"There are these women following me everywhere."
I was on the phone, trying to explain this phenomenon to my ex-housemate Kathy. Kathy didn’t trust me anymore, if in fact she ever had. She was still holding "marry in haste, repent at leisure" over my head, and she didn’t want to come over and meet someone I was going to divorce within the year. But she was still a good person to vent my subcultural horror to, even if she was so afraid of my computer cooties that my contacts with her were pretty much over the phone, unless I bribed her by taking her out to lunch---in her end of town.
I was not joking about members of this mysterious female entourage periodically appearing around Cambridge. Unbeknownst to myself, I had become a tiny celebrity and apparently the object of a lot of contempt and/or petty jealousy amongst a certain group of women. I was a shaman, the woman who was either privileged or utterly stupid enough to marry Sascha Strathmore, especially on such short notice.
I had quit my job at BC. At first, Sascha wanted me to be free after years of "gruntwork." Then he talked me into doing some lightweight PR for the company, mostly phone calls and a couple of personal appearances at the new "show" offices on Broadway, about a mile from our offices through the less genteel parts of Cambridge. Otherwise, I was spending a lot of time in Harvard Square. I had signed up late for some fall classes at Harvard Extension School, and I hung around Mondo Espresso and Cafe Algiers with my new Mac laptop, writing like mad for the sheer pleasure of hearing the tick-tick of the keyboard and watching my words come up on the little screen.
Unfortunately, my new freedom also meant the forfeiture of my access to the Boston College pool complex. Sascha encouraged me to join the spectacular MIT athletic center. But I couldn’t bear to identify myself as an "MIT Spouse," which smacked of a diffident homemaker cleaning up after her genius husband. Instead, I joined the Cambridge Y in Central Square---big, dusty, old, and definitely out of the gossip loop.
Indeed, the Y was one of my few gossip-free refuges. My fan club, if you wanted to call them that, must have all spent some time examining Sascha’s new glamour photos of me hyperlinked to the Deus Ex Machina Web site. I couldn’t walk the mile from the Mass. Ave. bridge to Casa Deus without receiving at least one hostile stare. These all emanated from what I had come to think of as the "hacker girlfriends" (long straight hair, big ass, glasses-friendly, dry-dust humor, lots of weird jewelry, backpack---regardless of whether the person was 20 or 40). Many of these women were programmers themselves, I gathered, or in fields like physics, engineering, or molecular biology. I felt as if they were looking through me to see the hole in my head where the math and science should have been, and chortling to themselves at Sascha’s misfortune. I found myself steering clear of the MIT/Kendall Square axis as much as possible, even if that meant taking the long way into Boston instead of hopping the No. #1 bus, which took you from Harvard Square to downtown Boston in 15 minutes, with a pit stop at MIT.
"I saw another one of them today," I’d say to Sascha. He’d ask me to describe her. I’d try, although, like any good bigot, my temptation was to say, "But they all look the same!". Amazingly enough, with Sascha asking a few guided questions ("What color was her hair dyed?"; "Was she walking a ferret?"), he would either pull down her picture on the Web---or worse, comb through his photo albums and find a decent likeness.
Even more disconcerting were the women who talked to me. I was in Amherst visiting a friend, and this woman I had never seen before, with waist-length hair, granny dress, and coonskin cap, accosted me outside a coffee shop. "Going out with Sascha Strathmore is a bad idea," she said harshly and without introduction, grabbing my arm so hard it hurt. She had lots of rings on.
"Thanks for the tip," I said. "Except that I’m not going out with him. We’re married. So it’s a little late. But I’ll tell him you said hi." Only later, I thought to wonder how the woman knew who I was, or how my reputation had preceded me 90 miles out to western Mass.
This was not an isolated incident. The afternoon I went to Laura Ashley to pick up my little wedding dress, I noticed that a very un-Ashley like female had followed me into the store, pretended to gaze at the sale rack while I wrote out the check, and then followed me out again.
"Look, what do you want to tell me?" I finally said, turning around to face her in the hot, windy Charles Hotel courtyard.
Her face twisted up, and she clasped her hands together over her cheezy, 1980s-looking jeans jacket. "Please, whatever you do," she begged, "don’t break up with him. He can’t handle another breakup."
I hailed a taxi, not inclined to walk with her protestations all the way home. "He can do just fine," I called to the woman. "Really."
"Magazine and Cottage," I whispered to the driver.
"You don’t know what you’re talking about!" the woman yelled after me as the taxi pulled away. "You’ve never seen him depressed!"
*
"I gotta go," I said to Kathy, as I heard the electric voice lock clicking open. "Somebody’s breaking in." I was really going to have to talk to Sascha about cutting down on the number of people who were voice-printed for the front door, so fewer of what I considered to be random elements wandered into our living room. Sascha couldn’t understand why I thought these chaotic comings-and-goings were such a violation of my privacy.
I went to the door. Another one of those long-haired, big-assed women was standing in the foyer. She looked like the Picasso model who seems to be enjoying herself so much on the cover of the Good Vibrations catalogue, except that the woman in the foyer wore a suede fringe jacket and had a ring strung through the bottom of her nose.
"Is Sascha home?" she asked, stepping past me into the living room. "I wanted to pick up some of my stuff. I think he also made some tapes for me.
"Ooh, look!" she exclaimed before I could answer. "There's the Klimt litho Troll bought! I've been wanting Sascha to put that up for years---"
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Crystal."
My frisson of simultaneous horror and confrontational adrenaline startled me. Why did I have it in so badly for this chick? I quickly decided I was going to be as open-minded about her as I could, because my irrational feelings about her were, well, irrational. Already, I felt my heart pounding flight-or-fight.
Crystal walked into the living room picking up things familiarly as she went. She had not looked at me once. "I've never seen this Mandelbrot design before," she commented to the computer-generated art on the wall.
"We got it for our wedding," I growled. "Do you know who I am?"
"Oh, and he took down the erotic Tantric art. Why'd he do that?"
"I'm his wife."
"Yeah, I heard something about that. What’s your name?"
"Sara."
"With an h or without? I once had a lover named Sarah whose name ended with an h. I’m going upstairs to Sascha's office."
I thought, The Whore of Babylon is in my living room.
At that moment Sascha bounded down the staircase. "Crystal!" he cried. "The computer told me you had activated the front door. Is it really you?"
She met him on the bottom stair. With her biker boots she was a little taller than he, and she kissed him smack on the mouth.
"Do you want to sit down?" I asked icily. I felt like a country-club mom whose son has just brought the high-school tramp home for dinner and a little necking in the library.
"I don’t have a whole lot of time," Crystal said to Sascha. "But I have so many things to tell you! Guess who I ran into!" She took his hand. "Let’s go sit on the couch together," she giggled, like the words "sit" and "couch" carried some private sexual meaning.
Crystal curled luxuriously on the couch. Sascha sat next to her. I sat in a chair a disapproving distance away. Crystal picked up one of Sascha’s many little toys---this one was a tiny mathematical puzzle made of silver---and started playing with it. Her hands were big but delicate, and her nails were bitten down below the cuticle.
"I am so thrilled to see you!" Crystal said again. She had solved the puzzle in less than a minute. She had obviously done it before. "There are so many people who want to know how you are these days. Remember that woman, Evenstar, who we met at the May Day ritual that one time? Well, I ran into her in Santa Cruz and guess what she’s doing? She changed her name to Omaha Tailchaser, and now she’s a stripper at a bifemme joint. Isn’t that funny! I gave her your email address."
Sascha laughed pleasantly. I was giving him the most evil looks possible; he looked straight into my face, as if for approval, and didn’t seem to get it. "That’s great," he said to Crystal. Could he be serious?
"Where’s your Omaha collection right now?" Crystal asked. "I’m missing a couple of issues, and I wanted to know if you had any extras."
"What’s ‘Omaha’?" I asked.
"‘Omaha the Cat Dancer’ is a comic book," explained Sascha. "Omaha is a cat who’s a stripper. She has friends who are other cats, and dogs, and birds, and whatnot. There’s a lot of sex. It’s very erotic."
"This is an interest of yours I didn’t know about before, Sascha," I said, not bothering to disguise my sarcasm. "Do you have some X-Men comix---" I emphasized the last "x" disdainfully--- "hidden in the basement?"
Sascha pointed at the ceiling. "No. They’re in the library upstairs."
"Comix are the future of the printed word," said Crystal authoritatively. "Literature is dead. It’s online, pix, or VR."
"That’s kind of offensive to me," I said. "I’ve been dealing with printed words for years. I write and edit them. You need to remember who you’re talking to when you make statements like that."
Neither Sascha nor Crystal said anything for a second.
"So how long are you in town for?" asked Sascha finally. "What are you doing for money?"
"I thought it was time to come back to Cambridge for a while. A friend in Santa Cruz gave me the name of a woman here. Lady Kira. She’s a domina. She lives right around here as a matter of fact. Gets a lot of her clients from Bondage & Discipline night at Club Man Ray. So I’m living with her, in exchange for doing her bookkeeping, and sometimes being her assistant. She’s really good. I know you’ve never been into BDSM, Sascha, but she’s a really gentle way to get broken in. Oh, and also I’ve been going over to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and doing different kinds of modeling for them."
"Ummm, he’s not going to get into leather and that shit," I said firmly. "You know why? Because he and I are married. Is marriage a concept that you grasp? Really. I’d like to know." Boy was I being a bitch. The Melrose Place women had nothing on me right now. All their lines were scripted.
Crystal shrugged. "Sure. Marriage is a valid lifestyle choice for some people.
"Anyway," she went on brightly, turning back towards Sascha, "listen to what they’re making me do at the Museum School! I sat naked in a chocolate mold---chocolate in my hair and all over my face and everything!---and then all the students had to take bites of the chocolate and eat me out of the mold! Get it? ‘Eat me out’!" She laughed. "The whole thing was filmed. Also, I was videotaped walking across the ridge of a tall building. And getting my labia pierced at an illegal tattoo parlor by this guy who must have spent, like, years getting his body modified. You’d really love the ring I have in there right now, Sascha. It’s a little pentacle. Oh, and I dressed up as some Venus De Milo, except I was rising out of a little swimming pool. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting. Good money, though."
Crystal prattled on about herself, her sex life, other people the two of them knew and I didn’t, those people’s sex lives, her therapist/bodyworker, and her various adventures on the road, many of which seemed to involve the categories above. Sascha smiled at her charitably. You know, I thought, if I weren’t married to this guy, this might be just cause to break up with him. As it stood, I saw a big fight coming on. The question was whether I could hold my tongue until Crystal left---if she left. Maybe Sascha was so goodhearted he would just let her hang out here indefinitely.
"You heard from Daphne lately?" Crystal asked.
Sascha frowned. "You know I haven’t heard from her in years."
How does Crystal know Sascha’s sister? I wondered.
"I thought she would have made up with you by now," said Crystal.
"I wish she would. You know how she never takes time to listen to anything. If she would just listen to how you had helped me two years ago..."
Helped with what? I looked sideways at Sascha. He shook his head. "Later," he mouthed.
"Sara and I are going to have lunch soon," he said. "Do you want to join us?"
I smiled fakely in assent, with flared nostrils.
"Thanks a lot," said Crystal. "I never turn down a free meal, but I’m on a pretty restricted diet these days. Guy, my bodyworker, says that I’m out of alignment. So it’s vegan macrobiotic, no wheat. If that doesn’t work, we’re going to check out environmental allergies. So basically, I can’t really eat anywhere except where I’m staying. Lady Kira is good about providing the right food for me. Which reminds me. What time is it? I don’t have a watch."
"What about the Movado I bought you?"
"Sold it. Didn’t need it. Needed the cash. Anyway, I have to go because Lady Kira needs me for an appointment at one. I’m going to be the woman they look at and get whipped for trying to touch. Role-playing games are very freeing, you know. Let me know if you want an appointment with Miss Kira. She’s got a waiting list, but you’re family."
Crystal lifted herself from the couch. "Can I have a pen?" she asked Sascha. "I want to give you my pager number. You can call anytime. The two of us can have lunch at Lady Kira’s, or whatever."
Sascha walked her to the door. "I’m so thrilled to see you," he said, giving her a big hug. "I’m so glad you’re doing OK."
"I’m glad things are finally working out for you, too," Crystal smiled.
"Thanks for stopping by," I said with the heaviest possible sarcasm.
"Yeah," said Crystal, slamming the door behind her.
Sascha bounced back to me with a beatific smile on his face. "I’m so glad to see her getting her life together. Her welfare means so much to me."
I just gaped. Sascha looked at me, concerned. "What’s the matter?"
I stewed for a few seconds before I spoke. "You need to change the voice-printing on the front door so that---slut can’t get in."
"What’s your problem?"
"I have never--- I repeat, never--- had to sit in a room with someone who offended me so much," I said with wounded moral indignation. "To say that Crystal---I’ll bet that isn’t her real name---"
"It’s her name for her new life," Sascha said mildly. "She doesn’t have a last name either, I don’t think. Or else she doesn’t use it."
"Exactly. That woman strains my bounds of tolerance, Sascha. I do not want her in my house. Especially since she’s basically only coming over here to fuck you or get something from you or get you into one of her little ‘alternative lifestyle’ deals. I mean, she has no moral compass at all. Have you enjoyed following her down the primrose path to this Pagan-poly-bi shit?"
Sascha was getting angry now. I think it was the first time in our short acquaintance he was openly upset with me. "You have no idea what you’re saying. You have no idea what her life has been like, or what she’s done for me. And she means a lot to me, just as a person. So I’d appreciate it if you’d stop your baseless, ad hominem attacks this instant."
"Fine. So why don’t you run down to her little leather den and have a wheat-free lunch with her right now? And maybe some alternative-protein dessert?"
"Sara... this is really not acceptable. Maybe she’s a little jealous because I’m married now---"
"Yeah, in a heteropatriarchal ceremony? She’s jealous of that?"
"---If you’d let me finish---but you can’t be jealous of everyone that I’ve slept with or who I’ve had a relationship with before you. Your jealousy is getting out of hand. And your kind of close-mindedness doesn’t fit into our group at all."
"You and your damn drugged-out Unix-hacking brass-ratted little group! I’m fucking sick of them! I’m going to go swimming, where I can at least be around people who care about their bodies. And don’t expect me to come back anytime soon!"
Gym bag in hand, I slammed the big door behind me. But the expression on Sascha’s face had already turned from angry to forlorn. "I promise I’ll leave you some lunch," he said quietly. "You can call me at my office number if you want."
*
Underneath the cold smooth water, I stretched my muscles harder and harder until there was nothing left but quietness and resistance and breathing. At last I could fall right back into my body, and be safe there without outside interference.
I finally hoisted myself out of the pool and back into the loud damp echoes above. I tore off my bathing cap and, cold and tired, walked into the locker room.
With my towel wrapped discreetly around me as usual, I pulled open the door to the sauna. Inside was a woman. I didn’t see her face, which was turned toward the ceiling. But her body was fleshy and hairy, spilling over the edge of the wooden bench, and she was pouring a little ladle of water over her copious stomach and spreading it across herself with delicate, knowing fingers.
She lifted herself up by her elbows. Her big glasses were fogged over, but she wasn’t someone I would have recognized anyway, except in a very generic way.
"Hi Sara," she said pleasantly, in a no-nonsense scientist’s voice. "Why don’t you take off your towel and join me?"
I brought my towel tighter around myself and backed away, filled with self-recrimination and a throat-tightening sense of foreboding. "No thanks," I heard myself whispering. "Not just right now."
Next chapter