Fake House (7 page)

He did not call me for three days after that kiss and I was relieved to be left alone. I needed time to think things over. I was scared of, yet eager for, what seemed inevitable. Finally the well-advertised, dreaded event. What are the means by which two clothed, talking people are transformed into sexual partners?

It was ten o’clock and I was in bed. I thought,
If he doesn’t call me tomorrow, I will call him
. Then the phone rang. He said, “Susan, I’m across the street.” His voice was fragile, cowed.

“What are you doing across the street?”

“I have a six-pack. We must talk.”

“But I’m in bed.”

“We must talk.”

I opened the door to let him in. His meekness on the phone had emboldened me. He was a reduced person, discounted, remaindered. He was remaindered of the day. He even appeared shorter. Gone was the authority who could thunder, “El Greco sucks!” He had difficulties composing his face. I said, “Come, we can sit and talk on the bed.”

He had only glimpsed my bedroom from the hallway while walking from the living room to the bathroom. He sat at the edge of the bed and observed his novel surroundings: a poster of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting; chrysanthemums in a carafe on my desk; well-stocked bookshelves. I was sitting on the bed with my legs crossed. He took out two bottles of Sam Adams from a paper bag and gave me one: “You have a bottle opening?”

“A bottle opener?”

“Oh, yes, ha! ha!”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll open it with a key.” He took out a set of keys and started to fumble with his own bottle, then he opened mine.

“Why are we drinking good beer? Any special reason?”

“No, no special occasion.” He grinned. He had been studying my bookshelves as we were talking. “Robert Walser! When did you get that book?” He glided his hand over my knee, barely touching it.

“I bought it at Hibberd’s a month ago for five bucks.”

“Who told you about Walser?”

“No one.”

He got up to pull the book from the shelf, then sat down again, but a little closer to me, a nearly imperceptible distance closer. He opened to a page: “Listen to this:
Perhaps because of a certain general weariness, I thought of a beautiful girl, and of how alone I was in the wide world, and that this could not be quite right
. Isn’t that nice, the ‘quite right’? He didn’t say it was wrong; he said it ‘could not be quite right’ that he was alone.
Self-reproof touched me from behind my back and stood before me in my way, and I had to struggle hard
. Ha! ha!”

“Why is that funny?”

He did not answer but swigged his beer, then inched yet closer to me, a bald gesture, unprefaced by any statement. He sat perfectly still. We both sat perfectly still for a minute. He stood up unsteadily, in slow motion: “I’ve got to use the bathroom.”

It’s gluey, I’d been told, lots of glue. It’s sticky like glue and even dries like glue. Elmer’s Glue. When he came back, he had a panicky, sorrowful face and did not sit down: “Maybe I should go.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

You coward
. “Then go.”

“But I don’t want to.”

“Then sit down!”

He resumed his old spot, sitting sideways, bookward, with his face turned away from me. We both kept still for another minute. Then he turned to me and said, lugubriously, his eyes downcast, “It’s great to see you.”

I put my finger to his lips to spare him any more inanities. I turned the light off on the night table and pulled him closer to me. I whispered, “I want you.”

I kissed him boldly, nibbling the corners of his mouth and his lower lip. I thrust my tongue inside. The mouth has no taste, only texture. I cradled his head with one hand and pushed him down onto the bed with the other. He slipped his hand under my T-shirt and fondled my breast. His palm was rough, calloused, and it made me shiver. He was slowly gaining on me, erasing my advantage. He took his shirt off, then his pants, then his underwear. I glanced at his shadowy crotch. It was a scumbled charcoal drawing, with the middle part lightly erased. He said, “Am I freaking you out?”

“I’m all right.”

We continued. I was stung by his question. How did he know? When his hand slipped inside my panties, I began to tremble. My pelvis tried to wiggle away; it was thinking on its own. His hand was clamped to my crotch. My entire upper body began to convulse. It was a grotesque display, this loss of control: Now he’s seen everything. He was about to pull my panties off, but I said, “No, Tom.” I said, “No, please, don’t.” I steered his hand away in panic. He was touching me, down there. I was shaking violently. I was sobbing. Between sobs, I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said, and kissed me on the forehead.

We slept. Or he slept and I pretended to sleep. I looked at his dark form and felt heat emanating from his back, from his asshole. In the middle of the night I peeled my panties off and pressed my body against his. He was lying on his side and turned away from me. (My body conformed to his.) I looped an arm around his torso, felt my breasts squished against his back. I could feel his ass.

The night was long. I touched myself, down there. I made myself wet.

At daybreak, as the blue light entered the room, I lifted the bedcover to peek at Tom, at this naked person. I had never seen a man naked.

Here was an eating/peeing/shitting body, nourished and exercised through two decades, a body at the pinnacle of its perfection, destined to be slashed, killed, corrupted, destined for ugliness. Here was a real human body, sleeping in my bed.

He was like a child. That’s what a naked person is, a child. He opened his eyes and turned toward me. He smiled, brought his face close to mine. We kissed, but leisurely this time. He slid his face down, clamped his mouth around my nipples. First one, then the other. It’s like eating. He squished my breasts together with his hands. Then he guided one of my hands toward his penis.

What is a penis? A silky stem, a paperweight, a pliable turd, an addendum. Something ancient, a dinosaur, a sage. It did not feel like it belonged on his body. Krazy Glued, it would snap right off with one hard yank. The head was shaped like the blade of a shovel, something to excavate with, or the reed of a saxophone. A downcast yet arrogant creature, defiant, dismal. Now I’ve touched a penis. I yanked it. I said, “Am I hurting you?” He laughed.

He rolled on top of me. His weight prevented my escape. I thought,
This is fucking. I’m being fucked
.

He lifted his torso to look down at our colliding pelvises. He wanted to register this unlikely act, to stash it away in memory. His soul was trying to escape from its solitary confinement. I heard the monotony of that swishy, swishy sound.

Afterward he lay draped over me, beached, his head nestled between my breasts. I asked, “Have you been with many people?”

Tom looked into my eyes, smiled, shook his head.

I stroked his black hair. He was twenty. I was nineteen. I had just been fucked.

I dressed quickly while he was in the bathroom. I did not want to be seen naked in daylight. When he came out, I was surprised to see that he was hard again.

He kissed me on the forehead before leaving. I had escorted him to the door. I was anxious to get rid of him. I wanted to be left alone to think about what had happened. I wanted him out of my apartment.

I went into the bedroom and took my clothes off.

I lay on the bed, uncovered. I opened my legs. I closed them. I kept them spread in a thirty-degree arc. I looked at the ceiling and saw his hovering face. I remembered the sucking, swishy, swishy sound. I remembered my fingers clenching his prick.
“Am I hurting you?”
Air and light played on my body. I became conscious of my toes and of my armpits.

I was an eating/peeing/shitting body, nourished and exercised through nineteen years, a body at the pinnacle of its perfection, destined to be slashed, killed, corrupted, destined for ugliness. I was a child, a naked woman. I had just been fucked.

Snatches of Tom’s conversations, spanning two months,
droned in my head—“Everyone knows Bonnard as a colorist, unrivaled at painting cats, dogs, and buttocks, but they forget that he was also a great allegorist. His paintings are not just bouquets.… Miró’s hovering assholes and cunts are traffic signs, devoid of sensuality.… Pollock is an inferior Monet”—and I thought,
Who gives a fuck!

I did not go to class that morning. I thought,
If I go out, people will know
. I would give it away by how I walked, by how I smelled.

I caressed my thigh languorously, probed my insides. I stroked myself without shame, with brio, but then I felt bad afterward. It was a regression, this relapse. It was a parody. The term
postmasturbation
came into my mind. Already I was polluting the memory of my first fuck.

I closed my eyes and thought of our house in Swarthmore, of my father pulling weeds in the yard. He, too, has a prick. I thought of my mother. I was now her equal. There was nothing she knew that I did not know. When I woke up in the afternoon, I forgot, for a moment, that I had just been fucked.

I walked into the bathroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror. I looked at my breasts. He had seen these breasts. I looked at my pubic hair. He had seen this pubic hair. He had seen what I saw. I cupped my ass with my hands, dug my nails into its cheeks. I walked up to my astonished face and kissed the reflection of my lips.

As I brushed my teeth, I thought,
He has used this same toothbrush. We’re sharing a toothbrush. Hygiene! That’s what intimacy is: shared hygiene
.

The toilet seat was up. On the rim of the bowl was a long pubic hair: his pubic hair.
He has pissed into this bowl
, I thought, smiling. I showered quickly, got dressed and left the apartment.

It was very bright on the street. Trees, cars, and buildings all appeared in stark outlines, their colors saturated, fake-looking. Everything seemed made of plastic. It was a dressed-up yet degraded reality, a clutter of inconsequential objects, a charade of people scuttling about pretending to be doing things.

I strolled along with pleasure, with defiance, with hole, with happiness. The silk of my pants fluttered against my calves and ankles. I was astounded by the pliant workings of my insteps in locomotion. Yellow, fan-shaped gingko leaves flecked the sidewalk. I squashed the stinky peach-colored fruits under my mules. As I passed a bare-chested, sturdy-looking boy standing on a ladder, I tilted my face up and shouted, “Hi!”

I went to Rittenhouse Square and found a seat on the granite balustrade framing the reflecting pool, recessed from the flows of traffic in the dappled shade of the sycamores. There were many people in the square: mothers and nannies with their toddlers; aging white matrons accompanied by black nurses; paralegals, lawyers, and accountants in business attire going home from work; jeaned and T-shirted slackers.
Everyone has genitals
, I thought,
Let’s not make too big a deal out of this
. I felt a part of this pantomime, initiated into the conspiracy of the universe. Silly phrases flooded my consciousness:
People must stick together.… She’s stuck up.… If it’s sticking up, hammer it down.… A stick in the mud, he is.… I’m tired of your shtick.… The weather’s been sticky lately.… I drive a stick shift, don’t you?

Nearby three boys of high school age, one with dreadlocks, were skateboarding. I looked at them with a knowing pleasure. I crossed, then recrossed my legs. I leaned back on my elbows, arched my back, pointed my nipples skyward. I felt giddy, let out a burst of laughter, which I tried to dissimulate as a coughing fit. A homeless man, picking through a trash can ten feet away, gave
me a drugged, hostile look. How unfair, I thought, that the homeless should go without sex.

He did not call me for two, three, four, five, six days. I thought,
It is okay. I’ll give him time
. It seemed perfectly natural that a man should run away from a woman after a bout of intimacy.
Love requires infinite patience
, I told myself. In any case I was swathed in a glow of contentment and was not all that eager to have sex again immediately. After a week I called him: “Tom?”

“Oh, hi! Susan!”

It was a little too breezy, this greeting, the emphasis on the “hi!”, the loudness of his voice. I half expected him to say, “May I help you?” I said, “Tom, I haven’t heard from you in a week.”

“Well—ha!—I’ve been busy—ha! ha!—a few things came up unexpectedly.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, ah, can I call you back?”

I did not say anything.

“Susan, are you there?”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Listen, are you going to be home tonight?” He had found his voice. It was deeper, more serious.

“Why?”

“I can come by and we can talk.”

“Let’s meet somewhere else.”

“Why can’t we meet at your apartment?”

“Tom, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s up with me.”

“Meet me at Tangier.”

“Tangier at Eighteenth and Lombard?”

“You know where it is. We’ve gone there together.”

“All right. But when?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“I’ll see you then.”

I went there half an hour early. I wanted to claim the space before he arrived. I also wanted to be drunk.

“Just one?” The waitress said after I had sat down at a table. “For now.”

“Would you like to see a menu?”

“No, thanks.”

“What would you like to drink?”

“A snifter of Bailey’s and a mug of Sam Adams.”

Some guy at the bar in a yellow polo shirt glanced in my direction. He grinned.
What do you want, asshole?
I glowered at him and he looked away. Then I noticed the white spatters on his pants. It was the house painter I had said hello to on the street.

The music was loud. Some horrible free jazz. The waitress brought me my drinks. I drank the Bailey’s in big gulps, holding the chocolaty liquid in my mouth for a few seconds before swallowing.

“Another Bailey’s, please,” I said to the waitress. “And, miss …” She turned around. “Is it possible to change this music?”