Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 14

"He was a medicine man? Really?" Tina asked.

"Well, yes and no," Carmen said. "Not as an occupation. He worked in construction, in Cancun, when they were first building the hotels and turning it into a major resort, back in the 1970s. He was from a little village in the interior just on the outskirts of a town called Valladolid, and he was always interested in studying his Mayan culture and religion, and so on, and even took some classes at the university in Merida, my mother says. His parents were both very involved in it, as well, and his father was also a medicine man. But it's not like what you're probably thinking, like American Indian medicine men, holding powwows and stuff like that. A medicine man is more like a shaman. The Maya civilization had a very strong history of beliefs and practices in healing arts, especially using herbs and plants. They had this huge pharmacopeia that had something like 1,500 medicines in it. It was like a blend of science and religion both. They believed in 'balance,' too, like the Chinese yin and yang, and in trying to achieve a spiritual balance. There was a lot of psychology and spiritualism in it, as well, and that's what my father studied. My mother said he knew hundreds of plants, and could go out into the jungle and bring back things, and make up medicines that really worked. He would give them out to people in the village. When the big building boom started in Cancun, it was a godsend to everybody in the Yucatan, which was dirt-poor up until that time, really impoverished, and then all of a sudden these thousands and thousands of construction jobs opened up, and every able-bodied man and woman who could went to Cancun and they all began building what it is today. When they started in 1970, Isla Cancún was just a coconut plantation with only three caretaker residents, and there was a fishing village nearby called Puerto Juarez that had 117 people. So 120 people in 1970 were living were there are now in 2005 half a million people. They even know the exact date the boom started: January 23, 1970.

"At any rate, my father was one of those workers, and that's how he met my mother. She was from Veracruz, up the coast. She was from a middle-class family but like thousands of other girls, when all kinds of service jobs opened up in the hotels, she went to Cancun, too, and that's how she met my father. Next thing you know, she and my father got married and they're living in this tiny apartment outside Cancun City, and Patricia was born, and then Anna. My mother says I was conceived on Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women, right off the coast of Cancun, on a vacation weekend they took.

"So, my father drove to work on a motorcycle, because that was cheaper than a car, and one day coming home from work in a really bad rainstorm somebody hit him and he was killed when his bike went off the road into the jungle. They didn't even find him until two days later, my mother said. She was five months pregnant with me. Without a husband and his income she had to move back home to Veracruz, and pretty soon her entire family and a few other relatives like my abuela were able to emigrate legally to the Los Angeles area. So we lived in the barrio and I was actually born right here in LA. I'm a pure-bred California gal, through and through."

"How did you come to get the tattoo?" Alice asked. "There must have been something that precipitated it."

"There was," Carmen said, "but I guess like Shane I don't like to talk about it too much. But I'll give you a real short version of it. I was raised Catholic, of course, like you said. I mean, what else would a Mexican-American be, you know? And when I was 19 I had this steamy affair with...someone who was Catholic, and very devout. And ... well, we broke up and Catholicism had a lot to do with it, and I was really pissed at the Catholic Church in general, and so because I was really mad and upset I started really getting into studying the Maya religion and culture, sort of a whole big 'Fuck you!' to the Vatican and the bishops and all that. Plus I was already in favor of using birth control, and a woman's right to chose, and so on, so I was in a lot of ways a pretty bad Catholic anyhow from a political and theological point of view, and that's before you even consider my being a total lesbian. So, yeah, I guess it was partly an act of rebellion and defiance against the Catholic Church, and the rule about not having any graven images of other gods. So, yeah, the tattoo in part honors my father and the Mayan goddess of medicine and women, childbirth, and healing. Her name is Ixchel, and she's that Jaguar head I have just above my butt. My father had a tattoo of Ixchel just like it, so my mother says, so I thought I'd honor the family tradition and get a tat of Ixchel. Two of them, actually, because I wanted that symmetrical thing, representing the duality, the women and childbirth thing on the one hand, and the medicine and healing on the other. The two faces of Ixchel, and her twin roles within Mayan culture."

"Never mind the fucking jaguar," Alice said. "Tell us about the steamy affair! What happened to the other girl, did she run off and join a convent?"

Carmen blushed. "No, not exactly. She was already a nun," she whispered.

"What! No way! Get out of town!" There were gasps all around the table. Kit covered her mouth in shock, and Bette shook her head, smiling.

"Shut! Up! You bagged A NUN?" Alice blurted out so loudly that around The Planet half a dozen heads turned to stare at the group. "How cool is THAT? Now I really AM jealous! Being Polish I was raised Catholic, too," she said, "and I always wanted to fuck a nun. I think it's the only kind of woman I've never fucked. I've sooo got to try it some—OW!" This last cry came as Dana whacked Alice hard on the arm.

"Baby!" Alice apologized, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that." But it was way too late, and Alice knew she had to just stop digging herself into a hole.

Carmen was grateful, because it took the attention away from her and her story line, as the Friends swung into a hearty discussion of all the Dream Fucks in their lives, imaginations or hopes. The list was impressive: Princess Di, Jackie Kennedy, Joan of Arc, Martha Washington. Bette wanted to do Frida Kahlo, no surprise there, and Tina wanted Greta Garbo, which immediately caused Alice to repeat the story, possibly apocryphal, about Garbo being introduced to lesbianism by Marlene Dietrich. Alice said Garbo was so shy and withdrawn because her genitalia were abnormally large, and that Dietrich had humiliated her over this fact. Carmen wanted to go down on either Emily Dickinson or Shakira, and Kit, who was still ostensibly straight, nevertheless said that if she was going to do a fantasy woman, then she wanted to fuck Josephine Baker, who had always been one of her idols. Dana wanted to do Anna Kournikova, whom she actually knew and had been beaten by, which made Alice jealous and gave Dana revenge over Alice saying she wanted to fuck a nun. Finally it was Helena's turn. She thought it over carefully and said she still hadn't decided, but it was between Helen Mirren, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Julie Christie and Fanny Hill. Oh, and Keira Knightley.

***

On the way out, Carmen and Bette happened to be the last two at the cash register paying their tabs.

"I'm sorry that Alice made such a fuss about you and the nun," Bette said. "I could tell from your face that relationship meant a lot to you."

Carmen smiled and shrugged, and finally nodded. "Yes, it did."

"Were you in love with her?"

Carmen shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. I never quite figured that out."

"First time?"

"Not first sexual relationship, no. But first time really being ... infatuated, or whatever I was, I guess. If it wasn't love it was something pretty close," Carmen said. "It was never, ever going to work out, but of course there was no way I could see that, even though it should have been obvious."

"Yeah, those can be really tough, those first ones," Bette said. "But I really meant what I said. I'm glad you and Shane are together. I guess you know this by now, but in a lot of important ways you're her first, and she's got so much to learn. She's been sexually active for ten or fifteen years, and she probably knows everything in the world there is to know about fucking, but she doesn't know the first thing about loving somebody. I don't think she's ever been in love before, not since I've known her, and I know for sure she's never had a true relationship with anyone. She's got a lot to learn and it's going to be tough. She's the queen of one-night stands, but she knows as much about real, adult love as a twelve-year-old. You're going to have to be the one to teach her. Her other paradox is that although she's tough as nails emotionally, in many ways she's also probably the most fragile, vulnerable person I've ever known. She's got a hard shell and she's all mush inside. Strange, huh? She's a bundle of contradictions. But I just hope you to stick in there with her. I think you'll be very good for her, and I hope she'll be good for you."

"Well, thank you, Bette. I don't know quite what to say."

"You don't have to say anything," Bette said, "but if you ever feel like talking, or you need a sounding board, or somebody to vent to, I'm only right next door."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Carmen said.

"Here's your change, Miss Porter," the cashier said, as Bette turned away to put her money in her purse.

***

The toughest part of the move wasn't Carmen's room, whether the old one or the new, but the studio in back of Shane's house. Mark had moved out, and before he left Carmen made him turn over every single tape he ever made while he lived there. In front of him and Shane, she put all the tapes into a 55-gallon trash can in the back yard and set them on fire, in violation of every open-burning ordinance on the city's books. The plastic was smokey as it melted and burned, but as far as Carmen was concerned it was worth doing, even when they heard fire engine sirens heading their way and they quickly doused the fire with a fire extinguisher they kept on the back deck next to the barbecue grill. When a fire truck arrived on the scene, Mark was sitting in a chair on Shane's back porch reading a book, Carmen was on her knees gardening along the back walk, and Shane was in the driveway lifting weights. All three agreed that they, too, had smelled something burning, but said they didn't know where it had been coming from. The firemen walked around the neighborhood, then left.

With Mark gone Carmen decided the inside of the studio could use repainting as well. She had agreed to pay a disproportionate share of the rent because she wanted the extra space to store all her music and DJ equipment as well as a place to work, and Carmen was making good money and could afford it. Shane was also getting paid better than she ever had in her life, so she increased her own share of the rent slightly to take a little burden from Carmen; it was the price she was willing to pay for not having a third roommate. Anyway neither Carmen nor Shane wanted a third roommate, especially one who might come into the house to use the kitchen, living room or bathroom while Shane and Carmen were loudly and joyously making love pretty much all over the place at all hours of the day or night, whenever they were both home. Like newlyweds, they couldn't keep their hands off each other, and their frequency of sex reached supernatural levels almost unheard of in either the heterosexual or homosexual communities. They went through Chapstick like locusts.

Shane helped Carmen paint the studio, although this time Carmen took the trouble to tape newspaper over the windows because Tina and Bette weren't the only people in the neighborhood who might be able to look in. Even an inept and ancient handyman could have painted the studio in a day, but it took Shane and Carmen together more than two days to get the job done, due to various work stoppages for cunnilingus, tribadic yoga (a new form they invented, and which replaced chants of "Ommmm" with "Cummmmmm"), paint fights (Carmen had brought home from a movie studio prop room two working paint ball guns, and they acted out liberally re-interpreted scenes from the movie TThe Naked Gun in ways Hollywood never intended). They took naps, and painted body art on each other. Carmen made Shane turn and face away while she dipped her finger in the Sherman-Williams and painted the words "Tradesman's Entrance" on Shane's lower back, with an arrow pointing downward to her ass slice. Shane thought it might be interesting to see what Carmen's flower boxes would look like if she very carefully painted the flowers white. She also painted a single narrow band down Carmen's clitoral hood. And indeed the effect was quite interesting, though she later found out that licking dried latex paint was not pleasant. "Worst idea I ever had," Shane confessed, laughing, as Carmen tried to scrub it off without climaxing.

***

Shane had said she didn't like sleepovers, and that was true at the time she said it. She didn't especially enjoy waking up in somebody else's house or apartment, on used sheets with a wet spot, in a darkened bedroom she didn't know her way around, next to a woman whose last name she may or may not have known (and on at least four occasions, the first name, either). It was better to wake up in her own bed in her own room, but there was still the issue of the person beside her, figuring out how to deal with her, and wanting her to leave as soon as possible. Shane was not a morning person, and the thought of being civil to a naked stranger was more than she could handle.

But she discovered that a sleepover with Carmen was different. It was different slipping between nice, clean, fresh, sweet-smelling sheets in Carmen's clean, neat, fragrant and often candle-lit bedroom. It was different embracing a woman fresh out of the shower, her body clean and smelling of a citrus body wash, her hair smelling wonderfully of scents far different from cigarette smoke and Jagermeister. It was nice kissing someone who had just brushed her teeth and who tasted of Pepsodent. It was nice knowing she could wake up in the middle of the night and walk down the hall to go to the bathroom, and return to bed without running into a stranger, even a stranger she had fucked a few hours ago. She learned how pleasant it was to crawl back between the sheets and spoon herself against Carmen's bottom, wrap her arm about Carmen's waist, kiss her shoulder blade, and go back to sleep. Because it was damned nice sleeping in the same bed with this woman, contrary to nearly every other sexual or romantic experience she'd ever had in her life.

Of sexual experiences in Shane's life there had been many (Carmen was No. 963 according to the count on Alice's chart); of romantic experiences there had been none. For the first time in her twenty-nine years, Shane had said the L-word to a woman. "I love you." The words had slipped out of her mouth, almost as if by accident, and it was true she had said it at the conclusion of a wonderful session of love-making, when her defenses were down and her brain still loaded with endorphins. For more than a decade she had had a thousand orgasms without having those magic words slip off her tongue. It was unpremeditated, spontaneous, unplanned ... but that was the point. It was almost as if Shane herself had been unaware of her feelings, and that during the sex she had let her own guard down so much that for once the bare naked truth had managed to slip out of her mouth. "I love you."

For a moment she herself could hardly believe she had said it ... and yet she did. It scared the shit out of her ... but it felt good, too. It was a moment laced with contradiction. It represented everything Shane was opposed to, on principle, on an intellectual level. And yet it also represented everything she had been feeling about Carmen, quite literally from the very first moment she'd set eyes on her. It was impossible to reconcile how a woman who didn't believe in love had discovered love-at-first-sight. It was what had tormented her all those months when she'd pushed Carmen into Jenny's arms, and then had to stand by and watch the woman she felt such strong feelings for having fun -- and having sex -- with her best friend and housemate.

The worst part of it had been trying to figure out what all those feelings were. Shane was in her own way almost as unfamiliar with love and its symptoms and manifestations as your average 13-year-old. She'd had feelings she didn't know what do with, feelings she didn't know how to process, feelings that had no names and no synonyms. A person as inarticulate as Shane ought to be used to feeling speechless. But she wasn't. Even a 13-year-old knew what a "crush" felt like. All she had known was that every time she looked at Carmen, or thought about her, or listened to someone say Carmen's name, her chest ached and her spirit soared, then crashed. She came to realize that she had loved Carmen from the beginning, but simply didn't know what love was, didn't recognize it, and had never had to deal with it before. It was an obscure disease she'd never heard of from some outlying third-world country she'd never been to, and now it had infected her, and there was no vaccine, no cure. She prayed it didn't kill her, because that was what love virus usually did.

***

On the third night after Carmen had permanently moved in they had gotten frisky immediately after dinner, and had made love on the kitchen floor in the middle of washing the dishes. Like newlyweds, they fucked around the clock, in every room in the house, until they had nearly exhausted themselves. After they'd made love they showered together, and were uncharacteristically ready for bed before 10:30. And the nice thing about making love on the kitchen floor was that the bed sheets were fresh and clean, not soaked with Carmen's love juices. Carmen was already in bed, feeling sleepy and lazy and good, and was waiting for Shane to finish brushing her teeth. Shane came into the bedroom wearing only a long but sleeveless T-shirt and her tighty-whities, which she dropped. She turned off the light but left the candles burning, and climbed into bed next to Carmen. She rolled onto her side facing her, her head propped up on her elbow. Carmen rolled toward her and lay on her side, too, looking at Shane. In the candlelight her eyes glistened, and she raised her hand softly to Shane's cheek.

Shane took Carmen's hand and brought it to her mouth and kissed her palm, then her fingertips, then placed it back on her cheek. The candlelight put Shane's face in shadow, but Carmen could see Shane was thinking about something. As was often the case, no words came out. Sometimes a little bump helped, if it was gentle.

"I wish I could read your mind," she whispered. "I wish I knew what you were thinking."

Shane sighed. "I was thinking ... how happy I am. How lucky. How ... I never imagined this could happen to me. That I'd fall in love. I know ... I don't talk much, I don't say things. Say things like other people do, like how they say, 'I love you' all the time." She brought Carmen's palm to her lips and kissed it again. "I know I don't say it, but ... I do love you. I'm just sorry I'm not, you know, I don't know how ... ."

"Shhhhh," Carmen hushed her. "I know it's difficult for you. I don't mind. I know that you do love me, because I can see it in your face, in your eyes. So I can wait for the words, however long it takes. I'm not in any hurry."

"You asked what I was thinking. I was remembering that time before we went on Dana's cruise, when we were in the kitchen, and you put your hand over my heart, and my hand over your heart. And you said this thing we had, you said how we had it from the first moment we ever saw each other. And I was thinking it was true, and you were right. And that I fell in love with you that day, but ... I didn't know what to do with it. It scared me. And then ... I fucked it up. All those months when I pushed you away because I was scared ... I hurt you, and I made you unhappy ... and I made myself miserable, too. And then ... and then I think if I hadn't been so stupid and so fucked up, we could have been together, you and me, months ago."