With or Without You Read online

  Praise for Kamikaze Lust by Lauren Sanders

  (Winner of a 2000 Lambda Literary Award)

  “Great courage must account for such complete disregard of political correctness, and great sensitivity for such sadness.”

  —Amanda Filipacchi, author of Vapor and Nude Men

  “Like an official conducting an all-out strip search, first-time novelist Lauren Sanders plucks and probes her characters’ minds and bodies to reveal their hidden lusts, and when all is said and done, nary a body cavity is spared.”

  —Time Out New York

  “Kamikaze Lust makes a connection between unrealized lives, sexual repression, and the fear of death. In Sanders’ hands, what is usually clichéd or gratuitous is hot.”

  —Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls

  “Kamikaze Lust puts a snappy spin on a traditional theme—young woman in search of herself—and stands it on its head. In a crackling, rapid-fire voice studded with deadpan one-liners and evocative descriptions, Rachel Silver takes us to such farflung places as a pompous charity benefit, the set of an ‘art porn’ movie, her best friend’s body, Las Vegas casinos, and the psyche of her own porn-star alter ego, Silver Ray, all knit together by the unspoken question: who am I, anyway? And as Rachel tells it, asking the question is more fun than knowing for sure could ever be.”

  —Kate Christensen, author of In the Drink

  “This sexy little novel isn’t afraid to be steamy—but it isn’t too jaded for romance either.”

  —The Advocate

  “Lauren Sanders is a writer of extraordinary skill.”

  —Bay Area Reporter

  “The fact that Sanders can so overtly take on sex and death, write almost exclusively of their relationship to each other and their effects on a developing personality, and not sound clichéd, is a monumental achievement in itself.”

  —Toronto Star

  “Sanders zips and zooms through Rachel’s overturned life with prose as sharp, quick, and deadly as any suicide mission.”

  —Out Magazine

  “In Kamikaze Lust, Lauren Sanders manages her own later-day book of changes. We follow the plight of a city reporter in hot pursuit of a controversial story, but when her newspaper union suddenly strikes, she finds herself in need of carryover cash. She becomes a ghost writer for a porn diva—and the story follows the transfiguration of her sexual and literary pursuits. From Bay Ridge to Vegas—with a memorable supporting cast—dysfunctional family members and porn stars—this high-paced novel gracefully covers ground. By the touching conclusion, Sanders has investigated the age-old questions that bookend life: sex and death.”

  —Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up

  “Without wit or heart, this much sex would be unsexy, particularly if the author were using the titillation factor as mere bait for jacket blurbs. Instead, it serves a broader purpose, illustrating that the boundaries we use to demarcate civilized society are largely an illusion, and that labels like ‘porn star,’ ‘cancer patient,’ and ‘lesbian’ are meant to signify—falsely—‘people nothing like us.’ Here sex bleeds so naturally into life, and life into sex, that books that shy from this human realm begin to seem prissy and suspect.”

  —City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul)

  “Kamikaze Lust is a whirl of New York neurotic fast-quipping with a line or two courtesy of Miss Sandra Bernhardt, but who better to borrow from than the Princess of Pith?”

  —Time Out London

  WITH OR WITHOUT YOU

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2005 Lauren Sanders

  Author photo on back cover by Lisa Ross

  eISBN: 978-1-617750-98-4

  ISBN: 1-888451-69-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004106243

  All rights reserved

  First printing

  Printed in Canada

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  for RoRo

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  July 2, 1987: The Morning After

  Girls, Girls, Girls

  The Littlest Div

  Reflections in Red Gelati

  Real Divas Don’t Cry (Unless they’re Asked

  Life Experience

  Lucky Little Lady in the City of Light

  Dreams of the Holy Land

  Angel in Motion

  The Love Hospital

  Starlight, Starbright

  Supernova

  Asteroids

  April 15, 1988: Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the following people who in one way or another have helped me through the long journey of this book: Kim Bernstein, Nina Chaudry, Rory Devine, Elena Georgiou, Angela Himsel, Mark Leydorf, Brenda McClain, Mary McGrail, Thais Morales, Eileen Myles, Jaymie Ridless, Aaron Zimmerman, my parents, and the rest of my friends and comrades. Big-time thanks to J.T. Rogers for sharing his wisdom and insight and for the early morning wake-up calls; to Johnny Temple and Johanna Ingalls for running the classiest literary shop in town; and to Gerry Gomez Pearlberg (and Mao, Otto, and Gumdrop) for being so darn wonderful to come home to.

  JULY 2, 1987: THE MORNING AFTER

  BECAUSE I’M WEARING ALL MY CLOTHES, and because the bay is choppy, I pretend I’m trapped in a giant washing machine. Sun pecks the back of my neck, warming me through the glass. My legs bob up and down. It’s a light spin cycle, the setting for silk blouses, lacy underwear, or, if you’re my mother, an endless string of sheer pantyhose, the kind I don’t mind on other girls but hate wearing myself. Gentlemen prefer them, too. Ask my father. He and his pal Gustave shoot the most popular hosiery commercials in town.

  You were wearing black hose when I left you. Maybe it was a different brand, but the sparkle in the crisscrossed fibers gave your shins the look of one of their spots. Edgy but sophisticated. And no blood on them, attached to your two black boots pointing skyward, forecasting the journey. If you believe in that kind of crap.

  I swim out a few feet where the waves are calmer, turn over on my back, and float. In camp they called this the dead man’s float. But I’ve never felt more alive. Too alive for a murderer. Though I’m not any normal murderer, and you’re no ordinary victim.

  Just a few days ago, I thought about picking you up outside the theatre and taking you to a fancy restaurant. Maybe bringing you to my summer house once my family cleared out. You were so tired and needed a break. Even with all the makeup caked into your cheeks I could tell—particularly that day I found you sitting in the stairwell, your legs triangled and head resting between them. You were pulling the blond hairs from your scalp one at a time. It must have been tough keeping up with your World scenes and being in a play at the same time. But you told Soap Opera Weekly it was a nice break from Los Angeles. Not that you didn’Weekly didn’t like L.A. You had an apartment somewhere in Hollywood, a little red car and big sloppy dog, a personal fitness trainer. You said it was the only city where you ever felt comfortable.

  I’d considered applying to art school out there before my parents decided Syracuse was the place for me. I think I told you in one of my letters how my father knew some guy at the school there. Jack promised he’d help fund the media literacy center if they’d overlook my lame SAT scores and enter me in the class of ’91. Nancy helped me complete the application, constructing the essay in a way that made me sound conven
tional. Just a slaphappy girl from the suburbs, my teenage years spent cheering football players from the bleachers and playing in the band. When we finished the draft, I asked, “Who’s this?”

  “Exactly who they’re looking for,” she said, and I knew she’d done her research. She always did. It was how she made a fortune selling houses to other people just like herself. She said there was no way I would ruin the opportunity at Syracuse the way I’d sabotaged their attempts to send me to dance class—getting expelled for, quote, “negligent uncoordination.” And all of those camps. When I was booted from the last one for hitchhiking, Nancy called me an ingrate. A couple years later she was even more pissed I refused the nose job that was supposed to be my birthday present.

  You had a perfect nose. Small and buttonlike. If your nostrils were any bigger, they would have been piggish, a distraction from those clear blue eyes. So reflective I could see myself in them, a shadow, the outline of my knuckles on the cool metal. Eyes corkscrewed and pleading … Why?

  I skim my right hand along the gray-blue water. When it dips below the surface, it grows purplish white and humongous. No longer my hand at all. I can’t stand it. So I go down, fighting the weight of my parachute pants. They seem to have inflated. I touch my sneakers to the bottom and it feels turbulent. This is where the delicates give way to chain-gang fabrics, the denim and cotton and flannel.

  Underwater my ears rumble like a distant subway car and I’m freaking. Can you hear the palpitations in my chest? Stay down, I tell myself. It’s only fair. Beams of light split the oily water. It’s not the celestial strobe near-death freaks talk about but more like the headlights from Jack’s BMW. Bright white circles illuminating this undersea world: moss, gnarled seaweed, silt. I try digging my feet into the bottom but it’s too rocky. What feels like slippery crepe paper wraps around my neck and I flinch, kicking off my sneakers. My lungs fill with water and I force myself up. Hacking but alive. Forget what anyone says, it’s hard to drown when you know how to swim. I am for one moment happy. My breathing turns to laughter and I dolphin-flip forward, wondering what I’ll do today, a bike ride, sit by the pool … it’s summer. Then I spot the motor boat coming toward me and remember where I am, what I’ve done.

  I lean my head back into the water. Chickenshit. The boat rocks to the side of me. Aboard are two men in khaki pants, green shirts, and sunglasses, one by the steering wheel, the other leaning his thick leg on a bench and chewing a toothpick. Their patches say Shelter Island Police Department.

  “This is a no-swimming zone,” says the cop behind the wheel.

  “I’m not swimming.”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “Can’t you see I’m trying to kill myself?”

  I regret that the moment I say it. Mostly because they laugh at me. Ridiculous creature. Out here in the bay on a blinding summer day, wearing all my clothes, telling them I want to kill myself when I don’t. I was never good at suicide. Not for any throbbing love of life but a total lack of nerve. I just couldn’t do it. And, like most things in life, you don’t get many points for your failures.

  But now I am a celebrity murderer. A murderer soon to be a celebrity. I deserve a little respect from a couple of bumble-fuck cops. The talky one backs away from the steering wheel and throws out a rope ladder. History warns, climb aboard or they’ll shoot. And they should, if justice is anything like the Bible says. An eye for an eye, tit for tat. But because like my father I’m an atheist, I grab the ladder and with wrinkled fingers hoist myself aboard. Sun smacks the left side of my body. My skin is always quick to burn. A splotched face’ll ruin the perp walk. I’ll look pathetic on the news.

  “Got any sunscreen?” I ask.

  The silent cop hands me a tube of lotion. Taking it from him, I notice a piece of egg or muffin trapped in the thick strands of his moustache. The hairs remind me of a straw broom. I imagine them pricking the lips of a girl and know even with a mouth so creepy he can get it whenever he wants. Bastard.

  I squeeze a few drops of coconut lotion into my palms and rub them together before bringing my hands to my face. The lotion, too greasy under normal circumstances, loosens the saltwater mask on my cheeks. Then I do my arms. When I’m finished, I hold out my fists. “You can cuff me now.”

  Silent cop smiles, the dirty straws above his lips expanding as he surveys my waterlogged Syracuse sweatshirt and parachute pants. Talking cop says, “I think we better get you home. You onisland for the summer?”

  “No.”

  “Then where do you live?”

  I try to remember the address of my summer house but draw a blank. They’re questioning me like I’m any other suicide teen. I probably seem young. When my hair’s wet you can’t see the shock of white on the left side. Makes people think I’m older than I am. I’ve got ancient hair and two webbed toes on each foot.

  Talking cop is trying to be nice, smiling as he says they can’t take me home if they don’t know where I live. “I’m telling you, arrest me!” I shout at him. “Read me my rights … I have the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, c’mon.”

  “You watch too much TV.”

  “You really don’t get it.”

  “No, you don’t get it,” silent cop says. It’s the first time he speaks and I don’t like it. “We got better things to do than play idiot games all morning. So tell us where you live or we’ll dump you back in the bay.”

  “Go ahead,” I say, sick of their small-time attitude. They have no idea who they’re dealing with. “I killed someone big last night,” I say, and they both burst out laughing. “Hey, jerk, if you don’t believe me, call New York. Ask them about Brooke Harrison. I’m about to make you very famous.”

  Saying the words I am for a few seconds tough like the baddest motherfucker in the world. Bad like Al Cappone, Michael Jackson. Badder than old King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog. Then I see your face and know you’re watching.

  The cops look back and forth between each other and me. They must have seen the news and are trying to decide if I’m actually … my temples pound. I said I killed somebody. And told them your name. Anything I say can and will be held against me. I said I killed somebody!

  I want to drop to my knees and beg their forgiveness, beg for a lawyer, but something tells me stay tough. I lean back on my hands and stare off into the blues of summer. A sea gull caws overhead. The ocean glimmers in the distance like a flattened disco ball; up close you can see the hypodermic needles, beer cans, and plastic bags floating nowhere.

  Suddenly, I know what to do: I jump overboard.

  The water is colder, more intimidating. Breathing in, I swallow all the water I can this time. Something hard and fleshy pulls across my stomach, and I feel my body being lifted up and thrown over the boat. Shoving me to the floor, the silent cop puts a black boot on my stomach. We are both dripping wet and hyperventilating.

  “Give me the cuffs,” he says.

  “Don’t got ’em,” the other says.

  “What?”

  “Last night … at the school.”

  “So?”

  “I think we left them in the car.”

  “Fuckin’ idiot! Get the wheel!” the silent cop screams, pressing his foot down against my stomach. I’m going to puke. He lifts a soiled towel from the floor, pulls me up, and turns me around. Now he’s got his foot on my back and he’s squeezing the towel around my wrists behind me.

  My face splashes against the fiberglass, the sun caressing the right side of my face this time. I hear the motor crank, feel the waves beneath my stomach. Then the voice rings faintly in my ear. “Listen up, sweetheart, here comes Mr. Miranda …”

  GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS

  I AM QUIET IN MY CELL.

  I read a lot in my cell. I lie on my bed a lot talking to you.

  Those jokes about women behind bars—they’re all true. Jail is crawling with dykes, although most of them would never use that word. Not too different from what I found outside. But here they’re big
into role-playing. For the girls who like to be manly, the kind who scare the pants off me they’re so real, so much the better. They rule with their heavy boots and bad haircuts, their chests puffed out like drug lords.

  If a girl’s strong enough or the opposite, there’s more sex in here than you can imagine. Most do it for power, some to connect. Others want to feel anything at all. These are the women who let Mimi zap them with her vibrating needle. Ink siphoned from a ballpoint pen. She’s been after me since the day I arrived and asked her how she made the needle move. She lifted her transistor radio. There was a wire attached to a small motor in the back, but I still didn’t get it. She said I would know it all one day, when I let her tattoo me. I smiled but no way was I letting her brand me.

  As the days go on, I want to give in. I like her silky green-black etchings and know she could copy one of my drawings, although I haven’t drawn anything in the month and a half I’ve been in here. My fingers won’t connect to my brain. So I pretend not to know anything about art and artists, pretend I never earned the praise of my painting teachers or interned at the advertising agency, pretend I never even owned a sketchbook, all for the sake of Mimi, who’s convinced she’s schooling me in the creative process. She’s the toughest of the tough girls and all the protection I have inside. The trick is I have to please her, if you know what I mean, which is much better than the other way, getting pleased, though she’s schooling me a bit there, too. I wonder if I’m still a virgin.

  Mimi likes my doing but won’t say so. Even after she gets off a few times then throws me off, making what we are together worse than what got either one of us in here in the first place. “I’m going to tattoo the word on your stomach,” she says, and runs her hand along the haphazard hairs beneath my belly button. She tries to yank at one, but it slips between her fingers. “Right here, it’s gonna say pata.”