Desperate times call for desperate measures. I was eating goat milk ice cream at Veggie Kingdom when I first saw Anya. It was 1979. A petite woman in her early thirties walked from table to table smiling demurely--shoulder-length blonde hair cascaded in soft waves about a pretty, perky face with an upturned nose--she looked like a cross between Michelle Pfeiffer and Lady of Lady and the Tramp. "That's Anya," someone said. The most incredible dress floated about her slight frame, layer upon irregular layer of pale blue chiffon, perforated throughout with holes, biggish ones, as if someone or something had once been trapped inside and punched its way out. "That's Anya Steppes," continued the man at the next table. "I love her dress," I said. "It's a replica of the native costume of Venus." "Venus?" I blurted out. He leaned over his soy grit stroganoff. "Yes, Venus--for Anya's a walk-in."

"What's a walk-in? Is that somebody who comes in without a reservation?" He smiled at me with his dark smudged hair, his graphite eyes, infinitely patient. He had an unusually high forehead, like Eraserhead, but cute. My hand reached toward him through the bright vegetarian air and our pointer fingers touched with a spark like the fingers of those burly naked gods in that famous, who did it, da Vinci, Michelangelo? "Hi, I'm Carla, Carla Moran." "Yes," he nodded knowingly, "I'm Steven. A walk-in is an enlightened soul who returns to Earth by taking over the body of a lesser soul who no longer wishes to inhabit it. The enlightened soul meets with the unhappy soul on the astral plane and says, 'Hey, I can help you out.' And so the body survives a suicide or a violent accident, then reawakens with the walk-in soul who works to raise the consciousness of mankind. Lots of geniuses and humanitarians through the years were walk-ins--Albert Schweitzer, Benjamin Franklin, Beethoven, the guy who invented the atom bomb. Anya took over the body of a twelve-year-old girl--from Tennessee--who died in a car wreck."

I swallowed the last spoonful of goat milk ice cream, it had a gamy afterbite like buckwheat or deer, but you got used to it, "Wow!" "Anya's an advanced soul--very advanced--here to bring the ancient spiritual teaching of Venus to Earth--she's written a book about it, One Touch of Venus." Later I would sleep with Steven, later I would hear of Anya dancing on a table in a leopard-skin bodysuit, cleavage Venusians never dreamed of, later I would hear how she fucked like a big blonde cat, clawing and screeching from Venus she came--but that first time in Veggie Kingdom I was so starstuck I dropped my water glass--CRASH--Anya turned toward me and her blue dress twirled with her, thin and translucent as dragonfly wings.

Steven put me on the mailing list of The Venusian Tattler, a newsletter that would keep me abreast of Anya's radio and TV appearances. "If astronauts landed on Venus," Anya'd tell her avid or skeptical host, "it would appear empty--save to the most enlightened--because Venus exists on a higher vibratory rate than here on Earth. We, the creative, evolved inhabitants of Venus all have blue eyes and blonde hair. Life on Venus is more permeable than on your planet--that's why this dress I'm wearing is full of holes." I learned from Anya that life "on the physical" is but a phase and therefore thoughts are actions--and that Jesus Christ was a lower initiate who diluted the Venusian teachings to match the (lower) consciousness of his era. On Venus, people could walk through trees or visit shimmering temples filled with all the great books that ever have been or ever will be written. Venusians didn't need to read these books--through osmotic transference their higher selves were directly linked to the wisdom of the universe. I placed a copy of One Touch of Venus under my pillow--in my little flat on Valparaiso Street in San Francisco's North Beach--so that while I slept its secret teachings would drift into my etheric body and I would understand with a depth that I never before dreamed possible. The inner Anya knew this, knew that I was tuned into the higher vibrations of her late-night talk-radio chatter, knew that I was ready to take the next step. The following Thursday night, Friday morning, really, I wrapped myself in my pink chenille bathrobe and switched on my "portable" Zenith radio, black and chrome it was, mono, built like a tank. Anya flirted with the DJ as usual. I propped a pillow against the wall, leaned back in my bed and lit a cigarette, comforted by her high bell-like giggles. "You're some far-out chick," the DJ punned. "Rapping with you's like taking a hit of acid with a sinsemilla chaser!" Anya's voice deepened, thickened like storm clouds. "Drugs and cigarettes burn holes in your aura," she declared. "Holes where demons burrow!" I was smoking two packs of Merits a day and lots of grass and then there were those mushrooms my roommate brought back from Mexico and the blotter acid I dropped before the Sarah Vaughan concert and the MDA I took by mistake . . . my poor astral body! Punctured and ravaged as a slab of charred swiss cheese! I felt light-headed, lightened by decay, invisible claws caressed my throat, invisible lips whispered sinful seductions. I grabbed the radio for support, its antenna quivered in the chilly, deathly still air. "Before you know it," continued Anya, "you're a nymphomaniac food-junkie alcoholic druggy, feeding the ravenous desires that keep demons clinging to our planet." Oh no! I took one last drag and threw my cigarette out the window. It spun like a falling star to the playground below.

I pulled One Touch of Venus out from under my pillow and looked up "demons" in the index. There was a column and a half of entries! Demons, auras: Demons wear binoculars around their necks to spot new holes in your aura, will use every trick in the book money flesh cares of this world persecution to get their fix. Demons, interruptions:WAAAH! Straight to hell you'll go an elevator, a demon's blazing finger pushing the buttons. Demons, language: The vilest grunts vomit from their mouths, snarls too obscene to be translated into English--imagine construction workers' mouths raised to the highest power--every word in the demon's lexicon is obscene, as is their grammar, their punctuation, their dingbats, their typography which is now your druggy lexicon your cigarette grammar your punctuation your dingbats. Every exclamation point is a rape-fuck!!!!!! Demon-sprache is blotched with underlines italics outline roman bold, putrid indecipherable swirls and stars--demons slap their foreheads, bug or scrunch their eyes, point to their temples and stick out their tongues; excretions bubble forth. MAN OH MAN @#!!!** HEY WOW! Pod-shaped bodies, waddling blobs of emotional cacophony, "AWK!" when the Devil chastises one, he clenches the edge of a paragraph, hands and feet poking into the margin, toes crimped under like odious question marks, halo of sweat, jack-o'-lantern mouth ripped open, "GULP OHHH NOOO AIEEEE!" Arms scrawny and naked as plucked chickens.

I flushed my cigarettes, grass, and diet pills down the toilet and went after Steven like a steamroller. Steven ran the Golden Gate Venusian Study Group, which met every Wednesday evening in the basement of Noe Valley Ministry. A thousand-holed white ceiling, fluorescent lights gleaming across the speckled linoleum floor, dark fiberboard paneling, de-humidifier humming in the corner, a handful of seekers sitting in folding chairs in a circle, eyes closed, chanting the secret Venusian mantra oooohh-hoooooo-aaiIIIIIIIIIIi-eeeEEEEE-AAAHHHNNNNNNNNN-YYYAAAAAAAHHHH-oooohh-hoooooo-aaiIIIIIIIIIIi-eeeEEEEE-AAAHHHNNNNNNNNN-YYYAAAAAAAHHHH-oooohh-hoooooo-aaiIIIIIIIIIIi-eeeEEEEE-AAAHHHNNNNNNNNN. When we opened our eyes the room looked slightly blurred--brighter, lighter, the air effervescent with spiritual energy. Steven was high-vibed and businesslike, never gave me the time of day. He seemed to favor this other woman, Marsha--Marsha who was always acting so syrupy holy in her puff-sleeved dresses, well I could see right through that holiness of hers, it had more holes in it than the ceiling. Desperate times call for desperate measures--one Wednesday evening I showed up in my seduction outfit: low-slung bell-bottoms that barely covered the crack of my ass and my soft, fuzzy baby blue cardigan. It was tight enough to gape open, with a plunging V-neck. No bra. When I wore this sweater to the food stamp place, the guy gave me a month's worth without even asking to see my ID. I lingered after the meeting as Steven put away the folding chairs, his hair was still darkly smudged, his eyes still graphite. Large, clumsy hands I found endearing. "Carla, can I help you?" he asked. "Yes," I said, batting my Maybelline eyes. "Steven, it's just that there are certain aspects of the Venusian educational system," dramatic pause, heavy eye contact, "that I just can't grasp." And so it began. His cock was large and his fucking was relentless and cold, it hurt like hell not HELL!!! I closed my eyes and imagined I was dying in a blazing plane crash and Steven's cock was a walk-in breaking through the physical barrier. His cum would fill me with glory and enlightenment.

Steven was a Vietnam vet, which I found way romantic, all that intensity. He drove for City Cab, but his dream vocation was to sketch tourists' portraits at Fisherman's Wharf. He already had a much-coveted street vendor's license. Once when we were brunching at Zim's he drew me on a napkin, a jagged cartoon woman with vertical slashes for hair, "But it doesn't look like me." Steven's heavy brows furrowed, he reached across his eggs Benedict, took my hand, "It's your inner self." Steven eventually gave up representation--he didn't want to be tied to the physical--and began painting bright biomorphic masses that floated around one another like jigsaw pieces suspended in Jell-O. Depending upon their colors they were called "Life," "Soul," "Etheric," or "Serenity." He also made mobiles, the same blobby shapes cut from cardboard boxes, painted with Day-Glo acrylic, and hung from twisted coat hangers--the air flowing between the forms, he said, was Spirit directing their movements. For our second date he picked me up at 5 a.m. in his cab and we drove to the Bay to watch the sun rise. Steven shuddered, remembering the rats in Vietnam, rats as big as cats we were souls inhabiting human bodies, we told each other, with enough spiritual discipline we could break the bonds of this plane, visit the wisdom temples, the white deserts of Venus my heart, like the horizon, turned golden, pink, extravagant.

I had a master's degree, but I was still a child, I'd had sex maybe twenty times with fifteen men, but never a boyfriend. When, after a couple of months, Steven announced he no longer wanted to fuck me, I started crying. I'd always been willing, I even kind of liked it why why why why why why... "Steven," I pleaded, "what did I do wrong?" "Nothing, Carla, you did nothing, it's just that after Anya, Earth women just don't do it for me, or not for long, that's all." Anya, Anya, Anya! Long ago she'd moved to Berlin, Anya didn't even send him postcards anymore but he would never move onto me, how bland I must seem how nothing beside Anya's Venusian tantra, her extraterrestrial tricks. I sniveled, my lower lip trembling like the San Andreas Fault. He pulled a hanky from his pocket and handed it to me, it was large and white and so soft. "Steven!" I wailed. "Don't worry," he said, taking me in his arms, "there's no reason we still can't sleep together, we just won't fuck, and I'll wear my jockeys." And that's just what we did, sort of. I hated those jockeys, standing between me and his creamy flesh vile cotton like Tristan and Isolde's sword. I continued to sleep naked, to spite them. Steven would wait for a perfect moment of unwillingness, when I was asleep or pissed off--the jockeys would vanish and he'd crawl on top, force my legs apart and bang into me so hard my guts sloshed upward squishing my lungs BREATH as he climaxed he yelled out, "What is happening...to me!!!!" Then he rolled over and we never talked about it. Once I inadvertently came too, "That was great!" I exclaimed to his back. Steven turned around, his face skewed with disgust, "You treat me like I'm your stud."

Heterosexuality continues to this day to surprise me, the things men present to you as normal I wondered what was wrong with me that Steven didn't want to fuck me if a demon bites you teeth marks appear on inaccessible parts of your body, wounds you couldn't possibly have inflicted yourself white-coated attendants rush in and strap your wrists to the bed, across your chart the shrink scrawls HYSTERIA on my back, legs open...body-heat bearing down on me, a bellowing boiling cloud, steam tunneled into my cunt scorching clit and lungs, I spread wider what heaven this brimstone and moaned, "Steven your thrusts are out of this world." No answer. Then I remembered Steven's at work and I'm alone in the bed or should be a body I couldn't see was fucking the shit out of me the thickness of touch demon fingers palpated my breasts, indentations dappling across my chest like magic sparse bristles on back, lines of energy rippling along calves and forearms, hairless armpits, no genitals, demon noses are long as dicks blow-dryers hidden beneath their nostrils crystallize the moisture in your cunt so that a nose rammed up there chafes and shreds the parched flesh OUCH! When a demon fucks you with its dildo-nose it comes with a big ACHOO snot for semen there isn't time for birth control not a minute still it took me a full six months to become pregnant.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.

After the abortion I started going to a holistic therapist named Donna, a cute woman with shiny brown shoulder-length hair and a chipper smile. She was older than I but still not very old. These are some of the things I never told her about: Steven my fear of being locked in public rest rooms trapped alive Anya my terror of falling asleep of turtleneck sweaters of potlucks of salt shakers and sugar jars in restaurants of people on drugs of catching their highs and what if my hands took on a will of their own. My elevator phobia: I would arrive fifteen minutes early, trudge up the six flights to her office, dawdle in the hall until I quit panting. "You look so exotic in those blue earrings," she'd coo. "What adventures has life brought you this week?" "Oh nothing in particular." "Noth-ing?" Deeper and deeper did I hunch into the white wicker armchair with its cheerful floral cushion, tainted and abject, my lips a trembling wall of nondisclosure. My eyes traced the arabesques of the oriental rug on the floor. Donna stared at me, her face pleasant and blank until I finally blurted out, "I throw up." "Throw up?" "Yes." "I'm all ears," she chirped. I babbled on about how I was vomiting at least twice a day and it had been over a year--the weight loss was great, I felt intense and sexy, like Joan Jett--but I read about all these women with rotting teeth. She listened, therapeutically silent, then cocked her head and said, "What sign are you?" "Aquarius." Her head shot erect, shiny brown hair jiggling against the lace collar of her blouse, "Yes." Some planet was imminently moving into some house, "So you see," she chimed, "when you're ready to give it up your bulimia will drop away." We decided to focus on something positive. Donna hypnotized me and we found a safe spot on my thigh that I could touch whenever I felt afraid.

The following week she was unusually somber. Her green eyes raced up and down my body like a bar code scanner, then she pointed a finger at me and intoned, "Demonic possession!" She grabbed the silver fairy ball that dangled from her neck on a velvet cord and began rubbing it quickly, the shiny silver ball rolled about between her pert little breasts reflecting the room, reflecting me like a third wide-angle eyeball, its tiny clapper tinkling erratically as if the fairy inside were having an epileptic attack. "Vomiting is your soul's way of telling you to get rid of something, only until now you hadn't figured out what." DEMONS!!!! I hadn't smoked cigarettes or done any drugs for nearly nine months, these holes in my astral body, would they ever heal? Silently I chanted oooohh-hoooooo-aaiIIIIIIIIIIi-eeeEEEEE-AAAHHHNNNNNNNNN-YYYAAAAAAAHHHH. "Have you," I queried timidly, "considered hysteria?" According to Donna, depression and possession go hand in hand--demons crowd your head, causing your brain to swell and press against the skull like water-weight, like psychic PMS. "Let's do a little spring cleaning!" I close my eyes and she tells me that my arm is weightless, that helium balloons are lifting it. When my outstretched arm floats in front of me she says, "Demons, can you hear me?" I nod. "Demons, when you died you should have passed quickly to the Other Side, but something went wrong and now you're lost between worlds. I'm here to help you find the way home." Behind my eyelids there is only mottled black, I squint and try to focus these confused beings, whom I imagine to be elongated and wavering. "If you look really hard, you should be able to see a light. Can you see it?" The demons nod. "You don't belong with Carla, you belong with your friends and family who are waiting for you in that light, let go of Carla's aura, walk toward the light. Are they walking?" I nod. "Say goodbye." My floating arm bobs up and down. "Have a nice afterlife, demons. Carla, when I count to ten, you'll be fully conscious and refreshed." But I hadn't seen anything, no lights, no demons, no nothing I failed my OWN exorcism at home I ate a pint of Chocolate Fudge Swirl and threw it up. As I wiped the sweet acidic froth from my mouth I thought I heard someone or something mutter you're going to pay for your big fucking mouth but when I turned there was nothing, nothing but air.

That night Steven took me to the Royal to see The Entity. Invisible forces pummel a female torso, tiny craters dimple across the breasts but it doesn't really look like human flesh, more like the impressions made by your finger when you poke a ball of yeast dough, soft hollows that of their own accord rise back up. But Barbara Hershey is great, so convincing as her body is rhythmically slammed against the bed the couch the wall AIEEEE AWK! Scientists trap the demon in a mountain of liquid nitrogen, but it breaks out. Afterward Steven said, "Want to go to Sweet Creations? My treat." "Sure!" As we crossed Polk Street he wrapped his arm around my waist, and I wriggled my hand into the back pocket of his Levi's. From a car radio Phil Collins crooned about something in the air tonight. And he was right, something was in the air, a clarity, a heightened charge--I could feel it in the way the concrete sparkled beneath the streetlights, in the aurora borealis of water standing along the curb, in the way the sky sprawled upward and outward forever, a vivid midnight blue. Three-dimensionality seemed to be swelling and stretching like a huge wad of bubble gum, and when it popped a whole new realm would spew forth, a realm filled with harmony and love. The infrared heat of Steven's ass cupping my open palm. Minutes later I spotted the chubby cherubs that frolicked across Sweet Creations' window--damn!!!--I wasn't ready to break free of Steven's body, wanted to curl myself around him even tighter, like a serpent in Eden. We entered the tiny health food bakery, ordered at the counter and took a window seat, the thick sweet scent of honey infusing our hair, our clothes, our words. Steven reached across the table and covered my hand with his large clumsy claw. His electric warmth zapped along my arm and into my cunt ooohh I gnawed my leaden sesame cookie and smiled and basked. His dark eyes seemed to glow with new light intoxicating eyes a world map spread across the wall behind him, the tip of South America pointing down like a fat finger to the top of his head. "Look, Steven, South America's pointing straight at your crown chakra!" We had a good chuckle over that one. "Barbara Hershey was amazing," I said. "She must have really been molested by demons." Steven sipped his ginseng tea and nodded in agreement. "If any Hollywood star was, it was Barbara Hershey!" He recalled her 1971 rebirth as Barbara Seagull. For one low-budget production she had to kill a seagull on film. It was so freaked out when it died, its spirit flew into her body. "So she took the name Seagull--Barbara Seagull. Like Anya, she's a walk-in! It ruined her career for years. And this movie The Entity is her comeback." I squeezed Steven's callused thumb. Maybe tonight was my night for a comeback too.

Steven lived in the Casa Mia, a tidy residency hotel on Columbus near Union. Dorm fridge beneath the sink in the corner, ten-speed leaning against the window, the snores of an old Italian filling the lightwell. As I sat on the edge of the bed taking my shoes off, Steven said, "You told didn't you, you told your therapist about me and you, you told her about the holes in your aura, the demons didn't you." I nodded guiltily how did he know Steven's high brow collapsed into wrinkles. "I gotta take a piss." I jumped up and grabbed his sleeve. "Wait, Steven, I told her some things, but not about you and me." "That's what you think." He shook me off and slammed the door. I went over to the sink for a glass of water, not that I was thirsty, but in the movies they're always offering distressed people water. "Your son's dead, here have a glass of water." As I lift the forest green tumbler to my lips, I hear the sound of horse hooves pounding densely packed Medieval earth, the rattling of windows, willow branches lashing against the panes. A crack opens up in the linoleum, then a golden face emerges with seven glowing green eyes arranged in the shape of a cross, I stoop down and push the middle one, it swirls and steams with molten blood and a pit opens at my feet that extends to the beginning of time and the Earth's hellish core. The colors in the room brighten, glow, swirl, then sag and drip, a glowing blankness, I step around the pit toward the bed, suddenly naked, staring straight into another world where mirrors register monkey heads, my toenails painted blood red. I float downward onto the mattress, gently, the mattress is cold and hard, a marble slab, no dialogue but a thousand fat white candles, their flames lapping the air. Steven enters wearing nothing but his 501s, biceps inflated, he paints ancient symbols on my midriff with a red brush, cold tickle, his face more angular--bestial--than usual as he mounts me and then I see it his giant lizardy eye, I let out a little scream Oh! His carefully manicured claws, two inches long, brush my cheeks, his horns reach skyward, his long ears droop downward straight to hell, the vertical furrows in his brows up and down up and down his huge mouthful of teeth his acres of gums, lava red, gleaming with demon cum, it leaks out of all his orifices whenever he's aroused desperate times he throws his head back, fucks me slowly and clumsily, his giant wings cumbersome, more jagged than angel wings my cunt a gash between dimensions his tail hangs down in the crack of his ass as he humps forward, the marble slab is so cold so hard love is bruises love is bruises I only see him in quick cuts, occluded by the sizzling haze of hell but he is truly a marvel to behold, his bubbly luminescent green hide, his sulfurous breath hot as a blowtorch on my flimsy cheeks, his molten red cock, two feet long with a spear-shaped head, there are words inside it, molten words dreams unwind love's a state of mind misty psychedelic colors undulate as he brays he loves me in Latin backwards. I am insatiable my name is Legion can't get enough of his demon cock for many demons have dwelled within this body ripped open by this snorting cloven creature red face forked tongue sweating and heaving I come quickly, a fireball of sulfurous farts explodes from between my bloody loins, my screeches break the sound barrier, rattling the tranquil vibes of Venus, booming back I cry out YIKES! AIGGEUUUU!!!!

Dodie Bellamy's book Cunt-Ups (Tender Buttons) won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for poetry. University of Wisconsin Press is reprinting her infamous epistolary vampire novel, The Letters of Mina Harker. She lives in San Francisco with the writer Kevin Killian and Blanche the cat.