Green Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bambi has no mommy. The mean hunter has a sexy glint in his eyes. This is why she cannot forget HIM. HE was not fooled by her face of innocence, by her pale pinchedness. HE used her and abused her and she begs for a repeat of this experience. When HE would come over for their nocturnal couplings she would plead for HIM to destroy her, murder her, pound her back into the nothingness from which she began and which she knew deep down she would inevitably return.
     
    She hadn’t known she had desired a beast. Someone to destroy her.
     
    That first meeting ended in bruises that she would lovingly watch yellow over the weeks.
     
    The rain lets up. It will descend again soon. She wanders down the cobblestoned streets of Soho, past the dark sticky alleys of peepshows girl mannequins blankly bearing whips naked boy mannequins wearing plastic grins holding hands of other boy mannequins. Glass windows revealing rows of pastries crowned with whipped cream.
     
    She walks past a shop she had worked at when she first came to London. Ruth had liked the idea of working in a sex shop, the vulgar aspect of it. She liked to slum, to place herself in humiliating circumstances. She didn’t know why. The work itself was rather dreary, shelving bottles of lubricant, lining up dildos like wriggly, neon soldiers, picking up handcuffs from the floor, ringing up meekish customers, alone or in pairs.
     
    The manager at the sex shop gave Ruth the creeps. Thin, oily, folded into a crisp suit, a handlebar mustache tickling tight lips. When he walked her around giving her the tour, he seemed to get satisfaction out of trying to shock her. Does it bother you to look at this? He would point to a TV monitor showing a long black penis sliding into a gaping red hole, in and out, in and out. A headshake no. How about this? A phantom penis ejaculated like splattered candle wax over a brunette’s massive breasts, as she groaned and writhed about. Trying to shock the American girl with the innocent face and the little girl voice.
     
    We’ll try you out he had said to her. As if he was a pimp and she was a prostitute. We’ll try you out. A trial period. We’ll see if you like us and if we like you. That’s what they always say—but what they really mean is we’ll see if we like you. The part about you liking them is actually immaterial. And one learns not to care. One learns to deaden oneself and to hold one’s breath and wait until it’s all done with. This is Ruth’s philosophy for many aspects of her life.
     
    She had lasted at the sex shop for two weeks. She hadn’t even picked up her paycheck. Ruth had a talent for quitting jobs. Often she would simply not show up, and then they would call and call and she would erase and erase the urgent where-are-yous. She has even been known to just walk out. Oh, the freedom of just walking out, the no-thanks, the not-for-me, the push of the door and pull back into herself.
     
     

What I am writing is something more than mere invention; it is my duty to relate everything about this girl among thousands of others like her. It is my duty, however unrewarding, to confront her with her own existence.
     
    — Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
     
     

Dreaded Saturday crowds. The grandiose door spits shoppers in, spits shoppers out. They are indistinct. They come in waves. An exodus of
the masses.
     
    Walking down the row women poised like flierers handing out scented sticks of paper.
     
    Desire? Care to try? Desire? Desire? Plastered smile, pink ornament of pastel scent at attention. Ruth does not even register the constant throb of gloves and shoes and clipping walks. She feels the pastel globe weigh on her hand. It is covered in silver netting, which pierces her palm.
     
    She has to display this bottle of perfume at chest height for an indeterminate period of time, like those Vanna Whites displaying prizes on game shows, a spokesmodel who only has one line to speak, until the powers-that-be allow