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Special Book Excerpt
Pulling
Taffy
By Matt Bernstein Sycamore
Suspect Thoughts Press
Falling in Love with Francis
Something CLICKS in me when I see Francis' sign, maybe I’m being naive and all, but I think it might just be true love or at least what they call something to write HOME about, though I have to admit I’m confused about where home is:
a. watering the plants in East Boston
b. diving into Lake Washington
c. getting high from Dancing
But back to TRUE LOVE I mean Francis: I’m in an ice cream shop on Avenue A but I'm vegan so I don't eat ice cream. I look at the signs on the bulletin board and FEMALE MODEL WANTED pops out at me, mostly because of the road trip around the world and wondering how we'd drive around the entire world, not just from New York to San Francisco and back. I've done that—I’m looking for new adventures and yes LOVE and today they have coconut sorbet at the ice cream parlor and it’s vegan. But I can't eat anything with too much sugar or I get so sketchy my life becomes one big breakdown. I don't get any sorbet—I get Francis.
Now some of you might think that Francis doesn't sound like a French name, but listen I’m not looking for AUTHENTICITY, I want love. Sure I’m skeptical, but it’s something about how Francis puts anarchy and peace and artist together at the bottom of the page that makes me fall for him. It's not many people who make those CONNECTIONS.
So I call Francis, we make an appointment for Sunday at noon. He lives in a penthouse at Red Square on Houston Street. I've always wondered what kind of people live there. Once someone who lived there gave me a dead plant, but when Francis fucks me it isn't like porn or real life, his dick just slides in. Then I think wait a second; what am I doing getting fucked again without a condom by someone who I'm not attracted to when he isn't even paying me? I sit right up and when I speak to Francis I’m speaking to every guy who's ever just slid it in without asking. Foreplay isn't the same thing as CONSENT. And with Francis it’s even more complicated than the wholesale acceptance of objectification in gay male sexual culture. Because Francis isn't gay. He’s some straight French painter who just wanted a female model and instead he got me.
But when I speak to Francis I can't speak. This isn't some straight-acting fag, this is the real thing. When I pull away from him, he says you look like Linda Blair in
Poltergeist. I just stand there speechless because Linda Blair wasn't in
Poltergeist and here I am in the penthouse of Red Square with a view of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, trying to tell Francis that I just don't love him anymore.
I go home and get dressed. I pull on my jellybean tights with a women's bathing suit from the ‘60s: green palm trees on white. Then I put two curly wigs in for tits. I step into my plaid stack heels and grab the shower curtain rings out of the bathroom to make a choker. Throw on about fifty fake pearl necklaces, and big Dangly plastic crystal earrings. Then I smear eyeliner from my eyes to my nose and lipstick from my lips to my chin. Finish the outfit with old lady cockroach sunglasses and a shower cap that has big plastic flowers growing off it.
I look in the mirror and something is missing. I pull out another wig for pussy hair. I have a big dilemma about that part, I keep thinking is this misogynist? In the past I would have thought yes, but sometimes I think I'm a ‘70s lesbian feminist, like how I used to believe all penetrative sex was rape. Then I realized I'd been raped by my father and that was why, how my biggest fear wasn't being raped because that was to be expected. How my biggest fear was ever being in a position where I could be the rapist. I'm still scared to take a self-defense class because then I have to be the aggressor.
I call car service. I say Saks Fifth Avenue and when I get there I walk in like I own the place, go right into couture. Look at a few price tags and start screaming I THOUGHT THIS WAS A THRIFT STORE. I can't get any help. I wipe my makeup off on a powder pink Chanel suit, then go down to cosmetics screaming LIPSTICK, grab a few testers and smear them across my face, rubbing them into the floor as they break off. At this point, there are a few people staring. I pull off my shower cap, take out the pussy wig and move it to my head, adjust it in the mirror and say
it's all about glamour.
Copyright
© 2003 Matt Bernstein Sycamore
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