Swish

thea lim

Pendant une soirée qui ressemble à toutes les autres, une are rarely ever used. serveuse dans un bar, pressée à servir machinalement sexe I fill a pitcher with water and the Javex mix that Tammy et alcool, se sent démolie parce qu’elle ne reçoit ni ne ressent brings in every night. “It’s not soap, it’s water and Javex aucune sympathie de la part des femmes qu’elle sert. mix so be careful of your clothes!” she tells me each time she sees me using it. She is very conscious of her cleaning We all talk to ourselves. It becomes a habit. When the product brands. As I am doing this she bounces against music is playing, it’s too loud to hear us dialoguing softly my hip at the sink, eager to fill her own pitcher. “I know with ourselves. We repeat orders to ourselves, tell our- I cleaned all this last night,” she says, like a soap opera selves jokes, console ourselves, abuse ourselves—except that awkwardly fills you in on missed details, “but you for Tammy, who mostly abuses other people in her self know me, I need to make sure it’s all completely clean!!” conversations. “Fuckin’ cheapass loser,” she whispers to Tammy talks so much about her alleged cleaning neuroses the fridge. “Keep your quarter,” she tells her j-cloth, “you that she has never noticed that I like to clean, too. I take need it more than me.” my pitcher to a tall white table, and start at the table’s edge, Tammy has been bartending for so long that I think carefully creating paths of clean among the sticky, dulled most of the conversations she’s held in her life have been surface. Swish, swish. Secretly the cleaning comforts me, with herself. When I listen to her carefully I can hear that because every time I wipe a table I’m assured that there is her voice has a sort of crazy lilt to it. When people hear no mess so big that it cannot be cleaned up. someone in the street talking to themselves like that, they When I don’t work at this bar anymore, it will not be walk faster. But when Tammy, when all of us talk like that the electrocuted songs, or the smell of ancient beer and to ourselves, no one notices. People get used to associat- cigarette smoke mixed with sugar syrup, that will bring ing only two things with bar staff like us—alcohol and back the most overwhelming memories of this place, sex—and it’s hard for them to notice anything else. and this job. It will be that swishing sound that reminds Sasha is training a new girl today, and she explains this to me of here, after I have left this job behind. This sound her. She says, “In bars there are two types of people: patrons is like our voices and our personalities, always drowned and servers. They look to us for booze, we look to them for out by music, except at the very beginning and very end cash.” Sasha talks in clichés, as if someone pre-wrote her of the night. speech. “So don’t do anyone any favours,” she continues. Leo grabs my elbow and I jump. Water and bleach leap “We’re not here to babysit, we’re here to pay our bills.” from the pitcher and flow unfettered across the table top, She’s about to finish off with her favourite line—“they’re overzealously drowning the scum. Swiiiiish. not people sweetheart, they’re patrons”—when the dj “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he says, echoing himself, “come comes up to the bar. and talk to me outside.” He pats me toward the door. His “Baby,” Sasha coos at him. “The usual?” She is posed hand is the size of my head, so I don’t protest. behind the bar like a woman in a beer commercial, her We stand outside on the front entranceway, and Leo breasts hoisted high, her hand easing her shirt up her side sucks manically on a cigarette. He lights one for me even to show off her lovely soft skin. The dj wears his hat so though he knows I quit. I take it from him anyway. The low that all I can see of his face is his mouth. She makes sun is setting, and the cars slide smugly home just as I’m his drink and his mouth bends itself into a “thanks lover.” only starting my workday. Sometimes working in a bar is like being a spy. Real names “You look good tonight baby,” Leo says, his hand on

VOLUME 26, NUMBER 1 37 my shoulder in a paternal way. I look down at my front. high-gloss mirror behind Sasha and the new girl, but it My shirt dips into a deep V and from my vantage point I is almost as if Sasha and the new girl are a mirror too. can see the little pink bows on my bra. “It’s peaceful, hey,” We all look exactly the same, pirouetting, leaping, and Leo says, “It looks so damn good in this light that you spinning out alcohol. can forget what a shit-hole this city is.” Leo, like Sasha, Suddenly, it seems as if the beer fridges are going to also talks like a movie character. It is a syndrome with bar cave in on me. Before Tammy notices, I duck into the staff who crack under the misconceived but persistent bathroom to look at myself, even though the shortest impression that this life is glamourous. “It’s like the light break endangers my tip total. Nothing is different today, washes it, washes us … or something.” but I feel strange. I think about Leo cheerfully recount- Leo likes to talk to me. Before almost every shift he ing his pummeling story; I think about my hair, which makes me go outside with him and listen to him talk. is black and not red. I think about charging four dollars Because of this Tammy thinks he is in love with me. She for water. I want to splash my face but that will eviscerate thinks I should sleep with him, because he works in clubs my make-up. I take a piece of paper towel and twist it up all over the city. “He is so much money,” she declares in because I don’t know what else to do. my ear, as if he is a lottery ticket. But I would never date Some regulars bust through the bathroom door. They Leo, for lots of reasons. Also, if I ever lay underneath him stop at the mirrors to say hello to me. “Hi honey!” they I’d be crushed to death. squeal. “How are you, my baby?” Sasha comes outside to smoke now, too. I slide over to “She’s my favourite,” one of them says to the other. where she is. She smiles at me and says, “You look hot, “I know I love her, she’s so sweet,” another one adds, sweetie.” This is a pre-shift ritual, where all bar staff get as if I am outside at the bar. together and confirm to each other that they look good. “You look good tonight, you all right?” a glossy mouth We do this before people come in, when we’re friends, not asks me. I stare at the mouth until I feel cross-eyed, and in competition. We reassure each other as if preparing to then I smile and nod. I cannot even communicate with battle an enemy. them right now, disconnected as we are by the patrons- Sasha finishes her cigarette as Leo and the other bouncer, not-people gap. Sunny, overlap stories of gore and pummeling until it is A woman pushes her way in between the profuse pa- time to go back inside. There are already some people trons to get to the sink. It is the new girl, and as she holds sitting at the bar. her hand under the faucet, the water flowing into the “Hello sweet cheeks,” one of them says to me, as if we sink turns red. I feel like I might throw up, but instead I are old friends. I don’t think I have ever seen him before. hear myself say, “Did you cut your hand?” The familiar “Hey,” he says, “Tell you what. I’ll give you a big tip if sound of my own voice, calm though I am not, makes you let your hair down. I like redheads.” He smiles and me feel better. nods at me, as if we have entered an agreement. “Yeah, I think I need—” she doesn’t finish her sentence. Tammy speeds past me and rams her shoulder into She looks stunned. mine as she passes behind me. She never travels anywhere “Let’s go get a band-aid from the office,” I say. I want slowly. She stands still for a minute, though her hand is to offer somebody something other than alcohol or sex. still moving, cleaning invisible counter dirt with a rag. We open the bathroom door and sprawled out across “Now make sure you don’t give out any more glasses of the floor is a fat mess of bodies moving in the now dark water tonight. It just doesn’t make any sense, giving out bar. There are bodies even where there are none. Every water when we sell it for four dollars.” molecule of air in the bar is populated with someone or “I know, but…” I say trying to think of a good argu- something—if not with bodies, then with smells, with ment, “we’re made of water.” voices, with need. Too many people recognize me and When Tammy listens to me, to anyone, she always it is a novelty for them to see the lower half of my body, mouths the words I say as I say them, forming little bub- usually hidden by the bar. I push the new girl in front of bling shapes with her mouth. me, nudging her along with my shoulder. I find the office “Well just don’t do it, okay. We don’t need to do any of door, sunken into the wall, and we fall through it and into these losers favours ’cuz they’re not going to do anything the buzz of the computers and the television. for us in return. And they hassle me, too, when you give Ali is watching tv and drinking tea. The World Fit- it out to them, and it’s a friggin’ headache.” Her voices ness and Aerobics Championships are on. A woman in rises in irritation as she reaches the end of her statement, a full spandex outfit gyrates on the screen, lying on her and my face and ears start to heat up. Then she turns back, whipping her legs in the air in a bizarre display of quickly, her face stuffed with smiles, to the man who health. thinks I am a redhead. “Whoa,” Ali says to no one, “Look at them go.” We have all taken our positions now. Sasha and the I find a band-aid for the new girl whose name I still new girl are on the main bar, and Tammy and I are locked don’t know. She leaves the office immediately to get back into our bar on the opposite bank. I can see myself in the to the bar, because time is money.

38 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME “Whoa,” he says again, “Look at these girls go, strutting I’m going home.” their stuff, giving it their all. Whoa.” A woman wearing I try not to listen to her voice. a glittering headband kicks around the stage, beaming “Tell me you don’t like it when I do this. Tell me you insanely at the camera, chopping her hands in the air. don’t like it when I do this.” I can see that he is pulling She is not in time with the music because no one has ever her body toward him, bone by bone. As he sucks her in written a piece of music fast enough to keep up with her toward him, she is losing to him. Her head is the last part level of optimum fitness. of her body to slide into him. She turns it just before it “So you met our new girl, Cherisse,” Ali says, without reaches his orbit and our eyes meet. I am not bar staff, looking at me. “Pretty girl. She’ll be some competition and she is not a patron. We are just women. for you, eh?” Ali looks back to the tv and slurps his tea. She just wants to go home, and I feel the same way. I The almost dead plant in the window next to him shakes reach my hand across the bar, across that organizing space

She just wants to go home, and I feel the same way. I reach my hand across the bar, across that organizing space that separates us, and my hand does something meaningful. It grabs onto the man’s sleeve. “No,” I say. “Stop it. She doesn’t want to go with you.”

its leaves slightly as vibrations from the dance floor jiggle that separates us, and my hand does something meaning- the office floor. Ali has writtennot “ an ashtray” in ful. It grabs onto the man’s sleeve. black marker and taped it to the plant, even though at “No.” I say. “Stop it. She doesn’t want to go with you.” this point its soil is beyond rescuing. Ali adores this plant But he doesn’t hear me, because I am still bar staff to in an unusual way. He fusses over its single leaf for full him. I lose hold of his expensive shirt. He pushes her shifts, but never thinks to water it. forward through the crowd, out of the reach of my ef- “Where the hell have you been?” Tammy yells at me as ficient hands. I squeeze back into the bar. She pushes quarters and limes “No,” I say. I don’t want this to happen. I drop shards across the bar toward the sweaty throng. of glass onto the floor and crunch them under my shoes “Sorry, sorry,” I yell back at her. We are not yelling out as I begin to run. I duck under the gate and out from of anger but out of necessity. The music is so loud I can behind the bar and my head rams straight into someone’s feel it in my spleen. bum. I swerve to the side and stand up straight, trying Tammy takes the east side of the bar and I take the to wind through the crowd. All the people around me west. A man and a woman are sitting right at the point seem unbearably slow and stupid and completely in- where the west bar becomes the east bar, right across capable of movement. Panic pushes at music for space from the computer where we enter our sales. Every time in my spleen. I lunge forward and trip. An enormous I report to the computer, I hear parts of the woman and hand catches me. the man’s conversation. It is a conversation I have heard, “Hey little one, where do you think you’re going?” I and had, before. stare in horror at a bright red face. The face wraps his huge “I’m going to go home, I’m just going to go home.” arms around my ribcage. “I caught you, you’re mine.” “Stop being silly baby, you know you want to come “I’m not a fish!” I say, but he thinks that I am being funny home with me.” and laughs. He opens his mouth and it is like staring into “Please stop it. I want to go back to my house.” a huge void, full of unknown and horrific smells. “Sweets, you’ve had a lot to drink, and you know what you “Let me go,” I push against him. Another wave of get like. Just trust me, okay? Tell me you can’t trust me.” nausea assails me. “Listen, I told you I don’t want to do this anymore. I “I’ve seen you working back there,” he says, as if it is a know how I feel.” brilliant observation. “You’re a little firecracker.” He pulls “No honey, that’s the thing. You don’t. We’ve been me closer in toward him, so that I am almost sitting on through this before. We both know you’ll call me tomor- his knee. row, and you’ll want me back. You know you don’t always “Wanna go out on a date? Wanna see a movie? Wanna know what you think. Just come home with me tonight, have sex?” I am so nauseous that I am almost blind. I and we can skip all that hysteria and the tears, and all that push against him one last time, and then I open my stuff you always pull.” mouth and pour everything that I have eaten today into The woman says the same thing over and over again. the space that opens up between our bodies. Immediately Each time I pass I hear her saying, “I want to go home, he releases me.

VOLUME 26, NUMBER 1 39 I don’t stay to hear what sort of names he has for me “Are you okay? Ali says you’re sick.” now. The mass of slug-like bodies starts to loosen as I look at this face that I love, and I think of all the things vomit fumes rise into the air, and I push and push and that I could say, of all the things I want to say. push until the cold air of the front door smacks me in the “Are you okay? Did you make good money?” I nod. face. My feet slide on my way down the front stairs, and “Well then, it couldn’t have been that bad, right?” He the muscles in my legs clutch at each other in terror, but smiles. I keep running—one, two, three more steps and then I “No,” I say. “Nothing happened tonight that was dif- am out onto the sidewalk. ferent from any other night.” I look to my left and to my right. There are big groups “Okay, good. I’ll be waiting for you outside, okay?” of people standing around, but I can’t see the man and I nod. the woman anywhere. I walk right out to the road to get He leaves me alone with the cloth and the Javex and a better view of the sidewalk. Headlights brush up against the tabletop. me, and my nipples, like embarrassing relatives, appear I begin at the table’s edge, and I begin to talk to myself. plainly on the front of my shirt. But I can’t find the woman I say, there is no mess so big that it cannot be cleaned up. and the man. They are gone. There is no mess so big that it cannot be cleaned up. Leo and Sunny and the cowboy who caught me come pounding out of the club. They are a blur of unnaturally Thea Lim grew up in Singapore and now lives in Toronto, large arms. Leo’s fist collides with the cowboy’s head, but where she does communication work for two not-for-profits, that is not what I wanted either, and I turn around and and is the web editor for the Shameless Magazine Blog. Her pour into the road everything I ate yesterday. Tammy and writing has been published by The Utne Reader, Shameless Ali are pulling me back from the road now, they are patting Magazine and Second Story Press. Her first novel, The Same me with paper towel, and they are pulling me back into Woman, was released this year by Invisible Publishing. the club, which is the last place I want to be. When I can see properly again, I am in the bathroom with Tammy, and she is holding back my hair while I rinse SPRING 2007 my mouth. She strokes my back. NEW RELEASE “This is not what I want,” I sputter, “I don’t want to INANNA PUBLICATIONS live like this.” “Shhh, shhh. You’ve been working too hard, honey.” Suddenly I wonder if anyone even knows my real name. “Who is looking after the bar?” I choke, trying to be business-like again. WOMEN AND “Oh Sasha’s got it covered. It’s after last call anyway. Oh, THE GIFT ECONOMY and Sunny and Leo took care of that asshole. You won’t ever have to deal with him again.” I stand up straight, and I look at Tammy and me in A RADICALLY DIFFERENT the mirror. There is no natural colour in my face, but my WORLDVIEW IS make-up and my hair have held themselves together, more POSSIBLE resilient than me. Tammy pulls herself up onto the sinks. She leans forward, so that her forehead is almost touching genevieve vaughan, ed. its reflection, and begins to wipe at her lower eyelid. “You okay now, sweetheart?” she asks. Featuring articles by well-known feminist activists and I want to ask Tammy what are we all doing here, all academics, this book points to ways to re-create the of us women, trapped in mirrors? How did we get here? connections, which have been severed, between the gift But instead I nod. economy, women, and the economies of Indigenous “Let’s go outside. I think your boyfriend is here to pick peoples, and to bring forward the gift paradigm as you up.” an approach to liberate us from the worldview of the The end-of-shift sounds punctuate the bar. I go behind market that is destroying life on the planet. the bar and fill a pitcher with water and the Javex mix that Contributors include: Peggy Antrobus, Vicki Noble, Tammy brings in every night. “It’s not soap, it’s water and Jeannette Armstrong, Rauna Kuokkanen, Ana Isla, Javex mix so be careful of your clothes!” Tammy cautions Angela Miles, Claudia von Werlhof, Kaarina Kailo, me again, like she does every night. I take my pitcher to a Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, Mililani Trask, Margaret tall white table, and start at the table’s edge. Swish, swish. Randall, Mechthild Hart, and many others. My boyfriend touches my elbow. “Hey,” he says, and kisses me on the cheek. I wish he 0978-0-9736709-7-4 6 x 9 376p $39.95 March 2007 would say my name. WWW.YORKU.CA/INANNA

40 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIES/LES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME