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‘My customers liked you,’ Gayl said. ‘They want to see more of you soon.’
‘Okay.’ Another session was what I wanted. A chance to work with her again, be with him.
Gayl pressed a piece of hash on the back of a spoon. Then she slipped the blackened knife out of the burner and smashed the two utensils together. She sucked in the thick smoke like she did it every day, staring at me the whole time.
‘I was taught not to lie, Myra,’ she said at the top of her breath. ‘I was taught by my mummy to tell the whole truth.’
I wasn’t lying. I had tried in my essay not to lie. I’d tried to write in language that did not suffer. It doesn’t matter, I wrote, if the slave is ashamed, or takes pleasure, or display themselves in pornography. It does not matter if their lack of freedom is traumatic or experiential. Because the self-conscious narrative of the slave, I concluded, is a liberation narrative.
Gayl was holding her breath, holding in the hash.
‘That stuff is really strong,’ I said.
Gayl coughed out her smoke and laughed in hoarse barks. ‘You’re getting used to our high-art bullshit already?’
‘Yeah, I am,’ I said. What’s the problem with that?
Gayl put the knife back into the coil for another hit. She set it up quick and sucked in a funnel of smoke.
I was basically committing myself to being in her films.
The slave revolt is a leap into the unknown, I wrote, into Bataillean non-knowledge, into direct, definitive confrontation with the power of the master that has defined the slave, defined the slave in her innocence. Because the slave also defines the master. The loop of the master and slave thus cannot be closed. It is open, repeating, electrically charged. This is the narrative structure of liberation: a possibility of non-identification with oneself – how one was born, how one wakes up – either master or slave. Because you can be fucked a thousand times and still be a virgin.
‘We’re only here for a little while longer,’ Gayl said at the top of her breath, holding out the smoking knife and spoon for me to take her remnants. I leaned over the table to take it in. ‘But you know that, Miss World Traveller, don’t you?’
I held in my smoke. No, I didn’t know that.
‘You’re an explorer who flaps her legs open like a book.’
Smoke exploded from Gayl’s nose. She was a dragon, red-eyed, dominant. I felt my mother-money in my pocket like a weapon.
I had emailed my essay to Ms. Bain and Mr. Rotowsky. I’d emailed Chris, Lee and Aaron a copy too. I’d even sent one to Jen and Charlene. Girls, I wrote, wrestle with this!
Gayl set up our last hit of hash. Her forehead protruded and shone like a dome. ‘Once you started, you just couldn’t stop, right? Once you started you got so open that you’d do anything.’
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s what happened to me.’
Gayl offered the last hit to me. ‘I hear him call you our little bourgie bitch,’ she said.
‘Fuck you,’ I said. I felt like Lee.
I half stood up to reach for Gayl’s arm over the table. Then I held her there and sucked. I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.
‘You aren’t so young, Myra, but sometimes you really seem young. Like, maybe twelve, not seventeen.’
Our faces were close. Gayl was scrambling or something, her eyes were glossy. When you’re eighteen you can do whatever you want, I wanted to say. My mother got married when she was nineteen. I felt my waist in the edge of the table. My mother gave me this shitload of cash. I was on the verge of showing my money to her. Sharing. Gayl’s mouth opened. Her swollen eyes closed.
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nbsp; Gayl had seen me and made me do things that I wanted. I breathed my smoke out into her mouth. Her lips opened wide and easy.
But Gayl extracted her wrist from my grip and went to lie down on the bed. The smock she was wearing rode up around her waist. Gayl had on see-through yellow underwear.
‘Camera,’ she said, pointing.
The burlap bag was by the wall. The room felt webbed up with smoke. The camera in the sack was heavy and plastic, all its cords twisted up.
‘It’s already charged,’ Gayl said quietly.
