The Label Read “Eat Me”

The image of it is as vivid today as it had been on the day that I last wore it half a century ago. The result of a botched tie-dye job that ended up kind of a streaky, faded purple, a brief slip of a slip with a lacey border, originally from a thrift shop. Anyway who was going to see it?  Over that I wriggled through a skintight nylon jersey mini skirt sporting undulating black and white zebra stripes with its matching long sleeved top. Black panty hose turning grey as it pulled on, full of snags. Zebra pumps. Make-up. Black and white shell checkered dangling earrings from a Union Square vendor.

On my way out the apartment I passed by a little spice jar of white crystalline powder, complements of a dealer friend. The label read “Eat Me”.  I dipped, no more than the tip of the forefinger, less than quarter of an inch, into the beckoning acid.  Licking it off as I pulled the door behind me, I descended the three flights of stairs.

I lived in an attic apartment on top of an old beat up Victorian house on Golden Gate Ave half way between upscale Pacific Heights and the funky, black end of Divisadero Street where I had to go to catch the bus. It was an unusually warm summer evening in San Francisco. Divisadero Street was bopping.

In about two blocks I started to come on. It wasn’t what I’d planned; I should have been safely in my seat before getting a mild buzz and enjoying an enhanced evening of ballet. Instead here I was sashaying down Divisadero…

Oh well.  Neon signs flashed on and off in the dusk, store front glass with crayoned messages: magic, voodoo, crystals, incense, records, liquor stores, James Brown feelin’ good in a passing car, trucks, pedestrians, everybody and their cousins, the homeless in their regular niches, checks cashed, Dunkin’ Donuts, taped off where a man had been killed…

At first there was the faint scent of cheap perfume, growing stronger like a net cast high over me from behind. Footsteps gaining on me, dogged me, closer and closer, but still out of sight, feigning to pass on the right, then on the left.  I walked faster, straight ahead, wobbling on idiotic zebra pumps, only a block or so now from the bus stop, panic in my throat. He circled me. I kept my eyes down, seeing only slick green leather shoes under green pantlegs. I passed a doorway. A sudden shove. I was knocked into its dark interior. I stumbled toward some stairs and turning to face him, fell backwards onto the steps. He lunged toward me; I blacked out.

I came to on a narrow bed stark naked in the half dark. Voices drifted in from an adjoining room and from the same room, the smell of cooking. I was not scared. I was not anything. A geometric patch of pink light lit the wall intermittently. The window was partly open and the sounds of the street drifted in. A curtain was pushed aside and the silhouette of a man was framed in the lighted doorway. He came toward me, regarded me for a moment, then bent down, and pulled a sheet over me tucking it in around my shoulders.

“When are they gonna leave?” I asked him, surprised by the conspirational tone of my own voice.

He gave me a hard look. “Right now!” then he was gone back into the kitchen. I could hear a burst of laughter, followed by banter, negotiations.  His voice was joined by maybe two or more females’.  There was an exchange of money. Some bitching about the amount of the money. It seemed like a long time before they finally left, banging the door behind them. The click of the dead bolt. A silence.

The curtain parted. The sultan’s son, a dark skinned, lustrous prince of Araby came into the tent of the captive slave girl. What happened between them in that night of the zebra was more than words could describe. When they turned to face the sun, the moon, the stars, and the other, it was he who blinked.

“Who are you?” She didn’t answer; it was not certain that she knew.  “Who the hell are you, woman?” He examined her: the bracelet on her wrist, homemade shell beads, old metal gears shiny and worn, held in place with knotted weathered deerskin. He looked at the zebra skin shed on the floor. He examined the tattoo on her arm, an armband of enigmatic symbols. He held her wrist aloft and shook it for an answer. “You’re a fuckin’ hippie hooka!”

“And you’re a fuckin’ nigga pimp!” They cracked up, then dove back into each other.

He arose from her shaking his head. “I am fucked out, bitch.” He put on a faded old plaid bathrobe with a frayed cord edge, went to the record player in the corner and dropped the needle on an LP. Otis Redding’s aching voice filled the room. A change came over them.

She saw him, then, as that sad lonely lovely old black man sittin’ on the dock of the bay…

He rolled a joint and sat down next to her. “Shit, I ain’t never ever been fucked like I’ve been fucked by you, baby.”

“Me neither.”

Somewhat later he tried again to tell her what he had to tell her, “I love ya, woman. I wanna be with ya. Tomorrow I’m gonna go out and get a job. I mean it. Shit, bitch, me! Ya hear me, Mama? I’m gonna get me a job and work and take care of ya. I ain’t never said that to no bitch befo’.” This running around is killing me…

“Whadya gonna do?” she asked him. Tramp! Otis, you aint nothin’ but a tramp…you straight from the Georgia woods…

He inhaled and blew smoke and passed it to her. And she knew. She knew he couldn’t do nothin’—except fuck.

“I can drive,” he asserted. It’s the glory of love, the story of love….”Ya watch me, Mama. I’m settin’ the alarm, getting’ up early, an goin out to get a job.” When the whole world gets through with ya, we’ll have each other…

Then he did set his big old alarm clock and they slept. That is, he slept. He had found a place on her where he thought he could finally lay down his head. She held him in her arms and knew the fullness of holding him.  His breathing sank into a deep rhythm. Ever so gingerly she peeled her limbs from his, sliding skin upon skin, stopping whenever he stirred. It took forever to ease out of the narrow bed, She rose out of their union and experienced the cold solitary strangeness of her singular shape. She slithered back into her clothes and felt around the dark floor for her shoes, her purse. A shitload of guilt hit her.

She persisted. Zebra pumps in one hand, anguish in her throat, she tiptoed out to the kitchen where the light was still on. A large pot of greens simmered on the stove bubbling thickly with chunks of salt pork. Suddenly, she was starved. She helped herself to a big bowl. She’d never ever had anything before or after like those salty, porky, hot and greasy greens.

As the hard cold foggy air of the street slapped me in the face, I was shocked to find myself no more than a couple of blocks from my apartment where my teenage daughter was sleeping.  It was just barely beginning to get light. Divisadero was almost deserted. A garbage truck stopping and starting way up from the white top of the hill. Trash cans banging. I shuddered and fled home, looking again and again, behind me to see that I was not followed.

Having determined that Shima was safely asleep in her room. I hit the shower, and stayed there a long long time, hoping the warm water would cleanse me, would purge me until the water ran cold. I crawled into bed with Shima.

Later I called Douglas. He said, “What happened to you?”

“I got raped.” I told him the story.

“Why couldn’t it have happened to me? Nothing ever happens to me!”

“That’s not all: I left my slip behind.”

Somewhere in the neighborhood there was a man with my purple tie dyed slip, a man I would, most likely, not be able to recognize. For a week I could not bring myself to leave the apartment. For months I lived in dread of running into him. I imagined seeing a black man with a triangle of a blotchy purple fabric peeping out of his pocket maybe on the bus, maybe in the grocery store, on the street near Dunkin’ Donuts…But it never happened, not that I was aware of.