Gasoline

Trigger warning for briefly mentioned SW, physical abuse, described nudity

GASOLINE

I went thirty two years, eight months, and sixteen days without knowing I was gay. Until that evening, with the prostitute in the passenger seat of my Ford Ranger.

Our conversation had lapsed. Cordelia (but just call me Cory) told me about her pimp, Ronnie, that she was running away from, explained the bruises and spared no gory detail. I was trying to keep my eyes on the road in front of me- Seward Highway. The setting sun peeked through the driver side window, illuminating the melted sparkles on her face. Her makeup, like my gaze, had drifted. The cobalt blue eyeshadow had burrowed into the creases underneath her eyes. Crumbles of mascara speckled strong cheekbones, bereft of the blush and highlighter that had once coated them, which now took up residence on her delicate jaw.

“You like girls, don’t you, Diana?”

That moment rivaled any near-death experience. My encounters with frigid winds and semi-trucks rolling out of control on highways had been comparatively uninteresting from a psychological standpoint. I never saw Jesus or achieved some personal enlightenment. I was just ready to die. But now, my life ‘flashed before my eyes in an instant’ like every trashy airport novel claims it does.

I saw a newborn baby in 1948. A blonde toddler in her holiday dress. A less blonde kindergartener having her ‘first day breakfast’ (strawberry ice cream and hot chocolate). An enamored sixth grader, staring at Sarah MacPherson across the classroom. A sullen preteen with a now completely brown bob, the hairstyle I kept for the rest of my life, writing romance novels, yet completely disgusted with every boy in her class, and terrified of marriage. A teary eyed teenager in the bathroom feeling left behind as her friends went to prom with their boyfriends. A college girl, clamping her eyes shut and staying completely still on the bed. It should have been so obvious. It took her, the object of desire, saying it out loud, what was so clear.

I couldn’t stop the word from coming out because it had, in that moment, become so desperately apparent.

“Yeah,” I shrugged.

Cory was still staring at me, smiling, lip gloss smeared all over her overlapping teeth… I could feel her silence in my spine.

A lump bubbled up in my throat. “I’m not- I’m like, just trying to help you out, I’m not going to try to get with you or anything, don’t worry,” I cleared my throat. I was conscious of my reddening face, only ripening it more.

“Oh, it’s fine. I wouldn’t even mind, you’re more of a man than the motherfuckers that pick me up.” I felt her hand squeeze my bicep through the fleece pullover I was wearing. A shiver went through my body.

I didn’t say anything. An English degree and tens of terminally in progress novels, I had finally run out of words. Cory didn’t seem to mind. She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, her posture softening in a full body exhale.

My mind was spinning out of control but I forced myself to stay in this moment. I wanted to freeze it. The leggy beauty emanating the scent of lysol and concrete and YSL opium, the gentle vibration of the road, the sound of my own breathing and hers. If I could just distill that moment, press it into a tiny bottle and cork it…

We drove to my Anchorage apartment in complete silence. I think she might have slept, but she stirred awake when I pulled into the building lot. She held my hand and I guided her through the blue dark, up the stairs, and into my dingy motel room turned studio apartment, where no living thing, besides my cattle dog, Waylon, and a plethora of moths, had ever entered.

I flicked on the yellowed light and was embarrassed. The scene was stark in the light. The couch I said she could sleep on was rattier and smaller than I remembered, and my old dog was snoring on the chewed up surface. Pens and clothes and beer cans and half empty cups of tea littered the floor. She didn’t seem to notice; she was tearing her high heeled boots off.

“I’m sorry,” I squawked through rusty vocal cords.

“I like it, it’s cozy,” she uncurled her fingers from mine to unzip her fur lined coat. “And your dog is so cute!”

I scratched my arm, folding my hands behind my back. “His name’s Waylon, he’s my best buddy.” I cringed when I said it because it was true, but she didn’t have to know that. I don’t even think she heard. She was kneeling on the carpet, scratching behind Waylon’s ears as if she’d done it a thousand times before. His sleepy pink tongue darted out and she giggled, “He likes me! I love dogs, I used to think I’d be a vet.” She scratched under his chin. “But, you know, life goes weird places.”

“Sure does.” I imagined us together. Unwinding with a glass of wine at dinner, she tells me about her day at the practice. We sit on the couch, watching TV, the dog across both of our laps, me, she asks me to braid her hair and I say yes doc and run my hands through the long blonde strands. Another life unlived.

I made my way into the kitchenette. She was unaware of me, and enamored with Waylon. He licked sparkles off her face. I asked her if she liked soup, because it was all I had, and she said she did, so I warmed a can of Campbell’s on the tiny electric stove and listened to her giggles.

She walked to the yellowed pedestal sink behind me, Waylon’s long nails click-clacking as he followed her. I was in a trance, watching her scrub. Spoon in hand, my body turned almost entirely in her direction. I had no control over it. It didn’t feel like my body any more, but something attached to hers.

She was wearing low rise Wranglers, bootcut. They were long and she was standing on the balls of her feet, as if wearing invisible heels. Underneath her blue and red striped tee, she had a knitted thermal shirt. Prostitutes in Alaska look very different than in other climates- the Alaskan lot lizard grows a long coat of fur and insulates itself within layers of clothing. The working girls in my home state of Oklahoma evolved halter tops and mini skirts and naturally slick, oily skin.

I was being obvious. She glanced up at me, turning off the water. “Does my makeup look even crazier now?”

Truthfully, it did. I never knew that eyeliner could stand up to so much vigorous scrubbing. But she also looked very beautiful in that sweaty, messy kind of way that I am pathologically drawn to in a woman. Psychologists suggested that my desire for these broken women (and women in general) was perhaps due to lack of strong maternal attachment, maybe from female peer rejection. I think that I just find them beautiful. So I told her that, in my stilted way.

“I think you look okay. It’s a little smeary, maybe.”

(okay; like the aurora borealis is okay and the morning sunset is okay and the sounds of wolves howling is okay and the sky full of sparkling stars. Smeary; like the arctic tern’s blue plumage is smeary or the artist’s paints or the red lipstick of the woman you love on your face, smeary, smeary, smeary)

“You’re too nice,” she yawned, coming up behind me, and grabbed two mismatched bowls from my drying rack. The one she chose had chipped paintings of tomatoes on the inside, mine prominently featured Mickey Mouse.

I didn’t say anything to that and poured the soup almost evenly between the two bowls. I handed her the bowl, forgot to give her a spoon, and she tipped the bowl to her mouth, guzzling the milky soup.

“Can I take a shower?” She asked, gesturing to my bathroom, which was, to my dismay, right next to the kitchen.

“I have a tub over there,” embarrassment crawled up again. “The showerhead is broken, I haven’t had the time to fix it.”

I was unemployed. I had more than enough time to fix the shower. The truth was, I never matured out of baths, and showers called for more energy than I had most days. The psychologists attributed this one to various Freudian theories. I believe the scrutiny of this quirk may be warranted; every disastrously unstable headcase I have met has been magnetically drawn to the bathtub.

“Hey, perfect! I love baths, it’s been a long time,” she set her half empty bowl on the counter, turned away towards the bathroom and started ripping off her dirty clothes.

Her, in a pale pink JCPenney bra and frayed lace underwear. Waylon next to her, decidedly his favorite. Me, standing in the corner of the kitchenette choking on soup. It’s impossible to swallow when your heart is in your throat.

“I look so gross,” she started, walking into the bathroom. She had her soup in one hand and was picking at her face with the other. “And I probably smell like shit. I haven’t showered in like, a week- I’ve been too busy running off, but I don’t think they’ll find me here, I think I’m good now.”

My neck snapped down when she undid her bra. “That’s good,” I managed.

“Hey, can you do something weird for me?” She called out.

I looked up but only briefly. A flash of hip length blond hair, small breasts. “What is

it?”

“Can you sit here? I don’t like taking baths alone. It scares me.”

“It scares you?” I laughed but my mouth had gone dry. Another glance. Sharp collarbones, blue eyes.

“Awh, fuck you! I don’t know, it just does. I don’t like being all naked and alone, it makes me feel… I don’t know. Itchy. You can just sit outside.” I wondered what the psychologists would say about that. Late weaning? Overly involved parenting styles? Sexual trauma?

“Okay.” It was barely a whisper.

I sat in the doorframe on the floor. She petted Waylon and hummed Sugar Magnolia, barely audible over the rushing water, while scrubbing the grime off her legs with my Irish Spring soap.

“It feels so good to get all this shit off me,” she stopped humming. “I mean, look, the water around me is like, almost black.”

I’d been given the invitation, so I did. The water was normally tinged yellow by rust, but her presence had turned it a murky brown. “Damn.”

She tried to stare into my eyes but I wouldn’t look up again. “I’m so done with this whole thing.” She sipped the last of her soup from the bowl on the ledge of the tub. “I’m done with running away from pimps and getting beat up, it’s all bullshit and I’m ready to do something else.”

“You could stay here,” I blurted. “I know it’s small but you could live here, just while you’re getting on your feet. There’s a community college nearby.”

She grinned and set her empty bowl on the floor for Waylon. “That would be so, so, so amazing.” When she moved her hands, soapy water splashed all over the room. “Really?!”

“Of course.”

“You’re the best, Di,” she was beaming, like it was the first time she had ever experienced kindness. “Maybe I’ll do some classes and be a vet nurse, that way I can clip Waylon’s nails. You know, you really ought to clip those guys or they’ll get way too long.” In her wildest dreams, it was nurse, not doctor. But I could see her in a white coat.

“Well, yeah, you’re great with animals- Waylon really loves you. That’s why I have to let you stay here, you know, I don’t want to disappoint him.”

“See? Too nice,” she smiled and went back to humming while I sat there in silence, resting my head on my knees. She took one of my towels when she got out, wiped down her dripping body, and then wrapped it like a turban around her hair.

The towel and the pendant necklace, ending just at her clavicle, only made her stark nakedness more apparent. “You have some shirt I can borrow? My clothes are so dirty, they smell horrible,” she gestured to the pile on the ground.

“Oh, yeah, one second,” I sprung up to rifle through my dresser drawers. I tore through cheap, plain Fruit of the Loom tees and free shirts from the Sierra Club to find my Grateful Dead shirt. I didn’t even like them. I think the shirt was a gift from some cousin or classmate who thought that smoking marijuana meant you liked Jerry Garcia, but I wanted to impress her. I also found some linen shorts I slept in from time to time.

I presented my findings to Cordelia. She was hanging on to some semblance of modesty, covering her breasts with one arm. A thatch of curly hair did the work concealing other regions.

“You like the Dead?!” she beamed, tugging the shorts on.

I looked at her grin, completely, shamefully incapable of telling a lie to that beautiful face. “I don’t really listen to them a lot actually.”

“Well, that’s okay, I have some of the tapes, you have a player? I can show you my favorites,” she offered.

So I showed her to my bedroom where I had my portable cassette player stationed. Waylon jumped up next to her, snuggling into her side. She pulled the covers up around her shoulders and talked through each song. She needed someone to know what she thought.

“Oh, I love this one, Box of Rain, I think you’ll really like it, I think it’s about a guy who’s killing himself, it’s a sad song but it’s a really good song...”

“God, Friend of the Devil, this one is really fun. I had a guy teach me how to play the intro on his guitar and that was a blast, I’d love to play an instrument…”

We listened to it again, this time with a glass of wine. I tried to sing along, and she laughed at me and I laughed at myself. I never had a high tolerance for alcohol.

Ultimately, we listened to The Grateful Dead’s American Beauty four times that night. From that day on, I’ve never gone anywhere without the album nearby. The next week I bought the record with the remainder of money in my account. For a decade I kept a CD in my bag, then bought it on ITunes. Now I have the entirety of the album stowed away on my phone. It will always remind me of her.

So we laid there all night. I was shorter than her by at least 6 inches, but she curled up against my chest and I wrapped her up in my arms. She held onto Waylon with one arm and rubbed my hand with the other. We slept like that, fully clothed, fully embraced. I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and yet I had never experienced touch so intimate. Europe ‘72 played on loop while we drifted off into sleep.

I woke up at 10:00 in the morning with my arms outstretched over an empty crater. Waylon was gone, snuffling at the door. The tape was still playing. She’d left that for me. My shirt and shorts were folded at the end of the bed. It looked like nobody had ever taught her how to fold, no mother or sister or aunt. Her creases were misplaced but careful.

She was gone and gone for good.

I knew that. But with perverse hope, I wandered around the dim apartment, desperately wishing to see her. I made my rounds, then sat on the floor and stroked Waylon’s greasy fur. He seemed even more depressed than me. The sparkles on his fur transferred to my hand and I began to sob. I hadn’t cried in years.

I tried to convince myself that she was out for a walk, maybe getting something to eat from the convenience store, but I knew I would never see her again. And I didn’t.

No note, no goodbye. She took all of her things and left.

I still look for her today. When I’m not teaching or writing or going to therapy for the nth time, I’m looking. I don’t know her last name- even Cordelia might be a pseudonym. I look through forums online. I pore over sketches of Jane Does, wondering if she fell victim to one of the murderous traffickers, if Ronnie found her, if a demented trucker tortured her. I look through obituaries for drug overdoses and suicides.

If she died, would anyone have found her? Would the police have cared about a prostitute with nobody at all? But she had me. She always will. She lanced me- my desire, my pain, my lust- open, like a putrefied cyst, and disappeared.

In my sleep I still whisper her name.

I love you, Cordelia.