Baby Geisha Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  WET LOOK

  MILLENIUM CHILL

  PURA VIDA

  JACKPOT (I)

  WORD SALAD

  Chocolate Lily

  Murderine

  Opal

  Boot Stomper

  Shellevision

  Cruising: A Postcard Exchange

  The Phenomenology of Psychedelia

  Treehouses

  The Albuquerque Savers

  Puppy Text

  Jim’s Rasta Vibe

  HAIRPIN SCORPION

  THE PERVERTED HOBO

  BABY GEISHA

  ESCAPE MUSHROOM STYLE

  JACKPOT (II)

  WAR FOODS

  SHRUB OF EMOTION

  THE SAD DRAG MONOLOGUES

  SMALL TIME SPENDER

  ORANGE

  MY PANDA EYES, MY SUNRISE

  THE CELEBRITY BEEKEEPERS

  BRONX SQUIRRELS

  ESCALATOR INTO THE GANGES

  SCARLET GILIA

  Acknowledgments

  ABOUT THE COVER ART

  Copyright Page

  WET LOOK

  Iggy’s thirty-fifth year had been all about Being Here Now, thanks to the book he’d read profiling the counterculture man who turned from acidhead to yogi in a blink. He’d interpreted this to mean, at various points, Do what I want right here right now, if in a hedonistic, self-destructive mood; I miss you and I want you to be here now, if missing his ex; Feel my body now, during aroused moments, and, most true to the cause, Maybe I do have a god-source, where is it, I need it right now. He hadn’t received any spiritual clues yet and therefore planned a deluxe Be Here Now package for summer, beginning with regular detoxifying lemon-cayenne cleanses and a high-protein, low-carb steak and salad diet.

  While Iggy longed to take his health to the next level on a pilgrimage to India, all he could afford was a $3-a-night campsite in the Missouri Ozarks, where he’d heard of a dolomite canyon that hosted annual gospel choirs. He wanted to hear that country mountain singing, in case divine vibes might absolve him of the skepticism he’d been schlepping around like a suitcase with a broken zipper, dropping bits of his bitter aggregate, his heavy thoughts, everywhere he went. He buzzed his red hair and read a few more books on Buddhism to prep for the trip, aching to bury complaints about his life’s sequence of events in the Ozarks. The regional potential for Christianity didn’t bother him as much as it used to, since the Dalai Lama said that all religions aim towards goodliness. Meeting some Christians would be wise in comparison to assuming complete strangers were self-righteous and petty. It was small-minded of him to criticize Christians when he hardly knew any and certainly had never spent more than 24 hours in the Bible belt.

  After driving four days from California, across the Southwest and up through Oklahoma, Iggy selected a campsite on the banks of Missouri’s Meramec, a gentle river whose ochre, chert-lined shores are hard and sharp in parts and velvety-smooth elsewhere. The chert hunks reminded Iggy of humongous camel teeth: the gorge was a dynamic, tawny experience. Many of the sedimentary chips resembled arrowheads, lending his temporary meditative landscape a tribal feeling. He pitched his tent and frivolously ambled away his first two afternoons on his patch of beach, slamming river stones together like a caveman. Some of these chert flecks housed dainty geodes with sparkling quartz crystal veins. He tended his rockhound hands, palms bruised from crushing rocks, in the aqua medicinal water. Both evenings he lined his lair’s perimeter with mineral scores, ate simply—ramen and cans of beans—and did some zazen. Iggy had a week until the concert and planned to sit with his rock collection in the meantime.

  As usual, his monkish plans went awry when he tired of pinto beans and craved a can of beer. Late afternoon on the third day he drove to the nearest diner, bought some French fries to eat while skimming the local paper’s Crime Blotter, then stopped in the corner market for a beverage to make roughing it more palatable. Iggy was surprised to find that the convenience store had some apparently elaborate hook-up with Chinese importers, as he perused an immense collection of pyrotechnic supplies and fireworks. Way more variety in this remote store than in the Chinatowns on either coast. He selected some neon sparklers, smoke bombs that looked like mini-Navy submarines, and a Chinese lantern whistler and laid them on the counter.

  “Best selection I’ve ever seen,” Iggy said, exhilarated.

  “We like fireworks up here,” the clerk said. She looked to be about twenty, had a mullet jelled back with extremely stiff curling-iron bangs jutting forward, heavy green glitter eyeliner, and wore a sleeveless black t-shirt that said DON’T ASK ME. The muddy car out front must have been hers.

  “Any fireworks displays coming up?” Iggy asked, in opposition to the t-shirt’s imperative. “I’m camping on the river for the week, getting a little stir crazy.”

  “Not officially,” the merchant said, handing Iggy his change and goods. “But my brother is always practicing in our yard. He hopes to go pro.”

  “Is he practicing tonight?” Iggy asked. “I’d tag along, if I could. I’ll bring a couple sixers.”

  “Probably is,” she said. “I’ll mention to him your wanting to come.” The girl jotted an address down, described the dubious rural directions, and told Iggy to arrive just after dark. Iggy had a good feeling about the invitation.

  “Ig,” he said, extending his hand. “Short for Iggy. See you tonight.”

  “Jody,” the girl said, shaking back with an iron grip. “We’ll party.” Jody smirked, and Iggy interpreted it to mean that they were going to get tanked. This was great, a date with the locals. Iggy headed back out to his campsite to river-bathe and change into clean clothes with the remaining sunlight.

  As he put clean underwear on, he had no intention of showing them to Jody; it was more to boost his spirits and to enhance any impending camaraderie. His dad used to say that a person should always wear clean undergarments in case of a car accident. Otherwise, if ambulance technicians had to strip you, they might assume you’re a dirty bird. Iggy hated himself for bowing down to this kid mentality, for allowing his dad’s chiding voice into his head while preparing for a night out. But there he was after having scrubbed with castile soap, suds already downstream, self-consciously pulling crisp checkered boxers on inside his tent. Thanks dad, he thought, next pulling on his jeans, for making me into a self-conscious wimp. For a second, he even felt victimized by the whole of Western Society, after all, because it had dictated that father teach son to wear clean underwear at all costs. He was so middle class. The real issue, Iggy thought as he zipped his fly and combed his hair, is our ill society, the barriers we build between ourselves. Then, he remembered that he hated constantly doubting himself, his inner critic. Underwear has nothing to do with sociological barriers. Why couldn’t he just pull a damn pair of boxers on without feeling so conflicted?

  “This is exactly why I came out here,” he said to himself, inhaling the humid Ozark air, tying his bootlaces proudly, as if shooting off fireworks with strangers might cure his fears of being wrongly judged, and in turn, cure his own ineffable judgments. Judge not lest ye be judged. That was Christian, and it made lots of sense.

  Jody’s house was easy to find on County Road MM because it was dark, and he saw shimmering rainbows cascading up and down over the property. Nobody left porch lights on in these hills, and the moon, tonight a tiny, insignificant sliver, was waning towards the end of its cycle. Iggy followed the display and pulled up under a green and purple spark shower.

  “Howdy,” he said, for the first time in his life. He was toting a case of beer as proof of ready participation.

  Jody said hello then walked him over to her brother, who was lighting the fuse on a gargantuan tower cal
led The Big One. He lit it, then took a few quick steps back before acknowledging Iggy’s presence.

  “Hey,” he said, offering an even stronger grip than Jody’s had been. “I’m Kitty.” They all paused to listen to a tense bursting whistle followed by a silver explosion.

  Funny name, Iggy thought. Kitty’s buff, hairy arms were covered in modern primitive tattoos, and he too wore a sleeveless black tee, but it said, DON’T HATE ME BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL. The siblings must have purchased them in tandem. Iggy wanted to tell Kitty that he liked the shirt’s irony, but thought he’d better take it easy until he understood Kitty’s humor better. He handed the beers to Kitty, and Kitty nodded with approval. With this, the newly forged pal trio fired up a variety show while polishing off several cans of beer.

  Tastes and preferences guided Jody and Iggy’s first line of conversation while Kitty worked the display.

  “I noticed you went for the smallest fireworks earlier,” Jody said, initiating the chat.

  “They’re illegal in California,” Iggy said. “I thought I better keep it simple.”

  “California?” Jody asked. “I thought they went crazy there on Cinco de Mayo.”

  “Southern Cali is one giant fire hazard,” Iggy said. “And honestly, I enjoy small displays as much as the fancy ones.”

  Iggy realized this was an unpopular view, as he’d noticed that there were no sissy smoke bombs, worms, or sparklers on-hand in this household. Every firecracker in site was titanic, cylindrical, and erect; Iggy had entered a fervent penis world, much more macho than his own more tender universe. Dudes blow each other’s cocks up all night, he thought snidely, get wasted, then stumble in to say their prayers. He assumed that Kitty and Jody were Christians, due to region, but again, he caught himself making assumptions and aimed to halt this. Judging these firework displays, much less making immature, sweeping judgments against Christians who kindly invited him over, just minutes after arrival: geesh. He cursed himself and attempted to decontaminate his brain. Love thy neighbor, Buddha compassion, it’s all the same, he generalized, continuing to talk with Jody about California versus Missouri.

  Just then a snapping turtle ambled across the dirt driveway, through the obnoxious sirens of a Whistling Pete.

  “That turtle must be deaf,” Iggy shouted, putting his fingers in his ears.

  Once Kitty spotted it, it was doomed. “Kill it!” Kitty yelled, and the siblings brutally kicked the turtle back and forth like a football until its head and legs were hanging limply from its shell. Iggy almost barfed, but didn’t feel he could intervene mid-violence for fear of Kitty’s backlash.

  “Why’d you kill him?” Iggy asked sternly, post-mortem, as he and Jody stared down at the dead turtle illuminated by yet another firework Kitty had already walked a few paces away to blast.

  “You ever been bit by a snapping turtle?” Jody asked. Iggy had not.

  “He was just trying to walk over to that pond,” Iggy said, pointing to the side yard. “He was probably going to lie down by his wife.”

  “Turtles don’t have wives,” Jody said, kicking dirt over where streaks of turtle blood marked the ground. Kitty sauntered over from pyro headquarters a few feet away.

  “What’s all this shit about turtle marriage?” Kitty asked, and the siblings laughed.

  “Iggy claims that turtle had a wife,” Jody said to Kitty, elbowing him to ad lib from there.

  “That punk turtle probably had AIDS anyway,” Kitty said.

  Seriously? Iggy thought. He could have foreseen minor aggression, sure, or maybe some pinhead cousins emerging from the basement, but AIDS jokes? These people were morons. Iggy had lost several friends to AIDS, had gone to the community clinic to get tested himself more than once, and thought it was far from humorous.

  “You and your AIDS have a good night then,” Iggy said, stomping towards the car.

  “Aw, come on,” Jody said, following Iggy to his car door as he opened it and sat down in the driver’s seat. “Kitty was just joking.”

  “The problem with people like you,” Iggy said, “is that you live your hick lives and still manage to believe there’s a God up there who will forgive your idiocy.”

  “Why bring God into this?” Jody asked.

  “It looks, from my angle,” Iggy said, “like you have to be pretty fucking dumb to have faith, and that’s why I don’t have any.” Iggy reclined in his seat, rectified but dizzy from alcohol, thrust his key into the ignition, and started the engine. He didn’t care what he said at this point, or if he provoked a fight.

  “So, you’re too smart for God,” Jody said. “Too pompous to believe in him and above hanging out with the low-lifes who do.”

  Iggy had not put the car in reverse yet, because he was really drunk. Some part of him, too, was still remotely interested in how the fight would play out. The scenario in which he got his ass kicked as badly as the turtle’s had something heroic in it.

  “You’re too smart for your own good,” Jody said. “That’s the only tragedy here.” Iggy’s chest hurt, because he knew Jody was right. He tasted sour vomit in the back of his throat.

  “It was obnoxious to kill that turtle,” Iggy said, trying to parse out the original offense. “How can you reconcile God with cruelty like that?”

  “If you really want to know,” Jody said, “cut that motor. You’re too loaded to drive.” Kitty, in the meantime, had gone back to sorting what looked like the grand finale: ten fountains alternating with M-80s, to be lit in succession.

  Was that poor turtle’s death God in a hideous costume?

  Jody led Iggy into their kitchen, opened a drawer in a desk occupying the breakfast nook, and handed Iggy a photo of a mashed-up car. She turned a ceiling fan on and Iggy noticed under the light that she’d changed her eyeliner color from green to blue, and had obviously re-made her face for the evening. Jody lit up a cigarette and offered one to Iggy. He took it although he didn’t smoke.

  “’84 Mustang,” Jody said, bowing her head. “I wrapped it around a tree.”

  “I’m sorry,” Iggy said.

  “Barely survived,” Jody said, then proceeding to chronicle the details leading up to her gruesome crash, including everything from the suicidal thoughts that compelled her to build a 30-beer tall Wizard Staff as part of a drinking game by which you tape empties together into a staff before battling dragons, a.k.a. liquor shots, until the Wizard topples or triumphs—to remembering the tree slam and her face, bloody and upside down, in the rear-view.

  “Fourteen broken bones later,” Jody said, “I was in a body cast for two months.”

  Midway through the story, Iggy became suspicious: Jody had had a near-death experience when she found God. Oh no, Iggy thought. Next, she’ll bust out the Bible tract. But he listened, again cutting his judgment off at the pass to make way for remote sympathy. He wanted someone, by whatever means necessary, to crack open his hard shell. If he couldn’t empathize with this girl, Iggy was certainly not above her turtle-dropkicking routine.

  “I almost died a few times,” Iggy confessed, feeling out whether or not he should mention getting AIDS-tested for needle sharing back in the day. “Can’t say I was always happy to have survived.”

  “Why’d you really come out here?” Jody asked, sitting down on a barstool and lighting another smoke.

  “I’m going nomadic,” Iggy said.

  “What does that mean?” Jody asked.

  “If I’m in one place, I’m missing out somewhere else,” Iggy said.

  “What is it you think you’re missing out on?” Jody asked. She hadn’t yet pulled a tract out, and Iggy settled in. Maybe she didn’t have an agenda; maybe she wasn’t even Christian. He pulled up a barstool at the counter next to her. Her mullet was clean and fluffy, and her bangs had been de-plastered as if they’d been washed and brushed. She, too, was wearing a clean t-shirt and probably underwear.

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be missing it, would I?” Iggy asked rhetorically. He admired the stalwar
t way Jody held her cigarette, between her forefinger and thumb as if in some survivalist militia.

  “All I know is that once I got that body cast sliced off with the doc’s pizza cutter, I wanted to find a man to settle down and have a kid with. Life’s too short,” Jody said.

  “I hear that,” Iggy said. “The only way I can slow it down is to hijack myself to random places like this.”

  “This place is random!” Jody laughed. “I saw you, almost speeding off in your car, bored stiff. So, you managed to slow it down after all, good for you.”

  Another wave of despondence about the turtle, in the form of nausea, rushed Iggy. Maybe batting that creature back and forth had been Jody’s way of slowing a moment down. It had operated as a slow-motion nightmare. Iggy couldn’t help but mentally replay the event. He had burned through quite a few horror films in his time, and it crossed his mind that maybe that’s what he had liked about them—the way time suspended in nascent cataclysm followed by the predicted trauma. Hell, even his past drug use was likely tied to this.

  Kitty marched in to wash his charcoal-blackened fingers in the sink.

  “What are you two lovebirds up to?” Kitty asked. “You missed a fine finale. Five Black Diamonds in a row. I wore sunglasses.”

  “We traumatized Ig with our turtle rugby,” Jody said. “And I think we owe him an apology.”

  A sobering shock circulated through Iggy like hot coffee.

  “Sorry, Miss Sensitive,” Kitty said. “But you have us to thank for saving your big toe, which that turtle might have snapped clean off.”

  “Thanks, but I can care for my own toes,” Iggy said, looking down at them, snug in hiking boots. “I’d better head out.”