CLARISS

Robert Plutchik

CLARISS

Buy me a drink? Thanks. I like you. You've got a nice
dimple in your chin. Do you know what that means? It means
you're sexy. I wouldn't kid you. There's plenty of men I
wouldn't say that to. Do you see this glass I'm holding? Well,
it isn't Coca Cola. The bartender knows me. He knows that I get
happy when he puts real whiskey in the glass. And he knows that
the customers come back after they've been with me, because I
give them a good time. Light me up, won't you? You wondering
what I'm doing here? You think I'm too nice for this place?
What's a girl like me. . . . Buy me another drink won't you? Do
you think I'm pretty? Some men tell me they like my brown eyes
and my lips - there's a lot I can do with my lips. But don't
look when I smile. I know my teeth aren't very nice. When I was
a kid they called me Bugs Bunny. That was when I lived in a
little town outside Johannesburg in South Africa. You may not
believe this but my father was very rich when I was young. His
family had been in South Africa for a long time and they had
made it rich. My grandfather owned about half the property in
town. It was almost like

his private estate. I remember him very clearly - his white hair
and white beard. I loved him more than anyone. He used to gather
all the family kids around him on the broad stone steps of the
hotel he owned and he would begin to recite Shakespeare for us,
"To be or not to be, that is the question. . ." I knew the words
of this speech before I could say mother. You don't have a
cigarette do you? Thanks. Would you call the bartender over, I
could use another drink? Funny, when I was a kid, it wasn't so
great just because we were rich. Some of the Afrikaner kids
would chase me down the street and they would yell at me and
pull my hair. Do you know my cousin and I once set fire to one
of the buildings in the town? It burned to the ground and no one
ever found out who did it. Thanks, Charlie, for the drink. Where
was I? Oh yeah. My mother was different. She came of a fancy
Spanish family who had settled in England and who arranged the
marriage with my father. She was bitterly unhappy in South
Africa far from her own family. She never forgave my father for
bringing her 10,000 miles from her home and she resented giving
him three children. But she got even. One of my brothers went
into the police force where he beats up all the niggers he has
to deal with. My other brother had a nervous breakdown and goes
in and out of the hospital. And here I am drinking gin and
getting laid by any man smart enough to have 50 bucks. Can I
have another drink? You are nice, and I do like your smile.
Makes me want to tell you more. So my mother got what she
deserved, what she gave to my father. I remember her only as an
old women sitting endlessly in a rocking chair. . . the same
chair in which she eventually died. She tried to raise me right,
at least a few times. Wanted me to be a good Christian. But by
the time I was 13 or 14 I decided that there could not be more
than one God, and if 50 different religions can claim their own
God, then there is none. Would you believe it that I went to
college - not for the whole time, but for a couple of years, and
I was a good student too? But I was restless and wanted to get
out of that fucking town. So I went to Paris. Have you been in
Paris? It's a marvelous place, isn't it? I made a few bucks
teaching English to the French, but what I loved was sitting in
the cafes all night, having long and deep conversations with my
friends, the artists and writers, and living on cheap food and
never having enough clothes to keep warm or a decent flat to
live in. But it didn't matter. I went from bed to bed, and the
arms and the beards and the cheap wine kept me warm. Am I boring
you? How about another drink? Thanks dear. It all changed when I
met Clarence. He was English - not very good looking but very
sensitive. He reminded me of myself. He was also a drifter. I
couldn't stay away from him. We went back to England and started
living together. For two years. Happy two years. Until I
received a letter from my aunt saying my mother was ill and that
she needed me at home. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to
leave Clarence and I was also afraid I would never see my mother
alive again. I finally convinced Clarence to come to South
Africa and get a job, and he said he would come in about three
months. Can you light me up again? Anyway, when I got to South
Africa, I found my mother dying and my father broke. So I
started to look around for a job. I met Horace. He was a
salesman and he convinced me to sell encyclopedias door-to-door.
Can you imagine that? Me selling encyclopedias? But I learned
fast. Horace would take me to dinner and we would make plans
about the business. He taught me how to sell. It was strictly
business. He knew Clarence would be coming soon and that we
would get married. But you never can tell about these things.
After three months I got a letter from Clarence saying he could
not come to South Africa and that if I loved him I should come
back to England. I learned later that he had already started an
affair with another woman. Men are like that - always horny. Are
you like that? You probably are with those bedroom eyes and that
sexy dimple in your chin. Do you have another cigarette? Anyway,
I wrote Clarence and asked him to come in a few months when the
business was better established. While all this was going on
Horace and I decided to combine a business and vacation trip to
a seaside resort a few hundred miles away, selling encyclopedias
while we went. We ate together, drove in his car, spent the
evenings together but we always had separate rooms. A couple of
days after we got to the resort, I was getting pretty bored with
Horace, so I invited the 18-year old pimply-faced son of one of
the women at the hotel to go to a movie with us. All during that
evening Horace was terribly restless and kept hinting that he
was tired and that we should get rid of the kid. Finally we
dropped the boy off and started to return to the hotel but
Horace suddenly decided he wanted to go to a night club. I told
him I was tired and we went back to the hotel. Do you know what
the son of a bitch did? He told me he wanted to talk over some
business in my room and when I let him in he grabbed me and
tried to get me into bed. We got into a fight and he became
furious. He pushed me over to the balcony and started to bend me
back over the railing. I tried to be calm and I talked quietly
to him. He held me over the railing for about five minutes and
then began to cool down. Suddenly he let me go and began to
apologize and cry and tell me he loved me. All of a sudden he
grabbed his chest, started to turn green and gasp for air. I
told him I would call a doctor, but he refused to see anyone but
his own doctor back in Johannesburg and he insisted I drive him
back immediately. Would you believe it, I drove 300 miles that
night with Horace moaning and puking and telling me he was going
to die? By morning I turned him over to his doctor who later
told me he couldn't find anything wrong with him. How about
another drink, dear? You don't mind if I put my hand on your
knee do you? Do you want to dance? No? Well maybe later. I can
dance in bed as well as on the dance floor. That wasn't the end
of Horace. He kept writing letters of apology and I kept getting
letters of apology from mutual friends, all of which I ignored.
I later learned that Horace would come to my street and stand
there for hours watching my window, and sometimes he would
follow me at night. About three or four weeks later, I
accidently met him on the street during the day, and he began to
call me a lot of filthy names. You know the kind of things. Two
weeks later I learned that he was committed to a mental
hospital. Got another cigarette? Thanks. You're nice. Sure you
don't want to dance? Well, that was the end of Horace, but only
the beginning of my troubles. I got a letter from Clarence
telling me I had to come back to England. So I did, only to find
the bastard living with another woman. And then, just as my aunt
predicted, my mother died. That was a bad time for me. I cried
all the time. I was depressed. I stopped working. I began to
drink a lot. This went on for months until one of my girlfriends
helped me get out of the blues and she found me another job. But
it was too late. By then I had found that the only thing that
could get me through each night was my friend the bottle and the
arms of a man with a soft smile. You see, all men in bed are
like little boys, and I will be their mother.

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