“They totally loved me,” she said. “It was great, but I got tired of it before they did. They dragged it out too long. They kept making it a big deal that he was eventually going to fuck me with his cock—the way they went on about it, I just lost interest.”
I looked at the Polaroids. I was slightly discomfited by her thinness; her ribs showed and her eyes looked starved and abnormally luminous.
“I forgot they even took those pictures until they sent them to me a month later.” She put them in a pile and placed them back in the box. She indicated the rubber penis. “I was going to use that on you,” she said. “But it reminds me too much of Jana. You deserve your own cock.”
Maybe because she had told me a story, I told her one about myself. It was something that had happened when, as a teenager, I had tried having sex for money. I told her the story to excite her, and I could see right away that it did. At first it excited me too; I had never told anyone about it before.
“He didn’t want me to take my panty hose off, he just wanted me to bend over and pull them down to about midthigh, which sort of embarrassed me. But I did it, and then I bent over and waited, and he didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah?” We were lying together, Erin up on her elbow, her eyes dilating slightly as she went into the rigid psychic suspension required by fantasy. She was, I thought, the only person I could tell this story to.
“On one hand, I was embarrassed on account of the panty hose thing, but on the other hand, I was very matter-of-fact—I guess teenagers just naturally are. I said, ‘Um, are you, like, doing some-thing or what?’ And he didn’t say anything, so I said, ‘Well, what are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Shut up. I’m doing what I gotta do.’”
“Which was?”
I realized that I was not excited anymore. I was not embarrassed, either. I didn’t know what I felt.
“What did he do?”
I put my face against her chest.
She ruffled my hair. “C’mon.”
I tilted my head up and whispered in her ear.
Erin yelped with glee. “He jerked off on you?” She fell down on her back and roared with laughter. We rolled around laughing, me tickling her, her little chin pointing at the ceiling. Then she grabbed me and held my head against her chest, and I felt, under her quick breath, her radiant tenderness; it was as if some secret part of her had come out to touch me gently and had then drawn back into its hiding place.
The next day I was shopping in a clothing store and daydreaming about Erin, when a pop song on the sound system took my imagination in a facile grab. It was a flimsy love song, sung in a high, caressing register. There was real feeling in it, but the singer had tortured it into deformed and precious shapes that debased his own emotionality with a methodical viciousness that was quite breathtaking and gave the bland song an odd, obscene jolt. It reminded me of Frederick and the artificial civility just veiling his furious contempt. It also reminded me of Erin, offering her flowers to no one. These images seemed opposite each other but at the same time locked together in an electrical stasis, each holding the other in place.
It was a very popular song. I had seen the singer interviewed on TV. He was a foppish young man who seemed thoroughly disgusted to find himself so liked.
We no longer talked about trying to have sex as “ourselves.” Some-times this was all right with me; we could find a little slot to occupy and frantically wiggle around in it until we were both satisfied. Other times I felt disgruntled and ashamed of myself. On those occasions I was aware that I was offering her only a superficial tidbit of myself, a tidbit tricked out to look substantial. It was dishonest, but our tacit agreement to be dishonest together at least allowed a tiny moment of exchange that I wasn’t sure was possible otherwise. And perhaps it was not fair to call her behavior dishonest, since she was so used to it that to her it felt true.
We saw each other two or three times a week, usually for dinner or a movie. Sometimes we went out with her friends. They were loud, lewd, exhibitionistic, and kind. They were a comedienne, an office worker, a photographer, and a waitress who wrote acerbic short stories. They were mostly ten years younger than me, and in their presence I felt enveloped in bracing female warmth that I did not experience with most people my own age, certainly not with my august colleagues. I loved standing around with them in the dark of some bar, talking sex trash. They made fun of me for having sex with men, although most of them occasionally did too.
“When I have guy fantasies, I want it to be a frat boy thing,” said Gina, the robust waitress. “I want them to call me bitch and make me suck their cocks and all that.”
“I like something more refined myself,” I said. “Cruel but refined.”
“I’m the reverse about guys,” said Lana. She was a curvaceous girl with loud clothes, severe hair, and signifying glasses. “Women can degrade me sometimes, if I really like them. But if I’m with men I want them to get on their knees and worship it. And they have to mean it.”
Their talk was like a friendly shoving match between giggling kids, a game about aggression that made aggression harmless. Although I wasn’t sure that it was completely harmless. It was fun to say that I liked something refined and cruel, but under the fun was an impatient yank of boredom and under that was indignation and pain.
One night Gina wore a rubber cock strapped onto her body under her pants. She clownishly pressed it against the rumps of men, who laughed and jovially explained that she was doing it wrong. She pressed it against my thigh, and I cooed and groped the rubber thing, arching my back and butt in a satire of narcissism and subservience.
“I’ll give Erin ten dollars if she’ll get on her knees and suck Gina’s cock,” said Donna.
Erin smiled and began to move forward. “She doesn’t need ten dollars,” I said.
“Just for you, baby,” said Gina.
“She doesn’t need it,” I said, and put my arm around Erin’s waist. Erin’s smile stuck, and she halted uncertainly.
“Aww, Susan loves Erin,” said Donna.
We all went to dance, our movements sloppily describing friendship, sex, display, and animal warmth, all in a loop of drunkenness that equalized every sensation. The bar was saturated with dumb, lurid kinesis. Mischievous entities with blearily smiling faces peeped from behind corners. I loved these young women.
But the next day, our posturing seemed stupid. I sat in my office between hours, thinking of the moment when Donna had offered Erin ten dollars, and I felt embarrassed. I imagined my officemate, a hale critic in her fifties, witnessing the exchange in the bar. I imagined her smiling gamely, eager to approve of these young women who were, after all, “gender bending.” I imagined her smile faltering as she registered that Erin’s eager response had nothing to do with sex, or even with fun. I imagined her frowning and turning away. I closed my eyes and felt this imagined rejection. I wanted to protect Erin from it, to make my officemate see her in all her different aspects—her brave flowers, her swagger, her private tenderness. That way I made my oblivious officemate bear the discomfort I didn’t want to feel.