This is the first installment of Mist's memoir; in it she calls herself "Sally Hamilton." Maybe that's her real name? I tried finding her using it. No luck. She wrote it almost like fiction. Perhaps it is. Regardless, I was fascinated and could hardly put it down. Here it is:
My
attraction was the sense of danger. Not
knowing what they would do next. I dig
adventure but never had the money or the time for travel. I like roots; I like the security of having
my own place and a steady job to pay for things I need to be creative; never
wanted to marry or the responsibilities of raising kids. I am attracted to men who live on the
edge. Like, once, I sort of went with
this Latino dude -- Chilean and indigenous from LA -- who told me tales of the
Mexican Mafia, his nine years in solitary for killing an inmate who tried to
rape him when he first got in at age eighteen.
He had "PEPE" tattooed on his penis in crude block letters. I asked him, why there? "Es no much to do een preeson." I had the sense to keep my distance. The authorities ran him out of town, he told
me the day he split for Vegas in his long, grey sedan he called El
Tiburon. I haven't heard from him in
almost a decade. I hope I never do. Then I had a raging affair for a couple of
years with a pot-farming cocaine dealer whom I stayed with outside of
Laytonville. We carried rifles on our
rounds and flattened ourselves under shrubbery when helicopters
whompah-whompahed overhead. Responsible
men have pulled guns on each other over me.
Then I met Docker.
I'd
see him at this arty-farty bar in the Potrero I liked going to because it was
just over the hill from my place on Bernal Heights and on Saturday nights a
jazz trio played. The scene was a mix of
artists, old-timey hard-drinkers, blue-collar workers, bikers, and
musicians. Women hung on Docker as he
stood at the bar. He knew everyone and
everyone knew him. When he looked at
you, his green eyes danced with gold flecks.
One night, as I walked by, he grabbed my hand, pulled me over to a
table, and held out a chair. I took
it. He fell into one next to me.
"I'm tired, fucking tired,
man." He lowered his head on his
arms. A women sidled up, pulled up his
black cotton sleeve and wrote her number on his arm with her lipstick. He turned his face towards hers; she leaned
down and gave him a deep tongue kiss. He
came home with me that night. We made
love. He sure didn't seem tired. Then he told me about his initiation.
Docker was a white boy who'd been initiated as a
kid. He was tall and raven-haired. He'd been captured by the Members who
threatened to do him in when all he wanted was to be in. That's why he hung around them, he told
me. When we first made love and I saw
him without his shirt, I ran my fingers over the notches of scarification
running across his shoulders. (Before
the end of the millennium, the trend was mostly tattoos.) His skin stood up in even points, like on the
vertebrae of some prehistoric amphibian.
As he talked, I imagined his fear in the darkness inside the heavy
tapestry they'd flung over him and tied tightly.
"I didn't know how long they kept me in there,
man. By the time they let me out, I
couldn't see. That's when they did
this." He gently touched his
shoulder. Docker spoke evenly, looking
out into the darkness. I curled close to
him, my arm across his smooth chest, one leg flung over his hips, grazing his
pubic hair. He shifted his arm to a more
comfortable position under my head and continued, "I kept losing
consciousness, seeing all that blood come out of me. But after I healed, when I got used to the
mixture they rubbed into my wounds, I felt pretty damn good."
"Were you scared?" He tucked his chin to his chest and looked at
me sideways, made a sound half-way between a grunt and a laugh which shook his
shoulders, then turned away. I figured
I'd better not pursue it. I felt an icky
thrill running my fingers over the ridge of pliable flesh when he sat with his
back to me on the bed after he had pulled his T-shirt off over his head.
There's a theory of the Jung cult
that goes: we choose the people closest to us in order to fill up holes in our
psyches with experiences or pieces of our personas that haven't been
developed. Though I thought I took
risks--or people said I did: traveling alone by bike, picking up guys because
they fascinated me, like Docker, because it felt right--I knew myself
inside. I trusted myself. People, when they first got to know me, an
orphan bounced around foster homes, figured me for the librarian type. I'd worn glasses since the fifth grade, was
in drama class, student body officer, cheerleader, cum laude, all that
rot. Some of the hipper guys at school
-- musicians -- would talk to me, but I couldn't figure out what they were
telling me until I grew older and started hanging out in jazz joints. They thought I was on drugs. They read something in me back then that I
was not conscious of. So, applying this
theory to Docker, is there a female librarian-type lurking somewhere in his
psyche?
For two weeks we rarely left my flat. I'd just started my vacation, so it worked
out fine. The only time we got out of
bed was to go dancing. He surprised me
one night by showing up in a classy suit, dress shirt, the whole works. Took one look at me and said, "Are you
going to wear that?" So I stripped
off my jeans, pulled a silk frock from a hanger, struggled into nylons with
seams up the back, high-heels from some other era and stepped out into the beam
of his approval. He pinned a gardenia on
my shoulder. We went to a hotel downtown
where a live band plays ballroom, which I love, but few dance like that
anymore. Docker literally swept me off
my feet during tangos and waltzes. He
gave me a bracelet of silver and gold strands twisted together into a silver
snake head, said belonged to his dead mom; a gift from his father who deserted
the family when he was an infant. He
showed me faint initials engraved on the inside: "JP love to DM." I took it off only once. Then I had to go back to work and didn't see
him for more than a year.
I stopped looking for him in that
bar after being told once too many times by the bartender: "You don't
wanna know. Stay outta here if you know
what's good for you." I laughed in
his face. "What is this some film
noir dialogue, or what? What are you
talking about?" "If you value
your life, I'm not kidding," he said, "I wouldn't even admit I knew
him, if I were you." He looked over
his shoulder as he talked. "You
think this is funny? What's not funny is
his brother got whacked last year.
They're going after anyone who knew him.
Darlene hasn't been around for weeks, either. Now, get outta here. You're a nice gal. Go home, marry a banker or somebody. You don't belong here." But I thought it was funny. Me, Sally Hamilton, in a '40s thriller. Ignoring the bartender, I kept coming
back. He wouldn't serve me. Others moved aside, giving me plenty of
space. No one mentioned his name. I had become invisible. And, I wondered, who was Darlene?
I moved a
bunch of times and got an unlisted number.
Then, in the middle of the night, the phone rang. I turned up the volume on the machine. The voice on the other end said, "I'm
coming by in a half-hour. Going to the
mountains with the kids. If you want to
come with me, be ready." A zillion
questions raced through my head. I
flipped on the speaker and said, "Okay," and before I could ask them,
he'd slammed down the receiver. What
about work? How long were we going to be
away? I cursed myself as I pulled on
jeans, a sweater, boots, tied a cotton paisley scarf around my neck, and threw
food, bottled water, clothes, and a bunch of other stuff into my big leather
pack; tucked my cell phone in the pocket of my calf-skin field-jacket. One questions loomed: How did he find
me?
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