Tales of the City 01 - Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

you dare suggest one of those mellowed-out Marin types. Underneath all that hair and patchouli beats the heart of a true pig. I’ve been that route.”
    “What can I say?”
    “Nothing. Not a damned thing.”
    “I love you a lot, Mona.”
    “I know, I know.”
    “For what it’s worth … sometimes I wish that were enough.”
    Two hours later, they left hand in hand, parting a Red Sea of naked male bodies.
    They ate dinner at Pier 54, boogied briefly at Buzzby’s, and arrived back at Barbary Lane at ten-thirty.
    Mary Ann passed them on the stairs.
    “How was your weekend?” asked Mona.
    “Fine.”
    “You go away?”
    “Up north. With a friend from school.”
    “Have you met Michael Tolliver, my new roommate?”
    “No, I …”
    “Yes.” Michael smiled. “I believe we have.”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t …”
    “The Marina Safeway.”
    “Oh … yes. How are you?”
    “Hangin’ in there.”
    Back at the apartment, Mona asked, “You met Mary Ann at a supermarket?”
    Michael smiled ruefully. “She tried to pick up Robert.”
    “You see?” said Mona. “You see?”

Miss Singleton Dines Alone
    A FTER UNPACKING HER SUITCASE, MARY ANN PAD ded restlessly through her apartment in the pink quilted bathrobe her mother had sent her from the Ridgemont Mall.
    She haled Sunday nights.
    When she was a little girl, Sunday nights had meant only one thing: unfinished homework.
    That’s how she felt now. Anxious, guilty, frightened of recriminations that were certain to follow. Beauchamp Day was homework she should have finished. She would pay for it. Sooner or later.
    She decided to pamper herself.
    She quick-thawed a pork chop under the faucet, wondering if it was sacrilegious to Shake ‘n Bake meat from Marcel & Henri.
    Lighting a spice candle on the parsons table in the living room, she dug out her Design Research cloth napkins, her wood-handled stainless flatware, her imitation Dansk china, and her ceramic creamer shaped like a cow.
    Solitude was no excuse for sloppiness.
    She scrounged in the kitchen for a vegetable. There was nothing but a Baggie full of limp lettuce and a half-eaten package of Stouffer’s Spinach Soufflé. She decided on cottage cheese with chives.
    She supped by candlelight, bent over a Ms. article entitled “The Quest for Multiple Orgasm.” Music was provided by KCBS-FM, the mellow station:
Out of work, I’m out of my head.
Out of self-respect,
I’m out of bread,
Underloved and underfed,
I wanna go home …
It never rains in California,
But, girl, don’t they warn ya.
It pours, man, it pours.
    After dinner, she decided to try the “monster mask” formula from her herbal cosmetics book. She cooked a saucepan of the glop—using oatmeal, dried prunes and an overripe fig—and smeared it relentlessly over her face.
    For twenty minutes, she lay perfectly still in a sudsy tub.
    She could feel the mask drying, chipping off in gross, leprous flakes and sinking into the water above her chest. This would kill another ten minutes. Then what?
    She could write her parents.
    She could fill out her application to the Sierra Club.
    She could walk down to Cost Plus and buy another coffee mug.
    She could call Beauchamp.
    Lurching out of the bathtub like a reject from a Japanese horror film, she examined her face in the mirror.
    She looked like a giant Shake ‘n Bake pork chop.
    And for what?
    For Dance Your Ass Off? For Mr. Halcyon? For Michael Whatshisname downstairs? For a married man who mutters strange names in his sleep?
    She would not call him. The love he offered was deceitful, destructive and dead-end.
    He would have to call her.
    She fell asleep just before midnight, with Nicholas and Alexandra in her lap.
    Over on Telegraph Hill, DeDe was eyeing Beauchamp malevolently as he adjusted the ship’s clock in the library.
    “I talked to Splinter today.”
    He didn’t look up. “Mmm.”
    “Apparently he had forgotten about your little Guardsmen function on Mount Tam.”
    “Oh, well