All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found (18 page)

Now when I wrote for the paper the stakes felt higher, and with Seidel as my example—the writer willing to say the unsayable in a climate of fear and self-censorship, flinging daggers that sang toward the unsuspecting reader—I chose my subjects with greater care. Still, it was easier as a journalist. I could simply quote the words of others, neither condemning nor condoning. In a profile of jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas, for instance, I quoted him calling the war in Afghanistan “more of a trade show and a laboratory for new weapons than a real pursuit of those who perpetrated that horrible event” already known by the glib shorthand 9/11. Indeed. It would take a decade for the mastermind to be snuffed, and the country where the plan was hatched would remain a failed state and a cesspool of extremism despite the best efforts of our misused soldiers, but it wasn’t as if the paper’s subscribers were looking to the arts pages for an understanding of the “war on terror.”

The assignment I enjoyed most occurred when Ray asked me to write a profile of a radical performance artist named William Pope.L. He’d once walked the streets of New York with a twelve-foot white phallus strapped to his midsection, a comment on white fears of black sexuality that sent the National Endowment for the Arts—which had once bestowed on Pope.L a grant of taxpayer money—into a tizzy. His most famous work, however, involved eating a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
with the aid of ketchup and milk, then regurgitating the meal, all while sitting on a gleaming porcelain toilet perched atop a ten-foot scaffold. He told me he’d once seen an ad campaign for the paper that made it out to be the modern equivalent of a primitive cultural object imbued with mystical powers. I quoted his explanation at length:

“The ads suggested that if you bought a subscription, good things would happen to you. They proposed that the paper could have a magical effect. You didn’t have to read it. Just having it near you, having it land on your doorstep, would multiply your wealth.”

It was Ray’s brilliant idea to hold the piece until the day the paper, after more than a century in existence, first enlivened its pages with color ink. Thus I could quip that we’d spiced up the product mainly for the sake of its digestibility, an ironic bit of institutional self-mockery that, far from buttressing Pope.L’s critique, laughed and winked at it. Nothing I wrote elicited more comments from my colleagues, and everyone thought it was a gas. With each compliment I grew more uneasy, until I began to understand that my habit of privately laughing and winking at myself, at least in relation to my work—the self-proclaimed democratic socialist, working as a low-level functionary at a rag whose very name was practically synonymous with the triumph of finance capitalism—had now spilled over into my writing about others. I had come, at last, to inhabit the voice of a trapped man who perversely enjoyed his cage.

I was running out of tricks on the talk line. My clever come-ons had begun to bore even me, and I heard the same voices time and again, reciting their own rote greetings: Brown Sugar, Mistress Tina, dozens of others who never gave their names but whose intonations were as familiar as old friends. What had once surprised me—the novelty of amateur pleasure seekers finding a voice for their fantasies, seeking a sympathetic listener to enliven and validate them—now struck me as not much more than a lurid form of group therapy in which true self-awareness remained forever elusive. Like all good things, the sounds of a working vibrator or the click of a pair of handcuffs became first dull and eventually repulsive with ceaseless repetition.

One night Molly called me at home. She said she’d been out with a friend, having a drink, and she’d told the friend our story—our improbable, slightly kinky, strangely sweet story.

I think of you a lot, out there in the city, she said. I wonder sometimes what you’re doing.

I think about you too, I said.

An hour later I was at her door.

We sat at the table, just like the first time. We drank a beer and smoked a cigarette, just like the first time. We talked about little things, work and such. Then she told me how, on a recent trip home, she’d found some cassette tapes her mother had stowed in the attic. Her mother had made them not long before her death, conversations with a psychic in which the psychic had made a cryptic reference to a lover. Molly’s mother confirmed that there was “someone special” in her life.

After listening to the tapes, Molly asked her mother’s best friend about this mention of a lover. The friend said that Molly’s mother had indeed had a lover, outside of her marriage, for forty years.

Was he my real dad? Molly asked. She wondered because she didn’t look anything like her father. Many times her mother had hinted that Molly was special, somehow different than her siblings.

Yes, the friend said, the lover was your father. He was also, she said, my son.

Molly was stunned. All these years the woman she’d known as her mother’s best friend had been her grandmother too.

Life just gets more complicated, she said. One day you’re walking along, deep in your routine, you’ve got a husband you love and a father you have no reason to think is not your father, and the next day you’ve got neither, but also somehow more. Everything you ever assumed is turned upside down.

We went to the bedroom and undressed. It felt very uncomplicated. This gesture has this effect. This movement elicits this response. This part fits here.

Silently we joined, as if picking the lock on a door to forgetfulness.

For a long time I didn’t mention my phone-sex forays to anyone. Then an old friend from college, Rebecca, invited me to Arizona for a week of work and solitude at a little cabin she’d rented for the winter. We wrote in the mornings—she was at work on a novel—read and walked in the afternoons, made dinner together in the evenings. We talked about politics, books, and personal matters; there were few people in the world I was happier to listen to, and none I knew who listened more intently. One night over dinner and a bottle of wine I told her about my calls to the talk line, my meetings with Molly. If anyone would get it, then Rebecca surely would. It wasn’t in her nature to be prudish or judgmental. She was the coolest cookie I’d ever known, as shrewd and nonchalant as a cat.

Little did I know just how well she’d understand, for when I finished she surprised me with a story of her own.

She was on her way out of the house, and the phone rang. It was a man. He spoke haltingly at first. She could barely make him out. Eventually she understood he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. For a seminar in human sexuality, he was conducting random telephone surveys. He wondered if she could spare a moment to answer a few questions.

She told him she was already running late. She had to give a lecture in half an hour. She was sorry but she didn’t have time.

Can I call back later? he asked.

Yes, I suppose, she said, although there was an edge of desperation in his voice that almost made her say no.

What is your lecture about? he asked.

She told him. She was an expert in her area of interest, and he was impressed.

Tell me one other thing before I go, he said.

What’s that? she said.

Tell me what you’re wearing to the lecture.

She was surprised by the question, but she looked at herself in the mirror.

I’m wearing a peach-colored dress, she said.

A woman in a peach dress on a spring day. That’s nice.

The way he said those words—
a woman in a peach dress on a spring day
—both excited and frightened her.

I have to go, she said.

Okay. I’ll call back later, he said.

She gave her lecture. Afterward, people asked her questions for an hour, and she came home exhausted and exhilarated. She made herself some dinner.

The telephone rang. It was the man again. He said his name was Joseph. He had just a few questions. It wouldn’t take long.

But first, how was your lecture? he asked.

She told him about it, told him it had gone well, and he said, with what seemed to her sincerity, that he was happy to hear it. She felt a sudden flush in her face, a little surge of self-satisfaction. It had been a long time since she’d heard warm affirmation in a male voice.

He said he was going to ask her a series of questions about her sex life. When she heard the phrase, she laughed.

Why do you laugh? he asked.

Because I don’t have a sex life, she said. My husband left me. I found out he was sleeping with his secretary. Maybe I should give you
his
number.

She laughed bitterly.

I’m sorry, he said. That’s awful.

It’s okay, she said. I’m glad he’s gone. In some ways it’s the most terrible thing that’s ever happened to me, but in others it’s been a blessing. I’m learning things about myself I wouldn’t have otherwise. I can eat cereal for dinner if I don’t feel like cooking. I’ve started mountaineering and I’ve lost forty pounds. I feel better inside my own skin than I ever have.

He asked her several generic questions—her age now, at what age she’d had her first sexual experience, how many partners she’d been with, whether she’d ever had an abortion or a sexually transmitted disease, how many times per week, on average, she’d had sex with her husband. She answered them all.

His questions became more intimate. He asked her whether she liked to perform oral sex, whether she liked to receive oral sex, whether she’d ever had anal sex, whether she’d ever had lesbian fantasies, lesbian experiences. She began to feel uncomfortable but she answered his questions. He sounded a little embarrassed to be asking them. When he was done, he thanked her, and they said goodbye.

A few days later he called back.

I tried to reach you a couple of times, he said. But I only got your answering machine. Rebecca. I like that name. And I missed your voice. I wanted to hear it again.

She was flattered—and apprehensive. She’d made a point of not telling him her name when he called before. She hadn’t thought he’d call again. But she talked to him. She liked the sound of his voice too, although she didn’t tell him that.

He began to call every few days. She looked forward to hearing from him. It was a pleasant distraction from her work, from her loneliness in the house she’d once shared with her husband. He was a good listener, and she did most of the talking—about work, about the new life she’d suddenly found herself living.

One day he asked again what she was wearing. She told him. What are you wearing underneath? he asked. She was surprised by the question—surprised and a little turned on.

Will you take it off? he asked. All of it?

Yes, she said. If you want me to.

He continued to call. Each time, they had phone sex—he would talk, she would touch herself. He said that he loved to give her pleasure; it made him feel good to make her feel good. She enjoyed it too. She’d ceased to have any interest in sex when her husband left, so disgusted was she by his philandering. Joseph was helping her discover a portion of herself she thought had vanished for good. His voice soothed her. She got lost inside of it as she touched herself.

She sometimes worried, though, that he was in cahoots with people who wanted to tarnish her reputation. She worried that he was taping their calls. She often worked with people who fought corruption in large corporations, and her work had cost those corporations serious money. Corporate lawyers and operatives had searched high and low for ways to discredit her, to no avail. She wondered if they might be getting desperate.

It was too late now. She could only hope that he was telling the truth.

One day he called and said, I have to confess, I lied to you.

Her throat tightened, her hands began to shake.

I wasn’t doing a survey, he said, although I did call your number at random. I’d just received some terrible news, and I was lonely. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I just started dialing numbers, and you were the first person who answered. So I made up a reason to talk to you.

What’s wrong? she asked. What happened?

I don’t really want to tell you, he said. It’s my problem. I don’t want to drag that into what we have.

So you’re not a student, she said.

No. I’m a landscape architect. I don’t live in Michigan. I live in Chicago. But I did go to college in Michigan about fifteen years ago.

He told her about his work, how much he loved it—being outdoors and doing creative things and making the world a tiny bit more beautiful. Moved by his passion, she forgave his lie, although she wondered why he couldn’t tell her what had happened to him.

The next time he called, she said, Guess what? I’m coming to Chicago to give a talk. I’d like to meet you. But I understand if you’d rather not.

No, he said. I’d like that too. More than I can tell you.

They arranged to meet in the lobby of a hotel.

A part of her knew she shouldn’t do it. He’d lied to her at least once. He could be a sociopath, a serial seducer of vulnerable women. She told no one where she was going. How could she? As she drove to the hotel, she became very afraid. She might disappear, might end up at the bottom of a river somewhere, dumped in a landfill, any number of horrible places, and no one would know how or why. She hadn’t left word with a soul. But she went ahead. She was too curious to turn back.

He was waiting in the lobby.

He was tall, sandy-haired, lean and tan from working outdoors. He wore elegant, thin-framed glasses. She thought him quite handsome. His face exuded a thoughtful calm. When he spotted her looking at him, he smiled.

They went up to his room.

As soon as they entered the room, they undressed. They made love, rested, talked, made love, rested, talked—all day long and into the night.

Once, when she came back from the bathroom, he was doubled over on the bed, holding his stomach.

Are you okay? she asked.

Yes, I’m fine, he said. Just a little indigestion.

They slept. In the morning, they showered, dressed, and checked out. He walked her to her car.

Thank you, he said. You have no idea how great a gift you’ve given me.