Everyone wants to be naked

Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Jun 12, 2004

My mother drops me off and I’m hanging out with this clique of aggressively bisexual college women who work at an orphanage. I’m of indeterminate gender, but I might be female.

We hear about a big fire at the orphanage in which a young girl perished. One of our own, a blonde girl, is the lead suspect. Enter a hardboiled detective who’s got big 70s hair and an outmoded tan jacket. Our detective is somehow romantically entangled with the suspect, and when we visit the “recent” crime scene (I say “recent” because there’s nothing left but a foundation, a few blackened boards, and a lush field of vibrant green grass that pokes up through the concrete) he sings her an aria proclaiming his undying love. Everyone seems to think she’s doomed.

The women decide to go shopping.

I’m male again and I’m walking up to this clothing store/nightclub at Broadway and Houston. I get in line outside because you have to show ID and pay 75 cents to get in. The people around me are all involved in various alternative relationships—I call them the alt-sexuals. An old lady interviews a young man who has two girlfriends in tow. “So, is she your girlfriend, young man?” “Well, she’s, uh, just a friend,” he sez. “Oh, like a friend… with benefits?” the old lady asks. And then they’re out of earshot. I chuckle to myself. I have to write about this.

While I’m in line I buy a loaf of bread from a deli counter conveniently situated next to the clothing store/nighclub. The cashier hands me a wad of hundred dollar bills as change. As I stand there, dumbfounded, thinking about whether I should say anything, I look up and notice a teevee hanging from some scaffolding, playing what appears to be a Soviet-era propaganda film with both animated and live-action elements. In the background a revolutionary sort of ditty drones on in a minor key, at once hopeful and elegiac.

There will be (there will be),
Tomorrow (tomorrow),

Our day of struggle has just begun.

There’s no need (there’s no need),
For sorrow (for sorrow),

Cause we’ve got the bastards on the run!

And it goes on, by now unintelligible.

At the door I hand over my ID and thumb through my wad of cash looking for a dollar bill that I can’t find. I’m afraid to flash the hundred dollar bills in public so I’m slowly tearing off a traveler’s cheque. People waiting behind me are starting to get agitated. My mother appears, waving at me from the back of a yellow cab. “Will the papers be safe?” she asks me in German. I tell her to get out of the fucking cab and stop worrying, but she’s still asking me about the papers.

“Wohin?” I hear myself ask.

And my mother’s just standing there, silent, staring at me in what I assume must be a state of utter confusion.

“Wohin?”

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