God is Wind
I dreamed I was at a party with a group of people from my high school, though because it was a dream and dreams do funny things with time, it was not clear whether I was in high school or among adults who had once gone to high school together, but anyway, off to the side of the main crowd sat a hippie girl in a prairie dress all by herself who may have been high and she was crying, to no one in particular but loud enough for everybody to hear, “God is wind,” and it was the kind of thing that, when you’re high or drunk sounds deeply profound, but after you sober up is kind of dumb, but in the dream it occurred to me that for all we know, she was right, because you can’t see the wind and you can’t see God, so I just started repeating it to myself, like a mantra — “God is wind, God is wind” — until my concentration was broken by a rowdy gang of guys who had assembled on the couch three deep and side-by-side, like a football team’s defensive line and above them, teetering on the back of the couch, was a girl I knew who, though we did not run in the same circles, was always nice to me, and I called out to her, “Find your line!” as though she was a skier surveying the slope before descending the mountain, but she hesitated so I encouraged her again, “Find your line!” and now that I think of it, I never went skiing in high school because we lived in the desert and you had to travel quite a distance to find snow, which required money, which the popular girl surely had because her dad was a judge, so how I knew that particular bit of jargon is a mystery to me, but I shouted to the girl in her cerulean satin dress and teenage pumps then all at once, in a rush and with great enthusiasm, she traversed those boys on the couch like so many moguls and arrived stunned but triumphant, grasping my outstretched hand, where I steadied her until she found her equilibrium, and as we stood there face to face I felt I had a purpose and possibly even a friend, because until then we were not friends (though she was always nice to me), but in that moment there was something unsaid between us, something you couldn’t see, like the wind.
Rearranged
I follow my friend down the narrow stairs—careful, don’t hit your head. Thumping disco from the bar above recedes to a muted rumble as we small-step in the dark, willing our eyes to adjust. The first thing to emerge from the black is the cage. A prison cell illuminated by a bare lightbulb, it seems to glow from the inside. Even though the structure is empty for now, we give it a wide berth and head for the bar, avoiding the group of women in the corner getting ready. They look like the kind of dykes who bring their own cues to a pool hall. Or in this case, whatever equipment they have in those duffel bags.
Upstairs, Kodachrome cowboys cavort onscreen, their chests hairy and their boots thrust high in the air. The men in the room watch the other men watch the films. In another video, two lumberjacks tie a third to a workbench like a cartoon damsel in distress. Dick Dastardly, with the emphasis on dick. There are no dicks in the basement, though, because it’s women’s night at the Eagle, a leather bar housed in a three-story Queen Anne on a sleepy corner of the north side. Downstairs the show is about to begin, for an audience of two.
The bartender asks our names. She’s affable in a white t-shirt under a denim vest, a little soft at the middle, with short-cropped hair. My friend hesitates. Are we really doing this? “Rachel,” I say, unable to hold the stranger’s gaze. I chose the alias because it’s five of the six letters in my real name, rearranged. It started as a lark, the fake names, because we’ve fashioned ourselves as undercover agents, scouring the underbelly of the urban jungle. We are nothing if not easily amused, which is what has kept us friends after the sex made things messy. To complete the ruse, my friend has also suggested we agree on safe words. Mine, which I will have no occasion to use, is “potato.” I have learned if something can be mocked, it can be controlled. I have seen that a joke can attenuate fear.
We order beers and the bartender adds, “You ladies wanna try a shot?” Apart from the evening’s participants, we’re the only people in the room at this early hour. “It’s called a Carrot Cake.” She pours two perfectly-layered concoctions of dark orange liquid topped with vanilla-scented froth that—wow, yeah—tastes exactly like carrots and cinnamon and walnuts. She smiles at us sideways. My Julia Roberts hair, unrestrained down my back, marks me as an interloper; the pin-rolled jeans and penny loafers leave no doubt.
In the corner, one woman half-heartedly flogs another with a cat-o-nine-tails, drawing the knotted cords slowly across her shoulders. My friend suppresses a giggle. I shift on my seat, lightheaded from the shot and the sense that I shouldn’t be watching whatever this is. Like the wannabe cowboys upstairs, these players follow a script, acting out a ritual that is more prosaic than profane, more disappointing than dangerous.
My friend has slipped up and uttered my real name at least twice, followed by a quick and obvious correction. Our charm has worn thin with the bartender, but we’re the only taste-testers available. She puts two more shots in front of us. These are German Chocolate—a sticky swirl of Frangelico, butterscotch, and coconut that fires my temples with an alcohol finish. The ceiling appears to undulate, throbbing to the menace of that Stereo MCs song, seemingly playing on a loop.
I turn away from the bar to see a woman pressed against the wall, her wrists and ankles snapped into rawhide cuffs bolted to a wooden frame. Her body forms an X. The room stagnates with leather and sweat. The woman’s back is stripped bare, save for a few curls grazing her scapula, and when her partner slides a gloved hand down her spine, slips it inside her waistband, then sinks between her legs, my breath catches. Something inside me opens. Something that needs to know what it would be like to relinquish control, to surrender certainty; to have a body and step outside that body. To be something I’m not. To lose my own name.
