Free After Delores by Sarah Schulman Page A

dollars?”
    Coco could get along with just about anybody and was, therefore, obviously unique. Somewhere in the background she was Puerto Rican on both sides, but they’d come over in the thirties so now she was more New Yorker than anything. Coco had never been a salsa queen but she did dabble in Latin punk and was always dyeing her hair a multitude of colors. But Coco’s most special feature was that she could talk poetry. She could turn it on and talk beautiful words that didn’t exactly belong together but worked out all right in the end. Sometimes listening to Coco’s stories was like swimming. You forgot where you were until it was over and then your arms felt freer. She’d read all the time, steal words for her spiral notebooks, and then throw them into one-person conversations that others could only watch.
    â€œHey Coco, isn’t it a beautiful day?”
    â€œI know,” she said, flipping her chartreuse frost over her shoulder. “It’s the gold-feathered bird.”
    â€œWhat is?”
    â€œThe bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”
    We were heading toward the Hudson River, trying to get across the highway, dodging in and out of speeding vehicles, so I didn’t quite catch what she said.
    â€œThe bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down,” she yelled over the traffic. “It means believe in the imagination, but it doesn’t mean politically like you should . The words just do it by example.”
    â€œWhere did you learn that, Coco?”
    â€œMy three o’clock appointment took a course at the New School. Next year she’ll take two. She told me about it waiting for her perm to take.”
    In a minute we were on the dock, sunny and warm. I had a beer. Coco had an iced tea.
    â€œTell me a story, Coco. Tell me one of your great stories about some girl.”
    â€œSure.” Coco flipped her hair back and looked out over the water. It was almost pretty the way the sun brought out the blue and hid the garbage and dead fish.
    â€œWe were both up in the country at the estate of a rich faggot whose boyfriend went to beauty school with me. She was married and older but we flirted the whole weekend in front of everyone, although her husband, thank God, was absent. Finally, with big smiles, we decided to meet at midnight but forgot to say where. So I waited in bed lounging, making myself fuckable, wet, and sparkly. And, at the same moment, she was waiting for me, picking the perfect lighting and music, putting clean sheets on the bed. It got later and later, both of us waiting, wondering if the other would ever show. Finally, I decided I would not be disappointed and assumed my responsibilities as suitor by walking over to the guest house where she was staying.”
    At just this point in the story, Coco took out a nail file and started doing her nails.
    â€œSo anyway, the woods were dark that night, barely one star. Still, I found the dirt paths easily and walked them without a light, since my excitement was fluorescent. I was bouncing along, feeling the night when, right then, ahead on the same road, in another direction, a single spot shined my way.
    â€œâ€˜Who’s there?’ she called out, knowing full well it was me coming to make love to her.
    â€œâ€˜It’s me,’ I said. ‘It’s Coco Flores.’
    â€œWell, let me tell you, it was fun. Everything was happening just the way it should.”
    â€œWhat did she say?” I had to know.
    â€œShe laughed and said, ‘Oh, great,’ and ‘You’re hot, you’re really hot.’ She said that to me because I was on her neck and scratching her fingers with my teeth outside in the woods. She held my hand in her leather glove. We were shy walking together in the night, but happy between kisses. During them we weren’t shy at all. So I put my hand on her ass like it was mine. ‘You are forward,’ she