Gods of New York

Asia and I didn’t relate to the human characters in Sandman. They sniveled. As teenage girls in New York with essentially no adult supervision, we felt as powerful as gods. We went wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted. We weren’t into clubbing, although we went a few times just to prove to ourselves we could sail past velvet ropes. Mostly we just walked around the city at all hours, making fun of people we passed. We ate a lot of oranges and muffins and drank a lot of bad coffee. Sometimes we’d stop at a diner and get some French fries or call up some friends and go sit in someone else’s living room, but mostly we’d just walk and smoke and judge people. We lived by the moral code of the Endless, which is to say we lived as though we had no morals at all.

While most of the girls who bought Sandman were all about Death, with her ankh and her eyeliner, Asia and I emulated Delirium, Dream’s space-cadet younger sister. She had multi-colored hair and an affected childishness. She would absentmindedly create little universes out of thin air and say things like, "I think, and I think and I think . . . I think I think too much." She was our guiding light — a deity who was enthusiastic, we were sure, about staying up for days, going for twelve-hour strolls from one river to the other and back again, doing original combinations of drugs, and getting into conversations with NYU film students we met on the street.

Sandman made me torture men for sport when I was fifteen.

Nearly every night, Asia and I would go out and throw ourselves on the mercy of the city. How did nothing horrible ever happen to us? Asia says it’s because we were smart. "Sure, we’d take pills from that twenty-six-year-old MTV dancer who was our new ‘friend’," she says. "We just wouldn’t take them right then, with him. At the end of the night, we’d empty out our purses and compare notes. ‘I think that’s ecstasy, but it might be a roofie,’ you’d say. I’d nod back and solemnly reply, ‘It’s hard to say. Let’s split it.’"

Impossibly, we were virgins. In spite of what must have been dozens of late-night encounters with men we knew from high school or from parties or from the park, we never actually had sex, rarely even got close, and I credit Sandman with keeping us pure. We were far too into the aesthetics of sex, the power involved, the mystery and the magic, to actually dirty our hands with the act itself. Now that I think about it, we were especially into the power.

The Religious Right is correct on exactly two scores: virginity can be a big deal, properly exploited; and what you read, listen to or watch can make a huge difference in how you live your life. Conservatives are smart to get sexy movies banned from Wal-Mart. I can believe kids shoot each other because of video games. Wilco made me throw my live-in boyfriend out of the house when I was twenty-two. And Sandman made me torture men for sport when I was fifteen.

Asia and I had company over all the time. We took our male guests to the roof and smoked and looked out at the city and said witty things. We played word games, like the one where you have to name famous people with names starting with the last letter of the last famous person’s name: Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway, Yanni. About people we knew, we said profound things like, "It’s like she’s standing on a stool with a noose around her neck, holding knives in each hand, calling out, ‘Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!’"

One young man we’d lured into our spider’s den was named Kyle. He lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and smoked so much, we were sure, because he looked so young and was trying to facilitate wrinkles. We got him drunk and when either one of us got up to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, the other flirted like mad with him. By the end of the night, he was convinced he was going to sleep with at least one of us, probably both. But when he said something to that effect, we acted like he was crazy. He started to think he was crazy, I think. But we just smiled and laughed and said goodnight, then showed him to the door.

We were highly amoral that summer, but it was mostly in self-defense.

My favorite encounters were with those high-minded men who were "above" sleeping with virgins. They would lecture me for hours on their sophisticated values, inevitably quoting Kierkegaard or some other neurotic philosopher. Then as soon as they got to second base they’d get this look in their eye like they were searching for a reference to justify their rapid change of heart. Without Marvell at the ready, they would just sort of sputter, and I would have to somberly insist on not corrupting them. I wasn’t all that keen on maintaining my virginity, but I didn’t want to sleep with a hypocrite.

Asia and I finished all such nights together, alone with our Too Much Joy and overflowing ashtrays. Kyle later got revenge by inviting us over to his house to do mushrooms and then throwing us out of his apartment, leaving us to find our way through the Polish enclave and back to Manhattan while peaking. But hey, we deserved that. And we managed to find a car service and had a perfectly lovely day in spite of him. So there.

Asia agrees with me that we were highly amoral that summer, but argues that it was mostly in self-defense. "When I think about that summer there are two things that stand out," she says: "1) the fact that we were so consistently so responsible, and 2) that feeling (which there really should be a German word for) of ‘I’m a teenager — why isn’t my life like The Breakfast Club/Some Kind of Wonderful/My So-Called Life/Weetzie Bat?’ We partied, and went to our jobs, and kept ourselves safe, and wandered around, wistful, making fun of everyone. That’s a funny combination, but I think it’s true."

I felt like the most powerful, Delirium-inflected girl in New York until one day at the comic book store. I showed up for work and there was a new girl sitting at the cash register, Victoria. She had perfectly applied make-up, an indeterminate accent and multi-colored hair —  hair exactly like Delirium’s. It might as well have been drawn on her. By comparison, my purple-tinged hair looked frumpy and suburban.

Victoria was very pretty and very haughty. Stan hovered over her to make sure she was comfortable. Darrell complimented her clothes. She was, horror of horrors, younger than me. She was the real god. I was just an imposter, one of the stupid mortals always trying to steal a Bezoar or otherwise become immortal. When we were introduced, Victoria raised one perfectly pierced eyebrow and sneered. And at that moment, I felt Death tap me on the shoulder.  n°

©2007 Ada Calhoun and hooksexup.com