Sugar in My Bowl (16 page)

My friend Ian says the best sex he has ever had was with a guy whose last name he doesn’t know and whom he meets once in a while at a cruising spot near Bethesda Fountain. For Ian the essential ingredient is fun. His Central Park sex toy really enjoys him—not like a fussy gourmand showing off the exquisite subtlety and range of his sexual tastes—but like a hungry youth who eats him up with gusto and generosity and simple pleasure.

My friend Ida loves sex with strangers. Relationships are not her thing. The last time she was dating someone and I asked her how it was going she said—“He phones me every day. It gives me the creeps.” Recently she signed on with one of the big Internet dating sites. She advertised for a man who wanted a regular physical relationship without emotional commitment, making it plain that she was looking for a fuck buddy—not a boyfriend or a husband. Within hours she was inundated with responses. Most of the respondents were married men who were also looking for sex uncomplicated. She arranged to meet a selection of seven for interviews. The interview was conducted—in each case—over cappuccinos in the Barnes & Noble on Union Square. The initial seven were whittled down to four, who were granted physical tryouts, which were conducted in a hotel room, the cost shared. Two contenders emerged. The favorite and the ultimate champion was a married doctor who declared up front that he adored his wife, loved his kids, had no desire to upset his home life, but needed more sex—he and his wife hadn’t done it in a decade.

And so—every Wednesday at 5:45
P.M
.—Ida has an appointment with the doctor at his consulting rooms. She wears exotic underwear and he opens up his drawer of toys. He has introduced her to slipper spanking, ostrich feather ticklers, and some light whipping. He courteously ensures that she comes at least once before he goes for his own climax. They talk a little before and after, but not much. The point is to fuck, not to make friends.

Much as I’d like it to, that wouldn’t work for me. That’s because my mind and my clitoris are connected by a horribly complex tangle of tensions and triggers. Great sex is obviously a matter of taste, determined by what it is you’re looking for on a spectrum ranging from transcendent emotional intimacy to a physical workout with an orgasmic ending. The height of pleasure for me falls somewhere in between. Sex as mind fuck, heart attack, and clitoral firestorm. A triple-connect of head, heart, and loin. A total sensory sundae.

It’s hard to describe great sex; it’s so sacred, so private when it’s good. It is of that order of existence and action that is beyond words—greater and grander than anything that can be distilled in sentences. That’s why written descriptions of wonderful sex often end up sounding cheesy or silly. So I’m not going to describe this at length, you’ll have to take my word for it—my best sex ever was with the man I married.

We met at college. We were young and we plummeted ecstatically into love; making love whenever and wherever we could, not because it was transgressive, but because it was urgently necessary. It was a total exploration of the other, a drenching of the senses, a total immersion in scent, taste, touch, seat, skin sound, breath. Every millimeter of his being had to be experienced, just as every millimeter of mine was touched and tasted and adored. It was utter; there was nothing else—no past, no future, simply the moment and one another—both completely exposed, painfully vulnerable and completely fearless.

More than a decade later we were divorced, but I’ll never forget that first time, in Luke’s dorm room at Yale, in a single bed that fitted us amply because our bodies fit so perfectly and so close. It was the first time that I came. Afterward he ran a bath in the communal change rooms, and together, wrapped in towels, we skittered up the cold staircase into the cubicle and soaked in silence in the deep, hot water. With his warm flannel he washed my face and my neck and my breasts and my belly—our eyes smiling, wide open and locked on one another.

Miss Honeypot Marries

A Short Story

Barbara Victor

F
rom the time she was aware of sex in her imagination, each act in her fantasy was perfect, the best sex she ever had, the next time always more incredibly delicious than the time before. All the dashing men who were friends of her father’s, husbands and lovers of the women who were close to her mother, taught her about seduction. The moguls, actors, writers, doctors, lawyers, painters, diplomats, the men who came to swim and play tennis in the country or who sipped cocktails at parties in the city, made her aware of the “it” her friends giggled and whispered about. “Did she do it?” “I heard she did it.” “Did he try to do it?”

By the time her teenage years were winding down, she was way beyond the “it.” She understood the subtle glances of the sophisticated and suave older men, the light touch on her arm to help her on with a coat, the words that held double meanings to camouflage the message, the embarrassed glances when she dared to look them in the eye, the flicker of hope when she hugged them too close. Because she understood their silent language, she knew why Eddie left Debbie for Liz and Frank left Nancy for Ava, and Archie secretly preferred Veronica though he always stayed safely with Betty. At sixteen and seventeen, she even understood what Hammett saw in Hellman, how Monroe desired Miller, and Bogart and Bacall exploded on the screen.

The “it” had no form or memory, no aftermath of regret or embarrassment, as it remained elusive and intangible, created and orchestrated by her alone—masturbation with a willing partner who was under her control and direction. Miss Honeypot was the Alexander Haig of sexual fantasy. “I am in charge here” was her mantra. Those older men were all Cary Grant, obliged to recite words written for them by her, succumb when the script called for surrender, retreat when the director, her again, needed sexual tension.

She had sex before she had sex. She had great sex before she ever had bad sex.

Miss Honeypot’s abstinence was never based on lack of daring or fear of reprisal but rather on a dread of disappointment that would contradict the perfection of making love that went beyond her brain. There were good girls and bad girls and somewhere in her mind, until she could come out and be both, the bad girl hidden within the good girl, until she could find someone who would understand that fantasy was her game, she was out of the running. Her desire was the chase that ended in half-finished acts which always promised more and better and best. Hunting for the drama that would turn into ecstasy impelled her to seek out the perfect candidates to share an actual foray into bed. The “it” became the “what if” when the first kiss at sixteen with a brooding, tragic boy who died two years later by his own hand, kept her going for another two years until at eighteen, the “what if” became a “so what” when the son of a literary giant tricked her into believing that knowing the steps of the dance standing up had bearing on the moves lying down. A black lace party dress ripped down the back was a remnant of his misplaced enthusiasm, lipstick askew covering a bruised lip happened more out of anger than ardor, which made the whole encounter off the charts and impossible to rank. She was his Lolita in the flesh. Coupling with him was a trip to a zoo where wild animals roamed free and which had her scurrying back to the safety of untried yet fulfilling fantasies. After doing “it” for years with happy endings, she made the mistake of doing “it” for real. The scale from worst to best had taken form.

In her twenties, Tuscany melted her heart and an Italian opera singer melted her icy veneer. Miss Honeypot heard him sing before the world sang his praises. He was the perfect panacea for her second encounter of the intimate kind and the appropriate send-off before heading down a Swiss slope into the arms of a married mogul who gave her a ride on his private plane. From there to Belgrade and the impoverished Yugoslav student who had no bathroom or shower in his room in the shabby pension, but who offered lilac soap to bathe in his sink. The affair was sweet and tender but geographically impossible, which was why it seemed great for the seventeen hours that they tangled. By then, the impossible, improbable, and highly unlikely freed her to hit and run.

On a train headed for Paris, she considered her position on the scale from worst to best. For a brief instant she had great though in reality, she was still firmly on worst, hoping to inch her way up to passable.

Driving along the quai in Paris at dusk where rooftops cut magical designs in the sky, she heard
the
question for the first time. “Am I the best you ever had?” Best? With the exception of seventeen hours of silent sex with an impoverished Yugoslav, she had just gotten over worst, passable was barely possible and adequate was a distant dream. The man asking
the
question was French and adept at food and wine, which, in her state of confusion, had her comparing him to the rich risotto she had devoured in Tuscany with the thin Nouveau Beaujolais that she had just tasted and despised. Too young to be so embittered, Miss Honeypot headed home to America with the intention of burying herself in work. While buried, she married a grim but brilliant economist who baffled her with his choice of monetary policy and his penchant for serial infidelity with obese women who lived in trailers. If fantasy was still her mantra, gratitude was obviously his. Sex with him was neither bad nor good, neither best nor worst. It was married missionary mundane and monotonous. While she wrote copy in her head for the news broadcast the following evening, he toiled away at intercourse. He was Portnoy. She was liver. Once in Berlin with him, she wrote a postcard to her mother. “Who is this man who calls himself my husband, and what is his name doing on my passport?”

Back in New York, divorced and working in television, Miss Honeypot met them all. There were the men who flattered, chased, pursued, begged, threatened, abused, drank, drugged, and sometimes even made it past passable. There was the anchor who used toys, the Greek who used drugs, and the producer who used the 8h13 back to Scarsdale to excuse his premature ejaculation. Another husband followed, a man whose face she couldn’t quite place years after the divorce when they crossed paths at an airport.

Something clicked in her brain. Bad sex was easy to recognize. Good sex, though elusive, was tough. It had little to do with technique, size, durability, or improbability. It had only to do with finding a man who had her number.

Settled in New York, and working in television, the dashing older men who were still her father’s friends were a decade more cynical, less confident and suddenly willing to risk it. It was a match made in Greek mythological heaven. They needed to assure their own immortality. She was Electra let loose in a geriatric ward. Her thirties were a blur of whirlwind encounters with men whose desire for her took precedent over her own sexual pleasure, when her body was taut and her power at its apex, when her ability to seduce gave her the right to go careening in the wrong direction down a one-way street. The scale from worst to best was all about conquest and some bizarre need to rebel against her roots. Had she been Catholic, her target would have been a priest. Had she been daring, it would have been a woman. Had she been in Auschwitz, it would have been a Nazi. Her story was banal. It was fear that propelled her to choose the worst and convince herself that she had found the best.

Fantasy is delicious. Reality is rarely better. Then it happened. For the first time, reality was the fantasy Miss Honeypot had never had.

Somewhere in her midthirties, she found herself floundering professionally and personally, convinced that she had hit the bottom, certain that the best was behind her and the future was bleak. Halfway down that one-way street, Miss Honeypot collided with a man. He was handsome, adorable, funny, guilt ridden, grief stricken, frightened, professionally in limbo, exiting a marriage, and the new father of an infant. At first glance, he was everything she wanted and everything she feared. Had he asked what her astrological “sign” was, she would have said “available,” but he only asked her name, where she lived, and what she did. The first two questions were easy to answer. The third was like an arrow piercing her heart. No longer able to hide behind a glamorous job, bored by men who had never penetrated her soul, desperate to regain some semblance of sanity and order in her life, Miss Honeypot fell madly in love, albeit with the unspoken but conditional proviso, “enter at your own risk.” He did. She did. Within twenty minutes or so, they were living together. It was the best sex she ever had. It was the best love she ever had. It was the funniest, most intellectually challenging time she ever had. It was the most tender and exciting moment in her life. And she and he did everything in their power to turn heaven into hell.

Their fights were an exercise in linguistics and psychoanalysis. His command of the language equaled or even surpassed hers. His ability to dissect her motives and machinations destroyed the little power she had left. He had her number to the point where he knew her body, defenses, and games, and could even dismantle her armor with nothing more lethal than his tongue. Their routine was predictable. They made love all night. Who knew what Miss Honeypot was capable of doing with a man who knew what he was doing? Starved at dawn, they stumbled to a neighborhood diner for food, came home and made themselves presentable to show up either to work or to interview for work. In the evening, he came home, carrying a shoulder bag on one arm and his infant in the other. His dog was a big part of their life until they parted and the dog jumped out a window. They would never know if it was suicide or dementia or perhaps sadness that the perfect couple had simply given up. When they parted officially and her closets were emptied of his clothes, her shelves bare of his books, her bathroom devoid of his toiletries, he took up residence in a building next door. He could see her come and go though never for a moment did she ever imagine he cared enough to suffer. She watched him come and go, steeling herself against the pain of missing him by taking to her bed or diligently plotting her next professional move. Six months went by and he saw other women, many women, not particularly plausible women, while she dated the occasional man. They had their moments. He would call. Miss Honeypot would answer. They would make mad passionate love and know that the bond wasn’t broken but the fear was too overwhelming to give it another try. He would tell her that all she had to do was ask. She would respond that if only he would say what he wanted. And it went on like that for several years—until she got a job and moved to Paris, and he found a woman and made a new life.