Money, and 31 Tonight

art curtesy of the author

by Elizabeth Schoettle

Money

I wish I could draw fairies. That is what I should do today. Go to the art store, buy markers and try to draw some fairies. A purple winged fairy I’d make come to life then have her make me small so we could fly all over the world eating fairy food. There’s nothing left. Stop wasting time; but what do voices sound like, real voices? I don’t know, but I do love the color of this orange shirt I’m wearing. I am so torn: doll or shirt, doll or shirt, doll or shirt. I’d really like to get a reservation at Rayo’s, this hot new restaurant in Harlem, membership only. My rent is going up in January. Money. If I had more money, I’d have more shirts if I had more shirts, I’d have more skirts, if I had more skirts I’d have more dolls, if I had more dolls, I’d have more friends then maybe I’d know someone who could get me into Rayo’s.

The ropes outside my window just hang. Someone is hammering. Someone is sleeping. It would be nice to see a murder. I always wished my breasts would stop. They did. Is it better to die early, or should I quit my job, eat bacon and buy a cabin, leave Edward. Do something useful with my life so that when I lose myself to myself, I have something to show for it other than this orange shirt.

I lay on my bed. The smashing pumpkins played in my head, Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty just like me… I never let on
that I was on a sinking ship. I never let on that I was down.

I stroll along Fifth Avenue with my coat pulled up around my ears, cars rush past, fast pants and skirts. But I don’t feel the charge. New York has such a gruesome way of turning its back on you the way an ocean does. I ride the bus, look out the window and think there is nothing pretty about getting paid for sex. I can barely make my feet move after I’ve finished the blowjob, but I can’t leave it, that’s the trouble. It’s just so hard to leave something where money is involved. I wonder if my life would be better if I were rich, if I’d worry less. But then what is rich, and when does rich feel rich enough.

The middle of the holiday season, whoosh, Merry Christmas, like a dream. I walk up Park Avenue then Lexington, headlights, horns, the evergreens are all choked round and round in tightly wrapped lights. I count the bones of my vertebrae like a skeleton in biology class. People say I need to see a psychiatrist but what in hell would that help and what would I talk about. I’ve seen them. They only make me want to do bad things. Sucking tits is extra and I didn’t even charge him for the extra. I love taxis. I swear if I weren’t feeling so bad I’d be in a taxi right now riding home alone drunk in the snow. The snow is glorious when you are drunk in a yellow taxi. I’m thinking. I have to keep thinking. I’m a thinking person. I’m never not thinking. I even have dreams I’m thinking. I think about death, a lot, and I think the worst part about death is that I won’t be able to think about it anymore.

31 Tonight 

The church bells sound deader than they did yesterday. It rained a champion rain and my feet got soaked clear through.

I like ice cream trucks in winter. Where do all the ice cream trucks go in winter? The ice cream graveyard. Ten years. I’m ready to change. Is that what this whole long run is about, Change. I gargle with salt water, but it doesn’t taste the same as the beach. Nothing ever changes but time.

1980. Salty pretzels with dirty hard tissues inside shiny black leather handbags remind me of granny. We’re on our way to Wanamaker’s. I’m seven or eight. We go every year. Tuesdays with granny, mom and brother. We get a day off from school. Granny puts the tissues out the window and hands us pretzels. My mother screams, “Mother!” I don’t care. I want to see the lights. I don’t even think of Philadelphia murders or the pigeon and people germs. I want a soft pretzel and to see the big Christmas lightshow that goes from the first floor of Wanamaker’s department store to the eighth. We have lunch at Tavern on the Green on the sixth, there’s a brass railing I sit by with my arm over the edge and a watercress sandwich in my hand, green velvet carpet under my feet. Ding dong. Ding dong. Ding dong. Noel, and Frosty the Snowman are loud, all the voices, bags and wallets with snaps blend in at counters, the wrapping paper rustle. Silent night hums and Jingle bells bell, and the light board lights up with a giant Christmas tree.  

I think about my body, my health, dicks and candy canes. I think about Jim. He always says I turned out so good.

I lift up the toilet seat, get down and study the rim that smells like puke.

Nose job. Blowjobs.

In the beginning it was so fresh. I didn’t mind the blowjobs so much because there were rules. Like a game. He couldn’t touch my breasts or my hands or look at me while I did it. “Just lick my balls honey, that’s all I need. I can do the rest.” And he did, and it was fine. I didn’t have to get naked at all and I was paid.

I’m a great swimmer too, but I don’t remember how I learned how to swim. I just remember the Y every Wednesday night with that hot chlorine and steamy shower smell where I had to walk on the slippery check tiles and watch naked women with big body parts like breasts and pubic hair get into bathing suits. That loud whistle and the coach telling me not to hold my nose when I jumped, or my brain would explode. No. Quite frankly, I can’t recall when my clothes came off and I was required to put my head all the way down.

REM sings the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine… 

I think about cutting my wrists the way they do in the movies. Hunger does strange things. I’m so hungry, blood runs from my wrists onto the floor, it leaks through the cracks. I can’t sleep. It’s three in the morning and puff. The Magic Dragon lived by the sea, I want summer to be summer again. I want to love summer again. School just out. Bathing suits in June. The ride in the car with the sun on my arm, damp towel wrapped around my shoulders like a big cape. Blue air hits my wet hair, I pull it out of my reflection in the mirror. God. Where is my Visine? This bathroom is a mess. I can’t get my eyes open. Look at my eyes. For a moment I thought they looked clear. I stare down at The Crack Up sitting on my table. “Sometimes,” Fitzgerald once said, “I don’t know whether I’m real or whether I’m a character in one of my own novels.” 

I cut my fingernails while I sit naked on the toilet seat trying to not look down at my thighs. Watch them plit plat to the floor like those little stars inside sand dollars. I can’t get them all up. I used to think I had talent.

I stare across the alley and see people sitting on a bed in TV light.

People are constantly telling me, “Phoebe, you’ve got to wake up. Life is not a dress rehearsal.” And I agree—it’s not. But my question is how do you get to opening night. Is that what death is?

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