Kamikaze Lust (5 page)

At home, my answering machine blinked a torpid two. I paced, listening to the tape scuttle back to the weary iambs of Aunt Lorraine’s voice: “Your Doctor Kaminsky was just on again. He is such a spunky fellow, and so good at his—” I jammed my finger on the fast-forwarded button. If only repression could always be this easy.

There was another message; Ethan confirming dinner tonight. I’d canceled our last two appointments as I did often with ex-boyfriends of the married variety who after one drink became sloppy and nostalgic about how great the two of us would have been together now that he was conveniently affixed to somebody else. All right, this only happened with Ethan. But he did say he might have work for me, maybe a celebrity-stroking piece for the glossy fanzine he edited. I heard some of his writers were swimming in cash, and Ethan himself had all of the trappings of financial success—the TriBeCa loft and summer house in the Hamptons, the fast car and bland bandshell of a wife.

Cordless pressed against my ear, I walked to the window, but instead of Ethan I called Shade. Dusk skipped down the street in a dervish of blues that sent the bright orange sun sinking into the Hudson. Cars honked, a child cried for her mother, and Shade wasn’t home.

Trading the phone for a pair of 7 x 50 World War II binoculars I found a few weeks ago at a flea market, I spied people walking down Broadway, jackets tossed over their shoulders, some wheeling babies in strollers, others carrying flowers in paper wrapping. Sentimental fools lapping up these last stolen moments of summer. I wanted someone to get hit by a bus.

And where was Ms. Teesha Marie Simpson on this evening oh-so-balmy? Off somewhere with Tina Motorcycle, no doubt. I tried to imagine it…Shade sitting in a dark bar, tilting her head back and laughing, her mouth open so wide you could see the silver fillings on her bottom molars—I loved that, the way she laughed as if nothing had ever felt so good. I thought about ringing her cell phone, but then I might appear too interested in her whereabouts, or simply psychotic, when she picked up and I didn’t have a single thing to tell her. I often worried about people thinking I was crazy.

Instead, I called Ethan and said yes, we were still on.

We met at a little bistro near his office. I ate a grilled chicken salad and drank two glasses of wine through our standard punctilio: small talk of careers—or lack thereof in my case, though I was careful not to seem too desperate for work—and friends we had in common from journalism school. After dinner we took the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building and pushed our noses into the grooves of the tall, metal fences, looking down on the lighted buildings of Manhattan as the sticky breezes blew Tropic-of-Cancer waves beneath the bucketing sky. I was feeling a little tipsy, Ethan said he was sober. I got vertigo, he didn’t. I practically fell into his arms up there on top of the world, and, though it seemed as sappy as Camille the dental assistant singing the Carpenters, I let Ethan take me home.

Blame the makeshift romance, blame the wine. Or blame it on Shade as I would the next day, but that night I was to break my sixteen months and three weeks—give or take a few days—of celibacy. It wasn’t the sex I’d missed, it was that I was beginning to forget my own body. I needed to be touched. And Ethan was there.

I liked kissing him more than I remembered. He’d become aggressive, his tongue running along the surface of my gums, his lips sucking mine as if through me he could finally breathe.

Soon enough, our clothes were flying overhead, and we were naked with his head planted between my legs, for a long, long time. Ethan was not one to give up easily—this I remembered. But what first felt good soon turned cold and my mind started wandering…don’t forget to call Aunt Lorraine…and where was Shade, goddammit?…I wanted a cigarette, but would have to hit the deli on the corner and buy a pack of Marlboros, no, something lighter, if I was going to buy a pack.…This was pathetic. Woody Allen had done so many of these scenes it was hard not to imagine myself a split-screen vision, and with Ethan going at it like a lawnmower. It was a shame, because one of the things about being with someone you haven’t been with in a few years is you want to show them how much you’ve improved and on that score I hadn’t made much progress. I thought about throwing in an
oooh
here, an
aaah
there, but couldn’t. Beyond comprehension was the fact that I often faked being drunk, pretended more than once to be a lawyer to get my hands on legal documents, frequently lied my way into interviews, yet I couldn’t fudge an orgasm! This had to stop. I grabbed Ethan’s hair and lifted up his head, which for all I knew he’d mistaken as my climax. Then again, he would know better. But he was breathing canine-hot like the weather, and I was just ready to be done with it.

He tore open a condom package, rolled over his dick with latex smelling like the gloves that earlier had covered Dr. Janis’ fingers, and I climbed on top of him, rocking him hard and fast enough that I thought I might have felt something myself, if I had anything left of myself to feel. “Slow down,” he said and I went faster, almost amused that I could have this penis diving mechanically in and out of my body and not feel a goddamn thing. My vagina was on Novocain, making me tense, hyperaware of the action, yet unable to register any sensation. But I
had
to feel something, so I swung violently up and down ignoring Ethan when he said, “It’s too much, I’m going to come,” and instead kept up my pace as we went back and forth, him huffing, “I’m going to come,” and me heaving, “Come,” until he said he didn’t want to come, not yet, because it had been so long, and I said not as long as it was for me, and we were suddenly having a conversation in the middle of our thrusts, which made me angry, and wishing I had weight enough to crush him, I slammed my body down on top of him, and he screamed, “Fran’s pregnant!” The room went quiet. I looked down at his red face…his black hair…his white teeth…black and white and red all over, like a cow in a blender…fucking
Cow Week!
I laughed maniacally, but only for a breath or two, until I felt a sharp pain pound up into me, and I didn’t know whether to scream or be thankful that I finally felt something when another jolt came up through my chest, and then another and another until Ethan screamed “Oh god fuck!” and I wanted to smack the surly look from his face, but instead fell forward on top of him, slid my head against the thin, wet hairs on his chest, and listened to the beat of his heart retreat before raising my head and staring down at the little man-boy soon to be somebody’s father. I wanted to puke.

I rolled over on my back and covered my eyes with my elbow. “You can go now,” I said.

“Come on, don’t do this.”

“No, don’t talk. Just go.”

I kept my eyes covered, listening to the sounds of Ethan dressing, the swish of his zipper, the clink of his belt buckle, every sound amplified as if with his clothing he could smite the heavy silence that hung between us. Then I had to look up and catch his sullen stare as he put on his shoes.

Freddy strolled up and lay languorously at his feet with her arms and legs outstretched. She was such a little tease, reminded me of Shade actually. Ethan couldn’t resist and went to pet her. She clamped down on his finger.

“Ow!” He lifted his hand as if he might hit her.

“Touch her and I’ll kill you.”

He shook his head. “You know, you haven’t changed at all. You just sit there all cold like a—I don’t know, like a statue. Everything’s so tied up in your convoluted perceptions of power.”

“My convoluted what! You mention your pregnant wife when you’re about to…you know, whatever.” I tried running my fingers through my hair, but was halted by clumps of dry mousse. I squeezed my fists until my scalp burned.

“Come, the word is come. You still can’t say it.”

“Would you just go home! We’ll call it a mistake and walk away.”

“You did that already, know what I’m saying? There’s no airplane this time.”

“No, just wives and babies, what was I thinking?” I sat defiantly. Counted backwards from ten, waiting for him to be gone, but he stayed there staring at me. I folded my arms over my knees, the red sheet tenting in between them, then leaned forward, taking a deep, long breath. “Jesus, Ethan, what are we doing?”

He shook his head back and forth, his eyes softening into contrition, his palms and mouth agape. “I don’t know,” he said finally, and we mirrored each other with monkey-see-monkey-do gestures until the whole thing seemed so damn absurd.

He walked to the front door. I followed. He turned and looked at me with his silk blazer draped over his shoulders. If I could have named the designer his latest collection probably filled the pages of
Jammin’.
Ethan was never much for integrity, nor journalism. The glorified gonzo life suited him well.

“So, I guess I’ll see you,” he said.

“Yeah, sure.”

He leaned over and kissed the top of my head. I looked up, smiling slightly, wishing he would just leave, because with every lingering second I grew colder, petrified like stone, or what did he call me? A statue.

After he left I remained numb. Riding an insomniac’s rage, I scrutinized the sheets for any sign of him—a smell, a stain, a leftover pubic hair—something to prove he was actually here and qualify the emptiness I felt, just as I used to search my bed for quarters left by the tooth fairy, a small compensation for the gaping hole between my teeth. Once, sleeping with my head above a tooth, I felt Neil’s hands underneath my pillow. I screamed. Dad came in and they fought violently, punching and grabbing at each other like amateur boxers. They were both red in the face when Dad, finally, using all of his weight, took down his pubescent son.

“You steal quarters from your sister!” Dad screamed.

“Fuck off,” Neil said, and they eyed each other so viciously I wanted to bury my head in my pillow.

Dad let go of Neil’s arms and stood up.

“Drunk loser ass,” Neil mumbled, and, despite Dad’s fingerprints all over his neck, he towered out of the room as if he’d been victorious. Dad slammed the door behind him and tucked me back into bed. Still wearing his Milky Way brown leather jacket and smelling of cigarettes and onions, he sat down next to me with his tan boots hanging over the edge of my bed. Just to make sure Neil couldn’t take anything else. He stayed sentry until the sun came up. I know, because I woke to him silently slipping away.

I bounded up when the phone rang, knowing immediately who it was. “Were you sleeping?” Aunt Lorraine said as I lifted the receiver.

“It’s two-thirty in the morning.”

“You don’t know what’s going on here,” she said. “Rowdy won’t wash dishes or shower, the government’s talking to him through the water or something, I don’t know. Everyone’s crazy—really! I can’t trust them anymore. Your mother said she’d take the phone away.”

“Okay, calm down. Nobody’s taking your phone away. I’ll talk to Mom.”

“Her, I don’t care. She’s worse than those doctors, treating me like I’m some kind of baby, but I know exactly what’s going on.”

I got out of bed and walked over to the kitchenette. “What do you want?” I asked, turning on the floor lamp next to the counter. My eyes adjusted to the muddy light.

“You know what I want, your—”

“No you don’t.”

“I do!” Her voice stopped me cold it was so childlike.

“Look, he probably won’t even take my calls. I’m no use to him anymore.” I heard my tone growing harsh, felt the back of my neck get all hot and sweaty. I was still suffering from the remnants of a lousy lay. And I didn’t have a job. And now Aunt Lorraine was deserting me.

Worse, I was sick of playing death’s little emissary in this family. It began the day Dad dropped dead of a heart attack, and Mom, who’d been seeing shrinks for as long as I can remember, finally graduated to the psycho clinic. She showed up at the funeral two days later looking like Gloria Swanson in big sunglasses, flanked by two extraordinarily beautiful nurses. Sobbing through the rabbi’s soliloquy, she fell to the ground before the service was over. We all ran to her, but the nurses stopped us, one handling crowd control, the other reaching into her pocket for smelling salt. Mom rose dramatically, smiling beyond those of us who’d gathered around her as if the footlights rendered us invisible. The nurses led her out and that was the end of Dad’s funeral.