Apartment Sessions




"Do. Or do not. There is no try."

~Yoda

Daddy had no boys. He farmed like all the burly men, even the landowners that
raised more cattle on more acreage. The land was flat and dry until the storms
came and then I'd walk the dew and pretend I was a pretty girl with white skin
and soft hands. If there was a feminine itch in my body from 4 to 13 it was
beaten blunt by turning earth hunched over so long a meditation threw itself
from my chest when the ground hummed and broke.

Mother did the best she could and hid in bottles all the times in-between.
After three miscarriages, her womb was a reflection out the kitchen window.
She'd take a long drink of mulberry wine our neighbor Marcum had passed on
before heading south the summer his barn caught fire and killed Susie where
she lay with the boys in the hayloft. I never saw her throat move so I don't
know if she swallowed or her mouth was the entrance to a deep and parched
tunnel that had no bottom. Despite her carrying a load made heavier by an
empty horizon, she sang hymns in the garden unlike any I'd ever heard in
church.

The days spent in the sun must have touched me with more than fire. We were
plain folk even in the 70's, the ride of free love traveling through on buses
and station wagon vans whose debris could be found in the ditches. Bottles and
beer cans, empty foil packets and rainbow needlework, bits of leather
unraveled by too much picking. The only time I happened to see the new age
bums, a woman had been running through the corn naked and wasp thin, her
nipples two dark Indian beads in the moonlight. Whether she was being chased
by angels is anyone's best guess but Daddy didn't blink or cuss her like he
did Mother when the chicken was too burnt to eat. He carried his shotgun onto
the porch and blasted a shell at the moon in warning. In a turn like a falcon
would catch a draft on the crest of a high hill, she fled, a glorious laughter
free of all fear trailing behind her. I left home soon after, considering her
pagan gallop a blessing on the family that relinquished me of guilt or memory,
maybe both.

At 13 whatever daintiness may have been prevalent in my bones stretched the
seams of me in red rivulets now a pale and fibrous delta I only understood
after crossing the Mojave desert on a commercial jet headed back to the farm
to bury my father's nameless longevity. The continuity of stretch marks and
Daddy's baby denim overalls ended up being the only things worth remembering.
The cities are full of men that stare. Some I get that slack-jawed, wide-eyed
gape that always brings to mind a carp's first time out of water on the end of
a hook. Even in sunny California, the eyes that peer out belong to a boy named
Toby in the 3rd grade, and his sneer, "What? I'm not looking at YOU." How that
shamed me through all layers of callous. Whenever I see horn-rimmed glasses
and sandy hair I turn into a sloe-eyed snake with black skin, dry and warm
after a period of sunbathing and starvation. They come in all sizes but it's
good to notice snakes never appear to be looking down at anything.

If you work on a farm you get accustomed to giving your body direction it has
to follow or else. It can wait for food, blisters don't matter much until they
bleed bad and you are impervious to bugs. Paying any heed to these things
won't get you a raised eyebrow much less a pat on the head. In this, I was
prepared to trek across the planes, into town and board a bus with the $200
partially saved and the rest pinched from Mother's tobacco can. She must have
known I was planning something that week, looking me square in the eye as she
put a crisp $10 bill into the can that previously only paid landlord to pocket
change and the $1's she'd collect by sharing her purple table wine. She had
over $300 in there balled up in a wad tied in a ribbon I had seen on my head
in one of the few pictures they could afford during my infancy and four other
large sisters. I could have taken it all but I didn't want her to think I
didn't owe her something for bearing me, even if it was into a grit-filled
void.

Once the dust settled behind the Greyhound's fat tires, the sun was coming
down in the prairie. I didn't say any goodbye, leaving sentimental thoughts to
girls with curling irons and bell-bottom pants that somehow matched the time
it took to do nothing but listen to records. My weight settled into the seat
and I fell asleep to the pitching of the motor in the first seat behind the
driver. A 15-year-old traveling alone wasn't a mystery, less so when that girl
was burned to a caramel color and looked like she could swing a tractor hitch
twenty feet. I had two dresses, two pair of jeans, five shirts, a handful of
underwear and three camisoles in a patchwork travel suitcase. Even then when
men tried to talk to me, the levelness of my stair said I could break them and
maybe I was looking for the excuse. After twelve hours, the driver noticed I
didn't eat and without a word handed me half a ham sandwich and an icy cold
can of Pepsi from his cooler under the seat. I hadn't thought of eating, only
spots to relieve myself. That sandwich on buttered white bread tasted like the
last meal to a prison mate who'd lost every appeal.

Some days on through the endless procession of giving my mind to the
landscapes, the Rocky Mountains glorious splendor and the desert mirage
equaling both the vastness of dreams I didn't know to build and the wasteland
of ambiguity I found in my own body, we rolled to a stop in the midst of a
Sunday afternoon Union Station. Outside the light was translucent. I thought I
could smell the ocean but had no idea what this meant without a compass. I got
on another bus and stepped off a short distance from Venice Beach. Rolled up
in my back pocket was the magazine the driven had left in the back pocket of
my seat before I got on at the last stop. Like the sandwich, his wordless
grace was the monsoon to my drought. Whenever I descend on San Bernadino
County I see glossy too-real layouts of immense men of muscle. These figures
had lifted my homestead in their superhero V chests, their ski slope deltoids
and grapefruit biceps. Somehow they came to represent all manner of produce
the countryside refused to grow, favoring usefulness over luxury.

I opened my mouth and tasted the beach. Sinking sandals into the hot sand, the
past burned away and this is where Roger found me. Pale and sweating in a
cut-off shirt, he once lifted but was now settling south for the winter of his
prime in a hardened pear shape. After the 3rd glance at my ass, I thought
about moving on but had no place to stay and wondered if bedding down in a
patch of scrub wouldn't get me picked up and hauled home. Turns out he was
only looking at the magazine, the very same that he happened to own and
operate.

"You build?" he asked, giving his own shoulders a roll.

"No."

"But you want to?"

"Yes."

I hadn't known until that moment that's what I wanted but I could see myself
for the first time sweating under something more than a conveyor belt.

"How old are you?"

"Old enough." Had I said this with any lip, he would have walked away. I think
I knew him from that moment on.

"You know where you're staying?"

"Not yet."

He sighed, unsurprised and accepting of his roll in life. "All right. We can't
start here. You ain't a member of this club."

Away we went. He had a studio in Santa Monica he shared with a beautiful black
and Hawaiian woman of unguessable age named Lady. She was a builder of nature,
hard without being too hard in lines that conjured loincloths and spears in a
humid jungle. She didn't blink when I was offered the couch and when prompted
about their relationship so I didn't step on any toes and get my ass handed to
me she said, "Not that anyone could possibly own me, but he does have a
certain amount of say in the matter." I wouldn't know until years later the
true meaning of their understanding had come on a mutual binger night Roger
had thrown her up against the wall in a heated argument and was contemplating
breaking her neck like a twig with his meaty hands. Instead of begging for
reprieve, she had looked him straight on and said, "Go ahead and do it. Ruin
your fucking life for me. I'm worth it." I loved her more than any woman I
could have loved outside myself.

Lady trained me during the day and Roger got me a job bussing tables at a
small caf' near Palisades. It had an outdoor patio, palm leaves and white
tablecloths. I fell in love with the hours that seemed like minutes in the
gym. As long as I could move mountains with my arms and legs and back, the
ocean would continue it's circulation around the globe.

If you've never pushed weight you don't know what I'm talking about and the
exercise names would only confuse you. A bench press sounds obvious to me as
does squat thrusts and dead weight lifts in all manner of pounds and kilos but
it doesn't matter if you haven't felt the bar threatening to bend your fingers
back. The fear and exhilaration that comes just before you lift a heaviness
with your mind, unsure about the outcome, is the quickest way to find out what
mood you're really in. The first rep is the testing ground. The honesty of
that expression is the difference in overcoming an idea you once believed and
discovered was wrong and slinking back into under the rock you let roll on top
of you. You get tired of being lied to, even by omission. Lifting weight you
discover there is no trying as it equals failure.

I'd lie and say I was of legal age when Roger's magazine started to go
belly-up but it doesn't matter. I was willing.

Lady had mixed a pitcher of sangria and the three of us sat at Roger's broken
dining room table. He suffered in silence, looking around for any distraction
and Lady, sucking on an orange slice told us of a man who'd asked if she
wrestled. This launched an account of her three-year experiment with a Navy
officer stationed in Ventura County off Point Mugu who was bound and
determined she should benefit from his collegiate wrestling days and advanced
basic training in self-defense. He served during a peaceful time between wars
and she didn't put much credit in how useful the moves were but it seemed like
a fun way to kill time. I said I wanted her to show me just to see Roger's
ears perk up. In my world of ordinariness a man tries anything funny with you,
you run. If it's a group of boys you do as much damage as possible and tune
out the rest. In California, they call it going to your happy place.

Roger's happy place was the dark room in the basement. Red lit bulbs sheltered
his two enlargers, easel, printing tongs, a long metal table with four large
processing trays and shelves of brown bottled graduates, developer, stop bath
and fixer. Clothesline had been strung up from one side of the room to the
next and any day of the week could showcase the beach gladiators trying to out
do Atlas in parachute pants and skinny singlets. The shutterbug part of Roger
had ceased to annoy me. The camera was an augmentation and his third eyeball.
By the time Lady had shown me a camel clutch, rear naked choke, head scissors,
the full Nelson, chinlock, a Boston crab, surfboards, a reverse school girl, a
figure-four leglock, and handful of other names gone just as quickly from my
mind as the previous, my body had taken over and we'd both worked up a sweat.
Neither of us noticed Roger flittering around the peripheral snapping away in
the poor light. Wine-laced fruit juice makes sweat tangy as does a diet of
chicken and broccoli. Spread eagle on the floor and pressed into her cleavage,
I licked the salt from the rim of my lips and forced her weight from my belly
with an arched back. Had she any lasting resentment from our meeting and my
youthful encumbrance to her life, this would have been the time to display it,
for which I was prepared. Her surprise was a compliment and pride her
motivation to switch from teacher to opponent.

If Roger went to bed that night he didn't find it necessary to sleep. Smelling
of metol phenidone, vinegar and TV dinner cheese, he left the studio at the
crack of dawn to oxidize what was left of his imagination with the volleyball
women on the beach. Little did I know in the following week he had been
recruiting a certain brand of women not to pose for his side projects and Bo
Derek calendar portfolios but to gain interest in women who would wrestle in
exchange for headshots they could send to casting directors he may or may not
have known. Given Lady's fondness for Roger that had out-lived
once-upon-a-time lovers, when he asked her to show the timid candy desperados
how to rough and tumble she just shrugged and stripped down to a bikini top.
He'd go through three rolls in fifteen minutes as she positioned their arms
and legs and he directed their facial expressions to reflect a certain amount
of discomfort Lady was unwilling to enforce. The effort wasn't wasted and the
girls took to it like a Barbarella sequel. To do him credit, the headshots
were decent. To give her a break and myself practice, I was gone busy at the
library finding new moves at the reference desk or stepping in to intimidate
the models.

We had no idea he planned on showing the pick of his litter in a ten page
spread smack in the middle of next month's issue or that he'd given us names
that promoted skill we neither owned nor could lease. Maxi Muscle, Torentia
Flex, Darlene the Dominator. Psy-fi aliases because obviously we now existed
in a different solar system that rang the hierarchy of feminine boredom. No
eager beaver reads through a modeling release when they have a dam to build or
career to launch. He wasn't the only one doing this, heaven knows, and on
occasion, we'd send off for girl/girl wrestling videos from the fetishy porn
companies to compare stylistic qualities that made Roger, Roger.

Soon enough the letters came rolling in, some typed like telegrams, others
long conveyances of dreams come true. How could they see more and where was
the lair of our secret wrestling women society? Were they taking applicants?
Suggestions? Outfit requests? The longer I stayed around, and I was already
hip deep in the builder's life by this time, the more it became evident that
my bussing job was wasting the time I could have been using in more productive
ways. Back then, medicine was still trusted and it wasn't a stretch to see a
local pharmacy doc that could write you script after script for steroids. The
little glass jars with their white labels boasting chemical components that
sounded fancy held an appeal only realized while standing in front of a
full-length mirror. Circles of metal hurling toward the ceiling made the sharp
sting of a needle in my ass better than a new string bikini. I was busy
imagining just how great that neon green would look pasted across the shelf of
my hipbones. Even legal, if you weren't sponsored and hungry to grandstand
your biblical Samson proportions, you were left to fend for yourself. Roger
had left the wb270 wrestling ladies list on the coffee table enough times I
took the hint and handed him a single sheet of paper with my ad. I knew enough
of the girls to lie to myself and say I wasn't like them, wouldn't do anything
unbefitting my character, and honest enough to know if it came down to
sacrificing my gym time, I'd find enough resources to sculpt the outcome into
something I could live with. He put my ad in the back of his magazine and the
phone started to ring.

Sometimes I used the studio where we shot the girls, but eventually it was
evident that I was imposing on my hosts more than helping them. I owed them
more than I could repay, the least I could do was get out of their way. I had
been sessioning over a year when I met Stanley and couldn't shake him no
matter how blatant my lack of interest outside of the apartment playtime. He
was relentless, a tick that can't be snuffed out with rubbing alcohol or
Vaseline, and I used my oblivious cruelties as his own mental stoking. Being
tiny and moldable, this was a man meant to believe women as superior, and
accepting that fact, made it a delight to be born and chosen to fulfill a task
much bigger than himself. If he was going to sign up for that kind of
treatment I was going to give it to him and shrug off any blubbering that
comes with being a baby.

I still saw Roger and Lady. They had opened a gym spot on the dank streets
outside Hollywood and attracted curious bystanders into expressing their
unknown submissiveness with a catchy 30 minutes of wrestling for $30. I
imagine this turned lost puppies into full-blown beasts, shaken to their very
core with how easy women of my size and proclivities could annihilate them
within seconds.

Stanley had just come in with the groceries and unloaded them while I did a
Search-a-word and waited for a shoulder and arm rub he'd use to work himself
into a lather and jack of in the bathroom. As wet-wrung as any self-respecting
sissy, he lived in anticipation of my needs and put down the milk carton for
my morning brew. One glance did me in, one glance and I was on a plane to Iowa
for the first time in fifteen years.

Cramped up in coach on a last minute ticket that cost the equivalent of two
three-hour sessions with slightly desperate men, I thought back to a session I
had the previous night and that first startled jolt of opening a door to a
farmer's tan, hat in hand. The resemblance to the man I remembered as Daddy
struck me across the cheek. Had I been smaller in my memories it would have
snuck up and ruined this dude's experience. He had asked me where I was from.
In reply I swung him across my shoulder and lifted him like a sack of feed.
Feeling far more frail than sturdy, the sight of him gray-haired, lack-luster,
and sipping off my bulging youth, it broke me down to a human level. I told
him my real name and kept it at that.

I can't explain it but my thoughts had begun to circle back on themselves
around the time I had seen my own undisguised child face in black and white on
the back of that milk carton and the woman next to it faux-aged in a way that
was me looking at my reflection in carnival glass. I had never considered that
Daddy would have become fixated on the thought that someone had stolen me away
fifteen years ago and even my mother's calm acquiescence couldn't sway the
idea that I appeared missing.

At the funeral, the township asses covered most of the hardwood. I sat in the
back, unknown, looking with all my bulk to be four pallbearers with breasts
and a manicure. Whatever I expected to feel it was not the giggle that started
somewhere in my pelvic floor as the preacher kept calling Daddy "O.J." Those
were his initials all right, but they also stood for "orange juice." Nothing
about me was appropriate for this place.

Mother sold the farm and moved into town with my closest sister Sharon, her
three sons, and her storekeeper son-in-law. Someone said it told she had
become a teetotaler shortly after my departure. If she was to give two cents
at this coincidence it was filing down the isle of our baptismal church
following a too-small lacquered box out the double doors. She was one of the
last on the train, bent over and haggard in black crepe and a netted
headpiece. I'd called my oldest sister after finding my likening attached to
dairy products, was informed of his demise, and told her pointedly there was
no use in coming back. Seeing me, I wasn't supposed to be there and she knew
better. From her vacuous purse, she hauled out the tobacco can and set it at
the end of the pew as graceful as any sleight of hand conman on the pier. That
was all. I wasn't going to the cemetery. Daddy's body had belonged to the dirt
he was born in, the formality of a plot was an insult. If anything, they
should have planted him outside the back kitchen window with his other
children.

I was anxious to get back to the ocean but seems my mind so long existing in
an alternate life could only believe I'd never left the farm, or my hometown
was a nightmare still running in widescreen projection at the base of my
skull. I'd been waiting for the faces of men I'd come to depend on for
adoration and willful weakness, waiting to merge them into those of Daddy's
long face, lifted in the harvest sun. I was much kinder to Stanley after that
although I could never love him the way he longed to be loved. Too much of me
had been given away in the back of magazines, sold off per pound looking for
my Daddy to fetch me home so we could finish plowing the fields.