Dream Lover (2 page)

He was wired all through lunch, paying me compliments, touching my hand, putting his arm around my shoulders. He kissed me passionately after we were done eating. I didn’t know if I could move when he suggested that we walk again. He put his arm around me as we went along, and this time—the only time he pretended that we would have a future—he talked about how he would love to take me to the beach sometime. He talked on and on about teaching me to surf. He said the waves broke directly in front of his house; there was a pile of boulders there in the surf left by a glacier a million years ago. He said I was about the size of his daughter and could use her wetsuit, the implication clear and contradictory. I didn’t think his wife would appreciate a visit from me. Then we got to the bathroom.

“I have to go,” he said, taking his arm off my back. As he walked toward the door, he turned slightly and offered me his hand. “Come in with me,” he said softly. “You’ll be safe.” I guess he could see the confusion on my face. Was I going to walk into my death chamber or just watch him pee? I didn’t know him. But something about him was mesmerizing, and I followed him into the bathroom, smiling shyly. I thought he would try to make love to me, but he didn’t.

“Being with you has turned me on so badly, but we really don’t know each other enough to have sex yet.” He was unzipping his pants. He reached into his fly and took out his penis, already erect. “Just stroke it a little, will you Cindy? It won’t take much, I promise.” So like an idiot, I went over to him and grasped him in my hand. He was right; it didn’t take long. He moaned my name over and over and pulled me to him, careful to not get his ejaculate all over our clothes. He snuggled his face into my neck, into my hair, moaning.

“Oh, Cindy, thank you. Thank you.” He grabbed paper towels with his free hand while the other arm stayed around me. He was adept at wiping himself off and putting his dick away with one hand. I didn’t know what I was feeling then; the flattery was gone. He let me go and I turned to the sink to wash my hands off. I used a lot of the soap; it had a medicinal smell that I would grow to hate. He didn’t wash his hands. I could smell his body when he put his hand up to my face to lift my chin so he could kiss me again. He was an expert kisser. I finally gave in and put my arms around his neck and kissed him back. It was a long, deep kiss. He rubbed my back and didn’t let his hands go below my waist. I’m not sure if I was grateful or not. I just remember thinking I would have to wash my sweater where he touched it.

“We’d better get you back to the office,” he said. I had forgotten completely about my job. What time was it, anyway? We started walking toward Wall Street and Jack started to talk. He told me about his children, a boy and a girl. His son was looking at colleges and Jack took him from one campus to another, all over the country. He was vague about where he lived; I thought it must be at the Jersey Shore because he talked about the beach. His wife loved the water, so they had moved there from Manhattan soon after he graduated from college. He loved his wife, but she was preoccupied with the lives of their two children and her mother and sisters. He was lonely. He looked at me.

“I’m giving you the opportunity to run from me right now. I’ll never leave my wife. My boss is a religious fanatic who will fire me if he finds out I am involved with another woman. Do you understand that? Are you willing to take this on? Er, take me on? Haha!” He didn’t say anything about having feelings for me, about being interested in getting to know me better. It was all about what I was willing to put up with.

For some unknown reason, I said yes. I would take him on. That night we met for a drink after work and he asked me to go to a hotel near the Path Train. It was one of the few times we went to a hotel, and he never stayed overnight. It was totally impersonal. Once, last winter, there was a horrible snowstorm. I stayed the night and went into work the next day with the same makeup and clothing on; fortunately, I had a hairbrush. No one seemed to notice.

I don’t know why I allowed it, why I chose to waste three years of my life with a man who didn’t have one single feeling for me. He used me like an accessory hand. I was a mouth, a vagina, a pair of boobs. When I think about my relationships with other men, there isn’t any evidence of self-deprecation, or self-loathing like that I exhibited with Jack. I was raised by loving, caring parents. My father and I have a warm, supportive relationship to this day. Well, until I tell them the news. I’m sure this will throw them both for a loop. My mother won’t hear that I am sexually active, even at the age of thirty-one. It is not discussed in our family. I love God and Jesus with all my heart. I know that sounds like a contradiction, after what I’ve done.

We have had few arguments in our household and they always revolve around religious hypocrisy. My parents are devout Catholics. When I say devout, I mean that they believe the words that come from the pope’s mouth are God’s words. They take the Bible out of context, choosing just the parts that seem to suit their purpose. An example: My sister went to my parent’s home one night last year, shortly before the holidays. I was there for some forgotten reason. Probably for Sunday dinner.

“We won’t be coming for dinner Christmas day, Mom.” Rather than offer an excuse, she allowed my mother to ask the questions. It was the way things worked at our house. Mom was wiping down dishes as she unloaded the dishwasher. She could never get it through her head that all you needed to do was to let them sit and they would dry on their own. She put the dishcloth down.

“What do you mean you won’t be coming for dinner on Christmas? Everyone comes here for Christmas dinner.” My mother never considered that one of her seven children would ever not show up for a dinner. We came from far and wide to honor those traditions, no matter how tough it might be to get there. “You’ll come.”

“Not this year, Mom,” Heather stated. “Mark is leaving.”

I thought,
So that’s the problem
. I’d wondered when it would happen. How long would it take our mother to figure this out? Heather couldn’t say, We are getting a divorce.

“Well, you’ll come after he goes.”

I looked sideways at my mother. Was she being wise? “Mom, Heather and Mark are getting a divorce.” There, I’d said it.

My mother picked up her dishcloth again and started wiping. “No one gets a divorce in this family. What are you talking about? Cynthia, you take after my mother-in-law. Your grandmother could take the birth of a baby and turn it into the ugliest story you ever heard.”

Heather and Mark could get a divorce; they could both marry other people and start families with them and my mother would never accept it.

“Mom,” Heather started, “Cindy is telling you the truth. Mark is leaving me. He doesn’t love me anymore.” Heather wasn’t beyond exaggerating to get my mother to see her point of view. Surely, if the man left, she would have to accept that. “Doesn’t it say in the Bible that if he wants to go, you’re supposed to let him?”

“Right! That’s exactly what it says, Mom,” I said. “It says to ‘let the unbeliever go,’ doesn’t it Heather?” She nodded her head yes, but that only fueled the fire. The amazing thing was that my parents hated Mark! He was an atheist Jew who insulted their Christianity at every turn, usually not intentionally. They, in turn, insulted Judaism over and over again. I thought that it might be a blessing that he was going his own way.

“It says in the Bible that God hates divorce! I won’t have this kind of talk. No one gets divorced in our family! If the husband acts like a donkey, you lie about it; you don’t tell your mother that you aren’t coming to Christmas dinner because your husband doesn’t love you anymore! Who cares about love! I never heard such talk in my life. You two act like you were raised by a couple of heathens. Wait ’til Daddy hears about this. Just wait.” I had the feeling my father would be more understanding, but didn’t say so. “I can’t believe my own daughter would even entertain the idea of getting a divorce! It’s a sin!” she yelled. “You’ll go to hell! Why’d we spend every dime we had sending you all to parochial school and then have this kind of sin!” She finally threw down her towel and plunked down in a chair.

My brother, Fred, came into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “What’s up?” he asked. “I heard yelling.”

My mother thought she would get an ally in Fred. “Heather and Mark are getting a divorce! How do you like that?” She hit the table with her open palm for emphasis.

“It isn’t such a big deal nowadays. You couldn’t stand Mark, anyway. Remember how he kept hanging the baby Jesus by his toes last Christmas?” Mark had insisted on picking the plastic doll out of the manger and swinging him around by his feet, in spite of my mother crying out to him to stop, yelling, “You’re making all the blood rush to his head!” Heather had put her head down on the table and pretended she was crying, but she was really hiding laughter from our mother, who was on the verge of storming out of the room. If that happened, it would be weeks before we would get her to talk to us again. This was all blasphemy.

Fred went on. “And what about him dressing up like an apostle for Halloween? A gentile apostle! No, I say good riddance to Mark. Besides, Mother Dear, gluttony is a sin, too, yet I don’t hear you yelling at me to stop eating so much.” Fred, a three-hundred pounder, had found something good to eat and was taking it back to his room. He was one of three children still living at home. My mother was furious.

“Heather Ann, stop laughing at me this instant. I’m so upset right now. What’s keeping your father?” She turned to the telephone and picked it up to see if there was a dial tone. She would call him and make sure he was coming home. Fred had already given him a heads-up. He would calm her down, as only he was able. However, she wasn’t finished with us.

“Why’d you ever marry a Jew, anyway? I told you this would happen! He thought he was better than us. He made fun of every celebration we had here.” Her arms were crossed over her chest and she had her best ‘I told you so’ expression on her face. Heather couldn’t argue with our mother because she knew it was true. They never should have gotten married. They married for lust. The folks hated him and it filtered down to Heather, who ended up siding with our parents because she had too much to lose if she didn’t, forgetting her husband in the process.

“Yes, well hindsight and all that, Mom. I’m sorry I hurt you and Daddy. However, this isn’t easy for me. If you’re going to yell at me every time I come home, I won’t come anymore.”

My mother thought about this. “So you’ll come for Christmas?” The woman was one-track, there was no arguing that.

“Yes! I’ll come! But promise me you won’t mention his name!” Mark’s name came up once during Christmas weekend that year. My mother mentioned him in a prayer and the entire family moaned. What would my parents say to me when it came time for my unveiling? I’d have to give them some background. Their beloved eldest daughter had had an affair with a married man. Heather and Mark would seem like a gift from heaven after my revelation.

After that first time in the hotel with Jack, I had serious doubts about the future of my relationship with this man. For one thing, the sex was not that great. He wasn’t interested in my satisfaction at all. The expression “getting his rocks off” fit Jack to a tee. I kept thinking that a hand job in the bathroom wasn’t much different from the hotel experience, and it was cheaper and neater, too. He did ask me to do a few weird things for him. He asked me to pose in my underwear. I was to take my panty hose off (he hated panty hose) and put my shoes back on, and then remove my clothes. Not like a striptease, just like I was normally undressing. He would go nuts. If I wore long pants, he asked me to turn my back to him so he could watch me bend over to take them off. I thought he would pass out from that one.

He liked me to jump on the bed, too. He’d lie next to where I was jumping and laugh and laugh. And then he would tackle me. That was his foreplay. Now that I think of it, I never had an orgasm with Jack in three years. He wasn’t interested in it; never asked, “Did you come?” We never discussed sex. I was just to assume that we would do it every single time we were together.

So that was my life for three years. We never had a real date that I remember; just an evening in the hotel. He never took me to a show; we didn’t spend a weekend together. It was so textbook. He wouldn’t give me a phone number. I did finally find out that his last name was Smith, and when I did, I laughed for at least five minutes. There are over two hundred Jack Smiths in New York, alone. How would I ever find him? It once occurred to me to follow him into his building to try to find out whom he worked for, but he caught me and I didn’t see him for a week after that. I learned my lesson.

Another time, we were on the street together and someone with whom he worked saw us. He didn’t say who, just that that person had questioned him later in the day about the woman he was lunching with. After that, we didn’t stop at our usual vendor for lunch. We ate closer to the campus bathroom. Our love nest.

I got to carrying around one of those metallic blankets that folds up into a tiny, silver dollar-sized bag and we would spread that out on the floor of the bathroom. He would lie down because his knees couldn’t take the hard tile. Or he would sit on the toilet and I would sit on him. Only once did someone interrupt us, and Jack just yelled that he was in there, sick. The person wasn’t waiting when we came out. For three years, I made my clothing choices to accommodate my lunchtime trysts with Jack. I would go shopping and see something, a dress with a full skirt, or a wraparound skirt, and think,
This would be good for seeing Jack
.