The Sound of A Birth
First appeared in Babel Magazine #100
I try not to remember that night on the beach. The daytime fading, turning purple and dark blue and sitting naked on the sand with a cigarette in one hand and Nadine’s hand in the other. Her face was expressionless except for a small twitch in her eye that gave me hope that life could be found somewhere inside her pumping blue and white heart muscle. Her nostrils breathed in smoke from my body. The smoke came from the burning, melting coke sensation, like dreams injected into twitching nerves.
Nadine was swept away in the tide. I had seizures underneath a hot white moon. I made body-craters in the sand and dotted the saltwater with my blood.
I sat up in bed when I heard someone open my apartment door. I tried to rub the morning crust out of my eyes. My bedroom door opened. Diana stood in the doorway. I tried to focus my eyes.
“Time to get up, lazybones,” she said. She walked over to my bed.
“It’s Saturday,” I said.
She shook me by my shoulders. “Just get up. I’m taking you shopping.”
I got up and started rummaging through my dresser for a pair of pants and a shirt. “Shopping for what?” I said. Not that I cared. Going shopping meant driving to the beach and walking around the boardwalk.
“Clothes,” she said. “Nice clothes. Just a little thank-you for paying attention to me these past few months. To make up for dragging you over to my place the other night.”
“Don’t be sorry for the other night,” I said.
“But I am,” she said.
My apartment was in Dead Sonny, Florida, a fifteen-minute drive from the beach. We took Diana’s car. We listened to Metal bands on her stereo. We yelled above the music, catching each other up on what we had been doing these past few days, the days since we had last talked. Georgette, she told me, was her newest crush. Diana had met her at a club the day before. They danced all night. They exchanged phone numbers. I felt sick listening to her. I wondered how I had allowed myself to fall in love with a lesbian.
She took me to Paul’s, one of the more expensive clothing stores on the boardwalk. We wove through racks of designer shirts, coats, ties.
“Anything you want,” she said. “Name it.”
“No,” I said. “None of this stuff. I can’t see myself in anything like this.”
“You’re such a beach bum.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“I guess. Come on and pick something out. I can afford it.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. But I’m not allowed to argue with Diana, not really. It’s one of our unwritten rules. I picked out a suit.
We left the store and strolled around the boardwalk. She bought a couple hot-dogs. We sat on a bench and ate them, watching the tourists stroll by, going in and out of souvenir shops that were like the one I worked at, places that sold plastic sharks and inflatable floats.
Her long, silk dress moved with the wind and she tried to keep it in place. I glanced at her legs: saw a tattoo, a snake that circled her leg, the tail at her ankle, the head stopping where her underwear started. A boy, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, walked by, staring at Diana. He stopped in front of us. He squinted at Diana, tried his best to place her, figure out where her sketch of familiarity came from. “I know I’ve seen you before,” he said to her.
“I get that a lot,” she said.
The kid’s T-shirt was an advertisement for the band Scorched Flesh. Diana must have known that with enough searching, enough digging around in his memory, the kid would recognize who she was. The person she was trying to hide. She stood up. “Let’s get back to your place,” she said, visibly shaken.
We started walking back to her car. “He doesn’t recognize you,” I said.
We got into her car and drove away. She didn’t turn the stereo on. We were silent for a few minutes.
“You haven’t said anything about the clothes,” Diana said.
“Oh yeah, yeah, thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she said, “but that’s not what I meant. If I can ever get you into that thing, we’ll go out. The women’ll be all over you. We can get you a girl.”
But I only wanted Diana.
“And maybe,” she said, “you could quit that souvenir shop gig.”
But I liked my job. I was on the beach. I sold worthless shit to tourists. I smelled the saltwater all day. I closed the shop around sunset. Sunset, when I looked at the ocean and prayed that God would forgive me for what happened to Nadine.
I looked at Diana. “And do what? I’ve got a BA in marketing. You know what a BA in marketing gets you these days?” She shook her head. “It gets you a job selling junk to tourists.”
She smiled at me like a mother smiling at a silly child. We kept driving until we reached my apartment.
Diana is like a thread and needle weaving itself through all points on my body.
I met her at a NA meeting at a local Methodist church. I was leading the meetings that month. I sat at the end of a long, candlelit table. She was one of many new faces. I was used to new faces. We always had vacationers at our meetings.
I noticed her right away. She stood out from the rest of the tourists. She had long, straight, black hair with a few purple and pink streaks in it. She had on a black dress and wore fishnet stockings on her legs and arms. She had glitter on her face. It shone in the candlelight.
She stayed silent during the invocation and when it was her turn to talk she simply waved her hand, indicating that we should move on to the next person. She tapped on the table with her black fingernails and ground a design into it with a clothespin.
I kept glancing at her throughout the meeting. I tried to pay attention, to focus on whoever was speaking. But I would see her through the corner of my eye and suddenly my attention would be hers. I stared at her without even knowing exactly how long I was staring. I wanted to love her.
My turn to talk came last. I had never told the group about Nadine’s death before. It was just something I preferred not to talk about. I liked to talk about the future, how I was getting along these days, how hard it was to stay sober with all of the temptations that life can blow your way. But I wanted to reach Diana.
“I’m an addict,” I said. “I’ve been clean for almost two years now.” And I went through the story. Nadine and I were in college together - dating for a few months. Incredible coke heads. Binge drinkers. We took a handle of vodka and some coke to the beach. Met some friends at a party. Snorted coke and drank and danced to a DJ spinning acid-influenced rave music. We kissed and groped and wanted some time alone. We walked to a secluded side of the beach, taking the coke and booze with us.
We could barely hear the acid music. We heard the bass, quiet like a tiny heartbeat. We got naked, tried to fuck. We laughed about my impotence. We drank and did coke until we were unable to speak, until Nadine was washed away into the ocean. I didn’t try to save her. I couldn’t save myself.
I finished my story and looked at Diana. She looked down at the table and rubbed her temples.
We closed the meeting in a circle, holding hands. “One day at a time,” I said, and then we broke away from each other and dispersed. I turned the lights on and blew the candles out. I poured myself a cup of coffee and turned the machine off.
“I just got out of rehab,” a voice behind me said. I turned around. It was Diana. She introduced herself to me and I invited her to have some coffee at the table. We sat down.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,” she said, staring at the table again.
“We don’t ever pressure anyone,” I said. “You go at your own pace.”
She looked at me. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“Should I?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You look like you couldn’t be more than twenty-five, twenty-six or so. You’ve probably seen me on MTV.”
“I don’t watch MTV,” I said. “I don’t watch TV at all. It depresses me - makes me want to go off the wagon.”
“My stage name,” she said, “was Betty Skumm. You know, from Sister Queer? We’re pretty much the most famous Lesbian Metal band around.” She looked for confirmation in my face, but my mind was blank. She smiled at me. “I’m nobody special to you, am I?”
“Well,” I said, “I mean, I just haven’t heard of your band. Sorry. I pretty much just have my job and my meetings.”
“Can you help me?” she asked.
“I can try, but you’ve got to want to stay sober. Do you?”
She shrugged.
And we kept talking. About her life on the road, writing songs, taking pills and heroin and booze. She told me about her band, about how they kicked her out when she went to rehab. Getting clean wasn’t easy. Convulsing on the hospital floor. Diarrhea for a week. Vomiting. Praying at the hospital bed, her knees shaking on the cold floor, dried tears crusting her eyes. She prayed for epiphany; a reunion with a god she had never believed in.
But in all of her thoughts, behind the scattered speeches of her schizophrenic voices (they had come to her when the heroin was leaving her system) was the calming sound of the ocean - the waves breaking slowly, crawling to the shore. It was the sound, she thought, that a baby hears when being born.
After she got out, she bought a condo on the beach. She wanted to be closer to the waves, the sound of a birth.
I kept my eye on her - my special project. And she really needed my help then, those first few weeks on the beach. I remember late nights, calls at midnight, two in the morning. I would leave my apartment in Dead Sonny, too tired to get up, but too obsessed not to help her. I had to talk her out of rage, out of suicide.
Her recovery seemed to be going well. She started smiling, laughing. We would share jokes and watch movies. But she started ignoring me. She ignored my calls, my knocks on her door. She quit going to meetings. I thought she might have gone off the wagon.
And weeks went by and I started to accept that I might never see her again. But she called one night and I came over to her condo and we talked. She told me about the mess she had gotten into those past few weeks. No drugs, just women. Women she met at The Catch, a local lesbian bar. Women she met strolling on the beach. Wives of tourists looking for a little adventure in their vacation.
“I was obsessed with them,” she told me, “like I was obsessed with the drugs.”
And I held her. What else was there to do except hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right?
Then, a couple of days ago, late at night: “Hello?”
“I need your help.”
“Nadine?”
“Diana. Look, come over. I was at the club and I found a guy who wanted to sell me some …”
“Jesus,” I said. “What was it? You haven’t taken anything?”
“Just come over, okay? I need you.”
------------------------------
And when I got there, I could feel my heart beating in my throat. I ran up the porch and opened the door. And there she was, smiling at me. She was wearing a bright red dress. It was the first time I had seen her in anything other than black.
She danced over to me and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“What’re you on?” I asked.
“Dreams,” she said.
I figured she had already taken the drugs.
Diana kissed me on the cheek. “It’s so late,” she said. “I thought that you wouldn’t come see me unless it was an emergency. I wanted to tell you how much your friendship means to me. I couldn’t have stayed clean without you.”
I broke free and sat down on her leather couch. In front of me, the TV was playing Looney Toons and the volume was muted. I rubbed my temples. I had work tomorrow. I couldn’t believe this. Diana came over and sat next to me.
“I want you to hold me,” she said. “I feel so good right now. You know what I did today?” I shrugged.
“Today—today I woke up feeling like I had a hangover. I wasn’t sure why—it’s been months since I’ve had anything to drink. It took me awhile, took a lot of thinking to realize what was wrong. I was still Betty Skumm. I still looked like her, the addict. I just, I realized that I had to make peace with my past and let it go. So I bought some really pretty dresses. And tomorrow I’m gonna visit one of those expensive salons here on the beach and see if they can’t get this black out of my hair. I’m gonna be a whole new person.”
I stood up. “I thought this was an emergency.”
She looked disappointed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m feeling real good tonight. You’re my best friend. I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done to help me.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost one. I had to open the store at eight. “Next time,” I said, “figure out some other way to thank me.”
“Fine,” she said, almost whispering. She turned away from me. She rested her head on the arm of the couch. Was she crying? My heart was aching. I started to apologize. But I didn’t. I left her condo and drove home.
------------------------------------
Okay, so it was an asshole thing to do. I admit it. But I was cranky. And I was tired of being in love with a lesbian.
A couple days later, Diana decided to buy me an expensive suit to make up for the situation.
When we got home from the beach we went to my bedroom and Diana put the suit in my closet. She started to pick up my dirty clothes and throw them in a pile. I was sitting on the edge of my bed flipping through a magazine.
“You don’t have to do any of this,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “And we should just wait till December and hope that Santa comes and picks this mess up?”
I laughed. “I’m not that lazy.”
“Yes you are.”
She bent over to pick up a dirty T-shirt. I tapped a finger on the small of her back. She turned around and faced me.
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks. And I’m sorry for walking out on you the other night.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s nothing. It was my fault.” God, she was beautiful.
“It was my fault,” I said.
“Look,” she said, changing the subject, “you need to actually wear this suit, okay? I didn’t buy it for nothing. You could get out of your apartment for once. Go to a club. Meet a girl. Maybe you could look for a better job.”
“A new job, huh? Can’t I just be happy being happy?”
“I guess. But you still need to meet a girl.”
I rolled over onto my side and patted the bed with my hand. “Come here,” I said. “Take a break.” She lay down next to me, on her side. I put my arms around her shoulders and touched her hands. Our fingers locked together. I felt a tiny shaking in her hands, just below the surface of her skin. Mine shook a little too. I rested my head on hers. We fell asleep, intertwined.