salty carnitas and juicy cactus. The tacos are pliant and plump, bursting with shredded meat and haphazard salsa and fat, meaty pinto beans. Raquel and Sue eat dozens of them each week, washing them down with draft beers from San Francisco’s very own Anchor brewery. Sue likes Liberty Ale; Quel prefers the Summer Beer, a paler wheat.
The girls—women—are blooming with youth and beauty. Best of all, after years of self-doubt and real or imagined social ostracization, they know it. Finally removed from the blandly insidious comfort of institutional food, Raquel is sleek and tan, almost firm, she thinks. In fact, sometimes, peering at herself in the cracked full-length mirror that’s propped against the loft’s exposed brick wall, she almost likes her body. Her breasts are still too full and heavy, her stomach more pillowy than the unyielding flatness required for blithe exposure. But her best features buoy her as never before. At last, she thinks, she looks like someone. Someone with enough exoticism to capture the attention she so desperately craves. Her hair falls, black and shiny, to midback, snaking waves that don’t quite break into ringlets but don’t frizz, either. That year everybody is cutting their hair short, spiking it out in dyed tufts. Raquel, correctly sensing disaster were she to follow suit, sometimes fastens her thick mane into a ponytail on the side of her head; mostly, she wears it long and loose, contrary to fashion. Against the olive backdrop of her smooth skin, her eyes are slate blue, striking if she wears makeup, unnerving and pale if she doesn’t. That year she wears a corset with a miniskirt or Levi’s, dark, high-waisted jeans that make her legs look even longer, paisley blouses and flat jeweled slippers she buys in Chinatown. She has three pairs of huaraches. She carries a battered black bag whose decay she takes an inexplicable pride in, which she decorates with buttons proclaiming APARTHEID SUCKS and TRAVOLTA IS REVOLTA .
One night Sue pokes her curly head into Quel’s studio— the part of the loft shielded by a wall of torn Oriental screens— and waves a set of tickets in Quel’s face.
“I won!” she yells, knowing Quel will understand. Sue has phoned in to the local new-wave radio station every day for the past five months, hoping to win concert tickets they can’t afford. Now they are going to R.E.M.
Quel puts down the chunk of metal she has been blowtorching and wipes her face of the sweat rolling down her forehead, stinging her eyes. The odor of charred steel is bitter, intoxicating, hopeful; years later, she witnesses a fatal car fire from a safe street corner perch and thinks, inexplicably and guiltily, of art and youth.
Together, the girls—women—dance around, reveling in the kiss of pure gladness. Sue’s hot-pink prom dress swirls around her small waist, highlighting her plump white arms. She is wearing red Converse high-tops.
“I’m going to marry Michael Stipe,” Sue chants over and over.
Later, at the concert, the girls are touched by a sort of wild enchantment that spirals into near perfection as the evening slides into night. Dancing in the tight crush of bodies at the front of the Cow Palace auditorium, they are tugged onstage by the band’s bass player, where they abandon the final shreds of their inhibition and gyrate like the rock stars they habitually dream about as banks of cameras record their joy.
Back on the ground, panting with uncharacteristic exertion, Raquel feels her feet skid in the manic swirl of sweaty dancers. The alcohol pulsing through her veins—two pre-dinner glasses of Cab, a few rum and Cokes, enough beer to wash down a cheap tapas meal— has rendered her clumsy and bovine. She struggles against the undertow surge of the
crowd. A small flame of fear licks at her gut.
“Hey, you okay?”
The voice, pleasantly bland and Californian—L.A.? Orange County?—and slightly raspy, wafts from behind her left ear. Her back is
The girls—women—are blooming with youth and beauty. Best of all, after years of self-doubt and real or imagined social ostracization, they know it. Finally removed from the blandly insidious comfort of institutional food, Raquel is sleek and tan, almost firm, she thinks. In fact, sometimes, peering at herself in the cracked full-length mirror that’s propped against the loft’s exposed brick wall, she almost likes her body. Her breasts are still too full and heavy, her stomach more pillowy than the unyielding flatness required for blithe exposure. But her best features buoy her as never before. At last, she thinks, she looks like someone. Someone with enough exoticism to capture the attention she so desperately craves. Her hair falls, black and shiny, to midback, snaking waves that don’t quite break into ringlets but don’t frizz, either. That year everybody is cutting their hair short, spiking it out in dyed tufts. Raquel, correctly sensing disaster were she to follow suit, sometimes fastens her thick mane into a ponytail on the side of her head; mostly, she wears it long and loose, contrary to fashion. Against the olive backdrop of her smooth skin, her eyes are slate blue, striking if she wears makeup, unnerving and pale if she doesn’t. That year she wears a corset with a miniskirt or Levi’s, dark, high-waisted jeans that make her legs look even longer, paisley blouses and flat jeweled slippers she buys in Chinatown. She has three pairs of huaraches. She carries a battered black bag whose decay she takes an inexplicable pride in, which she decorates with buttons proclaiming APARTHEID SUCKS and TRAVOLTA IS REVOLTA .
One night Sue pokes her curly head into Quel’s studio— the part of the loft shielded by a wall of torn Oriental screens— and waves a set of tickets in Quel’s face.
“I won!” she yells, knowing Quel will understand. Sue has phoned in to the local new-wave radio station every day for the past five months, hoping to win concert tickets they can’t afford. Now they are going to R.E.M.
Quel puts down the chunk of metal she has been blowtorching and wipes her face of the sweat rolling down her forehead, stinging her eyes. The odor of charred steel is bitter, intoxicating, hopeful; years later, she witnesses a fatal car fire from a safe street corner perch and thinks, inexplicably and guiltily, of art and youth.
Together, the girls—women—dance around, reveling in the kiss of pure gladness. Sue’s hot-pink prom dress swirls around her small waist, highlighting her plump white arms. She is wearing red Converse high-tops.
“I’m going to marry Michael Stipe,” Sue chants over and over.
Later, at the concert, the girls are touched by a sort of wild enchantment that spirals into near perfection as the evening slides into night. Dancing in the tight crush of bodies at the front of the Cow Palace auditorium, they are tugged onstage by the band’s bass player, where they abandon the final shreds of their inhibition and gyrate like the rock stars they habitually dream about as banks of cameras record their joy.
Back on the ground, panting with uncharacteristic exertion, Raquel feels her feet skid in the manic swirl of sweaty dancers. The alcohol pulsing through her veins—two pre-dinner glasses of Cab, a few rum and Cokes, enough beer to wash down a cheap tapas meal— has rendered her clumsy and bovine. She struggles against the undertow surge of the
crowd. A small flame of fear licks at her gut.
“Hey, you okay?”
The voice, pleasantly bland and Californian—L.A.? Orange County?—and slightly raspy, wafts from behind her left ear. Her back is
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