Baby Geisha (5 page)

“Take up a social sport, like volleyball,” said the sloth. “Something you can play with your sisters in crowded Brooklyn parks, where zillions of other people play those same sports, like sports zombies.”

Okay. Joanne would commit to something as boring as volleyball for her sisters. VV and Dena were so revoltingly athletic.

 

After sunset, the sloth clinic was bustling.
Or so Joanne would write in her article. Really, four kids in a hut hugged sloths while slung in cushiony white hammocks that looked like burritos. To re-enter the hospital at dusk, Joanne had pulled rubber galoshes on over her sneakers, so as not to track mud in from other parts of the forest.

“Sloths are sensitive to bacteria,” Nancy told her. Joanne wrote this down.

“Yes, but is there a sloth I can hold?” Joanne asked. It was her second day in Costa Rica, she was flying out the morning after next, and she hadn't even touched a sloth yet. She was really getting stressed.

“I'll check to see if any of the sloths feel like meeting someone new,” Nancy said, wandering off into another room. She came back in. “Not yet,” she said. “Why don't you have a look around?”

Who's healing who?
Joanne wondered. But there comes a time when one has to be for humanity or against it. The sloths certainly weren't to blame. A magazine sent their writer down to bond with sloths, and no sloths were offered.

“
Pura vida
,” Nancy called, sipping soda through a tall pink straw then holding it into the dank, tropical air.

“
Pura vida!
” everyone else said, toasting the sloths. Pure life. Everyone seemed to have a soda but Joanne.

Where's my damn sloth?
Joanne wanted to scream. She pictured VV getting sloth attention without even having to ask.
The harder I try
, she thought,
the less I make things happen
. Joanne needed to get with the humans if she wanted any chance with the sloths at all.

The disconnect was unbearable. Joanne marched down a short corridor to see the only other room in the clinic. There were more hammocks, and four more people holding sloths. No one spoke. They were swinging and hugging their rented pets. The scene was infantile. Humans rocked in their burrito cradles, tucked under tan, fuzzy covers.

Joanne had nothing better to do than to watch. While at first she felt trapped in an exposed way, like a pinned beetle, she moved her shoulders in small circles, easing her tense muscles, then leaned against the wall, slipping her pen and steno pad into her pocket. She mentally noted the demure noise of hammocks swaying, and implored herself to write this down later, still unable to capitulate to the benign setting. Acquiescence was not
in Joanne's vocabulary; she had never considered the idea that when one can't move, there are still ways out. Forced to sit with her feelings of captivity and helplessness, she managed to locate a certain comfort in her lack of options. Nothing was happening here. She had to get this piece done and she was safe in a hut, surrounded by sloths. She was not lost in the jungle being tracked by a jaguar.
What really
, she asked herself,
is so bad?
Her feeling of ensnarement shifted slightly to make room for a flash of controlled relaxation, as if Joanne was muffled in a womb.
Nothing
was okay. She could write about that nothing, later on, if she had to. Impatience was the snag, not the sloth torpor. This was her introduction to calm.

 

Nancy entered the room and handed Joanne a sloth. “Hold him tight,” she said. “And don't rub his fur the wrong way.”

This sloth was really friendly. He smiled at Joanne, as she noticed how his coat went backwards, up his arms instead of towards his fingers. She stroked his bristly, matted hair from his hand to his shoulder.

“That's his camouflage,” said the nurse. “It makes him look like moss. Sloths actually grow moss in their coats. They're living ecosystems.”

Joanne wanted to be an ecosystem. A couple weeks prior, VV and Dena had coerced Joanne into running nude, save for snow boots, while howling through a quiet neighborhood park during a Manhattan blizzard, and Joanne had been surprised at how much she liked it. They weren't arrested, and at least if it hadn't produced in her a sensation of placidity, it took her mind off of work. It had been too cold and too fast to think of deadlines, and Joanne never would have done it, or loved it, without her sisters.

The sloth hugged Joanne, and gave her a quick, dry lick on her neck.

“He likes you,” Nancy said. “He'll sleep with you now, if you want.”

Sleeping with a sloth, huh?
Joanne thought. A burrito hammock awaited her. She felt awkward bedding down with a sloth on top of her, but couldn't wait to get to know this sloth better. He buried his eyes by leaning his head face down on her chest, then looked up for contact. Hoisting him over her shoulder like Santa's toy sack, she plopped down in the hammock and let the animal sprawl across her torso.

Joanne couldn't tell if the sloth was awake or asleep; he was in some in between state. Time grew prehistoric, reverting into a previous eon. These sloths were living in some type of minus time, exuding a rejuvenating lethargy. Joanne was not worried, right now, about her sisters or about tomorrow. The sloth expected nothing from her, and gave nothing in return, gave a great and beautiful kind of protracted nothing, one that Joanne wanted to wrap herself in like a fur coat. Swamped in sloth, Joanne inhaled and noticed he smelled like old piano and white cheddar popcorn.

JACKPOT (I)

We'd checked in to the hotel for a grand international gathering, and had each found on our beds silver lamé bikinis or speedos alongside big bottles of whiskey and tequila. Pillow mints were for rejects. The hotel was on a private beach where yachts coasted in and out of the inlet, and people wore clothing that implied nudity. The other ladies had packed entire suitcases of lingerie. I'd packed a mere pair per day.

Liquor bottles lined the jacuzzi's edge in the rooftop suite reserved for the birthday boy we were there to party with. I took shots whenever the jets switched on. In the far corner, two Euro boys groped each other to decide whose balls were softer.

“So soft!”

“No, yours are soft!”

I tuned out the balls, taking note of the men's lightheartedness instead. One guy floated over the other and made baby waves. I went with it. A sex bath is cool with me. In my corner, a skinny Swiss friend sold me on milk & oil baths. One quart of milk, a drizzle of olive oil, optional honey.
Definitely adding honey
. Apparently every Alpine boy grows up taking luxurious baths. No wonder their nuts are supple. I pictured him in lederhosen pouring buckets of milk over himself. His forearm was flocked with peach fuzz like a reindeer antler.

“Soft,” I said, looking down into our shady tub. Everyone was naked. My pubes waffled underwater like a black seaweed patch. I twirled my new wedding ring, then lifted it out to make
sure the chlorine wasn't discoloring its dainty gem. It was square to worry about it. These people have mass diamonds, right?

Swissy's boyfriend wandered over, unrobed, and climbed in. I got out, tied on some terrycloth, and headed downstairs to see my own soft new husband. This extravagant honeymoon was a gift from the birthday Godfather who was still in the hot tub.

 

On our room's balcony, Pandora was shoving ice cubes up her pussy. She was impersonating a slot machine, one where no man can hit the jackpot. I wiggled in for a good view while deep funk played. Four people huddling around a lady crotch-melting ice cubes might be criminal in silence or sleazy with techno. But funk was making the scene revolutionary. Zeus, wrapped toga-style in the crisp white top sheet he'd yanked off our bed, called Pandora's pussy an antique clock. I guessed he meant her body was timeless and beautiful, which it was.

“How Greek of you,” I said to Zeus. He watched two more cubes disappear then passed out on our bed.

Hermes smoked a Capri cigarette in a monkey fur coat. He only wears exotic fur.

My new husband, wearing a shirt and no pants, sipped a glass of wine. He needed a nickname, fast.

“Pan, for no pants,” I said, kissing his cheek. I was impressed he was hosting an impromptu mini-party.

Once the ice bucket was empty, Pandora twisted the cap off a bottle of JD and trickled it down her butt crack to make Crack on the Rocks. Zeus passing out mid-show had forced her to reinvent the act. I've known Pandora for fifteen years and she's always a wellspring of experiments.

“Where are we?” I asked Pan.

Our daily life is swell, but it's not this theatrical. He put his arm around me. In this alternate universe, Pandora was challenging someone to a competition. The bride? I just don't think
about pussies that much. Pandora wins the trophy. I'm a space virgin who occasionally bumbles onto her orgiastic planet.

Pandora carves her initials into every place she visits. For instance, we met under a table. Many years back, I dropped a cigarette at a party, bent down, peered under the tablecloth, and there she was, shoegazing. Crawling under to join her, I asked her what she loved about foot apparel.

“Don't ever call it that,” she said.

We shared a smoke and planned a Russ Meyer movie marathon. I was into boobs, I told her, since I like how the word in singular is a palindrome. I wasn't a threat to Pandora because she only dates women who look like James Dean. After the breast talk, she left our fort, tore a lampshade off a nearby lamp, and danced around the room with a shaded head, declaring Russ the king of busts. People love her or hate her.

 

The following morning, some of us ferried to the birthplace of twin gods Artemis and Apollo. On this unpopulated island, millennia-old bricks still walled in areas where people had worshipped the Goddess of the Hunt. I could smell the Artemis cult—wise women with gold bracelets coiled around their biceps, drizzling liquids on each other. These were women who kept panthers on leashes. It wasn't Lesbos, but it was as close to Wonder Woman as I may ever get. The island was a desolate, scorched place, and it was over a hundred degrees.

Our group separated and I strolled with Pan through a ruined city of crumbling columns, stairs, aqueducts, and statues. We stumbled upon a turquoise and mustard mosaic-tiled ballroom floor, patterned with fish swimming around a mermaid that had been danced upon two thousand years ago. I kept a cloth tied over my head, Muslim-like, to avoid sunstroke. After two hours of strolling, I verged on summer heat hallucinations. The mermaid oracle appeared to tell me now that I'd married, I could die a happy woman.

“Don't take me now,” I pleaded with the heat vapors. “I finally have a husband to care for.”

“This moment in your life is fleeting,” the oracle declared. “Beware the future.”

This oracle was beginning to sound suspiciously like myself, the saboteur. I evaporated her by telling Pan I needed a rest. Locating a cave—three slabs wedged like Stonehenge into the hillside—Pan helped me scramble uphill and squirted water on my face. We inhaled a package of soda crackers, and Pan asked what my problem was.

I was feeling too quiet to explain that the oracle was undermining my romantic moment. Crushing silence was my only weapon against sexier women who might try to usurp my treasured love, sexier women who were only sharing my honeymoon because Pan and I had rolled our honeymoon and this birthday celebration into one fat spliff. I'd always presumed myself above Pandora's lowbrow challenges. The atavistic female struggle was already kicking in. I was excited that I had a husband to defend, but I didn't want to pander to the woman who loosed evil on the world.

“Where were the lion fights?” I asked Pan, gazing down at an amphitheater. Downhill to the right stood a gargantuan foot left from a colossus who had been one of the world's seven ancient wonders. This was my idea of a turn-on: a cave with a view of a hand-carved stone foot. Forget spying designer shoes from under a table. I wanted to have sex right here, a million more times than I had wanted it after the Ice Capades. Pan and I were desert lions. The sheer age of this place made it sexier than a boutique hotel room.

“Lions!” Pan said, pointing down to a row of stone cats, silently roaring at the sun.

“They look alive,” I said.

Back on flat ground, Pan showed me the case of painted glass eyes that had fallen out of the lion heads next to us. These were
balls I could get into. Arranged in rows, they gave off mysterious airs.
If an island's history is deeper than mine
, I thought,
how can I leave an impression?
Centuries of tragedy and scandal had boiled down to a vitrine of painted marbles.

I spotted Pandora's shoes from across the field: bright yellow rubber open-toed heels with ankle straps. Her magenta hot pants were tacky. I recalled our wedding, where as our maid of honor Pandora came disguised as a karate black belt—there are more photographs of Pandora karate chopping guests than of Pan and I combined.

I consider my best friend a sister, which means I don't always like her. She's related to me because we share qualities. Pandora is my mirror; she shows me things I hate about myself. How would I know what to fix if she didn't go everywhere with me to point out my flaws? The night we met, of course, I questioned wanting a friend who dances around wearing a lampshade. When I said,
N-O
, I knew I needed her. I want to believe that one can never be too free, and that I just need more training. But too much free spirit can make those around you uptight, as they pick up the slack.

 

When I met Pan, Pandora and I were roommates and she was dating one of her James Dean girls. This one had a short ash brown pompadour, wore a leather jacket, and spoke a hushed Marilyn Monroe/Elvis dialect. Jimmy Four, I called her, never hung out much; she'd just come in and head straight into Pandora's bedroom. Daily, I could hear them doing it through the thin wall that separated our rooms. Since Pandora was a drummer she showed me all the drumsticks and maracas they used as dildos. I even got a demonstration of why this egg-shaped shaker was Pandora's favorite masturbation tool.