Macho Sluts by Patrick Califia

Author:Patrick Califia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, book
ISBN: ISBN9781551523521
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 2010-05-20T04:00:00+00:00

The Hustler

I’ve been more comfortable in a public toilet. This room is a crucifying closet, stifling hot, and lit with ghoulish, humming fluorescent lights. There are no windows—nothing to look at but this big mahogany box of a desk and the Big Box herself—excuse me, I mean the Big Boss—behind it. Normally, I find women of her size attractive. There’s a larger canvas to work on, and more padding. But this woman’s bulk is menacing, and the lack of distance between us isn’t decent. I can see the wax in her ears. I’m confused, crowded, put off my game. I don’t get this close to anybody who isn’t manacled to a wall. I can’t sit down because the chairs are piled with file folders and fat reports that threaten to escape their staples. The knocked-together bookshelves and battered gray file cabinets look too shaky to lean on. I don’t dare lean on anything anyway. The pose might call up sordid reverberations from my checkered past, and we’re going to hear enough about that any second now.

The placement of the shrine contributes to my disorientation. The mirror (bigger than usual) is behind and to one side of her desk, right across from me. Above, it says, “Behold the heroine of today!” These damn things are everywhere, so I don’t even have to look below it to know that it says, “In her, the revolution lives on!”

I see a woman who has square, but not broad, shoulders, and a body that looks wiry and muscular (I hope). Actually, she is thin and worn out because she’s been living on fifteen hundred calories a day and can’t sleep at night. She is wearing faded khaki pants (army surplus), a leather jacket, laced-up combat boots, a studded belt, and a crewcut. That’s me. The heroine of today, ha-ha.

The heat presses in on me. I can feel it beating against my eardrums, but I refuse to take off my jacket. Its fragile, blood-stained lining is ripping out, but if I replace it, I will lose another piece of Jackie. I can still hear the crazy conviction in the voice of our trick-turned-killer, replying to her cool suggestion that we talk about where we were going and what we were going to do when we got there. “You’re going to be whatever I want you to be,” she said, putting a gun to Jackie’s head. Well, people had been telling Jackie that her whole life. Why should she believe it now? She curled her lip in disdain and grabbed for the wheel.

These are terrible memories, but if I don’t work hard to keep them fresh, that andro will have won and Jackie will not-be, never will have been her vital, crazed, strung-out self. I am the only one who can keep her alive because I am the only one who knew her and the only one who cared, who cares.

I should have left the jacket on her body, left it to burn up when the gas tank exploded and turned the psychotic jane’s car into shrapnel.

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