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Serial Fiction from Hanne Blank |
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| Episode One It was the bus that made her decide to do it, the routine trip on the rank, humid, city bus whose hard, utilitarian, theoretically vandal-proof blue plastic seats had become rococo with magic-marker graffiti curlicues buffed to haze by the butts and backs of pissed-off commuters. It was easy to be a pissed-off commuter when it was nearly ninety humid degrees out and it was only the beginning of May. Kala shifted her weight, leaning slightly against the aluminum post that, she was grateful, kept her knee from having to press that of the guy next to her. His pale legs, exposed by his khaki shorts, revealed splotches of red ringed by scaly shingles of leg-dandruff whose sloughed-off flecks speckled the man's dark leg hairs like a light dusting of powdered sugar. She might not have noticed had the bus not been so crowded, but crammed into the seat by the press of rush-hour bodies, Kala kept her eyes down, her arms close to her body and clasped firmly around the blue backpack that sat in her lap, as she studied the arms and knees of the people to either side of her. Gazing at the assortment of limbs, she tried to distance herself, to achieve that commuterly Zen where her eyes would unfocus themselves and she wouldn't so much notice the other people. And then there was that guy again. Standing right in front of her, hanging from the overhead rail, his red and white lunch cooler between his work-booted feet, clothes dotted and drizzled with a dozen tasteful shades of cream and light green and eggshell, he looked out the window as the bus pulled over to stop, craning his neck to see through the crush of other passengers between him and the street signs beyond the far side of the bus, and his free hand once again went to his crotch for a good old-fashioned unabashed ball-scratch. He took his time about it, too, digging in on each side of his fly with scarred, stubby, nail-gnawed digits that wore their own mini-Pollock of paint splotches. If the guy’s groin hadn't been approximately a foot from her face, Kala would've simply looked the other way. As it was, she had an unavoidable view of her very own, very much unasked-for, widescreen public transit crotch-o-rama. It was too hot, and she was too tired, for her to find it even mildly amusing. For fuck's sake, Kala simmered silently, the words forming with precise articulation in the back of her head, this has got to be the ninth time he's done that since he got on. A woman across the bus from her caught her eye with a wry, sympathetic half-grin, rolling her eyes through the tangle of bodies and purse straps and backpacks that filled the back half of the bus. Kala shrugged, glad she wasn't the only one who'd noticed. The bus lurched back out into the antlike trudge of Boston rush hour as the woman in front of Kala's seat opened her window, hoping for some fresh air. Next to the bus, a red produce truck, its company’s logo a grimy cornucopia on its side, expelled an oily fart of diesel exhaust. With a cough, the woman slammed the window tightly shut again. Perhaps she should get off at the next stop, wait for the next bus, Kala thought. The route she rode to get home was supposed to have busses every seven minutes during rush hour, every twelve the rest of the time. Sometimes if you were on a really crowded one, the one just after it would be pretty bearable by comparison, since the waiting passengers always seemed to crowd onto the first bus they could find, a public-transit truism whose validity could be gauged by the dense pack of sweaty, multicolored flesh that seemed to lurch as a single aggregate every time the bus driver felt the need to prove his Boston driver machismo, -- an event which took place, it seemed, approximately six times per block. No, there was no sense in trying for another bus at this point. It was six-fifteen, the tail end of rush hour. If she just stuck it out, she'd get home that much sooner. Lurch, go, lurch, stop, sway, rumble, hooooooonk! Desperate hands flailed for something to hold onto as the bus driver pounded the horn, suddenly slamming on the brakes, creating a pole-clutching jerk! that sent students crashing into secretaries into janitors against frat boys mashing jock-itching painters against aluminum poles just a few inches from Kala's startled face. Great, a close-up, Kala winced, instinctively pulling back as far as she could from the bodies that had suddenly swung her way. A blur in Kala’s peripheral vision made her turn her head: a crazed bike courier, day-glo dreads like a contrail of acid flashbacks, zipped jaggedly through the beady-eyed traffic to a chorus of exasperated horns. He had nice legs, Kala observed. Early shorts weather had its compensations. She had dated a seasonally out-of-work bike courier that winter, and remembered fondly the thick taut cables in those long, lean thighs. She liked that, and his sheer ballsiness. It took a certain amount of audacious Will, in the strictest and most Schopenhauerian sort of way, to plop your defenseless tender flesh on a bicycle and go flying through narrow streets and the eternal fenderfuck of Back Bay gridlock at your leisure, flipping the metaphorical bird at the self-centered, every-man-for-himself in-joke that was typical Boston traffic. He had tried to convince her to try it for herself when the weather got a little warmer. It would've gotten her out from under the disco ball and klieg lights and off of her seven-inch platform spike heels, out of the stale-booze aroma of the room where a lot of middle-aged men looked up at her twining her long legs around the metal pole and held their hands in their laps as if their erections were small hyperactive dogs that might, without warning, jump down and pee on the floor or bite the waitress. It would've let her not give a damn whether she had time for lipstick or hot-rollering her hair. Hell, as a bike courier, she wouldn't even necessarily have to wash it. But she wasn't convinced that biking madly all over town was any better than stripping. It certainly wasn’t any safer. Besides, the schedule wasn't as good for her. She had classes to deal with. And she was young, and good, so the tips were too. Three nights a week was a work schedule she could live with. Better than she could do as a bike courier, she reminded him, and though he nodded, she could always tell that he was only pretending to agree. That seemed to be the way it went. Once the “exotic” part of “exotic dancer” wore off, they'd try to get her to stop doing it. When she insisted on doing things her way, they eventually found their way to the door. In mid-shrug, Kala halted, snapping back to the reality of the bus and the meaty hand that once again rooted around in its owner's groin. "For Christ's sake," she blurted, halfway through the sentence before she even really realized she was talking out loud, "do you have to scratch your goddamned balls every half a block? Do you even realize that you're on a goddamned bus, and your crotch is six inches in front of someone else's face?" The guy with the leg rash snickered, then coughed unconvincingly, trying to cover it up. To the right, a tiny Japanese woman in black with a violin case wedged upright between her feet and knees shifted, looking down with a slight, discreet nod that might've been a thank-you. The painter, a tall, broad man, stared down at Kala, switching his grip on the overhead bar, small piggy eyes focusing first on her breasts, then on her face. Undaunted, Kala looked him right in the eye, accustomed to the challenge. She knew that men expected women to look away, to be scared by the steel in their eyes, by their displeasure, by the silent threat of their size, their facial hair, their dicks, or whatever it was that they thought made them so intimidating. So she stared back. It was a crowded bus; the worst he was likely to do was to say something rude. "You talkin' tuh me?" His accent was purest Revere -- or was that Ruhveah? -- straight from what Kala's Bostonian classmates, born and bred in the well-heeled urbanity of the city’s more exclusive suburbs, referred to sneeringly as the "White Trash Riviera." She had more in common with him than with them, she knew. Ever since she had come to Boston for grad school, her constant consciousness of her own working-poor Midwesternness was a common denominator over which the outcome of all too many interactions seemed to hover. She hated to give him shit; he’d been working hard all day, probably for some asshole crew boss who didn’t pull his weight. But really, he should know better. It pissed her off. "Yeah, I'm talking to you. I don't see anyone else grabbing his dick on this bus." The little Japanese woman's hand flew to her mouth as she turned her head away, concealing her delight. Low teenaged-boy murmuring came from the rearmost seat of the bus -- man, she got bigger balls than he do -- and a soft flutter of laughter rippled along the crammed bench seat on the far side. Kala noticed a few faces turning slightly in her direction, trying to figure out where in the pack of bodies the interaction was taking place. The humid air sagged with the smell of fatigue and overtaxed antiperspirant, but it also shimmered with anticipation, as if the entire bus ached for a fight, for something sharp and vivid that would penetrate the exhaust-pipe grey of the tired end of another tired day and give them something to talk about at the dinner table. "Yeah, well…" the painter paused for words, feeling all the eyes on him. Calmly, Kala reached up and behind her and pressed the yellow rubber tape that signaled the driver to stop. "Well, fuck you, bitch." "In your dreams, baby," Kala murmured, just loud enough to be heard, grabbing the pole with one hand and her bag with the other. She stood up, the motion carrying her to her feet, as the bus lurched hard to the right toward the curb, another bus grinding past as they swayed to a rough stop. As tall as the painter, the knot of hair bobby-pinned on top of her head making her seem even taller, Kala stood belly to belly with him, her hip practically pressed into the unmoving laborer, as close as lovers as they glared at one another and Kala waited for the other passengers to move enough that she could move toward the bus’ rear exit. "My stop," she said through a smile icy enough to push any martini ten degrees closer to absolute zero. "If you'll excuse me." Nearly knocking over the woman behind him, the painter backed out of Kala's way, and she slipped through the people, down the stairs to the street. After the incessant press of bodies on the bus, the narrow, heavily-trafficked sidewalk felt spacious. The air was filthy and exhaust-laden, but it felt twenty degrees cooler, twenty times fresher. Kala hoisted her bag to her shoulder, savoring the feeling of air against her skin, the ability to move under her own power rather than at the mercy of the yaw and tilt of the bus. Even though the back side of Mission Hill was quite alive with people -- the warm weather always brought people out onto their stoops and along the sidewalks -- it wasn't a patch on the bus. "Hey pretty mama, why don't you ever come over here and talk to me?" Kala was used to the commentary. It was a feature of the neighborhood her apartment-mate Theo had never mentioned, but then he wouldn't have: Theo, in this neighborhood, was just another guy, a little taller and a little lighter skinned than some, but as long as he looked straight enough, just another guy. "Hey, James." Kala didn't slow down, walking past the lanky baseball-capped man lounging on his stoop, her voice a little rigid but accepting the greeting, tossing it back. It wasn't anything personal. They both understood that. All the guys in the neighborhood did. They did what they needed to do to keep up appearances, a symbiotic shuffle of male and female, half-assed lechery and oddly affectionate indifference, rhythmic and neighborly. It was a familiar exchange. The neighborhood was like every other poor neighborhood she'd ever lived in, and not a little like the seedily homey backstage at every club where she'd ever danced. It wasn't something most of her friends at school would've understood. But it wasn't actually harassment. It was just the way it was. And it was usually okay, most days. But sometimes she wished they could give it a rest just the same. She felt a bit wilted, fresh out of bravado following the thing with the guy on the bus. Usually that kind of thing didn't phase her so much, even when it got confrontational. Probably it was the heat. After the cold, late spring, this heavy-breathing May felt like an insult. The trees loved it -- even the spindly dogwood the landlord had planted in the four square feet of yard in front of her building was swelling into blossom. Kala forced herself to smile at the hopeful little tree, but her day had been long and seminar that afternoon, the second to last of the semester and the year, had been evil incarnate, the discussion a post-Structuralist hemorrhoid that throbbed and itched. The sensation of being trapped like a rat in a cage only increased as the professor sat, hands folded over his substantial belly, infamous smug half-smile on his face, looking smarmily pleased that none of them had come up with the “right” answer to his pointedly unpointed questions. Derrida made her tired, and the crotch-scratching, bus-fumed distance between Derrida and her doorstep had only made her more so. Theo was gone already when Kala's key turned in the lock. That was normal. When he wasn't working on a dissertation whose focus seemed to shift with the seasons, Theo played piano bar (and sometimes tended it) for the A-gays and well-off show-tune queens at Empress Josephine's. The Empress was down in the Theatre District, a short enough walk from the Combat Zone that even the glossiest of well-heeled shoes scarcely showed a scuff after making the inevitable foray out of the bar to hunt down the kind of trade Nat the bouncer would never allow inside lest it muddy the vodka-clear waters of the gayristocracy that gathered behind its brass-trimmed doors. Theo was the resident African Queen, his tall, dancerly frame, elegant, high-browed face, and the artful way he combined his well-read aesthete side with his bitchy drag queen aspect made him a beloved ornament at The Empress, whether behind the keyboard, mixing a White Russian, or simply "oiling the temperamental gears of the great faggot merry-go-round," as he characterized his apparently effortless skill at schmoozing, mingling, and making people smile. What was also normal, if a less predictable, was the explosion of crap all over the living room. Theo was pure bipolar where traditional gay male fastidiousness was concerned. Kala never knew whether she'd be coming home to a degree of Felix Unger cleanliness that would've made her grandmother cry tears of neat-freak joy, or to today's splattered chaos of clothes and books and papers, dirty dishes still on the table, carton of milk sitting, souring, next to the sink. The thud of Kala's backpack on the floor triggered a small avalanche of photocopies that slid off the arm of the couch, fanning themselves across the floor, forming drifts where they hit the crumpled folds of several shirts which Theo had apparently tried on, then rejected, before dashing out the door to work. Kala closed her eyes for a moment, as if that would solve things, but the mess was obstinately still there when she opened them, so she stomped into the kitchen, irritable and indulging it. "Fuck, Theo," Kala muttered as she dumped the fermenting milk down the drain. "Milk out on the counter. On a day like this. You're enough to make your mama cry." Wrinkling her nose at the smell of souring milk, Kala ran the faucet, rinsing the carton, crushing it for the recycling pile. I need a vacation, she told herself firmly as she corralled all the dirty dishes and filled the dishpan. It's been a long year. Twenty-nine freshmen, plus three seminars. And I'm going to need to find another job doing something, because tips always go down in the summer. Fuck. Yeah. I need a vacation. Like I can afford a vacation. Kala felt the knots begin in her belly, little twisty-turny anxious kinks, soft but distressing as rats chewing at the baseboards. The cycle pissed her off, the evergreen battle between school and money, independence and poverty, sanity and solvency. She wasn't asking to be rich. She'd never had much money, didn't grow up with it like some of the people she sat next to in her classes at a university she never dreamt she'd be able to attend. Now that she'd gotten a chance to see how screwed up some of them were, she wasn’t any too sure they’d been better off anyway. She just wanted a little breathing room. The scholarship took care of tuition, the assistantship took care of the fees and healthcare and books and transportation, but damn it all, Boston was not Youngstown and rent was appalling, even on Mission Hill. Three nights a week at the club let her manage okay while the stipend checks came in. But the end of May was the end of those, and she had papers to write before she could search for another job. Rinsing the dishes and slotting them into the rack, Kala flashed on the bus, the overcrowded aisle, the passive worn faces, the leg-humping closeness of the people smashed together, the lumpy bulge under the faded denim of the painter's splotched crotch. Then she thought of the offer her advisor had mentioned to her the day before. She had resisted the idea at the time. It seemed too claustrophobic, too hemmed in -- eight weeks in a car with some middle-aged professor, some second-wave wannabe Kerouac who never learned to drive? But it couldn't be any more claustrophobic than being jammed into everyone else's sweaty armpits on the #39 bus, could it? And maybe it wasn't quite a vacation, but it wasn't quite not one, either. She could definitely do worse. Drying her hands on her pants, Kala went into her room and found the notebook where she'd jotted the information down. Putting on her best telephone voice, she dialed the number and waited. "Hello?" The woman's voice was low, a cultured contralto, with a faint hint of Julia Child. "Hello, may I speak to Dr. Salton?" "Speaking." Kala wasn't exactly nervous, not quite. Just hoping she wasn't too late. "You don't know me, but I got your number from Felice Yaralian," she began. "She's my advisor. My name is Kala Martin. I… well, Dr. Salton, Dr. Yaralian said you were going to be doing research travel this summer and I…I'm interested in knowing whether or not you've found a driver yet." "Oh, yes. And you can call me Vivian. Felice told me you'd be calling. No, I haven't found a driver yet. Are you interested?" "Yes," Kala replied, surprised to find herself suddenly grinning ear to ear, clenching her free hand into a fist, thumb up in tight triumph. She didn’t even mind that her advisor had apparently promised she’d be into the job. "I think so. I mean, yes, I'm very interested." As she spoke, Kala realized that it was quite true. |
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| to be continued • more chapters | |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
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