Petra went down on me. I always get scared the girl will bite my penis, instead of having a really great time I feel nervous. I looked down at her cute Asian head sucking my penis and felt a sense of pride. It was irrational and reasonless but I felt it anyway.
She stopped and her face came up to mine and we kissed. I really loved kissing her. I really liked the present. There was nothing terrible about laying there naked with her, half drunk, giving each other head and kissing.
We pulled the blankets over us. I spooned Petra.
Fourteen
It was morning. I was lying in bed with my clothes on when Petra got back from the store with eggs and vegetables. She made coffee and poured orange juice. I sat on the futon in the kitchen and listened to her talk about money. I sat and drank coffee. She stood over the stove cooking eggs mixed with green peppers, mushrooms and cheese.
Then the smoke alarm started going off. Petra got up on a stool and played with it. Her playing with it did nothing to help the problem. Lyndi Wood kept yelling from her bedroom to take the battery out. Petra said to me, “Benny, get up here and do this. I need to take care of the eggs.”
I got up on the stool. I stood on the stool playing with the smoke alarm. Most of it was made of plastic with little red wires and something that looked like a battery. The battery would not come out so I ripped it out. The alarm didn't stop. I said to Petra while looking at the alarm, “What the fuck is wrong with this thing? I took the fucking battery out.”
She looked up at the alarm and said, “Punch it.”
“It's made of plastic. My hand will get all cut up.”
“Hmm, rip the whole thing out of the ceiling.”
I attempted to rip the whole thing out of the ceiling but nothing happened. The alarm persisted without remorse to make terrible electronic noises. I said, “That's all I can do. Just finish cooking quickly.”
“I don't like to rush cooking. I want you to like it.”
“I'm sure it'll be fine.”
“I'm worried.”
“How much more time do you need?”
“Like three minutes.”
“Well, I guess we can stand this horrible fucking noise for three minutes,” I said.
“I don't like discomfort.”
I got off the stool. “You'll live.”
“You are so blue collar,” she said jokingly.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah, only blue collar people say things like, 'you'll live.'”
“What do you usually do in this situation?”
“Bitch a lot.”
“After when you're done bitching what happens then?”
“I get drunk until things make sense.”
“Do you want to have my babies?”
She laughed and said, “I'm not ready to have kids.”
“You're 32 years old.”
“That doesn't mean I'm ready for that commitment yet.”
“Norman Mailer had like six wives and eight kids.”
“Norman Mailer was a Harvard grad, had money and you're a shiftless asshole.”
“A lot of shiftless assholes have babies,” I said.
“With shiftless women. I'm not a shiftless woman. I'm educated, I'll have a nice forty hour a week job soon that'll pay good money and give me health care. I'll be on my feet and living a good easy life here on the lower east side. You'll be in Ohio half starving; you're like some kind of martyr.”
“I'm not a martyr,” I said.
“You live in that town for what? I've read your memoir. You used to live out west; you used to go out and do things. It was so sad reading it, such a strong young man with courage and determination and slowly, gradually without you ever noticing it all went away.”
“I lost several things.”
“You didn't write what you lost.”
“The memoir ended right before I lost them. I will have to write another memoir to record what I lost.”
She handed me my eggs and veggies. She sat down next to me, smiled and said, “How many memoirs you going to write?”
“Simone De Beauvoir wrote four.”
“She was a professor of philosophy who had lived through Nazi occupation and the creator of modern feminism; you're a cook at a restaurant in Ohio.”
“I used to be a pizza boy.”
“Yeah, and Celine was like a doctor and fought in World War 1.”
“I haven't done anything.”
We finished breakfast and I went in the bedroom to check Gmail. Desmond Tondo was on and decided to G-chat with me:
Desmond: You're in New York.
Me: Yeah. I'm getting my picture taken.
Desmond: That sounds good. Where are you going to be tonight?
Me: At the Opium Christmas party.
Desmond: Good, I'm going to be there.
Me: I gotta take a shower but I'll see you tonight.
Desmond: Sounds good.
Desmond Tondo was a writer. He was also a very strange person. He graduated from Harvard with an English degree and then decided to work in the hiring department of a hedge fund company. He was an attractive Italian man. He wasn't Ellis Island Italian; his family came later in the sixties. He had one book published about a suburban landscape catching on fire and turning suburbia into flames. He had grown up in suburbia in Connecticut. He found suburbia hell on the human soul. His parents had fallen for the advertisement that raising kids in suburbia with good schools and a high level of security would make their child an adult that would be efficient in the modern workforce. It was true, he was efficient; he had succeeded. He made good money and he was living out his conception of the good life. Desmond had a very well-ordered life. He went to work in the morning. He wrote four days a week. He read a little every day and still had time to date women. He kept everything straight, clean, and organized. His face was shaved and he always smelled nice.
Last summer Desmond came to visit me for a few days. He didn't shave those days. He wore t-shirts with leather shoes. He came to write an article that appeared on the Huffington Post. Desmond and I drove around the Youngstown area for two days doing nothing. He was fascinated by the shittiness of it all. There were houses close together but it wasn't suburbs. It was summer and the poor blacks and whites were playing basketball on the streets. The crack heads were walking down the sidewalks. The old steel mills looked old and appalling. People were sitting on their porches drinking beer and swearing at each other. It was a very different scene.
At night we went to the local strip club where he would get dances from impoverished women that didn't even know what Harvard was. They assumed it was something only spoken of on television. He didn't have to play big shot. He didn't have to tell people what schools he went to, what hedge fund company he worked for, that he lived in Manhattan in a nice apartment. All those facts which are so crucial to life in New York City meant nothing in Youngstown. He seemed very much at peace in Youngstown. He was dressed normally and had a courteous personality. Everyone accepted him as a person just walking around the earth.
Desmond liked sex though: he liked women. When he was at the strip joint he spent a lot of money on the dancers. The last time I was in New York a pretty girl didn't pass us without him making a comment. He told me he would spend money to go on boats where everyone was having swinger sex. He had a real passion for sex, the way DiMaggio had for baseball or Brando had for acting. He put his heart and soul in the getting of sex, into the things women require for a man to have sex with them. And I assume even though I've never experienced personally, he must have devoted a lot of heart into the act of sex.