Thanks, honey! comes up onscreen. When I’m Back In Town, You And I Will Spend Some Very, Very SPECIAL Hands-On QUALITY TIME Together! Meanwhile, You Be A Good Boy!
If my father notices the monthly charge on his Visa, I’ll tell him it’s an educational thing. An online listserve for research, or maybe a special kind of virtual tutoring. He’ll be happy I’m doing that, he’ll be very proud. I graduate next year, I’ll have to figure out what kind of lies to tell him then. I’ll need good lies, so he doesn’t worry, so he doesn’t get all upset.
THE TREATMENT FOR my boyfriend’s new script has story problems, all his friends except me seem to agree. Some holes, some loose ends, the inciting incident needs punching up, the second act drags. I thought it was wonderful, perfect, I told him I loved it just as it was. I always think his stories are amazing, but he never believes me, or he’s never satisfied. He went back to do more work on it for weeks and weeks, consumed and not seeing me, and finally finished what he now calls a ready-to-go-to-script treatment. Attached it to me in an e-maiclass="underline" Can you read this asap, I need your feedback!? And take it to the copy place, make ten copies, please, please?? And come over to my place tonight, you pick up dinner, I’ll do hors d’oeuvres, I love you, yeah?
So? he asks. I’ve brought chili cheeseburgers from Tommy’s, his favorite; we’re eating them sitting on the carpeted floor of his studio apartment in the Hollywood Hills. It’s a converted garage, really; the actual house belongs to a ninety-six-year-old former bit player, who still lipsticks her mouth to look bee stung and uses his rent to buy food. There are green-furred oranges on the kitchenette counter and a white-furred heel of whole grain bread. We have old Varietys across our laps, under our burgers and microwaved mini-chimichangas and dim sum laid out on the abandoned screen door he uses as a coffee table. The only other place to sit is the double futon, but it’s lumpy, unmade, and unlaundered, and we’ll wind up there anyway.
So? So?
So, it just gets better and better, I tell him. The story is wonderful. It feels so real. You’re absolutely ready to go to script.
I should just throw it away and start all over, he says.
He looks morose, opens another beer. After getting the copies and the cheeseburgers, I’d stopped to pick up the imported kind of beer he likes, a brand from some former Soviet country.
I should just burn it, he says. Put it through a fucking shredder. He kicks at the stack of copies I’ve brought. I hate that fucking story, he says.
No, you don’t, I tell him. If you didn’t still care about it, you wouldn’t be so upset.
I reach over to pat him, soothe him, but he jerks away.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, he says.
I know that you’re talented and you’re creative and you’re disciplined, I say. I wish you believed me. I wish you believed in yourself more.
Jesus, he says. Well, hey, thanks for reading it, anyway. Thanks for taking the precious time away from your precious fucking schoolwork.
I’ve been available, I point out. You’re the one who’s been preoccupied.
He eats the last dim sum, scrapes up chili with a finger.
I made an apple tart for dessert, I tell him. Will you eat some? Or we can split an orange?
He doesn’t answer; I get up and find most of a gallon of chunky skim milk in the mini-fridge. I’d like to throw it away, scrub dried spills from the sink. I’d like to clean his toilet, vacuum the gritty blue shag carpet, but don’t want to make him mad.
You don’t eat enough fruit, I say.
Fuck off, Mother, he says. He eats the last mini-chimichanga, rubs his hand on his shirt.
You need the vitamins.
Unbelievable.
I just worry about you, that’s all. I care. I love you.
And that’s what you think love feels like? he says. But he’s smiling, and I know he actually thinks I’m wonderful, that he needs me for this, he just doesn’t know how to say it, how to express it.
So, are you at the library right now? He reaches over to slide his dirty fingers through my hair.
No, I’m studying at my friend Stacy’s.
Do you have a friend Stacy?
No.
Wow.
He moves aside the used, chili-stained Varietys and pushes me flat on the floor. I’ve been wanting and waiting for this for weeks, it feels like it’s been a long, long time. I flatten out for him, spread all open, and he starts making love to me, but it’s so gently I can barely feel him there. I try to get into a tighter angle, so there’s some torsion, some clash, but he adjusts with me and it’s all too smooth and loose. He strokes my face, he’s being so sweet, and I’ll never come this way. I need the edge first, the clench of muscle, before I can go slack. Maybe he’s worried the floor is too hard, maybe he’s worried about hurting me by accident. I nod my head at the bed, and he slips out to let me go first. We lock in again and keep going. Now he’s stroking my hair, so I cross my wrists overhead and nudge them under his other hand, hoping he’ll grip them hard, give them a twist. I push my head up under his stroking hand, hoping he’ll grasp and tug my hair, make me strain. But he seems to want us even, balanced, and I just give up. I let him gently lunge and stroke away, and watch the square of paneled ceiling, the rustle of the jumbled sheets. There’s a stain on the pillowcase next to my head, the kind of leak a thin brownish fluid might make. I wish I could get up and wash all the linens. But not to wash away any trace of her. Just because I don’t like the thought of him sleeping in soiled sheets.
BY NOW SHE’S soaped herself up and given me, or the masculine-initialed me, a virtual bubble bath; squatted over the camera and peed to virtually spatter me; squirted lube on her fingernail-filed hand and pantomimed a good reaming; had me tie myself up at ankles and wrists (hard to do); assigned me a variety of punishments involving food or lack of, or sustaining physical positions; told me to lick her boots; acted out giving me an enema; pretended to apply alligator clamps to my nipples; cracked a leather riding crop at what’s supposed to be my ass, my scrotum, the tender soles of my feet; mashed her breasts into the camera and told me to suck; told me to call her Mommy; told me I’m a bad, dirty little boy. She’s played with herself and taunted me with shiny fingers, told me I’m not allowed to touch, mustn’t touch Mommy, bad dirty little boys aren’t allowed to touch. She’s a good actress, but I find it all very unengaging, and I’m bewildered there are guys willing to pay for such things. I’m bewildered there are guys who are turned on by this. I’ve logged on once or twice a week, very late at night when I’m sure my father is asleep, for my Very SPECIAL, Hands-On QUALITY TIME, and I keep looking for more of her, trying to get her closer. At first I thought I saw swelling from the brow lift, maybe the barest puncture marks from the staples along her hairline, but she’s been wearing bangs and I can’t see much. Otherwise, she looks exactly the same as she always has. I’m at a loss for what else to request, how to keep it going. The degradations, the hurts, the playacting — it’s all getting so lackluster, so old.
Hi, honey, she says to me. She’s sitting spread-legged on a chair, her red hair tugged into a bun, a gladiator-sized leather belt across her waist. Long black gloves.
Hi, Mommy, I type back. I type with one hand, I’m eating an orange with the other.