After dinner we went to drink. As we walked down the street, we held hands. There was real feeling between us, but it was unstable, as if we had been rewarded with a treat of flavored ice, which we wanted to put off eating for as long as possible so that we could savor it, but which was already melting anyway.
We went to a bar where people in various states of good-natured resignation sat in the dark under crushing disco music. I ordered drinks with lots of amaretto in them. The sweetness gave my mild drunkenness a pleasant miasmic quality.
Erin said she liked what I had said about trying to be more genuine. She said her therapist had recently suggested to her that it might be good for Erin to spend at least a few weeks getting to know women before she had sex with them, and that although she hated the idea on principle, she was considering it.
I reminded her that we’d already had sex.
“But we could start fresh,” she said. “And get to know each other before we do it again.”
I thought of going with her to restaurants and movies. We would sit and discuss current events, and under all our talk would be the memory of my open mouth and exposed tongue. I moved close to her on the banquette and put my head on her slim, spare shoulder. She held me. Her hair had a tender chemical smell. I pictured her washing it, bent naked over a bathtub, moving her arms with the touching confidence of rote grooming practices.
She walked me to my door and we kissed. Her kiss felt honorable and empty. I asked her in. “We don’t have to have sex,” I said. She came in and we lay on the living room floor with our arms around one another. We touched each other gently and respectfully, but with each caress I felt as if we became more separated. That made me touch her more insistently and more intimately. I felt her neediness rise through her abdomen in a long pulse; we brushed our lips together in a stifled dry kiss and then opened our mouths to feed.
“I want to do what you said,” she whispered. “I want to just be us.” I took her face in my hands. I wanted to say “my darling girl,” but I hardly knew her. I pulled up my shirt and pulled my bra down. I pulled up her shirt. I knelt over her and rubbed against her chest and belly, just touching. She closed her eyes, and I could feel her waiting in her deep body, wanting me to show her what “ourselves” might be. And I would’ve, except that I didn’t know. I could remember her at the restaurant talking about her mother and religion, expressing her opinions. Again, I imagined her standing alone, offering her flowers to no one. She was very dear and I wanted her, but I could only see her in pornographic snapshots, stripped of her opinions and her past. I unzipped her pants and pulled them down. I turned her over and positioned her. Her breath subtly deepened; she was taut and vibrant and absolutely present. I lightly rubbed my knuckles against her genitals. I felt an impersonal half-cruelty that was more titillating than real cruelty.
But she wanted to be cruel too, or rather to pretend that she was. She would take her artificial debasement to a certain point, and then she would change direction. She would kiss me and I would feel her tender self in a burst of nakedness that stopped my breath—and then she would veer away, immersing herself in some internal personality that didn’t know or care about me. She was a nasty teenaged boy, she was a silly kid, she was a full, deep woman all the way down to her private organs. She slapped me and she pulled my hair—but she demanded that I beat her between her shoulder blades. And when I did she whispered “thank you,” her face transfigured with sorrow so abject that I was for one violent second absolutely repelled, and then drawn back with equal violence.
Afterward, we lay against my throw pillows, cuddling and drinking chocolate milk. “Well,” I said. “I guess that was us.” She giggled and rubbed her nose on my stomach. My feral kitten crept round the bedroom door and peered at us, her wide eyes wistful, curious, and scared.
Later in the week, we took a nighttime walk. We walked uphill to Noe Valley, talking through strained waves of breath. She talked about a book she wanted to publish, even though the author was a nut who called every day to pester Erin with questions about how best to advance her career. Her stride was long and confident, but the inclination of her head was mechanical and deferential. She asked me if I would ever again dress the way I had dressed when she’d first seen me. I said probably, but not to take uphill walks. She told me that a previous girlfriend, who had been molested by her father when she was little, had liked Erin to pretend to be her father while they were having sex; she asked me if I thought that was creepy. I said it definitely didn’t seem like they were relating directly as their real selves. She laughed and said it sure felt real to her. She pushed me against a car and tried to make me turn around. I snapped at her to cut it out; there was hurt feeling in her retraction, and I put my arm around her.
We walked downhill and came upon the slovenly burghership of Twenty-fourth Street. People dressed in floppy clothing and carrying lumpy handbags walked up and down in complicated states of distraction. Two men were standing on the corner, each with a telescope, offering people the chance to admire the planets for fifty cents. One telescope was labeled “The Moon” and the other “Venus.” A group of children stood around them, looking as if they were willing to be delighted but weren’t sure that the moon and Venus were quite delightful enough.
“Do you want to look?” asked Erin.
I said yes because I could tell she wanted to. I did enjoy waiting in line with the kids; their hope for enchantment, glimmering just faintly through their premature disaffection, was poignant in its secret tenacity. Their mothers sat drinking cappuccino on the out-door bench of an expensive coffee shop, looking pleased to see their children engaged in such a good, simple activity. The moon was cold and beautiful.
We held hands as we walked back up the hill. The city was sparkling and calm in panorama. Erin told me that she’d fantasized about adopting kids one day, but she knew she needed to “work on” herself before that could happen. She asked if I’d ever wanted to have a family.
“No,” I said, “not for its own sake.” I paused, watching my shoes crease with each steep step. “If, when I was in my twenties, I’d fallen in love with someone and he’d loved me, I would’ve wanted to have children with him. And I probably would’ve loved it. But that didn’t happen, and I’m not going to be running around trying to get pregnant just to do it.”
“It doesn’t make you sad?”
“No. Although sometimes, when I hear friends talk about their babies, or other friends talk about how they desperately want to have babies, I wonder if I’m really sad and am just pretending I’m not.” My breath chugged earnestly. “I think I’m sadder that I don’t write poetry anymore. Although I’ve been thinking lately that I might start again. Not now, though. Maybe when I’m old.”
“Cool.” She paused. “I just felt like pushing you up against a car again. But I won’t.”
Erin shared a large flat with a former girlfriend named Jana and Jana’s girlfriend, Paulette. The house had a tiny yard full of saucy flowers. Erin’s two large cats sat on the pavement or bounded and promenaded about the area. I loved coming to Erin’s house. Every time I rounded the corner and saw it, I felt I was approaching a place where tenderness and good humor prevailed.
One night I came unannounced, surprising Erin in her lavender thermal pajamas. We sat together on her bed and enjoyed the garish comfort of her electric fireplace. To entertain me, she brought a large cardboard box out of the closet and showed me what was in it. There were somber albums of family pictures (tiny, troubled Erin in a ruffled swimsuit, handsome Dad looking absently at something outside the frame, towering, pissed-off Mom), a plaque that had been awarded her in a high school photography contest, a track team trophy, a bracelet her brother had made for her in junior high, love letters, an artificial penis made of rubber, an apparatus with which to strap it on, an odd assortment of small plastic animals, and some Polaroids of Erin naked except for a dog collar and leash around her neck. She explained that the pictures had been taken by a heterosexual couple whom she had met when she’d answered their advertisement for a “slave girl.”