Chris
Lombardi's fiction has been published in minnesota
review, Anything That Moves, Lurch, The Pearl, Living Room, and assorted anthologies,
including Hey!
Paesan: Lesbians and Gays of Italian Descent.
Her journalism has been published by The Nation, Ms. Magazine, Poets & Writers, Women's
Enews, ABA Journal, American Book Review and Inside MS.
Lombardi's
novel The Suicide Project was one of 12 finalists
for Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize. In the fall
of 2002, she appeared at the New York James Joyce Society
to present excerpts of her novel blue:season.
Lombardi
teaches writing at the City University of New York and
Gotham Writers' Workshop. In addition to occupying herself
with an insane number of writing projects, she natters
on a blog called Book
of Days.
San Francisco in the 1990s
Chris Lombardi
I spent the early '90s shopping for tattoos and letting
strangers finger me in public parks. Not complete strangers: I'd met
them at a dance club, or a cafe, or my job telemarketing. San Francisco
was in recession then and the rents were cheap, the weather too warm
and the sound of steel drums filled the parks. It was the year my divorce
was final. I cried every day.
Patrick was a juggler and gymnast, who turned me upside
down when we danced and propositioned me on a highway doing 70. Joel
didn't dance, but cooked mochi for breakfast. His tattoo peeked shyly
from under long hair.
Alex didn't wear a shirt when he danced. He let the
white-blond hairs advertise his surfer-chest; his perfect teeth made
his smile a little scary and new. I didn't fall for Alex, he had no
tattoos or mystery, but Fort Mason was quiet at night and the Bay Bridge
glittered over his shoulder as he leaned into me. "You have fabulous
legs." My newly-skinny divorced body a clumsy new weapon. A shock,
how little it took for men to want to take me for a ride.
I swooned early in those days, and San Francisco with
me: Mission District streets sweaty with fog, skins blazing tattooed.
I'd get mine done above my left breast, I said. "The place where
it hurts the most," Carl teased. "Impossible." His body
shaped like a guitar, thick honey-colored hair and tattoos on each ankle:
I dove for both. We smoked pot in his crappy loft until his roommate
threw us out, and ran before my legs dried to my basement apartment
in Noe Valley. Carl raped me one lazy Sunday morning, as I shut myself
down rather than wake the landlady's kids. He turned out to have some
other name entirely, which I only learned after I'd made a key for him.
Jerzy, who had broken up with me the week before because he felt too
bipolar, showed up with power tools and changed the lock so Carl couldn't
get in. We went dancing after, Jerzy's skeletal body and pale eyes flashing.
Dance with me. Help me forget you don't love me and never will.
I was a terrible slut, as in, not good at it. I lost
my heart every seven minutes, and was a pretty bad fuck. Jerzy's tattoo
was a slender bracelet that danced when he did. When he danced with
Sky the tattoo changed shape with their sweat. Sky's tongue in my mouth
mixed tamago and cigarettes, sweet and nasty. He and Jerzy sighed and
cried around me. All three times we did it everyone cried, muted by
layers of plastic at each point of contact. We danced with Sky's virus.
Later Sky took us to a wedding in three matching tuxedos, his tattoo
deep ochre against chocolate skin. He offered to take me to the parlor
to do mine.
The needle hurt too much. I never got a tattoo. When
Jerzy faded away again Sky held me while I cried. A limousine crashed
into Patrick's car at 5 a.m. on the way back from a dance club. When
I came home from the hospital he went back to his girlfriend. I stopped
going home with people and got a full-time job. Alex moved back to Marin.
Jerzy moved to Vancouver and walked into traffic. Sky moved to Texas
and married a banker. San Francisco stopped sweating and swooned for
cash.
© Chris Lombardi
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