learning experience? Hello California.
“Whoa, no problem. Have a nice life!” The cool Inspector launched a perfect jump shot. Old Baggie of trash and guilt disappeared into the Dumpster.
“Yo,” I shouted back, “you too.”
Reborn, admitted, launched into clean, conquerable gravity-free space. Even the air felt young, innocent, healthy. A few fat midsummer snowflakes danced like spit on a griddle off my Corolla’s sizzling hood. Was it a cold day with warm sun, a New York April sort of day? Or upstate October, a warm day with icy winds?
Devi arm-wrestled Debby. I was quicker, stronger as Devi; my intuitions were sharper, my impulsiveness rowdier. As Devi, I came into possession of my mystery genes. Thank you, Clear Water. And you, too, thank you, “Asian National.”
And thank you, Baby Fong, and what the heck, Frankie, too, for forcing me to deal with my not being a real DiMartino. Like Angie, or like cousin Nicole. Nicole graduated from Hudson Valley Community, and she’s now assistant-producing for some crack-of-dawn cable channel and living with a painter in an illegally converted loft in West Chelsea. Nicole’s a true DiMartino. She can afford to be hooked on Danielle Steele and fairy tales, because she has a family, because she has a family history that’s corroborated by uncles, aunts, grandparents and cousins like Angie. She thinks of Cousin Gino, the only DiMartino who’s done time in a state penitentiary, as Jesse James with a Sicilian twist. That’s why I wouldn’t share my stupid, sordid past as Faustine with someone whose only ambition was to move up to associate producer so she could get a taxi budget.
In my family, ambitious women my age went down to Manhattan to get a life. They always had, always would. Before August, before Frankie, I’d expected to head south, too, stake out sleeping-bag space on Angie’s floor, be a dog walker for neighborhood gays, make contacts and get a break, find a job in something self-expressive like fashion or decor, where my height and voice would take me to the head of the line, scout an apartment-share I could afford and keep my eyes open for the Fabio of my daydreams. I’dexpected to do all this out of desperation. Because I’d known that I didn’t fit into Hudson Valley any more comfortably than I did into the Asia of hippie mothers and Catholic missionaries.
Blonde like the Spider Veloce blonde was doable, but not my style. I put my money on Wyatt’s wish that someday soon I’d be rich and powerful as well as tall, pretty, free. The Golden State offered freaky-costumed freedom, and more; it offered immunity from past and future sins. Goodbye, Debby DiMartino. Long live Devi Dee.
So while I glide down I-80 from the thawing mountains past baking Sacramento to the perpetual spring of the Bay Area, while I negotiate the traffic surge of Berkeley and the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, while I count out traveler’s checks from my emaciated hoard to pay for a cheap room in a Tenderloin hotel, let me tell you how I got over Frankie. In California, many men saw in me the telltale hint of Burmese schlepping water jugs on their heads.
Some days in Chinatown, strangers claimed me as a fellow-lost. In a Chinese restaurant while I was stoking up on the all-you-can-eat, a waiter mumbled something in a soft, gloomy voice, then hovered for an answer I couldn’t give. In a McDonald’s, an Indian man who looked like a student blurted to me, “Wanna catch a new Amitav?”
Deep down I envied the Chinese waiter and the Indian student. The guys were geeks, but they knew who they were. They knew what they’d inherited. They couldn’t pass themselves off as anything else. No evasions, no speculations, no let’s-pretends. They didn’t see themselves as special or freakish.
The trouble was, I wasn’t a geek, a freak, a weirdo. I’d had a life and the chance at a Big Life, and lost it, temporarily. I told myself, For now why not be Devi the Tenderloin prowler,
“Whoa, no problem. Have a nice life!” The cool Inspector launched a perfect jump shot. Old Baggie of trash and guilt disappeared into the Dumpster.
“Yo,” I shouted back, “you too.”
Reborn, admitted, launched into clean, conquerable gravity-free space. Even the air felt young, innocent, healthy. A few fat midsummer snowflakes danced like spit on a griddle off my Corolla’s sizzling hood. Was it a cold day with warm sun, a New York April sort of day? Or upstate October, a warm day with icy winds?
Devi arm-wrestled Debby. I was quicker, stronger as Devi; my intuitions were sharper, my impulsiveness rowdier. As Devi, I came into possession of my mystery genes. Thank you, Clear Water. And you, too, thank you, “Asian National.”
And thank you, Baby Fong, and what the heck, Frankie, too, for forcing me to deal with my not being a real DiMartino. Like Angie, or like cousin Nicole. Nicole graduated from Hudson Valley Community, and she’s now assistant-producing for some crack-of-dawn cable channel and living with a painter in an illegally converted loft in West Chelsea. Nicole’s a true DiMartino. She can afford to be hooked on Danielle Steele and fairy tales, because she has a family, because she has a family history that’s corroborated by uncles, aunts, grandparents and cousins like Angie. She thinks of Cousin Gino, the only DiMartino who’s done time in a state penitentiary, as Jesse James with a Sicilian twist. That’s why I wouldn’t share my stupid, sordid past as Faustine with someone whose only ambition was to move up to associate producer so she could get a taxi budget.
In my family, ambitious women my age went down to Manhattan to get a life. They always had, always would. Before August, before Frankie, I’d expected to head south, too, stake out sleeping-bag space on Angie’s floor, be a dog walker for neighborhood gays, make contacts and get a break, find a job in something self-expressive like fashion or decor, where my height and voice would take me to the head of the line, scout an apartment-share I could afford and keep my eyes open for the Fabio of my daydreams. I’dexpected to do all this out of desperation. Because I’d known that I didn’t fit into Hudson Valley any more comfortably than I did into the Asia of hippie mothers and Catholic missionaries.
Blonde like the Spider Veloce blonde was doable, but not my style. I put my money on Wyatt’s wish that someday soon I’d be rich and powerful as well as tall, pretty, free. The Golden State offered freaky-costumed freedom, and more; it offered immunity from past and future sins. Goodbye, Debby DiMartino. Long live Devi Dee.
So while I glide down I-80 from the thawing mountains past baking Sacramento to the perpetual spring of the Bay Area, while I negotiate the traffic surge of Berkeley and the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, while I count out traveler’s checks from my emaciated hoard to pay for a cheap room in a Tenderloin hotel, let me tell you how I got over Frankie. In California, many men saw in me the telltale hint of Burmese schlepping water jugs on their heads.
Some days in Chinatown, strangers claimed me as a fellow-lost. In a Chinese restaurant while I was stoking up on the all-you-can-eat, a waiter mumbled something in a soft, gloomy voice, then hovered for an answer I couldn’t give. In a McDonald’s, an Indian man who looked like a student blurted to me, “Wanna catch a new Amitav?”
Deep down I envied the Chinese waiter and the Indian student. The guys were geeks, but they knew who they were. They knew what they’d inherited. They couldn’t pass themselves off as anything else. No evasions, no speculations, no let’s-pretends. They didn’t see themselves as special or freakish.
The trouble was, I wasn’t a geek, a freak, a weirdo. I’d had a life and the chance at a Big Life, and lost it, temporarily. I told myself, For now why not be Devi the Tenderloin prowler,
Similar Books
