Performance Anxiety

Now, if you don’t know already, here’s what happens in Madama Butterfly.

In the opening, the geisha dancer, Madama Butterfly, better known as Cio-Cio-San, marries Pinkerton, an American navy officer. She’s only fifteen and she’s soooo stupid, because if she had stuck her ear to the shogi, the wall screen, before putting on her matrimonial kimono, she would have heard Pinkerton blabbing on about a real American wife that he intended to marry sometime in the future.

No wonder he’s so casual about his own wedding.

But Cio-Cio-San has cotton in her ears, and cotton between her ears, if you ask me. When she marries him, she renounces her own religion to embrace Pinkerton’s Christian religion. When her family and friends find out, they all turn their backs on her.

Take a lesson, girls.

Pinkerton then boinks his bride and leaves.

And stays away for three years.

Okay, so there were no airline seat sales in those days.

Cio-Cio-San asks Sharpless, the American consul, how often the robins nest in the United States. Pinkerton promised to return when the robins next nested, so they apparently don’t nest as often in the States as they do in Japan.

Nice reasoning, Cio-Cio-San.

So three years pass.

At this point, they all know what she doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know. Everybody’s trying to talk Cio-Cio-San into divorcing Pinkerton and marrying the wealthy Prince Yamadori.

Take the Prince! Take the Prince!

But this must be looooovvvvveeeee. Because she says that although the law in Japan might permit it, the law in her new country, America, wouldn’t.

Sharpless reads her a letter from Pinkerton that announces his marriage to an American woman. But Cio-Cio-San has difficulty comprehending (all that cotton between her ears) and then slowly she starts to figure it out.

Only three years too late.

She brings out her big surprise bomb, her and Pinkerton’s little boy. She’s named him Trouble.

Got the name right anyway, Cio-Cio-San.

Then Pinkerton and his American wife arrive in Japan, and come to see Cio-Cio-San. Pinkerton stays outside to talk to Sharpless. Cio-Cio-San, who has been hiding, wonders who this other woman is. Cio-Cio-San comes out of hiding and is polite as she and the American wife introduce themselves.

The American wife leaves and Cio-Cio-San learns from Sharpless that the Pinkertons are willing to adopt the child.

Naturally, she freaks.

Cio-Cio-San sends word to Pinkerton that he should come back by himself in half an hour and get the child.

Things go downhill from there. Cio-Cio-San gets even more freaked out and starts waving her father’s dagger around. She ties a blindfold around her little boy’s eyes, sticks an American flag in his hand, and when Pinkerton comes back, Cio-Cio-San makes herself into a human shish kebab and drops dead. All this before she’s even reached the age of twenty.

Who says opera is boring?

Out of the geisha clogs and into the Adidas. There was no women’s chorus in the last part of the opera, so Tina and I were dressed and out of the theater well before Pinkerton had moaned out his last grief-stricken “Butterfly.” Tina was on her way to the Media Club for a beer with some of the techies and musicians, but I had to go straight home.

I had loads to do before Kurt arrived that night. I’d given him a set of keys to my place. Caroline could get a little bolshie with me if she found out he had keys, but I didn’t care. She was paying less rent for the smaller bedroom, so I considered myself the major shareholder.

I raced up the front steps of my Bute Street building and on into the apartment. Caroline was out I quickly discovered. I gave the place a superficial cleaning. Then I took over the bathroom and set about scrubbing away all the day’s grunge before Kurt arrived. I had a long hot shower, then oiled my body with white-musk scent, put on my pale blue bathrobe and went into the bedroom to wait for him. I fell promptly asleep, damp bathrobe and all.

I was woken by the sensation of warm skin next to mine. Kurt had managed to slip into my room, undress, undo my bathrobe and press up next to me without my waking up. I pulled back and said, “Kurt.” His put his fingers up to his mouth to signal no more words.

I was perfectly prepared to let our bodies do the talking. In the dim lamplight, I studied all of him. He was very tall, with slender but muscular arms and legs, longish blond hair, piercing blue eyes and intelligent mouth. He had an erection, but when I tried to do something about it, he grabbed my wrist, hard, pushed me back down on the bed and began to move all over me with his tongue, exploring hill and dale. Well, more dale than hill. And then finally, when the orgasm swept through me, I realized he’d made me come with his hands. Abruptly and frenetically, he started jerking against me and came himself in a little pool on my stomach.

This wasn’t going at all the way I’d planned.

“Kurt,” I said, “if you’re worried about birth control and such things, I’m prepared for this, you know.” I rummaged in the drawer of my bedside table, pulled out some fresh new high-quality condoms, and held them up triumphantly for him to see.

“Miranda, darling,” began Kurt. “There’s something I have to explain to you. And you must try to understand it. There can and will be all kinds of wonderful sex and marvelous orgasms between the two of us. But I’m a monogamous man. I will never, technically, betray my wife.”

I sat up straighter and stared at him, bewildered.

Kurt took my hands in his. The tiniest hint of tears was welling up in his eyes and in his elegant British accent he said softly, “It won’t be forever. You know that. We just have to be patient. Until Olivia and I have officially divorced, there will be no actual fucking.”

My mind exploded, bursting into the whirling newspaper headlines that used to precede old black-and-white movies.

“SANS PÉNÉTRATION POUR MIRANDA LYME” read Le Figaro.

“MIRANDA LYME NON SCOPA PROPRIO” said Il Corriere della Sera.

“NO ACTUAL FUCKING FOR MIRANDA LYME” roared the New York Times.

Chapter 5

Kurt stayed the night. I forced him to. This technical glitch in my sex life was already depressing me. There was no saying what I might have done if he had left me alone. I might have tried death by mascarpone, or the lemon vodka home-embalming kit.

I was restless all night, slipping in and out of half sleep then jolting awake to stare at Kurt’s motionless form and try to take in this new development. When I finally fell into real sleep, I dreamed that my bed had slid out the window and into the center of a snowy field. I was alone in it. Over the crest of a snowbank, I could hear the frantic sawing of violins, violas and cellos in a galloping rhythm, harmonies that were almost baroque but modern too. A figure appeared on the crest. It was a man. The first thing I noticed about him was his startling long black curly period wig, and as the rest of him appeared over the crest I could see he was dressed in full regalia, with a sumptuous, glittering, gold-and-black-brocade knee-length coat, huge lace cuffs, silk britches and shoes with a dainty heel. At first his face was blank but as he came closer it morphed between Kurt’s face and my father’s. The music seemed to be emanating from his fabulous coat.

The sounds then became visible, forming around the man into gold droplets that hung suspended on the air then floated downward like sparkling rain. I crawled off the bed and through the snow toward him and began to gather up the droplets. But I had no pockets, nowhere to put the droplets. I was wearing a nightgown, a simple white muslin nightgown of the type opera heroines wear during the mad scenes, for dementia arias. The man started to laugh. He roared and guffawed and slapped his thigh and I realized it was me he was laughing at. He wouldn’t stop and I began to whimper.

“Miranda. Miranda. Wake up. You’re dreaming.” Kurt shook me furiously.

I opened my eyes and rubbed them. I had a moment of disorientation then said, “God, Kurt, I think I just dreamed Lully.”

“You mean Lully the composer?”

I nodded. “Jean-Baptiste Lully. The Sun King’s court composer.”

“How very peculiar.”

“He was dressed in Louis XIV period costume, but it was more than a costume, they were his clothes. Beautiful strange music was coming out of his coat.”

“Too much cheese and crackers before bed, Miranda.”

I ignored him. “I think I wanted to yank the coat off him, too. I wanted to wear it myself. It was gorgeous. I’ve got to try to remember the music…” I faced Kurt. “He looked like you, you know. And my father. Alternately.”

“Good Lord. I certainly hope I’m not going to meet the same end as Lully.”

“What end?”

“Well, my love, the foolish chap punctured his foot while banging time with a conducting staff, during a performance of a piece celebrating Louis’ recovery from an illness. Lully wouldn’t have the injured toe cut off and so died of gangrene poisoning. Silly sod.”

“I think we better not analyze this one too deeply,” I said.

“No, let’s analyze something pleasant. Like your body.” Kurt wrapped himself around me and started all over again, hands and tongue working me over until I was reduced to an orgasmic mush. After he’d finished with me and I lay there unable to move, he said, “It’s all going to be just fine. Wait and see. And remember, it’s not going to be forever. Find a nice little gay friend to entertain you when we’re not together. That’s what Olivia always did.”

But from one last untouched cell of me, a shady all-knowing brain cell, a bubble of anger floated up. “I don’t know, Kurt. It’s all wrong,” I admitted.

“It will be fine. You really must learn to be patient, my love,” he soothed, and began to touch me again.

This time it was a competition to see who could make the other experience the most sensations. I did my very best but I think Kurt won. Again, I was paralyzed.

“Okay, okay, I surrender,” I whispered.

My entire body felt like sluggish liquid as I poured myself out of bed and fumbled with my dressing gown. In my head, the words it won’t be forever repeated themselves over and over. I looked back at Kurt. He was propped up on one elbow, admiring me, his face filled with happiness. How could I not believe somebody as gorgeous and talented and famous as that, somebody who adored me with all but one appendage?

At 9:05 the next morning, I was dressed and staring at myself in my full-length bedroom mirror. Pointy blue reptile cowgirl boots, La Perla tights with blue roses printed on a gray background, short jeans skirt and jacket, hair in a ponytail. Behind me, the bed, the IKEA bed I’d rushed out and bought because I couldn’t entertain Kurt on my old student-style foam-rubber floor mattress, was empty. The only trace of Kurt was the snowy battlefield of rumpled sheets.

It was important not to obsess about this new tic of his. Concentrate, I told myself, concentrate on Matilde.

I switched on the electric keyboard and sang a few soft scales, then moved on to some louder ones. When my voice was warmed up, I let loose with the kind of high notes that remind the neighbors in the surrounding square mile that there’s an opera singer in the zone. Just so they didn’t forget.

Sounds of ransacking from the kitchen made me stop singing. I hurried from the bedroom, increased speed down the hallway, skidding to a halt just in time to see it. Caroline had her head in the fridge. Her friend, Dan the Sasquatch, was sitting at the kitchen table. He was the hairiest individual I’d ever seen. He also had the habit of mooching around without a shirt. It was enough to put you off your food.

At my 1950s aluminum-sided raspberry Formica kitchen table, Dan the Sasquatch was smoking his strange little rollies. Caroline knew this was a nonsmoking apartment. I’d been adamant. But for some reason I couldn’t fathom, the Sasquatch was The One, right down to his dreadlocks. He was the man she’d break all the rules for.

He forever rolled those little cigarettes too loose. Tiny curls of tobacco sparked and leaped out of the lit end and landed on his furry chest. I had this fear that one morning, when Caroline wasn’t there, he’d catch fire and I’d have to put him out, throw water on him, stamp on him, or roll him in my favorite rug, ruining my one threadbare but lovely kilim. Or worse, that he’d burn my place down.

Not that it would have been a huge loss. Despite my craving for more luxurious conditions, all my furnishings were misfits given to me by friends on the move, or other singers off to other gigs on the other side of the country. I dreamed of a gorgeous home put together bit by bit with a sense of style and real money. But it was futile. If one of those big-city jobs came through—if I got the call from Toronto, or San Francisco or New York or London, or, the dream of all singers, La Scala in Milan—I could hardly say, “Sorry, I can’t come and do your season. I have antiques now.”

So most of my furnishings were classic. Classic inflatable plastic armchair. Classic stacked cardboard-box bookshelves brightened up with MACtac and ready to be closed and moved across the country at a moment’s notice.

From deep in the fridge came Caroline’s voice, intellectual and teasing. “Strawberries…mangoes…peppered chèvre…Brie…Camembert…stuffed artichokes…smoked salmon…caviar…well, aren’t we quite the little aristocrat.”

“I don’t think that my food choices are quite enough to qualify me for a noble title,” I laughed.

“Miranda. You’re not going to eat all that yourself? Or are you on a campaign to become one of those really fat sopranos? Don’t they say it improves the voice?”

“Nice if it were that easy,” I said. “I could eat my way to success.”

She continued, “Better hurry up and eat it or it’ll go bad.” She and the Sasquatch exchanged amused hungry glances.

“It’s for a party. I’m having some people over for dinner tonight.”

She turned to face me, crossed her arms and frowned. “Well. Thanks a lot for inviting me, Miranda. For telling me even. Very diplomatic.”

“Don’t be a grouch, Caroline. It was a last-minute thing. If you’re around, please join us. I just thought you’d be bored. You don’t really like my opera friends.”

“No, but I love the food they’re always stuffing their faces with.”

“You come, too, Dan,” I said reluctantly. Then I blurted out, “Just do me one small favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t touch anything until dinnertime. At least, let me get it all onto a plate, let my guests see it presented, cooked maybe even.”

Caroline made a face. “What do you think I am? Some kind of barbarian?”

“Yeah. A bolshie, punkophile, grunge-bucket, tree-hugging barbarian.”

Caroline grinned at me and then at the Sasquatch. “I think she’s got me pegged quite nicely, don’t you, Dan?”

The Sasquatch said nothing. He took a drag of his cigarette and blew out a huge plume of smoke. Our disapproval was mutual. He’d never really warmed to me, either.

But I knew they were pleased. They’d scored some free trough time and a party. Caroline and her friends were artists of the low-budget lifestyle. When they weren’t waving no-global placards outside an international summit, they were being “resourceful.” I’d watched her and the Sasquatch work their way through the lineup at the university cafeteria, swallowing food as they moved forward so that by the time they got to the cash register, they had one measly item each to pay for. She’d justified this method by stating that half of that food went into the garbage anyway, that it was all about manipulating market values. If something could be obtained for free or with a minor criminal infraction, she knew all about it.

Caroline wasn’t stupid, and although she gave the impression of ugliness, she wasn’t ugly either. But the way she dressed (lumberjack shirts, frayed jeans and army-surplus boots) was a big part of her personal statement, and the statement said, “Grotty underbelly rules,” which did not exactly enhance her feminine potential.

I still ribbed her about the day she answered my ad, the day she tricked me into thinking she’d be a nice dull dor-mouse of a roommate. It must have been the ugly tortoise-shell thick-lensed glasses (that she’s never worn since), her brown hair in a neat ponytail (now her hair is always wild or full of messy cornrows), the long boring black skirt, flat sensible shoes and heap of political science books. That’s what did it. I’d thought she was going to be a quiet, mature, proper little nerd, a career spinster, someone who had no life and spent all her time in the library preparing to win scholarships, so I’d never see her. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

Caroline said, “See you later then.”

I grabbed my knapsack. “Later,” I said, and left the apartment.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and as I walked I couldn’t help but take in the gold-leafed trees and deep shimmering October sky.

And then I had a moment of panic. If Kurt and Olivia actually divorced according to plan, maybe next year at this time my autumn would be a London autumn. A Kurt autumn. He was getting under my skin in all ways but one. Except for the first big heart-crusher of my life, I’d always had a high immunity to absent boyfriends, not giving them more than a few seconds of wistful reflection once they were out the door. It was a safety mechanism I’d worked hard at developing and now Kurt had shot it all to hell.

I sank into a daydream, the one where I ask myself, “What would woman X do in my situation? For example, if her man offered her the deluxe hot dog—mustard, ketchup, chili, bacon bits, sauerkraut, mayonnaise, cheese—with everything but the dog itself, would woman X accept those terms?”

Well, that’s what happens when you come from an illustrious cow town. You look around for mentors.

Such as Ellie Watson, the soprano from our production of Madama Butterfly, what would she do in my situation? It was a toughie. Since it was unlikely that Kurt would fall for someone like Ellie Watson, who had a gorgeous voice, and a pretty face really, but needed three airplane seats to be comfortable, but suppose, just suppose he had a thing for really big women and it had been somebody like Ellie and not me he had encountered in that broom closet two weeks ago.

Now, Ellie Watson didn’t take flack from anyone. She knew exactly what she wanted from life and she grabbed it. She was from Liverpool. She’d always had the great voice, the voice with the money notes, the good high Cs. All through her childhood, she’d honed her skills by singing for money in pubs and passing the hat. Then she’d moved on to local talent nights and kept on going until she was accepted into a famous English music school where she ate, drank and breathed opera.

Ellie was greedy, in the best sense of the word. When she took the stage, she really took it, making everybody else seem invisible. Well, almost everybody else. Peter Drake, the tenor who sang Pinkerton, was Ellie’s only obstacle. She didn’t like having to share the stage with another diva.

If Kurt had proposed to Ellie what he’d proposed to me, i.e. neutered sex, she would have said something like, “No actual shaggin’? ME BOLLOCKS!” and booted him out of her bed.

In the studio, Lance was going back over the takes we’d already done. He was wearing earphones and mouthing the words along with the characters on the screen. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and smiled. “It’s good, Miranda. Here, listen to yourself.” He placed the headset on my ears.

I listened for a few beats then said, “It’s not bad, is it?”

“C’mon, sweetheart, let’s bury Matilde. You warmed up?”

“Give me a minute,” I said, and began to pace, first humming then breaking into scales.

Lance leaned against the wall. He was studying me. I stopped and said, “What?”

“No…it’s nothing.” But he was still studying me.

Then I remembered Kurt’s advice from that morning. A nice little gay friend, somebody who could keep me company when he wasn’t there.

“Before I forget, Lance. I’m having some people over to my place tonight. Sort of a dinner party except I don’t have a big enough table, so it’s perch wherever you can. I know you’re probably too busy or I would have asked you earlier, but it would be really great if you could come. You have my address and my number. Come later if you like. For dessert.”

I’d always wanted to invite Lance to my parties but didn’t know whether they’d be his speed. I had no idea what his speed was. I’d never partied with him. I’d developed this weird intimacy with him in the darkness of the studio but I’d never seen him away from work. I wondered if he had a life away from work.

He nodded thoughtfully, then said, “C’mon, we’re running behind schedule.”

Matilde and her swineherd hurtled toward their demise, moaning, gasping, singing and generally porking their way around the rest of Paris until they were caught by the homely wife, hacked up and turned into quite a few kilos of nice link sausages and sold for a good price at the market.

When we’d finished, Lance reached out and rested his hand on my shoulder. His tone was serious. “I know, Miranda. It’s peculiar work. It’s not glorious and you want more limelight than this, and someday very soon you’re going to dump me cold so that you can become famous.”

Quicker than you know, I thought.

“But we’ve done a good job,” he said. “We’re close to finishing. I’ll let you know if we have to do some retakes.”

I tried never to telegraph my impatience, but Lance must have sensed it anyway, even in the darkness. In my early years in the city, the university years, I’d been so happy, so grateful to have those jobs that were somehow related to singing and got me a little closer to where I thought I should be going.

But that morning, I felt boxed in. I had the sensation of being in a cage, of suffering the same indignities as a captured parrot. Someone forced to learn words in another creature’s language, on the verge of forgetting the dreams and dialects that expressed life in the lush, raw, blazing freedom of the Amazonian jungle, now far away.

The Amazonian was the other Miranda in me. The wild, restless, unsatisfied one, age thirteen and obedient to no one, who heard Bach and Mozart and Brahms and Verdi and wondered how to unlock the secrets of that music, how to devour all the sounds in the universe, wrestle with them, make them hers, and then pour them back out to the world.

I took a quick run over to Mike’s for a double caffe latte refresher and to check my work schedule. I’d asked for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. Mike had said he’d try to talk another girl into working my shifts but he wasn’t sure he could manage it. The other girl was Belinda, his latest girlfriend. They’d been seeing each other for two months and the bloom of the romance was starting to fade. Belinda was sulking.

Mike had gone to the bank. And other than a customer, she was alone. She slapped the customer’s cappuccino down so hard that the liquid gave a little bounce and slopped out onto the saucer. The guy started to protest but she froze him with a look and walked away.

I was overdue for a short visit to Cold Shanks. Even though it was just a long bus ride away, my life had been so busy that I hadn’t been back since last Christmas.

I needed Belinda badly. I approached her cautiously. “Hi, Belinda,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Prick, prick, prick!”

“Excuse me. Did I miss something?”

I followed Belinda into the kitchen. She began unloading the dishwasher, crashing everything down as hard as possible. She was a redhead, ethereal and nervous, with short, lank, baby-fine hair. Normally, her skin was pale and transparent, but that day, it was bright pink with anger. “I just can’t believe him.”

“What’s he done?” I asked.

“Mr. Smooth, eh? It’s so nuts. Sooo nuts, I can’t believe I’m in the middle of all this.”