had migrated to Illinois from California, the daughter of Okies who had fled the Dust Bowl during the Depression, failed to get a toehold in California’s Central Valley, and wound up working in the Chicago stockyards, living on the South Side with the newly arrived Southern blacks. Our mother was malleable, independent, reckless, vain, and a looker. She had no intention of remaining on the South Side. She was seven months pregnant with Steven when she witnessed her husband’s first ascent into full-blown mania. It began with his defying the obstetrician’s caution about late-term intercourse. When she refused him, he slept with my mother’s sixteen-year-old niece. Women have retaliated against their husbands for less. Why didn’t our mother step over the line?
I was a middling high school student dreaming about becoming an artist, an actress, a poet, in the tradition of clueless youth, without giving any consideration to whether I had talent. I took a Greyhound to New York City shortly after I graduated and arrived at Port Authority at 2:00 a.m. on a rainy summer night.
I had planned to stay at the YWCA, but I met a girl on the bus who had already done what I was planning to do. She had been visiting her mother in Cleveland and was going back to Brooklyn, where she’d been living for six months. She was waiting tables until she could get modeling work and invited me to crash at her place. She lived in a first-floor studio looking out onto the Navy Yard. The kitchen was makeshift—just a hot plate and minifridge. The walls were bare and the institutional sea-green paint was scuffed. I slept on an air mattress, while she took the sofa bed.
Around six the next morning, I heard a key in the lock. A man let himself into her apartment. I called out to my friend, Candice, and she said sleepily, “It’s just my boyfriend, Doug.”
Doug said, “Hey,” to me, and then to Candice, “Hey, babe.” He sat on the edge of the sofa bed and took off his Frye boots. He wasn’t wearing socks. And for some reason, that alarmed me further.
I started to get off the already deflated air mattress. “I can head out now. Thanks for letting me stay over.”
“No need to go,” he said, taking off his shirt. “I’ve got to be at work in a couple of hours.”
My duffel bag was on the other side of the room and I would have had to pass near him to get it. I’d chosen to sleep in just a T-shirt and bikini underwear.
He took off his jeans. Without taking my eyes off my duffel bag, I could see in my peripheral vision that he had also forgone underwear. He climbed onto the sofa bed beside Candice and I told myself to calm down, I was in New York and I was lucky for the place to sleep.
The air mattress was a mere six feet from the sofa bed, so of course I could hear Candice tell her boyfriend to quit it, but she wasn’t angry when she said it. I hadn’t yet gone all the way, but I’d been on enough double dates to know what was going on. Those were the actual words that came to mind—going all the way. I was already constructing the story for my friends back at New Trier in Winnetka, the high school famous for talented and precocious students such as Ann-Margret and Rock Hudson, though my friends were the late bloomers.
I closed my eyes, placed my pillow over my head, and pretended that this kind of thing happened to me all the time. At some point their activity died down and I fell back asleep.
I woke up coughing, and the pillow seemed to be the reason. It was still covering my face, but pressure was behind it. I couldn’t get enough air, and when I tried to remove it, I felt the arms that were holding it in place.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you dick, leave her alone,” I heard Candice say. But the hands didn’t let go. I began thrashing and kicking.
“Let her breathe at least,” Candice said.
One hand let go of the pillow and I gulped in air before the free hand pinned my arms.
“Get her feet,” Doug called to
I was a middling high school student dreaming about becoming an artist, an actress, a poet, in the tradition of clueless youth, without giving any consideration to whether I had talent. I took a Greyhound to New York City shortly after I graduated and arrived at Port Authority at 2:00 a.m. on a rainy summer night.
I had planned to stay at the YWCA, but I met a girl on the bus who had already done what I was planning to do. She had been visiting her mother in Cleveland and was going back to Brooklyn, where she’d been living for six months. She was waiting tables until she could get modeling work and invited me to crash at her place. She lived in a first-floor studio looking out onto the Navy Yard. The kitchen was makeshift—just a hot plate and minifridge. The walls were bare and the institutional sea-green paint was scuffed. I slept on an air mattress, while she took the sofa bed.
Around six the next morning, I heard a key in the lock. A man let himself into her apartment. I called out to my friend, Candice, and she said sleepily, “It’s just my boyfriend, Doug.”
Doug said, “Hey,” to me, and then to Candice, “Hey, babe.” He sat on the edge of the sofa bed and took off his Frye boots. He wasn’t wearing socks. And for some reason, that alarmed me further.
I started to get off the already deflated air mattress. “I can head out now. Thanks for letting me stay over.”
“No need to go,” he said, taking off his shirt. “I’ve got to be at work in a couple of hours.”
My duffel bag was on the other side of the room and I would have had to pass near him to get it. I’d chosen to sleep in just a T-shirt and bikini underwear.
He took off his jeans. Without taking my eyes off my duffel bag, I could see in my peripheral vision that he had also forgone underwear. He climbed onto the sofa bed beside Candice and I told myself to calm down, I was in New York and I was lucky for the place to sleep.
The air mattress was a mere six feet from the sofa bed, so of course I could hear Candice tell her boyfriend to quit it, but she wasn’t angry when she said it. I hadn’t yet gone all the way, but I’d been on enough double dates to know what was going on. Those were the actual words that came to mind—going all the way. I was already constructing the story for my friends back at New Trier in Winnetka, the high school famous for talented and precocious students such as Ann-Margret and Rock Hudson, though my friends were the late bloomers.
I closed my eyes, placed my pillow over my head, and pretended that this kind of thing happened to me all the time. At some point their activity died down and I fell back asleep.
I woke up coughing, and the pillow seemed to be the reason. It was still covering my face, but pressure was behind it. I couldn’t get enough air, and when I tried to remove it, I felt the arms that were holding it in place.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you dick, leave her alone,” I heard Candice say. But the hands didn’t let go. I began thrashing and kicking.
“Let her breathe at least,” Candice said.
One hand let go of the pillow and I gulped in air before the free hand pinned my arms.
“Get her feet,” Doug called to
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