor because she never grew any facial hair to be removed. The estrogens had shrunk her penis, redistributed body fat – and in so doing had given her a good shape and lovely legs. The legs especially pleased her because you see a lot of drag queens with bad legs, legs in which the muscles stand out like cords. Women’s legs have subcutaneous fat which accounts for their smooth shape. In high heels, the difference is strikingly apparent.
The delicacy of her facial structure made it seem hard to imagine her, even without the makeup, as a boy and not a girl. She had been dressing strictly as a female for the last three years. Pierced ears, shaved armpits and legs, boobjob, hormone shots and long brown hair. No one ever questioned her right to use the ladies’ room.
The only thing she didn’t have was a vagina, and she was fascinated with them. She wanted to understand them and how they worked. When she had a lot of money, she paid a woman named Janet de Sade to do an S&M number on her. She smoked Algerian hashish to get in the mood. She groveled at Janet de Sade’s feet, which were shod in shiny shiny black patent spiked heel boots.
It made Jean-Luc sad when he contemplated the fact that Kimberly was not real. She would not last. Nothing does. Nothing does, but…
Jean-Luc knew Janet de Sade too. She wanted to star in a documentary about all the twisted things people paid her to do. Maybe he’d do it, but it felt like selling out. It was so cheap.
He admired people who sought to change who they were, who did not accept being born as a peasant, or as an awkward boy, as an Edward, Edwin, Edgar, Ed or Eddie… how he hated that name! Much better, even if partly as a joke, to reinvent oneself as Jean-Luc.
But everything was a joke, he told Kimberly, who was lying incompletely dressed posed on a pillow like Olympia for Manet.
Astronomy was a joke. Astrology was a joke. Biology was a joke. The Roman Empire was a joke. Cancer. The War in Vietnam. The Renaissance. Enlightenment. Industrial Revolution.
“Was that on TV?”
“Yes, Kim. That was on TV.”
“But they said ‘The Revolution will not be televised.’ Was that a joke?”
“That was a joke. The Revolution was televised. It just didn’t get very good ratings.”
“Do you have any more Dexedrine?”
He wasn’t sure. Some of the white pills had scattered on the floor. He wanted to be organized, but there was some law of thermodynamics leading to Entropy which said, “Not so fast.”
***
Anyone might be cast into slavery in a region where small nations were constantly fighting and capturing large numbers of each other’s citizens.
The Slave Auction, then, was a choice scene, thrilling the imaginations of the spectators, especially regarding the dispersal of the young, attractive specimens, who might be put to use as sexual toys.
***
Paul looked less effeminate when dressed up as the King, primarily because of the braided fake beard he wore. His costume consisted of a long, smooth tunic, partly decorated with rich embroidery in horizontal and diagonal bands. The head-dress of the King was a fez-shaped tiara with a conical spike. He also wore a diadem, bracelets, mascara and rings.
The King enjoyed respect as a supernatural being not only from his officials but from other supernatural beings. He stood in front of a painted background, and then went up to his throne. He had an itchy back. Then he recited a poem:
For ten thousand miles
the landscape
Spreads out like
a beautiful brocade.
Gentle sunshine.
Light breezes. Smiling flowers,
All the birds sing together at once.
Humans and animals rise up, reborn, in the sun.
What could be more natural?
Oh beauty of the lion, the iguana and the red bird!
There is black & white footage of lions tearing apart roebucks and gazelles, then a closeup of the lion resting later, panting, his eyes closing — as he has seen all that he needs to see today.
Three muscular men in lion-costumes fuck a young man named Mario who is on mescaline and will not be heard from here again. He may imagine he is in prison. Sing Sing. Maybe this scene is somewhat evil, Jean-Luc thinks. He loves it though. He wishes he was Mario even as he wants Mario torn apart.
Jean-Luc moves his lips but says nothing aloud. These thugs want more money than was agreed. One of them punches Jean-Luc. His lip bleeds. They steal things on their way out, still wearing lion-costumes as they walk down Saint Marks Place, one carrying a small television set with antenna, extension cord dragging on the sidewalk behind.
There is graffiti on the walls.
***
By 363 A.D., the ruins of Babylon had been made into a royal game preserve for the Persian king Shapur the First. Most of the towers had fallen, but the walls, though breached in many places, still stood. Nebuchadnezzar had built these walls a thousand years before.
The Jewish prophet Jeremiah had said, And Babylon shall become a heaps, a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment and a hissing, without an inhabitant.
The Christians used Babylon, after Sodom and Gomorrah, as a symbol of man’s wickedness and the wrath of God. Also, Babylon was used as a codeword for pagan Rome, enemy of the early Christian church.
***
Jean-Luc wasn’t Jean-Luc Godard. But he had directed a version of Breathless when he was in high school. It was nine minutes long.
***
The Third Annual Miss G.G. Beauty Contest, including over 50 of the most gorgeous and convincing transvestites ever assembled, was so well-attended both by the community and the press that a large number of very unhappy local color type individuals had to be turned away at the door.
The 20 semi-finalists appeared before the judges in bathing suits, the true test of successful female impersonation. There were several “shims” or “she-males” within that group who could challenge the judgment of even the most discriminating connoisseur of femininity.
The contestants were rated for Charm, Elegance, and Poise, as well as, of course, Sex Appeal and Beauty. According to Kimberly and to several others “in the know,” it was all rigged in advance: the fix was in before they ever came out onto the runway. Some rich bitch from Long Island, named Darcy, whose sugar-daddy owned the lease, was crowned Miss G.G. 1973.
Everywhere corruption and depravity.
***
Raymond Faye was going to Paris soon to work on his next one-man show; but in the meantime he agreed to appear in just one scene as the Grand Vizier.
He was dressed outrageously, and would bring in different gifts from off-camera and drop them in front of the throne. Paul sat staring fixedly ahead, taking no notice, seemingly hypnotized or in a state of suspended animation, surrounded by the court of mannequins in exotic costume, moved into different positions between each shot.
“The King of Persia sends his regards,” said Raymond, in his droll manner, and carelessly dropped an armload of egg-beaters onto the floor.
“Amenhotep the Third, Pharaoh of Egypt, King of Kings, wishes you a very happy birthday,” Raymond said, and dropped a large vase, which broke into shards, disclosing a rubber snake.
Between each shot, the floor was swept clean. Beverly, who was generally willing to do the shit jobs when on drugs, brandished the broom.
“The Witch of Endor sends you her most pious solicitations,” said Raymond, as he let loose doves, which flew all around, followed by the camera even when they swooped out of the confines of the set.
“Princess Al Capone… ”
Raymond took a bite out of a sandwich, one of several on a plate. A Ham and Swiss on Rye, from Aristotle’s Delicatessen on 13th.
A slave boy, bound with Saran Wrap, courtesy of the King of Saran. The boy held a flower. He smiled right at the camera. Very nice. Oh, what a cute kid. Nude. He blinked his eyes. Moved. Stopped. Again the smile.
Raymond teased him with a long red feather, then felt him up. Kiss kiss. The King remained unmoved.
***
Elements of timing, luck ride with you. Be aware of color combinations – you’ll look especially good in indigo, electric blue. Intuition will serve as reliable guide.
***
Paulie sort of resembled the late actor Alfred Paget as he had appeared, with mascara and a phony beard, in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, playing the pleasure-loving Belshazzar.
Kimberly, on the other hand, as the Princess Beloved, was much prettier than the actress Seena Owen had been in the same role back in 1915. Maybe Kim was not as pretty as Mae Marsh, or Blanche Sweet, or the Gish sisters at their best, but she was definitely prettier than Miss Owen.
***
At least once in her life every woman in the land was supposed to prostitute herself in the Temple of Ishtar. However, wealthy women took all the precautions they could to avoid an encounter with an unwanted stranger by surrounding themselves with a great number of female attendants. They would have made an arrangement with someone, perhaps even their husbands, to meet them there.
The majority of women, though, adorned in their best finery and jewels, seated themselves in the holy enclosure and awaited whatever partner the gods might see to provide. A man had only to toss a coin (of any denomination, though as a token of respect a higher value might bring one greater joy), and utter, “The goddess Ishtar prosper thee,” and he could not be refused. The beautiful women were taken care of swiftly; ugly ones might wait a long time.
***
Beverly, barely five feet tall, hair cut short so that she looked like a cute little boy, went into Union Square Park and bought some downers from a black guy in a knit cap.
“You gonna be here later, case my friends want some?”
“Sure man,” the guy said, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, perhaps in some correspondence with his languid chant “Ups and Downs; Ups and Downs.”
Beverly had smoked some dope about an hour before. Her head was still pleasantly buzzed. She only asked the guy if he’d be there later to try to insure that it wasn’t a burn. The pills looked right, but you could never be one hundred per cent sure. She’d been to this park often enough she shouldn’t get ripped off. She wasn’t sure if this guy recognized her or not – but then, she wasn’t sure if he recognized anyone.
“Hey, don’t you usually have a dog?”
He smiled then. “Yeah, I do.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got sick.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Sure is, man. Protects me from Big City White Devils, shit like that. I think someone put a spell on him. But he’s getting better, gonna be all right. Had to get me some of the right medicine, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear he’s better. Catch you later.”
“Later, yeah. Ups and downs.”
***
In another scene, the god Shamash was seated, while a person half-man and half-bird was brought to him.
***
Jean-Luc was not sexually attracted to Kim. It was too hard to tell her from a real girl. In fact, it could not be done in ordinary circumstances, unless you cast a critical eye. Jean-Luc occasionally slept with girls, teenyboppers, pulling down their jeans from behind, especially if there was another boy in the bed, but in such cases he preferred to enter the girls as he did the boys, inhabit their rectums while using slow friction on sensitive sphincters.
Dark salty vaginas had unfortunate associations. Is the rectum a grave? Norman Mailer thought so or something. In An American Dream his hero while fucking went from the Cunt into the Asshole, from Heaven into Hell, a description which seemed overwrought. Protest too much and all that.
***
The Harem of the King were all mannequins, as were the members of the Royal Court. They were all individually and extravagantly clad, literally dripping with cheap costume jewelry and phony strings of pearls. Paul rolled around on the floor with one or the other of them, fought with them, struck them, whipped them, shouted at them, finally allegedly screwing one in the ass.
“There, you fucker, take that! There! How do you like that? Well, there’s more where that came from. If you don’t start acting more lively you’re going to find yourself in some Pretty Deep Shit. You ungrateful bitches. I hate you. You’re going to be sorry you ever met me. You should have treated me better when you had the chance. Just you wait. You’ll be up there on the platform at the Slave Auction, begging me to forgive you, to take you back, while some greasy Phoenician licks his lips and throws his drachmas on the block. You know what they do in Phoenicia? Do you? You don’t want to know. Really. You can’t imagine. You think we’ve got perverts here, just wait till you land in Phoenicia. You’ll wish you were back here sucking my toes.”
Zoom in on a capsized, impassive mannequin.
***
Babylonia, thanks to a sophisticated system of irrigation based on a clever network of canals, waterways, and dams, was in its time the richest granary in the world. With the final fall of Babylon in 538 B.C., the irrigation system became neglected. The Tigris and Euphrates periodically overflowed and even changed course altogether, flooding the region without control. By the 20th century, the area had become a desolate and dreary landscape, a far cry from the lush farmlands of so long ago.
***
Focus on desire, emotional involvement, ability to transform dreams into realities. People are drawn to you with their problems – you’ll be invited to join “secret sessions.” Member of opposite sex feels you are not living up to potential.
***
She loved candy, but she’d only take one bite. Clark, who’d fallen for her a bit, fascinated despite being straight and having a girlfriend, bought Kimberly some Grand Marnier truffles. She thanked him gracefully, modestly, and then just took one bite.
“Here, you have the rest.”
And she put it to his lips and made him eat it, seemingly taking vicarious pleasure in the idea of the flavor in his mouth.
Clark watched her one day, when she was changing costume, wearing only panties and bra, and she saw him looking. She gave him a special smile.
***
The vast play battleground had been constructed by Jean-Luc’s nephew, his eldest brother’s son, who was ten years old and lived in Brooklyn Heights. Jean-Luc had seen the detail that Stephen put into his elaborate train-set, with all the figures and little bushes and trees, and it came to him that the patent artificiality, filmed in extreme close-ups, including the manipulating hands (hands of the gods), would be perfect for simulating big battles.
He had to buy the materials, and the hundreds of plastic little Indians who could be transformed into warriors of the past, but Stephen was enormously excited by the project. His friend Ira helped him. Jean-Luc paid Stephen thirty dollars, of which Ira got twelve.
THE BABYLONIANS vs. THE ASSYRIANS
THE BABYLONIANS vs. THE ELAMITES
THE BABYLONIANS vs. THE ISRAELITES
Each battle was different from the last. Stephen and Ira were delighted to be able to set things afire, pierce figures with needles and daub them with blood, behead them, move about the chariots with their little horses wearing plumes, knock down the gate.
THE BABYLONIANS vs. THE PERSIANS
***
“I went to Bryn Mawr for a couple of months,” said Kim to a guy at a party, making it up as she went along, “and then I couldn’t stand it anymore. All those snotty rich girls wearing bib overalls and going around with hairy legs, pretending to be serious about every injustice the world has ever known, pretending that they’d like to be a peasant in Cuba or Red China; then they’d just write another check, take another plane to Switzerland or France, meet their parents and complain. You know what I mean? Save me from these hippies.”
“So what do you do? I mean,” the guy said, “to pay your rent?”
“That’s a personal question, but I don’t mind. I’m a professional groupie. I run a string of groupies, and when the bands come to town the managers get in touch with my service to make sure the bass-player or the drummer, if he’s ugly, you know, gets a good-looking groupie all his own. Do you play guitar? My favorite band is T. Rex. I love Marc Bolan, though he’s terrible when they play live. I like records better anyway. Are you my main man? Are you now? Are you now? I always want it to sound the same. I hate live shows. I don’t know. I’m so full of shit. I guess I like the messiness of seeing them live. I’m really high. Do you wanna go up on the roof?”
Was there a blowjob in the offing for the squarejohn? Maybe so.
***
Stock footage: the b&w archers strung their bows, awaiting the order to let their arrows fly. They looked more like Normans or Saxons or Visigoths than like Babylonians, but Jean-Luc liked them anyway. His glasses were repaired with tape. The arrows made a slow-motion fragile arc of vectors, coming to rest in the torsos of enemy warriors or clattering off their shields.
This footage was replayed.
***
Kim packed her suitcase to try to escape the fall of Babylon and go to St. Louis, deathly afraid of the oncoming Assyrian hordes and their reputation for atrocities.
“I’ve heard that it gets real muggy in St. Louis during the summer, but it can’t be any more humid than here in Babylon. God, last year as soon as you got out of the shower you’d be soaking in sweat. I didn’t pay any attention to the things that Hell’s Angel wanted me to do, I just listened to freak out in a moonage daydream,” and David Bowie faded in, all movement giving way to a static close-up of Kim’s face.
Cut to the Assyrian hordes.
***
The b&w dance sequence featured twenty young women, all costumed after the manner of a typical sexy Hollywood Biblical extravaganza, scantily clad in shiny gold, with elegant headdresses owing as much in style to modern Las Vegas as to ancient Babylon or Ur.
A shot from above: a roseate pattern. Then it bloomed.
***
“I need these pills to survive, uh, the strangeness of existence,” said Kim, as Beverly Hills watched her swallow one with a sip of Coke. “Not just the particular strangeness of my particular existence, though I suppose that’s bad enough. But everyone feels this unnaturalness I think. Everything moving wants to be at rest. Am I making sense?”
“Yeah,” said Beverly, “It’s like Valley of the Dolls.” She paused so they both could consider this.
“I liked that book,” said Kim. “Did you ever read The Carpetbaggers, by Harold Robbins? That’s the best one. This girl named Rina Marlowe – Jean Harlow, get it? – spills orange pop on her boobs, and it gets her brother all excited, he gets a hard-on, and she tells him that she’s been spying on him, watching him jerk off, and I can’t remember why they don’t get it on, but… he goes off and commits suicide. Anyway, that’s the first book where I ever saw the word ‘cunt.’ I love that word. Call me that, all right?”
“Cunt. Cunt. You’re nothing but a cunt.”
“Great,” said Kim, sighing. “Do it again.”
***
The three qualities women look for in nail enamels are:
– gloss and brilliance
– depth and coverage
– exceptionally long-lasting “hold”
The enamel must be applied to the nail in a single layer with one stroke of the brush. Each coat must dry before the next one is applied. Always start with the little finger or thumb of one hand and use the same order with the other hand as well.
***
“That’s disgusting,” Kim might say, or she’d quote Jack Smith, who’d said, “Sex is a pain in the ass.”
Sometimes she’d insist that she was asexual, that she felt no desire for anyone man woman or child.
Other times … mmmm. She looked kind of like Elizabeth Ashley, or maybe Lesley Anne Warren. It was so fleeting, this thing she was after, it required so much upkeep, and sometimes there were terrible down days when she felt ugly and did not wash or get out of bed.
For a while she worked as a salesclerk in a porno bookstore, but she didn’t really like that job. The customers were such creeps. The pornography got her down. She was much happier when she got a job waiting on tables, flirting, swinging her hips.
She got a boyfriend, Andre, who she really loved. But he had a tendency to mix alcohol with dexedrine, a combination that made him jealous and unpredictable. Andre sometimes beat her up, not that bad, he pulled his punches, but it hurt, and she didn’t like having a cut lip or black eye. One time he showed her a knife, and she was afraid he was really going to kill her, accidentally, carried away. He wouldn’t mean it.
***
By checking behind scenes, you regain sense of direction. A recent dream, properly interpreted, could prove prophetic.
***
Artificial, stylized, larger-than-life plants, the leaves having simplified shapes, made more angular and stiff. The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Kimberly walked among the fake potted plants like a sleepwalker, in a filmy gauze dress, her new round breasts jiggling gently, bobbing, nipples plainly erect. Her hair was tied back, and she looked ethereal, composed, as enigmatic as though seen in a dream. She bent over the fake grass, bright green, and looked at a crawling snake, which was real. She was not afraid of it. It formed an “S.”
It crawled away.
***
Kim was with Jean-Luc, Paulie, Beverly and Clark the soundman in a bar in Soho when she saw André, dark-skinned and good-looking, slender, a pearl in his left earlobe, and she was scared. She hadn’t kept in contact or been faithful while he’d been in jail.
He saw her and came over. He was loaded on something, and his eyes looked just like the last time she’d seen him six months ago. He often seemed an unusually tortured soul.
“Come with me, Kimberly. I need you, baby. Leave these fags and come home with me. I’ll forgive you everything if you’ll just come home right now. I need you, baby. You need me too.”
“André, no.”
He nodded, as if she’d said what he’d expected. He smiled then.
“Right on, bitch. One of these days, you can bet your sweet ass, I’m gonna show up and shoot you full of holes. Shoot you down dead. Cold blood. You take care now. Remember I love you. Be seeing y’all, folks.”
“Who was that?” Jean-Luc inquired. “Here, have a Valium. Let Paul light your cigarette. That guy was scary. Did you drive him crazy with love?”
“No… He was crazy before I ever met him. Let’s get out of here, okay? I don’t feel safe. All those guys hanging out at the bar look like undercover cops.”
***
A life-sized articulated skeleton sat in a chair. Princess Beloved danced around, after the manner of Isadora Duncan. That is, not without clumsiness. Would-be Grecian gestures. Her girl slaves danced too, less like Isadora than like groupies backstage at a Mott the Hoople show.
Big phony mouths opened and closed in the backdrop, which was black, painted with stars, sunbursts, and moons. Kim’s gown was purple, with golden crescent moons in sequins. Violet eye shadow. They were going to perform a magic ceremony. Incense and candles burned. The lights swam in a melting vaselined lens.
***
Princess Beloved was helpless, surrounded by soldiers in a circle, enclosing her, each pointing at her, menacingly, a spear. It was a shot that Jean-Luc had long admired, stolen from a bad movie directed in 1954 by Riccardo Freda – Theodora, Slave Empress. Princess Beloved, trembling, groveled. But no, she wasn’t to be killed. She was condemned to a fate worse than death.
***
Transsexuals almost always manifest some degree of transvestism before the age of twelve, and they usually have spent more time playing with girls, playing with dolls and so forth, than have their boyhood peers.
***
Stay clear of self-deception, pie-in-sky schemes. Individual who makes many promises may be sincere but misinformed. Check with Pisces.
***
There was something very vulnerable about Beverly, thin and pale, small as a neurotic child – though she could talk tough and act cynical and hold her drugs. She and Kimberly were friends. Beverly wanted to be a writer. She had at first wanted to play the guitar and sing, and had learned some chords and a few songs, but she was too shy to sing in front of the public. Even a tape recorder made her nervous and dumb. She came to New York from Sacramento, California. She looked much younger than she was.
As far as Beverly was concerned, Kim was sort of like an older sister, and they shared secrets, forming a united front to deal with Jean-Luc when he got too full of himself.
When Beverly found André in the apartment with Kim, his head now shaved bald, handsome and dark, with his earring and a mustache, she was frightened, but Kimberly seemed wanton and happy and stoned.
“Let’s get high. You want to get fucked up with us, Beverly Hills?” asked André, with a nice smile that seemed devoid of even a trace of menace or malice. Maybe he and Kim really were in love.
“Sure,” said Beverly, sitting down on a wooden chair, looking at Kim, who was wearing a red silk kimono with blue dragons over gold lamé panties and bra, her eyes telling Bev everything was cool…
It was powerful shit. Beverly got very stoned. She thought of the time she’d been smoking with Paulie and Jean-Luc, and Paulie had an asthma attack. It was funny how straight he could look until one heard and saw him speak. Paulie.
“Bev,” Kim said, eyes alight, glowing, “I want you and André to make it together. It’ll be so good for you both.”
There was a conspiratorial element to everyone’s pleasure from then on. Beverly’s inhibitions were gradually overcome. She really got into it, losing her identity in the molten flow as André rocked her into several hard-won orgasms. She held Kim’s hand throughout.
Then so Andre could cum he slowly entered her ass.
***
- Line upper and lower lashes with Perfectly Kohl Color-Perfect Accent Stick; smudge; smudge lightly.
- Apply Roses from Revenescence Eye Shadow Trio Champagne Roses & Caviar to entire lid, from lash line to brow.
- Contour from inner corner along crease with Caviar shadow; deepen at outer corner.
- Highlight center of lid with Champagne.
- Thicken upper and lower lashes with several coats of Black Instant Lash Builder, for extra sensational lashes.
Now you have eyes as provocative as the night itself
***
Going to the Welfare Office was not the best way to get rid of a headache, but if she wanted to keep getting the food stamps Kim had to take the subway uptown to see her caseworker, who was an obese woman with glasses.
Kim always tried to wear weird makeup and go there stoned, so that she’d be both numb and sufficiently hard-core unemployed and unemployable to forestall any nonsense about why she hadn’t gotten a job.
Kim had on blue fingernail polish and glittery eye shadow, silverblue, extending out past the orbits of her eyes. She could tell that Barbara kind of liked her, despite the problems that she posed. She gave Barbara a copy of Valley of the Dolls.
“You’ll really like it. Everybody in America should read this book. There’s a singer who’s like Judy Garland, you know, and an actress who’s supposed to be either another Kim Novak or Marilyn Monroe, or maybe Jayne Mansfield, I’m not sure … shit, maybe it’s Mamie Van Doren.”
“Mamie Van Doren?” said Barbara, and laughed her harsh thick laugh.
Another time Kimberly brought Barbara some flowers. It made for a break in a civil servant’s day.
“I don’t envy you. This must be the most thankless job in the world, having to deal with all the misfits and fuck-ups. Do you have to know Spanish to work here? I could never do a job like this. It’s not that I’m so unreliable – but my references are all bad; no boss on earth would want to trust me with the combination to the safe …”
“What about getting another job as a waitress?”
Kim shrugged. “That’s my ideal, but they’re not hiring at any of the places I could ever work.”
She’d lost her job at Dojo’s because she was late too often and called in sick too many times within a relatively short span. She had said it was her period but she’d lied. It wasn’t something she was proud of. They had been nice to her there.
***
André said, “Yeah, well I admit, you know, that I was fucked up. I mean, I’m sorry about all that shit that I was coming down with. I was fucked up with a lot of foreign substances in my body, but none of that’s any excuse for acting evil. I felt bad, baby, I felt real bad. I didn’t like myself, you know? Kimberly, honey, I never stopped loving you. There’s something between us, some kind of real connection. It’s Fate.”
“Yeah, I know.”
***
You are rebellious, creative, and you seldom succeed by following the crowd. You are an individual to your fingertips, you have your own style and you have created your own blueprint for success. Scorpio, Aquarius persons play important roles in your life.
***
Beverly found some dirty pictures in the drawer along with the underwear Kimberly, from the bathroom, had asked her to fetch. The photographs were of Kim sucking someone’s cock. Then, delving deeper, Bev found a magazine called Cum in My Mouth. Kimberly was featured — referred to here as Vanessa — giving a blowjob, ending up with semen all over her face. Ah, now Beverly understood: whoever bought this pornography would take Kim for a girl.
She found herself feeling disgusted, and wasn’t sure why. Kim’s weaknesses had begun to seem more like weaknesses and less like charming little quirks of an interesting and unique personality.
***
In the Spotlight Café, at three in the morning, wired, drinking coffee, Jean-Luc was talking a hundred miles a minute to Raymond Faye. “Do you remember those articles where Jack Smith talked about his concept of visual revelation, about the true meaning of Josef Von Sternberg’s films with Marlene Dietrich?”
“Yes,” said Faye, looking tired and older than usual, unanimated, smoking a cigarette. “The plots have nothing to do with the message of the visuals; the plots are just made up out of some nonsense the studio needed to have, as a formality, on the soundtrack.”
“I love the idea,” said Jean-Luc, “of that Maria Montez movie Jack Smith edited down from ninety minutes to fifteen, making it fly past the retina, bringing out all the latent myth-patterns…”
“I think that was Ken Jacobs – he and Jack often worked together, it’s true – but I think it was Kenny who did that one. Just before Star Spangled to Death.”
A junkie whore tried to bum some money for coffee. Jean-Luc looked around to make sure this wouldn’t start a trend, and then gave her a dollar bill and some change. She thanked him, pathetically skinny and unattractive in her cheap fur, looking about sixteen years old. She realized they were queers and left them alone.
Raymond had not gone to Paris after all. He had passed the age or point at which he could still look good in drag, and he was only recently, painfully aware of this. It was a real bringdown.
***
Paul waited, and his lover didn’t show. He could acutely hear the scraps of conversation, disarticulate words and phrases from the booths of the café, the clatter of silverware against silverware, coins into cash-register, coffee cups against saucers, and he was alone and afraid that he was going to start to cry in a public place.
Paulie understood love only as expressed through the body – asking the other to look at yesterday’s cut, mysterious black and blue marks, little scratches, needing a lot of caresses and reassuring kisses and hugs.
Why wouldn’t Lee show up? Why would he say he was going to if he didn’t mean it? Paul had said, over the phone, that he just wanted to talk, he thought they needed to talk, and he’d said that if Lee didn’t want to then he’d understand. So if it was such a drag, why did Lee say that he would come, and even pick out the specific time and place to meet?
It wasn’t the first time Paulie had been dropped, but he wished that, for once, damn it, he’d seen it coming, and so could have managed to cut his losses.
He saw Jean-Luc and Raymond Faye, and could sense that they didn’t want him to join them. They didn’t think he was a serious person.
***
There was no guarantee for the Babylonian that one might ever escape from the assaults of Evil; no hope that Evil might one day be decisively overcome. There was no belief that good works would in any way be rewarded, whether in this life or the next.
***
Kimberly was afraid, but since he was André’s friend, she let him in. She wasn’t yet at her most presentable; it was too early in the day. This guy was big, burly, beefy, and dark-skinned. His name was Vernon.
“The pigs got hold of André, man, they holding him for questioning. In the meantime, he said stash this shit here, and you just keep your mouth shut.”
“What are they questioning him about?”
“Walkin’ against the motherfuckin’ light, what do you think? Here, you keep these; I got to stay on the move. You don’t let no pigs in without a motherfuckin’ search warrant, understand? You hear what I say?”
It was a brown, rumpled grocery bag with a couple of revolvers in it, boxes of bullets, a couple of empty beer cans and a loaf of white bread.
Kim was too frightened to protest. She knew André had been selling dope. After Vernon was gone, she didn’t know what to do. She was scared to have the guns around, but at the same time… she was scared to get rid of them. She didn’t know what to do. She tried to call Beverly. Sometimes Beverly just wouldn’t answer her phone, not wanting to talk long-distance to her mom.
***
Define terms, see people as they are, avoid self-deception. Make personal appearances, be direct, get to heart of matters. Pisces, Taurus, Virgo natives figure prominently.
***
Paul was with Beverly when Kim knocked on the door.
“Should I let her in?” Bev whispered, making a face as though she didn’t want to. “Or should we pretend that we’re not here?”
Paulie put his finger to his lips, smiling, telling her to be quiet, and they could hear Kim saying Beverly’s name. It was hard not to giggle like conspirators, but they kept it down.
Beverly really liked the way Paul looked. He was slender, and betrayed effeminacy whenever he talked, but he was without guile, relatively speaking — certainly far from being as cynical as some of the others around here. He looked like a musician in a glitter band. His simplicity was like a kind of wit. It was refreshing.
While he took a bath she washed his hair.
***
The mind-boggling, delirious sets created for D.W. Griffith’s Babylon stood for years at the corner of Sunset and Hollywood boulevards. The property was eventually condemned as a fire hazard by the Los Angeles Fire Department. Many scorpions, rats, flies, cockroaches and other insects had made their home within this realm.
***
At last, feeling paranoid and pursued, worried about being arrested or attacked by other black gangsters connected with André and Vernon, Kimberly buzzed Jean-Luc via the doorman and then took the elevator up to the loft. She found him waiting for her, trembling yet still somehow serene, smoking a cigarette there in the midst of Babylon’s ruins.
Kim’s mascara was smudged. She had taken another pain pill with codeine about a half hour ago, washed down with a couple of sips from a soda she’d bought from a vendor in Washington Square Park, and the pain pill effect was just beginning to come on.
“I like your dress,” said Jean-Luc. He was wearing sunglasses now.
“Thank you.”
“What color lipstick is that?”
“Radio City Red.”
“It looks good. Well… are you hungry?”
Kimberly shrugged, greatly relieved by Jean-Luc’s air of nonchalance.
“I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast, I guess,” she said, “except for a soda. André’s being held for questioning by the police.”
“Didn’t you say that he stood trial once before?”
“Yeah,” she said. “His lawyer got him off.”
“The cops are probably just hassling him, just letting him know that they’re aware of his existence. I bet they don’t have any real evidence. Andre’s too slick.”
“You’re probably right.” It sounded good to talk like this, anyway.
Then Jean-Luc said: “I’m all out of film. And I’m all out of money. Do you know any rich johns I could hit up? No, I guess not.”
Was he bummed out? He seemed philosophical.
“Where should we go to eat?” she said, and Jean-Luc looked at her for a moment before figuring out what she was talking about.
“There’s a new Indian restaurant on Sixth. Why don’t we go check it out? Does that sound okay?”
“They have rice, don’t they?”
“I think so.”
They left the Babylonian ruins behind and went downstairs, outside. There were people all around, active, on the move. All of them seemed to have a sense of mission.
“Look,” said Kim, pointing, “There’s Janet de Sade.”
“Who’s that?” asked Jean-Luc, following her gaze.
Janet saw them, just as she was about to get into a yellow cab with some fat businessman, and she smiled, waving with one black glove.
Kim winced, shivered, and Jean-Luc, out of some nostalgia for ordinary human emotion, took her by the hand. There was music playing from some car’s radio stopped at the light. It was the ballad “Angie” by the Rolling Stones.
Mick Jagger wore mascara these days, blue eyeshadow, lipstick and rouge, following the Babylonian fashion of the time. Jean-Luc had gold nail polish on, though he’d forgotten he was thus adorned.
A line of clear snot descended from Kimberly’s left nostril, unchecked and unnoticed in an aristocratic manner until finally she became aware of something wet and dimly salt. Jean-Luc squeezed her cold hand with his warm.
They held hands tightly while they walked on down the street.