DORIS
*
Smog hovered in the sky as white blades of sunlight jutted from the leaves of scattered palms. It was a typical day in Los Angeles and Doris sped down Fountain in her sparkling new Shelby mustang like a killer sprinting towards its prey. She was heading to the gentleman’s club on Sunset, dreaming up a fat glass of whiskey on ice. She liked drinking during the day. It made everything feel mirage-like, semi-permanent. She drove down Fairfax to Beverly, where she spotted a young, painfully thin model type sucking on a cigarette in front of the urban lights at LACMA.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he echoed, his eyes narrowing into an untrusting squint. He was likely no older than twenty-four, his face cast in a glossy daze.
“Wanna come to a bar with me?” Doris asked, her voice an octave higher than its normal flat growl. Doris was an attractive woman in her early forties with a demanding, authoritative presence. She permeated wealth. Her eyes glimmered with adventure and youth yet her demeanor was tinged with the jaded drag that often accompanies a woman of her stature.
“Why would I go to a bar at two in the afternoon?”
“What else do you have to do?”
He shrugged, flicked his cigarette into the curb.
“You can’t smoke here,” a security guard barked.
“Yeah yeah.” The kid’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull.
Doris waited in the car patiently, flipped her strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulder.
“Which bar are you going to?”
“The gentleman’s club on Sunset. The one with the neon sign.”
“Which neon sign?”
“The one with the three dancers all in a row.”
The kid took another look at the security guard, glanced up at the light display now overcrowded with influencers taking selfies and mothers darting around with strollers, and hopped over the passenger side door into Doris’ midnight blue Mustang.
“Nice car,” he said without looking at her.
“Thanks. Just got it last week from this woman up in Oxnard. Got her down to sixty grand. Turns out we went to the same university.”
“That must have been a long time ago.”
“What’s your name?”
“Henry.”
Henry pouted and watched the blurs of pedestrians sweep by as they drove towards the bar, his hair pinned back by the wind. His Los Saicos tee shirt was so thin it looked as though it might disintegrate against his translucent body. “So,” he said, “what do you do?”
“Hah!” Doris laughed. “I’m sure you can come up with a better question than that, Henry.”
His deadpan eyes were fixed on the silver buildings ahead, a sight that made Doris a bit nauseous. It reminded her of the old days when she was an assistant at a production studio. She remembered the pale grey light of the office, the neon glare of the computer, which she would stare at for twelve hours entering numbers into templated spreadsheets. She pushed her gum to the front of her mouth, grabbed it and tossed it into the dry-as-bones wind.
“I work in the entertainment industry.”
Henry smirked. “What are you like a stripper or something?”
“I’m a director.”
“Oh,” he said, piqued with excitement. “You know, I’m trying to be an actor.”
“I make erotic films.”
He looked at her in the eyes for the first time, his mouth slightly agape.
“You know, porn.”
He laughed, too loud, and turned red as a grape tomato. Doris lowered her cat-eye sunglasses and smiled, revealing the gap between her two front teeth, her piercing blue eyes a shade lighter in the sun.
“Oh. That’s cool.”
“How old are you Henry? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Twenty-two. I’ll be twenty-three next month.”
“How big is your cock?”
“Jesus. Really?”
Doris stared straight ahead. An old Hasidic man walked by and looked at them as the car rumbled at the stoplight, then continued on his wayward trajectory.
“I don’t know…like eight or nine inches?”
Doris grabbed another cube of gum from the pack and stuck it in her mouth. “Can I see it?”
Henry laughed again, this time uncomfortably. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”
He shifted in his seat again as Doris burst out into a high-pitched guffaw. “It’s okay, you don’t have to show me if you don’t want to.” She adjusted her bra and wiped a gleam of sweat from her left breast.
“I got nothin’ to hide,” he said.
He unzipped his pants and all eight inches of him lay there like an unwrapped treasure, pulsating gently in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Doris knew she had seen something in him, even from far away, flanked by the horrendous light display at the museum. He was perfect for the lead role in her new film. She tried to mask her excitement as they roared up to their destination. Once she turned the engine off, Henry got out quickly and slung his backpack over his shoulder.
“Listen, thanks for the ride and all, but I actually have to go. I live right down the street. I’ll see you around.”
Doris wondered if she had done something wrong. He wasn’t like the others. He was more pained; beautiful in a way that was bruised and contorted. She pictured his rigid features on 16mm film, plowing into a girl like Susan, for example. She thought about all the young men she’d seduced…had it had all been consensual? The way Henry walked away made her feel as though she had wronged him in some way. But wasn’t this how it always went? Who ever really felt comfortable in this world?
*
The bar was empty aside from two middle-aged rockers huddled in the corner booth, taking turns going in and out of the bathroom. She sat on the far side of the bar counter away from the door and ordered her usual. The place was an absolute dump. Why did she keep coming here? She spun her hair around her finger and thumbed through the magazine she’d brought. It was an old copy of A&F quarterly, one she was using as inspiration for her film. She loved how free the young models looked, bare-backed in an old car painted with butterflies and roses. “IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE COUPLE IN THE FRONT OF THE WINDOW ARE FANTASIZING THAT SOMEONE IS OBSERVING THEM THROUGH THE WINDOW!” it read, “THEY NEED THAT GAZE IN ORDER TO BE IN LOVE: THEY PERFORM THEIR LOVE FOR THAT GAZE.” The last three words were in bold red type, layered over a black and white image of a man holding a woman’s shoulders, his face pressed against hers.
“Another one?” Susan asked. Poor Susan, serving drink after drink to people who didn’t appreciate her, when all she wanted to do was be a star. Doris gazed up, her face drained of wonder a bit more than usual this time.
“Susan,” she lingered, “do you think I’m attractive?”
Susan continued to wipe down the bar, her tiny biceps bulging with each circular motion. She had a tattoo on the small of her back that jutted out from the top of her jeans. Doris could never quite make out what it was.
“Of course you are. I hope I age as gracefully as you!” She placed another glass of whiskey on the coaster in front of her, which was imprinted with rings and reeked of stale beer. “This one’s on the house.”
by Jenna Putnam
Jenna Putnam is a writer and visual artist based in Southern California. Her work has been featured in Hobart, Expat Press, The Sun, The New York Times, and others. "Inertia", her second collection of poetry, will be released in the near future by way of Paradigm Publishing.