Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [69]
“You’ve got such an addictive personality. Can’t you see what those cigarettes are doing to you?”
I smile determinedly and take another drag. About five years ago Paula won an award for her presentation to the therapists’ collective on how fingernail biting was a form of subliminal alcoholic behavior. Since then she’s become the world’s expert on addictive behavior, talking on the radio and writing a pithy little column for the local women’s paper. Margaret jokes that Paula can spot addiction indicators faster than most people can locate a taxi. It gets tiresome for her old friends, but most of us pretend to ignore it. Occasionally Margaret and I even talk about how tolerant we all seem to have become of each other. “It’s getting older,” Margaret thinks. I tell her that all that has happened is that we’ve worn each other down. It’s a conversation we have often, every time Paula or Jackie does something that gets us mad, and Margaret and I have a tacit agreement to head off arguments when we can. This time Margaret fails me.
“Paula’s right,” she says, pausing to lick salt off the rim of her glass. “You really ought to take a close look at yourself, girl.”
“Don’t want to get too introspective.” I pull smoke deep into my lungs and try to look amused rather than brooding.
Margaret’s eyebrows go up quizzically, and I know it’s time to get to the point of this little gathering.
“I thought we were here to talk about Jackie.” That sets Margaret to nodding.
“Oh Lord, don’t tell me.” Paula leans forward in her seat and grips her wineglass more tightly. “What’s she done now?”
“It’s the worst. You won’t believe it.” Margaret’s voice is a little loud and excited. Twin spots of flush pink appear high on her cheekbones. She signals the waiter for another margarita and puts her right hand on Paula’s free wrist. “She’s paying the whole bill for the arbitrator. She’s decided it’s her own fault after all.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous!”
It is that, I think, but I heard about this last night so I’m not as surprised as Paula. I let my eyes wander to the waiter’s trousers drawn tight across his ass. He looks like he’s put concentrated attention into that ass or else is what Bruce always calls “genetics’ gift to faggots.” Bruce was the first gay man I met who admitted to having grown up and come out in a poor family in a small southern town—the same little crossroads town where I was born. Once every few months we get together to share gossip from our mothers, and talk bitchy trash that makes us both feel cosmopolitan and witty. “No one else talks like you do, honey,” Bruce insists, but the truth is no one talks like either of us. Most of the other expatriate southerners we know pretend to membership in the petty aristocracy, a fact we both find very amusing. One would think southern gentry produced only queer offspring. Somehow the conversation always seems to turn to highly detailed descriptions of our favorite body parts. The only serious conflict Bruce and I have is our divergent fascinations. He’s consumed with lust for narrow ankles and beautiful feet, while I obsess over lush behinds.
“Taste,” Bruce calls it.
“Fetish,” I always tell him.
I don’t seem to care so much what the rest of the body is like. It’s those flexing, bouncing bottoms that always pull my own thigh muscles tight and make me feel slightly gushy all over. Paula tells me I am disgustingly predictable. “A product of modern advertising, that’s all you are.” She’s probably right. I used to be the only woman in the collective that subscribed to Playboy. I’d clip the pictures I liked and leave the rest of it in the trash, upsetting Paula and Jackie terribly. But I noticed that the magazine was never there when I checked back later, so one of them was probably taking it out—to verify just how sexist it was, no doubt.
“I’m not as predictable as you think,” I’ve always told Paula, noting that she dates only bodybuilders and competition jocks. I like jocks myself, but since my taste in behinds is significantly larger than the social standard, I