Free After Delores by Sarah Schulman

wouldn’t be generous like that to me.”
    â€œWell, then you’re lucky to be rid of her. Don’t worry, she’ll do the same thing to her new woman when her number comes up. Then you can rejoice. People never change their modus operandi.”
    That made me angry. It started in my upper arms, they began to ache. I got jumpy like I wanted to smash everything and scream at myself in the mirror.
    â€œShe just didn’t love you. It’s obvious.”
    I wanted her to shut up.
    â€œYou sound like you don’t even care that Marianne is dead. You don’t even care that someone squeezed her neck until it broke. Think about how scared she must have been. Don’t you give a shit?”
    â€œShe was my rival. I have the right to be cold. Charlotte likes those young women. I can’t stand them. I don’t like them aesthetically. I don’t like their skin. It’s too easy to be gay today in New York City. I come from those times when sexual excitement could only be in hidden places. Sweet women had to put themselves in constant danger to make love to me. All my erotic life is concerned with intrigue and secrets. You can’t understand that these days, not at all. Lesbians will never be that sexy again.”
    I wondered if her hands were too small to have fit around Punkette’s neck. And then I asked a larger question. What makes a person suddenly able to commit murder? It’s easier to hate than to kill, that’s for sure. But I bet the combination brings the greatest satisfaction. When you kill the woman who took love out of your life, it can be an act of honor. But if you kill a woman because you saw her go-go dance in East Newark and wanted to feel her neck snap, then you too deserve to die. I marveled at how easily I accepted the difference.

11
    THERE IS A limit to what you can do for yourself. When the mess you’re in is too scary and overwhelming to possibly unravel, you have the choice to call in outside help. The best candidates are smart, compassionate, and creative. That narrows it down quite a bit. They have to have some free time, and finally they have to care about you a little. When I considered all the necessary qualifications, there was only one option: Coco Flores.
    If everybody’s got a best friend, I guess she’s mine. She’s always been a good talker but she learned to listen since she started working as a beautician. We met when she was managing an all-girl punk band called Useless Phlegm. Their name accurately described both their music and their personalities. When Coco suggested changing it to Warm Spit, they fired her. Then she enrolled in beauty school and got a job working a hair salon in the strip of new stores along the waterfront where the fuck bars used to be. Coco liked to hang out outside. She knew all the street people and they knew her. She knew the first name of every person begging for money between the park and the F train.
    â€œWhen someone asks you for money, you have to give it to them,” she always said. “How can you say no? Dollars are best.”
    Of course, a beautician can’t hand out dollars like business cards, so she developed a priority list which was topped off by two black dykes who regularly asked for cash. One worked the corner of Fourth and Second and the other stood under the scaffolding on Saint Mark’s Place where construction workers had taken out a movie theater and were putting in a David’s Cookies. They were definitely lesbians, Coco pointed out, and you have to take care of your own people first, so she saw them as her personal responsibility. There are more and more women in general panhandling on the street, but women asking for money usually plead. They cry or they will tell you what good reason they need the money for, like getting home to New Jersey. Not these women. They lean against buildings and talk to you real honey-like.
    â€œBaby, can you give me a couple of