Kamikaze Lust Read online

Yet, by handing me a film she believed was tailored to my specific desire, Alexis Calyx had in fact given me permission to indulge myself. Twisted logic, indeed; perhaps the residue of my two or three weeks as a practicing Catholic.

  So it was with the explicit purpose of having an orgasm that I took home X-posure, poured myself a glass of Chablis, dimmed the lights, slipped the tape into the VCR and myself into something more comfortable, and lit…goddammit!

  Cut!

  All I had in the apartment were those skinny, Chanukah candles, the result—along with a silver menorah—of a rare burst of sentimentality one holiday season back in Miami Beach when I decided to show Sam something about Chanukah. After we broke up and I moved north, I kept the menorah around for any future religious awakenings.

  Providence, for here it was with X-posure cued and the room just crying for candle light. I retrieved it from the closet above the sink and set it on my side table, sticking a candle in every hole, and lighting them all with a bic lighter. Flame after flame fueled a mango-orange glow. The warm sheen enveloped my studio, as the candles roared irreverently against the black window pane. I pulled down the blinds, lest some zealot spot the sacred candelabra and bust in throwing stones.

  I built a sanctuary of pillows on my bed and climbed aboard. Streams of light from the TV blending with my profane fire, I felt like a temple prostitute; numinous, on a quest for a new religion, seeking the wisdom of Silver Ray.

  On screen: the scene.

  Two women pretzeled in and out of each other’s limbs; kissing, sucking, caressing. They were gorgeous, both with short, dark hair, nimble bodies, no implants, and even some cellulite, which I adored. Each was a mirror for the other. Together, they formed a kaleidoscope of feminine desire. I thought of Alexis watching me watch. Then she became Shade.

  My right hand slipped inside the elastic band of my sweat pants. My left hand held tight to the remote. I twirled my pubes between my fingers, spread my thighs further apart against the bed, let my fingers travel down and up so deep.

  Meanwhile, on TV they were going at it furiously, one woman probing and pummeling the other with her fingers. Bring on the moan & groan track…uh…uh…oh, god. Silver Ray circles her clit with her middle finger, breathing bigtime, breathing in circles. She’s going to come with them, she’s sure. Come like she’s wanted. Like she’s needed. Into the fray, the fire, by the light of the glowing menorah, alongside this terbium orgy of tits and ass, she’s pulsating to her toes, shucking and jiving like a mad bongo player…strumming on the old banjo, singing…

  …Ringing!

  A goddamn fire alarm chimed through the walls. No, don’t stop, don’t stop…ignore it! Another long, flat ring.

  I jumped up and checked the menorah, which flickered innocently. The ringing continued. It was Yossi the doorman. I gave a breathless, “Hello?”

  “Yes, it’s Shade, she’s here.”

  “What!”

  “I send her to you.”

  The next few seconds were surreal. I stumbled up nervously, threw on a long-sleeved, black T-shirt, shut off the movie. My heart was beating as if I’d swallowed a double espresso with extra sugar, my thighs were damp inside my sweat pants. I felt slippery when I walked.

  The doorbell rang. Before answering, I killed the fading glow of my early Chanukah celebration. I shouted, “Just a second!” and cursed myself for not spending the extra three hundred dollars a month for a one bedroom. In a studio you were on display like a caged animal. I opened the door and Shade barreled past me, a breeze of musk and sulfur. “How dare you not return my calls, I’m way too insecure for that shit—what’s that smell?”

  “Smell?” I asked, horrified.

  “Something’s burning.” Her eyes roved left, right, bouncing from the silent images on the TV screen to the pile of pillows on my bed and landing finally on the smoking gun. “Is that a menorah?”

  “Yeah,” I shrugged, playing it oh-so-cool given the ubiquitous thumping in my temples. Her eyebrows lowered skeptically. “It’s a candle holder, I didn’t have any other candles.”

  “I thought you hated that new-age garbage.” She stared at me, oddly. “What are you watching?”

  “It’s just background noise.”

  She took off her jacket and fell down on the couch with a loud, “Huh!” I sat on my bed perpendicular to her, watching as she quickly discovered the pile of videos Alexis had given me. She beamed her lowered eyebrows at me again. “Don’t tell me, you’ve joined a Zionist sex cult.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I knew something was up, you haven’t been you lately.”

  “I am the ghostwriter of Alexis Calyx.”

  “Great,” she nodded. “Who’s Alexis Calyx?”

  Shade sat quietly as I explained just who Alexis was, describing with theatrical élan our first few meetings, playing up today’s scene on the set. As it turned out, Shade knew of her; she’d once been to a feminist film festival where they banned one of Alexis’ movies.

  “Probably X-posure,” I threw out, suggesting intimate knowledge of the Alexis Calyx cannon. I wanted to appear hip, to talk about porn stars and sexual fantasies and Vaseline lenses. “There’s some pretty hard-core fucking between women, even better than the boys do it.”

  Shade curled her upper lip and squinted.

  “It goes beyond the usual girl-girl suck-fest.”

  “Girl-girl what fest?” She saw right through me. I shook my head and smiled dumbly. Shade said, “Okay, you fembot, who are you and what have you done with Rachel?”

  “She went out for a quart of milk this morning, I haven’t seen her since.”

  “And back in Miami I couldn’t even get you to go to that stripper movie.”

  “You and your Hollywood porn.”

  “You know me, I’m a high-concept kind of girl.”

  I bit the inside of my lip, wishing for a bit of Silver Ray. She would know how to spin the situation, just as Alexis had twisted our conversation this afternoon. The best I could do was empty the rest of the wine into two glasses and sit down next to Shade on the couch. We laughed, bantering about the weather, the strike, other freelance possibilities, and just about everyone we knew. I would have forgotten how frustrated I’d been by her unexpected visit had I not found myself mesmerized by her pupils, the center of her gaze enlarged, encased in gold marbles; and her nose, her cheeks, her thick, fleshy lips jumped out at me, animated, as if they’d been properly lit for the first time.

  Shade smiled, half-laughing. I folded my right leg further into my body and pulled my hair back. I would have sworn she was staring, too, although I was operating under the influence of pornography. They should put warning labels on those boxes. Like cigarettes. Caution: Viewing may result in excessive fantasizing and skew sexual perceptions.

  “All right,” I ventured. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was trying to be mad at you. You’re never around the picket line, so I’m stuck with the rest of those goombahs, and then you don’t call me for three days, not even a message… you can’t do that, Slivowitz. Nothing’s stable anymore, I feel disconnected, like I’m all alone out here.”

  “What about Tina?” I said and immediately wished I hadn’t. Saying her name out loud gave her too much importance.

  “Oh, I can’t talk to her. She’s not about that.” She stared at me so deeply that for the second time that day I felt as if I’d been stripped naked by the gaze of another woman. As much as I tried to look away, I kept coming back to her, smiling too much. Shade was so beautiful. Of course I’d always known that, but it had been more of a two-dimensional, fashion model sort of beauty. I felt as if in all the years we’d known each other I’d never really looked at her until now.

  “You’re making me nervous,” she said. “The way you’re looking at me, stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You know what.” She rested her elbow on the couch and leaned her head against it. Our faces were almost
touching.

  “Are you really trying to seduce me, Slivowitz?”

  “Yes,” I said. Then, as if in slow motion, I watched myself bring my right hand to Shade’s face. My fingertips burned against her chin. She shut her eyes, grazed her teeth against my fingers. I couldn’t breathe, felt the world flash by in song lyrics. Birds do it, bees do it. Between the devil and the deep blue sea. Like a virgin.

  I brought my lips to hers and we kissed a slow, soft kiss. My arms fell around her body and we were making out on my couch. The words reverberated in my head: Shade and I are making out on my couch! She twisted her hips slightly and pulled her head back. My lips slipped down to her neck. I kissed it. Still holding me, she whispered, “We can’t do this.”

  “Yes, we can,” I said, but I didn’t want to talk. I kissed her again. This time, she grabbed a tight fist of my hair and pulled me close, kissing me longingly, lusciously. Her tongue traveled over my teeth, her lips riveting mine as if her own survival depended on it, and I remembered that Mark and Tessa hadn’t kissed much. They were slamming and bamming like nobody’s business, but without kisses? No wonder Tessa didn’t come. At that moment I would have given anything to spend the rest of my life with Shade’s tongue in my mouth.

  But she pushed me away, stopping midscene. I had a newfound respect for Mark’s frustration. This flicking on and off of desire was maddening.

  I covered my face. My eyes felt dry, but I was afraid if I blinked I might start bawling. “I’m sorry,” Shade said. She clasped her hands around mine and brought them to her lips. I remembered where my fingers had been earlier. Could she smell me? Taste me?

  Without letting go, Shade brought our hands down to the couch. “Listen, we can’t just kiss each other like that.” I kept staring at our fingers, criss-crossed like a backgammon board. Connected. “Slivowitz, look at me.” She lifted my chin. “I have real feelings here, this is no joke.”

  “I’m not joking, Shade.”

  “Okay, wait…look at it this way, I come in here and you’re talking all of this sex talk and watching porno, and really, how do I know it’s me you want? I could be anybody walking through that door.”

  “Oh, yeah, it was either you or the Dominos man. Luckily you showed up first.”

  “Don’t start with your sarcasm, not with me.”

  I huffed, averting my eyes, thinking how much Shade reminded me of Alexis, both of them lecturing me, talking down to me. How was it that everyone but me seemed to know everything about my desire? If only I had some sense of what was going on behind Shade’s stony face, beyond those eyes, which despite their discomfiting scrutiny made me want to hold her tight enough to cut off her circulation. Was I supposed to tell her about the porn? Tell her that, yes, just before she’d come, I was hot, I was horny, I was the phantom Silver Ray ready for anything and anyone, but in my Rachel Silver reality I wanted only Shade. I could tell her that I’d been thinking of her throughout X-posure, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. If it were a compliment or an insult.

  “This is too crazy,” she said. And we carefully avoided each other’s stares as we spoke a litany of innocuous little phrases until she angled over my shoulders to grab her jacket. I was flooded by waves of sadness and desolation; that left-alone-on-a-dark-desert-road feeling.

  She stood up in front of me. I leaned back against the couch, hugging my knees into my chest. The lower corner of my left eye twitched.

  “You’re really leaving?”

  “I can’t stay, I’m scared.”

  “So am I.”

  “Please,” she held out her hand. Begrudgingly, I took it and followed her to the door, more anxious than Tessa the porn star before her boy-girl debut. Whoever said sex was less pressured with women ought to have a lobotomy.

  In the doorway, Shade put her arms around my shoulders, hugging me in the Alexis Calyx role. I moved in closer, slipping my hands inside her jacket, folding myself into her body, feeling through her sweater her shoulder blades, her ribs, the rough bumps of her spine, the hook of her hips. And her fingers were stroking me, her body on mine, our legs intertwined and breasts swept up against each other. How could she touch me like that and then leave?

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” she whispered, almost directly in my ear. I wanted to say don’t go, but couldn’t. Honestly, I wasn’t sure which was more frightening: her rejecting me or changing her mind.

  She pivoted on the lush carpet. I watched her glide down the hall, this electrified figure in my hospital-clean corridor. I wanted to run up behind her and take her to the ground in a girl-girl version of the From Here to Eternity wrestling scene. I wanted to say something important. But even more than that, I wanted her to come back here and tell me everything was going to be all right.

  At the elevator bank, she turned and smiled. “By the way, you kiss good.”

  “Watch your language.”

  “The neighbors?”

  “No, the grammar. You mean, well.”

  “No, I mean, good.” The elevator rang and Shade stepped inside. The doors whisked shut behind her. I felt dizzy, off-balance, and slid down against the molding in my doorway.

  I’m not sure how long I was sitting there when I felt Freddy push her nose up against my face, meowing. She smelled like candle wax. Her face, I discovered, was covered with it: my little waxed pussy. What was it they said about you and curiosity, my furry friend? It hardly mattered, for I knew what they never said, that whatever doesn’t kill you leaves you a complete and total mess.

  TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

  I squeezed my fingers around the telephone until my knuckles turned white. Listening to Shade’s voice on the other end made my feet sweat. Several days had passed since we’d kissed, and I still couldn’t talk to her without reliving the intensity with which my missionary lips had locked onto hers.

  A cup of coffee teetered in between my thighs on the couch. Moted stripes of sun beamed through half-open blinds, double-exposing bars over my apartment like an illusive cage.

  “I forgot to tell you, Alexis thinks I’m bisexual,” I teased, the way only the telephone would allow. As if through the wires I had less at stake and could break through the hazy poles she’d erected between us. Alleviate the rejection I was feeling.

  Shade laughed. “Bisexual?”

  “Yup. But she says I’m probably man-primary. Apparently there’s man-primary or woman-primary, she says it’s about your emotional allegiances.”

  “What a visionary.”

  “Okay, forget it,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just not that simple,” Shade’s voice cracked, and for one second, I thought she might be as frightened as I was. “You have no idea,” she said. “Women will tear your heart out.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Exactly, you’re killing me.”

  “Is that why you’re afraid to come near me? You froze up yesterday when I kissed you hello. On the cheek.”

  “For a smart girl, you’re awfully dense.”

  “You say you’re old enough to be my mother, you’ve got responsibilities.” Those last words made me wince. Who was I to talk? My own “catch” quotient was down: no steady job, recently broke off an engagement, never been with a woman before. But Shade wasn’t exactly stable.

  “I can take you to a lesbian bar if you want,” she said.

  “I don’t pick up men in bars, I’m not going to do it with women.”

  “Never let it be said I wasn’t encouraging of your experimentation.” “I don’t want an experiment, I want…”

  “What? What is it you want?” she said, and I felt muzzled. I was valiant in my mind, I want to kiss you again, idiot. Instead I said, “You’re driving me crazy.”

  “Then we’re even.”

  “So now what?”

  “Don’t ask me,” she sighed. “We crossed a line, anywhere we go it’s trouble.”

  “Stop saying that. Why do you always say that?”

  “Because I know. No
w if you’ll excuse me I have to go and get drunk before I remember I don’t have anything else to do this afternoon.”

  I hung up feeling cast off. Jealous, too. Shade had become part of the strike, or at least one of the core journalists who’d been hanging around The Corral. Who knew the people she’d been cavorting with? The Tina Macadams of the world. Serves me right for abandoning my colleagues to shuttle back and forth between Alexis Calyx and Aunt Lorraine. I was on the outskirts; a journalist among journalists.

  I walked to the sink determined to wash the few days worth of dirty dishes. Warm water trickled between my fingers. I remembered Shade’s lips on my neck, her breath angling toward my ear. My hands found each other in between a few suds and I rubbed them together, slowly, feeling each finger the way Shade had touched them the other night. Pretending to be loved through my fingers. Hot water scalded my hands, my arms. The pounding in my chest expanded to my throat. I shut off the tap before picking up a single dish. I sat down on the couch, hiked my knees up next to me, thinking of Shade at home, maybe sipping from a 64-ounce Pepsi bottle or opening a can of tuna fish, careful not to let the oil drip between her fingers. Save those fingers for my touch. My lips. My tongue. I wanted her to bite me so hard she left teenage marks, then skim her tongue along the insides of my thighs until I screamed. My left nipple peaked through my T-shirt, sending adjectives rolling: hard, swollen, aching, empty.

  I tore off the shirt and squeezed my breasts with both hands. As if I could wring my longing from them. My desire for a face so familiar I could barely remember it. I kicked my sweats to the floor and stepped in front of the full-length mirror, mindful of the savage glow in my eyes and Shade’s voice: You kiss good, Slivowitz.

  Naked, I pressed my palms against the mirror, its cool surface steaming at my touch. I gyrated my hips in a circle, swinging left and right like the Israeli dancers on public access TV. Whose body was this? Reeling in the rhythm of these hips… come swing with me and be my love…I caught a quick shadow of myself and had to fight another voice: Look at you, the fat on your stomach jiggling, those awful asymmetrical nipples, that pubic sprawl on your thighs…who would want to touch you?